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The Province of Manitoba will recognize post-traumatic stress disorder as a work-related disease starting Jan. 1. It's the first time that PTSD has been included as an occupational disease by a Workers Compensation Board in Canada. "When a worker who has experienced a traumatic event on the job is diagnosed with PTSD, the Workers Compensation Board will presume his or her condition was caused by the job, making it much easier to access supports, treatment and compensation," Premier Greg Selinger said in a release. The new bill extends coverage and benefits to all workers who are eligible for workers compensation in Manitoba and who are diagnosed with PTSD by medical professional. "This is compassionate, humane but smart legislation," said Selinger. "It helps people suffering from PTSD -- no matter what area of work they are in." Selinger said many people working in the province's public service experience extreme stress, and the legislation will help get them support more quickly. "It is a well-established fact that PTSD is an illness that worsens over time if left untreated," said Michelle Gawronsky, the president of the Manitoba Government Employees Union -- the province's largest union.
A revived language is one that, having experienced near or complete extinction as either a spoken or written language, has been intentionally revived and has regained some of its former status.[citation needed] The most frequent reason for extinction is the marginalisation of local languages within a wider dominant nation state, which might at times amount to outright political oppression. This process normally works alongside economic and cultural pressures for greater centralisation and assimilation. Once a language has become marginalised in this way, it is often perceived as being "useless" by its remaining speakers, who associate it with low social status and poverty, and consequently fail to pass it on to the next generation. The only substantial success story in the field of language revival is Hebrew; all other cases are projects of limited success. Ainu [ edit ] The Ainu language of the indigenous Ainu people of northern Japan is currently moribund, identified by Japanese scholars as a "dying language" since the 1920s.[1] A 2006 survey of the Hokkaido Ainu indicated that only 4.6% of Ainu surveyed were able to converse in or "speak a little" Ainu.[1] As of 2001, Ainu was not taught in any elementary or secondary schools in Japan, but was offered at numerous language centres and universities in Hokkaido, as well as at Tokyo's Chiba University.[2] An Ainu language radio station was established in Hokkaido in 2001, and manga books have been produced in the language.[3] The work of researcher Kayano Shigeru has been prominent in the revival of Ainu, including the recording of the Ainu oral epics known as yukar. Shigeru also began the Nibutani Ainu Language School in 1983, the first Ainu school in Japan.[4] Barngarla [ edit ] Barngarla (Parnkalla, Banggarla) is an Australian Aboriginal language of the Barngarla people in Eyre Peninsula, South Australia, Australia. It is currently being revived by Ghil'ad Zuckermann (University of Adelaide) and the Barngarla community, based on 170-year-old documents.[5] Chochenyo [ edit ] The Muwekma Ohlone Tribe of California has revitalized the Chochenyo language, which was last spoken in the 1930s.[6][7][8] As of 2009, many students were able to carry on conversations in Chochenyo.[9] Cornish [ edit ] Origo Mundi, the first play of the magnum opus of medieval Cornish literature), written by an unknown monk in the late 14th century The opening verses of, the first play of the Ordinalia (theof medieval Cornish literature), written by an unknown monk in the late 14th century Cornish was once spoken in the English county of Cornwall until it became extinct as a spoken language in the late 18th century. The language had been in decline since the 14th century and by the time of the death of the last fluent speakers, was only spoken in the western fringes of the county. Dolly Pentreath (d. 1777) is believed to have been the last speaker of the language. Literature from the Medieval and Tudor periods, and fragments, including grammars, from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries survived, which allowed Cornish to be reconstructed by a small group of Celtic enthusiasts in the 20th century as part of the Celtic Revival. These Cornish language revivalists borrowed heavily from Welsh and Breton in order to aid in the creation of the modern Cornish language. The reconstruction of the language was known for disputes over orthography during the late 20th century, until a Standard Written Form was agreed upon in 2008. The number of Cornish speakers is difficult to estimate, but it is believed that some 500 individuals have a degree of fluency in the language. The language is now taught in some schools in Cornwall. UNESCO recently reclassified the language from "extinct" to "critically endangered".[10] Dalmatian [ edit ] The Dalmatian language was spoken in Dalmatia, a coastal region of Croatia, in the Middle Ages. Its last known native speaker was Antonio Tuone Udaina, who died on June 10, 1898, as the result of an explosion. The Dalmatian language is being revived by pro-autonomist Dalmatian activists, and today is estimated that there are about 20 fluent Dalmatian speakers and more than one hundred people with some knowledge of the language.[11] Hawaiian [ edit ] On six of the seven inhabited islands of Hawaii, Hawaiian was displaced by English and is no longer used as the daily language of communication. The one exception is Niʻihau, where Hawaiian has never been displaced, has never been endangered, and is still used almost exclusively. Native speakers of Niʻihau Hawaiian speak among themselves in a way significantly different from the Hawaiian of the other islands—so different that it can be difficult for non-Niʻihau speakers of Hawaiian to understand. The most marked difference between Niiahauan and Hawaiian is that the Hawaiian K sound is often replaced with a T sound in Niihauan. Efforts to revive the language have increased in recent decades. Hawaiian language immersion schools are now open to children whose families want to retain (or introduce) Hawaiian language into the next generation. The local NPR station features a short segment titled "Hawaiian word of the day". Additionally, the Sunday editions of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin feature a brief article called Kauakukalahale, written entirely in Hawaiian by a student. Hebrew [ edit ] First Hebrew school in Rishon Lezion Hebrew was revived as a spoken language two millennia after it ceased to be spoken (although it was always used as a written language), and is considered a language revival "success story". Although used in liturgy, and to a limited extent commerce, it was extinct as a language used in everyday life until its revival, considered impractically archaic or too sacred for day-to-day communication, although it was, in fact, used as an international language between Jews who had no other common tongue, with several Hebrew-medium newspapers in circulation around Europe at the beginning of the 19th century, and a number of Zionist conferences being conducted exclusively in Hebrew. Starting in the late 19th century, it was revived as an everyday spoken language as part of the emerging Zionist movement. Eliezer Ben-Yehuda largely spearheaded the revival efforts, and his son Itamar Ben-Avi was raised as the first native Hebrew speaker since Hebrew's extinction as an everyday language. Hebrew is now the primary official language of Israel, and the most commonly spoken language there. It is spoken by over 9,000,000 people today.[12] Most of them live in Israel or are Israeli expatriates, but many in Jewish communities outside Israel have undertaken its study. Kaurna [ edit ] Kaurna is an Australian Aboriginal language of the Kaurna people in Adelaide, South Australia, Australia. It is currently being revived by the Kaurna Warra Pintyandi, a committee of Kaurna Elders and youth, teachers, linguists and other researchers based at the University of Adelaide. Latin [ edit ] Latin in use on an ATM Latin was historically the language of the Roman Empire, but spread through Europe and beyond, thanks partially to its role in the Roman Catholic Church and in higher register. Feature films and broadcasting have been conducted in Latin. Two notable examples include 1976's Sebastiane by Derek Jarman and Paul Humfress, and Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ (which also contains long sections in Aramaic). Harry Potter has even been translated into Latin and ancient Greek.[13] Somewhat like Sanskrit, Hebrew, Maori and Manx, Latin has never been entirely out of view, and has always had some speakers, but a lack of native speakers. Lazuri (Laz) [ edit ] The UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger (2010) declares Lazuri as a language that is definitively endangered. Lazuri is a Southwest Caucasian language spoken by ca. 30,000 people as their mother tongue along the East Black Sea coast of Turkey and in some parts of the Autonomous Republic of Adjara (Salminen, 2007). The region where the Lazi people live is called Lazona (Benninghaus, 1989). Because Lazuri is primarily an oral language, and all new speakers tend to grow up bilingual (typically speaking Lazuri and Turkish), the language is at risk of extinction (e.g., Yuksel-Sokmen & Chasin, 2008). Although the Lazuri alphabet was first established around the late 20s by a native folklorist, named Iskender Tsitasi, who published periodicals and poems until 1938, there were many obstacles to learn and to teach Lazuri due to the lack of language learning resources and limited documentation of the language (interview with language activist İsmail Avcı Bucaklişi in Istanbul, April 2012). Hence, Lazuri remained a primary spoken language until Lazoglu and Feuerstein re-introduced the Lazuri Alboni or Alphabet in Latin letters in 1984 and started to publish periodicals, called 'Ogni' (“Did you hear”). The first Lazuri Dictionary (Bucaklişi & Uzunhasanoğlu, 2006) was among the first one to adopt the Lazuri Alboni. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery become the first book which has been formally translated into the Lazuri Alboni by Sinan Albayrakoğlu (2011) who worked four years on the Turkish to Lazuri translation. Also, in 2011 the Bosphorus University of Istanbul started to offer Lazuri as an elective class for beginners. With the recent establishment of the Lazika Yayin Kolektif (Lazika Publication Collective) in 2010, current and future generations of students, teachers, authors, and scholars of Lazuri are encouraged to contribute to the process of language revitalization, thus paving the way for a Lazuri literature. Livonian [ edit ] Livonian is a Finnic language spoken in Latvia. It is one of the three languages (along with Manx and Cornish) listed as revived by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger.[14] Leonese [ edit ] Leonese was recognised as a seriously endangered language by UNESCO, in 2006. The only legal reference to this language is in the Autonomy Statute of Castile and León. The Province of León government supports the knowledge of this language through courses, by celebrating "Leonese Language Day" and by sponsoring literary efforts in the Leonese language, such as "Cuentos del Sil", where nine writers from teenagers to people in their eighties develop several stories in Leonese. The Leonese Local Government uses the Leonese language in some of their bureaus, organizes courses for adults and in 2007 organized Leonese Language Day. The Leonese Local Government official website uses the Leonese language. The Leonese language is taught in two schools of León city since February 2008. The local authority for education said it would be taught in all Leonese schools next course. Manx [ edit ] Use of Manx on the national museum; note the smaller font size of the Manx. Manx is a language spoken in the Isle of Man, which is in the Irish Sea, between Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales. Manx ceased to function as a community language during the first quarter of the 20th century, but was revived by enthusiasts at a time when there were still a number of native speakers alive. Although at one point no native speakers of the language were alive and it may have been officially classified as "dead" in 1975, the revival appears to have gained strength in recent years. There is a regular programme in Manx on Manx Radio. As of 2012 there were sixty-nine pupils undergoing their education through the medium of Manx at the Bunscoill Ghaelgagh. Māori [ edit ] Māori is the indigenous language of New Zealand, where it was commonly spoken until the 20th century.[15] In recent times initiatives have been taken to revitalize Māori as a spoken language.[citation needed] Mutsun [ edit ] Mutsun is one of the eight Ohlone languages originally spoken in the San Juan Bautista, California area. The last fluent speaker, Ascencion Solórzano de Cervantes, died 1930.[16] The contemporary tribe, Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, is working to revive the language using the notes of linguist John Peabody Harrington. The Mutsun language has a program to teach it to tribal members and a dictionary is being planned. The initial member to galvanize the language revitalization is Quirina Geary.[17] Immersion into the language is planned in books, songs, and games[18] Rumsen and Chochenyo are the other two Costanoan languages being revived along with Mutsun. Occitan Gascon [ edit ] Aranese signage in Bossòst , Val d'Aran The Aranese language, a standardized form of the Pyrenean Gascon variety of the Occitan language spoken in the Aran Valley, in northwestern Catalonia is still spoken. Once considered to be an endangered language[citation needed], spoken mainly by older people, it is now experiencing a renaissance; it enjoys co-official status with Catalan and Castilian (Spanish) in Catalonia,[19] and since 1984 has been taught in schools.[20] Palawa kani [ edit ] Palawa kani is an attempt to revive various Tasmanian dialects in a single combined form. The original Tasmanian languages, which may have numbered a dozen or more, became extinct in 1905 when the last native speaker died. As part of community efforts to retrieve as much of the original Tasmanian culture as possible, efforts are made to (re)construct a language for the indigenous community. Due to the scarcity of records, Palawa kani is being constructed as a composite of the estimated 6 to 12 original languages. Theresa Sainty and Jenny Longey were the first two "language workers" to work on the project in 1999. Sanskrit [ edit ] A revived language being put to another use: the Agni and Prithvi missiles of India. Sanskrit is a pan-South Asian and Southeast Asian (reaching as far as the Philippines) language in Vedic times but lost its prominent place among spoken dialects in modern India. A number of attempts to revive Sanskrit have been made from the 18th century onward. However, it has been challenged in this role by various community languages, Hindi, Urdu and English. Many of India's, Nepal's and Sri Lanka's scientific and administrative terms are named in Sanskrit, as a counterpart of the western practice of naming scientific developments in Latin or Classical Greek. Many Nepalese names of people and places have derived from Sanskrit which is why it is so important in the history of the Nepali language. The Indian guided missile program that was commenced in 1983 by DRDO has named the five missiles (ballistic and others) that it has developed as Prithvi, Agni, Akash, Nag and Trishul ('Akash', 'Nag' and 'Trishul' are, however, Hindi; though written the same in the Devanagari script, these three words in Sanskrit are - for transliteration - 'Akasha', 'Naga', and 'Trishula'). India's first modern fighter aircraft is named HAL Tejas. Neo-Sanskrit is spoken in around four villages in India. The Mattur village in central Karnataka, Shimoga district claims to have native speakers of Sanskrit among its population. Historically the village was given by King Krishnadevaraya of the Vijayanagara Empire to Vedic scholars and their families. People in his kingdom spoke Kannada and Telugu.[21] Samskrita Bharati (Sanskrit: संस्कृतभारती, IPA: [sə̃skr̩təbʱaːrətiː]) is a non-profit organization working to revive Sanskrit, also termed Sanskrit revival. The organization has its headquarters in New Delhi, and U.S. chapter headquarters in San Jose, California. The Samskrita Bharati office in Bangalore is called "Aksharam" and houses a research wing, library, publication division, and audio-visual language lab for teaching spoken Sanskrit. Wampanoag [ edit ] In the 21st century, Wampanoag became the first Native American language in the United States to be revived, with young children brought up in the language.[22] See also [ edit ]
Video There's been widespread anger in Mexico with the daughter of a drug cartel leader, after she posted pictures of herself on Instagram. Melissa Plancarte, who is also a singer, posed in an outfit covered in the insignia of her father's gang, The Knights Templar. Her father Enrique is one of seven leaders of the group, who control many areas of embattled western state of Michoacan. The images caused anger because "vigilante" groups are fighting the cartels on the ground, and they are also now waging a social media campaign against cartel leaders and their families. Although Mexico has a fascination with the culture associated with drug trafficking, the pictures of the "cartel kids" have not gone down well. Produced by Benjamin Zand All our stories are at BBC.com/trending Follow @BBCtrending on Twitter and tweet using #BBCtrending
in which you dress up like a big veiny guy, Corin gives broadcasting advice, everyone comes together, Corin receives some unsolicited photographs, and Nick Evans “wins” the Ruin-A-Life Drawing. Do Evil Better. Kakos Industries is ad free. To help keep it that way, please visit KakosIndustries.com/Patreon, that’s p-a-t-r-e-o-n, and consider a pledge of a dollar or more a month. What you are about to hear might make you feel something… for the first time in forever. Hello, and welcome to the Kakos Industries Corporate Shareholder Announcements. At Kakos Industries, we help you and all of our clients to Do Evil Better. Really, we help the whole world to Do Evil Better whether they notice it or not. Whether it’s that little lie you told for convenience’s sake, or that time you did that thing, but you’re totally not that person now, or anything else. In fact, you are not that person now, and we at Kakos Industries have to continuously grow to make sure that we keep meeting you where you are. If you grow and mature, then so must we. I am CEO, Corin Deeth III, and I am so pleased to be sharing these announcements with you today, shareholders. I am told that for some of you, today is your shareholder anniversary. This is the that fateful day when you did, said, thought, or tasted the Evil that brought you into our warm, maybe too warm, why is it so warm, clutches. So to each of you who joined us on this day, I thank you, and I celebrate you. If you were here at Kakos Industries right now, you might see a somewhat different celebration. If you are at all paying attention, you might know that this is the day of the year where something always goes wrong, and that something generally has to do with a penis. Today, all of my staff are dressed as penises in honor of Penis Day. At first, I was upset about this development, but then I tried to catch one of my employees and beat him down, but he was too damn slippery. I made an announcement saying that this celebration was in fact offensive to the entire Wood family, but everyone seemed to simultaneously not give a single DarkMega shit. I resolved myself to being okay after all and went about my day, until I was put face to face with yet another giant penis ruining my day. Junior: Hello, Kakos Industries Shareholders. It is I, Junior, the most intelligent creature on Earth, and I am in Corin’s recording studio. Corin: It’s funny, because I designed this studio to be just too small for you to fit. Junior: And your construction team expanded your design to comply with the Kakosians with Gigantism Act, requiring that all spaces fit all Kakos Industries employees. Corin: I’m pretty sure we have some people that have to stand outside because they are too large. Junior: There’s a cutoff. It’s just larger than me. Everyone else is granted telepresence robots. Corin: So what brings you, and… your third leg into my studio today? Junior: You see, Corin, I don’t have to dress up today. My Johnson is already larger than Peter Wood at his most excited. I am celebrating every day it seems. Corin: So you’re just here to annoy me, then? Junior: Yes. And no. Corin, I have an idea, and I would like your opinion. Corin: But you are the smartest thing alive, or so you say. Junior: My raw intelligence cannot always make up for wisdom and experience. Corin: So what experience do I have that you need? Junior: Your broadcasting experience. Corin: Broadcasting? Like these announcements? Junior: Exactly, Corin. I wish to be… a podcaster! Corin: A podcaster? Who listens to podcasts? Junior: Don’t you know, Corin? Podcasting is the wave of the future! No one watches movies anymore. No one watches TV. Everyone commutes too long for such enjoyment activities. Now they listen to podcasts. And soon, they will listen to me! Corin: Okay, Junior. What’s your idea? Junior: I want to host an interview podcast. I want to talk to people of note from around the world. Celebrities. Comedians. Hot chicks. Corin: Okay. Well, I’m sure Soundman Steven can help you get started on the equipment. Junior: No! Equipment is the easy part, Corin. I will not become a gear snob. The content of my podcast is what will count. Corin: So what’s your pitch then? Junior: I would like to interview you, Corin. Corin: Okay, make an appointment and I can probably find five minutes or so… Junior: NO! NOW! Corin: Oh… Okay. Junior: QUestion one! Why are you so stupid? Corin: Is that what you’re going to ask everyone, Junior? Junior: Yes. Corin: No one will agree to be on your show. You have to be nice to your guests! Junior: I will tweet about them! Corin: That’s not enough. If you want people to be on your show, you have to make them look good. Junior: Fine! I will… reconsider. Corin: Is this what reconsidering looks like? It looks like you’re pulling on your dick. Junior: This is how I think. Ignore me! Corin: I’ll do my best. Today’s broadcast is coming to your from Shaft Electronics’ new three-piece sound system. The first piece is a long slender speaker filled with tweeters. The other two are sub woofers that support the longer soundbar, which I assure you is supposed to be mounted vertically. It doesn’t take an audiophile to tell you that this setup is inadequate, but it is penis-shaped, which was apparently the goal. Hurray. More penis references. We sure do love those today, and always, don’t we, Kakos Industries. (Heavy sigh) Did you have an enjoyable Celebration of Self Love, shareholders? Our readings for global sexual experience spiked dramatically during the celebration. I should share one odd note about this celebration, which is that, for some reason, while you were loving yourselves, all of our shareholders seemed to sync up and experience a climax at exactly the same moment sometime around Tuesday. Our indications are that you all found just that thing that got your mind really going and took you to new heights, and that that moment was synchronized with everyone else. Everyone else. Everyone here at Kakos Industries and all of you shareholders. There was a steady increase in enjoyment everywhere, and then the chart begins to rise dramatically in a way that only happens when many people are reaching sexual heights together. Then the peak got higher and higher, telling us that this was no small group of people, but just possibly everyone at once. And then the numbers rose even higher without falling even once, telling us that somehow, all of you out there had synchronized your sexual experiences, bringing about the most dramatic peak in global sexual release we have ever seen. The peak of sexual experience on our charts was very nearly off the charts. We set our charts high enough to include events like these in case we ever do cause them. It’s valuable data and you don’t want to be caught off guard. When you had that dirty, nasty, self-sacrificial orgasm that totally blew your mind on Tuesday, you should rest easily, or perhaps very uncomfortably, knowing that everyone else did as well. People you know. People you might be related to. People relating to other taboos that I could mention here. When you found yourself in the glorious afterglow, breathing heavily, muscles weak, you should know that you were definitely not alone. Not by a long shot. My first idea, being the CEO of an Evil and often highly sexual company, was that we might be able to use this as a bonding experience. To reduce the taboos around our own pleasure and that of others. Instead, no one in the office talked to each other for a whole day after we told them. Things are back to normal now; I did mention that everyone is dressed as giant penises to upset me, so there’s that. But it took this strange event so that everyone could look each other in the eye again. They know what they were doing at that moment. They know what everyone else was doing. They know what they were thinking. And the knowledge that they were somehow not alone is uncomfortable. I do not believe that we caused this shareholders. Perhaps there is a new fundamental force for sexual mojo that flows through the whole world that we will need to research. Or maybe it took place after some synchronizing event that I am unaware of, like meeting a bunch of cars on the road at a stoplight. All we know is that it was big. And for that, I commend you, shareholders. You went deep. Really deep. I was actually at the statue of Bazzizzazizz-Ah when the rest of you were having that simulgasm, and I still did not feel a damn thing. Perhaps Bernice Largo is right to say that I am too stressed out. Still, I don’t think throwing extra sex at me will solve the problem, Bernice. Did you have a fun time at Evil Con? I am sorry that I was unable to attend this year. I really enjoy going and watching the lengths that all of you will go to to experience anything meaningful in your lives at all. To wait in line for hours while bleeding from a very special wound that is both personally identifiable and verifiable on our end, so we could let you into the building. We really put the crypt in cryptography here. Or at least we put a lot of you into crypts, anyway. The haul for this year was the limited edition Evil Marie doll, based on the hit show Evil Marie. The reason this doll was so sought after and so limited edition is that Evil Marie’s actress, Donna Jablome, was found to be doing Good on the side. So this limited edition of one statue actually has her inside of it. There’s an air hole in the metal, so she’ll last a little bit. What you do with that knowledge is up to you, lucky bidder! We are now making preparations for the CEO Festival of The Dance. We’re making those two festivals one to save ourselves some time this year. The last couple CEO Festivals have been kind of lame, and have involved far too much roasting of me. I can take a joke. A joke. Not hundreds. You monsters. Instead, this year, I invite all of you to come down and compete for my favor by dancing in front of me. We will be hosting some classes to get you familiar with the basics. I’m looking forward to seeing what you do. Coming up, I am told that our various rulebooks indicate it’s time for a Kakos Industries Rodeo. I’m a little embarrassed to say that, contrary to the placard that hangs in my office, this will be my first rodeo. I am told that we will have a variety of mutant and genetic abominations for our wranglers to wrangle, and that also, for entertainment, some of you will be selected randomly from the stands, stripped naked, and then chased down by those same wranglers. It will apparently be an amazing time. Anything that dies on the field will then be barbecued and then served for dinner with a side of beans. Junior: Corin, I have finished thinking. Corin: I can see that. We’ll get you some paper towels. Junior: Corin, I would like to start an Audio Drama. Corin: Well, I’ve heard that those are getting pretty popular these days. Junior: Yes, Corin. This is where I will begin! Soon, I will have my own television pilot. Corin: Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves here, Junior. Junior: In the story, I will be the ruler of an Evil kingdom! I will name myself Junius Splatius, King of all that is Evil. Corin: That sounds like a decent start. People love Evil. So, uh, what’s your plot? Junior: No plot, Corin! Just awesome Evil shenanigans! And sex, Corin! So much sex! As the king of all Evil, I will be having sex with numerous fine maidens and many Evil creatures! Corin: Well, you can’t just have sex with everyting, Junior. That’s not a good story. No one wants to hear about your imaginary sexual exploits. You gotta take yourself out of the story. You gotta be willing to make your main character suffer. Is there anyone your character won’t have sex with? Junior: I will write of all of my amazing sexual conquests and just what a great king I am! Corin: this is going to be so boring for your audience. You can’t just have stories of sexual conquest. Where the pain? How does your main character need to grow? Junior: Grow? Corin: Your characters have to grow. Is your king of all Evil new at the job? Did he inherit a legacy that’s impossible to live up to from a parent or grandparent? Does he need to learn to rule? Does he come across as way stronger than he is to put forth a brave face on all that he experiences? Junior: That sounds just terrible. Why would anyone listen to a story like that? Mine will be nothing but sex and gore and conquering the lesser evil nations. Subjugation! Tyranny! Corin: Okay, you write the first draft of that and tell me if it doesn’t bore you to tears, ya fuckin’ Mary Sue. Junior: Fine! I will. Corin: Do you want a pen or something? Junior: No, this is how I write! Corin: I just don’t feel great about you doing that in here. Some, uh, past trauma. Junior: This is how I think and write! Do I judge your creative process, Corin? Corin: Just make sure that you don’t skip the boring bits in your head. That’s where you run into trouble when you write it down later. Junior: I know how to write, Corin. And what is it that you write, anyway, just the notes for these announcements? Half of this information is handed to you. I reject your expertise on this matter. Corin: You know that you speed up when you’re yelling at me? Junior: It’s because I’m angry, you fool! Corin: Just keep thinking, I guess. Quietly. And try not to point it at me. The Tabitha’s have taken up hobbies. It seems that no amount of fidget toys fill up the free time they have here at work. Tabitha has begun to knit. I am told that she knits a variety of monsters, as well as a variety of sexual organs. The knit creations have started to take over their office just outside of mine, I am told. At the same time Tabitha has started working on app development. I am told that her greatest achievement thus far is an app called BodyLingua, which is a dating app that only allows you to communicate via nude photos of yourself. I don’t know how this app wound up on my phone, but both Tabithas have been sending me a variety of nude photographs. Hailey as well, though I think she sends those to everyone. I have some strange news regarding Helga. When I said last time that The Division of Unhealthy Beauty Fads thought she looked great, I did not think they would then ask her to do some modeling for them. Now there are photos of Helga all over the building. I asked their director, Jane Pain if her thinness didn’t make them uncomfortable. She said of course it did, and that was the point. That’s the point of all modeling. Something pretty that looks like it’s dying. I asked if Helga was actually dying. Jane said, “she sure is beautiful.” Then I later saw Brosephus. He looked me in the eye and said, “Not cool.” I guess he isn’t pleased about leaving her in the dungeon so long. Then we played video games anyway. It’s good to have him back. Helga will be fine. Probably. It’s not like the fashion industry has ever done anything bad to a model. I visited Jasmine Aashna in the Division of Erotic Experiences once again. I tend to keep an eye on this division because prior incarnations of the division have done terrible things that we all must live with. Now, my mind might have been playing tricks on me, but the people in the test chambers really look like they’re developing pig-like, and maybe rabbit-like features. I saw some charts indicating that the people she was testing on were having more frequent sex, and more pleasurable sex, and much extended climaxes. This is all good work. I asked Jasmine if the people were becoming more animal-like, though. She said that was probably just a figment of my imagination. Then, the strangest thing happened. I could have sworn that Dr. Dunkelwissen stepped into her lab from a back door, but right when he did that, Jasmine lifted her shirt and screamed “What do you think of these, Deeth?” She sort of shook her breasts at me. It was distracting to say the least as Jasmine is, of course, quite beautiful. She put her shirt back and then I told her I’m not in the habit of rating or ranking people’s bodies. Only losers get hung up on their ten scales. And when I finally refocused on the room around me, whoever came in the back door had left again. Strange things at the Division of Erotic Experiences. Meredith Gorgoro tells me that her plans for an engine that runs on human misery are coming to fruition. Recently she has had the Helots looking inward instead of moving boulders, and now I think I understand. Placing one of the Helots into the device and putting them through a mind and body opening routine often leaves them screaming and wailing about the earliest pains in their life. Surprisingly, a huge amount of energy is released, and the engine turns, moving boulders, crushing stones, and punishing the disobedient workers. Interesting stuff. Shareholders, I would like to take this time to do an employee spotlight. Let’s see how long we can keep these going before I forget again, losing this segment to the dust of history. Today, I am honoring Bob Bob Bob, who has just been named the head of the Division of Danger. I probably don’t have to tell you, shareholders, that the Division of Danger has a habit of killing its division head within about two weeks of them being named, but Bob Bob Bob has fearlessly taken the mantle. Thank you Bob Bob Bob. The medication developed by the Division of Labor last time has had some interesting side effects. While it does make people think less and better at math, it also has the effect of making their eyes leak. I’m not sure I can call the liquid tears because the subjects don’t seem anything but neutral as they work. Just liquid falling constantly from their eyes. It’s pretty eerie, which honestly is a plus for us. They say that Evil is a gentle and tender lover that always leaves before morning. This is Things We’re Taking Credit for Now. Today, we are taking credit for microtransactions, pay-to-win, and video game addiction. Of course, we can’t know for certain that we are responsible for all of these things, but we really really think so, and if you don’t, then maybe you won’t think so much in the future. Be careful. Nick Evans has won today’s Ruin-A-Life Drawing. Nick has selected Ssssss as his nemesis. Ssssss? Like a hiss? Is this a snake or something? We don’t know? Okay. We spun the Wheel of Misery and it stopped quite suddenly on the space for Noncrucial. From this day forward, Ssssss, whoever they may be, will be much less crucial in all scenarios, and often times left out altogether. For extra measure, Nick Evans will be 10% more crucial in many situations, making Nick get up earlier to solve other people’s problems more often. Congratulations on the “win” and best of luck. Junior: Corin, my audio drama idea was terrible. Corin: It wasn’t terrible. It just lacked drama, Junior. Junior: I don’t like drama. Corin: Well, there are ways to do drama that aren’t so… drama-y. Junior: I hate drama. Stupid humans having their stupid problems. Who gives a shit. They should kill each other and save us from having to listen to their never ending whining. And I hate mystery boxes, Corin. I hate those television programs that distract you with ever increasing mysteries, while the answers to the previous mysteries become less and less satisfying. It becomes a huge disaster, Corin. And it takes great ideas and slowly turns them to shit over a matter of seasons. I hate that, Corin. I hate that. Corin: Junior Hates This. Junior: Yes I do. Corin: No, that’s the title of your podcast. Junior Hates This. Junior: Well, I am full of vitriol and antipathy. I do hate a lot of things. Corin: Just make it funny. Junior: Let me think on this some more. Corin: No! Oh, shit. Junior: Yes, this is a good idea. Corin: He’s going fast again because he’s angry. Junior: I can make this work. Corin: Don’t get too ahead of yourself. It’ll still take some time for development. Junior: Mmmm… Corin: Okay. Just… do what you do, I guess. And that brings us to the end of today’s broadcast, shareholders. Destroy your radio however you wish. The numbers are next. Corin: 3 Junior: Oh, that’s a good one, Corin. Corin: 17. Junior: Oh, I do like that. Corin: This is bad. 22. Junior: Ha! Excellent. Ooh! Corin: 13 Junior: Great choice! Ha Haaa! Corin: He hasn’t stopped… you know. 88 Junior: Greatness! Heaven! Corin: 26. Junior: Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Corin: Oh, fuck. Kakos Industries is written and produced by Conrad Miszuk, who is also the voice of Corin Deeth. The music is also composed by Conrad Miszuk. The introduction is read by Kim Aiello, and the credits are read by Hanna Jones, who is currently drawing a journal comic about this recording session.. Check out KakosIndustries.com for more episodes. There’s also transcriptions if you’d like to read along with the Kakos Industries announcements. That’s K-A-K-O-S-I-N-D-U-S-T-R-I-E-S dot com. Please check out store.KakosIndustries.com for merchandise and special offers and become a patron at kakosindustries.com/patreon. Questions, comments, or a strong desire to collaborate? Drop us a line at inquiries@kakosindustries.com. If you like Kakos Industries, be sure to rate and review us on your favorite podcasting service, and connect with us on Facebook (facebook.com/kakosindustries), Tumblr (kakosindustries.tumblr.com), and Twitter (@KakosIndustries). Special thanks to our esteemed shareholders Iain Croall, Renee Stein, Dan Shumway, Blaise Devletian, and Courtney Campbell. Also thanks to our honored employees Katiana Greer, who managed to stack an unstackable amount of fruit in the warehouse, and Valerie Koop (COPE) who caught a grievous spelling error in an insulting message that we destined for Melantha’s company. And thanks to our Division heads Britney Garcia, head of The Division of Beanies, Booties, and Construction Projects That Are Probably Too Large for Yarn, Patrick Green, head of The Division of Oceanic Micro-Cryptozoology, Billy Davis, head of the Division of Splashing, and Lynne Herman, director of the Division of Increasingly Improbably Slash Fiction. The Division of Beanies, Booties, and Construction Projects That Are Probably Too Large for Yarn has begun working on a wall to keep the tide of the undead at bay. There is not currently a tide of undead, but better safe than sorry. The Division of Oceanic Micro-Cryptozoology has produced a rock that they believe the Devil Protist to have lived under at some point. So far, few are convinced. The Division of Splashing has vastly improved the belly flop, managing to kill most of the test subjects after a fall of only two meters. The Division of Increasingly Improbable Slash Fiction has recently started shipping scissors and rock. This romance was truly not meant to be. Our esteemed shareholders, honored employees, division heads, and other Patreon patrons are the best. If you want a thank you in the credits, your own division, or other great rewards that help to keep this show running, please head to Kakosindustries.com/patreon. That’s Patreon: p-a-t-r-e-o-n. If you’re feeling down after this broadcast have you considered breathing fire everywhere?
It's that time of year again. During the next couple of Friday prayers we will hear that famous ayah recited numerous times - You who believe, fasting is prescribed for you, as it was prescribed for those before you, so that you may be mindful of God (2:183) It seems every year we go through the same thing. Ramadan sneaks up on us. We hear a bunch of reminders about how rewarding it is, developing taqwa, feeling compassion for the less fortunate, making sure to stay away from backbiting, and then rushing to the finish line. Then once it's done, we hear a bunch of talks about trying to keep up the good work. It works for a little while (or at least until the new season of House of Cards comes out), and then it's back to square one. To counter this, we start treating Ramadan like a 30 day transformation boot camp. We shun the New Year's resolutions, but make our Ramadan ones. 30 days of no white sugar. 30 days of fasting+paleo. 30 days of no Netflix. 30 days of deleting social media apps from my phone (read this if you want to do social media fasting). We end up turning Ramadan into some kind of bizarre mix of Lent and a juice cleanse. The reason for this is simple. We've heard all that taqwa stuff before a million times, and nothing has changed. The life hack of tracking the caloric burn of taraweeh prayers on your Fitbit seems cooler, data-driven, and ground-breaking. We tell ourselves it might actually work, so it's worth a shot. On top of that, we're already disrupting our schedules for 30 days, let's see what else we can get out of it. So we tack on every new habit or routine we've wanted to incorporate into our lives and throw it into the Ramadan mix. We need only to look back at our own 5-10 year history to see how well all these things have worked and the lasting change we have really gotten out of all those Ramadans. So what do we do instead? The answer is maddeningly simple. The challenge, as always, is in the execution. It is to master the ordinary to become extraordinary. Going back to the ayah above, the goal of fasting is to cultivate taqwa. Taqwa, according to Ibn Hajr, is to create a barrier between yourself and the punishment of Allah by following His commands and abstaining from His prohibitions. In a more general sense, it is the consciousness and awareness that Allah is watching over you at all times. In the famous Hadith of Jibrīl, the fasting of Ramadan is identified as one of the 5 basic pillars of Islam. Excellence in performing this worship is attained when the servant worships Allah "as though you could see Him, for even though you cannot see Him, He sees you." The goal, therefore, is doing the worship, and then excelling in the act of performing that worship. Master the ordinary to become extraordinary. It is difficult to adopt and implement these simple truths because of the distortive nature of social media. Once we know something at an informational level (taqwa, compassion), we tend to discount it. When we are reminded of those things again later, we cast them aside as cliche or recycled. We instead seek out the new and novel. Whether we like it or not, this mentality permeates into our Ramadan preparation. We assume we'll already check off the boxes for things like taqwa and compassion, and then go looking for new boxes to add to the list that other people don't have. When we step back and look though, success rarely comes from the novel. It always comes from relentlessly focusing on the basics. Take baseball, for example. Derek Jeter is one of the most celebrated baseball players of all time. He has fame, multi-million dollar endorsement deals, accolades, his jersey retired by Yankess, and much more. His career batting average was .310. An average player, on an average contract, without the fame and accolades bats roughly .250. Over a 162 game season, with 4-5 at bats per game, the difference between a .250 hitter and a .310 hitter is barely 1 or 2 hits per week. People like Jeter aren't superhumans who have a secret keto diet recipe and bodyweight workout that others don't have - they are people who execute on the basics and fundamentals a little better than everyone else. This is why in a playoff basketball game, coaches say things like - it comes down to the 50/50 balls, or they need to make sure not to make mistakes on their defensive rotations. A lot of winning comes down to the basics like hitting open shots, and executing the game plan. Ask a dentist about the key to good oral hygiene. It's not in buying a $100 toothbrush, it's in brushing your teeth and flossing every day. Want to make your car last a long time? There isn't some kind of secret oil to buy, it's getting your oil changed regularly, and on time. Aisha (r) once asked the Prophet (s) what was the best deed someone could do? He said that which is small, but consistent. The Prophet (s) told Bilal he heard his footsteps in paradise because he used to pray 2 rakat every time he renewed his wudu. The Prophet (s) once pointed out a companion as being from the people of Paradise - a man who's only distinguishing action was forgiving anyone who wronged him every night before sleeping. Small, consistent acts. Basics. Basics executed better than anyone else elevate the ranks. Want to grow spiritually and come closer to Allah? Pray on time, with concentration. Fast. Give zakat and charity. Go on hajj. Be kind to people. And then keep doing those actions over and over and over again. Let the fasting orient you toward a focus on developing consciousness that Allah is always watching. How do we know that we are actually practicing taqwa instead of simply acknowledging it at an informational level? Have taqwa of Allah, perhaps you will be grateful (3:123) The more conscious you are of Allah, the more it should make you grateful. How much time do we spend a day reflecting on the blessings of Allah? Thanking Allah is basic. And yet - If you are grateful, I will surely increase you [in favor] (14:7) The more gratitude, the more blessings from Allah. If you want to succeed this Ramadan, have a relentless focus on the fundamentals. Master the ordinary to become extraordinary.
Union Railways Minister Piyush Goyal \| Photo Credit: PTI New Delhi: A user, who had put up a question on popular Q&A website Quora, was in for a big surprise when the answer to his query was posted by none other than Union Railways Minister Piyush Goyal. The user wanted to know “what is the Indian government doing to improve the safety of Indian Railways?” The question came amid a spate of rail accidents and change of guard at the ministry in the recent Cabinet reshuffle. The minister gave a very detailed reply, which was full of charts and photographs. “Safety of all passengers in Indian Railways is an issue of the utmost importance for Government. Therefore, we have made safety the number one priority,” the minister wrote on Quora. “During the first few weeks in office there has been a comprehensive review of safety undertaken to understand the short comings of the Indian railways. The outcome of the review brought forth a number of immediate measures that must be taken to address key issues such as Unmanned Level Crossing and Derailments. Here’s how the Government is working towards the welfare and security of every commuter,” Goyal wrote further and then detailed the steps taken by the government. Click here to read the full answer. Goyal took charge of the Railway Ministry after Suresh Prabhu was shifted out in the wake of a number of rail accidents this year.
The Left in the last 48 hours has tried to make the argument that the Tucson shootings were the result of Tea Party angst, health-care furor, talk radio, opposition to illegal immigration — almost any contemporary hot-button hoi polloi issue or any populist forum. And the more the public refuses to buy any of it, instead seeing Tucson as a madman’s evil attack on the innocent and noble, the more the liberal media seems weirdly intent on promulgating its absurd narrative. Advertisement Advertisement Arguments that the liberal community is less prone to reckless speech, or has far less tolerance for those within it who use violent imagery and language than does the Right, are unconvincing. I don’t remember a Krugman column or a Sen. Patrick Leahy speech on the toxic Nicholson Baker novel, the Gabriel Range Bush assassination docudrama, the Chris Matthews CO 2 -pellet-in-the-face/blowing-up-of-the-“blimp” comments about Rush Limbaugh, the “I hate George Bush” embarrassment at The New Republic, Michael Moore’s preference for a red-state target on 9/11, or the Hitlerian/brownshirt accusations voiced by the likes of Al Gore, John Glenn, Robert Byrd, George Soros, and so on. So why the disconnect? Politics for sure, but I think also the double standard has something to do with style, venue, and perceived class. If a progressive imagines killing George Bush in a tony Knopf novel or a Toronto film festival documentary, or rambles on about why he finds his president an object of hatred in a New Republic essay, or muses in the Guardian (cf. Charles Brooker: “John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr. — where are you now that we need you?”), then we must certainly contextualize that hatred in a way that we do not in the crasser genres of commercial-laden talk radio, or an open-air demonstration placard. The novelist, the film-maker, the high-brow columnist, the professor can all dabble in haute couture calumny (cf. Garrison Keeler’s “brownshirts in pinstripes”); the degree-less, up-from-the-bootstraps Beck, Hannity, or Limbaugh behind a mike cannot. What is at the most atypical, out of character, or in slightly bad taste for the former must be a window into the dark soul of the latter. Advertisement So when suave, sophisticated, and cool Barack Obama talks metaphorically of knives, guns, enemies, punishing, kicking ass, relegation to the back seat, get angry, getting in their face, hostage takers, trigger fingers, tearing up, etc. we are supposed to think of it quite differently than George Bush, the swaggering Texan, speaking of “dead or alive,” “smoke ’em out,” or “bring ’em on”— even if, empirically, one might find Obama’s confrontational expressions far more frequent and used far more in a domestic context against American political opponents than Bush’s Texanisms, which were spoken of radical Islamic terrorists. Advertisement In short, we are asked to believe that Sarah Palin’s use of crosshair symbols is confirmation that trigger-happy Alaskan yokels cling to their guns and incite violence, whereas sophisticated liberals, with their campaign maps replete with shooting targets on Republican districts are at most “edgy.” If a New England governor with perfect liberal credentials, like Howard Dean, M.D., blurts out, “I hate Republicans and everything they stand for,” we are supposed to see that as the slightly over the top exuberance of a progressive crusader; if a Southern counterpart from the RNC were to say the same thing of Democrats, it would be derided as confirmation of violent red-state hatred and Bull Connor–era venom. Advertisement The same relativism applies to comments on race (cf. the Biden/Reid Obama quips of 2008) and a host of other issues. In short, it is not so much what is said, but the assumed class, contextualized intent, and perceived status of the person who says it and the particular genre he employs in doing so. Advertisement In such a warped world as we are in, the suggestion that the unhinged Major Hasan drew on the ubiquitous hatred of radical Islamic imams is as irresponsible and scurrilous as it is certain that Sarah Palin fostered Jared Lee Loughner.
The mother of one of the children killed in the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School tore into President 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 for hosting National Rifle Association (NRA) president Wayne LaPierre at the White House on the fifth anniversary of the massacre. Nicole Hockley, whose son Dylan Hockley was one of 20 children killed in the shooting, slammed both Trump and White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders for their actions on the anniversary of the shooting in a lengthy Facebook post. ADVERTISEMENT Hockley first criticized Sanders for saying she didn’t think any action could have been taken to prevent the shooting. “But while I can forgive Sanders for her lack of knowledge (though not her lack of compassion) I cannot say the same for President Trump,” Hockley wrote. “Not only did he ignore the 5-year remembrance completely - not even a single tweet - he slapped us all in the face by having none other than NRA President Wayne LaPierre at his White House Christmas party that night. The appalling lack of humanity and decency has not gone unnoticed.” Sanders confirmed to the New York Daily News that LaPierre was among the guests at the White House Christmas party on Dec. 14. “While they ignorantly partied and remained uninformed on an issue that kills thousands of Americans every year, I was crying myself to sleep. While they got the chance to kiss their children goodnight, I kissed the urn holding my beautiful boy's ashes,” Hockley wrote. “I would request an apology. But I'm not sure there are any hearts in the White House that would understand why an apology is the least they could do.” Trump was endorsed by the NRA and figures from the group spoke at the Republican National Convention in his favor. Trump’s White House has pushed back against taking action on gun control, with Sanders saying it was too early to take action in the days after the October mass shooting in Las Vegas, the deadliest in modern U.S. history.
