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When Julia walked out of our hospital without full knowledge of her prognosis, I had been derelict in my duty as her physician. I was fully aware that my job was to have “open and honest” communication with her, in a “patient centered” manner. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t bring myself to tell this young mother that she was going to die. It could be that I over-identified with my patient, or that I let my emotions get the better of me, or that I was an out-and-out wimp. No doubt all played some role, but I wasn’t the only doctor who struggled with the truth. Everyone responsible for her care — intern, resident, medical attending, cardiology fellow, cardiology attending — independently fell short of the Charter on Medical Professionalism. Young, old, male, female, touchy-feely, egotistical, blustery alike — not one of us could say those words to her face. When it comes to medical error, doctors have an even harder time coming out with the truth. There is, of course, the well-founded fear of malpractice litigation. Momentum is growing for legislation to protect doctors who acknowledge error and apologize. But beyond the fear of malpractice, there is the larger issue of shame at failing at your job, of letting a patient down, that makes you want to hide. It took me two decades to speak publicly about my first major medical error. I was one week out of my internship at the time, and my patient was admitted nearly comatose with what is called diabetic ketoacidosis, from a severe lack of insulin. After we’d brought him back from the brink and could finally turn off the intravenous short-acting insulin drip, I committed the cardinal error of neglecting to inject him with long-acting insulin. He promptly barreled downhill again. A senior resident rescued him before he had a cardiac arrest, then screamed her lungs out at me in front of the entire emergency room staff. 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. I never mustered the courage to tell the patient what happened. So great was my shame that it was 20 years before I could begin the “open and honest” communication that the situation deserved. Are doctors simply cowards? Do our own existential fears paralyze us? Human beings, by nature, prefer to avoid horrible truths, and denial may be our most powerful survival skill. Doctors are no more nor less immune to this, and to the basic human drives of empathy and pity, than anyone else. By now, even the most hard-core, old-school doctors recognize that emotions are present in medicine at every level, but the consideration of them rarely makes it into medical school curriculums, let alone professional charters. Typically, feelings are lumped into the catch-all of stress or fatigue, with the unspoken assumption that with enough gumption these irritants can be corralled. The emotional layers in medicine, however, are far more pervasive. Emotions have been described by the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio as the “continuous musical line of our minds, the unstoppable humming ...” This basso continuo thrums along, modulating doctors’ actions and perceptions, while we make a steady stream of conscious medical decisions that have direct consequences for our patients. Emotions can overshadow clinical algorithms, quality control measures, even medical experience. We may never fully master them, but we must at least be conscious of them and of how they can sometimes dominate the symphony of our actions. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Julia did eventually get the truth of her diagnosis, at her first post-discharge clinic visit. The actual moment was — as expected — horrible. It took several tries for us to get the words on the table. Voices choked, eyes brimmed — and that was just the doctors. Julia was more stoic. She nodded slowly, very slowly, as she pieced it all together. The quiet that followed felt like a licking of the wounds for all parties. All wasn’t sunny and optimistic, but there was a sense of reality, and now the planning could begin. Why did it take us so long to tell her? It might have been that we doctors first had to come to terms with the diagnosis ourselves — however selfish that might sound. Perhaps, unconsciously, we were trying to give Julia breathing room. But all this may have been mere justification to make us feel better. The fact is that we didn’t tell her the whole truth, up front, as we should have. I’d like to say that I’d handle the situation better now, with another decade of clinical experience under my belt, but I’m not sure. Today, at least, when my medical team faces the prospect of giving bad news or admitting a medical error, I try to help my students and interns pay attention to the basso continuo running underneath. I try to point out when our emotions might be impeding us, and when, as sometimes happens, they might be assisting us in caring for our patients. Doctors can’t — and shouldn’t — eradicate the emotions that grease the wheels of patient care. But being alert to them can help us minimize where we fall short, and maximize where we succeed.
MoonEx aims to scour moon for rare materials The Silicon Valley start-up is building machines with NASA scientists that are designed to search the lunar surface for precious metals and scarce metallic elements. "From an entrepreneur's perspective, the moon has never truly been explored," said Naveen Jain, chairman and company co-founder. "We think it could hold resources that benefit Earth and all humanity." While there's no guarantee the moon is flush with these materials, MoonEx officials think it may be a "gold mine" of so-called rare earth elements. The private company Moon Express Inc., or MoonEx, is building robotic rovers alongside scientists at NASA's Ames Research Center northwest of San Jose. MoonEx's machines are designed to look for materials that are scarce on Earth but found in everything from a Toyota Prius car battery to guidance systems on cruise missiles. A team of prominent Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are shooting for the moon with a new private venture aimed at scouring the lunar surface for precious metals and rare metallic elements. The Mountain View start-up is made up of about 25 employees, including former NASA engineers. The founding team has its roots in the Internet world. Jain amassed a fortune founding data-aggregating website InfoSpace Inc. Another MoonEx co-founder, Barney Pell, is the head architect behind Microsoft Corp.'s Bing Internet search engine. Beyond its founders' personal wealth and other investments, MoonEx has received a NASA contract that could be worth up to $10 million. The company is among several teams hoping to someday win the Google Lunar X Prize competition, a $30-million race to the moon in which a privately-funded team must successfully place a robot on the moon's surface and have it explore at least 1/3 of a mile. It also must transmit high definition video and images back to Earth before 2016. The idea of exploiting the moon's resources for private gain is not likely to be a concern, Jain said. The United States, he said, "has already brought back moon rocks to our country without any other country fighting war over it." "I also think that the moon will be treated no differently than the international water in our oceans," he added. "In this case, no one really owns the water but any company or country can mine the resources … from the international water as long as they follow certain safety/moral guidelines." Jain also noted that "there is strong legal precedent and consensus of 'finders keepers' for resources that are liberated through private investment, and the same will be true on the moon. You don't have to own land to have ownership of resources you unlock from it. Moon Express will use existing precedents of peaceful presence and exploration set by the U.S. government 40 years ago." The start-up is on firm financial footing, Jain said, notable because a moon launch would require massive investment. In the coming months, MoonEx hopes to stage a public demonstration of its hardware. "MoonEx should be ready to land on the lunar surface by 2013," Jain said. "It's our goal to be the first company there and stay there." william.hennigan@latimes.com
Starting very soon the comic will start needing background characters/ fill. I have set up a patreon pledge that will allow you to either receive a commission or BG character. I will link your DevArt or other website for your OC in the comic description as well. : : DarkOath© Tabbyderp Vesper is seen playing a pretend game with a clueless squirrel, and much to her excitement, Faeron and Elawen are back, with her attention specifically focused on Ela for some reason.Hello Humans! I'm glad to finally post the next page. I went through a bit of development to improve characters and environment. Like I said, this is a constantly evolving comic, with each page homing in on the final product. But anyway, say hello to Vesper! She is named after my newborn niece, who I adore dearly, so I made a slight last minute change to her name (originally Alya). She'll serve a unique purpose in the pages to come.Thanks to SoggerG (yoskater13) for editing support
I'm a total Star Wars geek who loves Pop figures. My Santa picked up on that pretty much immediately, and even forgave me for slacking on providing an updated wish list. He has messaged me every step of the way (isn't that sweet?), paid for 1 day shipping, and had them gift wrapped in really pretty cloth gift bags (did I mention how sweet he was?). So on to the gifts... My daughters always help me open anything I receive for the exchanges, but I tortured them a bit by making them wait until after supper. Don't think I've ever seen them put their dishes away faster! On to the Amazon box and the pretty gift bags inside. Attached were funny little notes that only a Star Wars fan would understand (see photos... loved that part!). Inside were K-2SO and C-3PO bobbleheads! Perfect for my expanding collection that I keep on a bookcase by my desk at work. Love them!! Couldn't be happier with this exchange. Thanks Simon, you're the best!! Tell your girlfriend that I say hi and love the bobbleheads!