Today is the first day in a long long time that I have loved being in the Labour Party. Today is the day UKIP announced their new leader as Diane James. This is a great day for the official Opposition. I have always slagged off Nigel Farage, but I have never underestimated what a potent politician he is. He bridges the gap between the blazer-wearing toffs of middle England and the working class pub talk of Essex and Kent. He is the Pied Piper to many of our constituencies. Yet his party rejected him and his political allure to Labour’s heartlands, in favour of respectability. Respectability? We should thank them. Labour will be laughing all the way to the polls. Nigel claims he resigned, but the backstage row that proceeded his departure resulted in rule changes that made it impossible for his main rival, Douglas Carswell, to enter the leadership race, as well as also banning turncoat Suzanne Evans, Nigel’s former protégé, who publicly described him as a liability. This looks like far more than Nigel negotiating his exit forcefully. It looks like he was pushed out of the plane at 30,000 feet, but had the good sense to grab a couple of his colleagues to cushion his landing. Having destroyed their options for competent future leaders, Ukip are left with someone called Diane James as the new figurehead. She is a former Conservative councillor from the provinces, who comes across as little more than a former Conservative councillor from the provinces. Perfectly inoffensive, but with nothing to say. That’s what they seem to want right now, and it suits Labour fine. UKIP honestly thinks that racism damages their reputation. I feel the need to tap them gently on the forehead and tell them: “wake up and smell the coffee” Farage insists they are not a racist party but their councillors and candidates have been caught making racist remarks repeatedly. Further to that, their timing is awful. It must be 20 or 30 years since Britain had much appetite for old-fashioned racism, presented under the legitimate guise of a well-to-do officer type, reminding us of the values that made us great. Now I know what you’re thinking, surely they are honourable people for wanting to make UKIP legitimate, but if that’s the case then these people must be even bigger fools, because they joined Ukip and poured their lives into building careers in a party with no idea that its core value was a hatred of foreigners. Many northern Labour MPs were worried about the effect of UKIP on their vote at the next general election. After today, they can rest much easier . This doesn’t mean that Farage won’t make a comeback at some point, but it’s fairly unlikely to be this side of the election. If anyone fancies meeting me in the Dog and Duck for a pint, we can raise our glasses, this time not to Nigel, but to Ukip. May they long continue to fail to be a threat.
My LinkedIn profile is 85% complete. It has been since I first signed up, and probably will be in 5 years. Why? Because I have not included my education. Here’s my recent correspondence with LinkedIn: I do not wish to include education in my profile. I am a self-employed college dropout, and it is not relevant. Yet LinkedIn does not allow an option for “include none”, and insists my profile remains only 85% complete. I find this really annoying, and would appreciate the option to include no education component in my profile. Is my life incomplete according to LinkedIn because I have been largely educated within the University of Life? Here is the response: Dear Paul, Thank you for contacting LinkedIn Customer Support. And I want to apologize for any inconvenience this has caused you. Unfortunately, this option cannot be changed at this time, I will sent your information to our research and development team for future consideration. […] We appreciate your commitment to making LinkedIn a stronger community! It was mostly written in a late night moment of jest, but I do wonder how many others fall into a category like mine. Is Bill Gates on LinkedIn? OK, Bill Gates has been a bit more successful than me, but he’s had a few years headstart. For those who don’t know me terribly well and aren’t already bored by this post, I’ll fill in some of the mundane details of my life. As a teenager, I was very interested in computers, and would often stay up very late working on them. I wasn’t interested in games, but communications. One of the first things I did with my new 80286 computer and 1200 baud modem was open my own bulletin board system (BBS), which allowed people to dial my computer up from their computer, using the phone line, and post messages, download files (ironically, usually games), chat (when I was around), and send private messages. Before the Internet came into popular use, my BBS was a node of FidoNet, a global network that operated across phone lines around the world (my address was 1:340/36). I also found high school exceptionally boring, so much so that I barely graduated. They’d always enroll me in special classes for smart kids (or smart asses, in my case), but I’m fairly certain I never once applied myself. I had a C- in English 12, due primarily to the fact that classes began at 7:45am, so I missed about a third of them. After high school I took an operations job with a medical software company and worked my way up the ladder there. I quit after a few years to take Political Science and History in college (I even took an English placement test, which ironically allowed me to skip the first English composition class, despite almost failing English 12). I went for one semester, but was given an opportunity to go back to my previous employer. The offer was for far more than what I might have earned with a PoliSci degree, so I dropped college and went back to work. In 2000, I made a strategic exit from that company to start my own web company, and have been doing that ever since. Let me be clear: I am not anti-education. Far from it, I am an enthusiastic supporter! I am often invited as a guest speaker for business students, and often work with people in my community to support the local University. I have a tonne of respect for anybody with an MBA, a Masters Degree, or a Doctorate – they clearly have a hell of a lot more patience than me! So when people ask about my alma mater, life experience is my response.
Brexit leader Nigel Farage is planning to move to the U.S., according to a new report. ADVERTISEMENT The Times reported Thursday that Farage and his wife, Kirsten, are planning to leave the U.K. Insiders told the newspaper that Farage has had a long-held interest in the U.S. and would feel “freer” from public attention living abroad. Farage was spotted entering Trump Tower on a Saturday earlier this month. “We’re just tourists,” he told reporters when asked if he was invited there by President-elect Donald Trump Donald John TrumpREAD: Cohen testimony alleges Trump knew Stone talked with WikiLeaks about DNC emails Trump urges North Korea to denuclearize ahead of summit Venezuela's Maduro says he fears 'bad' people around Trump MORE or if he was helping with the transition. Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, later said that the president-elect and Farage had a "very productive" meeting. “I think they enjoy each other’s company, and they absolutely had an opportunity to talk about freedom and winning and what this all means for the world,” she said. Farage has said that he would welcome a role in the Trump administration and floated the idea of being Trump’s ambassador to the European Union.
In one of the several low points of her stunningly inept general election campaign, Theresa May warned that Jeremy Corbyn would be “alone and naked” in the Brexit negotiating chamber. This week, though, it is Mrs May herself who has been revealed as Brexit’s empress with no clothes. Everything about her performance in Brussels over the last two days has underlined both the larger national tragedy of Britain’s decision to leave the EU and the deepening personal failure of Mrs May’s attempts to deliver it. Mrs May went to this week’s Brussels summit promising a “fair and serious” offer on the rights of EU citizens in the UK, and of UK citizens in the EU, after Brexit. She met a humiliating response. The EU-27 told her these were not matters for a summit but for the negotiations. Angela Merkel said the proposals were no breakthrough. Emmanuel Macron said there was a long way to go. Even Donald Tusk, often a friend of Britain, called them “below expectations.” Meanwhile in Britain, EU citizens’ groups dubbed the plan pathetic, and George Osborne revealed that Mrs May had unilaterally prevented a fairer and more serious offer immediately after the referendum last June because that would strengthen her leadership election chances. Theresa May makes 'fair and serious' offer on EU citizens rights in UK Read more The post-Brexit future of EU citizens in this country, and of our citizens in the EU are widespread concerns across our continent. The uncertainty reaches into thousands of homes and affects millions of lives, especially of young people. Mrs May’s insensitive handling of it is both characteristic and a glumly indicative example of a wider Brexit problem that stretches to every horizon. Mrs May likes to say that 85% of Britons have recently voted for parties committed to Brexit. But this is another clunky line she should stop repeating. The 85% of Britons who voted Tory and Labour on 8 June did not all vote for a Brexit that prioritises heartless immigration controls or spurns the European court of justice. They have certainly not, as Philip Hammond rightly warned this week, voted to become poorer, less secure, or to treat Europe in ways that risk the economy crashing if the talks reach impasse. Britain’s decision to leave the EU was lamentable when it was taken. It remains lamentable now. If it is ever carried out, it will still be lamentable in the future. That is not going to change. Some things, however, have changed. A year ago, Britain’s decision caused shock among our fellow Europeans. Today, it is more likely to evoke pity. By the time Brexit occurs, if it does, our neighbours’ mood may have turned to derision. Brexit and the US election have energised our neighbours to raise their game. Mr Macron’s election lends momentum to reforms that the UK would back if it had remained. Just when the EU seems to be choosing a more hopeful course, it is Britain, not the EU, that seems left behind by the real world. It was tragic to hear Mrs May talk on Friday of cooperation on terrorism, defence, climate change, trade and migration with good allies that the UK is preparing to abandon. The events of the past 12 months, and of the last 48 hours in particular, have provided a vivid lesson in the folly of Brexit. For a year, Mrs May has expended most of her leadership of the Conservative party attempting to forge – the word is appropriate – a new deal with the EU that will be worse than the one we now have in every significant respect: economically, socially and culturally. On 8 June, the voters pulled the rug from under her feet. The upshot is a Brexit process that was wrong in the first place, has been badly mishandled, and now lacks credibility at home and in the EU. There is an overwhelming need, and perhaps a burgeoning consensus, for Britain to change its Brexit priorities. We need a closer and more engaged relationship with the EU than the one Mrs May has pursued so ineffectually.
With approvals from authorities in the U.S. and Europe, Valneva is set to advance its Lyme disease vaccine candidate into clinical testing on both sides of the Atlantic. It's the only candidate against the disease in development, but the U.S. government has specifically pledged to tackle it as expressed in the recently passed 21st Century Cures Act. The vaccine, dubbed VLA15, targets the Outer Surface Protein A, one of the most dominant proteins expressed by the bacteria in a tick. Preclinical studies on mice showed that the vaccine can provide protection against the majority of Borrelia species. Lyme disease is caused by the Borrelia bacteria usually transmitted to humans through the bite of ticks. Its early symptoms after infection include a neither itchy nor painful skin rash called erythema migrans, fever and headache, which if left untreated, could evolve into infections in joints, the heart and the nervous system. Free Daily Newsletter Like this story? Subscribe to FiercePharma! Biopharma is a fast-growing world where big ideas come along daily. Our subscribers rely on FiercePharma as their must-read source for the latest news, analysis and data on drugs and the companies that make them. Sign up today to get pharma news and updates delivered to your inbox and read on the go. SUBSCRIBE NOW The first and only licensed vaccine used three doses to fight Lyme disease and was made by what’s now GlaxoSmithKline. Even though it showed about 80% effectiveness, LYMErix, licensed in 1998, was voluntarily withdrawn from the market by 2002 because of safety concerns over its possible relationship to autoimmune arthritis. The company also chose to settle a class action lawsuit even though no study has ever corroborated the hypothesis. VAL15 uses the same basic idea as LYMErix, but is trying to tackle bacteria species not just found in the U.S. but also in Europe, which LYMErix failed to cover. The phase 1 trials will be carried out on 180 individuals at two sites in the U.S. and Belgium. Another Lyme candidate developed by Pasteur Mérieux Connaught never sought licensure even though phase 3 data were positive. A small market size was cited as a reason to abandon the project. However, Lyme disease has gained pace in the U.S. and Europe in recent years. In 2009, the CDC listed the disease among the top 10 notifiable conditions in the U.S., together with other vaccine-preventable diseases like varicella and pertussis. That year, Lyme disease reached a peak of 29,959 cases as reported by the CDC. In 2015, 28,453 cases were confirmed. Based in France, Valneva also has Dukoral, a cholera vaccine acquired in 2015 from Crucell Holland, part of Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen, and a Japanese encephalitis vaccine marketed under the trade names Ixiaro and Jespect. Also in its pipeline is a Zika vaccine candidate generated on the Ixiaro platform; the company is seeking a partner to advance the candidate into clinical trials after receiving positive feedback from the European Medicines Agency.
“The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun,” National Rifle Association (NRA) executive vice president Wayne LaPierre infamously declared following the Newtown, Connecticut school shootings in 2012. The vision of armed heroes killing armed villains and preventing loss of life is a staple of the NRA narrative, as well as of Hollywood films. In Dallas, though, it didn’t work that way. Following a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest, at least one sniper opened fire on police. Despite the presence of armed law enforcement, the shooter did great harm before he could be stopped. As of reports this morning, five officers have been killed, seven more were injured, and two civilians were also injured. Gun proponents often point to a handful of incidents in which bystanders with firearms have managed to stop mass shooters. In 2007, for example, a gunman killed four people at a church in Colorado Springs, Colorado and was then shot and disabled by church member Jeanne Assam, who is a security guard and former police officer. In 1997, a high school shooter in Pearl, Mississippi was subdued at gunpoint by an assistant principal who was a member of the Army Reserve. Sometimes armed bystanders are able to capture a shooter. This is the exception rather than the rule. It’s true that sometimes, in some situations, armed bystanders (often with some training) are able to wound or capture a shooter. This is the exception rather than the rule, however, according to an FBI study of active shooter incidents between 2000 and 2013 in the United States. As defined by the FBI, active shooter incidents are those in which a shooting is in progress, and in which police or civilians have a chance to affect the outcome. According to the FBI, active shooter scenarios mostly end because the shooter decides to end them. Of the 160 recorded cases, 90 incidents (56.3%) ended with the shooter committing suicide, ceasing to shoot, or fleeing the scene. Another 21 incidents (13.1%) ended when unarmed civilians stopped or restrained the shooter. There were 5 incidents (3.1%) in which civilians with firearms shot at the shooter, and 2 incidents (1.3%) in which off-duty police officers killed the shooter. That leaves 45 incidents (28.1%) in which law enforcement arrived on the scene with an active shooter and exchanged gunfire. The shooter was killed or wounded in 34 of these incidents, committed suicide in 9, and surrendered in 2. It’s clear from the FBI’s active shooter report that most bad guys with guns are not stopped by good guys with guns. It’s clear from the FBI’s active shooter report that, contra LaPierre, most bad guys with guns are not stopped by good guys with guns. Still, around 30% of active shooter incidents between 2000 and 2013 did involve police or—much less often—civilians exchanging fire with the shooter. No doubt, LaPierre would argue that if more civilians had guns, more active shooter incidents would end more quickly, and therefore fewer people would be killed. This position isn’t supported by the data either. In the first place, even when civilians or police use firearms against a mass shooter, it’s not always clear that “good guy” shooting reduces loss of life. For example, friendly fire from SWAT teams may have been responsible for some of the deaths in the Orlando nightclub shooting. In Dallas, though police exchanged gunfire with the suspect, the standoff wasn’t even ended with conventional firearms, but instead came to a conclusion when authorities detonated a robot-controlled bomb. This presents another slippery slope argument in terms of the use of force. Presumably, the NRA doesn’t believe that civilians should be provided with automated bombs as a way to deter mass shootings. But if guns aren’t enough to stop attackers, where do we draw the line in order to save lives? Moreover, most studies find that more guns make people less safe. Moreover, most studies find that more guns make people less safe. A 2014 study of gun restrictions found that loosening gun laws, and making firearms more available, did not reduce gun fatalities. Instead, tighter restrictions reduced deaths. In line with those findings, studies have found that high rates of gun ownership are correlated with high rates of firearm fatalities: In a 2013 study looking at firearm fatalities in 27 countries, the United States was found to have the most guns, and the most gun deaths. Within the US itself, states with the highest gun ownership rates also have the highest rates of gun deaths. Similarly, guns in the home don’t make people safer; instead they increase the likelihood that someone in the family will suffer a firearm fatality. According to Liza Gold, professor of psychiatry at Georgetown University, there is no scientific evidence that guns prevent harm, “only occasional anecdotal reports of someone preventing a crime because a person had his or her own gun,” she says. “In contrast, there is overwhelming evidence that owning a gun increases risk of homicide and suicide for the gun owner and anyone else in the home, including partners and children.” Between 2000 and 2013, the FBI calculated 486 deaths from active shooter incidents in the United States. That’s a heartbreaking number, but it’s dwarfed by the approximately 33,000 people killed by guns in 2013, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Most of those deaths (around 60%) are suicides. Accidents account for about another 5%. Homicides make up about 35% of gun deaths—but only a tiny percentage of those are mass shootings. All the evidence suggests that, in most cases, guns do not defuse violent situations, but exacerbate them. It’s very likely that Alton Sterling and Philando Castille would both still be alive today if the police officers who stopped them had not been armed. Guns make it easier for everyone to kill, whether they are “bad guys” or “good guys,” whether deliberately or by accident, or whether they are aiming the gun at themselves or at others. There are far, far fewer gun-toting heroes than there are gun victims. You can follow Noah on Twitter at @nberlat. We welcome your comments at ideas@qz.com. Correction: A previous version of this post incorrectly stated the number of deaths attributed to gun violence in the US. There were approximately 33,000 people killed by gun violence in 2013. This article is part of Quartz Ideas, our home for bold arguments and big thinkers.
Get the biggest daily news stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email A young soccer fan’s dream came true when he was given hundreds of birthday cards from Everton supporters wishing him a Happy 12th Birthday - after an appeal from the team went viral. Noah Cunningham has Duchenne muscular dystrophy and is unable to walk and uses a wheelchair. A social media campaign was set up by the ‘Everton Blue Army’ Facebook page to give him a birthday to remember - and has since gone viral with nearly 10,000 shares. The campaign asked fans to send Noah as many birthday cards as possible - which were presented to him at Saturday’s FA Cup match against Dagenham & Redbridge. Noah from , from Southport, Merseyside, was delighted when he was brought onto the pitch during the pre-match warm up and be presented with a card by Everton legend Duncan Ferguson. (Image: Mercury Press & Media Ltd) Noah’s mum, Vicki Cunningham, said: “Thank you so much to everyone who has given him or sent in a card. Read more: Everton fans start heartwarming campaign to give muscular dystrophy sufferer best 12th birthday ever “It really does mean a lot, and it looks like we’ll be opening them for weeks. (Image: Mercury Press & Media Ltd) “Noah just loves Everton so to go on the pitch and meet Big Dunc was incredible for him and it has all been very overwhelming. “He’s not into expensive things or massive toys, with our family it’s all about building memories. "He’s quite a shy boy at times but I know he is having the best birthday ever.” (Image: Mercury Press & Media Ltd) In the twelfth minute of the game both sets of fans both united to sing happy birthday to a very overwhelmed Noah, who was delighted. Noah has been a member of Everton in the Community’s Medicash Powered Wheelchair Team for five years and in that time has managed to raise more than £26,000 for his ‘Team Noah appeal’. Ruth Eardley, an Everton Fans’ Forum Member, said: “This has been a great campaign and the fans have really got on board to make sure Noah has a special day. (Image: Mercury Press & Media Ltd) “This has shown that there is genuinely something special about Everton fans and the bond they have with their Club. “We have been helping the club manage all the cards coming in today and there have been hundreds of them in all shapes and sizes. “Noah is going to be very busy over the next few days opening up the cards and reading all the nice comments.”
An Oak Park college professor is taking gun safety to the polls with an advisory referendum that will seek support in repealing the Second Amendment. The referendum, which is non-binding, will look like this on Oak Park residents' ballots: Shall the Constitution of the United States be amended as follows? The second article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is repealed. The United States Congress shall regulate the licensing and use of arms. Piergiorgio "George" Uslenghi, the man behind the question, told the Chicago Tribune he backs the referendum due to safety concerns for his family and students at UIC. He's a migrant from Italy and left his home country in 1961. "I became very concerned over the last few years at the rate of murders that have been going on because of handguns and firearms," Uslenghi said to the Tribune. "The original intent of the Second Amendment was really to protect ourselves from tyranny. That was 200 years ago. No civilized nation allows citizens to carry loaded pistols in their pockets." In his perfect world, the Second Amendment would be abolished and Congress would begin a discussion about how to regulate gun control safely. However, Uslenghi said he's not completely against the idea of leaving the amendment as-is. "I'm not against the reasonable use of firearms," he said. "I don't object to hunters having firearms. I'm also not against people having a pistol by the side of their bed. I object to people walking around with a loaded gun in their pocket." Uslenghi had to collect 15 signatures of registered Oak Park voters to the county clerk to get his referendum on the ballot. He said that, more than anything, he noticed skepticism, not criticism, when collecting signatures. "The only criticism I've gotten is that it may take 200 years to change," Uslenghi said. "But remember, a big sequoia tree starts from the smallest seed. Oak Park is a very enlightened community, and I think it is a reasonable place to start this civilized conversation about limiting the use of firearms." Have any questions about this referendum? Let us know in the comments, and we'll do our best to answer them for you. -- Image via Shutterstock.
What the developers have to say: Why Early Access? Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access? How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version? Custom map editor and Steam Workshop support Progression and stat tracking systems Discord powered VOIP More official maps and environments British and Russian factions each with their own arsenal New game modes Matchmaking and competitive rankings What is the current state of the Early Access version? Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access? How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process? “Driven Arts is a small team of 4 developers, and Days of War is our first game. We came to Early Access to get live feedback from players and test features on a few maps while we built out our final vision for Days of War. We couldn’t have made it this far with Days of War without the Early Access program.”“We plan to release Days of War in the first half of 2018, but we will only enter full release when we are happy with the foundation of the game. After launch we plan to continue to add more free content and updates, while focusing on growing the community in earnest. Updates may involve substantial changes to core game mechanics, so only jump in if you’re up for that!”“We are working on a large content update in the next few months with 6 new maps.We maintain a roadmap which you can view for more details of what we’ve done and what we are planning, and you can also vote on what you consider most important for us to work on next!Here are some of the larger items we want to see added for the full version:Take a look at our roadmap for more details”“Currently the team is working round the clock on the next major game update. If you are new to our community we recommend you check out our community hub for news updates from Driven Arts and add us to your wishlist to be notified when the next update is released.”“The price will reflect the state of the game, both during and after Early Access”“Right now is a crucial stage in end of our early access development. We will be making some final decisions on core mechanics of the game that are unlikely to change much after release.We welcome all constructive feedback, and we are very seriously committed to making the best game we are capable of making.Join our Discord Channel and our Steam Group to get your voice heard.”
Finally working on this Kiriban price for again... I'm so sorry for the delay ;_;Decided to finally start using Clip Studio Paint since I haven't touched it ever since I bought it a while ago. And I have to say, I immediately felt comfortable using it. Obviously it offers a lot more functionality than SAI, but it still has this somewhat lightweight feel to it (compared to PS for instance). The only issue I'm running into right now though is that I guess CSP is more resource demanding than SAI was and I guess the weaker graphics card which my tablet is connected to can't handle it too well because I'm getting some fps problems when rotating or moving stuff. But other than that I really like CSP so far and I guess I'll switch to it, at least until SAI 2 gets released.
After months of living in fear, Kathleen Edward is about to live large. On Thursday, the Trenton 7-year-old is expected to travel by limo to Ann Arbor, where a local toy shop is literally rolling out the red carpet and giving her free run of the store. Kathleen, who is in the final stages of Huntington's Disease, captured the world's attention last week when a local television station exposed a neighbor who was taunting the girl and her family. In , Jennifer Lynn Petkov admitted that she posted images to Facebook depicting Kathleen's face above a set of crossbones and her mother, who died of the same degenerative brain disease, in the arms of the grim reaper. The story went viral online, and Petkov quickly . But neighbors said the taunting -- the result of a long-running neighborhood feud -- had been going on for months and culminated in Petkov and her husband attaching a coffin to the back of their truck, which the couple claimed was a Halloween decoration. Hans Masing, owner of , said he first saw the story on Reddit, a popular social networking site, and was inspired to act on Kathleen's behalf. "When I realized it was local, I knew we had to help," he told MLive.com this morning. "I have an 8-year-old daughter, and I honestly can't imagine the pain she is going through." To ease that pain, Masing organized a "dream trip" for Kathleen utilizing donations from Redditors across the world, national toy companies and local businesses moved by the story. "We have an amazing thing coming together," Masing said. "When we say a 'dream trip' to the toy store, we are not kidding." Kathleen is expected to arrive at the toy store around 9:30 a.m., where she'll be greeted on a red carpet by a flash mob Masing expects could approach 80 people. At the store, she'll be allowed to pick out any toys she wants for her personal collection. From there, the limo will take Kathleen, her family and friends to the University of Michigan's C.S. Mott Children's Hospital, where they will present other sick children with thousand of dollars worth of donated toys. Masing visited with Edward's family on Monday and presented her with a first batch of toys. Fox 2 dropped by, and father Robert Edward as he fought back tears "I can't even imagine people emptying their pockets for that," he said, "just to make a dream for her. I thank you." Masing said he couldn't have organized the trip without the help of several local and national businesses who have offered services and goods. Head to for a full list of those companies, more information about Thursday's event and details on how to donate to the cause. "It's pretty amazing how the community has come together," Masing said. "It's nice to be on the side of the good guys."
RARE good news in the bloody fight against narcotics gave drug warriors in the Americas reason to boast on June 22nd. First, Jamaican police arrested Christopher “Dudus” Coke, a gang leader wanted in the United States. The same day, the UN reported that the area used to cultivate coca leaf in the Andes fell by 5% last year. Get our daily newsletter Upgrade your inbox and get our Daily Dispatch and Editor's Picks. Mr Coke's unexpected capture was a coup for the Jamaican government. On May 17th Bruce Golding, the prime minister, authorised his extradition to America and launched a search for him. The effort caused 73 deaths in firefights between the security forces and his supporters, but found no trace of him. Yet after a month on the run, Mr Coke decided to turn himself in. Police had conducted raids on his associates, which may have made him think they were closing in. He contacted a pastor to arrange a surrender at the American embassy. But Jamaican police were tipped off and stopped Mr Coke, dressed in a wig and hat, en route. At first sight, the coca figures are equally encouraging. According to the UN's data, derived from satellite images, the total amount of Andean land under coca has dropped by nearly a quarter since 1990. Colombia has done especially well: partly because it switched from ineffective crop-spraying to large-scale manual eradication, its coca-growing land has been reduced by 60% in the last decade. Yet it is precisely such achievements that produce the most scepticism about counter-narcotics. The surrender or capture of 27 Jamaican gang leaders in the past month has created a power vacuum that may be filled by bloodshed. As long as political parties depend on the mobs at elections and the police cannot provide security, citizens will still suffer. Similarly, the drop in land used to grow coca has been offset by better productivity. Since 2000, yields per hectare have risen by nearly two-thirds. And crude machines are replacing bare feet as macerators, while washing machines are being used as makeshift centrifuges. As a result, the UN's current estimate of global cocaine production is 10% higher than it was in 2005. Moreover, growers continue to find the weak links in the enforcement chain. In 1995 Peru and Bolivia were the world's top cocaine producers. Much blood and money was spent driving the trade out of those countries and, inadvertently, into Colombia (see chart). In 1999 America sponsored a big anti-drug programme in Colombia. As a result, growers have moved back: in the past decade, the area used for coca rose by 55% in Peru and 42% in Bolivia. Bolivia's president, Evo Morales, still leads a coca-growers' union. He wants the leaf taken off the UN's banned-substances list to allow its industrialisation in drinks and creams. The new constitution passed last year calls coca part of Bolivia's “cultural heritage”. No matter that cocaine is not. Peru's president, Alan García, refuses to eradicate coca in a key valley, in part to avoid agitating Maoist guerrillas. The UN report found that Peru may have passed Colombia as the world's top coca grower last year. As a senior Mexican official says: “Until legalisation, the only thing you can do is make it someone else's problem.”
Despite Warnings China's Over the Counter Bitcoin Economy Is Booming Bitcoin in China has deep roots as a vast majority of mining takes place in the region, and the country once accounted for the lion’s share of the world’s BTC trade volume. These days, however, renminbi and bitcoin volume coming from mainland exchanges is virtually non-existent, but there’s a whole lot more international and underground action happening within the over-the-counter (OTC) crypto-economy. Also read: Japan Increases Lead – Approves Another Four New Cryptocurrency Exchanges CNY/BTC Trade Volume Is Virtually Non-existent As China’s Market Action Has Moved to Hong Kong, OTC Markets, and Tether In the past Chinese bitcoin trade volume captured the majority of global trades for quite some time, and the renminbi (¥ CNY) was usually the top currency traded with BTC. However, these days CNY represents less than 0.03 percent of the world’s bitcoin trade volume and ranks number 20 amongst all the other global currencies. Even though CNY volume is down, Chinese exchanges are still functioning internationally in places like Hong Kong according to the Bitcoin Association of HK’s founder and tech-columnist Leonhard Weese. The top three Chinese exchanges Huobi, Okcoin, and BTCC now only capture 7 percent of the global trade volume Weese explains. For instance, at the time of writing, Huobi is swapping $194M USD worth of BTC paired with Tether. Okcoin only accounts for $11M worth of BTC trades and BTCC is trading $146M in BTC, ETH, BCH, and ETC. The controversial Tether (USDT) medium of exchange has interestingly replaced the CNY as far as worldwide volumes by currency. Over-the-Counter Dealers Reap the Benefits, But China’s Government Is Watching Even though Chinese exchange volume is lower than in the past, and renminbi pairs are not taking place within the region — OTC trading is booming. This week Chinese Localbitcoins trades are at an all-time high outpacing the last time exchanges went on hiatus. Additionally, other OTC platforms are also seeing a surge in demand like Poim, Richfund.pe, and Coincola. These companies not only provide substantial orders of bitcoins to investors, but also contribute liquidity to the top three Chinese exchanges who are utilizing international borders as a shield. Richfund is well known as a significant bitcoin hedge fund and OTC dealer within the region and supplies funds to many institutions. “[Richfund] makes a very large contribution for depth and volume and is a is a strategic partner of Huobi, explains CEO Lin Li on the company’s website. However, as news.Bitcoin.com reported last month, the Chinese government doesn’t seem to appreciate the peer-to-peer markets. On November 11, China’s Central Television (CCTV-13) warned viewers of the risks involved with OTC bitcoin trades. The warning has not stopped people from trading underground via Telegram channels, Wechat, and Alipay. Chinese trade volume on the peer-to-peer platform Paxful is at an all-time high as well. Even though there’s a lot of underground action PBOC officials seem pleased that they shut down mainland bitcoin exchanges from utilizing CNY trades. According to the regional news outlets Yicai Global the vice governor at the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) explains that the central bank was right to intervene in regard to China’s cryptocurrency economy. The central bank’s Pan Gongsheng explains; If we didn’t shut bitcoin exchanges and crack down on initial coin offerings (ICOs) a few months ago, and if more than 80 percent of the world’s bitcoin transactions and financing activities were still taking place China, which was the case back in January, what would it be like today? Four OTC Providers Competing for China’s OTC Spillover The top three exchanges Huobi, BTCC, and Okcoin alongside Localbitcoins, Poim, Coincola, and Richfund are also not the only businesses competing for OTC customers. Other over the counter dealers have moved into that area including Circle Financial, Gatecoin, Octagon Strategy, and the newcomer Genesis Block. The privately owned Octagon Strategy Limited says they specialize in providing digital asset liquidity offering cryptocurrencies like ethereum and bitcoin. The Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency exchange Gatecoin is receiving a lot more attention these days since Chinese exchanges ceased operations. The platform founded in 2013 caters to both retail investors and large market makers as well. News.bitcoin.com reported on the creation of Genesis Block in Hong Kong and how the company also helped jumpstart the Bitcoin Cash network. These OTC-centric companies have a minimum amount of how many bitcoins are required for purchase which is typically no less than $100,000 to $10Mn per order. Circle Financial had previously set up a strategic position in the region creating a Beijing-based subsidiary called ‘Circle China’ back in June of 2016. Its liquidity services arm ‘Circle Trade’ is doing quite well in the area dedicating its resources to OTC markets. What do you think about the bitcoin and cryptocurrency situation in China? Do you think exchanges will come back and renminbi will dominate again? Or do you think China’s bitcoin dominance days as far as trade volume is concerned is over? Let us know what you think in the comments below. Images via Shutterstock, Crypto Compare, and Coin Dance. Make sure you do not miss any important Bitcoin-related news! Follow our news feed any which way you prefer; via Twitter, Facebook, Telegram, RSS or email (click to subscribe to daily or weekly).
Dream Theater have spent the majority of 2013 behind closed doors working on their next studio album, but keyboardist Jordan Rudess took some time out to speak with Loudwire about the band's progress on their upcoming disc, how drummer Mike Mangini is adjusting to the group after one record cycle under his belt, the group's future tour plans and the fan-voted victory of Dream Theater's 'Images & Words' album in Loudwire's March Metal Madness . Check out our interview with Dream Theater's Jordan Rudess below: First of all, Jordan, congrats on winning the March Metal Madness competition we had over here at Loudwire . Oh wow, thanks. That was pretty exciting. There was a lot of intensity around that and our fans were pretty supportive. Yeah, that is cool. You know you have a great fan base, but how cool is it to see it in something quantifiable where they organize en masse for you like this? I know, it's amazing. Just the power and the voice of these people, it's hugely successful. Dream Theater are back working on new music and have been for a while. Just wanted to see how things are progressing toward the next album. We're doing very well. We're kind of in the homestretch of the whole thing. I was just finishing some keyboard tracks and we have some more things to do, but we're definitely looking at the finish line at this point. You've got one album cycle under the belt with [drummer] Mike Mangini and he had to get up to speed with that last record, but how's he progressing within the framework of the band? Having Mike in the room with us as we were doing the writing and everything was such a wonderful thing. The man has such a strong energy and such a great player that it made a big difference to our process to have him there, have him contributing ideas. The way I see it is like, he's such a specialist in his area. He's got such a rhythm math brain and that addition to what Dream Theater already has in the composition department was so cool, 'cause we've been able to do things I've never done before. There's some stuff on the album that I'll rhythmically is very, very cool. With a new piece to the puzzle, does it give you a renewed sense of energy at this point in the band's career? Oh for sure. Anyone who's heard this album or stopped by the studio, you've just got to smile at the drumming, it's so outrageous. He does some fills that are like, 'Oh my God!' (laugh) I can't help but almost like laugh. You guys are such great musicians all around, but what is the studio like for you? Are you continually amazed by what you and each of your cohorts come up with? That's an interesting question. I feel so lucky to work with all these people. They all have really good taste and they're completely professional. I know that it's the kind of thing where you can be assured that if you're not involved every step of the way, whoever takes over will do a fine job. So it's really a comfortable situation to know that everyone is really up on their game. You know one thing with Dream Theater is that we haven't let go of the reins at all. Sometimes when you hear bands that have been around for awhile, it's like, 'Oh, you know, their stuff years ago was really more on top of it' or whatever. But I feel with Dream Theater everyone is still so energized and excited about what we do. We all still practice hard and nobody's lost their spirit or energy. We just really keep the wheels firmly in motion. And another thing, as far as the working environment, we're very dedicated. We go in there, we have a job to do, we have deadlines and we want to get done. So it's definitely what we do. It's our work. Some days are more inspired than other days and some days are just getting things done, but other days the inspiration may be there and an amazing chord progression came out of it. I know you are very much a gear head and have all kind of gadgets you can use. Do you have a favorite thing you are enjoying working into the music at this point? Yesterday I was just doing solos and I used my Geo Synthesizer for one of my solos. It's an app that I made. I have an app company called Wizdom Music and one of our apps is called Geo Synthesizer and I used that for a solo which was really fun. And is there something you're just waiting for the right occasion to work in? Yeah, yeah. I'm involved with this company called Roli, and I have this instrument called a Seaboard. It's an amazing keyboard instrument and it has a whole new kind of touch sensitivity to it. It has what we call an elastics feel. So I've been waiting for the moment in my musical life to bring that out. It's not out as a commercial product yet, but it's really, really cool. So that's the one kind of keyboard that's really a standout amongst Jordan's new technology. And with these technologies, will it work for you as well within the live setting? I'd like to, yeah, I'm actually thinking about that now. My live rig definitely takes some thought way ahead of the game. So I'm starting to think about what I want to bring with me. Like the Seaboard would be really cool. Dream Theater are very much known for their live sets, but it's an all around experience. How much do you as a musician work not only off what you're getting from the other guys but what the audience provides for you as well? This made me think of a funny story. When we were doing our drum auditions, Mike Mangini played a song for us -- 'Dance of Eternity' or 'Metropolis' or something like that. And he put so much energy into the song, and it was so intense, and first of all it was very early in the morning, but it was just so incredibly intense that when he was done with the song, I thought he was going to die. But of course he was fine. But I was thinking that when we go out, if this guy is the drummer that we choose, how is he possibly going to play a night like this? How can he put that much energy into a song? He won't be able to play more than one or two songs. But the reality is that he is so energized that he is able to play that kind of show with the energy. So the last tour we did was so fun, and I'm right in line with Mike Mangini and more towards the back -- my riser and his riser -- and we have a lot of fun interactions with facial expressions and smiling and the band as a whole, our experience was very unified. One thing about the new Dream Theater if you will, I mean I've always enjoyed playing with this band, and [Mike] Portnoy was one of the greatest drummers, but one thing that has changed with Mike Mangini is there is this unified, five guys all similar in our musical ways, just working together. I really feel it and it's interesting. It's tangible. Everybody I talk to at the shows are like, 'Wow, you guys are such a unit.' And I think that's really cool. That's what I really enjoyed this last go-round. Between Dream Theater, your solo work, your apps company, it seems there's rarely a break. What's behind that drive? I'm so like one-sided. There's a lot of people that do a lot of things and have a lot of hobbies, but that honestly isn't really me. I'm like a musician through-and-through. I eat, breathe and sleep music. So for me it's really natural to spend time doing what I love to do. It's fun for me too. It's definitely work, but sometimes it's more fun than anything else and that's what kind of keeps me driven. It's what I love to do and it's what I enjoy. I know you said you're in the homestretch on the Dream Theater record. Do you envision a 2013 release or is it too early to project? And is there a tour on the horizon for the band? It seems like the album is going to come out in the fall. We haven't announced a release date, but that's kind of what we're looking at. And we'll be doing a world tour with the album and we'll certainly be on tour in 2014. I'm not sure yet on dates, but you can be rest assured that wherever you are in the universe, you'll see Dream Theater in 2014. Our thanks to Dream Theater's Jordan Rudess for the interview. And be sure to check out Jordan's current PledgeMusic Campaign for his solo orchestral and piano Explore Project here .
THE £622million sale of AC Milan to Chinese investors will be finalised on March 3. Former Italy Prime Minister and president of the Rossoneri had agreed to the sale in August, but the buyers needed final approving from Beijing. Getty Images 6 AC Milan sale to Chinese investors will be finalised on March 3 The deal will be the biggest-ever Chinese investment in a European club and includes the £185m worth of debt. Keep up to date with ALL the AC Milan news, gossip and transfers on our club page Sino-Europe Sports Investment Management Changxing (SES), backed by Haixa Capital and Yonghong Li will formally take over on March 3, having already £168m in three separate instalments to Berlusconi’s holding company, Fininvest. And they will pay the outstanding £269m, while also injecting a reported £84m into the team as agreed. Businessman Berlusconi took over as president of his beloved Milan in 1986 and immediately set about establishing the Rossoneri as the best club on the planet. He broke the world transfer record by paying £6m to sign Ruud Gullit from PSV Eindhoven a year later and repeated the trick twice in 1992. Getty Images 6 Silvio Berlusconi had been the president and owner of AC Milan since 1986 Getty Images 6 Silvio Berlusconi broke world transfer record for first time to sign Ruud Gullit AP:Associated Press 6 Silvio Berlusconi celebrates with players after incredible 1989 Euopean Cup final display First, he signed reigning Ballon d'Or winner, Jean-Pierre Pain from Marseille for £10m and then shocked the world when splashed out a whopping £13m on Gianluigi Lentini. Milan won back-to-back European Cups in 1989 and 1990 — a feat which has never been repeated since. And, in the former, produced one of the greatest displays of all-time, to beat Steaua Bucharest 4-0. PA:Press Association 6 AC Milan are regarded as one of biggest clubs in European football history They reached the Champions League final in each of the first three seasons of the rebranding. In 1994, they beat the Barcelona ‘Dream Team’ 4-0, to rival their 1989 performance. Berlusconi is believed to have invested around £1billion in the club during his three decades in charge and, in 2009, reached as high as 12th in Forbes' list of The World's Most Powerful People. Getty Images 6 AC Milan have fallen massively and investment could give them big push Yet, his record signing Manuel Rui Costa for what now seems like a snip at £37m in 2001. Milan added two more Champions League trophies in 2003 and 2007 before a rapid decline which coincided with Berlusconi’s third term as Italy’s Prime Minister. The club are in disarray, but perhaps this new investment will see them back challenging Europe’s elite on the pitch and off it.
PureScript is a small strongly, statically typed programming language with expressive types, written in and inspired by Haskell, and compiling to Javascript. Functional programming in JavaScript has seen quite a lot of popularity recently, but large-scale application development is hindered by the lack of a disciplined environment in which to write code. PureScript aims to solve that problem by bringing the power of strongly-typed functional programming to the world of JavaScript development. This book will show you how to get started with the PureScript programming language, from the basics (setting up a development environment) to the advanced. Each chapter will be motivated by a particular problem, and in the course of solving that problem, new functional programming tools and techniques will be introduced. Here are some examples of problems that will be solved in this book:
Missing Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych has been smuggled out of the country by the CIA, claims Russian government Claims made in Vladimir Putin' s official newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta Alleges that U.S. has offered tyrant new life if he left the political stage Says Yanukovych would have continued resistance 'if he had not received weighty guarantees of safety ' ' Who could give guarantees in the prevailing situation? Only Washington' Report will be seen as smokescreen for claims Russia is shielding ally 'Corruption' papers found in tyrant's lake uploaded to WikiLeaks-style site Flown to a new life? Russia's official state newspaper claims disgraced Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych (pictured) has been smuggled out of the country by the CIA Russia today claimed that the CIA could be behind the disappearance of toppled Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych. The official newspaper of Vladimir Putin's government alleged that American intelligence may have secretly flown the disgraced tyrant - now accused of mass murder - to a new life after giving him personal guarantees if he left the political stage. The extraordinary claim in Rossiyskaya Gazeta will inevitably be seen as a smokescreen for similar suspicions that Russia is now shielding former ally Yanukovych, possibly at the headquarters of the Black Sea fleet in Crimea. But today's theory from Moscow's official newspaper that the CIA may be behind his disappearance is the most intriguing yet in a 'Where's Viktor?' hunt that has gripped governments and the media since the weekend revolution in Kiev. 'Where is Viktor Yanukovych?' asked an article on the website of Russia's state-owned newspaper of record. 'The intelligence agencies of many countries, hundreds of politicians and experts, thousands of interested persons in Kiev, and millions of Ukrainians racked their brains over this question. 'He could not have simply disappeared into thin air. He is a recognisable politician, after all, even a very recognisable one. 'And at this point, the entirely logical question comes to mind: Has he not been hidden by people who are very adept at covering tracks? That is to say, by the Americans.' The article stated that 'many people thought it strange how easily Yanukovych raised the white flag and signed an agreement that obviously no-one apart from himself intended to fulfil' after the involvement of the foreign ministers of Germany, Poland and France. The Kremlin newspaper claimed that 'it was obvious that the main 'guarantors' of this document were not European diplomats, but their counterparts from across the Atlantic. 'Yanukovych would definitely have continued to resist if he had not received sufficiently weighty guarantees of safety for himself, his family, and his innermost circle,' stated the Russian version. Making ties: Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko (who is no longer using the wheelchair she was in when she left prison) shakes hands with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns in Kiev CORRUPTION EVIDENCE UPLOADED TO WIKILEAKS-STYLE WEBSITE Documents recovered from Yanukovych's presidential home that reportedly show evidence of widespread corruption have started to appear online. Journalists and volunteers have been analysing the papers after divers retrieved them from the lake at the sprawling estate in Mezhyirya. They say the documents show how millions was lavished on construction, furnitures and animals. Lesya Ivanova, one of the journalists, told Euro News: 'Some documents were collected from the surface of the water, others were retrieved by the divers.... we had to unfold and dry them immediately to preserve the information.' The papers are being uploaded to the purpose-built website Yanukovychleaks.org. Journalist Oleksandr Akymenko said: 'These documents are very valuable. They could help prove corruption schemes used by Viktor Yanukovych personally, his team and his inner circle.' 'Who could give such guarantees in the prevailing situation in Ukraine? Only Washington, which, as the latest events in Kiev show, is the 'eminence grise' behind the Maidan (Ukrainian protests).' It has been claimed by participants in the talks that Yanukovych abruptly agreed to the agreement last week after consulting various people privately on the phone, including Putin. Yanukovych packed his bags the same night in his vast mansion near Kiev, evidently not intending to return. The paper claimed that the US may have learned from other revolutions where the bloody fate of the toppled tyrant became a spectacle. 'It is possible to understand the Americans. They needed not Yanukovych, but Ukraine. 'At the same time, Washington is clearly not interested in a repetition of the bloody reprisal against Libyan leader Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi in a European state. 'In other words, the State Department could have given Yanukovych any safety guarantees, so long as he disappeared from the Ukrainian political stage. 'And the Americans are past masters at disappearing people. Take the episode of the CIA's flying prisons alone.' The newspaper also denied reports that the Russians which have major military facilities in Sevastopol - close to the last alleged sighting of on-the-run Yanukovych in Balaclava - was now in Moscow's hands. 'Yanukovych is not in the facilities or ships of the Russian Black Sea Fleet,' stated Rossiyskaya Gazeta citing an 'informed military source'. Opulent: A view of a room inside President Viktor Yanukovych's palatial estate in Mezhyhirya Religious iconography and paintings displayed in a room inside the estate which the tyrant fled from last week Grand: A staircase winds up inside the palatial property, which has been closed off to the world for a decade 'Reports had appeared in certain Ukrainian mass media outlets to the effect that the Ukrainian president was allegedly in Kazachya Bay in Sevastopol, where the Black Sea Fleet's marine brigade is based. 'Information appeared to the effect that Yanukovych was in Kharkiv. But he was not found there either. 'Perhaps he has fled in the direction of the Persian Gulf? This report was immediately refuted by the authorities of the Arab states. In hiding: Yanukovych fled on Saturday as the turmoil of three months confrontation with his people caught up with him Lived in luxury: A view of a bathroom inside President Viktor Yanukovych's Mezhyhirya estate Ukrainians have poured in by their thousands onto the 140-hectare grounds for a first glimpse at a luxury 'According to unconfirmed information, the Ukrainian president has even given up his personal state guard. There is no doubt that, if this is true, it is far easier to disappear without a guard than with one. 'So just where is Yanukovych? In Kiev, he has even been placed on the wanted list. 'It cannot be ruled out, however, that the thugs who have seized power in the Ukrainian capital simply need to inquire about the whereabouts of the disappeared president from the US ambassador, who is becoming an ever more important figure on the political Olympus of "independent" Ukraine. 'However, it is unlikely that he will tell them the truth.' 'Not in Moscow's hands': A Russian Army officer helps an armored personnel carrier drive on a street in Sevastopol, close to the last alleged sighting of on-the-run Yanukovych in Balaclava Women holding flowers pass by barricades in Kiev's Independence Square, the epicenter of the country's current unrest, Ukraine
Last summer, Skully, the motorcycle helmet with a heads-up display, became the fourth-most popular Indiegogo campaign in history. According to an SEC filing, it’s raised another $1.5 million. The financing, which took the form of convertible securities, was added to existing cash that Skully had raised through its crowdfunding campaign and previous fundraising. Skully hoped to raise $250,000 during its two-month crowdfunding campaign, but took home nearly 10 times that amount. A company spokesperson confirmed Skully has raised a total of $5.8 million in both pre-orders and angel investment thus far. Its helmets provide an added layer of safety for thrill-seeking motorcycle riders by providing hands-free GPS navigation and calling capabilities, wide-angle rear-view camera displays on the helmet screen, Bluetooth connectivity, an integrated audio system and streaming music. Co-founder and CEO Marcus Weller created the helmet described as having augmented reality capabilities with his brother Mitch. Marcus told us back in August that the idea came to him “literally as a fever dream” after experiencing several bike crashes. He didn’t own a motorcycle at the time, but was convinced something like this helmet had already been invented. It hadn’t been. Marcus, who has experience in research on intelligent transportation systems via the University of Minnesota, was so compelled by the idea of something like this he went and made the helmet. It seems he was onto something. The Weller brothers sold 1,950 helmets in over 47 countries during the two-month campaign. Skully did not want to disclose the particulars of the current raise. We’ll update you as soon as we know more.