Howdy. Read this entire document before trying any of the steps.'Having sex with a car'. The phrase is sometimes misunderstood tomean sex in a car, and sometimes is greeted with skepticism. How can youhave sex with a car? The short answer is, up the tailpipe.The long answer is much more involved, including techniques,precautions and cautions all designed to get you maximum satisfaction fromscrewing a car. Our first subject will be the tailpipe.The tailpipe of the car is, of course, where the exhaust comes out.So in this sense, the tailpipe is an anus.First we will deal with some cautions you should know about.In most cars, the edge of the tailpipe is sharp. You shouldtherefore exercise caution when doing anything with the tailpipe.If the engine has been on for a long (or even a relatively short)period of time, the tailpipe will be hot. Do not do anything with thetailpipe hot. Wait until the tailpipe has cooled off. The tailpipe willcool off faster than the engine, so you don't have long to wait. I callscrewing the car while the tailpipe is hot, "fucking the car hot".Never fuck a car hot. I did, once. Once.The exhaust from a car contains poisonous gases. One of these,carbon monoxide, is a slow killer. Carbon monoxide takes a long time tobe flushed out of the body, so it can build up to toxic levels withoutyour knowing it.Never do anything with the tailpipe while the engine is on!Now, the first thing you should note is that the inside of thetailpipe is usually coated with soot. This is the usual particulate debrisof combustion. Before having sex with the car, clean the inside of thetailpipe with soap and warm water, as far as you can go. Keep in mindthe possibly sharp edge of the tailpipe.Now that the tailpipe is clean, you are ready to pleasure and bepleasured by the car.You can do this two ways. One way doesn't require any equipment.The other way (which is much more rewarding) does.The first way is to fuck the car 'raw'. This does NOT mean stuffingyour cock into the tailpipe and thrusting. This would hurt (remember thesharp edges?) and be no fun anyway, since the tailpipe doesn't flex.What you should do is get behind the car and start jerking off.When you are about to come, carefully put your cock into the tailpipe ofthe car, and then come. But, in the heat of passion, you must stillremember the sharp edge. Even putting just the head into the tailpipe isgood enough. Just make VERY sure that you don't hurt yourself.Now, this assumes that you can get your cock into the tailpipein the first place. Some tailpipes are too small, and then, well, you'reout of luck. Find someone who has a car with a bigger tailpipe.The best way to have sex with a car, however, is not raw. Youneed the following equipment:1 Dekhyr Dragon Industries (Teledildonics Division) Sexual Interface Unit.If you don't have one, you can get one through me (Dekhyr, [email protected] ) or you can attempt to build one yourself. The SIU isessentially a tube made of foam rubber, rolled such that the inner diameteris slightly smaller than the diameter of your erect penis. When lubricated,it acts as a sexual interface to whatever you attach it to. In this case,it is inserted into the tailpipe of the car you want to have sex with.To build one, you will need black electrical tape, a 'Koozie',a can of soda, and a hefty pair of scissors. A 'Koozie' is a foam rubberdingumbob in which you put a soda. It keeps the soda cold and your handwarm. Being a 'give-away' item, you usually can't find it anywhere. I'vehad reports of finding them in liquor stores. I've actually found a gooddeal of them at a local discount-type store.There are two kinds, thick walled and thin walled. I've only beenable to find the thick kind; the thin kind I've only been able to getthrough an advertising company. The thin kind is particularly good withtailpipes not much bigger than your cock.Here is what you need to do:1. Measure the circumference of your erect penis. This is most easily doneby wrapping a string around your cock (around the shaft, not the head).2. Take the bottom of the Koozie out. You should be left with a tube.3. Cut the wall of the tube from top to bottom so that you are left witha slab of foam rubber which refuses to stay straight.4. Now, carefully cut away material parallel to the first cut until youcan put the ends together making a smaller tube, and such that the innercircumference of the tube is slightly smaller (say, by 1/2" or so) thanthe circumference of your shaft.5. Take a piece of electrical tape. Hold the ends of the tube flush.Place the tape on the cut on the outside to secure the tube in themiddle. Now repeat with more tape until the cut is secure. Wrap tapearound the whole thing.6. Drink the soda. With the scissors, CAREFULLY cut off the top and bottomof the aluminum can. CAREFULLY cut a strip of aluminum lengthwise fromthe can, about 3/4" to 1" wide.7. Coat the strip with electrical tape. This is to prevent the edges fromcutting.8. Attach the strip to the tube at one end:9. 