Last year it was reported Star Trek 3 writers JD Payne and Patrick KcKay were hired to write a script for a Flash Gordon reboot that 20th Century Fox is developing. I think that this is an awesome franchise that is actually ripe for a reboot, but apparently the plan is to develop it as a sequel to the 35-year-old film, which just seems weird. But Disney did it with Tron, so maybe it could work. This news comes from original Flash Gordon movie star Sam J. Jones during an interview with Den of Geek. When he was asked if there were any sequels planned, he said, “That was then, but up to date now Matthew Reilly, VP of production at Fox Studios, acquired the screenplay rights to Flash Gordon last year, and he hired [Predator/ Chronicle/ Man From U.N.C.L.E producer] John Davis and his staff to write the script. They're looking to bring out a sequel actually. I met with Matt, we're in talks about that. I'm very excited. A lot of people over the years, including Stephen Sommers and Neil H Moritz, have acquired the screenplay rights, but for whatever reason they did not do a follow up on the option. So I'm very excited about it.” The actor was then asked how he would be used in the movie, and he said, “However they want to use me, I'm very excited. I told Matt, however he wants to use me, keep one thing in mind: whatever a younger, leading man can do, I cannot only match him, I can do more! If he does 20 pull-ups, I can do 30 pull-ups. If he can do 100 push-ups, I can do 150 push-ups. Just keep that in mind!” It sounds like he's pretty up to date on what is going on with the project. However, it was previously reported that the "pitch goes right back to the original Raymond comic strips and sidesteps any association with the movie, and even the serials." The idea was "to reclaim Flash Gordon from his current reputation in the way that Tim Burton redirected the public conception of Batman." Things seemed to have changed since the initial report on this project. As interesting as a sequel might be, I still think that starting from scratch on this franchise would be a better way to go. What do you think?
Driven to action by California’s historic drought, state lawmakers on Wednesday voted to place a $7.5 billion water plan before voters in November, ending a year of political wrangling over the measure. California is in the throes of a devastating multiyear drought that is expected to cost its economy $2.2 billion in lost crops, jobs and other damages. The measure marks the largest investment in decades in the state's water infrastructure and is designed to build reservoirs, clean up contaminated groundwater and promote water-saving technologies. It replaces an existing water bond that was approved by a previous legislature but was widely considered too costly and too bloated with pork-barrel projects to win favor with voters. On the last possible day to approve the ballot measure, Democrats and Republicans fought over what projects to include, with Republicans arguing for more funding for reservoirs and Democrats saying that damming rivers and flooding canyons to build them is damaging to the environment. Last-minute intervention by Gov. Jerry Brown, a fiscal moderate, brought the sides together. The ballot measure sailed through both houses of the legislature: 77-2 in the Assembly and 37-0 in the Senate. Republican Tim Donnelly of Twin Peaks and Democrat Wesley Chesbro of Arcata cast the dissenting votes in the Assembly. After signing the legislation, AB1471, Gov. Brown said he probably had never seen Democrats and Republicans so united in his lifetime. "With this water bond, legislators from both parties have affirmed their faith in California's future," Brown said. Democratic Speaker Toni G. Atkins said late on Wednesday that the water bond was "the biggest investment in water storage in decades." Senate Republican leader Bob Huff said the plan, which costs less than the $11 billion bond that the California Legislature agreed to in 2009, dedicated nearly 40 percent of funds to water storage. The agreed bond includes $2.7 billion for new storage, including facilities in the Central Valley; $900 million for a groundwater cleanup investment in Los Angeles' San Gabriel Valley; over $250 million in drinking and wastewater treatment projects and statewide investments to tackle drought and climate change, said State Democratic Senator Lois Wolk. Provisions in the proposal involving water recycling and cleanup of contaminated groundwater could increase the availability of water during future droughts. The bond also includes other water projects not directly related to supply, such as watershed improvements and flood management. California, with a population that exceeds 38 million and an agricultural industry that feeds the nation, has been struggling to meet the increasing demands for water after three dry winters. The push to revamp the 2009 ballot measure, which had been delayed from statewide votes twice, gained momentum as the worst drought in a generation intensified throughout the state. It has forced farmers to fallow fields, led to double-digit unemployment in many rural areas, turned large expanses of reservoirs into mud flats and prompted local governments to mandate water-use restrictions and impose fines for water waste. Numerous agricultural, environmental and business groups quickly endorsed the legislative compromise. The plan includes $7.1 billion in new borrowing and $425 million from previous bonds that would be redirected to the updated water priorities. Redirecting that money requires voter approval. Wire services
Alberta’s opposition parties are gearing up for a looming election — with many expecting the writ to drop Tuesday. The Herald reached out Sunday to all five parties that held seats in recent years. The governing Progressive Conservatives did not reply, though Jim Prentice appeared Saturday at the Calgary Zoo for a photo-op announced on party letterhead. The party refused to let journalists to ask any questions. Wildrose party spokesperson Matt Solberg said the Official Opposition is prepared for a Tuesday election call. “In the short span of a week we’ve elected a new leader, we’ve come together, put a solid campaign team together and put a plan in place,” he said. “The great goal here is to represent Albertans as the only conservative party left. The budget, any idea that there are conservatives left in the PC party has been put to bed.” Solberg said the main Wildrose focus will be proposing the cuts needed to restore the province’s finances rather than raising taxes. Liberal leader David Swann — whose party ties the Wildrose with five seats in the current legislature — is aiming for voters aged 25 to 50 who feel shortchanged by decades of PC government. “I think trust is going to be a big issue in this election, especially for the new generation. They’ve become pretty discouraged by what they’ve seen in the past few years in Alberta,” said Swann, whose party is looking to target voters who include people struggling with post-secondary debt, aging parents and school-aged children. “Our main commitment is to look at the demands on the emerging generation, the younger generation and their kids; what we call the Martha and Henry, and their grandkids,” said Swann, invoking Ralph Klein’s mythical common-folk couple. The NDP — which holds four seats — said it’s riding on one of its highest waves of memberships and funding during what it claims is the largest campaign force it’s ever assembled. “We’ve got a lot of momentum right now, so things are looking up,” said party secretary Brian Stokes. “What you’re going to see is a bigger, stronger campaign than probably Alberta’s seen from New Democrats in a generation.” In advance of a rumoured Tuesday election call, the party will announce its slate Monday. Stokes said the NDP aims to raise corporate taxes and reorient the government’s priorities. “They’re putting the burden of their poor planning onto the backs of regular Albertans in increased taxes and fees and cuts to services,” said Stokes. Meanwhile, the Alberta Party aims to win its first elected MLA seat. “As I’m talking to Albertans, they’re not buying this budget. They don’t like cuts to health care, and they don’t like cuts to education,” said leader Greg Clark, who’s also expecting a Tuesday election call. “The Alberta party will be better known through this campaign, and beyond.” Locally, each party mentioned promised schools that have yet to be funded, and various health-care problems. But parties also highlighted issues specific to southern Alberta ridings. The Liberals will specifically campaign on Calgary’s cancer centre, which the government announced last week it intends to split into two sites after a decade of changing project plans. “Water is the key issue in southern Alberta,” Swann also said. He said the Liberals would halt oil, gas and logging development on the Rockies’ eastern slopes until a land-use plan is put in place. The NDP said it will draw attention to the impact of centralizing regional health boards — which the government recently announced it was reversing — on areas like Lethbridge, “causing delays and more strain,” Stokes said. Along with the NDP, the Alberta Party is targeting flood mitigation, with “buyout programs that were a waste of money and terribly unfair,” said Clark, who’s running in flood hotspot Calgary-Elbow. drobertson@calgaryherald.com Twitter.com/dcrHerald
Get the biggest daily news stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email THE TEENAGE terror who tormented Chelsea might have been lost to the game because he was the boy who couldn't grow up. While Jose Mourinho and his Blues were furious with Lionel Messi's part in Asier del Horno's red card, the jeers of the Stamford Bridge boo boys were as much a sign of the damage the tiny Argentinian was doing to them. But if Messi's poor steelworker family had not had relatives in Barcelona five years ago, the world could have been denied his talents altogether. Messi, then 13, was playing for Newells Old Boys when a move to the schoolboy books of Buenos Aires giants River Plate fell through after a routine medical detected hormonal problems in his bones that were related to a mild form of dwarfism. At the time, Messi was just 4ft 8in tall and when Newells refused to pay for his treatment his desperate family sent him over to their relatives in Spain where a trial with Barca was arranged. Despite his lack of stature, Messi scored five goals against older boys and was offered a contract on the spot, with Barca happy to foot the bill for his medical treatment which involved injecting hormones into himself every day. Still only 5ft 7in, Messi was a giant on Wednesday night and he admitted the jeers had only made him more determined. Messi said: "The boos didn't bother me at all to be honest. It made me want to do more, especially for our fans who came here. "If we play at home like we did at Chelsea we will have no problems in going through. This was the most important result. We know if we get the ball down and play we will score plenty of goals against them. "It would have been nice for me to score and I had a few chances but what matters was the result. It was a strong game and showed how we like to play. We deserved it by the way we played."
On July 28, 2017, a public awareness event took place in Northern California, put on by GeoengineerWatch.org. Kevin Shipp presented at the event, informing attendees of various crimes he says the CIA and the U.S. government are involved in. CIA Crimes Kevin Shipp refers to himself as a “recovering CIA officer.” The former CIA official refuses to turn the other cheek and ignore cover-ups and criminality in relation to the government.On July 28, 2017, a public awareness event took place in Northern California, put on by GeoengineerWatch.org. Kevin Shipp presented at the event, informing attendees of various crimes he says the CIA and the U.S. government are involved in. This (1) YouTube clip shows the CIA whistleblower presentation at the recent public awareness event. Shipp starts the talk with some seemingly ironic humor, noting the ‘benefits’ of being a CIA officer, such as having a cell phone that turns on and off by itself, and having his mail opened before he receives it. The lecture then takes a more serious tone, as Shipp describes how he decided to expose how he saw the CIA engage in unconstitutional and illegal activity, violate international law and participate in some pretty serious human rights violations. The former CIA agent speaks of how the Defense Intelligent Agency engaged in the torture program, in which some people died, and where attempts were made to recruit American citizens to be informants. Shipp refers to a ‘secret system’ in which the President of the United States’ has his own secret army. Within this army special operators are sent out to foreign countries in secret to engage in killings, overturning governments and other things the American people don’t know about. Mainstream Media Controlled by U.S. Intelligence The ‘recovering CIA officer’ also notes how the FBI conducts warrant searches, in which national officers enter a business and demand management hands over employee security details. If they find anything that shouldn’t be in there, they can put the supervisor in jail. Shipp touches on the mainstream media’s connection with the intelligence agency. He speaks of how the likes of the Washington Post and the New York Times feed information directly to the CIA to be published to “alter the perceptions of the American people.” The presenter goes on to highlight how the ‘secret bank’ recently gave out a couple of trillion dollars to some unknown corporations in the military industrial complex that they won’t tell anyone about. Shipp notes how Wall Street funds the military industrial complex and how it was Wall Street attorneys who funded the CIA. Government Legalizes Lying On a large overhead screen, Shipp displays the words “The Government Legalizes Lying”. He refers to an incident of an air force B29 Superfortress bomber flying on a so-called classified mission, crashed into Waycross, Georgia. Nine of the crew members were killed in the crash. The widows of the deceased demanded to know how their husbands died. The CIA told them that the details were classified. The whole case was shut down and the widows were told that if they talked about it they would go to prison. However, details of the ‘top secret’ crash report were found on the internet which revealed gross negligence by the pilots. According to Shipp, the Executive and Judiciary Branch which made the State Secrets Privilege law, is the “most tyrannical power of the US government” and is now being used to seal legal cases brought by civilians’ against the CIA and NSA. Shipp believes the United States lost its constitution in 1947 and 1948 when the CIA was created. The CIA whistleblower hopes his speech and revelations will help lead to a reformation of the system. Shipp Trying to Expose Coverups The speech is eye-opening and shows courage from Shipp for trying to expose the alleged coverups within the US government. As (2) Global Research reports: “The courage Kevin Shipp has shown by doing his best to expose government criminality and tyranny serves as a stellar example to us all. We desperately need other individuals in government agencies and the US military to follow Kevin’s lead.” Of course, allegations related to (3) CIA and U.S. government secrecy and wrongdoing is nothing new. Though it has to be said, there’s something deeply disturbing about Kevin Shipp’s first-hand accounts of the alleged violation and misconduct of the ‘shadow government’. References & Image Credits: 1 YouTube 2 Global Research 3 Top Secret Writers Originally published on TopSecretWriters.com
NKyTribune staff Due to extreme cold, Turfway Park in Florence has canceled live racing for Sat., Jan. 7. The facility remains open for simulcasting. It is the second day in a row Turfway has canceled live racing bcause of the cold snap, with temperatures expected in the single digits and wind chills below zero. Friday’s race card, which included Perry Ouzts Day activities was also canceled. The Perry Ouzts Day event has been rescheduled to next Friday, Jan. 13. A decision regarding tonight’s scheduled entertainment for Kickin’ Country Saturday is pending. Turfway’s Winter Spring meet runs Jan.1 – April 1, with live racing Wednesday through Saturday in January and February. First post time is 6:15 pm Gates open at 11:15 a.m. for simulcast racing, except as announced. Mutuel windows open 30 minutes before the first simulcast race.
Norsk Telegrambyra AS / Reuters Nobel Peace Prize laureate Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos reacts to the torchlight parade from the balcony of the Grand Hotel in Oslo, Norway December 10, 2016. Santos called for the world to rethink the drug war while accepting the prize. Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos used his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech to urge a rethinking of the war on drugs, calling it more dangerous than all world armed conflicts combined. Santos’ pointed rejection of the drug war echoed a chorus of criticism from Latin American leaders in recent years rejecting the strategy of ordering militaries to fight an endless and seemingly unwinnable battle against drug trafficking. But Santos’ comments, delivered in Oslo on Saturday, went further than most other sitting Latin American heads of state ― particularly for a U.S. ally. His criticisms carry the weight of a Nobel Peace Prize winner and a former defense minister who has helped aggressively fight the drug war using billions in U.S. foreign aid in the world’s leading coca-producing country. “The way in which the war against drugs is being waged is equally or even more harmful than all of the wars being fought in the entire world today, combined,” Santos said, drawing applause from the crowd. “And it’s time to change our strategy.” Santos spent most of his speech discussing his administration’s four-year negotiation to end its war with the left-wing FARC rebels, his signature achievement as president. Watch Santos’ speech in Spanish below. He recognized victims of the half-century internal war in the crowd, asking them to stand up “and receive the homage they deserve.” He heaped praise on the Colombian military and foreign governments from Norway to Cuba, which helped facilitate the peace process that brought the guerrilla insurgency to an end. And he urged the audience to imagine a world without war, saying the peace deal with the FARC ― which nearly collapsed after a surprise referendum rejecting the original deal in October ― shows that the “impossible can be possible.” But Santos also said he felt compelled to criticize a global drug war that has increasingly drawn his skepticism. As he has in the past, the Colombian president asked why his country should be expected to jail peasants who grow marijuana, when Americans can freely buy and sell the drug in some U.S. states. He cited his country’s own long experience of internal conflict and organized crime as evidence that punitive policies do little to stop drug trafficking. “We have the moral authority to affirm that after decades of struggle against drug trafficking, the world hasn’t controlled this scourge that feeds violence and corruption in our global community,” Santos said. Several prominent Latin American leaders have banded together in recent years to press world governments to abandon the drug war in favor of policies centered on decriminalization that leave drug abuse to public health authorities rather than police and prosecutors. They’ve questioned why foreign governments should bear the brunt of the violence that kills tens of thousands of people annually from Mexico to Brazil in a futile attempt to keep drugs off the streets in the United States, the world’s largest illegal drug market. Most other well known critics of the U.S.-led drug war in recent years ― including former Mexican Presidents Ernesto Zedillo and Vicente Fox, and former Brazilian President Henrique Cardoso ― waited until they left office to level their most clear-throated challenges to drug war policies. A few prominent critics of the U.S. drug war policy have carried out major reforms in recent years, despite hostile or dismissive reaction from the U.S. government. Uruguay’s former president, José “Pepe” Mujica, signed a law creating the region’s first legalized marijuana market for recreational use, contending that criminalization was a failed policy. The State Department responded with muted criticism, even as several U.S. states expanded legalized weed.
My critique of Tyler Cowen’s post arguing the unimportance of social mobility has started off, or maybe merged into, of those old-fashioned blog firestorms we used to have back in the day, now also reticulated through Twitter – a few links here, here and here. But rather than criticise Cowen further, I thought I would try to work through the bigger issues involved from a social democratic perspective[1]. In particular, as discussed in comments here, should social democrats favor policies to enhance social mobility, or does mobility between generations make inequality even worse, for example by justifying what appears as meritocracy? It’s helpful to start with some facts, and the big one is that inequality of opportunity and inequality of incomes (or, more generally) outcomes are strongly positively correlated. The US and UK are notable as being highly unequal societies in both respects. More precisely, as would be expected on the basis of even momentary thinking about the ways in which parents try to help their children, highly unequal outcomes in one generation are negatively correlated with intergenerational mobility in the next. That brute fact kills off one of the central ideas put forward by lots of ‘Third Way’ advocates among former social democrats, namely that it’s fine to have the highly unequal outcomes produced by free-market liberalism if you can get a modest amount of extra growth in aggregate, since governments can use education and similar policies to ensure that everyone has a fair chance at the big prizes. If a highly unequal society allows parents to give their children an unbeatable headstart, then the idea that we can offset greater inequality of outcomes by more efforts to promote equality of opportunity becomes problematic at best. Matt Cavanagh in Against Equality of Opportunity takes the dilemma seriously and argues for the abandonment of equal opportunity on the basis that it is inconsistent with a market society. That’s pretty much the actual position of most Third Way supporters[2] though not too many are willing to say so. Moreover, the factual basis for the claim that free-market liberalism actually produces higher growth is weak, though the evidence isn’t as clear-cut as for the relationship between unequal outcomes and unequal opportunities. The time-series evidence goes the other way – the strongest period of economic growth for the US and other (then) leading countries was during the post-1945 ‘Great Compression’. The comparison is even sharper now that we’ve had a few years of highly unequal austerity. So, the Third Way position appears unsustainable in every way. On the other hand, as long as you accept some role for markets, or even just for individual choice, different people will experience different outcomes in life. It seems obviously sensible, for example, to allow people a choice between working hard in paid employment, and buying goods and services in the market, or spending more time at home, providing directly for themselves and their families[3]. And, if people are allowed to take real risks, some will turn out relatively well and others relatively badly. There is no reason, however, why freedom of choice, even within a generation, requires the grotesque inequalities produced by market liberalism. In fact, by punishing any choices that don’t produce a high income, market liberalism reduces the range of effective choices. Tyler Cowen makes this point, using the examples of the US and Europe, here (his point 4, though of course it’s not intended this way). Once we have unequal outcomes in one generation, there will be a tendency to transmit them to the next. But if the distribution of income within a given generation is reasonably equal, there is lots of scope for government action to give everyone in the next generation access to the same broad set of choices and opportunities. The most obvious measures relate to wealth and education. Taxes on inheritance and capital gains can discourage the transfer of large accumulations of wealth from one generation to the next. As regards education, the crucial element is centralised funding, with a commitment to offset, rather than reinforce, inequalities in starting points. That is, schools in poor communities should get more resources rather than less, to offset both the poorer starting position of the students and the greater opportunities of schools in wealthy areas to secure support of various kinds for parents. How does this relate to concerns about meritocracy? The more that differences in outcomes reflect different choices from a given set of opportunities, rather than differential success in climbing a well-defined hierarchical ladder, the less this seems to me to be a concern. As always, I’m hoping for comments to point out (preferably in a non-snarky fashion) weaknesses in my argument and to help me clarify my thoughts. So, go to it. fn1. I’m not going to attempt a definition of social democracy. But I’m thinking about a policy view that would take the best elements of the Keynesian/welfare state polities that was developed in the decades after 1945 and extend it to cover a much wider range of people and concerns than those of the developed-country male-earner households who were taken as the model participants in those polities. fn2. The term is pretty much dead, along with the idea that the Third Way would transcend the divide between social democrats and free marketeers, rather than just split the difference as many times as the opinion polls appeared to require. But the political tendency it represents is very much alive, as shown by the general capitulation to the zombie economics of austerity. fn3. This glosses over all sorts of problems, from involuntary unemployment to the distribution of work and consumption within households. But however these problems are resolved, the choice I’ve described will remain important.
In a recent interview with prominent TV journalist Christiane Amanpour, who never misses an opportunity to promote repellent moral relativism about fundamentalist Islam, Middle East analyst Marwan Muasher declared, “The Muslim Brotherhood has been used for a long time as a scare tactic” (emphasis added). This eyebrow-raising dismissal of legitimate concerns about the world’s largest Islamist movement went unchallenged by Amanpour – no surprise there – although Muasher did weakly concede this: “that is not to say they don’t have designs.” “Designs” indeed. Nothing less ambitious than the downfall of the West and the establishment of a medieval dystopia known as the worldwide caliphate. Is it a mere scare tactic to point out that internal Brotherhood documents themselves reveal that the “elimination of Western civilization” is the Muslim Brotherhood's endgamel? Or that the Brothers’ motto is: “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Qur'an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope”? Considering these “designs,” the group’s swift, successful entrenchment around the globe, and its spawning of such alumni as current al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri, only the willfully naive or complicit could claim that the Brotherhood shouldn’t be taken seriously as a threat. Whichever Muasher is guilty of, he feels perfectly comfortable inviting the Brotherhood into the political mix of the Arab world’s current turmoil. A recent report reveals that Muasher, a former Jordanian diplomat, has praised the revolutions rocking the region and has called for the inclusion of Islamist groups in any pluralistic, fledgling democracies that may emerge. The ostensible reasoning is that Muslim fundamentalists like the Brotherhood have a legitimate role to play and deserve to be allowed to compete on the supposedly level playing field of the marketplace of ideas. It might even temper their radicalism. That all sounds very fair-minded and inclusive. But as with most theories, this one doesn’t mesh especially well with reality – in this case, the reality that Islamists tend to be more ruthless, organized and effective than their political opponents in the Arab world, that they are currently well-positioned to seize power, and that they will tolerate pluralism and democracy only as long as it takes them to acquire that power. After that, well, welcome to the caliphate. But there may be more in play here than simple fairness and wishful thinking on Muasher’s part. He happens to oversee research for the Middle East at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, funded by leftist multi-billionaire George Soros, one of the world’s most politically influential men. Soros is waging his own personal ideological war against America by shoveling seemingly limitless funds into organizations giving life to his "progressive" vision of social justice. That vision, like the Muslim Brotherhood’s, identifies America and Israel as the “Great Satan” and “Little Satan” respectively, who must be demolished to pave the way for a purifying, redemptive utopia. These common enemies unite progressives and Islamic fundamentalists in what David Horowitz has coined an "unholy alliance." As Andrew C. McCarthy writes in The Grand Jihad, “With their collectivist philosophy, transnational outlook, totalitarian demands, and revolutionary designs, Islamists are natural allies of the radical Left.” Thus Soros and his spokesmen like Muasher see opportunity in the unrest roiling the Middle East and North Africa – opportunity to support the enemy of their enemy. The numerous ties of Soros and his Shadow Party cohorts have been documented; they include the master puppeteer’s own Open Society Institute and various anti-Western Islamist groups in the revolutions. It has been confirmed, for instance, that the International Crisis Group (ICG), led in part by Soros, has long petitioned for the Egyptian government to “normalize” ties with the previously banned Brotherhood – for example, in a June 2008 report called "Egypt's Muslim Brothers: Confrontation or Integration?" And this talking point is echoed by Brian Katulis, senior fellow at the Soros-funded Center for American Progress: “Any real democratic opening would lead to greater participation of groups like the Muslim Brotherhood in a future Egyptian government.” Soros himself has put forth this argument. In a February Washington Post editorial entitled "Why Obama Has to Get Egypt Right," he asserts with almost comic optimism that “the Muslim Brotherhood's cooperation with [Egyptian opposition leader] Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel laureate who is seeking to run for president, is a hopeful sign that it intends to play a constructive role in a democratic political system.” Considering some of the past peace prize winners, from terrorist troll Yasser Arafat to underachiever-in-chief Barack Obama, being a Nobel laureate is hardly a glowing recommendation anymore. And only the very dim or the very disingenuous can claim that the Muslim Brotherhood has any intention of playing “a constructive role in a democratic political system” – and George Soros is no dim bulb. He knows that the Brotherhood’s usefulness is in a destructive capacity, helping the Left to undermine American and Israeli power abroad. (Not coincidentally, Mohamed ElBaradei sits on the board of Soros’ ICG, along with others who advocate dialogue with Hamas, the Muslim Brothers’ violent Palestinian branch. And as I have written elsewhere, “as the former head of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency… ElBaradei repeatedly stonewalled international efforts to put the brakes on Iran’s ambitions.” No friend of Israel or America, he.) But by calling for the Muslim Brotherhood to be given a seat at the table and a hand in fashioning the future of the Arab world, George Soros may be biting off more than he can chew with this alliance of convenience. To quote Andrew McCarthy again: Revolutionaries of Islam and the Left make fast friends when there is a common enemy to besiege. Leftists, however, are essentially nihilists whose hazy vision prioritizes power over what is to be done with power… Islamists, who have very settled convictions about what is to be done with power, are much less so. Even their compromises keep their long-term goals in their sights. Thus do Leftists consistently overrate their ability to control Islamists. Whatever nasty surprise awaits Soros and the Left in the long-run, at the present time they and the Muslim Brotherhood are solidifying a formidable alliance that threatens American capitalism, sovereignty, and security at home and abroad. * To get the whole story on The Shadow Party, read David Horowitz's and Richard Poe's book, The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic.
It was the sign advertising Brylcreem that got me. It can be seen in one of Chalmers Butterfield's colour photographs of Piccadilly Circus in 1949. Why did it move me? Brylcreem's range of hair styling products for men is still very much with us. Personally, though, it always means the red plastic pot of the stuff my dad kept ever-ready in the bathroom of our home in the 1970s. It spoke then, and does now, of his youth in austerity Britain, skiffle-board Britain, Teddy Boy Britain. What is nostalgia? For me it's triggered by the sense that my parents might be young people in Butterfield's deep colour vistas of the West End of London. For enthusiasts who post historic photographs on Twitter, it's more broadly scattered. These pictures reveal the wealth of photographic documents, memories and arcana that these sites have dragged into the 21st-century limelight, from an 1890s portrait of Cornelia Sorabji, India's first female advocate and the first woman to study law at Oxford University, to the building of the Hoover dam in Roosevelt's America. Cornelia Sorabji, who became the first woman to read law at Oxford University. Shared by @IndiaHistorypic Photograph: IndiaHistorypic History and nostalgia are not the same thing. Looking again at Piccadilly Circus in 1949, its historical evidence is crisp and unsettling. In its eerily immediate colours, you can see an underlying chromatic order. All the people are wearing brown, grey, black or a daring dark blue. Buses provide a refreshing redness, but cars mainly come in any colour you like so long as it's black. Austerity is not something the historians made up – you really can see, in this picture, the limitations of life in a postwar Britain regulated by ration books. No wonder everyone smoked (another habit of the age my parents took with them to later life). A giant cigarette in an ashtray advertises Craven "A" high above Piccadilly Circus. It's a reminder that George Orwell published Nineteen Eighty-Four in the year Butterfield took his pictures – the relentless smoker's ads resemble his totalitarian hoardings for Victory cigarettes. Every photograph collected and tweeted by accounts such as Retronaut, @IndiaHistorypic and @HistoryinPix can be looked at like this, as a visual document of specific historical realities. Yet the fascination runs deeper. Nostalgia clings to photographs like dust to Victorian knick-knacks. It seeps out from sepia tints and Polaroid hues alike, for as the medium evolves, yesterday's invention is today's curio. The look of a 1970s snapshot is already heartbeakingly otherworldly. It is the paradoxical condition of photography to be both immediate and dated. It dates because it is so immediate. Every photo captures the light of a unique moment, a time and place dateable to the instant the shutter opened. So as soon as it is taken it starts to slip away in time – a perfectly preserved microcosm of a vanished universe. Brighton Swimming Club, 1863. Shared by Retronaut. Photograph: Brighton Swimming Clubs This is the fascination of "retronauting". A photograph really is a frozen fragment of time. Not even the fastest, most gifted artists or the most sensually specific novelists have ever captured the kind of incidental realities a photograph dumbly records – the creases in the uniform of the last Napoleonic veteran, his paunch and sidelong glance and white whiskers – or the Brighton Swimming Club in 1863, naked except for their trunks and top hats. What painter would have included the ridiculous top hats? Even as we laugh, we are seeing something disarmingly real – an unfeigned revelation of Victorian habits. Look again: the men in their top hats are caught in a pale, English light, a moment of weather, a day on planet Earth. Beyond their sartorial values, and their pallid bodies, we see the very atmosphere in which they lived. This power to preserve dead light is the principle of photography: it is shared by the first photographs of the 1830s and the cameraphone pictures being taken this very second, click, now. So, looking at Cornelia Sorabji, it is not so much her historic achievements that move me as the fact she is there, before my eyes, as immediately as my parents or my childhood self in 1970s snaps. All gone, all lost to time and yet all captured for ever with the crystalline immediacy of photographic light. Sorabji stands in the light from a window, holding a book. Her face is half-illuminated, half in shadow. Her eyes flash with life. Yet she is standing in the 19th century. For a moment, it is possible to imagine that she is real, in her time, and we are the ghosts. Impossible ghosts from an impossible future of instant communication, looking down the time vortex through electric veils, calling out to her. What is it we are trying to say? • View a gallery of stunning vintage pictures from Retronaut, @IndiaHistorypic and @HistoryinPics
Hypoxia is almost ubiquitous in PE (In the comments Liam suggests otherwise. I honestly can’t find a clear answer. in PEITHO, a trial of submassive PE, 85% were receiving oxygen suggesting hypoxia. Certainly in the tiny PEs, lots of people don’t have hypoxia. If you have a better answer let us know in the comments). Yet it is not immediately clear why. You might think you know but certainly when I start to think about it too much it all becomes very muddy. This is mainly due to my poor understanding of respiratory physiology no doubt. I’ve tried to correct that somewhat with this post. My basic thinking has always been. A PE is a big clot in the lung, this means part of the lung doesn’t work right, ipso facto then there must be hypoxia. That gets you through day to day existence in emergency medicine but it’s hardly a detailed description of the problem. The terminology doesn’t really help here as V/Q mismatch technically seems to mean that there is an imbalance ventilation to perfusion. In the context of PE people state that the hypoxia is due to V/Q mismatch but don’t clearly state if it’s a high or low V/Q state. The terms shunt and venous admixture are also used with some frequency which has a tendency to confuse the anatomist in me where the I can tell where the superior oblique is and what direction it runs in purely from the name… I started with Rosen’s 8th Edition. The PE chapter is written of course by Jeff Kline. A lodged clot can redistribute blood flow to areas of the lung with already high perfusion relative to ventilation and therefore cause more blue blood to pass through the lung without being fully oxygenated. This venous admixture is probably the primary cause of hypoxemia with PE and the increased alveolar-arterial oxygen difference This actually is a pretty decent explanation of what seems to be happening. PE causes redistribution and instead of the left lung getting 50% of the cardiac output it suddenly gets 80% and the ventilation isn’t sufficient to oxygenate the blood. But figured I’d do a bit of further reading just to see what else is out there. Paper #1 Huet Y, Lemaire F, Brun-Buisson C. Hypoxemia in acute pulmonary embolism. Chest. 88(6):829-36. 1985. [pubmed] These guys studied a whopping 7 people, all 1-9 days post PE, but 2 hrs post their formal angio that was used to diagnose it. Most had greater than 50% pulmonary vascular occlusion and most had some CXR changes too (something we don’t see very commonly). They all had Swan-Ganz catheters placed hence all the lovely data they got to play with. They were all on heparin and were given urokinase after their “gas exchange test”. This involved infusing a bunch of inert gases dissolved in dextrose and measuring lots of things. They suggest that the hypoxia had different causes depending on the patient and interestingly could be related to their CXR changes. if they had atelectasis on CXR then there hypoxia was from shunt. if the CXR was normal it was due to perfusion of lung units with low V/Q ratios (ie overperfusing a lung unit with no increase in ventilation) In PE there is a degree of shifting of ventilation away from and around the underperfused lung, this presumably, is the lung autoregulating itself. This shifting is not particularly well done and after a while atelectasis occurs and as a result of that you now have shunt as an additional cause of hypoxia. They conclude from their data that initial hypoxia is due to V/Q mismatch (in particular ,perfusion of lung units with low V/Q ratios) and later in the disease course it is likely shunting. Paper #2 Burton GH, Seed WA, Vernon P. Observations on the mechanism of hypoxaemia in acute minor pulmonary embolism. British medical journal (Clinical research ed.). 289(6440):276-9. 1984. [pubmed] These were probable PEs, all diagnosed on V/Q scans. All were tachy and breathless with normal CXRs and patients were identified through chart review. Mostly post op. They describe them as minor PE but I suspect they were all quite impressive and may well be termed “submassive” in these days of right heart strain and trops… Most were a week post symptoms and the ABG was taken just after the diagnostic V/Q scan. They garnered a huge 11 pts. The V/Q all showed reduced perfusion in areas well ventilated (which seems to be the definition of PE on a V/Q scan) and lots of other distal areas that were overperfused comared to how well ventilated they were. The more severe the V/Q scan changes the more severe the ABG abnormalities. One of the big issues here is that they assume the cardiac output was normal or raised i their calculations but they don;t actually measure it. The prior study did measure CO in their patients and that it was reduced in all patients. This doesn’t really help much in working out what’s going on to be honest Paper #3 D’Alonzo GE, Bower JS, DeHart P, Dantzker DR. The mechanisms of abnormal gas exchange in acute massive pulmonary embolism. The American review of respiratory disease. 128(1):170-2. 1983. [pubmed] I had to work off the abstract here as I couldn’t get full access. They studied two patients here, both with “massive PE” (they don’t provide a definition in the abstract) using the inert gas method and found that shunt was the main issue, not V/Q mismatch . They state that 20% and 39% of blood flow was through unventilated lung. They conclude that shunt is the main issue. Paper #4 D’Angelo E. Lung mechanics and gas exchange in pulmonary embolism. Haematologica. 82(3):371-4. 1997. [pubmed] This a review article written by one of the authots above. It’s the best I’ve found and is open access too. Bottom line: shunt and V/Q mismatch are the main causes of hypoxia. (are there any other options???) It does try and explain why V/Q mismatch causes low O2 – apparently due to the sigmoidal shape of the O2 curve increases in ventilation cannot keep pace with either increased or decreased perfusion. Note this does not apply to CO2 as its curve is linear. This did ring a bell from my ICU reading years ago… It highlights that some reports have noted bronchoconstriction and airway narrowing is part of PE – though perhaps this is clinically silent for most patients as I can’t say I’ve heard a great deal of wheezing in there. The atelectasis that occurs (with resulting shunt) could be down to pneumoconstriction from low CO2 or it could be down to humoral mediators from the platelets in the clot surrounding it. Summary: Both shunt (perfusing a totally unventialted lung segment) and V/Q mismatch (poor matching of ventilation to perfusion) are important causes of hypoxia in PE. The shunt is probably the important take away point as we commonly see patients with pleuritic pain for a week with what looks like consolidation/atelectasis on a CXR and we don’t entertain the diagnosis of PE as most of us were brought up believing that we should think of PE in patients with SOB and a clear CXR. In my search I did find some great videos on basic mechanisms of hypoxia in all conditions which I’ve embedded below. Any questions, comments, corrections are always welcome. UPDATE: Martin on twitter noted that shunt is really just V/Q mismatch in the extreme. In particular shunt refers to perfusion of a completely unventilated lung segment. If the segment is perfused and partially ventilated then it is just an area of high V/Q (numerator bigger than the denominator). I hope this doesn’t confuse matters. Update Dec 2015: When looking into this originally I’d wondered just how many patients had PE (see note from Liam in the text). Jeff Kline on twitter had suggested this paper from PIOPED II. They had 74 pts with PE with ABGs on room air and 32% of these had a PaO2 >80mmHg (>10kpa) so as expected hypoxia isn’t that great a sign as a rule out. Image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Saddle_thromboembolus.jpg
Image copyright Parks Australia Image caption The heavy rain meant waterfalls coming off the rock and flooding roads below Six people are missing after record rainfall caused floods in Australia's outback and forced the temporary closure of a famous national park. The six, including an infant, have not been heard from since Christmas Day. They are thought to have got stuck along a remote road in the state of Western Australia, acting Superintendent Brendan Muldoon said. The Christmas storm drenched the usually dry region, causing flash floods and turning the soil into mud. The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) described it as a twice-a-century weather event, creating waterfalls all over Uluru, also known as Ayers Rock, a site sacred to indigenous people at the heart of the park in neighbouring Northern Territory. The conditions of the roads have meant police have been unable to find the missing family, and are now using helicopters to continue their search of the area, which has no mobile phone signal. Fears for their wellbeing were first raised after the group, who were travelling from the remote community of Kiwirrkurra, Western Australia, failed to arrive at their destination, Kintore, in the Northern Territory. "We are seriously concerned for their welfare," Acting Supt Muldoon told reporters. Flash floods in Kintore - where more than 232 mm (9 in) of rain fell on Monday, more than double the record December rainfall - also forced the evacuation of dozens of residents. Northern Territory police told Australia's ABC Network that up to 25 houses were flooded in the town, near the border with Western Australia. Papunya, another town 250km (155 miles) from Alice Springs, was completely cut off, while the town square of Yulara - the nearest community to Uluru - was inundated. Meanwhile, a car carrying three tourists near Alice Springs was washed off a road into a flooded creek. Police have now reported all are safe. Rangers closed the Uluru-Kata Tjuta national park at 09:00 local time on Boxing Day (23:30 GMT on Christmas Day), citing the risk of flooded roads and potential car accidents. Parks Australia said on Tuesday that they had reopened the park but urged people to drive carefully as there was still surface water on the roads. Uluru is a large sandstone rock in the outback sacred to the indigenous Anangu people, and one of Australia's top tourist attractions.
Last updated on April 7, 2015, with news of HBO Now’s launch. Key to reading this story What we know for certain What we think we know What we don’t yet know HBO’s forthcoming streaming service As of April 7, HBO has launched a subscription service in the US in April that will let people watch its shows over the internet without also having to pay for cable television. The service is called HBO Now, to distinguish from its existing service HBO Go, which is merely the internet component of HBO for people who pay for it as part of a cable package. HBO expects to reel in 10 to 15 million cord cutters with the service. The service launched on Apple devices, including the Apple TV, iPad, and iPhone, for $15 a month. HBO will offer a 30-day free trial to customers who sign up in April. Once you sign up, you’ll also be able to access it via the web at HBONow.com. For the first three months, Apple will be the exclusive internet-only provider of HBO Now. HBO Now will also be available through some existing partners of the network, like pay TV companies. The first to announce its plan to offer the service is Cablevision, which serves some areas surrounding New York City. HBO Now will also cost $15 per month through Cablevision. Other devices, like Roku, Amazon Fire TV, PlayStation, Xbox, and Google’s Chromecast, are also likely to partner with HBO after Apple’s three-month exclusive window expires. HBO has outsourced the service to Major League Baseball Advanced Media—the baseball league’s internet arm, which is renowned for its excellence in streaming media. Cox Communications is also interested in partnering with HBO to offer the service as an add-on to an internet package. The major cable providers, like Comcast and Time Warner Cable, may eventually cut similar deals with HBO. They’ve already begun dropping prices on HBO cable subscriptions in anticipation of the new service’s debut. HBO Now houses all the same content as HBO Go, which includes current and old shows, documentaries, sports, and a vast movie library on-demand. But otherwise, HBO Now is a completely different product than HBO Go, with separate log-ins and a redesigned user experience. While HBO Go subscribers can also watch HBO on television whenever they want, HBO Now subscribers will not have that luxury—all interaction they have with the network will be over the internet. And for the first time, HBO will have to handle its own customer service. Currently, if your cable were to go out during Game of Thrones, you’d complain to your cable provider, not HBO. But if a stream on HBO Now doesn’t work, HBO will have to field thousands of phone calls. Of course, the company could outsource customer service to a third party, but that comes with a host of potential problems in itself. An HBO spokesman told Quartz that HBO Now will not include Cinemax shows. When asked if HBO would launch an equivalent “Cinemax Now” service, he responded, “not at this time.” Once mostly a destination for softcore pornography, Cinemax is now a legitimate player in the pay TV industry, symbolized by its auteur-created headline series The Knick. Depending on your cable provider, Cinemax can either be a packaged deal with HBO, or it can come separately. Time Warner, which owns both companies, already has Max Go in place—the Cinemax equivalent to HBO Go, and those with HBO Go logins can’t access Max Go unless they also have a Cinemax subscription. Given that HBO seems serious about developing Cinemax into, perhaps, the second best pay cable channel, the company may, sometime down the line, launch a Cinemax version as well. Time Warner is, however, considering adding other shows from Turner Broadcasting channels (which the company also owns) like TNT, TBS, and Cartoon Network. An HBO spokesman said that there are currently no plans to do so, despite the report, which cited people familiar with the situation. HBO Now will not have pricing tiers, even though Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes has floated the idea of pricing tiers in the past. It will launch exclusively in the United States, but the company has said they are “exploring opportunities” in other countries. There will be a dedicated VICE News channel on HBO Now, featuring a daily newscast, among other news programs. Sources HBO CEO Richard Plepler announces the new service in a conference call with investors \| The potential problems HBO could run into launching a brand new streaming product \| HBO outsources the streaming infrastructure to MLB Advanced Media \| International Business Times report detailing the name of the service and its price \| Some cable providers interested in partnering with HBO \| HBO Go is poorly designed \| HBO is grooming Cinemax into a major player in cable television \| Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes floats the idea of pricing tiers \| Plepler doesn’t care if you’re sharing your HBO Go login information \| Analysts mulling who HBO’s partners will be \| Cablevision’s announcement that it will offer the service \| Time Warner is considering adding other shows from Turner Broadcasting networks \| HBO Now will have a VICE News channel
In addition, as the world develops, it has become much less vulnerable to unusual weather events Oops-There Are Benefits From Climate Change “Our climate conversation is lopsided. There is ample room to suggest that climate change has caused this problem or that negative outcome, but any mention of positives is frowned upon,” say Bjorn Lomborg. (1) He adds, “A climate economics approach finds that today—contrary to the alarmists’ massive insistence on negative stories only, global warming causes about as much damage as benefits.” (2) The prestigious journal Nature recently revealed just how much CO2 increases have greened the Earth over the past three decades. Because CO2 acts as a fertilizer, as much as half of all vegetated land is persistently greener today. The additional greening over the past 33 years is enough to cover the entire continental USA twice over. (3) NASA recently reported that rising CO2 will help food crops. (4) Researchers found that crops responded better with higher temperatures and double the CO2 values compared to those in the year 2000. Higher CO2 levels reduce the amount of water crops lose. Leaves contain tiny pores called stomata that open and collect carbon dioxide molecules for photosynthesis, a process known as transpiration. As carbon dioxide concentrations increase, the pores don’t open as wide, resulting in lower levels of transpiration by plants and therefore increased water-use efficiency. (5) There are literally thousands of articles in the scientific research literature showing that essentially all plants grow faster when atmospheric carbon dioxide is increased. This effect is plant type specific, with trees generally being affected more than many other plant types. A $2.5 million project to study redwood and giant sequoia trees is finding that these trees have been growing faster during the past century. The study found that redwoods near the California-Oregon border are showing growth rates 45% higher than at any time during the past 200 years. (6) You’ve undoubtedly heard that as temperature increases more people will die from heat. What you probably haven’t heard is that fewer people will die from the cold. The biggest study on heat and cold deaths published last year in Lancet examined more than 74 million deaths from 384 locations in 13 countries from cold Sweden to hot Thailand. The researchers found that heat caused almost one-half of one percent of all deaths, while more than 7 percent were caused by cold. (7) One study for England and Wales shows that heat kills 1,500 annually and cold kills 32,000. By the 2080s, increased heat waves will kill nearly 5,000 in a comparable population But cold deaths will have dropped by 10,000, meaning 6,500 fewer die altogether. (8) In addition, as the world develops, it has become much less vulnerable to unusual weather events. A hurricane hitting Florida kills few people while a similar event in Guatemala kills tens of thousands. Climate related deaths have dropped from half a million per year in the 1920s to less than 25,000 per year in the 2010s. (2) Then there’s Al Gore’s concern that 40 percent of the world gets drinking water from the Himalayas and melting glaciers means ‘those 40 percent of the people on Earth are going to face a very serious shortage.’ Yet a new study of 60 climate models and scenarios shows this warning fails to take into account the fact that global warming will mean precipitation increases. Indeed, water flow will actually increase over this century, which is likely beneficial in increasing water availability in the Indus Basin irrigation scheme during the spring growing season. (2) References Bjorn Lomborg, “No one ever says it, but in many ways global warming will be a good thing,” The Telegraph, May 5, 2016 Bjorn Lomborg, “Deaths from climate and non-climate catastrophes, 1900-2014, “facebook.com/bjornlomborg, December 8, 2015 Zaichun Zhu et al., “Greening of the Earth and its drivers,” Nature Climate Change, (2016), doi:10.1038/nclimate3004 “NASA: rising CO2 will help food crops,” junkscience.com, May 4, 2016 Delphine Deryng et al., “Regional disparities in the beneficial effects of rising CO2 concentrations on crop water productivity,” Nature Climate Change, April 18, 2016, doi:10.1038/nclimate2995 Arthur B. Robinson, “Uncooperative trees,” Access to Energy, 43, 3, March 2016 Antonio Gasparrini et al., “Mortality risk attributable to high and low ambient temperature: a multicountry observational study,” The Lancet, 386, 369, July 2015 Sotris Vardoularkis et al., “Comparative assessment of the effects of climate change on heat and cold related mortality in the United Kingdom and Australia,” Environ. Health Perspectives; doi:10.1289/ehp.1307524 Only YOU can save CFP from Social Media Suppression. Tweet, Post, Forward, Subscribe or Bookmark us Jack Dini is author of Challenging Environmental Mythology. He has also written for American Council on Science and Health, Environment & Climate News, and Hawaii Reporter. Please adhere to our commenting policy to avoid being banned. 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Late last week, a senior water scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Caltech issued a harsh wake-up call to California when he revealed that the state is down to just one year of water supplies in its reservoirs because of the drought and the overuse of water in the past decade. Writing in an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, Jay Famiglietti, who is also a professor of Earth system science at UC Irvine, noted that California's groundwater supplies are also dwindling rapidly and the Sierra snowpack this winter is essentially nonexistent. Famiglietti also pointed out that California has no backup plan for when the water runs out, and so he called for immediate, strict, mandatory water rationing throughout California. On Tuesday of this week, the State Water Resources Control Board was prepared to enact some tougher rules, including limiting outdoor watering to two days a week. And while the proposed rules are long overdue, they are arguably not tough enough to avert a disaster, particularly if the state is now in the early stages of a so-called mega-drought — a prolonged dry spell that could last twenty years or more. Moreover, environmentalists say the proposed regulations fail to address the state's largest water waster: Big Agribusiness. In fact, California's agricultural interests use 80 percent of the available water in the state each year (even though they represent just 2 percent of California's economy). "But there's no target [reduction] for agricultural use," noted Tom Stokely, a water policy analyst for the nonprofit California Water Impact Network. Instead, Stokely pointed out that the state is just targeting urban and suburban water users in its rationing plan, even though they only consume about 20 percent of the California's available water each year. It's one of the great illusions in the Golden State. When we think of wasting water, we think of emerald lawns, lush gardens, and backyard swimming pools. And while it's true that many households and businesses are still wasting lots of water — and we need tougher rules to stop them — the true water wasters are large agricultural interests that are increasingly growing water-intensive crops, particularly almonds, in extremely dry sections of California, including the western San Joaquin Valley (see "California's Thirsty Almonds," 2/5/14). In the past decade, the number of almond orchards in the state has grown by roughly 50 percent — primarily because tree nuts are highly profitable for farmers. And while growing nuts in the wetter northern Central Valley makes sense, it is irresponsible to plant tens of thousands of acres of almond trees in areas that don't have enough water. According to state data, California's almond crop now consumes more water than all outdoor watering combined. You read that right. Even if every Californian stopped watering their gardens tomorrow, it would not save as much water that which is used for almonds in the state. "As a consumer, it makes you ask, 'Why should I conserve water when they're planting 40,000 acres of almonds in the desert?'" Stokely said. Environmentalists, however, are concerned the current record-drought conditions will only lead to dumber decisions about water. They're worried that instead of calling for the end of water-intensive farming in the desert, Governor Jerry Brown and state water officials will double-down on their plan to build two giant water tunnels underneath the delta so that it will be easier to ship Northern California water to the dry San Joaquin Valley. "They don't want to do what really needs to be done," said Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, executive director of the conservation group Restore the Delta, referring to ending water-wasting practices by Big Ag in California. Environmentalists are also concerned that Brown and other centrist Democrats, such as US Senator Dianne Feinstein, will join with Republicans in calling for the weakening of our environmental laws in order to send water shipments to farmers in the San Joaquin Valley — even if it means driving some fish species to extinction. "At what point to we accept that we're overusing a limited supply?" said Bill Jennings, executive director of the conservation group California Sportfishing Protection Alliance. For their part, agricultural interests have argued that they shouldn't be subject to rationing because they're too important to the state. After all, they say, how would we eat without the state's bountiful farms? But environmentalists rightly note that no one is calling for a cutback on water use for the state's essential food supplies. The problem is the water wasted on non-essential crops. Right now, California is producing far more almonds than state residents can consume. So much so that at least 70 percent of the state's almond crop is now exported — much of it to China. In other words, we're essentially exporting our water to China. That's absurd. And if Governor Brown and California water officials are ever going to get serious about conserving water, then they need to abandon crazy business practices — like growing water-intensive crops in the desert and spending $25 billion on water tunnels to make it happen so we can sell more nuts to China. That's especially true now that we've only got one year of water left. Corrections: The original version of this column misstated the percentage of California's almond crop that is exported. According to the California Almond Board, it is 70 percent -- not 80 percent, as has been reported by other news outlets. In addition, this column was corrected because of a correction in the Los Angeles Times op-ed by NASA water scientist Jay Famiglietti. The Times corrected the op-ed to reflect the fact that Famiglietti stated that there is only about one year of water left in the state's reservoirs -- not one year left overall.
Story highlights Obama's quip to the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, came as he critiqued some African leaders' reluctance to turn over power. The President spoke extensively on the corruption within Ethiopia and other African nations, warning it was holding these societies back. Washington (CNN) President Barack Obama said Tuesday that he could win a third term in office if he ran again but that he is barred by the Constitution. "I actually think I'm a pretty good President. I think if I ran, I could win. But I can't," Obama ad-libbed during a speech in Ethiopia. "There's a lot that I'd like to do to keep America moving. But the law is the law, and no person is above the law, not even the president." Obama's remarks, which come on the same day that a new CNN/ORC poll found his approval rating standing in net-positive territory for the second month in a row, were made to the African Union in Addis Ababa. He is the first U.S. president to address the group, and was critiquing some African leaders' reluctance to turn over power. "Africa's democratic progress is also at risk when leaders refuse to step aside when their terms end. Now let me be honest with you -- I do not understand this," Obama said, going on to say that he is looking forward to life after the presidency. The loudest applause line of his address came when Obama said he didn't understand the motivation behind remaining in power through force -- even when leaders have "got a lot of money." Read More
Austin Lee Russell aka Chumlee (Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department) Chumlee, from the Las Vegas-based reality television show “Pawn Stars,” was arrested Wednesday by Las Vegas police on 20 felony charges, the department said in a press release. Chumlee, whose real name is Austin Lee Russell, was booked into Clark County Detention Center on 19 charges of drug possession and a single charge of possessing a gun by a prohibited person. Police were serving a search warrant at Chumlee’s house as part of a sexual assault investigation and found methamphetamine, marijuana and firearms, Metro said. Metro said 33-year-old reality TV star has not been charged with sexual assault, but the investigation is ongoing. It was not clear Wednesday night why Chumlee was considered a “prohibited person” who was not allowed to possess a gun. A records search for Austin Russell in Clark County courts turns up only minor traffic offenses. Chumlee quickly became a reality TV celebrity in 2009 when the show profling the daily operations of Gold & Silver Pawn Shop, 713 S. Las Vegas Blvd., premiered on The History Channel. Laura Herlovich, personal publicist for the store’s owners and Chumlee, declined to comment on the news of the arrest. Contact reporter Colton Lochhead at clochhead@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4638. Follow @ColtonLochhead on Twitter.
A TENT soared across the skies, clearing the tops of two bungalows as a pensioner watched on. Joan Bond, 69, of Grove Road, in Forton, Gosport, was in her kitchen when she saw the wind carry the round tent into the air on Thursday. She said: ‘I was watching out the kitchen window when I saw it sailing across two bungalows and it landed in somebody’s garden. I’ve seen all kinds at my age but this is a new one – I’ve lived all over the world, in South Africa and Ecuador, but I’ve never seen anything like this before. ‘It was completely together, it even had the front sheet on. There’s some funny things in Gosport but this was a new one on me.’ It happened at 2pm.
Surgeons are using new, highly accurate 3D printers to guide face transplantation operations, making the procedures faster and improving outcomes, according to a new report. The face replicas made on these printers take into account bone grafts, metal plates and the underlying bone structure of the skull. They improve surgical planning, which ultimately makes the surgery much shorter, the report authors said. The new technique has already been used in several patients, including two high-profile face transplant patients — Carmen Tarleton, who was maimed by her husband and received a face transplant in 2013, and Dallas Wiens, who was the first person in the U.S. to receive a full face transplant, in 2011. The surgeries have dramatically improved the lives of the patients, the researchers said. "They went from having no face and no features at all, to being able to talk and eat and breathe properly," said Dr. Frank Rybicki, a radiologist and the director of the Applied Imaging Science Laboratory at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, who presented the findings today (Dec. 1) at the meeting of the Radiological Society of North America. Custom fit For the patients, face transplantation is often the end of a long journey. "Typically, by the time they come to us, they've had 20 or 30 surgeries already, just to save their lives," Rybicki told Live Science. [15 Odd Things That Can Be 3D Printed] That means that patients may have plates, screws, bone grafts and dozens of other small modifications in their faces, and the new face has to fit perfectly around these. 3D printing allows the team to see exactly where these elements are, making the surgery — which can take up to 25 hours — go more quickly and smoothly, Rybicki said. Soft tissue The team printed out the soft tissue for Tarleton, whose estranged husband threw industrial-strength lye (a strong chemical used in soap making) on her face, according to the report. The lye "literally burned off all the skin and all the squishy stuff in the face, and just left the bone," which was covered by a paper-thin flap of tissue, Rybicki said. Printing soft tissue requires a sophisticated technique, but it was tremendously helpful because, without 3D printing, it's very difficult to visualize that tissue, Rybicki said. Since her face transplantation procedure in 2011, Tarleton has done amazingly well, and her facial features have truly become her own, Rybicki said. The tissue has undergone dramatic remodeling, and the face no longer resembles neither her original face nor the donor's face. Now, three years after her operation, it is hard to tell that she was the recipient of a face transplant, Rybicki said. Images of Tarleton's face will be revealed at the meeting later today. The team also created 3D-printed versions of the new soft-tissue structure at Tarleton's follow-up appointments. As a result, they can document some of the facial remodeling that Tarleton has undergone, Rybicki said. New innovations Having a better understanding of the facial anatomy can also improve outcomes in less dramatic types of facial reconstruction, said Dr. Edward Caterson, a plastic surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital who is part of the same face transplant team. For example, when someone's jaw is destroyed, doctors typically harvest a piece of rib or leg bone to replace the missing jaw. Because the tibia, or leg bone, is quite straight, it's tricky to cut it for a perfect fit. 3D printing allows that cut to be done more precisely, Caterson said. "We're also getting an opportunity to innovate surgically, due to the fact we can do this planning preoperatively," Caterson told Live Science. Recently, 3D printing enabled Caterson to harvest bone from a completely new location — the femur, or thigh bone. Though doctors often use rib grafts to replace jawbone, ribs don't have their own blood supply, so they typically collapse after a few years. 3D modeling allowed Caterson to use a portion of the femur that has its own blood supply, which should last much longer, he said. Follow Tia Ghose on Twitter and Google+. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Originally published on Live Science.
“When ‘The Best Two Years’ Are Over,” Ensign, Dec. 1978, 29 He had been home ten days. … He still sometimes thought in German, forgot and used German words, which made people smile. At first he had been lost without a companion and the daily routine of missionary work, but in the last two or three days there had been moments when he had to think about his mission to remember it, as if it were possible to forget the whole two years. … At first he had thought that everything and everyone … had changed, but then he realized that it was himself, and that change was proof of what had happened to him on his mission, how he was new, which he couldn’t have understood in Germany. (Douglas H. Thayer, “Elder Thatcher,” Under the Cottonwoods and other Mormon stories, Provo, Utah: Frankson Books, 1977, pp. 79–80) The finality of a packed bag. The last interview with the mission president. The knotted stomach. The plane ride home. The reunitings. And the realization: a full-time mission is a part of life’s greater mission. “One of the great purposes of a full-time mission is to prepare the missionary for his or her future role in the Church,” says Elder Vaughn J. Featherstone, member of the First Quorum of the Seventy and former president of the Texas San Antonio Mission. One’s mission is not over when the stake president extends an official release. According to President Spencer W. Kimball, missionaries should have the understanding that their mission “is not a two-year mission; it is an eternal mission. It not only includes all their mortal lives, but their spiritual lives after their demise when they will continue to preach the gospel.” (Regional representatives’ seminar, 30 Sept. 1977) The weeks and months of adjustment after the two-year mission ends are critical in the success of one’s continued mission. “I can honestly say it was the hardest transition I’ve ever had to make,” says one returned missionary. “I was prepared to go on a mission, but not prepared to return.” Another returned missionary agrees, suggesting that parents should place as much emphasis on “preparing for life” as on preparing for a mission. On the other hand, some missionaries have little adjustment on returning home—no more than members moving into a new ward. But whether or not the returned missionary has much adjusting to do, missionaries and mission presidents agree that the transition can be a time of growth and success if missionaries determine to keep the same standards they kept in the mission field. “A returned missionary should still serve, still plan for each day, still keep himself clean, still share the gospel. The only thing that changes is that he doesn’t go tracting,” says Elder Featherstone. One elder remembers similar advice given by President Spencer W. Kimball: “President Kimball, then serving as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve, spoke after a sacrament meeting to several of us missionaries. He stated that we looked great as missionaries and suggested we maintain the same image following our full-time missions. If missionaries maintain the same standards where applicable, they wouldn’t find the conflicts they do in ‘adjusting.’ That advice was good; at least it worked fine for me.” Some returned missionaries and mission presidents identify these key elements in a successful transition: Spirituality As the returned missionary relaxes from his rigorous mission schedule, he may be tempted to discontinue habits—prayer, meditation, scripture study—that are essential to his spirituality. One returned missionary explained what he has observed: “We let ourselves relax too much. We react to the freedom of not having to respond to rules. Our lifestyle becomes a series of indulgences, to some degree, in those things we could not do during our missions. It’s like overeating after a fast. One gluts himself with ‘worldliness.’” But this indulgence backfires because, as Elder Featherstone suggested, returned missionaries may find themselves more spiritually sensitized than before their missions. “They get home, and their spirit is a different spirit than it was before they left. Now, if they let their hair grow too long, for example, it is offensive to their spirit, and they start feeling uncomfortable.” More common than a conscious abandonment of missionary habits is an unconscious lowering of one’s personal expectations. A young woman convert who served a health mission in South America describes her experience: “At first, I felt this depression, this terrible weight on me, because I had quit studying. I was getting out of tune with the Spirit. Then I began spending mornings studying my institute lessons and the scriptures. I had felt so empty; but studying again made me feel so good.” Elder Carlos E. Asay, member of the First Quorum of the Seventy and executive director of the Missionary Department, says that missionaries are unique—they stand out in a crowd—because of the special missionary character they have developed after two years of forming good habits: getting up early, studying the scriptures daily, praying, keeping themselves well groomed, etc. “Returned missionaries can’t afford to lose any of their good missionary habits. If they don’t hold on to them, they’ll be throwing away two years of precious training!” Elder Hartman Rector, Jr., member of the First Quorum of the Seventy and president of the California San Diego Mission, tells his returning missionaries to check themselves periodically on “points of positive affirmation”: —I am morally clean. I live by Doctrine & Covenants 121:41–46. —I sustain the general authorities and stake and ward leaders. I keep my eye on the prophet by reading what he says and then following his counsel. —I pay a full tithe. —I live the Word of Wisdom. —I observe the Sabbath by using the day for “uplifting, inspiring activities,” and by not buying. —I am honest in my dealings with my fellow men. —I daily read, study, and ponder the scriptures. —I daily pray with earnestness. I pray for specifics, and I pray with humility. —I set worthwhile goals and actively work to achieve them. —I hold a current temple recommend and attend the temple regularly. I wear the temple garments with honor and reverence. I will be married in the temple and will raise my family in the Church. I will do all in my power to have all of my family united together in the celestial kingdom. Mission presidents now give returning missionaries a card-size list of spiritual checkpoints and encourage them to review them often. Elder Featherstone tells his returning missionaries to check them each fast Sunday, and if they find themselves slipping, “to go alone into the mountains, or somewhere, and to meditate and pray.” This assessment also can be effective when done with priesthood leaders, family members, and friends. A returned missionary explains that having a “heart-to-heart talk with a stake president or bishop, or someone who will listen, just listen, to your inner feelings, to your fears, to how you feel about your mission” can help resolve leftover fears, regrets, and problems. A returned missionary who has remained active tells what keeps him spiritually attuned: “Continue to study, pray, associate with good people, and serve in whatever capacity possible. In other words, live the gospel.” Courtship and marriage “The first couple of months after my mission, I was so nervous around girls that I couldn’t say anything,” says one returned missionary who laughs and adds, “which isn’t much different from how I was before my mission!” For many returned missionaries, the suitcase isn’t unpacked before the pressure comes—with good intentions—from parents, friends, and other Church members: “Get married.” Some returned missionaries feel they have to follow a timetable in marrying soon. As far as Church guidelines go, returned missionaries have—and should have—no deadlines for marriage. The 26 May 1978 Messages from Church Headquarters to stake, mission, and district presidents and bishops and branch presidents states: “It is entirely appropriate and desirable that priesthood leaders counsel returning missionaries on the importance of continuing to live standards that will lead to celestial marriage. It is considered unwise, however, to recommend or imply that the missionary should be married within a specified time period following his release. Although the returned missionary should keep himself worthy and pointed toward marriage, the decision to marry is of such importance that it should be approached only after the most prayerful and careful consideration. During the post-mission period of social, emotional, and physical readjustment, and the differing individual demands of employment and education, the returned missionary should not feel pressured by specific time constraints in approaching this very personal, sacred, and significant decision.” A returned missionary may be awkward around persons of the opposite sex at first. And the pressure to find a mate can intensify the awkwardness. “For eighteen missionary months, I wouldn’t even think of holding hands,” a returned lady missionary stated. “Then when I got home, I cringed whenever a date touched me. I felt like holding hands was almost sinful. I didn’t see how I could ever get married. It just took some time.” Once the awkwardness passes, the returned missionary may find himself or herself “really in the market” says one elder. “I went through a stage when I dated seven different girls at once. I learned you have to settle down and stop trying to date everybody in the world, though. It’s better to strike a balance.” For some, the balance involves simply finding people to date. One returned missionary came home with less hair on his head than he had when he left for his mission. Some girls won’t go out with him because the top of his head is bald, his roommate says. But once people get to know him, his baldness doesn’t matter to them; “the girls in the home evening group love and adore him.” After two years without dates and freedom, a returned missionary—even one with a previous girlfriend—may feel a need to hold on to his “new” freedom; wishing to meet new people and make new friends, he may hesitate to make commitments too soon after coming home. One elder suggests, however, that while it’s usually a good idea to look around for a while, returned missionaries should be careful not to “continue this love for freedom too long.” Elder Featherstone suggests dating a variety of people and then deciding. “Of course, they may not have a mallet tap them on the head and say, ‘This is the right one.’” Elder Rector indicates that each person should have a sureness of his potential mate similar to his sureness of the gospel. The individual should make his decision and ask the Lord for confirmation. Service and self-esteem As a missionary is released, the rights and authority that attended his calling are no longer his. Spiritually, he feels a difference. Emotionally, there is a similar difference. A returned missionary, particularly one who has been home a while, isn’t recognized as he once was. Not many call him “elder” anymore. As one former missionary says, “He doesn’t have four million people praying for him anymore.” With a backward glance, a returned missionary may feel that the “best two years of his life” are past, and that none will ever be as good. But one elder relates: “The missionaries I know who most successfully adapted to reality after their missions were the ones who dove right into the business of living in the here and now. The best attitude was, ‘I’m glad I went on my mission, but I’m happy to be home and getting on with finishing school, starting a career, etc.’ The ones who experienced the most frustration were the ones who looked back on their mission years as a golden age. Hence, they spent a lot of time living in the past and not looking forward to the future.” The key to looking forward is service. “The missionary should understand that he needs to spend his life filling other people’s buckets,” Elder Featherstone says. “If he will only take time to fill others’ buckets, his own will be filled. There are a lot of people going around dipping out of other people’s buckets, but what we need are bucket fillers.” A returned lady missionary explains her feelings about Church service work after her mission: “When I came home, I wasn’t thinking of staying home long, so from August to November I had no callings. It was like living just for myself, and it was horrible.” With slight exaggeration, a returned elder makes a similar point: “It really helps if the bishop is right there to hand the returned missionary a Sunday School manual when he gets off the plane.” Some missionaries report that their bishops and stake presidents have helped them by offering many opportunities to serve. One says what helped him was that his bishop called on him to pray in meetings, invited him to go home teaching, interviewed him to determine his interests, and kept him busy in Church service. The elders quorum president is also an important figure in a missionary’s adjustment. “Besides meeting with the stake president and bishop,” says Elder Asay, “returning elders should also report to their quorum president and immediately become involved in the activity, service, and fellowship found in the quorum.” Continued service will help returned missionaries feel that their service is needed. “Some missionaries feel they have given, and now it’s time for them to put in time for themselves again,” says Elder Featherstone. A returned missionary told of the temptation to feel this way: “If the returned missionary lets him, Lucifer plants into his mind that he has paid his debt to the Church and that now there are better things to be done.” The resolution? “The Spirit is too sensitive for that kind of attitude,” replies Elder Featherstone. “I believe that if a missionary comes home with the idea of serving other people, he can’t go too far astray.” Elder Asay urges all priesthood leaders to study the pamphlet entitled The Returned Missionary (stock no. PBMP000A) for suggestions on ways to help returned missionaries make the transition from serving in the field to serving at home. Another factor in maintaining self-esteem is goal-setting. In the mission field, full-time missionaries are expected to set and reach goals. Their successes are measured. Because of this emphasis on goal-setting, the transition from a highly structured to a less structured life can be disconcerting. “When a missionary goes back to a less structured existence, it seems to him that nobody cares whether he sets goals and prays anymore,” Elder Rector says. But the returned missionary should go on setting and working toward goals anyway. Elder Rector encourages missionaries to set guidelines for planning their lives—such as getting married in the temple, raising children in the Church, getting a good education, being a good provider and parent, and staying righteous and active. Returned missionaries are encouraged to set their own goals through undertaking the Pursuit of Excellence program, which emphasizes spiritual, intellectual, physical service, and character challenges. (Pursuit of Excellence, no. PCMP39U3, 10¢ each) Some returned missionaries may find that outside a mission setting they lack the energy to carry out goals they set. “The energy level of a mission is difficult to maintain, especially for an energetic missionary,” reports one elder. “The returned missionary may have to accept the fact that he is going to be discouraged when he can’t accomplish the same things on the same level he accomplished on his mission.” Nonetheless, continuing positive personal habits such as studying, getting up early, holding self-evaluations, and setting goals will help the returned missionary find fulfillment. One such area of fulfillment can be in setting and attaining educational goals. Elder Rector encourages missionaries to pursue training that will make them employable. “That doesn’t necessarily mean getting a Ph.D. or even a B.A.,” he says. “There are excellent trade schools that can prepare you to earn a good living. Training is important.” Although it helps if a missionary knows where he wants to go to school, he shouldn’t feel he has to have his career planned out before he starts, Elder Rector adds. “I don’t think it makes much difference what career he selects, as long as it’s something he enjoys doing and it is harmonious with spiritual growth.” Returned missionaries are encouraged to continue their gospel education by enrolling in courses provided through institutes of religion at colleges and other schools.
0 Defendants of Azamat Tazhayakov, one of the two Kazakhstan students apprehended after the Boston bombing, have postponed the hearing scheduled for May 14 and initiated their own investigation, the student’s attorney Arkadiy Bukh told RIA Novosti “The hearings were postponed upon our request for an unspecified period of time. We want to understand what proof the prosecutors have. Right now the accusations look quite blurry. Such quickly-initiated cases and fast arrests usually do not find good proofs in court,” Bukh said.According to him, the defendants doubt the prosecutors’ statement that the suspects conspired to eliminate an evidence in the Boston bombings case. The lawyer confirmed that Tazhayakov cooperated with the investigators and gave a testimony.“He completely denies that he agreed to eliminate the evidence. The FBI agent states in his report that my client has allegedly agreed to destroy certain things. I did not see how exactly he agreed to that: nodding, silent consent or the prosecutors just felt so,” Bukh said. Testimonies of key witnesses -- Dzhokhar Tsarnayev’s roommate and a girlfriend of one of the arrested students, who were together with Tazhayakov and Dias Kadyrbayev during the alleged “elimination of evidence” -- will be important for the Kazakhstan students. The lawyer did not give their names, but said that the girlfriend was also from Kazakhstan.“We hired a former FBI agent for our own investigation,” Bukh said noting that the student’s defending team included six people. The attorney also said that he met Azamat’s family and believed that he had nothing to do with the bombing. “This family is not religious and there are no jihad motifs,” he said.According to Bukh, Tazhayakov is currently held in an individual cell. “He is a patient guy. I have not heard any complaints from him. But being in an individual cell is usually psychologically very difficult. We managed to arrange a meeting for him with his father who arrived to the U.S.,” the attorney said.Bukh added that BMW with TERRORISTA#1 plate was owned by both arrested students and the plate was a gift from a girlfriend of one of them and was associated with some pop band, not with Osama ben Laden.Azamat Tazhayakov and the other Kazakhstan student Dias Kadyrbayev were arrested for alleged violation of U.S. immigration regulations on April 20. They were detained by the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement at the Suffolk County House of Corrections in Boston. But no visa regime violation charges have been presented to them so far.Instead, after the FBI started looking into Tsarnaev's connections they were found to have communicated with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in text messages, and were presented with the criminal charges of obstructing investigation by tempering with evidences. They are not suspected of being involved in the bombings or the preparations.
Hundreds of millions of dollars in government contracts are going to firms with criminal histories and serious safety violations, NBC 4 New York's I-Team has found. (Published Thursday, May 10, 2012) Hundreds of millions of dollars in government contracts are going to firms with criminal histories and serious safety violations, News 4's I-Team has found. The I-Team analyzed 25 of New York City’s biggest public construction projects by dollar value. Data from the Mayor’s Office of Contract Services show 10 of those jobs went to construction firms that have criminal convictions, criminal settlements, or serious safety violations on their records. One corporate offender is Skanska, the international firm currently in charge of the $508 million Brooklyn Bridge renovation. Rock Stars: Then and Now Before winning the bridge project, Skanska pleaded no contest to criminal charges related to the mishandling of asbestos in California. Last year, Skanska paid $19.6 million to settle charges it defrauded the federal government in a scheme to win contracts intended for minority-owned businesses. Richard Kennedy, co-chief operating officer for Skanska USA Building, stressed the asbestos charges were expunged from the company’s record in 2007. With regard to the federal fraud settlement, he said the firm admitted no guilt. “We didn’t believe we did anything wrong, but we decided, given the context of the investigation, it was an appropriate settlement,” Kennedy said. Another company that won a city contract despite disclosing a criminal record was Worth Construction. The Connecticut-based firm is in charge of a $13 million renovation of Queens Borough Hall. Before winning that bid in 2011, Worth pleaded guilty to tax evasion. The former owner of the company also admitted to giving an illegal kickback to a public official. Worth Construction did not return a request for comment. The corporate disclosures about criminal and administrative investigations come from the city’s Vendex Caution List. The list is supposed to give government department heads background information about the hundreds of firms that bid for public projects each year. In response to the I-Team findings, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer said the city should reform the way it uses the Vendex list. “If a contractor violates the rules three times, I think they should be out,” Stringer said. “When you have a bad actor time and time again, you have to have the strength to turn around and say alright, enough is enough.” The New York State Department of Labor maintains a “Debarment List.” The only agencies that can place a firm on the list are the state Department of Labor, the city comptroller's office, the state attorney general's office, or a county district attorney. Often, construction firms under criminal investigation cut deals with prosecutors that allow them to continue bidding and working on public works projects. As part of Skanska’s $19.6 million settlement on fraud charges, the firm struck a non-prosecution agreement with the U.S. attorney in Manhattan. "People shouldn't be allowed just to pay a fine and walk away, and do the same thing over and over again," said Joseph Graffagnino Sr., whose firefighter son died in 2007 while responding to flames on the demolition of the former Deutsche Bank building, which was operated by contractor Bovis Lend Lease. Despite being tagged with multiple OSHA violations, the firm -- now called Lend Lease -- cut a non-prosecution agreement with the Manhattan District Attorney. And last month, Lend Lease agreed to pay $56 million and accepted responsibility for an unrelated scheme to cheat taxpayers by overbilling on multiple construction projects. The firm avoided criminal charges by cutting a deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District. Despite the history of safety and fraud violations, Lend Lease remains eligible to bid on government contracts in New York City. Lend Lease did not respond to a request for comment on this story. Graffagnino is suing Lend Lease for its role in the fatal fire that killed his son. He says bloodshed could be avoided if corporate offenders were banned from government work. “People don’t need to die on these projects,” Graffagnino said. Get the latest from NBC 4 New York anytime, anywhere. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Google+. Get our apps here and sign up for email newsletters here. Get breaking news delivered right to your phone -- just text NYBREAKING to 639710. For more info, text HELP. To end, text STOP. Message and data rates may apply.
Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. March 22, 2017, 11:10 PM GMT / Updated March 23, 2017, 11:51 AM GMT By Alex Seitz-Wald After a high-stakes back and forth between the top Democrat and Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, Sen. John McCain says partisan bickering has cost Congress its credibility to investigate alleged Russian interference in last year's election. "I have not seen anything like it," McCain said Thursday on TODAY about the infighting. "It is very disturbing." McCain, R-Ariz., said it's up to House leadership to decide whether to change how the investigation is being conducted, and on Wednesday called for a congressional select committee or independent commission to take charge. Republican leaders on Capitol Hill have so far resisted such a move. "No longer does the Congress have credibility to handle this alone, and I don't say that lightly," McCain, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told MSNBC's Greta Van Susteren on Wednesday. Earlier in the day, Devin Nunes, the Republican Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, announced that he had new evidence showing communications of President Donald Trump's transition officials may have been incidentally collected by U.S. intelligence surveillance. Trump said he felt somewhat vindicated by the news, after spending weeks on defense about his unsubstantiated claim that former President Barack Obama had wiretapped him. McCain said Nunes' revelation of new evidence hasn't changed his mind about whether the Obama administration ordered any surveillance. RELATED: What Does It Mean That Trump May Have Been 'Incidentally' Surveilled? "I think the president can obviously express his views and emotions, but nothing has changed since the director of the FBI said there was no evidence that Trump Tower had been 'wiretapped,'" McCain told TODAY. Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday were furious after learning that Nunes, a former Trump transition official himself, briefed Trump on the matter first before them. "It’s simply not possible to do a credible investigation if you take information that’s pertinent to the scope of what you’re investigating and bring it to the White House instead of bring it to your own committee," Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, told MSNBC's Chuck Todd, adding that there was "more than circumstantial" evidence of collusion between Trump associates and Russia. Surveying the entire Nunes-Schiff exchange, McCain called it "bizarre" and criticized both lawmakers. "This just shows a tremendous chasm between the two senior members of the House Intelligence Committee," the veteran senator told Van Susteren. "There is no substantiation for what Chairman Nunes said, nor is there substantiation for what Congressman Schiff said," he added. McCain said we know "for sure" that Russia interfered in the election, but also said, "They did not achieve in affecting the outcome." Asked about Trump's claim of vindication, McCain responded, "I have long ago given up on trying to interpret the remarks of the president of the United States."
This past election was a battle between the America we want, and a group of backward racists who use threats and insults at to put down and control minorities. The two sides are not exactly what the corrupt media present them as. If you want to see real racism and violence, look at Hillary Supporters and the Tolerant Left. The past week has had two great examples. There have been only 10 African Americans serve in the United States Senate. One of these is Senator Tim Scott. Scott is also the first black from South Carolina to serve in the Senate. Last week he read some of the racist hate spewed at him by the left during a speech on the Senate floor. Highlights include “You are a disgrace to the black race,” and, “He doesn’t have a shred of honor, He’s a ‘house negro.’” Out of respect for the fact that he was speaking to the Senate, Scott left out all the ones that used the “N” word. He then followed up by saying “You see what I’m surprised by, just a smidgen, is that the liberal left that speaks and desires for all of us to be tolerant, do not want to be tolerant of anyone that disagrees with where they are coming from. So the definition of tolerance isn’t that all Americans experience a full level of tolerance, it’s that all Americans that agree with them experience this so-called tolerance.” That is the left. An accomplished man and member of the US Senate is reduced to racial slurs by Democrats because he dares think differently while being black. Isn’t that the REAL racism to demand that African Americans cannot be free, but must instead only think and act a certain way? Then there is last night’s Grammy awards. I admit I had never heard of Joy Villa until last night, and do not know much about her even today. All I really know at this point is that she is a singer, she pulls of a skin tight dress VERY well, and she has triggered all kinds of leftist rage. First there are the predictable violent comments and threats like “ATTACK!! KILL HER!! THROW HER IN A CAMP…FOR ADULTS!!,” while MANY simply said “die.” Then there is basic racism with “Here’s the coon with the Trump dress. I’m truly outdone,” “idk who you are, but it’s definitely fuck your coon, attention seeking ass,” “‘You went coon and plantation’ and fell to your knees for white daddy. I hope them butter biscuits were well worth it #bedwench,” “Joy Villa gets coon of the year award and no one can tell me different. Selling your soul for some album sales????” and finally “nigga you from Canada. Go ride a moose.” Then the party of feminism goes for sexism and misogyny with hits like “You DUMB SLUT! With less than 15k followers you’ll do anything for attention. You STUPID BITCH! Should’ve fixed your NAPPY hair!,” “fucking HO!!!,” and “Who is this cunt Joy Villa!? She wore this to the Grammys.” Finally, there was a lot of gratuitous “F” bombs with comments like “first off who the fuck is joy villa and second fuck her” and “whoever you are ..Fuck you and your president.” These were just a few highlights. That is just two examples in less than a week. The election of Donald Trump as President has truly caused the left to become unhinged. In the process they are spinning out of control and showing their TRUE selves. Riots. Assault. Threats. Racism. For the party that once affiliated with the KKK and filibustered the civil rights act, this is not a change. It is more Democrats getting back to their roots. Advertisements
ANC veteran and former intelligence minister Ronnie Kasrils on Tuesday night launched his new book – A Simple Man: Kasrils and the Zuma Enigma – that traces President Jacob Zuma’s character from his exile days to being elected as the country’s president. Speaking at the launch, which was held at the headquarters of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa), Kasrils slammed Zuma, labelling him a dangerous disgrace who had betrayed the country and its people, TimesLIVE reports. ‘It was something that I warned Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki about.’ Kasrils said Zuma was far from being a simple man who had the interests of the working class at heart, as the title of his book suggested. “He is far from that. He is sly‚ tricky‚ cunning‚ deceitful and manipulative. Any opposition or criticism to his looting of the state‚ he eliminates‚ no matter the opposition‚” Kasrils reportedly said. “I saw it back in the 1980s and 1990s that he was not a simple man. It was something that I warned Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki about … his social backwardness‚ homophobia‚ cruelty to fellow comrades and ethnic and tribalistic tendencies. Unfortunately for the country‚ those warnings‚ and many others by other people‚ were not heeded.” Kasrils’ latest book launch coincided with another book about Zuma, The President’s Keepers, written by investigative journalist and author Jacques Pauw. The explosive book about Zuma’s alleged tax evasion and dodgy dealings with gangsters has seen Pauw receive legal threats from the South African State Security Agency and SA Revenue Service. ALSO READ:
CUE the chirping crickets and tumbleweed - the field of sporting memorabilia collectors vying for all things Lance Armstrong is suddenly very empty. The man who once commanded thousands of dollars for signed posters, helmets and cycling jerseys bearing his name is now lucky to draw a single bid on the myriad items up for auction online. Not since Tiger Woods revealed his scandalous penchant for stroke-play with women other than his wife has the worth of a sporting superstar's signature plummeted so drastically. And Armstrong's autobiography, It's Not About The Bike - once celebrated as a tome of inspiration for anyone battling through life's great struggles - has fast become a focal point online for ridicule and abuse. "After the events of the last few weeks, it's obvious to all that this is a complete and utter fabrication,'' the latest review on online bookseller Amazon reads. "Lies upon lies. Deceit upon deceit. DO NOT BUY.'' Manly Library in Sydney has gone so far as to re-categorise all books in its collection featuring cycling's greatest ever drugs cheat. "All non-fiction Lance Armstrong titles, including Lance Armstrong: Images of a Champion, The Lance Armstrong Performance Program and Lance Armstrong: World's Greatest Champion, will soon be moved to the fiction section,'' a sign informs customers. A smiley face on the sign suggests it's a tongue-in-cheek move, but for those who have spent thousands of dollars collecting signed Lance Armstrong paraphernalia over the years, sometimes as an investment, it is no laughing matter. Sports Memorabilia Australia CEO Michael Fahey, valuer to the National Sports Museum, said demand for Armstrong items had evaporated completely. Previously, framed, limited-edition Armstrong jerseys would have been worth a "ballpark'' $2000, he said. Now, there was simply no market. "Those who buy memorabilia want to surround themselves with pieces that are symbols of success, and athletes that are admired,'' Mr Fahey said. "They're not qualities that would be associated with Lance at the moment, so it will certainly affect the desirability and resale-ability of those pieces.'' "That's the one big unknown in sport - someone's reputation or their actions can materially affect the longer-term brand.'' "These guys that were superstars who were squeaky clean all seem to be falling over, one after the other.'' Originally published as Armstrong now a work of fiction
READER COMMENTS ON "VIDEO EXCLUSIVE: Senator John Edwards Gives Stirring Speech At L.A. Rally" (16 Responses so far...) COMMENT #1 [Permalink] ... Phil said on 1/18/2008 @ 9:31 am PT... Off Topic, Looking for that OPEN THREAD.... where is it? Could this help Sibel? http://cryptome.org/fbi010908.htm Just asking. I ain't forgot about her. To try to stay on topic though. yeah, removal of the corporate money in elections is absolutely needed. COMMENT #2 [Permalink] ... Phil said on 1/18/2008 @ 9:34 am PT... So sorry I didn't say what the hell that link was...It ain't like I am a journalist...I'm not. 10 January 2008 [Federal Register: January 9, 2008 (Volume 73, Number 6)] [Rules and Regulations] [Page 1493-1495] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr09ja08-2] --- DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE 28 CFR Parts 0 and 27 [Docket No. OAG 120; A.G. Order No. 2926-2008] Technical Amendments to the Regulations Providing Whistleblower Protection for Federal Bureau of Investigation Employees AGENCY: Office of the Inspector General and Office of Attorney Recruitment and Management, Justice. ACTION: Final rule. COMMENT #3 [Permalink] ... Phil said on 1/18/2008 @ 9:36 am PT... how many of you remember wais? Heh heh heh I know brad does. COMMENT #4 [Permalink] ... 72dawg said on 1/18/2008 @ 10:20 am PT... MORE OFF TOPIC Brad, It's time to clean this up. There are six screens of "stay on top" articles. Please group them under a button. They are important, but so is reading the new stuff. I would like to know about the MI election results that used the same LHS/Diebold machines as NH. NOW the ACLU is trying to block paper ballots, what's that about? Thanks COMMENT #5 [Permalink] ... Juarez Traveller said on 1/18/2008 @ 10:48 am PT... Sadly, Edwards will not be our next President. Is there really any doubt about that? Nationally, Clinton is only a few points above Giuliani, which is scary because he's a nutcase and any Dem should be cleaning his clock. But she really only wants incremental changes, and would leave the existing power structure intact. Obama --- despite his recent (albeit huge) mistakes --- offers the best chance for real change. But it all depends on when Edwards gets out of the race. If he does it by Super Tuesday, his supporters will go mostly to Obama, and not to Clinton. But Edwards has to get out right after losing South Carolina and Nevada. If he really does prefer Obama to Clinton and values his principles more than his ego, he'll get out while the getting's good. COMMENT #6 [Permalink] ... Floridiot said on 1/18/2008 @ 11:56 am PT... #5 true, but Edwards can give his delegates to whom he wants after...but I think Hitler(y) is the corporatist pick. Do we even have a choice ? COMMENT #7 [Permalink] ... Agent 99 said on 1/18/2008 @ 12:31 pm PT... The worst part about these wonderful speeches is that you can go back and listen to virtually the identical speeches from back in the fifties and sixties and seventies and eighties and nineties.... A lot of people must be pretty damn sick of it always having to be about the same damn heinous problems... that are not actually ever solved. Democrats have been using the same hot air on us for a looooooong time, and even if Edwards means it, we can't even tell anymore. He can't even tell anymore. He gives this fine speech against the corporate greed while his "universal health plan" merely makes it mandatory for everyone to BUY healthcare. I think most of us would already have tried that if it were feasible. He gripes about coverage for lifesaving care being denied, and mentions we should nix "preëxisting conditions" but leaves out about just how the hell he's going to force insurance companies to pay for stuff they don't want to. All the remedies for that already exist, and have long since, but they're not remedying anything, now are they! No. They are not. Obama is 90% great speeches and 10% almost completely useless senator. Clinton is worse still. But that doesn't make Edwards the answer by a long shot. If he were even half as sincere in his advocacy for workers and the poor as he thinks he is, he'd have the balls to call for single-payer universal healthcare. At least.... COMMENT #8 [Permalink] ... Alan MacDonald said on 1/18/2008 @ 1:17 pm PT... Posted on NYT Blog Caucus re Edwards' TV ad: I can’t imagine what Edwards has going for him that could possibly explain the overwhelming popular support shown in that Fox video survey? Oh, oh, oh — maybe its his anti-corporate message. Could that possibly explain why he is not getting any corporate media coverage? Yes, but hold your hat and wait until Edwards starts expanding his anti-corporate message into an anti-corporate EMPIRE message and telling people that this corporate Empire is the single cause of not just one but all of their top election issues: – the war – the crashing economy – job loses – health care crisis – domestic spying – destroying their environment – economic inequality and unfairness – budget & trade deficit – medicare funding shortfall – all the ‘wrong track’ problems that frustrate 80% of the voters I wonder if that will get Edwards more corporate media coverage? It won’t matter, because when Edwards rightly blames the corporatist Empire for all the most important voter issues and concerns, a populist / progressive fire will start that will burn right over the corporate media gatekeepers. — Posted by Alan MacDonald COMMENT #9 [Permalink] ... molly said on 1/18/2008 @ 4:07 pm PT... If Edwards would fight election fraud, I would vote for him. But after the travesty of the N.H. primary election...he isn't even helping to pay for a recount...lost cause to me. I'll probably vote for just state politicians. Not gonna' hold my nose and vote for any other war monger, So I guess Edwards is my favorite war monger. Sad. COMMENT #10 [Permalink] ... Dredd said on 1/19/2008 @ 6:53 am PT... I saw Edwards working in the New Orleans wards to help those whose lives were destroyed by Katrina and a levy collapse. And who were largely ignored by the preznit blush regime's hero Mr. "You are doin a heckuva job Brownie" Brown. A levy collapse that could have been avoided if the preznit blush regime had listened to the civilian head of the Corp. of Engineers. Instead preznit blush fired him for wanting to fix the levies way before Katrina. COMMENT #11 [Permalink] ... Ancient said on 1/19/2008 @ 9:22 am PT... My lingering concern about Edwards is his connection to some horrific hedge fund. Anybody got info on that? I think he would be much more believable with an honest answer about it. Amy and Juan have a great interview with LA Time's Drogin on mitt's financial backround http://www.democracynow....ys_bain_capital_profited What a total korporatist that ass is! COMMENT #12 [Permalink] ... Encart said on 1/19/2008 @ 11:55 am PT... If you're expecting change after the election of Clinton or Obama, check under the cushions of your sofa.E COMMENT #13 [Permalink] ... Juarez Traveller said on 1/20/2008 @ 3:12 pm PT... Obama got Rev. Caldwell's endorsement today. http://www.chron.com/dis...l/chronicle/5469706.html This, following Obama's praise of Reagan, seems to indicated that there's a lot that folks (including me) have believed about him that turns out to be incorrect. COMMENT #14 [Permalink] ... Ian Silberstein said on 1/20/2008 @ 10:50 pm PT... What 's wrong with the Democrats? For the last forty years the Democratic Party has had a very difficult time politically defining it self. Since Richard Nixon was sworn in for the first time, nearly four decades ago, we have had five Republican Presidents. Now why is that? I believe that too many Democratic voters are inept when it comes to politics. The philosophical foundation of their party is very sensitive to the kind of issues that plague low income families and the middle class. We need the kind of Democratic leadership that can send a strong message to their voters, teaching them that it is their civic responsibility to vote for a presidential nominee, who not only has a plan to deal with these issues, but who also has the best chance to beat the other party's candidate. As a voter you can't base your decision just on personality or feelings. You need to base your decision on substance. Democratic voters need to do their home work. They need to look at the issues before them, and see how the candidates plan to address them. An election is not about who has the biggest smile, the most charisma, or gets the greatest amount of sound bites on CNN. How many voters actually study the political demographics of the general electorate? Remember all those red states in the last two races? Who have they been voting for? I sincerely believe. that to be for change, we need to be progressive. However we need to do it methodically and in steps. The only Democrats to occupy the White House since Richard Nixon were James Earl Carter and William Jefferson Clinton. Both of these men were southern Democrats who ran to make a difference. If Democratic voters want a brighter future, they need to define themselves as the party of change, but to achieve change, you not only have to look toward the future, but you also need to look back at the past, or history is just going to repeat itself. Ian Silberstein I support John Edwards for President. COMMENT #15 [Permalink] ... gtash said on 1/21/2008 @ 5:14 pm PT... Edwards should not drop out ahd I don't think he will. The people who follow him have no natural affinity to Obama nor Hillary. If you believe that, then I think you are in for a rude awakening. He will not "give" any delegates to anybody with a recommendation. He may release them, but he will not align unless or until either one of them begins moving LEFT, not right. We need Edwards because we need fighter, not a dreamer, not a mechanic,not an insider, not a Reagan worshiper, and not a Republican---at all. COMMENT #16 [Permalink] ... gtash said on 1/21/2008 @ 5:22 pm PT...