'Test drive' it! Lube it up with KY (try not to use oil-basedlubricant; you may want to use it with more than one person, and thenyou'll be using a condom).Now, stuff the SIU up the tailpipe and lube well.You now have several options for fucking your car. One major oneis from behind. If the car is automatic shift, then put the car in Parkand remove the emergency brake. This will enable the car to rock back andforth to your thrusts. If the car is manual transmission, chock the wheelswell, remove the emergency brake, and put the car into gear -- the higherthe gear, the more play the car has. This will also enable the car torock. Kneel behind the car. Now thrust in.You may not have any trouble with heavier manual transaxled cars,since you may not have to chock the wheels -- the weight of the car willprevent the engine from 'topping out' and moving the car away. Lightermanual transaxled cars are more likely to be topped out by your thrusts,so chocking is necessary. In general, the lower the gear, the lessplay, but the more difficult it is to top the engine out.Another major method is to lie down under the car, your upper bodyunder the car, and thrust into the car. It is difficult, though, to makethe car rock unless you push on the closest rear tire.I've also had some success leaning on my side and fucking the carsideways.More than one person can fuck a car if it has more than onetailpipe on opposite sides of the car. This will also make the car rockfaster and harder since the energy of two people will add.NEVER fuck a car with the engine on. Firstly, you will be breathinghard, and that means you can poison yourself faster. Secondly, the carwill either stall (because there's something blocking the tailpipe, heh)-- causing damage to the engine -- or will force the exhaust out. Andyou have an idea where the exhaust will go, I trust. Ouch! Fatality City!If you do not use a condom and you come inside the car, ten orfifteen minutes of driving will kill off anything inside. So you do nothave to worry about STDs from that. What you will have to worry about,though, is the SIU itself. It is not being sterilized. Therefore, if youuse an SIU you think is going to be used by someone else, use a condom,and use KY jelly or some other water-based lubricant. Remember -- oilrots condoms, and so will an oil-based lubricant.Enjoy your cars!--Dekhyr Dragon
Ah, 2017 … the year of endless celebration. It is the country's 150th birthday. It is 100 years since Canada came into nationhood at the Battle of Vimy Ridge and 100 years since the man who painted Canada, Tom Thomson, went missing. It's 100 years since the federal government brought in that "temporary" income tax that no one today remembers, 100 years since the NHL was founded … and 25 years since the modern-day version of the Ottawa Senators played their very first game. That the Senators are still kicking in the spring of 2017 is testament to a different sort of survival. Like the century-ago Income War Tax Act, no one really saw it coming and no one expected it to last as long as it has. Story continues below advertisement When the NHL announced that it was taking in two new expansion teams in 1990, the Tampa Bay Lightning and the Ottawa Senators, the reaction was nothing short of incredulous. If Canada was going to get another franchise, it should have gone to Hamilton. Hamilton, after all, had the rink, the financial backing and the surrounding population. The only hitch, apparently, was that the Hamilton backers wanted to pay the $50-million expansion fee in instalments. The Ottawa bid was the brainchild of three young men – Bruce Firestone, Randy Sexton and Cyril Leeder – who conjured up their dream over a few cold ones after a beer-league hockey game. They would build a rink, they said, and a town would grow up around it. They didn't ask for instalments – then again, they didn't have the money. Bruce Firestone (right) is joined by Frank Finnigan, a former Ottawa Senator who scored the Stanley Cup-winning goal in 1926, at an event to promote the bid for an NHL franchise in Ottawa, in this Sept. 6, 1989 photo. FRANK GUNN/Canadian Press No matter, the NHL, which has never been known for foresight, embraced the young men and their wacky ideas and the Ottawa Senators were reborn, back in Ottawa and the NHL after a 58-year hiatus. There were problems from the start, and not just financial troubles. The NHL held an expansion draft – Lightning co-founder Phil Esposito likened it to being offered "snow in winter" – and the inexperienced management team screwed up its choices so often that "Ottawa apologizes" became a punchline that to this day requires no explanation in hockey circles. They put together a team, however, and, miraculously, they won their very first game, defeating the Montreal Canadiens (who would win that year's Stanley Cup, the most recent Canadian team to do so) 5-3. "Maybe Rome was built in a day," read the headline in the Ottawa Citizen. Well, Rome wasn't and certainly the Senators weren't. They lost their next game, against the Quebec Nordiques, 9-2. They then flew to Boston, boarded a bus and got hopelessly lost in the fog. It was the perfect metaphor for a team that would go on to set records for futility. Story continues below advertisement But that doesn't mean they weren't entertaining. They were, in fact, hockey's equivalent of the '62 Mets – baseball fans may remember manager Casey Stengel saying his best fielders were sitting in the upper deck – and the stories from that first 1992-93 season are today the stuff of legend. When young defenceman Darren Rumble, previously a minor-leaguer, showed up for the first plane ride out of town, he carried his own pillow and bag of sandwiches. Told by one of the broadcasters that he should sign up for Aeroplan, he asked what that was. When the travel-points program was explained to him, he went wide-eyed and exclaimed, "If they'd had Bus-o-Plan when I was in the minors, I could go around the world." Another rookie, Darcy Loewen of Sylvan Lake, Alta., became a fan favourite for his wild style of play – the other players called him Taz – and even his mother said he had "cement hands." Veteran Andrew McBain, a fine player, became the only Senator to make the ESPN "plays of the year" – by falling down the steps leading to the old Chicago Stadium dressing room. Alain Vigneault, now coach of the New York Rangers that the Senators are facing in the Eastern Conference semi-final, was then an assistant coach with the Senators. To take his mind off the team's woes, he took up running. By Christmas he had dropped 30 pounds. The Senators had to fire their mascot for "abusive conduct," only to have him run off with the car they'd rented for him. They had burglars break into their practice facility and make off with all their video equipment but the game tapes. "Burglars with taste," said assistant coach E.J. McGuire. The Senators were also going broke. Story continues below advertisement The first financial saviour was entrepreneur Rod Bryden, who finished building the team's new rink in a cornfield on the western edge of Ottawa and who was immediately billed by the province for the building of an overpass so fans could get to the games. Bryden ran into multiple other roadblocks, from a government directive that civil servants could not accept free tickets to a shrinking dollar. At one point, in early 2000, the financial situation was so dire that the federal government was willing to step in and put up a $20-million support plan for struggling Canadian clubs. The backlash was so livid, particularly in media-centre Toronto, where the Maple Leafs had no need of charity, that the government quickly backed off its offer. Meanwhile, the Senators as a hockey team had been improving dramatically. So desperate had one coaching regime become, late in 1995, that the staff had assembled candles and a table and were on the verge of holding a seance before one of the assistant coaches, a deeply religious man, panicked and backed out. But in early 1996 they had their new arena, a new general manager in Pierre Gauthier and a new coach in Jacques Martin. They also had a rising young star in Daniel Alfredsson who – to give the original managers full credit – had been plucked 133rd overall in the 1994 draft. Then-Senators captain Daniel Alfredsson pursues the puck during a game against the Minnesota Wild in 2009. ERIC MILLER/REUTERS Beginning with Alfredsson, who would serve as team captain from 1999 to 2013, the Senators slowly gained respectability on the ice. Off the ice, the struggles continued – the club eventually declared bankruptcy under Bryden's watch and was purchased by current owner Eugene Melnyk in 2003 – but on ice the team eventually reached the Stanley Cup final in 2007, losing to the Anaheim Ducks. That may not, in fact, not have been the best Senators team ever. The team would have been formidable had NHL owners not locked out its players for the 2004-05 season. As well, the Senators seemed Stanley Cup bound in 2006 before star goaltender Dominik Hasek injured his groin at the Turin Winter Games. The Senators slowly faded after the apex of 2007. They launched a complete rebuild in 2011 under then general manager Bryan Murray. It was a low, often painful process. The Senators missed the playoffs two of the previous three seasons and only made them in 2015 thanks to the incredible play of unknown goaltender Andrew (The Hamburglar) Hammond. The magic did not last, however, as earlier this year Hammond was placed on waivers by the Senators, the team having decided to go with regular Craig Anderson and new backup Mike Condon. That the Senators are one of only two Canadian teams – along with the Edmonton Oilers – to win the first round of the 2017 Stanley Cup playoffs was a bit of a surprise. Much more had been expected of other Canadian teams, particularly the Montreal Canadiens, but the Senators dispatched the Boston Bruins in six games and are currently tied at two games each with the New York Rangers, who put the Canadiens out in the first round. Erik Karlsson battles through Rangers players in Game 1 of second round play in the 2017 playoffs. Jana Chytilova/Freestyle Photo/Getty Images It has been a year of tremendous change for the Senators. A year ago, it seemed their future in Ottawa was finally a lock when the National Capital Commission