baby names 2013 weird It’s the end of another year, and with that comes a variety of lists of baby names. Which were the most popular names of the past 12 months? The fastest rising, and the names falling from favour the quickest? What are the latest trends? While we wait for the Australian states and territories to release their lists of the most popular names of 2013, we can turn to the US, where baby name sites have been compiling lists of their own. The following are names taken from bounty.com’s list of ‘most extraordinary baby names', and babycenter.com’s ‘unusual baby names of 2013’. The latter gets its data from parents who register their baby’s name with the site, and the site explains that each name was given to at least three children. This year brand names were popular with some parents, with girls named Chevy, Pepsi and Wrigley, and several boys named Dior. The general population also reflected the celebrity trend of naming children after places, with London, Egypt and Dallas for boys, and Phoenix and Olympia for girls. Parents also have high hopes for their offspring, choosing Luck, Prosper, Bright and Victory for males, and Nirvana and Paradise for girls - much like some of the most unusual names for 2012. Some girls were given feminine, flowery names, such as Orchid, Tulip and Fairy ... and the much more literal Flower. Animals were a hit: boys were named Cub, Finch, Tiger, Kodiak and Panda, while the girls included Feline and Puppy. And lastly, in the too-hard-to-categorise group, comes Cheese, Chow and Thirdy for males, and Duda, Blip and Kiwi for females. Advertisement 50 most unusual names for boys in 2013 Ab Ajax Anibal Apollo Braulio Bright Boden Bramwell Cadence Caige Cheese Chow Cub Dallas Danish Denley Denton Dior Drey Egypt Finch Geordie Holmes Hurricane Ivory Jag Kashmere Kazz Kodiak Lalo Legend Lohan London Lorcan Luck Miggy Osbaldo Panda Perseus Porter Prosper Ripley Rocket Stetson Thiago Thirdy Tiger Tintin Tory Victory 50 most unusual names for girls in 2013 Amorette Archita Azza Blip Chevy Creedence Delara Duda Elektra Eternity Fairy Feline Flower Galya Green Huxley Jurie Justus Kalliope Kelby Kinzly Kiwi Lovelle Loveena Nirvana Nolly Nyx Oceana Olympia Orchid Paradise Peppa Pepsi Phoenix Pippin Puppy Purdy Ream Sida Summer-ray Tea Tru Tulip Viggo Vogue Wrigley Xaviera Zabrina Zelie Zona For more name information and inspiration, visit the Essential Baby name section, or chat with others in the baby names forum.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) — You have to have nerves of steel to get into business in Vancouver right now, according to the executive director of the South Granville Business Improvement Association. Sharon Townsend says the small business shopping corridor currently has a vacancy rate between six and eight per cent. “Vancouver is no longer really a city where a small business can test their skills or learn their skills. They have to go somewhere else. It’s just way to expensive,” says Townsend. “I’m not seeing any great influx of businesses that are willing to take on that financial risk because the economics are just not there.” Business turnover is common in any city but Townsend says the popularity of online shopping, properties being targeted by developers, and high property taxes mean the risk to set up shop for a small business just isn’t worth it. “I think we’re going to be shocked over the next few weeks, as we start to see the tax roll out and the pressure coming to small business from redevelopment.” Townsend says, when every dollar counts, adding even $60,000 to a business’s property tax means small stores and shops have to make major cuts. She predicts staff would be the first to go. The harsher than usual winter has also been a factor for local small businesses, reducing pedestrian traffic due to ice and cold. “It can be as small as two weeks of ice on the roads and nobody is shopping.” NOTICING A CHANGE Shoppers who frequent South Granville from Broadway Avenue to 16th Avenue say they have noticed a change in the makeup of the area, although not all of the change is negative. “There’s been a change over from fine art to furniture and other things over the past couple years,” one shopper tells NEWS 1130. “I like the mix of furniture stores, cooking stores, and clothing stores. There’s a good variety.” Other shoppers point to a few empty storefronts along the stretch with some concern. “I think it maybe is the affects the economy a little bit, there’s a bit of a slowdown.” “It looks like some restaurants are closed, so maybe the people are going someplace else.” “It’s also been a really tough winter. There has been a lot of rain and snow and people just haven’t gotten out as much.” Townsend says she doesn’t know of any “magic bullet” to fix the issue but she implores people to support their local businesses. She also would like to see a review of BC Assessment.
"Removing barriers... Innovation and the latest technology... delivering the world's most powerful console is something we absolutely want to do... the most powerful graphics processor that's been put into a game console... the highest res... the best frame-rate... no compromises... we can render at 60Hz... we can render fully uncompressed quality pixels... the best quality pixels... true 4K gaming..." The pitch presented at the E3 press conference for Project Scorpio is plain and simple. While some of the claims sound a little bizarre or straight-out laughable (uncompressed pixels?), Microsoft aims to regain control of the technological high ground with its own mid-generation console refresh. What we're looking at here is an ambitious leap-frogging of the PlayStation 4K Neo in technological terms, with Microsoft utilising the top-tier parts available from hardware partner AMD - technology we've yet to see fully revealed in the PC space. Actual performance figures and hard specs are thin on the ground, but there's enough information here for us to put together a picture on what Scorpio offers and whether it can indeed deliver on the claims made for it. A video overview revealing everything we know about the Project Scorpio hardware specs. PS4 PS4K Neo Xbox One Project Scorpio CPU Eight Jaguar cores clocked at 1.6GHz Eight Jaguar cores clocked at 2.1GHz Eight Jaguar cores clocked at 1.75GHz Eight cores, speculation: up-clocked Jaguar or equivalent GPU 18 Radeon GCN compute units at 800MHz 36 improved GCN compute units at 911MHz 12 GCN compute units at 853MHz Speculation: 56/60 GCN compute units at 800-850MHz Memory 8GB GDDR5 at 176GB/s 8GB GDDR5 at 218GB/s 8GB DDR3 at 68GB/s and 32MB ESRAM at max 218GB/s Over 320GB/s bandwidth - speculation: 12GB of GDDR5 GPU: Much faster than PlayStation Neo First up, let's discuss the GPU - the area of the spec that Microsoft is clearly most proud of. The rumoured six TFLOPs of processing power is confirmed, out-stripping the 4.2TF found in PlayStation Neo by quite some margin. It's around 40 per cent faster, calling to mind the advantage PS4 had over Xbox One. We know how Sony has achieved its performance target - it is almost certainly utilising the AMD Polaris 10 graphics core, using 36 next-gen GCN compute units clocked at 911MHz. Essentially, it is a downclocked version of the Radeon RX 480 graphics card - AMD's upcoming $199 next-gen GPU, aimed squarely at the mainstream gamer while also offering good, entry-level VR capabilities. We can be fairly sure that this GPU is a cut-down version of a yet-to-be-seen product, quite possibly one with 40 compute units. By leaving a portion of the CUs deactivated, imperfect chips can be used from the production line - it's a tactic used on both PS4 and Xbox One, both of which have two offline CUs on the silicon. However, based on the differential in spec between Neo and Scorpio, it's unlikely that the new Microsoft console uses Polaris at all. A 40 CU part would need a mighty overclock to hit 6TF, and based on the rendered imagery we've seen, the heating assembly planned for Scorpio looks a little lacklustre. With that in mind, our money is on a downclocked version of AMD's upcoming Vega technology. Thanks to an AMD engineer rather unwisely posting a partial spec for Vega on his LinkedIn profile (!) we know that the fully enabled processor features 64 compute units. Assuming that this is cut down to 56 CUs (as in the Radeon R9 Fury, a pared back version of the 64 CU Fury X), a clock speed in the 830-850MHz region looks likely. Alternatively, and perhaps more likely, we could be seeing 60 CUs at 800MHz. Both represent a substantial increase over PlayStation 4K Neo, while the raw increase to performance over PS4 and Xbox One is obviously much larger. AMD's technology roadmap reveals the parts Sony and Microsoft have available. We know that Polaris 10 is in Neo, while a cut-back version of Vega seems like a likely fit for Scorpio. Memory: 12GB of GDDR5? Microsoft also dropped some hard figures in terms of memory bandwidth too, telling us that Scorpio has over 320GB/s of throughput. This gives us a couple of useful data points. Firstly, it's almost certainly the case that the ESRAM experiment on Xbox One is now a thing of the past - Microsoft will be following the approach pioneered by Sony in using a single, unified pool of memory based on PC graphics RAM technology. Which technology that is remains to be seen - will it be GDDR5 or the faster G5X found in Nvidia's GTX 1080? The stated figure of 320GB/s can be achieved with 8GB of G5X using a 256-bit bus, or alternatively it could be using a 384-bit interface paired with 12GB of GDDR5. Now, this is where the stylised renderings of the Scorpio motherboard prove rather useful as we can count the amount of memory modules on the board - 12 memory chips are visible, confirming the use of current-gen memory tech and not the HBM2 we expect to see on Vega and Nvidia's next-gen Titan. This also seems to suggest that Scorpio has another big advantage over PlayStation 4K Neo - not just over 100GB/s more bandwidth, but also an additional 4GB of onboard RAM. And this is a good thing for Microsoft in reaching its stated aim of handing in a worthy 4K experience - PlayStation Neo only offers up an additional 512MB of RAM for developers compared to the original PS4, meaning only limited space for higher resolution textures. Scorpio won't just deliver higher resolutions, but there'll be more space for higher detail textures. The only question will be on how quickly that RAM can be filled up - assuming that 5400rpm hard drives are still being used, 12GB will take a long time to fully occupy. On the flipside, we have heard from some developers that the 8GB of memory found in PlayStation Neo isn't quite enough to get the most out of 4K displays. The orientation of the memory modules around the main processor strongly suggests that there are 12 DRAM chips here, indicating a 384-bit memory bus connected to 12GB of GDDR5. CPU: Eight cores, but what are they? Microsoft didn't spend much time talking about the CPU technology found in Scorpio and if we were to be cynical about it, we'd suggest that it's because it's not going to show that much improvement over Xbox One. Just one specification was revealed - that Scorpio would have eight CPU cores, which brings it into line with the existing Xbox One, PS4 and indeed PS4K Neo. There are two theoretical CPU technologies available to Microsoft here - the existing Jaguar cores (or perhaps a more modern version thereof), or AMD's upcoming Zen technology. Weighing the balance of probabilities, we'd say that it's unlikely to be Zen - if it were, we'd expect Microsoft to have made a much bigger deal of it. But secondly, what we know of the eight-core Zen is that it's a high-end desktop processor that's likely to require a large area of silicon. Integrating that alongside an already large GPU core seems overly ambitious. With that in mind, we expect the disparity between CPU power and GPU in the consoles to grow even wider, and the importance of DX12 and GPGPU grows even more important - more tasks traditionally associated with the CPU will be hived off to the graphics hardware instead. Assuming Scorpio is indeed still using AMD's more mobile-orientated CPU cores, we should at least expect higher clock-speeds there - PlayStation Neo runs its cores at 2.1GHz vs the 'stock' 1.6GHz found on PS4. Hopes were high that Scorpio would features AMD's new Zen CPU technology. But here we see just one processor block. Combining a top-end CPU solution with a top-end GPU in a single slice of silicon would be enormously expensive, and require a better cooling solution than the one seen in Microsoft's reveal trailer. Can Project Scorpio deliver the VR and 4K promises? Based on existing AMD Radeon technology, the bottom line is that 6TF of GPU power isn't enough to power a convincing 4K experience. AMD's R9 390X offers around 5.9TF and struggles to push 4K resolution at anything like 30fps on modern PC titles. Now, we can assume that the move to the next-gen GCN architecture will give us some efficiency improvements, but it's hard to believe that this is enough to turn a 390X-level GPU into a top-tier Radeon R9 Fury X equivalent (8.4TF). But it has to be said that we have seen developers start to extract more from Xbox One and PS4 than we see on equivalent PC parts - something borne out from the E3 demos of Gears of War 4 and Forza Horizon 3, which are - remarkably - running on hardware equivalent to AMD's £80 R7 360 graphics card. So maybe - maybe we will indeed see 4K native titles. However, upscaling is equally as likely, and while it's not the true 4K we've been promised, this can produce some great results. For example, using Fury X on PC, we could run Star Wars Battlefront at 4K output but with an 85 per cent resolution scale. On top of that, we could increase quality settings over the console equivalents - and the end result looked phenomenal. We've also seen superb results from a straight 3200x1800 upscaled to 4K too. In terms of VR - that should be no problem. A 6TF Radeon GPU comfortably outperforms the baseline R9 290 and GTX 970 suggested for VR ready PCs. Assuming Scorpio can delivery Fury X levels of performance, 4K gameplay may be out of reach for many games, but as seen in titles like Star Wars Battlefront - tested here - we can tweak settings and apply some gentle upscaling to get some phenomenal results.
The federal government is poised to blow its 2020 climate change target, federal Commissioner of the Environment and Susatinable Development Julie Gelfand said today. Ottawa didn’t equip itself with the tools to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions set out in international agreements, said Gelfand, who tabled her fall report in Parliament this morning. The federal government also never gave much thought to telling the public how it planned to meet its targets, she added. The forecast follows a pattern set by the Canadian government in the early 1990s — of over-promising and failing to deliver on its climate change commitments. Canada will be churning out 111 more megatonnes of GHGs in 2020 than it said it would in 2010, when it joined an international climate effort in Copenhagen. Ottawa is now focusing attention on a 2030 target for GHG emissions, which were included as Canada’s contribution to the Paris agreement signed in 2015. “We found that Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) was no longer working to meet the 2020 target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions set out in 2010 under the Copenhagen Accord,” the report says. “The Department did not show that existing regulations to reduce emissions would be sufficient to meet that target. “We found that the Department shifted its focus to meeting a new federal commitment, made in 2015, to contribute to global emission reductions by 2030.” In 2010, the federal government said it would reduce GHGs emissions 17 per cent below 2005 levels by 2020. In 2015, it said it would reduce emissions 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030. Canada has to reduce its GHGs emissions by 219 megatonnes to meet the 2030 target, the report says. The failure to meet the 2020 target can be blamed in part on a change in government. Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) missed a chance to get closer to the 2020 target by abandoning industry-specific targets in 2016, a approach favoured by the Conservatives. But Liberal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna, despite focusing the bulk of her statements on the 2030 commitment, has not publicly admitted that Canada won’t meet the 2020 target. And in the years since 2014 — a period during which both Conservatives and Liberals have been in power — ECCC has only initiated two regulations aimed at reducing GHGs, says Gelfand’s report. Even the results of those regulatory changes have not been properly communicated to Canadians, says the report. “We found that the Department did not consistently report to the public on the results of implementing regulations for reducing emissions. For example, it did not always follow the planned reporting schedule, publish reports on time, or make all reports public.” The forecast for the 2030 target isn’t too promising, either. While Ottawa made progress on the climate file by bringing almost every province and territory under one agreement to reduce GHGs, its plan to meet the target is still fuzzy. The federal Liberals have not introduced legislation to create a national carbon price benchmark, a key component of the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change, Gelfand’s report says. And the federal government is still not publishing information on how the provincial and territorial measures included in that deal will add up to the 2030 target, it says. ECCC’s response to the charge that it’s ignoring the 2020 target has been to reinforce the 2030 objective and say a “number of measures” underway will help meet the 2020 targets. And the department has improved some of its reporting of emissions to better reflect the uncertainty in some of its predictions, and to acknowledge the ongoing debate over how forests should be considered in international climate change monitoring, the report says. In a news conference after the report was tabled, Gelfand said the 2030 target is at least supported by what’s likely the best plan among the seven created by the federal government to address climate change since 1995. “The plan that we now have, the Pan-Canadian plan, is likely one of the best plans we’ve seen to date and that’s because the provinces and territories were involved and participated,” she said. She also said that while the Liberals have been in power for two years, they spent one year getting the Pan-Canadian plan in place. “We have to give them time to bend the curve,” she said. The Liberals defended their plans by saying they inherited a flawed one from the Conservatives. “For a decade under the previous government, there was no plan and there was no action,” said McKenna, the environment minister, speaking to reporters in the afternoon. But the government is actually falling behind because it didn’t change Canada’s targets from the previous Conservative ones when they came to power, the NDP said. “The Liberals adopted Stephen Harper’s weak targets and now it’s clear that they will fail to meet the 2020 targets, let alone the 2030 targets,” NDP environment critic Linda Duncan said in a statement. The failures underlined by Gelfand’s report cast a pall over the government’s efforts as it prepares for a critical international meeting on climate change set for next month in Bonn, Germany. Negotiators are supposed to come with a work plan in Bonn to put the Paris agreement into action — a complex effort, given divisions over GHG monitoring and the voluntary nature of national submissions to the United Nations body that is helping guide global efforts. The federal Liberals also will likely face new pressure from newly-elected NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, who is opposed to the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion and the Energy East pipeline project because of their anticipated impact on Indigenous rights. The Liberals approved Trans Mountain last year on the argument that oil and gas development should continue as national climate change policies come into play. Gelfand also took aim at the government’s preparations for climate change and its financial support for clean technology in her fall report. ECCC has not provided the leadership needed to get departments ready for the physical impacts of warming temperatures, rising seas and more frequent forest fires, Gelfand’s report says. The federal government has around $66 billion in tangible capital assets, according to 2016 figures. Since 2011, the federal government has spent $538.6 million on preparing for climate change, the report says. Sustainable Development Technology Canada, a federally-funded arm’s-length foundation, adequately reported on the GHG reductions that it hopes will come from its investment in demonstration projects, the report says. But Natural Resources Canada still doesn’t report on what it expects to achieve through the multitude of smaller projects it funds. And the commissioner’s office couldn’t find a signed risk assessment document, a financial due diligence document or a contribution agreement for one of three large demonstration project, the report says. Ottawa spent $83-million on all three projects. Correction: An earlier version of this article mistakenly said the federal government spent $83-million on one large demonstration project, not three. Contact James Munson at [email protected] or on Twitter at @james_munson.
EST San Francisco Real Estate Housing Bubble Home prices are rising at the fastest pace since before the housing bubble and crash, according to the Case-Shiller Index. Data for January showed a 10-city composite up 7.3% over the last 12 months and a 20-city index gaining 8.1%. A bullish sign for the housing market? More like a death rattle, we’d say. In our estimation, the collapse in residential real estate prices begun in 2007 is only halfway to a bottom, implying that valuations will eventually fall a further 35% from their 2007 housing bubble peaks. Check out the Mountain View, CA home pictured below if you want to know why, even after the real estate collapse of 2007-09, California home prices in particular are still egregiously out of line with incomes. We rented this house from 1995-1999 for about $2400/month before moving to Colorado like so many other Californians seeking twice as much home for half the price. The three-bedroom rancher was worth about $525,000 at the time, and we wondered who would be so foolish to buy it at that price. With just 1150 square feet of usable space and a small back yard, it had sat unimproved since 1952, when it sold new for around $12,000. The only feature in the house that might be considered an upgrade was the quiet-flush toilet in the half-bathroom. Otherwise, fixtures, carpets and structure were original and well worn. Termites could be heard munching on the garage. Smelling like a San Francisco housing bubble? Unbelievably, the home is currently valued at $1.1 million on Zillow. Anyone who buys it at that price would have to be either crazy, extremely desperate, or confident that a greater fool would eventually appear when it’s time to trade up. In 1952, before the San Francisco housing bubble, this was a blue-collar neighborhood. By the time we arrived in 1995, however, nearly all of our neighbors worked in high-tech jobs in Mountain View (today the home of Google), Los Altos, Menlo Park and Palo Alto. A typical couple had a Honda Civic with an MIT decal on the back window and a hefty loan from their parents, who themselves had borrowed against homes that had been bought and paid for. Software engineers in the area were making $80,000 to $150,000, but even workers at the high end of that range, especially couples with children, wouldn’t have much left over for frills. Our kids went to a highly rated elementary school across the street, in the Los Altos District whose close proximity supposedly added $100,000 to the value of nearby homes. Los Altos proper, just up the hill, was out of reach for mere software engineers, since basic 3BR homes went for around $1.8 million in the late 1990s. A Little Dumpy There are of course high-tech hot-shots living in the San Francisco Bay Area and on the Peninsula who can easily handle a $5,000 monthly mortgage payment or rental. At the southern edge of San Francisco, an easy commute down the Peninsula, they’ve bid up real estate prices to New York City levels. But for most Bay Area workers, even those in the $150,000-$250,000 range, the best housing they can afford would be considered dumpy in just about any other region of the U.S. As a consequence, renters and buyers alike stretch affordability not only until no discretionary income remains, but until there is no savings cushion for emergencies or unforeseen expenses. This is living on the edge, and when it describes as many lives as it does in the Bay Area, the implication is that even a small downturn in the economy – never mind a recessionary bust or an uptick in Fed-suppressed mortgage rates – could cause a collapse in real estate prices that would ripple across the country. Beware of situations similar to the San Francisco housing bubble. *** Trading stocks, options and commodities in these treacherous times calls for great patience and skill. Click below if you’d like to see how Rick’s Picks approaches the challenge.
When the Flyers traded Scott Hartnell for RJ Umberger and a 4th round draft pick, it was a bit of a head scratcher. You could try to find the positives in the deal, but the fact of the matter is that Hartnell was, and is, the clearly superior player.The ultimate light at the end of the tunnel was the shorter contract. In the mean time, fans could hope that Umberger could contribute a little bit given he's a better skater than Hartnell, has some positional flexibility, while committing less penalties. So far, Umberger has been a complete bust on the ice. I can't be alone in watching nearly entire games at a time without noticing R.J. Umberger -- like, at all. It's still a little unfathomable how Columbus was so close to buying out Umberger, and then they managed to turn him into Scott Hartnell. Yes, Hartnell's contract isn't pretty but at least he's got 10 points in 11 games to start the year. Umberger, meanwhile, is failing in almost every conceivable way you can measure a player. The traditional stats Umberger has averaged over 14 minutes a game this season, almost 12 of which come at even strength. The even strength minutes are good for only 9th among Flyers forwards, while he's spent the majority of his time with Sean Couturier and Matt Read, who are second and fourth among forwards in even strength TOI respectively. He's also contributing slightly on special teams averaging a little over a minute on both the power play and penalty kill. He's managed one goal and two assists for three points in 11 contests so far, with a goal and an assist coming in a single game. He's a minus-5 (tied for worst among all forwards). And he's got a total of 13 shots on goal for the season. While he is certainly seeing some pretty difficult minutes playing with Couturier and Read, as we'll see shortly, he is sheltered a bit more than they are and yet is still producing at a lower clip. Scoring Chances It's always nice to take a look at scoring chances because it kind of splits the difference between traditional metrics and "advanced" analytics. One of the biggest counter-arguments that gets thrown back at the "analytics" crowd is the concept of "shot quality", and that's exactly what scoring chances help account for. Andrew D. is kind enough to track scoring chances for our viewing pleasure. (Note: these totals are prior to the game against Florida on Saturday.) As you can see, in terms of chances generated, Umberger is bringing up the rear, with only fourth liners in Akeson and Jones trailing him. The fourth line hasn't exactly been a bright spot so far this season. Advanced metrics Of Umberger's 128 five-on-five minutes this season, he's spent over 90 of them with Couturier and Read. The next most frequent forward was Lecavalier with only 21 minutes spent together. As you would expect when playing predominantly with Couturier and Read, Umberger is seeing some difficult minutes. He faces the fourth most difficult competition on the team (as told by Corsi relative quality of competition). However, Umberger is fortunate enough to see significantly less defensive zone time than his most frequent linemates. While Couturier and Read start their shifts in the defensive zone 43% and 37.3% respectively; Umberger starts in his own end the least among Flyers forwards having played 50 minutes at only 24.4%. Meanwhile, he actually sees more advantageous offensive zone starts at 31.7% as compared to Read's 21.6% or Couturier's kind of laughable 19.9%. Despite his slightly more favorable zone starts, Umberger has been a disaster from a puck possession perspective. With Umberger on the ice, the Flyers only generate 39.44% of the shot attempts. For you math majors...that means over 60% of the shot attempts are for the bad guys. Relative to the rest of his team (meaning comparing the Flyers numbers with Umberger on the ice versus them with him off of the ice) the team does over 10% worse with him on the ice than they do with him off of it. That is the 46th worst in the entire league out of 381 forwards having played at least 50 minutes. If we look at Umberger's WOWY (with or without you) to see how his teammates do with him as opposed to without him, it looks bleak. Every Flyer that has played at least 20 five-on-five minutes with Umberger, that's 9 players, has done worse with Umberger than without him. The only exception is Andrew MacDonald. Couturier goes from being a 42% possession player with Umberger to almost even at 48% without him. Read jumps from 48% to nearly 52%. Wrapping it up I think it goes without saying that we have a "small sample size" alert here with Umberger. However, it's not a stretch to say that he has had a forgettable first 11 games in 2014-2015. I started writing this piece without having looked at a single statistic with regards to Umberger. I think it's been clear to anyone that has been watching that he's had a rough start. It gets interesting though when you start to peel back the layers to see just how bad he has been. It doesn't matter how you slice it, Umberger has been very poor. Whether you're looking at the most basic of numbers, diving a bit deeper into scoring chances, or trying to unwrap as much context as is possible with some of the advanced numbers; it's all bad.
If you’ve lost a job to automation, take heart — it’s more than just humans who are getting muscled out by robots. UT San Diego recently reported that in the next five years, the Navy will be phasing out dolphins from its mine-sniffing operations and replacing them with unmanned underwater vehicles, likely similar to the Seafox drones that were recently deployed to the Strait of Hormuz. Currently, the plan is to use Knifefish robots. They’re 20-foot long, torpedo-shaped vehicles that can operate for up to 16 hours and developed by General Dynamics. The $28 million Navy Marine Mammal Program located at Point Loma, which is over 50 years old, currently employs 80 bottlenose dolphins and 40 California sea lions. The dolphins have been used because their sonar ability allows them to detect mines in shallow or deep waters and serve as harbor protection, while sea lions are used to find underwater swimmers and objects and tether them to the boat. The program once included sharks and killer whales as well. The recent announcement affects only 24 of the dolphins who are tasked with detecting mines. They’ll be reassigned to do what dolphins can still do better than robots: search seafloors for bombs masked by plant growth and sediment. Considering that it takes seven years for the dolphins to be trained, underwater vehicles offer the advantage of rapid deployment and replacement. While the 12-foot vehicles that are planned to be used are larger than the 4-foot, $100k Seafox drones, the switch is likely a cost saving endeavor as well because mine-sniffing dolphins must be specially transported for assignment in their own large mobile pools with trainers in tow. In the big picture, Singularity Hub readers know where this is headed. The Navy’s move is just one more example of how robots are going to take jobs away from mammals, humans and dolphins alike. Unfortunately for dolphins, they can’t take comfort in this transition like humans can by reading books like “Robots Will Steal Your Job But That’s OK.” [featured image credit: wwarby on flickr]
Blood Lions offers a rare glimpse into the South African captive hunting industry. Lions are bred in wretched conditions solely to be shot at in hunts with guaranteed kills. Above, an African lion in the wild. Photo by Vanessa Mignon There was worldwide outrage when the public learned that Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer flew halfway across the world to southern Africa to lure a mighty beast out of a national park in Zimbabwe, and shoot him with an arrow – just to mount the lion’s head in his living room and get a leg up on his competitors in the macabre universe of globe-trotting international trophy hunting. It turns out that Palmer’s shameless act is not unique in the world of competitive trophy hunting, and that other wealthy elites travel just as far to shoot the king of beasts – but in hundreds of cases a year, it involves shooting lions in a corral or a pen, in a no-kill-no-pay arrangement. Tomorrow night, MSNBC airs a must-see documentary, Blood Lions, that pulls the curtain back on the shockingly large, unregulated, and appalling South African captive lion hunting industry. Though much of the media following Cecil’s death focused on illegal hunts, Blood Lions makes clear that South Africa’s legal lion hunts are perhaps the most cruel and depraved of any. Blood Lions offers a rare glimpse into the captive, or canned, hunting industry, in which animals are bred in wretched conditions solely to be shot at in hunts with “guaranteed kills” in fenced areas where the animals have no opportunity to escape. If the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services lists African lions as endangered, the disgraceful import of these lion trophies by American hunters should stop, denying the industry a vital class of fee-paying patrons. The documentary follows a South African safari operator and an American hunter as they expose this sordid industry. The so-called “hunters” who frequent these operations quickly dissolve the myth that this is a sport – they are there solely to gun down the animals and collect their trophies in a transaction where the kill is certain. One trophy hunter interviewed in the documentary says he prefers to kill captive lions because their dead bodies are not as scarred as those of wild lions. At The Humane Society of the United States, we’ve been fighting the captive hunting industry for decades. We always hear the same excuse from the defenders of this mercenary trade – that captive hunting somehow aids conservation in the wild or supports local communities. Blood Lions ably shatters these self-serving myths, demonstrating that the industry hurts wild lion populations and does nothing for local communities – enriching the operators of these facilities and enabling American trophy hunters who have a mania for head-hunting, regardless of the circumstances of their alleged “hunts.” We recently released a new report, “Trophy Madness,” which provides a broad view into the bloodlust and vanity that fuels wealthy individuals to hopscotch around the world to kill endangered and penned-up animals. We found that one Michigan trophy hunter, the owner of a large mechanical contracting firm, has killed animals of more than 250 species in 26 countries. He once even sued his African hunting guide for not getting him enough trophies to add to his “significant” collection and for not getting adequate video footage of him killing animals. We also found that a trophy-hunting couple from New York, who made their fortune in real estate, have killed nearly 600 majestic wild animals. They sued the U.S. government after it tried to stop them from importing the body of a rare sheep they had killed in Pakistan. Behind so much of this trophy madness is one group: Safari Club International, the world’s largest club for wealthy trophy hunters. The Safari Club is notorious for encouraging hunters to kill the rarest animals in the world by offering prizes and awards. The “Grand Slam Cats of the World” requires a hunter to kill four species of wild cat, for example, and the World Hunting Award requires a hunter to kill hundreds of animals. The African Big Five Grand Slam requires a hunter to kill a lion, an elephant, a rhino, a leopard, and a Cape buffalo. The Safari Club is now gearing up for its annual awards gala, to be held at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas next February, with a thousand exhibitors offering guided trophy hunting excursions to kill a dizzying array of the most beautiful and often imperiled animals in the world. It’s going to require a sustained public outcry to shake this club of wealthy trophy hunting fatcats out of their moral blindness. Blood Lions is a critical step toward creating that outcry. I hope you’ll join me in watching it on MSNBC, at 10 p.m. ET tomorrow night.
Britain must pay a divorce bill of 'around' £50billion to get a 'friendly' deal with theEU, Jean-Claude Juncker has warned. The European Commission president insisted Theresa May would be made to 'honour' the UK's commitments when Brexit negotiations get under way next week. The tough line will increase tensions ahead of the Prime Minister formally triggering the Article 50 process on Wednesday. The demand for a huge settlement to be agreed before talks on trade get going is shaping up to be a major roadblock. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker (PA) Ministers have indicated they will not tolerate any sum above around £3billion, and Mrs May has said she is ready to walk away from the table if the EU does not offer reasonable terms. Mr Juncker told the BBC that Brussels did not want to 'punish' the UK for leaving, describing Brexit as 'a failure and a tragedy'. He promised that Brussels will approach the negotiation of Britain's withdrawal in a 'friendly' and fair way. But Mr Juncker also warned that European institutions were not 'naive' about the process - and confirmed a divorce bill of around £50billion will be presented early in the process. 'It is around that,' said Mr Juncker. 'We have to calculate scientifically what the British commitments were and then the bill has to be paid.' The liabilities identified by the EU include projects the UK has agreed to help fund - even though we will not now get the benefits - as well as pensions for Eurocrats. 'You cannot pretend you were never a member of the union,' Mr Juncker said. 'The British government and parliament took on certain commitments as EU members and they must be honoured. This isn't a punishment or sanctions against the UK.' Theresa May, pictured in the House of Commons yesterday, has said she is ready to walk away from negotiations if the EU does not offer reasonable terms Mrs May will formally notify Brussels of Britain's intention to leave the EU in a letter to the European Council on March 29 – just four days after the EU's 60th anniversary celebrations in Rome on Saturday. That will begin a two-year process of negotiation with Brexit schedule to happen by March 29 2019. Asked how he felt about Brexit, Mr Juncker said: 'It is a failure and a tragedy. BEMUSED JUNCKER INSISTS PM IS 'NOT AN ELEPHANT' Jean-Claude Juncker appeared confused when he was asked whether Theresa May would be the 'elephant in the room' during the BBC interview. The EU commission chief, who speaks four languages fluently, was discussing the bloc's 60th anniversary celebrations in Rome this week when the question was posed. The PM is not attending to avoid aggravating tensions with the 27 states. But Mr Juncker did not seem to recognise the idiom. The puzzled Eurocrat replied: 'She's not an elephant.' He added later: 'Of course we will miss her.' 'I will be sad, as I was sad when the vote in the referendum took place in Britain. For me, it is a tragedy. Mr Juncker was asked whether he will miss Theresa May at the EU 'birthday' summit tomorrow to mark the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome. The PM is not attending to avoid aggravating tensions with the 27 states. 'Of course we will miss her,' Mr Juncker said. 'I am everything but in a hostile mood with Britain. Britain is part of Europe, and I hope to have a friendly relationship with the UK over the next decades. 'We will negotiate in a friendly way, a fair way, and we are not naive.' Mr Juncker made clear he wanted an early deal to protect the status of some three million EU nationals resident in the UK, and one million Britons living on the continent. 'I am strongly committed to preserving the rights of Europeans living in Britain and British people living on the European continent,' he said. 'This is not about bargaining, this is about respecting human dignity.'
Former Tigers player Kirk Gibson, right, and Rod Allen in the broadcast booth on Opening Day at Comerica Park in Detroit in 2015. (Photo: Tom Gromak / Detroit News) Here's a good sign for Kirk Gibson's health. The former Tiger is set to call more games for Fox Sports Detroit this year than last —possibly as many as 60. Gibson, diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease last spring, had to drastically cut his workload last year, his first year back on the Tigers' TV team. Rod Allen, the long-time analyst for the Tigers, is set to do 60 games, as well, and again will serve in the studio on days he doesn't call games. Jack Morris, the third analyst, again will have the lighter load, as he continues to do double-duty, working on Twins telecasts, as well. Mario Impemba is back as the play-by-play voice for a 15th season. FSD plans to use two-man booths for most of the season, but will have the occasional three-man booth, including Opening Day in Detroit. The Tigers open the season April 5 on the road against the Marlins, and open at home April 8 against the Yankees. tpaul@detroitnews.com twitter.com/tonypaul1984
Surprise! People have bitcoins and want to spend them, a fact that Overstock.com quickly discovered after they started accepting bitcoin payments. “We did not expect to hit this milestone so quickly,” states Overstock.com Chairman and CEO Patrick M. Byrne. “Bitcoin customers are good customers, and we’re pleased to provide them this service.” Overstock.com started accepting Bitcoin in early January by partnering with Coinbase to process the payments and handle the conversion of Bitcoin into U.S. dollars. Since then, Overstock.com reports 4,300 customers paid for over $1 million worth of goods with Bitcoin. The retailer estimates almost 60% of those are new customers to Overstock.com. Bitcoin will likely remain a small part of Overstock.com’s sales. The retailer’s most recent financial statement indicates that it saw $397.6 million in revenue during its fourth quarter. Bitcoin transactions have a long way to go. Overstock.com’s stock price jumped on this news and is currently trading 4% up on the day. Up until Overstock.com started accepting Bitcoin, only small retailers and services were accepting the currency. It was originally an experiment for the retailer but today’s press release clearly shows that Overstock.com is happy with the results. So who’s next? Newegg? Zappos? Maybe even Amazon?
Southampton Itchen candidate told to report to police accused of ‘treating’ after savouries were provided at event attended by snooker star Jimmy White The Ukip leader, Nigel Farage, has defended one of his parliamentary candidates after claims he tried to bribe voters by providing sausage rolls at an event attended by snooker star Jimmy White. Kim Rose, who is standing in Southampton Itchen, laid on refreshments at an event at a local community hall on 21 February, after inviting White to play snooker with children. But the candidate said he was subsequently told to report to Hampshire police over a report that he had been “treating”. Rose told the BBC: “Maybe it’s a bit naive but all the intentions were good. It’s absolutely ridiculous. I’m sure people aren’t going to change their mind for a sausage roll.” Asked about the furore while on the campaign trail in South Thanet in Kent, Farage described it as “utter nonsense”. “There seems all sorts of cases in politics of people behaving badly and doing things wrong, abusing their positions. Having a few sausage rolls I don’t really think counts as one of those,” he said. Labour is expected to hold Southampton Itchen, where John Denham MP is standing down after 23 years, but Ukip is a credible challenger in the seat. Electoral Commission rules state that a person is “guilty of treating if either before, during or after an election they directly or indirectly give or provide any food, drink, entertainment or provision to corruptly influence any voter to vote or refrain from voting”. Hampshire police said: “We have a received an allegation of ‘treating’ by a prospective parliamentary candidate, contrary to the Representation of the People Act 1983. We are looking into the complaint. No arrests have been made.”
“According to normal economic theory, and the history of oil, rising prices have two major effects,” said Fatih Birol, the chief economist at the International Energy Agency in Paris. “They reduce demand and they induce oil supplies. Not this time.” With global supplies tight, geopolitics continue to play a big role in pushing up oil prices. Oil futures closed at $118.75 a barrel, up 23 cents, on the New York Mercantile Exchange, after strikes by oil workers in Scotland and Nigeria that shut down nearly 1.7 percent of the world’s daily production. Countries outside the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries have been the main source of production growth in the past three decades, as new fields were discovered in Alaska, the North Sea and the Caspian region. But analysts at Barclays Capital said last week that non-OPEC supplies were “seemingly dead in the water.” Goldman Sachs raised similar concerns last month, saying that growth in non-OPEC supplies “can no longer be taken for granted.” At the same time, oil consumption keeps expanding. Global consumption is forecast to increase by 1.2 million barrels a day this year, to 87.2 million barrels a day, with much of the growth in demand coming from China, India and the Middle East, according to the International Energy Agency, a group that advises industrialized countries. In the United States and through much of the developed world, the higher fuel prices have led drivers to reduce their consumption, and gasoline demand is expected to drop this year. But that drop will be more than offset by the rise in energy demand from developing countries. In the next two decades, demand is projected to jump by 35 percent, and developing countries will consume more oil than industrialized countries. Higher oil prices mean record profits for oil companies that have, to some extent, masked the supply problems. Exxon Mobil and Chevron are both expected to deliver knockout performances when reporting quarterly earnings this week, even as they struggle to increase production. Advertisement Continue reading the main story “What is disturbing here is that things seem to get worse, not better,” said David Greely, an analyst at Goldman Sachs. “These high prices are not attracting meaningful new supplies.” The outlook for oil supplies “signals a period of unprecedented scarcity,” Jeff Rubin, an analyst at CIBC World Markets, said last week. Oil prices might exceed $200 a barrel by 2012, he said, a level that would very likely mean $7-a-gallon gasoline in the United States. Some regions are simply running out of reserves. Norway’s production has slumped by 25 percent since its peak in 2001, and in Britain, output has dropped 43 percent in eight years. Production from the giant Prudhoe Bay field in Alaska has dropped by 65 percent from its peak two decades ago. Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content , updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters. In many other places, the problems are not below ground, as energy executives like to put it, but above ground. Higher petroleum taxes and more costly licensing agreements, a scarcity of workers and swelling costs, as well as political wrangling and violence, are making it harder to raise production. “It’s a crunch,” said J. Robinson West, chairman of PFC Energy, an energy consulting firm in Washington. “The world is not running out of oil, but rather it’s running out of oil production capacity.” Mexico, the second-biggest exporter to the United States, seems increasingly helpless to find new supplies to offset the collapse of its largest oil field, Cantarell. A combination of falling production and rising domestic consumption could wipe out Mexico’s exports within five years. Foreign investment could help Mexico produce oil from deeper waters, but that is a controversial proposition in a country where oil has long been seen as part of the national patrimony. Another country, Russia, is also a focus of analysts’ worries. Russia is not exactly running out of places to look for oil — a huge chunk of eastern Siberia remains unexplored — and the country has been the biggest contributor to the growth in energy supplies in the last decade. But Russian energy officials warned recently that the days of stunning growth that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union were over, as the country focuses on stabilizing its output. Russia today produces about 10 million barrels of oil a day, up from a low of 6 million barrels in 1996. Advertisement Continue reading the main story The Russian government has been muscling Western companies to gain more control over its energy resources. That rise in energy nationalism could freeze new investment and slow any meaningful growth in supplies there for years. As countries like Russia slow output, analysts say OPEC will have to pick up the slack. The oil cartel accounts for 40 percent of the world’s oil exports and owns more than 75 percent of global reserves. But there are serious concerns that OPEC will also find it tough to increase production. Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil exporter, is completing a $50 billion plan to increase capacity to 12.5 million barrels a day, but it signaled recently that it would not go beyond that. That means Saudi Arabia could fall short of the 15 million barrels a day that most experts had expected it to produce in the long run. OPEC’s 13 members plan to spend $150 billion to expand their capacity by five million barrels a day by 2012. But OPEC will need to pump 60 million barrels a day by 2030, up from around 36 million barrels a day today, to meet the projected growth in demand. Analysts say that without Iran and Iraq — where nearly 30 years of wars and sanctions have crippled oil production — reaching that level will be impossible. Not everyone is pessimistic about energy supplies. A study by the National Petroleum Council, an industry group that provides advice to the secretary of energy, concluded that the world still had plenty of petroleum resources that could be tapped. In fact, high prices have set off a global dash for oil. Brazil, for example, has struck large offshore fields that could turn the country into one of the world’s top 10 producers. But developing new fields can take many years. To make up the shortfall, the world is also increasingly turning to fuels from unconventional sources, like biofuels or heavy oil. Canadian tar sands, for example, have attracted large investments. But the International Energy Agency estimates that current investments will be insufficient to replace declining oil production. The energy agency said it would take $5.4 trillion by 2030 to raise global output. Otherwise, it warned that a crisis before 2015 involving “an abrupt run-up in prices” could not be ruled out.
Jairo Samperio scored the only goal of the game as 1. FSV Mainz 05 inflicted a third successive defeat on Hannover 96 head coach Thomas Schaaf on Matchday 20. HANNOVER 0-1 MAINZ Goals: 0-1 Samperio (24’) Mainz had lost their last two on the road, but they did not let that hold them back at the HDI-Arena. The 05ers were the much better side in the first half, Jairo Samperio taking advantage of some lacklustre Hannover defending to stroke home Christian Clemens’ low cross for the opener. Yunus Malli, Leon Balogun and Gaetan Bussman all went close to adding to the 05ers’ lead, before Hannover midfielder Manuel Schmiedebach sent an errant effort into the stands. The Hannover fans were given reason to cheer shortly after the restart when Hungary international Adam Szalai forced a belated save out of Mainz goalkeeper Loris Karius. Hugo Almeida should have sent the home faithful into raptures with little over 20 minutes remaining, but the Portugal international was unable to hit the target from a promising position. In spite of a mediocre performance, Mainz almost made it two late on when Clemens’ audacious effort came back off the crossbar with Hannover stopper Ron-Robert Zieler rooted to the spot. Man of the Match Few players work as hard off the ball as Mainz striker Yoshinori Muto, who barely allowed Hannover’s new-look back four time to catch their breath before being replaced by Fabian Frei in the 75th minute. Talking Point These are worrying times for rock-bottom Hannover, who travel to Borussia Dortmund next week on the back of a six-match losing run. Match Stats Bundesliga debutant Alexander Milosevic is only the second Swede to play for Hannover after Christoffer Andersson.Giulio Donati is the first Italian to play for Mainz in the Bundesliga.Hannover goalkeeper Ron-Robert Zieler extended his record run of consecutive Bundesliga appearances to 162. The Germany international has played in every Bundesliga game since the 4-1 defeat in Dortmund in April 2011. Line-ups Hannover: Zieler - H. Sakai, Milosevic, Schulz (c.), Prib - Hoffmann (Sobiech 63’) - Yamaguchi (Sane 35’), Bech (Karaman 68’) - Schmiedebach - Almeida, Szalai Mainz: Karius - Donati, Balogun, Bell, Bussmann - Latza (Moritz 85’), Baumgartlinger (c.) - Clemens, Malli (Cordoba 67’), Samperio - Muto (Frei 75’)
In the history of product launches, the rollout of the Obama Administration’s plan to stabilize the financial system was in the category of “Ishtar,” smokeless cigarettes, and New Coke. On February 10th of last year, the newly appointed Treasury Secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, appeared in the Treasury’s Cash Room to outline proposals that would relieve banks of toxic assets, force them to undergo stress tests, and provide relief for struggling homeowners. Immediately after Geithner’s speech, the Dow fell sharply, and it closed the day down 382 points. Critics from all quarters dismissed Geithner’s plan as vague and inadequate. “Has Barack Obama’s presidency already failed?” Martin Wolf, the Financial Times’ influential economics commentator, wrote. “In normal times, this would be a ludicrous question. But these are not normal times.” In the ensuing weeks, the Dow dropped below 6,500, and other indicators of financial stress, such as the interest rate that banks charge one another, rose, pointing to continued skepticism about Geithner’s plan. Commentators from Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz on the left to Alan Greenspan and Lindsey Graham on the right called on the authorities to seize control and restructure the most troubled banks, which were widely believed to be insolvent. “I understand that once in a hundred years this is what you do,” Greenspan told an interviewer. Adam S. Posen, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said to the Times, “Putting it off only brings more troubles and higher costs in the long run.” At a lengthy White House meeting last March, Lawrence Summers, the head of the National Economic Council, pressed Geithner and his aides on whether nationalization was now the least bad option. Geithner held his ground, arguing that rushing to take over salvageable financial institutions would be irresponsible and economically damaging. In the end, Summers and the President agreed with him. But his stilted public performances, together with his reluctance to take a populist line on other issues, such as Wall Street bonuses, led to demands for his resignation—calls that have continued into his second year in office. From across the political spectrum, critics have accused him of kowtowing to Wall Street and failing to hold to account those responsible for the financial crisis. On the anniversary of Geithner’s disastrous speech, the Treasury issued a two-page briefing paper hailing the achievements of the stabilization plan, which much of the media ignored. “A year later, there’s still a lot to criticize,” David Wessel, the economics editor of the Wall Street Journal, wrote, noting that the unemployment rate remains close to ten per cent and that banks are paying generous bonuses to their staff but remain reluctant to lend to small businesses. And yet—whisper it softly—there is good news about the financial system and the roundly loathed bank bailout, the seven-hundred-billion-dollar relief package that Congress approved in October, 2008. During the past ten months, U.S. banks have raised more than a hundred and forty billion dollars from investors and increased the reserves they hold to cover unforeseen losses. While many small banks are still in peril, their larger brethren, such as Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Goldman Sachs, are more strongly capitalized than many of their international competitors, and they have repaid virtually all the money they received from taxpayers. Looking ahead, the Treasury Department estimates the ultimate cost of the financial-rescue package at just a hundred and seventeen billion dollars—and much of that related to propping up General Motors and Chrysler. Barring something unexpected, the bailout will end up costing taxpayers less than the savings-and-loan implosion of the early nineteen-nineties. The government could conceivably end up making money. Wessel is right, of course, that the unemployment rate remains stubbornly high—the rise in long-term joblessness is particularly worrying—but other economic trends are pointing up. Although some businesses are struggling to get bank financing, municipalities, car buyers, and students again have access to credit. Consumption and exports are rising. Corporations are once more spending money on software and machinery. Meanwhile, it looks as though the Senate may be finally preparing to vote on an overhaul of financial regulation. Economists are still debating what it was that ended the financial crisis and turned the economy around. It is inarguable, though, that Geithner’s stabilization plan has proved more effective than many observers expected, this one included. “The policy worked,” Brad Hintz, a top-rated financial analyst at the research firm Sanford C. Bernstein, said. “Now, did it raise the mob to come after the bankers and politicians and try and drag them off to the guillotine? Certainly it did. That’s part of the political price that is being paid for the policy having worked.” A few weeks ago, during a blizzard that deposited several feet of snow on Washington, I met Geithner in his office. Dressed casually in bluejeans and snow boots, he seemed to have largely given up hope of convincing the public that the financial-rescue plan was well calibrated, but he insisted that it had been necessary. “My basic view is that we did a pretty successful job of putting out a severe financial crisis and avoiding a Great Depression or Great Deflation type of thing,” he said. “We saved the economy, but we kind of lost the public doing it.” When President Obama came to office, the Bush Administration had already committed two hundred and thirty billion dollars of taxpayers’ money to big banks—a policy that Geithner, as president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, helped to enact. During the transition, he warned the incoming President that more “repugnant” actions would be necessary to shore up the financial system and restore economic growth. (In the first three months of 2009, G.D.P. declined at an annual rate of 6.4 per cent.) “We knew it would be politically costly, but not nearly as costly as if we hadn’t got it right,” Geithner said to me of the financial stabilization plan. “And we didn’t think we had other options available that were credible.” The new Administration offered a threefold policy response. Through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which President Obama signed into law on February 17th, Congress approved a $787-billion stimulus program, consisting of roughly equal amounts of tax cuts, new spending projects, and increased financial aid to states and individuals affected by the recession. A month later, the Federal Reserve, which had already introduced a series of emergency lending programs for distressed financial institutions and reduced the short-term interest rate to near zero, announced that it would purchase up to a trillion dollars’ worth of Treasury bonds and mortgage securities—a move designed to bring down long-term interest rates, particularly for mortgages. Geithner’s Financial Stability Plan was the third piece of this policy triad, and it consisted of several elements. Initially, the most widely discussed was the establishment of two public-private investment funds that would buy toxic assets and troubled loans from banks. The Treasury Department and private investors would provide equal amounts of capital for these funds, and other arms of the government would furnish them with hefty loans to scale up their purchases to as much as a trillion dollars. This Public-Private Investment Program—which echoed an earlier idea from Henry Paulson, Geithner’s predecessor as Treasury Secretary—set off a heated debate, with many commentators describing it as a giveaway to Wall Street. If the new funds did well, the private investors would share equally in the gains; if the funds fared badly, the government would assume most of the losses. In the end, banks were reluctant to sell their assets to the government for prices that would have forced them to recognize losses, and the public-private funds invested less than thirty billion dollars. (Geithner still insists that the idea was a good one.) As things turned out, the far more significant part of Geithner’s plan was the bank stress tests, which the Treasury and the Fed carried out in March and April of last year. The stated aim of these tests was to figure out whether individual banks were strong enough to survive a severe recession. Government officials simulated a number of economic scenarios, involving successively higher rates of loan defaults, to see if the banks had enough capital to withstand losses. Undercapitalized banks would have to issue more stock to investors, or, if they couldn’t manage that, accept more government funding and more government control. At first, some people on Wall Street feared that the Obama Administration was simply seeking a pretext for taking over embattled firms like Citigroup and Bank of America, as liberal Democrats had urged. But Geithner was resolutely opposed to such an option, at least at that stage. He and Ben Bernanke, the Fed chairman, intended to use the stress tests to bolster banks’ finances rather than nationalizing them. “That would have been a deeply transforming policy mistake,” he said to me. “The country would have suffered for decades. We’d have spent hundreds of billions of dollars more that we didn’t need to spend, and would have been stuck in those institutions for years.” Other critics dismissed the tests as a sham, arguing that the economic assumptions underpinning them were too benign. As the tests unfolded, however, it became evident that the government’s loss projections were quite high, and that many banks would be forced to raise considerable sums of money—in some cases, more than ten billion dollars. “When people did the math, they said, ‘This is for real,’ ” Mark Zandi, the chief economist and co-founder of Moody’s Analytics, recalled. “That went for the banks, too. They complained that they didn’t need to raise all of this capital.” In fact, some commentators agreed that the Treasury and the Fed were being too tough on banks. (Stock issues dilute existing stockholders and reduce earnings per share.) One of these skeptics was Richard Bove, an analyst at Rochdale Securities, who has been following the financial industry since 1965. He has since changed his mind. “Geithner recognized that the system needed overkill on security and soundness to rebuild the confidence that was lacking,” he said. According to Bove’s calculations, U.S. banks now have more capital as a percentage of assets than in any year since 1935. “He built in that safety and soundness throughout the industry. As time goes on, I’m getting more and more respect for him.” Between March 9th and May 7th, when the results of the stress tests were announced, the Dow rose by almost two thousand points, and the spread between AAA and BAA bonds—a reliable indicator of financial distress—fell sharply. Other factors contributed to this revival: the decline in house prices slowed; the Fed began buying mortgage bonds; Congress started to disburse funds from the stimulus program; and the U.S. accounting authorities granted banks more leeway in writing down their assets. From abroad, the Group of Twenty nations agreed on a range of policies to fight the global slump. But the stress tests surely played an important role in reassuring investors that the banking system wasn’t about to collapse. During our conversation, Geithner compared the effect of the tests to the banking holiday that F.D.R. introduced in March, 1933, to stem a financial panic. In January and February last year, Geithner recalled, there was an undifferentiated “run” by bank creditors. Nobody, not even the banks, knew which firms might be saddled with heavy losses, and there was a general reluctance to extend money to financial institutions. The stress tests “allowed people to differentiate,” Geithner said. “They could decide who deserved capital and who didn’t.” Once the banking panic had ended, the economy, like a patient recovering from a coronary arrest, began to take some hesitant steps forward. Between July and September of 2009, G.D.P. grew at an annual rate of 2.2 per cent, and in the fourth quarter of the year the pace of expansion accelerated to 5.9 per cent. Despite a recovery in demand for their products, many firms chose to increase output by working their existing employees harder; some continued to cut payroll, and until this winter the unemployment rate rose steadily. But a “jobless recovery” is nonetheless a recovery of sorts. At this time last year, most economists saw the economy contracting throughout 2009. Without a successful stabilization of the banking system, even a modest recovery would have been inconceivable. Still, some economists insist that nationalization would have produced an even better outcome. “While the Obama Administration had avoided the conservatorship route, what it did was far worse than nationalization: it is ersatz capitalism, the privatizing of gains and the socializing of losses,” Joseph Stiglitz, a Columbia economist who served in the Clinton Administration, writes in his new book, “Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy.” Stiglitz goes on, “The government response has set the economy on a path to recovery that will be slower and more difficult than need be.” “Let me know if I’m going too fast for you.” Stiglitz could be right—since history happens only once, there is no way to know for sure. But his argument raises several issues. Contrary to widespread belief, the Obama Administration never ruled out nationalization; it simply made it a policy of last resort. Last April, at an off-the-record dinner at the Brookings Institution, Larry Summers was confronted by a number of economists who believed that the financial crisis would not end unless the government took over stricken banks. Summers told the critics that if they were proved right in the following months the Administration would move toward nationalization, and the wait would exact some cost to the economy. But if they were wrong and the Administration moved now it would be like amputating limbs that might instead be saved with strong medicine. “Today, with all of the major financial institutions having a market capitalization of more than a hundred billion dollars and the economy growing again, the judgment not to nationalize but to put an enormous emphasis on raising private capital looks to have been effective,” Summers told me a couple of weeks ago. “I think the critics were wrong, and that Tim’s leadership helped us avoid a lot of things that could have been very damaging.” The experience of other countries that have taken over banks, such as Sweden, Norway, and the United Kingdom, shows that it can be done quite effectively. Northern Rock, which the British government nationalized in February, 2008, is operating fairly well. Conceivably, the U.S. government could have seized control of some big banks, forced them to boost lending more rapidly, and, eventually, split them into pieces and sold them off, thus alleviating the too-big-to-fail problem. “It would have been temporary ownership and genuine restructuring,” Robert Kuttner, the author of the forthcoming book “A Presidency in Peril,” said. “You would have had more money going out to the rest of the economy sooner, and you would have had an honest accounting for losses. The problem with doing what we did, kicking the can down the road, is that you have these wounded institutions that are very parsimonious with credit, and, even today, nobody knows what their real state is.” But the United States is not a parliamentary system like Sweden or Great Britain, where the executive has more control over the budget. In addition to regarding nationalization as a last-ditch economic option, the Obama Administration had political concerns. To finance such a policy of nationalization, the Administration might well have had to return to Congress and ask for more bailout money—a move that the President’s advisers, as well as Geithner, were keen to avoid. “We thought it might get to that point, but we were not going to start with that,” Geithner said. “We thought there was a very good chance you could recapitalize the system in a way that kept the government out of the financial system, made it much stronger financially, was better for financial stewardship, and preserved resources for what both Democrats and Republicans care about.” Even if the money could have been found, taking over firms like Citigroup and Bank of America would have presented several challenges. For example, firms that weren’t immediately nationalized could have been hamstrung, as investors shunned their debt and speculators shorted their stocks. To avoid a panic, the first wave of nationalization would have had to be large, possibly encompassing the top five or ten banks in the country—a move unparalleled in U.S. history. Such a policy would have wiped out bank shareholders, including the banks’ senior executives, which would have had the advantage of punishing some of those who had taken excessive risks. On the other hand, a government takeover could also have amounted to a bailout for bank creditors and counterparties, especially if their financial claims, in the form of bonds, derivatives, and other securities, were fully honored. “Nationalization without imposing losses on bondholders would have just been a free gift to bondholders,” Raghuram Rajan, an expert on banking at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, said. “From being just a corporate claim, they would have been guaranteed by the full faith and credit of the United States.” As well as being unfair, this would have created trouble in the market. Bondholders are supposed to monitor risk-taking at firms they lend to. If they know they can rely on a government bailout, they have little incentive to do so. “My sense is that the real issue stemming from this crisis is how to impose losses on the bondholders,” Rajan said. “Nationalization would have wiped out equity but not bonds. It was solving the wrong problem.” Many financial experts who aren’t aligned with either party now believe that Geithner was right. “The people who were against nationalization have been vindicated: such a policy was not necessary,” Nariman Behravesh, the chief economist at IHS Global Insight, a leading economics consultancy, said. Mark Zandi agreed. “Of all the various policy efforts to stabilize the financial system, none has worked better than the bank stress tests,” he said. (During the 2008 election, Zandi advised John McCain, but he regards himself as an independent.) Together with the original decision to inject public money into the banks, he said, the tests “put an end to the panic and stabilized the system. Geithner got it about right. Nationalization would have caused havoc.” Getting the economics right is a Treasury Secretary’s primary responsibility. But economic policies also have a political aspect—economics used to be called “political economy,” after all—which no elected official can afford to ignore. In a recent article that circulated widely in Democratic circles, Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi accused the Obama Administration of staffing its economic team with “bubble-fattened ex-bankers and laissez-faire intellectuals,” who “proceeded to sell us all out, instituting a massive, trickle-up bailout and systematically gutting regulatory reform from the inside.” Simon Johnson, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, has put forward a more refined variant of the same argument. In a story in The Atlantic last year, he accused senior U.S. officials, Geithner included, of adopting, consciously or subconsciously, the mental outlook of Wall Street—a problem known in the economics literature as “cognitive regulatory capture.” Geithner seemed exasperated by these critiques, and by the idea that the Democrats were now viewed in some quarters as beholden to business interests. “I don’t think the Democratic Party is seen as the party of Wall Street,” he said. “I think there are some in the Democratic Party that think Tim and Larry are too conservative for them and that the President is too receptive to our advice.” The reality, Geithner insisted, was that the Obama Administration had given just seven billion dollars to banks—mostly small and midsize banks, not big Wall Street firms—and it had proposed the biggest regulatory overhaul in seventy-five years. “Some on the left have fallen into a trap set by the Republicans, allowing voters to mistakenly think that the biggest part of the bank bailout had come under Obama rather than Bush,” Geithner said. He suggested that his critics draw up a balance sheet comparing the Administration’s expenditures on programs that benefitted Wall Street with those that benefitted Main Street. “By any measure, the Main Street stuff dwarfs the Wall Street stuff. Compare money for housing versus money for banks. Measure tax cuts for working families versus money for banks.” Geithner’s figures are accurate. But he and the Administration have failed to persuade the public. For whatever reason, a large chunk of the population—from liberal Democrats to right-wing Tea Party activists—does indeed believe that people who used to work for Wall Street firms, particularly Goldman Sachs, run the Administration. At Capitol Hill hearings and other public events, Geithner himself, who has been a public servant for almost his entire career and has never worked on Wall Street, has sometimes been identified as a former investment banker. (“Why are you sticking up for your former colleagues at Goldman?” one interviewer asked him.) As Geithner struggles to market the Administration’s policies, he has sometimes suffered from a lack of day-to-day support from the White House, which has been primarily engaged in the battle for health-care reform. “There’s been a total lack of Presidential leadership,” Michael Greenberger, a University of Maryland law professor and former senior official at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, said. “If Obama had been running the war in Afghanistan like he’s been dealing with the financial crisis, the Taliban would control the streets of Kabul.” Sometimes, Geithner’s primary role has appeared to be that of flak jacket for the President, absorbing enemy fire. On other occasions, however, he has seemed almost willfully ignorant of the political climate. One of his first moves at Treasury was to hire a former lobbyist for Goldman Sachs as his chief of staff. When it was revealed that employees at A.I.G. were set to receive about a hundred and sixty-five million dollars in bonuses, he insisted that the federal government didn’t have any legal authority to stop the payments, allowing Andrew Cuomo, the New York attorney general, to seize the initiative. (Following Cuomo’s intervention, the A.I.G. employees agreed to return about a quarter of their bonuses.) Last December, Geithner refused to follow the British government in advocating a windfall tax on bank bonuses. In each of these cases, Geithner insisted to me, he acted deliberately. He pointed out that Mark Patterson, his chief of staff, spent fifteen years on Capitol Hill, working for Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Tom Daschle, before his four years at Goldman. (To many Americans, of course, the revolving door between politics and business is precisely the problem in Washington.) The Treasury Department’s lawyers had advised Geithner that the A.I.G. bonus agreements couldn’t be abrogated without breaking the law. And the British windfall tax, which was applied to employers rather than employees, didn’t make much difference to the amount of bonus money banks paid out, Geithner said. President Obama, at Geithner’s instigation, recently proposed an alternative bank tax, in which big banks that greatly expanded their balance sheets would pay more. (This has the virtues of raising more money than a windfall tax and of discouraging excessive leverage.) “We didn’t embrace things we thought were unwise, even if they were going to be politically appealing, and we were certainly not going to embrace things that had a big risk of adverse consequences,” Geithner said.
Due to school commitments on Jonathan "EliGE" Jablonowski's part, Mohamad "mOE" Assad will be standing in for Liquid on the first day of ESL ESEA Pro League Season 2 Finals. As Jonathan "EliGE" Jablonowski will have school commitments on the first day of ESL ESEA Pro League Finals, Liquid will be bringing Mohamad "mOE" Assad in in his stead. The organization has just announced it via Twitter, and according to Nick "nitr0" Cannella's Tweet, the only match the youngster will have missed is the initial best-of-three battle, where the Americans are set to lock horns with EnVyUs. mOE will fill in for EliGE on day one in Burbank From Friday on Liquid will be in a full lineup to take on the rest of the group stage, which - apart from the Frenchmen - also features fnatic and Conquest. Liquid's lineup for the EnVyUs matchup will be: ESL ESEA Pro League Season 2 Finals, taking place in ESL's studio in Burbank, Los Angeles, is a mere four days away, kicking off on Thursday, December 10 and will run until Sunday, December 13.
It’s not easy to translate 20 years of an artist’s work into a single book. It’s even harder if that artist happens to prefer the more ephemeral mediums of artistry. Doug Aitken is best known for his engrossing multimedia installations. He’s projected films against the facade of the MoMA (Sleepwalkers), and did the same at the Hirshhorn Museum (Song1). He’s dug a crater in the floor of a New York gallery (100 Yrs), constructed a sound pavilion in the Brazilian jungle to listen to the earth’s rumbles (Sonic Pavilion) and orchestrated Station to Station, the cross-country train trip that held pop-up events in nine different cities last year. All this is to say, you kinda had to be there. To appreciate Aitken's work, you have to see it, hear it, and feel it, which which makes it a particularly difficult challenge to lasso the feelings and aesthetics of his oeuvre onto paper pages. And yet, that’s exactly what Aitken did with his newly released monograph, 100 Yrs. The nearly 300-page book looks back at Aitken’s work through a series of visual essays curated and organized by art world luminaries such as curators Hans Ulrich Obrist and Francesco Bonami. The book explores the big ideas that Aitken has worked through in many of his pieces. Most notably, the architecture of narrative. Many of Aitken's works toy with the idea of time and how we experience it. You can see this in his Mirror installation at the Seattle Art Museum, for which Aitken recorded hundreds of hours of video and sounds from the city. The film is projected on the museum’s facade, as the old footage is rearranged in real time to reflect current inputs like pedestrian traffic and weather conditions. “That’s something I've always believed very strongly, that the human experience is the sum of all these fragments,” says Aitken. “All these pieces and particles—it’s not just one long story with a start and finish.” For the book, many of Aitken’s sprawling digital works have been distilled down to snapshots. Each photo conveys the same moody surrealism as Aitken's live events. It’s clearly a reductionist way to interpret any kind of artwork, but it's also extremely efficient at getting to the essence of a piece. “If you create any kind of installation or artwork in that vein, really all that ever lasts through time is the documentation,” he says. “The documentation becomes the narrative.” In that way, 100 Yrs is an effort to slow down a piece’s lifespan. It was also a chance for Aitken himself to slow down. The artist says he’s never been one to hold onto pieces—when they’re done they’re done. “I’ve never looked back. I've never been aware that I have a shadow as I’m moving,” he says. “When I started the project, it was really the first time in my life where I was forced almost to recognize that I had made anything other than yesterday.” You can buy 100 Yrs here.
Salvador Martinez began his career with 150 grams of heroin. He met the dealer in the Texan city of El Paso in a diner with large windows during the lunch rush. More witnesses reduce the risk of execution, Martinez calculated. Both of them drank iced tea, he recalls. Martinez wanted dark heroin, La Negra, as the Mexicans say. "Where is the money?" the dealer asked. "Around the corner," Martinez said. He had learned to remain vague, never saying where the money was hidden or giving precise information about amounts and people. "We will make the delivery at Tiffany's Bar," the dealer said. Martinez carried a cloth sack containing $15,000 into the bar, wearing a Glock 9-millimeter pistol loaded with 17 bullets in his waistband, which the dealer saw gleaming through his shirt. In the drug business, it is wise to carry a gun, says Martinez, so the dealer knows you are serious. You could shoot also shoot him in the head if necessary, he adds. The dealer pointed at the heroin in a sports bag. Martinez drew a red scarf from his pocket and dabbed the sweat from his forehead. That was the signal. The doors flew open. Men stormed into the bar with guns, shouting, "Freeze! DEA! Freeze!" Handcuffs clicked. Martinez threw himself to the ground. It was his first undercover operation for the DEA, the Drug Enforcement Administration, America's drug police. His heart pounding, he realized that this was his new life. He was an undercover agent. It felt big. An All-Out Offensive Eighteen years later, Salvador Martinez is standing on top of a hill in El Paso. He is 50 years old and has a round belly, but there are still traces of the strength that was once in his shoulders. Martinez has flown to his old home and gone to the hill to take a look back at his past. El Paso lies at his feet, while a little further south the border fence separates the city, which is called Ciudad Juárez on the Mexican side. The city has become the symbol for a broken war. "All that you see was my territory," he says. In 1973, when Martinez was a child playing in the streets of El Paso, the then-American President Richard Nixon said in a press conference: "America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive." Nixon founded the DEA and, among other things, gave it the task of intercepting drugs at the Mexican border. Ciudad Juárez was a quiet town on the other side of the river at that time. Martinez often went there in his youth to drink beer with lime juice and go to clubs. His father was a bus driver and the family was poor, but Sal made it to college. He had a vision of what his life should look like, and for that he needed a degree in criminology, he says. "I wanted to be like the undercover agent in Miami Vice," he says. The characters in the TV drama from the 1980s sometimes ventured into criminal activity themselves, but at the end of every episode, they returned to legality. In his interview with the DEA, Martinez said that he wanted to serve America. He wanted to do good, but he soon realized that this didn't fit the self-image of the drug police. Martinez found himself in a group where the atmosphere reminded him of a football team. Their favorite word was "fuck." It appeared to Martinez that the instead of doing good, the DEA wanted to destroy evil. He was the newest person there, so he took on the habit of chewing tobacco and saying "you fucking fuck." He let his black curls grow long, and wore pointed boots and silk shirts. At the police academy, he pierced his ear and wore a golden crucifix on it. He had no idea that something would happen to put him on the other side of the front. America 's War Becomes Personal The instructors gave him a police badge, the Glock pistol and an automatic pistol. They created an agent that moved, dressed and talked like a drug dealer. For some missions he took on the role of a criminal, but on other days he was a police officer, interrogating suspects, running patrols or storming houses. Martinez needed to be the ultimate weapon in the fight against organized crime, and for a time, the plan seemed to be working. He began a life of weapons, money, adrenaline, fast cars, scotch on the rocks and arrests. It was something akin to El Paso Vice. Martinez was actually afraid, he says today. He was scared when he raided houses, took on false identities and met with drug dealers. But fear is an un-American emotion, and his work was about America. "For God and country," he says. So he became another man. Shortly before Martinez got out of the police academy in 1989, then-President George H.W. Bush held up a package of crack cocaine during a speech and said: "It's as innocent looking as candy, but it's turning our cities into battle zones and it's murdering our children." Martinez did not want any of his potential children to be killed, so he made America's war his personal war. On the hill in El Paso, he gets into a car he rented at the airport. He doesn't stay long in one place on this journey through his life. Later, he parks in front of a one-story house in a quiet neighborhood. "I once carried 200 kilograms of cocaine in small packets from the attic to the garage there," says Martinez. That investigation began when Martinez arrested a small dealer. "Listen hombre, you're fucked," he told the suspect in his cell. "You're going down for a long time. But because I'm a good Christian, I'm going to give you a chance. You work for us now." The people he interrogated often wept, he says. In fact, it was easy to "flip them," turning them into informants. He assumed that it had to do with his pleasant nature. The informant arranged a meeting with an intermediary dealer who needed a warehouse, which Martinez had rented. He shook the dealer's hand in the manner that the people at the border use, clapping their hands together and tapping the other's right hand with their left. The handshake can mean the difference between life and death, Martinez says. He went to various houses with the middleman to pick up cocaine, says Martinez. They piled up the goods in plastic drums, then went to Walmart and bought silicone to seal them so that police dogs couldn't smell it. Outweighed by the Cartels The cartels are like highly specialized logistics companies, he says. No one knifes open packages to test the quality by licking the blade like actors do in films -- that would only numb their tongue. The drug industry managers move inconspicuously. The cartels' heads live like ghosts. Everyone fears them, but hardly anyone has seen one. The most powerful drug lord in the world, El Chapo Guzmán, head of the Sinaloa cartel, dared to go out in public for the last time seven years ago, according to eyewitnesses. He walked into a restaurant in Nuevo Laredo with 15 bodyguards, barricaded the door from the inside, collected the mobile phones of the 30 other customers and said, "Hello, nice to meet you. How are you? I am Joaquín Guzmán Loera. It's an honor." He ate steak and shrimp, paid for the other guests' meals and then disappeared. Martinez learned that smuggling drugs is similar to boxing. His problem was that the cartels fight in a much higher weight class than Americans. They have more money, more power, more experience, and no rules. "You have to meet Psycho," says Martinez. "He has lived through it all with me." Psycho's real name is David Cordoba, and he used to be Martinez's partner at the DEA. His friends call him Psycho because he once allegedly rode a horse into Tiffany's Bar to order a beer. The DEA dismissed him when he wrecked his car while drunk on duty. Martinez meets him in a bar 50 meters from the border fence. Psycho is now working as a bodyguard for business people who want to travel to Mexico. On this day, he is welcoming the afternoon with a few beers. Martinez and Psycho hug, holding on to each other tightly for a long time. "Come on, we're going to Juárez," says Psycho. "I'll get us an armored car and we'll speed through the streets like we used to." Martinez looks right at Psycho for a few seconds, then refuses. He always feared his work in Juárez and remembers the day when his boss phoned him and Psycho in the office and said, "Guys, there is a fire on the other side of the river and we need to put it out." In 1995, the year when Martinez went to Juárez for the first time as an agent, the American president at the time, Bill Clinton, said that the country must do more to prevent drugs from coming in. Martinez saw it that way too.
The Quaternary International journal has just published a scientific paper about the existence of livestock enclosures in Álava dating back about 5,000 years. In this pioneering work on agropastoral communities in the Chalcolithic, researchers from the UPV/EHU have participated alongside experts from the University of Barcelona and the CSIC. A team of researchers belonging to the Prehistory Area of the UPV/EHU-University of the Basque Country has published the results of its recent investigations in the San Cristóbal Rock-shelter (Sierra de Cantabria. Laguardia. Álava, Basque Country). This is the first time that empirical data have been presented and which demonstrate the use of rock-shelters as enclosures (for sheep/goats) by agropastoral communities from the early Chacolithic onwards (about 5,000 years ago) in the area of the Basque Country and throughout the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula. The UPV/EHU team was led by the Professor of Prehistory Javier Fernández-Eraso and the work is the outcome of interdisciplinary collaboration coordinated from the UPV/EHU's Prehistory Area in which experts from the University of Barcelona and the CSIC have also participated. Previous studies conducted by this same UPV/EHU research team had documented the existence of livestock enclosures dating back to the Ancient Neolithic (over 6,000 years ago) at other sites on the Sierra de Cantabria. Nevertheless, this is the first time that data of a geoarchaeological (microsedimentological analyses) and palaeobotanical (phytoliths, pollen, charcoal and seeds) nature have been incorporated. The aim is to find out about the specific practices that the human groups in the area were engaged in inside these shelters, and to know what function was fulfilled by these practices in their economy and in their strategies for organising the territory during the Chalcolithic. "This is a piece of pioneering work in the studies on agropastoral communities on the Iberian Peninsula. We have evidence that the human groups that occupied San Cristóbal during the Chacolithic used the shelter as a pen for goats and/or sheep and that this use, although repetitive throughout hundreds of years, was not ongoing but of a temporary nature linked to a seasonal exploitation of the rich natural resources available on the Sierra de Cantabria. We also know thanks to the microscopic study of the sediments that every now and again they used to burn the debris that had built up, probably to clean up the space that had been occupied and that this combustion process was carried out in line with some specific habits: they used to pile up the debris and on top of them pile up woody remains, perhaps to help to get the fire going before going on to burn the debris," explained Ana Polo-Diaz, a researcher in the UPV/EHU's Department of Geography, Prehistory and Archaeology. On the other hand, the correlation of the microsedimentological and phytolith analyses (mineral remains that make up the skeleton of plants) has made it possible to determine what the livestock ate, and which was largely based on the grazing available around the shelter. Hazelnut trees and oaks The data on the pollen have revealed that a forest, in which hazelnut trees predominated along with deciduous oaks (possibly gall oaks), grew in the immediate surroundings of San Cristóbal during the period studied. There is also evidence of holm oaks, box and pine. The study of the charcoal remains preserved on the site has made it possible to go into how the timber available on the Sierra de Cantabria was used, and the results indicate a clear change in the selection of woody materials throughout the Chalcolithic occupation of the shelter: during the oldest phase a predominance of pine followed by yew is observed while in the most recent phase there is an increase in the use of species such as oak, holm oak, the rose family and box. The pollen analysis also indicates the existence of grazing areas and farmland fairly close to the shelter, so the use of San Cristobal as an enclosure has to be understood in the context of a way of life in which agricultural and livestock activities were combined as a means of subsistence. Although it has not as yet been possible to locate any site in the open air in the area close to San Cristóbal, a settlement may well have existed close by from which during specific periods of the year the livestock were moved to make use of the resources on the ridge. The correlation of the data obtained at San Cristóbal with the information provided by the neighbouring sites on the Sierra de Cantabria itself and its immediate area has also revealed that San Cristobal also formed part of a network of shelters-cum-enclosures used at the same time and for the same purpose by human groups with similar cultural features; it has also emerged that the communities that occupied these shelters-cum-enclosures were very likely the same ones that used the dolmen constructions of the Rioja Alavesa area during the Chalcolithic. Bibliographical reference Polo-Díaz, A., Alonso Eguíluz, M., Ruiz, M., Pérez, S., Mújika, J., Albert, R.M., Fernández Eraso, J. ‘Management of residues and natural resources at San Cristobal rock-shelter: Contribution to the characterisation of chalcolithic agropastoral groups in the Iberian Peninsula'. Quaternary International. Available online 19 May 2016. doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2016.02.013. Photos: Javier Fernández-Eraso y Ana Polo-Díaz. UPV/EHU.
One of the first questions we asked Mazda’s engineers when we attended the first drive event for the all-new CX-9 was if its 2.5-liter motor would fit in any other Mazda chassis on the market today. This was after a long day of plowing around town in the vehicle, and experiencing all of the joy its potent four-banger had to offer. It’s been a while since we last saw a turbocharged Mazda on sales floors, and since this motor is both compact and potent, there’s a strong chance that it will one day wind up in another chassis or two. Over dinner I asked about the vehicle the engineering team had been eyeing, and was told that there had been talk in the past of taking the snubby CX-3 subcompact CUV and test fitting an engine in one to see how things lined up. That statement has so far gone unsubstantiated, but it’s kind of fun to think about. While clearance issues and engine mount locations were not a major concern, one engineer said that simple maintenance worries could pose a problem on that particular chassis, and things like oil changes would not be easy. He went on to explain that ever since the turbocharged Skyactiv engine was first given a green light for installation in the CX-9, the entire engineering team was waiting for an opportunity to swap it into other vehicles. But talking about it and making it happen are two totally different things. Last we heard, there was no major headway in this direction because of the company-wide focus on the successful launch of the CX-9. Nevertheless, there was one glimmer of hope that was thrown my way toward the end of the evening, and it was encapsulated by one word: SEMA. While all the bean counters and product planners continue to consider if this is a worthy venture or not, the engineering team might get a chance to exercise its skills in building something sporty to showcase at SEMA this year. Mazda has been on a roll for the past few years, winning awards left and right for its quality and design, so bringing turbo power to a segment that already craves it only sounds befitting. This would also give the automaker the ability to showcase its engineering prowess on one of the largest aftermarket automotive stages in the world, a low-risk arena to gauge consumer interest before committing to a production run. Mazda has some of the best drivers’ cars in the world as it is; its commitment to driving excellence and a rebirth of the MazdaSpeed program would instantly catapult the brand to the forefront of many of the world’s performance segments. But there still has yet to be any confirmation on what the future holds for this powertrain, so we can only hope and wait. It would be great to see the stout little Mazda3 with 310 foot-pounds of torque, or the triumphant return of the Mazdaspeed6 to take on Ford’s new Fusion Sport, but Mazda has indicated that it’s staying the course for the time being. It makes sense for Mazda to follow this path too since it doesn’t offer a V6 or a turbo four-cylinder version in the regular 6 sedan, leaving it at a disadvantage when faced with the rest of the segment. So while the Mazda3 would make for a fun little turbo hot hatch, the 6 would stand strong with the CX-9’s motor as a V6 substitute. Check out Autos Cheat Sheet on Facebook More from Autos Cheat Sheet:
German second tier side SV Sandhausen have secured a sponsorship deal that is certain to go down well with a certain section of their supporters – namely the ‘sex-starved perv’ demographic. Sandhausen recently announced that they have successfully agreed a commercial partnership deal with local brothel Bienenstock Eros Centre (which translates as ‘Beehive’), which is located in the neighbouring town of Heidelberg. Bienenstock, it might interest you to know, claim to be the “most environmentally-conscious” brothel in the world, as Sandhausen general manager Jürgen Meier Mach explained thus. They are a very serious partner. Alcohol and cigarettes are regularly promoted (by other clubs). At least Bienenstock is good for the environment. As part of the agreement, the eco-knocking shop will now be able to advertise their services on the electronic hoardings around Sandhausen’s Hardtwaldstadion and take out a half-page advert in the matchday programme. According to Bild, the deal will also come with a few choice perks for Sandhausen fans, who will be offered discount rates at Bienenstock until the end of the current season. How thoughtful. Cue penis jokes…
A white woman who identifies as black wants people to be able to choose the race they want, further angering the black community which rejected her after she was exposed as being Caucasian. Rachel Dolezal, who self-identified as black for 10 years before being found out to be white, has called for ‘racial fluidity’ to be recognized in the same way as transgenderism. Dolezal was head of the Spokane chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) until she was outed by her parents as being “biologically Caucasian,” in 2015. Goddammit, Rachel Dolezal is trending again. pic.twitter.com/dsBwGZH22U — Artemis Freeman (@artemisfreeman) March 24, 2017 Wow. "Trans Black"??? Talk about being an offensive white person. Rachel Dolezal is a head case. https://t.co/dyunLYuoHE via @nbcnews — Amos Kwon (@wrathofkwon) March 29, 2017 The civil rights activist invited anger from both the black and white communities, and was accused of cultural appropriation and racism once news of her true race broke. Dolezal, who has since penned a book about her experience and is currently on a press tour to promote it, says she has been “stigmatized and ostracized” since being exposed. “The thing that hurt the worst was from the black community because I still feel like that is home for me and even if I get evicted or get pushed to the fringe or some people don't see me as part of that group, it is still where I feel like I fit and where I feel at home,” she told BBC Newsnight. “It is painful because I feel like there is misunderstanding that I want to resolve, if I could resolve one group’s understanding it would be theirs,” she said. Dolezal was raised in a strict fundamentalist Christian family where she says she always felt black and would imagine she was an adopted Egyptian princess. She later reinvented her race and backstory, adding extensions to her hair and darkening her skin to appear black. Once news of her true identity spread, she lost her job teaching African studies at the Eastern Washington University in Cheney. To many people of colour, Dolezal’s ability to identify with her preferred race only further highlighted her supposed white privilege. Speaking on BBC Newsnight, Dolezal said drawing parallels between transgender and her racial identity has been “somewhat useful, just because gender is understood, we’ve progressed, we’ve evolved to understanding gender is not binary, is not even biological.” Back in 2015, Dolezal rejected the idea of transracial. “I don’t like it because I don’t believe in race. To say ‘transracial’ further entrenches that idea,” she said. “I really feel we need to come up with better vocabulary.” Speaking to NBC on Tuesday, Dolezal said she liked the term trans-Black. “I was allowed a more complex term, I would say I'm a pan-African, pro-Black, bisexual, mother, activist, artist, you know that's like too long. So trans-Black is quicker.”