chose Melnyk's group for a $3.5-billion redevelopment project on LeBreton Flats. If all goes according to plan, the team will eventually be playing downtown, where critics have long said it should have been in the first place. Murray, who has valiantly battled cancer the past many months, stepped aside to allow his assistant, Pierre Dorion, to take on the duties of general manager. Dorion hired a new coach, Guy Boucher, to replace the fired Dave Cameron, and Boucher brought a new, defence-first system. Today's Senators may have the most entertaining player in their history to watch – defenceman Erik Karlsson – but Boucher's overall style of play did not immediately capture the public imagination. Empty seats early in the season infuriated Melnyk to a point that he cleaned house, firing several of the franchise's top executives including co-founder Leeder. One of those let go, chief financial officer Peter O'Leary, has launched legal proceedings against Melnyk that have yet to reach court. Former Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment executive Tom Anselmi was brought in to run the operation. Dorion had a good rookie year. He traded young forward Mika Zibanejad to the Rangers for veteran Derick Brassard, who turned out to be a pivotal player in the Boston series. He brought in depth forwards such as Alex Burrows and Tommy Wingels and Viktor Stalberg. For a fifth-round pick, he pried Condon away from the Pittsburgh Penguins and Condon's arrival proved fortuitous, as Anderson was often lost to the team over the season so he could be with his wife, Nicholle, who has been battling cancer. Condon was often superb in relief. Few, if any, would have thought last fall that the team would still be playing on May 6, with the puck about to drop on what is now a best-two-out-of-three series with the Rangers, the winner to move on to the conference final and the winner of that to play for the Stanley Cup. The Senators would be a long shot to reach the final, but it is not as though they have never raised the Cup. In their early years, they won it 11 times. But the last, for those keeping track of anniversaries, was 90 years ago.
Hey there! We agree that the new player experience needs more work. We've been tweaking it for years and have seen significant increases in retention among new players since launch. Most new players start playing against the AI and then take on other players in Casual. The Casual matchmaker has gone through a lot of iteration and new player winrates have increased by ~15%. Ranked is a different story. Ranked is becoming more difficult for new players over time. I spoke about some of the challenges we are currently facing with our ladder system before I left for paternity leave here: [See quote below - Ben on Ladder] Something you may not realize is that new players actually play in a seperate matchmaking pool for their first several sessions. In Casual, we match them entirely against other brand new players with similarly-sized collections. That all said, we think the introductory missions up through Illidan feel pretty good, and after that it still feels like a bit of a cliff. It's definitely something we're aware of. Thanks for your feedback, and for the feedback of everyone else who's been chiming in on this over the last few months.
Matt Slocum/Associated Press One month before pitchers and catchers report, we've still got several things to settle… 1. What's Up with Cespedes? While Justin Upton has surfaced, it seems Yoenis Cespedes is stuck somewhere on Mars with Matt Damon. Golfing, maybe. What gives? Five months ago, Cespedes was emerging as a last-minute National League MVP candidate. He joined the New York Mets at the trade deadline and immediately rocket-launched them toward the World Series. Today, Cespedes is more invisible than Punxsutawney Phil. Will he emerge this week? Next week? By, ahem, Groundhog Day (Feb. 2 for all you non-believers)? Jake Roth-USA TODAY Sports The icing of Cespedes is freeze-drying into perhaps the winter's biggest story. While Upton found a soft landing in Detroit on a six-year, $132 million deal, the man who hit a combined 35 homers with 105 RBI and a .328 on-base percentage in Detroit and New York last summer continues to scan Craigslist. For one thing, Cespedes last summer landed at the wrong place at the wrong time. He probably could have parlayed his second-half World Series charge into untold riches in nearly any other market. Popular demand would have pressured the club to keep him. But in New York, where Mets ownership has been off balance since the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme, the Mets continue to toss nickels around like one of George Halas' (Mike Ditka's?) manhole covers. "The Mets are a debacle right now," one agent told Bleacher Report. "It's a shame that family still owns the team." The Mets telegraphed at season's end the fact that they probably wouldn't be players for Cespedes on a long-term deal, so their lack of engagement this winter is not surprising. Most projections going into this winter pegged Cespedes for roughly a six-year deal