Since this month's publication of my paper "The Burden of Suboptimal Breastfeeding in the United States" in Pediatrics with Arnold Reinhold, I'm often asked by reporters what the US can do better to improve our breastfeeding rates. I've also gotten quite a few comments asking if this research just makes moms feel guilty if they couldn't breastfeed. The answers to both these queries are intimately related, and are best illustrated by the following Tale of Two Births. As you will see, if you compare what should happen when a woman gives birth, versus what actually happens, you can appreciate how tough it can be for US women to breastfeed, but how much easier it could be if only things were a little different around here. Birth number 1: Having a baby in the ideal, family-friendly United States: You give birth with the help of a birth doula. She helps you avoid a c-section or vacuum assisted birth, which is why your hospital hired her. Your baby is wiped off, then put directly onto your chest, skin to skin, with his head between your breasts. The nurse puts a blanket around you both, and then your partner cuts the cord. The nurse evaluates his initial transition to life outside the womb as he rests on your chest. As you lay semi-reclining, happy and exhausted, your baby uses his arms and legs to crawl over to your breast and he starts nursing. You and your partner are left undisturbed for an hour to enjoy your new baby, who has now imprinted the proper breastfeeding behaviors thanks to this initial breastfeeding. You are then transported to your post-partum room with your baby on your chest. The nurse returns and weighs, measures, and examines your baby right there in your room. You are with him as she gives him his vitamin K shot and antibiotic eye ointment. Your baby is handed back to you, and again placed on your chest skin to skin. He stays in your room with you until you go home. From your prenatal class, you knew in advance to ask most of your visitors wait until you go home, so that you can get some rest, and you turn the ringer off your phone, so that no phone calls will wake you. Before you leave the hospital, your baby's routine heel-stick blood test is done while he is nursing, and you are amazed to see he doesn't cry at all. You are discharged with clear instructions around breastfeeding, and phone numbers to call if you need help. You are not given samples and "gifts" from a formula company. Two days later, you see your pediatrician, who is a little concerned about the baby's weight, but your baby otherwise looks healthy. He quickly refers you to a licensed International Board Certified Lactation Consultant, and all you pay is your standard co-pay. She does a careful assessment and advises increasing the frequency of nursing for a few days, and that does the trick. You enjoy three months paid maternity leave, at 80% of your usual pay. Your baby sleeps within arm's reach of you, and because you taught yourself how to breastfeed lying down in the dark, you awake fairly refreshed every morning. When you return to work, your employer allows you flex time. Your employer has a policy that allows new parents to bring their infants to work, so often you bring your baby with you. As in other companies with such policies, your coworkers enjoy having a baby around, and you feel happy, calm, and productive. When your baby gets more active, you put him in the daycare near your worksite so you can nurse him during lunch, and you can pump milk in the lactation room at work. You bought a nice pump with your insurance's Durable Medical Equipment allowance. After 6 months, you introduce solids. A few months later, you really don't need to pump any more and you and your baby enjoy breastfeeding for another year. Your baby is so healthy that you've never had to miss a full day of work. Does that sound like your birth experience, or does this? Birth number 2: Having a baby in the real United States: Your give birth to a healthy baby, and you've never heard of a birth doula. The umbilical cord is clamped and cut before anyone can say, "It's a boy!" Immediately, your baby is whisked across the room to the warmer where Apgar scores are assigned, he's given a shot of Vitamin K, and antibiotic eye ointment is slathered in his eyes, clouding his vision. He's placed on a cold scale and weighed and measured. He is examined by his nurse, who takes him to a different room to do her evaluation. He is bathed, washing off his mother's scent. At last, he's professionally swaddled into a nice tight parcel and handed to you to hold, cradled sideways in your arms. He's not skin to skin, and he can't move his arms and legs to crawl to the breast. Before you know it, an hour has passed since his birth, and since he's missed the window of "alert time" after birth, he slips into a deep sleep without having spontaneously breastfeed. You attempt to interest him in the breast, but he is really too tired to try very hard. Because he's wrapped up and has been given a bath, he can't use his sense of touch and smell to crawl his way over to find your breast. You don't know enough to unwrap him and feed him immediately after birth, because your prenatal class didn't stress the importance of skin to skin contact during the first 3 days of life. That was all discussed in a separate breastfeeding class and you didn't really have time or money to take two classes. Just as you're getting to know your new bundle of joy, the staff decides to check his temperature and his blood sugar. His glucose level is 45 -- normal for a newborn, but low for an adult. His temperature is a little low, too -- all that time in the bath, the cold scale, the swaddling, and the time away from his mom's body heat has led to hypothermia. Hypothermia and hypoglycemia can be signs of a serious infection, so immediately he is taken from your arms down to the nursery, where he gets what's known as a sepsis evaluation. Lying under a warmer down the hall from you, he gets his blood drawn, and then is left in his bassinet in the nursery to be observed for a few hours so you can't spend time with him as you recover from giving birth. He gets a 2 ounce bottle of formula, most of which he vomits, since the stomach of a five-hour-old baby is no bigger than a teaspoon, the perfect size to digest the colostrum your breast secretes for him in the first few days. Finally, your baby's brought back to you, swaddled in a nice package. He's more alert, but never imprinted breastfeeding very well, and he's very stressed from all the day's events. He might be full from the formula he's given, and doesn't breastfeed well. He tries later in the day. The nurses try to help you, but it feels like they all give you different advice, much of it conflicting. Little do you know, their advice is based on their personal experiences rather than any scientific evidence because they haven't had much training in breastfeeding. You don't know what to believe. Finally, your baby goes to the nursery for the night "so you can sleep," and he is brought in for you to feed him. He doesn't like it in the nursery, so he cries, and you don't get much sleep either. You have some pain when he latches on, and you're told that's normal. You're so excited about his birth that you talk to everyone by phone, and lots of people come to visit. They pass him around. Maybe someone wants to give him a bottle, and you figure, ok, why not. He's chewing on his fist, but no one ever told you that means he's hungry, so you give him a hospital-issued pacifier to suck on instead of his hand. You don't know that giving formula and pacifiers in the hospital will undermine your efforts to breastfeed. It's surprising the nursing staff doesn't inform you of this, and you didn't learn it in your prenatal class. You're too embarrassed to feed him with everyone there. Finally, your guests leave, but by this time, your baby's frantic, and nursing doesn't go well as a result. Overnight, as he stays in the nursery, he gets weighed, and he's lost more weight than he should have. The doctor says it's because your milk isn't in yet, and recommends more bottles. He still sucks happily on a pacifier and sleeps in the nursery despite his alarming weight loss, and no one suggests that you nurse him more often, room in with him, get rid of the pacifier, or see a lactation consultant, all of which would help put him back on track with breastfeeding. An hour before you're due to go home, the lactation consultant comes in briefly to check on you, but because her department is so understaffed, she couldn't see you earlier when you needed it most, and she has little time to spend addressing your problems. On your way out, a nurse hands you a marketing bag from a brand-name formula company, complete with free samples of formula and information on breastfeeding that makes it sound a little hard and scary. She tells you if you have any questions, to just call your pediatrician. The first night at home, things don't go well. It's the middle of the night, and your baby won't stop crying when you try to breastfeed. You wonder if you should just give up. You reach for that ready-made bottle and his crying mercifully stops. The problem is solved, at least for now. You are really motivated to breastfeed, so in the morning, you try to find a lactation consultant. You talk to someone you find in the yellow pages called a "lactation counselor" who is willing to help, but your insurance won't pay. You find someone else called a "lactation consultant." You have no idea what the difference is between a "lactation counselor" and a "lactation consultant." Since these professionals aren't licensed in any state, you have no way of knowing if they know what they are doing. You meet with the lactation consultant, but have to pay out of pocket. She helps you. Afterwards, you have to file a claim with your insurance company and hope they reimburse you, all while caring for your newborn. The lactation consultant recommends pumping with a double electric pump to help you build up your milk supply, which is now threatened because of all the formula the baby got, and because his breastfeeding technique is not really good enough yet to extract milk well, since he didn't learn properly right from the beginning. Your insurance won't allow the breast pump to come out of your Durable Medical Equipment allowance, and you try to pay for it with your Flexible Spending benefit card, but it's denied. You pay $250 out of pocket. Good thing you had a gift card to pay for all that! You go to your pediatrician for follow up. Since your pediatrician got very little training on breastfeeding, he doesn't know how to help you, but is concerned that your baby has lost too much weight, and advises giving some formula. You don't know what to do because the lactation consultant's advice was different. Ugh!!! This is really hard, you think. Eventually, things miraculously end up working out, just because you persevere through thick and thin, and your partner and family and friends are very supportive. By about 4 weeks, your baby is now exclusively breastfeeding, and gaining well. And you are enjoying what time is left of your unpaid leave under the Family Medical Leave Act. But, you have only two more weeks before you go back to work. You can't afford any more time off. You start pumping to build up a stash of frozen milk for your return to work. You arrange with your employer a place to pump -- how lucky you are that it won't be a bathroom! You go back to work, and before long you discover your milk supply is dwindling and now your baby wants to nurse all night long. You are exhausted. You call the lactation consultant who tells you that it's common to see a drop in milk supply when moms go back to work. She explains that pumps aren't as efficient at removing milk as your own baby is, so your milk supply may drop, and your baby makes up for it by nursing more when you are with him -- it just so happens that that's at night. "It's called reverse cycle feeding," she tells you. You wonder why you never heard about this before, in any of your follow-up visits with your pediatrician or OB. You want to see the lactation consultant again, but your insurance will only reimburse you for visits during the newborn period. Well, you think, at least my insurance paid for something -- my friend's insurance doesn't reimburse anything for lactation help. You nearly fall asleep at the wheel driving to work. "This is crazy," you think. "My baby needs me to be alive, more than he needs me to be breastfeeding." Finally, you give up. You just can't do this anymore. You are very sad and disappointed. You become a statistic: one of the 41% of US mothers who wean before 3 months. You feel guilty as hell, especially when all you ever hear is how great breastfeeding is, and now how that new study shows it could save the US economy $13 billion/year, and how everyone says it saves lives and how it will make you healthier too. You just wish all these people would just shut the heck up. So, now that you've heard the difference between what your experience could have been like, and what it was actually like, you tell me: Do you feel guilty for not breastfeeding? Or do you feel angry because it didn't have to be this way? And if you answered "angry," then take that anger, and write to your hospital -- tell them you want them to become a Baby-Friendly hospital, so that no one else will have to go through what you did just to feed your child. Write to your state and federal legislators -- tell them to support laws that make breastfeeding easier, like licensing of lactation consultants, and the requirement that insurance companies reimburse for lactation care and services. And write to your US representatives and senators, and tell them you want tax-credits for onsite childcare, and that you don't want the US to continue being the world's only developed country without paid maternity leave. Yes, I'm a researcher and a physician, but I'm also a mother. Since I live in the United States, you can probably guess what my birth experience was like. Maybe you've heard me on the news saying that moms shouldn't feel guilty. I've been there. So take that guilt and turn it inside out, and do something positive so that other moms don't have to go through what you did. We all deserve better.
For centuries, great thinkers have instinctively stepped out the door and begun walking, or at the very least pacing, when they needed to boost creativity. Charles Dickens routinely walked for 30 miles a day, while the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche declared, “All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.” But in recent years, as lives have become increasingly sedentary, the idea has been put to the test. The precise physiology is unknown, but professors and therapists are turning what was once an unquestioned instinct into a certainty: Walking influences our thinking, and somehow improves creativity. Last year, researchers at Stanford found that people perform better on creative divergent thinking tests during and immediately after walking. The effect was similar regardless of whether participants took a stroll inside or stayed inside, walking on a treadmill and staring at a wall. The act of walking itself, rather than the sights encountered on a saunter, was key to improving creativity, they found. Dan Schwartz, who conducted the study and is Dean of Stanford Graduate School of Education, says in an interview that there are “very complicated” physiological changes associated with walking. It’s not exactly clear why walking is helpful to so many thinkers, but “it could be that the brain is focusing on doing a task it’s quite good at,” he adds, which then allows it to free up and relax. Exercise is known to improve mood, and so it’s likely that the aerobic activity has an effect. But it’s not clear whether more intense forms of exercise has exactly the same effect as walking. “When I’m in good shape, my imagination can go, but when I’m in bad shape, all I can think about is how much it hurts,” says Schwartz, suggesting that perhaps the activity would have to be undemanding to have a creative boost. Barbara Oakley, engineering professor at Oakland University who wrote a book about learning effectively which includes the benefit of walking, says in an interview that we make a mistake of thinking that we’re only learning when we’re focused. In fact, walking allows us subconsciously process and think in a different way. “Part of why walking, I think, is important is it can be boring. It’s that very aspect that causes your mind to go back and revisit, even subconsciously, on what you’ve been analyzing and learning,” she says. This “important part of the creative process” has helped her work many times, adds Oakley: ““I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been working away and I’m completely stuck. Sometimes I’m so stuck I don’t even know I’m stuck. I finally get so frustrated I just get up. And as soon as I get out and have walked for ten or 15 minutes, these ideas start coming to me. It’s the best thing I could’ve done and I should’ve done it earlier.” Meanwhile, several therapists have embraced the benefits of walking, by only conducting sessions outside. Clay Cockrell, who runs a walking therapy practice in New York, says he believes the motion, as opposed to sitting on a couch, allows for more free form thinking. Cockrell has 35 to 40 clients a week, and says they appreciate the rare chance without any agenda. “New Yorkers walk out of their apartment building and jump in the taxi or subway, get to their destination, walk the two feet to their office. They’re never just outside out and about,” he says in an interview.
I recently shared a sweet post from the mother of a fan who got to meet me through make-a-wish foundation. Make-a-wish is a wonderful charity and I’ve done a few of these before, but I never share them because I don’t want people to think I just do it for attention. I thought I’d share the post on my Facebook; because it was very sweet and since I didn’t write the post or took any of the pictures - I thought it would be ok. I’m just really fucking disappointed to see some of my fans commenting on the post; making fun of the clearly disabled fan - Drawing resemblances to a horse, etc. It frustrates the hell out of me because it’s not my post so I cant delete these stupid, horrible, idiotic comments. Just want to say, I don’t approve of this for a second. I’ve blocked these people INCLUDING EVERYONE who liked their posts. I don’t want anything to do with fans like these! Daisy is such an amazing girl who taught me awesome things like Bro Shambo and I’m SO proud to have as a fan! I would honestly pick 1 Daisy bro, over 43 million like the ones in the post. Please do send the family and awesome bro Daisy some love and support! AND DONT REPLY OR COMMENT ABOUT BAD PEOPLE. The post can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/PewDiePie/posts/1181428815223339
NEW YORK CITY — An effort to give away free fuel across the city began unraveling Saturday amid reports of miles-long lines, people re-selling cans of gas for up to $200 and police admitting they have "lost control of the situation" at one location. At the Brooklyn Armory in Crown Heights, desperation turned to anger as the line of cars waiting for fuel stretched for miles. Those not waiting for gas this afternoon were told to keep away from the head of the swelling line by one police officer, who stated that "we do not have control over the situation." Some in line even reported seeing others filling up cans and then turning around and selling them for up to $200 each. One woman asking a police officer about the line said the officer told her to buy it from someone who had already filled up. "I was inquiring about the status of the line, and one of them told me that I could always go around the corner and buy it from some guy," she said. "I said, 'are you telling me to participate in an illegal activity?' And he said, 'Well you do want gas, don't you?'" Several times throughout the day, accusations of line cutting nearly led to fights. At one point, three women were removed from the line by police for allegedly cutting, sparking a shouting match that continued to ratchet up the tensions. "People forget — we live in a concrete jungle," said Lyndale Patterson, 44, a public school teacher, who got on line about 2:20 p.m. toting a 5-gallon tank. "When your self-preservation is under attack, you can't predict how people will act." First responders were given priority in line Saturday afternoon, raising concerns as people questioned when — and if — they would even get gas. The National Guard acknowledged that while they intended for the general public to access the gas, they did not expect the crush of people hoping to fill their tanks. When authorities saw the number of people who showed up at the fueling stations, they instructured officials to stop filling new vehicles and to prioritize only emergency vehicles. “We're asking the public to give a breather,” New York National Guard spokesman Richard Goldenberg said. "We’re definitely calling on everyone for their patience." However, crews continued to fill up private cars at the free fuel locations in Crown Heights, Staten Island and Jamaica into Saturday evening. “The rumor I heard is that the White House said if they’re here, they get it,” said Air Force Capt. Ryan Abbott, who was working at the Staten Island location, noting that authorities were alternating between filling three emergency vehicles at a time, followed by three civilian vehicles. “We have a pretty fluid system going.” He said that in the first five hours of fueling, they went through 2,000 gallons and expect for the tanker to be empty by about 4 a.m. Sunday. Goldenberg said authorities were aware of issues of re-selling, price gouging and fighting, but that he expected more out of New Yorkers. “We have higher expectations on ourselves,” Goldenberg said. Mayor Michael Bloomberg addressed the fueling stations in a Saturday press conference, urging New Yorkers to remain patient amid the frustration. "One of the problems is when you have lots of different agencies, it takes awhile for them to get coordinated," he said. "We’re trying to adjust… just have some patience." Bloomberg did acknowledge that the gas would be slow flowing with so many people waiting. "We’re not going to get to everybody on everything immediately," he said. "You gotta understand people's frustration. They’re cold, they're tired, they’ve lost a lot." In Brooklyn, people came carrying anything they could get their hands on to fill with fuel, from empty paint cans to bleach and water bottles. "They have been waiting in line for hours," said Butch Manuel, 57. "People are going to go crazy." Letter carrier Rosa Delvalle, 42, who was told she had to wait in the back of the line because she isn't a first responder, bought 5 gallons of gas from a station earlier in the day, but paid $40 to "lease" a gas can. "I said I was a letter carrier, and the mail has to get delivered," she said of her argument for getting through the line quicker. "I feel bad. I missed a $300 day of work." The situation appeared more orderly in storm-ravaged Staten Island, where nearly 1,000 people stood on line at the Staten Island/Elizabeth Armory Saturday afternoon, while a line of cars stretched for about 3 miles. However, a fight between two men had to be broken up by National Guardsmen about 4 p.m., after one of the men left the line to go to the bathroom, only to return and be accused of cutting, witnesses said. In some instances, people cut deals in order for a shot at the fuel — with one man on Staten Island trading half his can's worth to cut the line. Rodolfo Velazquez, 31, a construction worker, has been pumping water out of flood-damaged homes in Midland Beach and came to get gas to fuel his company's generator. After waiting for two hours, he asked man near front of line with only one 5-gallon can to fill his, as well. The man agreed, but for a price: half of the gas in Velazquez's can. He agreed. In Queens, Tara Singleton said she was driving to the supermarket early this morning when her tank emptied out. The only personal tank she owned was a 2-and-a-half gallon container that she said she hoped would get her to somewhere, like Connecticut, where she could gas up fully. "It's like something out of a movie," Singleton said. "You never think you're going to live out something like this." Still, Singleton said she was taking it in stride, delivering people warm food and hot coffee just to keep the crowd placated. "People are getting restless," she said. "One guy jumped the line before. I thought they were going to beat him to death." There was also growing concern among the crowd that things might be out of hand should the National Guard run out of gas. "You think Sandy was bad?" Singleton asked. "This place will explode if they start sending people home who've been waiting seven hours." As of about 6:30 p.m. Saturday, officials said they had about 5,000 gallons of gas remaining to give out through the night. In Staten Island, Johnny Canelo, 27, and his mom Anatalia Canelo, 53, were near the front of the car line with his vehicle running on fumes. At one point it stalled, but a friendly neighbor gave him a jump. "We're running low on food. We need to get to the supermarket. And a lot of ATMs are shut down, so we need to drive somewhere to get cash," Johnny explained. "I'm getting gas for my daughter, she's a toddler, and we need it in case of an emergency. If I didn't have a toddler at home, I probably would't be waiting here." As the sun began to set on Staten Island Saturday, Donna Bracey, 39, wrapped in a giant blanket given to her by authorities, was in it for the long haul. “I’ll stay all night if I have to," said the nursing home worker, who added that she needed the gas to get to work. “We’ve been rescuing people all through this weather. I need to be there on Monday to help.” The tankers, which are being provided by the U.S. Department of Defense, hit the streets Saturday morning, with 150,000 gallons of additional fuel available to restock the trucks throughout the day. Cars will be able to fill up directly from the trucks, but will be limited to 10 gallons at a time. The trucks are sent to the following locations: Queens Armory, 93-05 160th St. Jamaica, NY 11433 Bronx Armory, 10 West 195th St., Bronx, NY 10468 Brooklyn Armory, 1579 Bedford Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11225 Staten Island/Elizabeth Armory, 321 Manor Road, Staten Island, NY 10314 Freeport Armory, 63 Babylon Turnpike, Freeport, NY 11520
Author Message Combat_Wombat Joined: Nov 04, 2003 Location: Minnesota ModeratorJoined: Nov 04, 2003Location: Minnesota Posted: Sat May 25, 2013 5:07 am Post subject: FrEee Releases This release has much more stable combat and replay code as well as a slew of other bug fixes plus some more art and such. Download Here This thread will be about the various of releases of FrEee as development continues. I will reply to the topic whenever there is a new build I have posted. We have no real versioning system so you will have to watch the thread for when the link is updated. There is one difference between SE4 and FrEee in terms of file placement. 'Space Empires IV Gold\Pictures\Systems\1024X768\' is just 'FrEee\Pictures\Systems\' we eliminated separate resolution folders in FrEee because of the difference in how the game handles images. Last Updated 5/16/14This release has much more stable combat and replay code as well as a slew of other bug fixes plus some more art and such.This thread will be about the various of releases of FrEee as development continues. I will reply to the topic whenever there is a new build I have posted.We have no real versioning system so you will have to watch the thread for when the link is updated.There is one difference between SE4 and FrEee in terms of file placement. 'Space Empires IV Gold\Pictures\Systems\1024X768\' is just 'FrEee\Pictures\Systems\' we eliminated separate resolution folders in FrEee because of the difference in how the game handles images. Co-Lead of the FrEee project an open-source Space Empires IV clone Author of Invasion! for Space Empires IV Last edited by Last edited by Combat_Wombat on Fri May 16, 2014 9:17 pm; edited 11 times in total Back to top MattII Joined: Aug 16, 2003 Space EmperorJoined: Aug 16, 2003 Posted: Sat May 25, 2013 9:39 am Post subject: I keep getting prompted for a password. Back to top ekolis Joined: Aug 04, 2003 Location: Cincinnati, OH, USA Virtual GuruJoined: Aug 04, 2003Location: Cincinnati, OH, USA Posted: Sat May 25, 2013 10:14 am Post subject: ...And now SJ's server seems to be down or something! Oops. Looks like CW forgot to put the file in the public folder...And now SJ's server seems to be down or something! That's no space station - it's a spreadsheet! Back to top Combat_Wombat Joined: Nov 04, 2003 Location: Minnesota ModeratorJoined: Nov 04, 2003Location: Minnesota Posted: Sat May 25, 2013 12:21 pm Post subject: ekolis wrote: Oops. Looks like CW forgot to put the file in the public folder ...And now SJ's server seems to be down or something! You can go look it is totally in the right folder but I have changed the link to be from the bitbucket downloads section. Just wasn't sure how much control we maintained using bitbucket for the downloads. Co-Lead of the FrEee project an open-source Space Empires IV clone Author of Invasion! for Space Empires IV Back to top MattII Joined: Aug 16, 2003 Space EmperorJoined: Aug 16, 2003 Posted: Sun May 26, 2013 7:54 am Post subject: Downloading fine now, but when I try to start the game, I get the error message: " The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000135). Click on OK to terminate the application. " Would you like me to start up a feedback report thread? Back to top Combat_Wombat Joined: Nov 04, 2003 Location: Minnesota ModeratorJoined: Nov 04, 2003Location: Minnesota Posted: Sun May 26, 2013 2:10 pm Post subject: MattII wrote: Downloading fine now, but when I try to start the game, I get the error message: " The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000135). Click on OK to terminate the application. " Would you like me to start up a feedback report thread? Naw feedback can be done here. Do you have .NET installed? Co-Lead of the FrEee project an open-source Space Empires IV clone Author of Invasion! for Space Empires IV Back to top ekolis Joined: Aug 04, 2003 Location: Cincinnati, OH, USA Virtual GuruJoined: Aug 04, 2003Location: Cincinnati, OH, USA Posted: Sun May 26, 2013 6:56 pm Post subject: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=17851 Specifically, version 4.0: That's no space station - it's a spreadsheet! Back to top MattII Joined: Aug 16, 2003 Space EmperorJoined: Aug 16, 2003 Posted: Sun May 26, 2013 8:25 pm Post subject: No I don't. That would be a good thing to put in the readme. Back to top ekolis Joined: Aug 04, 2003 Location: Cincinnati, OH, USA Virtual GuruJoined: Aug 04, 2003Location: Cincinnati, OH, USA Posted: Sun May 26, 2013 11:58 pm Post subject: wonders if we actually have a readme That's no space station - it's a spreadsheet! Back to top MattII Joined: Aug 16, 2003 Space EmperorJoined: Aug 16, 2003 Posted: Mon May 27, 2013 8:48 am Post subject: Well a readme doesn't have to be big (the one for SE4 is only a few KB) or complex, but can be very useful. Back to top ekolis Joined: Aug 04, 2003 Location: Cincinnati, OH, USA Virtual GuruJoined: Aug 04, 2003Location: Cincinnati, OH, USA Posted: Mon May 27, 2013 6:10 pm Post subject: So did you get it working? That's no space station - it's a spreadsheet! Back to top MattII Joined: Aug 16, 2003 Space EmperorJoined: Aug 16, 2003 Posted: Mon May 27, 2013 8:33 pm Post subject: Well I can't do anything with the construction queue screen, and there isn't an icon for the ship, but the game itself doesn't seem to have any issues. Back to top Skyburn Joined: Mar 12, 2008 Space EmperorJoined: Mar 12, 2008 Posted: Mon May 27, 2013 9:33 pm Post subject: I also had an asteroid field spawn with a moon in the same sector. http://files.spaceempires.net/user/2047/freee_screenshot.jpg What's the turtle button (4th from the left) supposed to be?I also had an asteroid field spawn with a moon in the same sector. Back to top ekolis Joined: Aug 04, 2003 Location: Cincinnati, OH, USA Virtual GuruJoined: Aug 04, 2003Location: Cincinnati, OH, USA Posted: Tue May 28, 2013 5:50 pm Post subject: The "turtle" was supposed to be a lizard; it's for the Empire screen. For some reason Combat_Wombat thought a "grey" alien was too generic... and yes, we know the art for those icons sucks! Hmm, an asteroid belt and a moon, with no planet? That's weird! I wonder if Fizbon VIII is in some other sector entirely? That's no space station - it's a spreadsheet! Back to top Combat_Wombat Joined: Nov 04, 2003 Location: Minnesota ModeratorJoined: Nov 04, 2003Location: Minnesota Posted: Fri May 31, 2013 12:32 am Post subject: Reptilian thank you very much. Though I will admit he was the worst of my MS Paint creations. Co-Lead of the FrEee project an open-source Space Empires IV clone Author of Invasion! for Space Empires IV Back to top Combat_Wombat Joined: Nov 04, 2003 Location: Minnesota ModeratorJoined: Nov 04, 2003Location: Minnesota Posted: Sat Jun 15, 2013 2:16 am Post subject: New version! Game crashes with the CB data files that are distributed with it so overwrite with stock se4 ones to play. Co-Lead of the FrEee project an open-source Space Empires IV clone Author of Invasion! for Space Empires IV Back to top ekolis Joined: Aug 04, 2003 Location: Cincinnati, OH, USA Virtual GuruJoined: Aug 04, 2003Location: Cincinnati, OH, USA Posted: Sat Jun 15, 2013 2:21 am Post subject: Actually the stock files are already in this version. (Hey, they're in the source code repository anyway!) One other thing when you go to put your SE4 pictures into the FrEee/Pictures folder - for now, you'll have to rename Races to Shipsets. I think we'll be changing this back, though, as the system I have in place now is a bit confusing! That's no space station - it's a spreadsheet! Back to top ekolis Joined: Aug 04, 2003 Location: Cincinnati, OH, USA Virtual GuruJoined: Aug 04, 2003Location: Cincinnati, OH, USA Posted: Sat Jun 15, 2013 2:29 am Post subject: But it would matter for things like construction - you're not allowed to say "I'm going to build Uber Mega Do Everything Facility on Tudran IX" when there is no Uber Mega Do Everything Facility defined in the mod! Combat Wombat, se5a, and I tried to start a multiplayer game, but unfortunately we ran into a bug - if any player tries to research anything, the host crashes saying that it's not allowed to accept technology objects from players. Shouldn't be sending technology objects in plr files; should just be sending ID's of technology objects! Not that it really matters that best, as if you try to research a nonexistent technology, it won't do you much good!But it would matter for things like construction - you're not allowed to say "I'm going to build Uber Mega Do Everything Facility on Tudran IX" when there is no Uber Mega Do Everything Facility defined in the mod! That's no space station - it's a spreadsheet! Back to top Combat_Wombat Joined: Nov 04, 2003 Location: Minnesota ModeratorJoined: Nov 04, 2003Location: Minnesota Posted: Sat Jun 15, 2013 3:38 am Post subject: [20:46] <+Combat_Wombat> choosing a hull size from a menu [20:46] <+Combat_Wombat> instead of a drop down [20:46] <+Combat_Wombat> ultra obnoxious [20:48] <+Combat_Wombat> looking at the design in the designs window [20:48] <+Combat_Wombat> should give you a cost summary Co-Lead of the FrEee project an open-source Space Empires IV clone Author of Invasion! for Space Empires IV Back to top MattII Joined: Aug 16, 2003 Space EmperorJoined: Aug 16, 2003 Posted: Mon Jun 17, 2013 4:07 am Post subject: Okay, when I try to do a quick start I get this error message: "Unhandled exception has occurred in your application. If you click Continue, the application will ignore this error and attempt to continue. If you click Quit, the application will close immediately. Sequence contains no elements." And in the details section it gives me: Quote: See the end of this message for details on invoking just-in-time (JIT) debugging instead of this dialog box. ************ Exception Text ********** System.InvalidOperationException: Sequence contains no elements at System.Linq.Enumerable.First[TSource](IEnumerable`1 source) at FrEee.WinForms.Forms.GameForm.SetUpGui() in c:\Users\Ed\Documents\Visual Studio 2012\Projects\FrEee\FrEee.WinForms\Forms\GameForm.cs:line 318 at FrEee.WinForms.Forms.GameForm.GameForm_Load(Object sender, EventArgs e) in c:\Users\Ed\Documents\Visual Studio 2012\Projects\FrEee\FrEee.WinForms\Forms\GameForm.cs:line 54 at System.Windows.Forms.Form.OnLoad(EventArgs e) at System.Windows.Forms.Form.OnCreateControl() at System.Windows.Forms.Control.CreateControl(Boolean fIgnoreVisible) at System.Windows.Forms.Control.CreateControl() at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmShowWindow(Message& m) at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m) at System.Windows.Forms.ScrollableControl.WndProc(Message& m) at System.Windows.Forms.Form.WmShowWindow(Message& m) at System.Windows.Forms.Form.WndProc(Message& m) at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.OnMessage(Message& m) at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(Message& m) at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam) ********** Loaded Assemblies ********** mscorlib Assembly Version: 4.0.0.0 Win32 Version: 4.0.30319.296 (RTMGDR.030319-2900) CodeBase: file:///c:/WINDOWS/Microsoft.NET/Framework/v4.0.30319/mscorlib.dll ---------------------------------------- FrEee Assembly Version: 0.0.2.0 Win32 Version: 0.0.2.0 CodeBase: file:///C:/Program%20Files/Malfador%20Machinations/Space%20Empires%20IV%20Gold/FrEee/FrEee.exe ---------------------------------------- System.Windows.Forms Assembly Version: 4.0.0.0 Win32 Version: 4.0.30319.1002 built by: RTMGDR CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/Microsoft.Net/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Windows.Forms/v4.0_4.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Windows.Forms.dll ---------------------------------------- System.Drawing Assembly Version: 4.0.0.0 Win32 Version: 4.0.30319.1001 built by: RTMGDR CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/Microsoft.Net/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Drawing/v4.0_4.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/System.Drawing.dll ---------------------------------------- System Assembly Version: 4.0.0.0 Win32 Version: 4.0.30319.1001 built by: RTMGDR CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/Microsoft.Net/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System/v4.0_4.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.dll ---------------------------------------- System.Core Assembly Version: 4.0.0.0 Win32 Version: 4.0.30319.1 built by: RTMRel CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/Microsoft.Net/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Core/v4.0_4.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Core.dll ---------------------------------------- FrEee.Core Assembly Version: 0.0.2.0 Win32 Version: 0.0.2.0 CodeBase: file:///C:/Program%20Files/Malfador%20Machinations/Space%20Empires%20IV%20Gold/FrEee/FrEee.Core.DLL ---------------------------------------- AutoMapper Assembly Version: 2.2.1.0 Win32 Version: 2.2.1.0 CodeBase: file:///C:/Program%20Files/Malfador%20Machinations/Space%20Empires%20IV%20Gold/FrEee/AutoMapper.DLL ---------------------------------------- Anonymously Hosted DynamicMethods Assembly Assembly Version: 0.0.0.0 Win32 Version: 4.0.30319.296 (RTMGDR.030319-2900) CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/Microsoft.Net/assembly/GAC_32/mscorlib/v4.0_4.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/mscorlib.dll ---------------------------------------- System.Data Assembly Version: 4.0.0.0 Win32 Version: 4.0.30319.1 (RTMRel.030319-0100) CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/Microsoft.Net/assembly/GAC_32/System.Data/v4.0_4.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Data.dll ---------------------------------------- ********** JIT Debugging ********** To enable just-in-time (JIT) debugging, the .config file for this application or computer (machine.config) must have the jitDebugging value set in the system.windows.forms section. The application must also be compiled with debugging enabled. For example: <configuration> <system.windows.forms jitDebugging="true" /> </configuration> When JIT debugging is enabled, any unhandled exception will be sent to the JIT debugger registered on the computer rather than be handled by this dialog box. I haven't tried the long setup yet, or at least I've yet to get fully through it (it's overly complex IMO, especially the resources screen). Also, when reorganising the images, does the '_Race_Portrait' image come under population, and when the instruction mention flags, does that mean the '_Main' image, or just the flags themselves? Back to top Combat_Wombat Joined: Nov 04, 2003 Location: Minnesota ModeratorJoined: Nov 04, 2003Location: Minnesota Posted: Mon Jun 17, 2013 2:59 pm Post subject: Oi yeah this release is borked I will get it reposted tonight all proper like. Co-Lead of the FrEee project an open-source Space Empires IV clone Author of Invasion! for Space Empires IV Back to top Combat_Wombat Joined: Nov 04, 2003 Location: Minnesota ModeratorJoined: Nov 04, 2003Location: Minnesota Posted: Fri Jun 21, 2013 10:53 pm Post subject: New less borked version up! some minor new features too. Co-Lead of the FrEee project an open-source Space Empires IV clone Author of Invasion! for Space Empires IV Back to top MattII Joined: Aug 16, 2003 Space EmperorJoined: Aug 16, 2003 Posted: Sat Jun 22, 2013 12:04 am Post subject: Okay, just tried the Quick Start, and it seems to be working mostly okay, except for the Design screen (and obviously the Menu, Diplomacy and Ship List screens), which allows construction, but not copying, editing or making obsolete of designs. On confirming Next Turn I get the error message: "Unhandled exception has occurred in your application. If you click Continue, the application will ignore this error and attempt to continue. If you click Quit, the application will close immediately. Unable to cast object of type 'FrEee.Game.Objects.Vehicles.Design`1[FrEee.Game.Objects.Vehicles.W{break for edge of message box} eaponPlatform]' to type 'FrEee.Game.Objects.Vehicles.Design`1[FrEee.Game.Objects.Vehicles.S" I presume that the second exception was meant to have the line: "hip]' to type" on the next line down. Under details I get: Quote: See the end of this message for details on invoking just-in-time (JIT) debugging instead of this dialog box. ********** Exception Text ********** System.InvalidCastException: Unable to cast object of type 'FrEee.Game.Objects.Vehicles.Design`1[FrEee.Game.Objects.Vehicles.WeaponPlatform]' to type 'FrEee.Game.Objects.Vehicles.Design`1[FrEee.Game.Objects.Vehicles.Ship]'. at FrEee.Utility.Reference`1.get_Value() at FrEee.Game.Objects.Orders.ConstructionOrder`2.FrEee.Game.Interfaces.IConstructionOrder.get_Template() at FrEee.Game.Objects.Civilization.ConstructionQueue.ExecuteOrders() at FrEee.Game.Objects.Space.Galaxy.ProcessTurn() at FrEee.WinForms.Forms.GameForm.EndTurn() at FrEee.WinForms.Forms.GameForm.btnEndTurn_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e) at System.Windows.Forms.Control.OnClick(EventArgs e) at System.Windows.Forms.Button.OnClick(EventArgs e) at System.Windows.Forms.Button.OnMouseUp(MouseEventArgs mevent) at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmMouseUp(Message& m, MouseButtons button, Int32 clicks) at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m) at System.Windows.Forms.ButtonBase.WndProc(Message& m) at System.Windows.Forms.Button.WndProc(Message& m) at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.OnMessage(Message& m) at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(Message& m) at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam) ********** Loaded Assemblies ********** mscorlib Assembly Version: 4.0.0.0 Win32 Version: 4.0.30319.296 (RTMGDR.030319-2900) CodeBase: file:///c:/WINDOWS/Microsoft.NET/Framework/v4.0.30319/mscorlib.dll ---------------------------------------- FrEee Assembly Version: 0.0.2.0 Win32 Version: 0.0.2.0 CodeBase: file:///C:/Program%20Files/Malfador%20Machinations/Space%20Empires%20IV%20Gold/FrEee/FrEee.exe ---------------------------------------- System.Windows.Forms Assembly Version: 4.0.0.0 Win32 Version: 4.0.30319.1002 built by: RTMGDR CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/Microsoft.Net/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Windows.Forms/v4.0_4.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Windows.Forms.dll ---------------------------------------- System.Drawing Assembly Version: 4.0.0.0 Win32 Version: 4.0.30319.1001 built by: RTMGDR CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/Microsoft.Net/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Drawing/v4.0_4.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/System.Drawing.dll ---------------------------------------- System Assembly Version: 4.0.0.0 Win32 Version: 4.0.30319.1001 built by: RTMGDR CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/Microsoft.Net/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System/v4.0_4.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.dll ---------------------------------------- System.Core Assembly Version: 4.0.0.0 Win32 Version: 4.0.30319.1 built by: RTMRel CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/Microsoft.Net/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Core/v4.0_4.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Core.dll ---------------------------------------- FrEee.Core Assembly Version: 0.0.2.0 Win32 Version: 0.0.2.0 CodeBase: file:///C:/Program%20Files/Malfador%20Machinations/Space%20Empires%20IV%20Gold/FrEee/FrEee.Core.DLL ---------------------------------------- AutoMapper Assembly Version: 2.2.1.0 Win32 Version: 2.2.1.0 CodeBase: file:///C:/Program%20Files/Malfador%20Machinations/Space%20Empires%20IV%20Gold/FrEee/AutoMapper.DLL ---------------------------------------- Anonymously Hosted DynamicMethods Assembly Assembly Version: 0.0.0.0 Win32 Version: 4.0.30319.296 (RTMGDR.030319-2900) CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/Microsoft.Net/assembly/GAC_32/mscorlib/v4.0_4.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/mscorlib.dll ---------------------------------------- System.Data Assembly Version: 4.0.0.0 Win32 Version: 4.0.30319.1 (RTMRel.030319-0100) CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/Microsoft.Net/assembly/GAC_32/System.Data/v4.0_4.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Data.dll ---------------------------------------- Microsoft.CSharp Assembly Version: 4.0.0.0 Win32 Version: 4.0.30319.1 CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/Microsoft.Net/assembly/GAC_MSIL/Microsoft.CSharp/v4.0_4.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/Microsoft.CSharp.dll ---------------------------------------- System.Dynamic Assembly Version: 4.0.0.0 Win32 Version: 4.0.30319.1 CodeBase: file:///C:/WINDOWS/Microsoft.Net/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Dynamic/v4.0_4.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/System.Dynamic.dll ---------------------------------------- ********** JIT Debugging ************ To enable just-in-time (JIT) debugging, the .config file for this application or computer (machine.config) must have the jitDebugging value set in the system.windows.forms section. The application must also be compiled with debugging enabled. For example: <configuration> <system.windows.forms jitDebugging="true" /> </configuration> When JIT debugging is enabled, any unhandled exception will be sent to the JIT debugger registered on the computer rather than be handled by this dialog box. To note, I had designs for both a couple of ships, and a weapons platform, but nothing else, so I'd say that there's some incompatibility between ship/unit designs, and turn-ends, for some reason. So, yes, less borked, but still borked. Also, proper insignias (the ones from SE4 don't work well), and some general polishing (the animation when adjusting the percentage spending for research is kind of jerky for example). Back to top ekolis Joined: Aug 04, 2003 Location: Cincinnati, OH, USA Virtual GuruJoined: Aug 04, 2003Location: Cincinnati, OH, USA Posted: Sat Jun 22, 2013 2:28 am Post subject: Yeah, the SE4 flags don't work at the moment. Sorry about the progress bars; have to figure out how to update just the part of the screen that needs to be updated instead of refreshing everything every time you do anything at all there. Sometimes I wonder why I even bother with this... all this work and it's most likely going to result in nothing but a buggy, unplayables mess... Hmm, that's weird. Last I checked ship designs worked, so maybe it's the weapon platforms that are broken?Yeah, the SE4 flags don't work at the moment. Sorry about the progress bars; have to figure out how to update just the part of the screen that needs to be updated instead of refreshing everything every time you do anything at all there.Sometimes I wonder why I even bother with this... all this work and it's most likely going to result in nothing but a buggy, unplayables mess... That's no space station - it's a spreadsheet! Back to top MattII Joined: Aug 16, 2003 Space EmperorJoined: Aug 16, 2003 Posted: Sat Jun 22, 2013 2:57 am Post subject: ekolis wrote: Hmm, that's weird. Last I checked ship designs worked, so maybe it's the weapon platforms that are broken? Oh you can create designs right enough, but you can't (as far as I can tell), copy or edit them, or mark them as obsolete. Plus the simulators and weapons reports don't work yet. Quote: Sometimes I wonder why I even bother with this... all this work and it's most likely going to result in nothing but a buggy, unplayables mess... Don't get downhearted, you'll get there eventually. Look at Wildfire Games and 0 A.D., a year and half from initial announcement to the first pre-alpha, and that was a company of dozens. Back to top
But as those members passed new measures giving money to charters and hired a new superintendent, a backlash grew. Critics accused the board of secrecy and of trying to turn the 86,500-student district into a petri dish for conservative educational ideas. Board meetings turned into shouting matches. Upset parents spliced the live-streamed meeting video — an innovation of the new board — into outrage highlight reels. ... In September of last year, thousands of students walked out of school when [Julie] Williams [one of three conservatives] proposed shifting the focus of the Advanced Placement United States history course toward patriotism and away from “civil disorder” and “social strife.” It was a moment when festering disputes among parents, students, teachers and the board leapt into the national news. Even though the curriculum was never changed, many voters around the district say they are still upset.
MUMBAI: A US district court judge ruled on Friday that the Trump administration cannot delay an Obama-era immigration rule, which enables eligible foreign entrepreneurs to temporarily stay in the US to nurture and grow their startups. America’s doors are open again to foreign entrepreneurs under the International Entrepreneur Rule (IER), which in common parlance is referred to as the ‘startup visa’ route.Finalised by the Obama administration, IER enabled qualified (based on prescribed criteria) entrepreneurs to obtain immigration ‘parole’—that is to temporarily enter and stay in the US despite not having a visa or green card. Commonly, IER is known as the startup visa , but it is actually a permit to foreign entrepreneurs to stay in the US for two and a half years with the possibility of a similar extension. The IER was to come into effect from July 17, 2017; however, less than a week before that, the US Department of Homeland Security announced that it would be delayed to March 14, 2018 and that it intended to rescind the final rule.As was reported by TOI in its edition dated October 6, this action of the DHS at the behest of the Trump administration prompted a group of entrepreneurs including some from India, along with the US-based National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) to file a lawsuit in the US Federal Court.The plaintiffs argued that because the DHS did not solicit advance comments from the public on the delay, it violated the clear requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act. Hardships that the delay caused to the plantiffs were also pointed out. In addition, they contended that the US would miss out on the economic activity that would have been generated as result of these new businesses.The order pronounced by district judge James E Boasberg, on December 1, a copy of which is available with TOI, now compels the DHS (the Citizenship and Immigration Services wing falls in its ambit) to begin accepting applications from foreign entrepreneurs.Paul Hughes, lead counsel for the plantiffs and partner at Mayer Brown, a law firm, told TOI: “The court’s order confirms that while American administrations may change, basic legal requirements ensure agency transparency, guarantee public participation, and prevent reactionary, ill-considered policy changes. The court has held that the Trump administration’s delay of the IER was unlawful.”The stakes were high for all foreign entrepreneurs and US investors and not just the plantiffs. Traditionally the US has been known to provide a conducive ecosystem for startups. To illustrate, a 2016 study by the National Foundation for American Policy pointed out that immigrants have started more than half (44 of 87) startups in the US that are valued at $1 billion or more. Fourteen of these startups were founded by Indians.As the recent order points out, since the US does not have any dedicated work visa for foreign entrepreneurs, the DHS had promulgated the IER to encourage them to set up and develop startup entities with high growth potential. Attracting foreign entrepreneurs would benefit the US economy through increased business activity, innovation and dynamism was the basis of formulating this rule.In an official statement, Bobby Franklin, president and CEO of NVCA, referred to the order as a significant victory for talented foreign entrepreneurs, the entrepreneurial ecosystem and the US economy. “The facts speak for themselves—the US economy has long thrived on the contributions and innovations of immigrant entrepreneurs and we are a better country as a result,” he said.“The order requires immediate implementation of the IER. We anticipate that qualified entrepreneurs will immediately begin applying for parole, so that they can get to work in the United States, build new businesses, and create new jobs for the economy as a whole,” summed up Hughes.The association had repeatedly urged the Trump administration to maintain the IER and expeditiously implement it. NVCA's members were harmed by the delay in IER. These members have invested, will invest or would consider investing in startups that have founders who could apply for entry and stay in the US under IER. The delay puts these investments in jeopardy and chills potential future investments.Omni Labs, which provides digital platforms to its customers for data visualisation and analytics, had set up a US entity in 2015. However, two of its founders—Nishant Srivastava and Vikram Tiwari (both Indians) who would have otherwise qualified under IER, were not able to operate from the US. Thus an office had to be set up in Canada. In addition to operational challenges and increased costs, as the founders were not based in the US it could also result in difficulties in obtaining funds from US investors the company had contended. Similar operational difficulties, including of not being able to launch their digital platform in the US and challenges relating to obtaining additional US investments were also expressed by Indian-origin brothers Atma and Anand Krishna, co-founders of LotusPay.1. A new startup entity must be set up in US within 5 years of the application2. The foreign entrepreneur can remain in the US for up to 30 months to grow his startup. A further stay of up to 30 months could also be granted3. The applicant is required to have an ownership of at least 10% in the startup and also play an active role in the business4. The startup needs to have substantial potential for rapid growth and job creation5. A minimum investment of $250,000 is required from qualified US investors or at least $100,000 in grants from US government entities
To rehydrate porcini mushrooms, heat 1 cup water to boiling. Add the mushrooms to the water and let soak about 20 minutes, or until softened. Drain off the water and rinse the mushrooms well in a strainer to remove any dirt. Chop the mushrooms before using. If you would like to keep the soaking water to use in another dish, pour it through a coffee filter to remove any dirt. It can be stored in the refrigerator in a container for 3 days. It would have been easy to opt for the same wine that was used in the dish, and that would have been a good decision. Instead, we chose a bigger bolder wine, to see if the dish would stand up to it. It did. 2010, Molly Dooker, "The Boxer" (Shiraz, Australia) When the Boxer first hit the stores five or six years back nobody knew about it, and they were relatively inexpensive. We saw at least twenty pallets of Molly Dookers at a huge Chicago store their second year of release. But as time passes and profits must rise, this became a $30.00 bottle, which is competitive, but certainly not the $19.99 it used to be. So In the past when we'd get cases, now we'll buy a bottle or two for old time's sake. The Boxer is big, big, big, so open it early and give it air before drinking. An hour or two is not out of the question. In the old days it was a bit more finesse-ey, now it's just BIG. Because it's a high alcohol wine, it has a soft texture and a bit of a palate burn on the finish. This year's Boxer was like being dunked in a kiddy pool of black cherry goodness and held under until the moment you run out of breath. And then dunked again six times in a row. The wine wrested for domination of the dish, the alcohol cutting through the savory seitan and then being saturated and complemented by the rich thickness of the bourguignon's flavors. Back and forth, twenty rounds, and in the end we were the only ones left standing.
For all of the changes in its history, the Supreme Court has retained so many traditions that it is in many respects the same institution that first met in 1790, prompting one legal historian to call it, "the first Court still sitting." Justices have perpetuated the tradition of longevity of tenure. Recently, Justice John Paul Stevens served for 34 years before retiring in 2010 as the fourth longest serving Justice in the Court’s history, just barely missing the third longest record of service held by Justice Hugo Black, who served for 34 years and one month prior to his retirement in 1971. The record for length of service is held by Justice William O. Douglas, who retired on November 12, 1975, after serving a total of 36 years and six months. He surpassed the previously held record of Justice Stephen J. Field, who served for 34 years and six months from 1863 to 1897. As is customary in American courts, the nine Justices are seated by seniority on the Bench. The Chief Justice occupies the center chair; the senior Associate Justice sits to his right, the second senior to his left, and so on, alternating right and left by seniority. Since at least 1800, it has been traditional for Justices to wear black robes while in Court. Chief Justice Jay, and apparently his colleagues, lent a colorful air to the earlier sessions by wearing robes with a red facing, somewhat like those worn by early colonial and English judges. The Jay robe of black and salmon is now in the possession of the Smithsonian Institution. Initially, all attorneys wore formal "morning clothes" when appearing before the Court. Senator George Wharton Pepper of Pennsylvania often told friends of the incident he provoked when, as a young lawyer in the 1890s, he arrived to argue a case in "street clothes." Justice Horace Gray was overheard whispering to a colleague, "Who is that beast who dares to come in here with a grey coat?" The young attorney was refused admission until he borrowed a "morning coat." Today, the tradition of formal dress is followed only by Department of Justice and other government lawyers, who serve as advocates for the United States Government. Quill pens have remained part of the Courtroom scene. White quills are placed on counsel tables each day that the Court sits, as was done at the earliest sessions of the Court. The "Judicial Handshake" has been a tradition since the days of Chief Justice Melville W. Fuller in the late 19th century. When the Justices assemble to go on the Bench each day and at the beginning of the private Conferences at which they discuss decisions, each Justice shakes hands with each of the other eight. Chief Justice Fuller instituted the practice as a reminder that differences of opinion on the Court did not preclude overall harmony of purpose. The Supreme Court has a traditional seal, which is similar to the Great Seal of the United States, but which has a single star beneath the eagle's claws— symbolizing the Constitution's creation of "one Supreme Court." The Seal of the Supreme Court of the United States is kept in the custody of the Clerk of the Court and is stamped on official papers, such as certificates given to attorneys newly admitted to practice before the Supreme Court. The seal now used is the fifth in the Court's history.