around $140 million, which would be just a bit more than Upton got from Detroit this week. But other than a sudden interest by Baltimore last week, there hasn't been much noise around Cespedes. And the Orioles' interest in hindsight appeared to be simply a maneuver to roust slugger Chris Davis, who agreed with the Orioles on a seven-year, $161 million deal over the weekend. One major league executive believes clubs like Cespedes more on a short-term deal than on a multiyear contract because of concern with how he will produce long-term. The fact that Cespedes has played for four teams in the past four years also adds intrigue. "The pattern has been real good initially, then some form of backing up as it goes along," an American League executive told Bleacher Report. Lenny Ignelzi/Associated Press "When this guy is engaged, he's a terrific player. When he is not, he lacks the effort on defense and the at-bats aren't as good. He has been streaky, which is not abnormal for power hitters, but the at-bats weren't as good the longer he was somewhere." After Cespedes hit .287/.337/.604 with 17 homers and 44 RBI in just 57 games with the Mets last summer to lead them to the NL East title, his autumn turned weird. He became embroiled in a mini-controversy on the day of Game 4 of the NL Championship Series when, after he left the game with a sore left shoulder, it was revealed that he was seen playing golf in Chicago the morning of the game. Then he left Game 5 of the World Series in severe pain after fouling a ball off his left knee. Matt Slocum/Associated Press As for the golf, it turned out that it was business as usual for Cespedes. He's become hooked on the game, playing often during the season, to the point where Mets hitting coach Kevin Long last summer would ask Cespedes when he arrived at the park whether he played golf that day. And if he had, Long smiled. "If he played golf, most of the time he hits a home run," Long told the Wall Street Journal. But the autumn issues may have left a lasting memory that carried into winter negotiations as well. "Obviously, how things went in the playoffs didn't help," the AL executive said. "Taking himself out of the clincher with the Cubs early in the game, then [being] seen in the dugout with goggles around his neck wasn't a good look." Recent industry speculation included the Tigers, but they opted for Upton. The Orioles are out after signing Davis. Jae C. Hong/Associated Press The Los Angeles Angels clearly need a left fielder. Though owner Arte Moreno has steadfastly maintained he prefers to remain under the luxury-tax threshold of $189 million, if Cespedes is to get a monster contract, the Halos are one of the few organizations left that could afford it. On the other hand, Albert Pujols already is weighing down the franchise with a long-term deal, and they just got out from under another bad contract in Josh Hamilton, so there could be some aversion to romancing Cespedes long-term. The St. Louis Cardinals, after losing Jason Heyward, have a need. So do the Houston Astros. And Cespedes would bolster a Chicago White Sox lineup big-time. The Washington Nationals, who struck late for ace Max Scherzer last January, also are thought to be considering a similar late-winter strike this year for Cespedes. "There are a lot of yellow flags around him," the executive said. "Not the dark red ones, but caution flags. "I don't think he is a star. He's a very good major-league talent. But he disappears too often." He has absolutely disappeared this winter. When he will re-emerge has become the most interesting question of all. 2. Mike Ilitch Does It Again Denis Poroy/Getty Images Justin Upton can be an impact bat in the middle of the order, and if Victor Martinez, J.D. Martinez and Miguel Cabrera can stay healthy, the Tigers have a chance to recapture the division title from Kansas City in an AL Central that gets more intriguing each week. Whether Upton does or doesn't work out, though, say this: Detroit's owner Mike Ilitch is the kind of owner every fan has to wish his or her team had. Year after year, Ilitch has laid out millions in pursuit of the one goal that continues to drive him, bringing a World Series title to Detroit for the first time since 1984. From Pudge Rodriguez to Miguel Cabrera to Justin Verlander to Prince Fielder to Jordan Zimmermann (and beyond), Ilitch has thrown money at one star after another. In that regard, he's reminiscent of the late Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, who poured every ounce of energy he had, year after year, into attempting to bring New York a Yankees World Series title. While teams in larger markets continue to do calisthenics to avoid going over the $189 million luxury-tax threshold (the Yankees, ironically, and the Angels, to name two), Ilitch thinks nothing of it. 3. Of Tanks and No Arms Race Michael Perez/Associated Press As we edge closer to the glorious sunshine and pitchers and catchers reporting to camps in Arizona and Florida, some serious questions are on the horizon in the National League. Mainly, spring training, that time of hope and optimism, isn't