SMALL and medium-sized businesses in Scotland are more worried about the UK economic outlook than those in any other part of Great Britain, a survey has revealed, with the Brexit vote cited as one “very plausible” explanation. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) north of the Border also have the most negative view of likely business conditions for their company over the next 12 months, according to the survey conducted by Capital Economics in association with Enterprise Nation and Amazon UK. Scottish businesses expect a significant deterioration in the UK economy over the next 12 months, with a confidence score of -26. This is much worse than an average of -13 for Great Britain as a whole. The survey did not cover SMEs in Northern Ireland. SMEs in every part of Great Britain forecast a deterioration in the UK economy in the coming 12 months. Small and medium-sized businesses in the south-east of England were the least pessimistic, with a confidence score of -3. In terms of business conditions for their company over the next 12 months, the confidence score of -3 from the 106 SMEs surveyed in Scotland, as well as being worse than that for any English region or Wales, was way adrift of the overall average of +5 for Great Britain. Surveys in the run-up to the UK electorate’s June 23 vote to leave the European Union showed Scottish firms were significantly more keen to remain in the EU than their counterparts elsewhere, even though there was generally majority support for Remain among businesses in the UK as a whole. Asked if Scottish firms’ pessimistic view of the UK economic outlook might reflect a greater degree of disappointment about the referendum result, Capital Economics chief project economist Mark Pragnell replied: “Certainly, that is one very plausible explanation – the reason why Scotland has seen a dent in confidence above that seen elsewhere in the country is something that reflects [the] Brexit vote.” He noted the survey was quantitative, rather than asking SMEs why they were optimistic or pessimistic, but observed that parts of Great Britain in which there had been greater support for staying in the EU had lower confidence readings and vice-versa. Mr Pragnell emphasised that, although Scottish SMEs were gloomy about the outlook for business conditions and the UK economy over the next 12 months, they were relatively upbeat about the prospects for their revenues over the coming year. Scottish SMEs projected an average 1.2 per cent rise in revenues over the next 12 months, a greater increase than the 0.6 per cent recorded over the past year. He noted this projected increase was not far adrift of the 1.5 per cent average rise in revenues projected by SMEs across Great Britain. Scotland has the biggest share of SMEs using e-commerce, at 55 per cent, according to the survey. Only one-third of SMEs in north-west England use e-commerce. A separate report commissioned by international money transfer firm World First, conducted by the Centre for Economics and Business Research, shows 52 per cent of Scottish SMEs expect Brexit to hinder their trading ambitions, greater than a UK average of 42 per cent. Only 15 per cent of Scottish SMEs think the UK electorate’s vote to leave the EU could help in the future. This is four percentage points lower than the UK average.
Ever since I saw the first makerbot, I have been obsessed with 3D printing, I am an engineering student and I don't have an extra $800-$2500, and have been doing my best to create one out of what I have on hand. I tried using arduino with easy drivers, and parallel port, but neither one gave results, I always needed a tool or part that I couldn't get. So I pulled out my old box of legos and started building.This is a project I have been working on for the past year, it prints in hot glue and is made almost completely out of legos. Its design is roughly based on the first version of the makerbot. While it does print, I would call this more of a prototype or concept than a finished project. I am using 4 power supplies (3v extruder motor, 7.2v for nxt, 12v fan, and 115v for hot glue gun) and having to manually turn the extruder on and off, (although I am working on that one) . Unfortunately, due to my lack of programming skills, every move has to be manually programmed from the NXT programming software, I have yet to find a g-code interpreter for the NXT.Hopefully in the next version I will be able to shorten the height of the platform, reduce wobble, and use g-code files.But in the meantime, I have included a Lego Digital Designer file of the full printer, just about all the technic parts are exactly the same as in my printer, but for the structure I used different part placements to speed the digital building process, the structure and dimensions are still the same. under each X and Y axis there are 2 suspended blocks that I placed coins in to balance the weight of the motor on each side, for the extruder motor I used a lens adjustment motor out of an old VHS camera because it was low speed/high torque. In the .ldd file, the green box on the right side of the extruder gears is the case I made for it, it works perfectly.While hot-glue works, its very rubbery and doesn't have many practical uses, if only one or 2 layers are printed then it will stick to glass to make window stickers, but its not sturdy or rigid, I will be experimenting with printing using wax and heat-melting resins in the future. I am currently limited to what I can make with what I have on hand, some more printed parts could really improve accuracy on this. I initially did not have enough gear racks so I asked someone who had a 3D printer at work if he could help me out, I was able to get around 30 of them printed, and while they work, they do not connect perfectly to the legos, which is what causes most of the wobble in the platform.If you liked this and want to see more, please vote for it in the 3d printing and lego contests!Thanks,MattUPDATE: My project is now on Technewsdaily and Gizmag ! Thank you Randal Marsh and Elizabeth Palermo for writing those excellent articles! also on Hackaday Dvice , and many more!
Matt Collins When Janet Holwell first joined Weight Watchers seven years ago, she lost 43 pounds in one year and considered the popular commercial weight-loss plan “miraculous.” “I felt like I had found the magic key, the secret that eluded me all of these years,” said Ms. Holwell, who has maintained most of her weight loss by continuing to adhere to the program. But the magic disappeared when Weight Watchers overhauled its weight-loss plan little over a year ago. Under the new system, called Points Plus, Ms. Holwell, has not been able to lose the five pounds she recently gained. “It just doesn’t work for me,” said Ms. Holwell, 61, a research consultant who attends weekly Weight Watchers meetings in Middle Village and Glendale, Queens. Millions of people around the world belong to Weight Watchers International, ranked best commercial diet plan by U.S. News & World Report last year, and even nonmembers look to it for guidance and recommendations. It is best known for its points system, which assigns specific values to different foods and permits each member a daily allotment. At its weekly group meetings, healthy eating and exercise are emphasized over rapid-fire results. The latest iteration of the weight-loss plan, called Points Plus, was intended to steer people toward more healthy food choices, encouraging people to eat more fresh fruits by giving them zero points, as most vegetables already were. But many longtime members who were familiar with the earlier plan, like Ms. Holwell, have been grumbling about slow weight loss under the revised plan. “I have been doing Points Plus for about a month and keep gaining and losing the same few pounds,” a commenter at one weight-loss Web site complained shortly after the new plan was introduced. Others chimed in to reassure her she was not alone. In December, in a move that seemed to acknowledge the difficulty many dieters were having with the new system, Weight Watchers recommended that all members consider reducing their daily food intake, or points allotment, by 10 percent, not counting fruits and vegetables. (For those who’ve missed a few meetings, that means most women might cut their daily Points Plus allotment to 26 per day, down from 29.) Although Weight Watchers officials say the change in points allotments was optional — that members could adjust their daily points up or down — and insist that it was not a response to members’ failure to lose weight, many longtime members unhappy with the newer plan say they feel vindicated. “I think they miscalculated,” Ms. Holwell said. Many members said they were not given a choice. “One day we came in and they said there were changes, and suddenly I had 26 points,” said a member in New York City who asked that her name not be published to avoid alienating those in her group. Company officials insist that the only reason Weight Watchers modified the plan was because they had become convinced members were getting more than adequate nourishment under the new plan and would not be harmed by eating less. “We chose to be conservative when we introduced the plan, because we wanted to make sure that the things we stand for, nutritional health and well-being, weren’t going to be compromised,” said Karen Miller-Kovach, a registered dietitian who is chief scientific officer of Weight Watchers. Still, she said the company had been following the progress of members who use online tracking tools and had found that dieters have been gaming the new system. “People were having to circumvent the system in order to lose weight at a healthy rate,” she said. Judy Weinstein, a Manhattan opera director in her 50s, has attended Weight Watchers meetings regularly for nearly eight years and is very committed to the program. But while she found it enormously helpful when she first joined, losing 33 pounds, she has had less success with Points Plus. So six months ago, she committed what was once the ultimate Weight Watchers no-no and cut her own points allotment. That Weight Watchers has now suggested this for all members, but as an option instead of providing clear guidance, disturbs her. “That’s not really helpful,” Ms. Weinstein said. “People wouldn’t be here if they could do it on their own.” Fruit has been a particular conundrum for dieters on the new plan. As fresh fruit “costs” zero points, dieters can have as much as they’d like, “within reason,” Ms. Miller-Kovach said. Many members dislike the vagueness of this recommendation, since they tend to overeat when left to their own devices. But people who are overweight did not become fat because they binged on fresh fruit, said Elizabeth Josefsberg, who leads meetings in New York City. “You know how it is with a cookie — you want six cookies,” she said. “When you finish a banana, you don’t say, ‘Gosh, I want another banana.’ ” Other experts are less sanguine. “No single dietitian I know would count fruit as a ‘free’ food if someone is on a diet and trying to lose weight. You have to account for it,” said Marjorie Nolan, a New York City dietitian who speaks on behalf of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. She expressed surprise that even bananas (which used to cost two points under the previous Weight Watchers plan) are zero points. “That just doesn’t make sense,” she said. “They’re a denser fruit.” But Dr. Jeffrey Mechanick, vice president of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists, said there was no evidence that indulging in fruit impedes weight loss. The reason fruit and most vegetables are zero points is that the formula actually “prepays” those points, Ms. Miller-Kovach said; the daily points allocation already includes an allowance for what the plan has determined is a typical daily consumption of fruits and vegetables. Ms. Miller-Kovach said she could not divulge the number of fruits and vegetables used in the calculation because the information is proprietary and not revealed even to participants. But since average consumption of fruit is low in this country, usually not reaching the five to nine servings of fruit and vegetables a day recommended by government health experts, the prepayment may underestimate the effect of more liberal fruit consumption on waistlines. Results of randomized clinical trials of the new Points Plus program have not been published in peer-reviewed journals. But two brief reports have been presented at scientific meetings on obesity, and the authors found no difference in weight loss between the old and new points plans. In one of those studies, participants lost an average of 8.2 pounds over 12 weeks and saw significant improvements in their total cholesterol and triglyceride measures. But only 111 overweight adults completed the 12-week trial, and only 55 people were following the new Points Plus program. Weight Watchers officials said the number of participants was sufficient to provide statistical proof that the new diet system works. The new Points Plus plan also was evaluated in an earlier unpublished trial, Ms. Miller-Kovach said. And Weight Watchers has been following more than 12,000 members in Germany since the introduction of the new Points Plus program there. So far no differences in weight loss have been found between users of the new and old programs, she said. The transition to a new system seems to have been traumatic for many members. Ms. Holwell is optimistic that the plan will work again for her but wonders now if it will need further revision. “The jury is still out on the 26 points,” she said. Have an idea for a future consumer column? Send an e-mail to consumer@nytimes.com.
Mark Levin opened his show with the blockbuster interview between Morning Mika and Evelyn Farkas that we posted this morning, pointing out that this really is a big deal and in some respects a smoking gun. Listen: Levin points out that as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, Farkas was really only mid-tier and yet she still had access to sources and methods as well as the actual intelligence. Further, she herself tried to get this information shared with members of Congress and encouraged her colleagues to do the same. Levin calls this a smoking gun – “not in every particular but in enough particulars” – and says Farkas needs to be a witness in front of the House and Senate intel committees and needs to be interviewed by the FBI. In a later segment Levin made a great point, asking if Trump’s people were only caught by mistake then why did Farkas fear that they would lose their sources and methods once Trump’s people moved into the White House? Listen to the clip for more on his thoughts about this. UPDATE: Levin had even more questions about this from his opening segment in hour 2 of his show. Listen to it here!
Uzma, the Indian woman who was allegedly forced to marry a Pakistani man at gunpoint during her visit there, called Pakistan a "well of death" while narrating her ordeal on her return today.Seated with External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, Indian Deputy High Commissioner in Islamabad J P Singh, and other senior ministry officials, an emotional Uzma said, "It's easy to enter Pakistan but nearly impossible to leave that place." "Pakistan is a 'maut ka kuan' (well of death). I've seen women who go there after arranged marriages. They're miserable and living in terrible condition. There are two, three, even four wives in every house," she said.Uzma said she wanted to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi to personally thank him for the government's efforts to facilitate her return. She said 'Buner', the area where Tahir, the Pakistani man who married her at gunpoint, took her after giving her sleeping pills, was like a "Taliban-controlled" region.Uzma said had she stayed there for a few more days she would have been dead. She broke down several times while recalling the horror in front of the national media. She profusely thanked Swaraj, Indian mission officials and other staffers for making her comfortable and ensuring her return.Uzma, who is in her early 20s, hails from New Delhi. She was allowed by the Islamabad High Court yesterday to return to India following a plea she filed with the court seeking its direction after her husband Tahir Ali "seized" her immigration papers and refused to return the document.She crossed into India through the Wagah Border crossing near Amritsar. She was accompanied by Indian mission officials and escorted by Pakistani police personnel.
Bus travel company Busbud tallied up every US state's most popular place to tag an Instagram post based on hashtag and geolocated check-in data, and found that most of the favorite places are outdoors (h/t Business Insider). Local and state parks topped the list, followed by wineries and vineyards, historic sites, gardens, theaters, landmarks, nature and wildlife areas, zoos, and ski and snowboarding areas. And here are the most Instagrammed locations of every state: Busbud also has a great interactive map, which you can check out here. The top Instagram of the most popular location in the 10 most populous states Just for fun, I checked out the most-liked posts in the 10 most populous US states (as of publishing) — collected by combining Busbud's list with Instagram's public data. Since you can't search Instagram by likes alone, I picked the most-liked post of either the check-in or the hashtag for each location. Many of the locations have 50,000 or more public tags and check-ins. Something I didn't expect? First, many of these Instagrams are pretty recent. While the Explore tab is successfully connecting users to trending posts by users they may not know or follow, these may be replaced by new pictures or videos soon. I also didn't expect to see so many check-ins at professional car racing events, but that's probably because I'm not too into racing. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy these pictures as much as I did. The list is organized in descending order by total state population, according to the 2014 US Census. Disneyland, Anaheim, California Circuit of the Americas, Austin, Texas South Beach, Miami, Florida Is it any surprise that South Beach's most popular post is of tanned, happy people on the beach? No. Empire State Building, New York Wrigley Field, Chicago, Illinois The most-liked Instagram from Wrigley Field is a regram (a shared post of another's Instagram post) of the picture below. Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium, Pennsylvania Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden, Ohio Atlanta Motor Speedway, Georgia Charlotte Motor Speedway, North Carolina Silver Lake Sand Dunes, Mears, Michigan If you haven't had your fill of gorgeous Instagram spots, there's more to enjoy — Busbud also conducted the same survey for Canada.
Juan Martin del Potro is making his way to the U.S. ahead of the start of his 2017 season later this month. The Argentine had been training in Buenos Aires and is headed to Miami to continue practising. He is scheduled to return to tour-level action at the Delray Beach Open, which starts 20 February. Del Potro won the ATP World Tour 250 event in 2011 and reached the semi-finals there last year. The 6'6” right-hander delayed the start to his 2017 season to get a full pre-season. The 28 year old was unable to train during the 2015-2016 off-season because of rehab on his left wrist. Del Potro, who is still without a coach, started playing tennis again a few weeks ago in Tandil and Buenos Aires. He's coming off his best and – most importantly – his healthiest season on the ATP World Tour in years. In October, del Potro won the If Stockholm Open for his first title since January 2014. He jumped 552 spots in the Emirates ATP Rankings to his current position of No. 38. He also was named the Comeback Player Of The Year in the ATP World Tour Awards presented by Moët & Chandon.
Egypt Unanimously Chosen to Lead Counter-Terrorism Committee at the United Nations The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has chosen to appoint Egypt as the head of the Counter-Terrorism Committee (CTC), reported the Middle East News Agency. According to MENA, Egypt was unanimously chosen by member states voting in the UNSC to lead the CTC from January 2016. The CTC, established after the 11 September terror attacks in the United States of America, is considered the most important counter-terrorism body in the United Nations. The CTC monitors the implementation of member states’ responsibilities towards Resolution 1373. These responsibilities include implementing measures to counter terrorism in each member state. Egypt’s appointment as head of the CTC comes after Egypt secured a seat in the Security Council with 179 votes. Egypt, which enjoyed regional support for its bid, was virtually guaranteed the seat but officials and representatives campaigned heavily in the lead-up to the vote. Ahead of the vote for a non-permanent position in the UNSC, Egypt’s Minister of Foreign Affairs declared his country’s support to eradicating terrorism and empowering women. “Women are among those most vulnerable to terrorism. We will work to give priority to this issue during our upcoming UNSC membership,” the Foreign Minister said. Egypt will be replacing Lithuania as the head of the CTC and will hold a non-permanent position as a member of the Security Council until 31 December 2017. Subscribe to our newsletter
This website is dedicated to the postal activities of W. Reginald Bray. Bray lived for most of his life in Forest Hill, Kent from birth in 1879 to 1938 before moving to Croydon where he passed away in 1939. His lifelong passion was to send items through the post that, in one form or other, challenged the Postal system. He even had himself "delivered" on more than one occasion having paid the requisite postage. After experimenting with a number of postal curios his main focus was on the collection of autographs through the post. He sent out thousands of cards to all types of people, ranging from the Pope to the local Station Master, asking for them to return the relevant item duly autographed. Over the years Reginald amassed over 15,000 autographs, declaring himself the Autograph King - a title that was undisputed by his peers. More information and high quality images of some of Bray's creations can be found in the new book, "The Englishman who posted himself and other curious objects" - click on the cover picture for more details. New discoveries and items related to Bray are posted regularly on the book's Facebook page - see panel on the right. I would be delighted to any information and/or scans from anyone who can add to the knowledge base.
Why NSA's Betrayal Of Internet Security Is Akin To A Massive Public Health Disaster from the infectious-ideas dept I think there's a good case to be made for security as an exercise in public health. It sounds weird at first, but the parallels are fascinating and deep and instructive. If you discovered that your government was hoarding information about water-borne parasites instead of trying to eradicate them; if you discovered that they were more interested in weaponising typhus than they were in curing it, you would demand that your government treat your water-supply with the gravitas and seriousness that it is due. This is the most alarming part of the Snowden revelations: not just that spies are spying on all of us -- that they are actively sabotaging all of our technical infrastructure to ensure that they can continue to spy on us. There is no way to weaken security in a way that makes it possible to spy on "bad guys" without making all of us vulnerable to bad guys, too. The goal of national security is totally incompatible with the tactic of weakening the nation's information security. "Virus" has been a term of art in the security world for decades, and with good reason. It's a term that resonates with people, even people with only a cursory grasp of technology. As we strive to make the public and our elected representatives understand what's at stake, let's expand that pathogen/epidemiology metaphor. We'd never allow MI5 to suppress information on curing typhus so they could attack terrorists by infecting them with it. We need to stop allowing the NSA and GCHQ to suppress information on fixing bugs in our computers, phones, cars, houses, planes, and bodies. One of the most shocking of Snowden's revelations was that the NSA and GCHQ are deliberately weakening the Internet's security -- either by undermining standards, or by using zero-day vulnerabilities to break into systems. More recent news about the huge scale of attempts to infect computers with malware only compounds that outrage. It's hard to convey to ordinary Internet users the seriousness of what the NSA and GCHQ have done here, but in a brilliant new column in the Guardian, it looks like Cory Doctorow has done just that Here's the basic insight:Because that is precisely what the spying agencies are doing: they are intentionally withholding vital information about threats to your digital health -- the fact that programs you use are vulnerable to infections with malware, or that key security technologies you depend upon have backdoors -- regardless of the serious consequences this might have for you. If you try to imagine doctors doing the same in the case of equivalent threats to your health, you begin to get an idea of the depth of betrayal felt by computer professionals here. Doctorow goes on to point out that this is not just a matter of personal harm; the NSA and GCHQ are degrading the basic digital infrastructure of modern life:Doctorow is right on both counts: we can't allow the NSA and GCHQ to withhold vital information that endangers the digital fabric of society, and the way to stop them is to use this public health metaphor to get that message across to politicians and the general public. Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+ Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+ Filed Under: cory doctorow, cybersecurity, gchq, hacking, nsa, public health, surveillance
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull faces down Opposition Leader Bill Shorten. Credit:Photo: Alex Ellinghausen Mr Turnbull made his comments during a media interview to sell his first budget when he was asked about negative gearing, which Labor has pledged to curb, but the government says it will not change. "[Negative gearing's] created conflict with effectively the kids of your and my generation who can't get into the market and they're saying 'for goodness sake, you baby boomers, you just want everything and you're locking us out,' " Mr Faine said. "Are your kids locked out of the housing market?" Mr Turnbull responded. "Yes," said Mr Faine. Mr Turnbull used the tax deduction one-year-old Addison Mignacca, of Penshurst, was getting to help her buy a home to justify making no change to negative gearing. Credit:Michele Mossop "Well you should shell out for them. You should support them, a wealthy man like you," Mr Turnbull told the radio host. "That's what they say," Mr Faine responded, laughing. Illustration: Ron Tandberg "Yeah exactly, see you've got the solution in your own hands… you can provide a bit of inter-generational equity in the Faine family," Mr Turnbull said. Opposition Leader Bill Shorten went on the attack in question time. "Is that really the Prime Minister's advice for young Australians struggling to buy their first home? Have rich parents?" Mr Shorten also raised Mr Turnbull's recent media event with a family in Sydney which backfired, after the parents said they had purchased an investment property for their one-year-old child. "Can the Prime Minister confirm that in the past two weeks his advice to young Australians struggling to buy their first home was to have rich parents or to have parents who buy you a home when you turn one." "Prime Minister, just how out of touch are you?" Mr Shorten said. Mr Turnbull accused Labor of waging class-warfare. "They are sneering at the hardworking Australians who seek to make something for their children. And they dare to talk to us about being out of touch! This is a war - a political war - they want to commence against aspiration, against ambition, against enterprise," he said. In the Senate, Labor's Doug Cameron asked if Mr Turnbull had helped buy his daughter, a teacher, a subpenthouse in a high-end part of Sydney's eastern suburbs. "I know that history teachers in New South Wales, after a number of years of experience, are on about $65,000 a year. But Miss Daisy Turnbull Brown is able to buy a subpenthouse, with knockout views of the harbour and city skyline, in 2008 - she was then aged 23 - for the pricey sum of $2.7 million," he said. "There was a bit of intergenerational equity getting moved in that one, because there is no doubt that Ms Turnbull Brown had no chance, under her own steam, of getting such a penthouse with stunning views. "Get in touch with the real-life people of this country and stop the nonsense that negative gearing promotes," Senator Cameron told the prime minister. Nationals Senator John Williams urged Senator Cameron to fess up to owning a waterfront flat on the Kingston foreshore – one of Canberra's most expensive suburbs. Mr Turnbull, a multi-millionaire who last week admitted to buying his wife a Cartier watch, valued at tens of thousands of dollars, has already been the target of numerous other Labor attacks aimed at his wealth. In one of his first interviews he was asked about how he could expect to relate to everyday Australians given his net worth, conservatively estimated to be about $200 million. The member for Wentworth reprised an anecdote from his time as a partner at investment banking firm Goldman Sachs in New York. "The chief executive of the firm gave a sort of pep talk to the partners and he said, you know, 'We're doing well. We're making lots of money 'cause we work hard and we deserve it.' And I said to him afterwards, just quietly, I said, 'You know, there are taxi drivers in this city that work much longer hours than anyone does here and they don't earn very much at all,' " he said. He nominated the ability to empathise instead as the key factor. "Emotional intelligence is probably the most important asset for - certainly for anyone in my line of work," he said. Early on in his prime ministership, Labor attacked Mr Turnbull for holding investments registered in the Cayman Islands. Many leading political commentators condemned the tactic.
South African cricket is bracing itself for more bad news this week, with further revelations about match-fixing to follow the loss of the Test series against England and their No 1 Test status. After the former South African international Gulam Bodi was charged with conspiring to fix matches in the T20 RamSlam competition before Christmas, the best-case scenario is that other players will be charged with nothing more serious than non-disclosure, which carries a maximum ban of two years. The Weekend Argus in Cape Town revealed that four Proteas – players who have represented South Africa in one format or another – and four other domestic players were offered sums of up to R800,000 (£33,400) for one spot-fix, an enormous sum in a country where cricketers are paid far less than their counterparts in Australia or England. Bodi, 37, who played two one-day internationals and a T20 international for South Africa in 2007, was alleged to have been on commissions of up to R150,000. When contacted about the charges made by Cricket South Africa in their 13-page Notice of Disciplinary Charge, Bodi declined to comment. The worst-case scenario for South African cricket is that some of the eight players will be accused of more than non-disclosure, though the Weekend Argus stated that they have all denied any wrong-doing.
DENVER -- Michael DiZoglio has a dog to thank for saving his life. CBS Denver reports DiZoglio's father's dog — a Husky named Mickey — loves when he comes over. "One time he jumped on me from the right and I didn't feel any pain, and I thought it should have hurt," he said. DiZoglio says he thought the lack of sensation was worrisome. So he underwent a series of testing. And on his 28th birthday, his doctors informed him that he had testicular cancer. "I didn't cry, laugh, I didn't overreact," he said. "I felt dumbfounded. I never anticipated that kind of news." The treatment hasn't been easy, but DiZoglio says he began to think positively after receiving the diagnosis. "The best thing in my life is that I had testicular cancer," he said. "What if it had been my spleen or liver? I wouldn't have known." DiZoglio has been receiving chemotherapy treatments since August. He's taken a break from work due to the difficulty of his therapy. An operation successfully removed a tumor, but it's an aggressive type, known as embryonal carcinoma. Unfortuantely, a scan detected the cancer spread to his lungs, which showed a series of spots. DiZoglio says he is hopeful that good news could come from a scan scheduled for early December — his chemotherapy could potentially be over at that time. Catching his cancer early was key. DiZoglio says he thinks it's important to pay attention to what might be wrong with your body. "Someone's looking out for me through the dog," he said. "I felt like something's going into place to protect me."
[/caption] During a Russian weather observation campaign, cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko took photographs above the South Ossetia region of Georgia soon after the Russian military action in the area on August 9th. According to NASA’s ISS Daily Report, Kononenko was monitoring the “after-effects of border conflict operations in the Caucasus” and his orders from Moscow instructed him to carry out this task for humanitarian reasons. Some sources are suspicious of this possible orbital reconnaissance opportunity, citing that the 1998 ISS international agreement enforces the rule that the space station can only be used for civilian activities. However, NASA has stated that the Russian space agency Roscosmos admitted to the photography request, saying that the images were required to monitor serious water management issues and not intended for military purposes… This new article to surface in the Aviation Week website refers to a paragraph in the August 9th entry of the International Space Station Daily Reports: Also working from the discretionary task list, Oleg Kononenko conducted another session of the Russian GFI-8 “Uragan” (hurricane) earth-imaging program, using the D2X digital camera with the F800 telephoto lens and the HVR-Z1J SONY video camera. [Uplinked target areas were glaciers on the north slope of the main Caucasus Ridge, the Dombai region, after-effects of border conflict operations in the Caucasus, the Kalmyk steppe, the main stem stream of the Volga river (west-most) from Astrakhan to Caspian Sea, a series of overlapping shots of the Ob and Bia river valleys (Bia river head stream, Teletsk lake, confluence of Katun and Bia rivers form Ob river), general photography of Carpathian region on both sides of track and of the river valleys in Moldova, gulley and ravine topography of Central Russia up to Volga river, steppe on the left shore of Volga river to the south of Saratov including Y. A. Gagarinâ€™s landing site in nadir, petroleum deposits along both shores of the Ural river and oil drilling fields, former Soviet Army fire ranges in Germany and coal pits after reclamation, scenic shots of Central America and Caribbean basin for educational purposes, and the Gulf Stream.] – ISS Daily Report (Aug. 9th) (emphasis added) Naturally, only two days after the Russian infringement into the troubled region of Georgia, such a photography campaign from orbit could be seen as a prime opportunity for Russia to attain large-scale imagery for military gain. The AW article even goes as far as outlining the original treaty signed by Russia and the USA stating that the ISS cannot be used for any other reason other than civilian purposes. If Russia did indeed use the ISS for military gain, they would violate the January 29th 1998 ISS cooperation agreement which states (in Article 14), “The Space Station together with its additions of evolutionary capability will remain a civil station, and its operation and utilization will be for peaceful purposes, in accordance with international law.” In response to the concerns raised by the AW reporter, a NASA spokesman replied, “Roscosmos informed us that the pictures were requested to support potential humanitarian activities in the area, including serious water resource management issues.” He also added that there was no need for the matter to be investigated further. Before hostilities broke out in Georgia, Russian news reported that there were water shortages around the main city of Tskhinvali in South Ossetia due to diversions by Georgian villagers to the south. When the fighting started international aid organizations did struggle to distribute water to the affected area. Besides, many would argue that the Russian military wouldn’t need military reconnaissance from orbit as Russian forces dominated the region anyway. I’m also curious just how much detail could really be picked out by using a digital camera and 800mm telephoto lens from 330 km (180 miles) high. I’m thinking it wouldn’t be that much use for military purposes… Sources: NASA, Aviation Week
As smoke and flames threatened her rural property in Suisun City last week, Cristina Santini’s thoughts turned to her 38 goats and sheep. She and her husband Flavio had been told to get out ahead of the Atlas Fire that was raging in Solano County. There seemed to be no time for the couple to chase their livestock down, pack them into trailers and drive them to safety. The county seemed unlikely to help, since it was in the process of evacuating thousands of humans threatened by the flames. “Maybe I should open the gates and let them run for their lives,” Santini recalled thinking at the time. Instead, she and Flavio decided to phone the Solano County sheriff’s dispatch line. To her surprise, Santini recalled, animal control officers were on the scene within minutes, rounding up frightened livestock for transport to a makeshift evacuation center at the fairgrounds. Sign Up and Save Get six months of free digital access to The Sacramento Bee Sydney de Polo, left, and Cli Scully, both of Napa, take miniature horses out for a walk, Wednesday, October 18, 2017, while volunteering at the Solano County Fairgrounds that has been turned into a large animal evacuation center, sheltering more than 600 animals evacuated from fire areas including horses, cows, pigs and other livestock. Lezlie Sterling Sacramento Bee “They brought 10 people and three trailers. I’ve never seen such a hard-working crew,” Santini said. “They got all of my animals. They and the firefighters are my heroes.” Santini’s home was mostly spared, and her sheep and goats are safe and seemingly content at the Solano County Fairgrounds in Vallejo. They were among more than 600 animal evacuees who have been sheltered and fed and received veterinary care since fires erupted across Northern California’s wine country 11 days ago. Napa, Solano and Sonoma counties are known as places where some of the world’s finest wine is grown and produced. They are also a prime livestock area. Sonoma County alone is home to some 27,000 horses, mules and donkeys, according to a recent study. Rural ranchers raise sheep, llamas, goats and other creatures across the rolling hills. The constellation of wildfires, collectively the most destructive in California history, left more than 40 people dead and thousands of structures in ashes. As the flames bore down, many residents had mere minutes to figure out what to do about their pets and livestock. Some had to leave their animals behind, and are still searching for survivors. Others mobilized friends and family members to help evacuate horses and other livestock. Rescue groups such as the SPCA and government agencies, as well as staffers from the UC Davis Veterinary Medical Center, stepped in to search for animals and tend to the injured. Facebook pages were set up to help reunite missing pets with their people. Animal sanctuaries also scrambled to respond to the crisis. Rescue Ranch in Vacaville packed up its chickens, pigs and sheep and headed for safer ground in Grass Valley. Employees at Safari West, an exotic animal sanctuary in Santa Rosa, evacuated, but keepers quickly returned and the agency’s animals escaped injury. At the Solano County Fairgrounds, which has sat mostly vacant since horse racing stopped a decade ago, the county Office of Emergency Services announced a day after the fires started on Oct. 8 that it would provide a refuge for displaced livestock. A stream of trailers carrying animals flowed in, and a small army of government workers and volunteers began unloading a menagerie of refugees, including prized show horses and pet donkeys; pigs, llamas, sheep; even some fowl. Some of the displaced livestock came in with phone numbers spray painted onto their bodies to identify them in case they became lost. “We are treating every one of them the same,” said Erin Hannigan, a Solano County Supervisor from Vallejo who has helped organize and maintain the evacuation center. “They are getting great care, and by caring for these animals we are caring for our people.” The operation was organized chaos at first, Hannigan said, as workers welcomed an unusual mix of animals that were highly stressed and, in some cases, injured. Trucks started arriving with donated hay, feed and other supplies. Veterinarians and veterinary technicians reported to the scene to evaluate and treat animals. Other volunteers began documenting ownership of evacuees, and getting them settled in barns and stables that had been vacant for years. A volunteer brushes a donkey, Wednesday, October 18, 2017 at the Solano County Fairgrounds. Hundreds of horses and other livestock have been evacuated from the wine country fires to the Solano County Fairgrounds in Vallejo. Many are virtually stranded as their owners lost everything. Lezlie Sterling Sacramento Bee Within a few days, “we were a well-oiled machine,” said Hannigan, who has gone to the property every day to offer greetings and comfort to animal evacuees and human helpers. “I’m not that comfortable in a stall,” said Hannigan, as she patted horses whose owners fled flames threatening Calistoga last week. “But I can say hello, and welcome them, and pet them.” Livestock owners began retrieving their animals as soon as they could confirm that their properties were inhabitable. As of Thursday, the fairgrounds still held more than 100 animals, including a friendly pig named Daisy, a bonded pair of elderly horses and Santini’s livestock. Santini said she and her husband planned to reunite with their animals on Friday, after repairing fencing around their property. “We are so very grateful,” she said. “I just can’t say enough about what everyone did for us and our animals. I never imagined it would turn out this way.” Others are still looking for pets that disappeared in the wildfires. Sonoma County Animal Services has received some of those animals, and is working to reunite them with their owners using the social-media hashtags #tubbsfire and #LOSTPETSsonomacountyfire2017. Details are available on the agency’s website, which also is soliciting donations to pay for veterinary care and supplies for animals affected by the fires. The UC Davis veterinary teaching hospital has treated a handful of burn survivors, including eight cats, a couple of horses and a llama, officials said. The school is collecting money through its Veterinary Catastrophic Need Fund to provide care for animals that are injured in natural disasters or other accidents. Further information is on the school’s website. A goat that was evacuated from fire danger takes shelter at the Solano County Fairgrounds, Wednesday, October 18, 2017. Hundreds of horses and other livestock have been evacuated from the wine country fires to the Solano County Fairgrounds in Vallejo. Lezlie Sterling Sacramento Bee At the Solano evacuation site, Dori Pettigrew, a retired hospital administrator and former horse owner, has been working 16 to 19 hours a day tending to her charges. She is one of more than 1,500 people who have helped out at the site. “I feel for all of the people who have lost so much,” she said. “I am an animal lover, and I have a background in safety and administration. I just felt like the best thing I could do was to be here.” Kelly McCrary, another volunteer, said she has felt the desperation that many animal owners must have experienced when the fires ignited. “We are no stranger to fires,” she said. “When you are in such a desperate situation, you have to leave your animals sometimes. Then you hope and pray that someone will be there to help them.” The work at the fairgrounds has been as satisfying as it has been challenging, said Pettigrew. “It’s so inspiring to see so many people, from young people to the elderly, giving their time selflessly and generously,” she said. “The hearts of people are good. “When you see tears of happiness as an owner comes in and finds an animal they had lost, it makes it all worthwhile.” SHARE COPY LINK Chris Hale found a dehydrated cat in a tool box of a burned house at the Tubbs fire in the Coffey Park Neighborhood on Thursday, October 12, 2017 in Santa Rosa. Rescuers planned to take the cat to a shelter.
(CNN) The suspected Islamist terrorists who had a shootout with police on Thursday in Verviers, Belgium, have ties to ISIS-linked cells in other European countries, a senior Belgian counterterrorism source told CNN on Friday. The two suspects who died in the shootout are believed to have fought with ISIS in Syria, the source said. Another man was captured but hasn't revealed any information. There also was a dire warning: Not all the terrorists in the cell have been rounded up, according to the source. Belgian police have taken out part of the terror network plotting an attack in Belgium, but they have not yet taken down every component of it, the source said. There is fear others may try to avenge the two men. Authorities investigating the aftermath of the raid in which the men were killed found materials used to make bombs, including chemicals for the powerful explosive TATP, but the suspected terrorists had yet to assemble those weapons. They also had grenades. Cell members had discussed attacking police in wiretapped phone conversations, but Belgian investigators still did not know what they were intending to target for sure, the source said. The discovery of police uniforms after the raid suggested the possibility they may have been trying to gain access to sensitive sites. The source characterized the cell as one with organized structures, a logistical support network and links back to Syria and Iraq. Belgium is one of the nations participating in airstrikes in Iraq, and officials are concerned this plot is ISIS "pivoting" to launch attacks on the European countries involved in the military action against their troops in Iraq. "I think one of the things that's happening is we're seeing something that's surprising me. That is the pivot of ISIS," Philip Mudd. a former CIA counterterrorism official and a CNN analyst, said. "Just last summer, we were talking about how quickly ISIS was taking over geography. For a terrorist group to turn around in six or eight months and start training people for operations in Europe is remarkable." In the raid in Verviers, a city of about 56,000 people, police approached three suspects as they carried large duffel bags outside of a former bakery that might have been their lair, a Western intelligence source told CNN. The suspects immediately opened fire with multiple weapons, prosecutors' spokesman Thierry Werts said. Police returned fire; two gunmen were killed and another was arrested, federal prosecutor Eric van der Sypt said. Photos: Belgium anti-terror operation Photos: Belgium anti-terror operation Belgium anti-terror operation – Police officers gather at the scene of an anti-terrorism operation in Verviers, Belgium, on Thursday, January 15. Two people were killed during a raid on a suspected terror cell, Belgian authorities said. A third suspect was injured and taken into custody. Hide Caption 1 of 7 Photos: Belgium anti-terror operation Belgium anti-terror operation – Police block a street in Verviers. Hide Caption 2 of 7 Photos: Belgium anti-terror operation Police officers work in Verviers after the raid. Hide Caption 3 of 7 Photos: Belgium anti-terror operation Belgium anti-terror operation – Police set a large security perimeter in the center of Verviers. A senior Belgian counterterrorism official told CNN that the alleged terror cell is believed to have received instructions from ISIS. Hide Caption 4 of 7 Photos: Belgium anti-terror operation The trio targeted in the raid had been under surveillance for some time, prosecutor's spokesman Thierry Werts told reporters. Hide Caption 5 of 7 Photos: Belgium anti-terror operation Verviers is about 69 miles (111 kilometers) east-southeast of Brussels. Hide Caption 6 of 7 Photos: Belgium anti-terror operation CNN affiliate VTM reported that the terrorism investigation started weeks ago. Hide Caption 7 of 7 That raid turned up four Kalashnikovs, handguns, bomb-making materials and police uniforms, van der Sypt said. Van der Sypt refused to name the two killed in Verviers, but said "we have a pretty good idea" who they were. Answering reporters' questions, the prosecutor would not comment on reported plans by the suspects to abduct or behead any victims. The Belgian counterterrorism source said Belgian authorities had asked the CIA for help in finding the director of the plot, a Belgian who was in Greece. Neither the CIA nor Greek officials were able to locate the man. He is described as a key link to ISIS in Syria for the terror cell and once fought there. Plot to kill police, prosecutor says The two men killed in the shootout were among more than a dozen people rounded up in across-the-country raids designed to stop a group's allegedly imminent attack -- a plot to kill Belgian police in streets and stations -- van der Sypt said earlier Friday. The alleged plotters -- including the two people killed Thursday night in a battle with police in Verviers -- were confronted in 12 raids across Belgium from Thursday into Friday, Sypt said. "Could have been hours, certainly no more than a day or two" before terror attacks were to begin throughout Belgium, van der Sypt told reporters of the alleged plot. JUST WATCHED Belgian police foil 'imminent' terror attacks Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Belgian police foil 'imminent' terror attacks 03:16 Besides the two killed, 17 have been arrested in the investigation -- 13 in the Belgium raids and four others in France, including two who were detained while trying to cross from France into Italy, van der Sypt's office said. Thursday night's raids were a dramatic culmination in a chain of Belgian police investigations into an alleged terror cell that included people who had fought in Syria, van der Sypt said. The U.S. intelligence community knew for weeks of the plot in Belgium and was sharing critical information with Belgian authorities, several U.S. officials told CNN. The officials wouldn't say precisely what they knew, how much they knew, and when they knew it. There is concern those details could signal other militants planning other potential attacks. One U.S. official told CNN's Barbara Starr the entire "developing plot was being monitored and watched." The official said, "We were aware. We were tracking this," and added, "'There is a high probability other attacks were being planned" before the plots were disrupted by the raids. A European security source told CNN that Belgian authorities arrested two men returning from Syria over the weekend and interrogated them, then decided to act quickly. The United States was aware of the timing of the Belgian moves, U.S. officials said. 'Everybody can hear it' Verviers is a little off the beaten path in eastern Belgium, the last stop before open fields and forest. Like many European towns, it's densely built. People live close together. The whole city must have heard the explosions and the gunfight, according to resident Frederic Hausman. "I can hear it. Everybody can hear it," he said. "In this little city, everybody heard the sound." From his window, he could see police firing assault rifles at a nearby house. Hausman recorded the assault on the house and posted it on YouTube. JUST WATCHED Belgian officials: 'Major terrorist attacks' thwarted Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Belgian officials: 'Major terrorist attacks' thwarted 02:11 The two who were killed were of North African descent, the Western intelligence source said. Verviers is home to many people with Moroccan roots, according to a study by the nearby University of Liege . Immigrants make up more than 11% of the population, with the largest contingent from other European countries. Moroccans are the next-largest group. Verviers is about 69 miles (111 kilometers) east-southeast of Brussels and 200 miles (322 kilometers) northeast of Paris. Police followed trail of suspects The raids came as authorities monitored people returning from Syria, said Werts, the prosecutors' spokesman. Police had arrested, questioned and searched Neetin Karasular, a Belgian suspected arms dealer allegedly aligned with ISIS and suspected of providing weapons to Amedy Coulibaly, the man who attacked a Paris kosher supermarket. Karasular knew Coulibaly's wife, Hayat Boumeddiene, who is also a terror suspect in France. Karasular's lawyer Michel Bouchat said his client was facing local firearms charges and had no connection with any jihadi groups or terror plans. In the process, police turned up names that solidified their suspicions about known persons, the Western intelligence source said. Last weekend, they arrested two more men at the Charleroi airport -- as they returned from Syria -- squeezed them for information then decided to act quickly, the source said. "The investigation made it possible to determine that the group was about to carry out major terrorist attacks in Belgium imminently," Belgian prosecutor spokesman Werts said. Authorities believed the suspects in Thursday's gun battle had been providing documents and weapons to men returning from Syria, the intelligence source said. A senior Belgian counterterrorism official told CNN that the alleged terror cell is believed to have received instructions from ISIS. Arrests in France, Germany Belgium is putting 150 troops on standby for deployment in light of the increase in the country's terror threat level, Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon said Friday. It has not been determined where they will be deployed, he said. The threat level will stay at three (with four being the highest) for one month, Prime Minister Charles Michel told CNN affiliate RTL . "It is a way to mobilize all forces to raise security," added. Additionally, two people suspected of involvement with the alleged Verviers suspects were detained while trying to cross from France into Italy through the Frejus tunnel, a spokesman for Belgium's federal prosecutor's office said Friday. Belgium is asking France to extradite those two, said the spokesman, who would not disclose the suspects' names or nationalities. In neighboring Germany, police in at least two cities arrested men they accuse of supporting jihadis in Syria. These suspects did not appear to be planning homegrown attacks, German authorities said. JUST WATCHED ISIS: Picking up where al Qaeda left off Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH ISIS: Picking up where al Qaeda left off 02:03 The fear of terror was already high in Western Europe after the bloodbaths in France that followed multiple threats of attacks from ISIS -- the Islamist group fighting to establish what it calls its Islamic caliphate in Iraq and Syria -- and al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. AQAP has claimed responsibility for the Paris slayings. Men claiming to be ISIS terrorists and speaking French promised new attacks in France, Belgium, Germany and Switzerland, in an online video found on Thursday. ISIS has said it would lash out at European countries participating in bombardments in the Middle East. More than 3,000 Europeans have left to fight in Syria in recent years. Authorities have long warned that those fighters could return and carry out attacks at home. British intelligence has also warned another Islamist group in Syria was planning "mass casualty attacks against the West," an apparent reference to the Khorasan group. The Belgian raids came against the background of a terror trial of dozens of men suspected of recruiting jihadists or trying to go to Syria to fight. An Antwerp court was to return verdict this week but postponed it due to the Paris attacks.

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