going to bring what it once brought to several National League clubs. And how damaging might that be to the integrity of the game? Friend Jayson Stark over at ESPN.com wrote a riveting piece on the subject last week, noting that at least four teams (Philadelphia Phillies, Cincinnati Reds, Milwaukee Brewers and Atlanta Braves) and possibly as many as six (Colorado Rockies and San Diego Padres) are shifting into, basically, non-compete mode while rebuilding. It was bad enough when the Houston Astros stripped things down to the studs and foundation a few years ago, losing at least 106 games in each of three consecutive seasons (2011-13). The Cubs caused some grumbling as well in the early years of the Theo Epstein regime, finishing fifth in the NL Central for five consecutive seasons. Now, with both the Cubs and Astros roaring back in 2015 and boasting some of the game's best young talent, enough other clubs appear to be following suit that baseball might wind up with an embarrassing situation sooner rather than later. "I think it's a problem for the sport," an executive for an American League contender told Stark, speaking of the NL. "I think the whole system is screwed up, because I think it actually incentivizes not winning. And that's a big issue going forward." At the very least, it is an issue baseball must closely watch. As things stand now, it's good to be a member of the NL Central and NL East—because only three of the five clubs in each of those divisions really are trying to compete in 2016. In the NL East, you've got the Mets, Marlins and Nationals on one side, while the Braves and Phillies are stripping things down. In the NL Central, you've got the Cardinals, Cubs and Pirates with chances to win, while the Brewers and Reds will resemble Triple-A outfits. Given that clubs face each other 19 times because of the unbalanced schedule, that's a lot of extra wins the front three clubs in each of those divisions will pick up. Enough, probably, to guarantee that the two NL wild-card teams likely will come from the East and the Central, not the NL West. Commissioner Rob Manfred told Stark that rebuilding is just part of the cyclical nature of the game. Dan Steinberg/Associated Press "Obviously, you don't want to have too many teams in a rebuilding cycle at one time in one league, and I accept that," Manfred said. "But the fact of the matter is, when you have 30 teams, it's not unusual that you have five or six in a rebuilding cycle. I think if you look back historically, that would not be a number that's out of line." That the Astros and Cubs had so much success with their dramatic rebuilds is to each of their credits, of course. It just becomes a problem if the rebuilding highways become gridlocked with copycats. 4. Where Have You Gone, Mariano Rivera? John Minchillo/Associated Press Yankees GM Brian Cashman says newly acquired flamethrower Aroldis Chapman will head into spring training as the team's closer, because that's where he adds "max value." However they divvy up the work, there's no question the Yankees should be awesome in the late innings with Chapman, Dellin Betances and Andrew Miller aboard. There's also no question that Mariano Rivera is becoming smaller and smaller in that rear-view mirror. As statistics whiz Bill Chuck points out, Chapman could give the Yankees their fifth different saves leader in the past five seasons in 2016: Rafael Soriano (42) in 2012 (the year Rivera missed most of the season with a knee injury), Rivera (44) in 2013, David Robertson (39) in 2014 and Andrew Miller (36) in 2015. 5. The World Champs Get Better Gregory Bull/Associated Press Make no mistake: Ian Kennedy is not David Price or Zack Greinke. It's not like the Kansas City Royals signed a guy who will become a favorite to win a Cy Young Award. But in agreeing to terms with Kennedy on a five-year, $70 million deal, the Royals unquestionably took a step in the right direction after losing Johnny Cueto to free agency. Kennedy is coming off a down season in San Diego but should be able to give Kansas City exactly what James Shields did a couple of years ago: a summer of 200 innings and a solid veteran rotation presence. He surrendered a career-high 31 homers last season, which is saying something given that he pitched some of his early years in hitter-friendly Arizona. But from that perspective, Kansas City is a good landing spot: Kauffman Stadium was the most difficult park in the American League to homer in last summer, surrendering an average of 1.60 homers per game. It's also hard not to look at Kennedy's splits last year and give him the benefit of the doubt that an Opening Day hamstring pull threw him off balance during the first half of 2015. Before the All-Star break, he went 4-9 with a 4.91 ERA and 20 homers allowed in 84.1 innings pitched in 16 starts. After the break, he went 5-6 with a 3.64 ERA and 11 homers allowed in 84 innings pitched. 6. Free-Agent Rankings Tony Gutierrez/Associated Press Here's my weekly take as agents bluster, suitors cluster and bean counters muster the courage to write those checks as the winter (gulp) deepens… 1. Yoenis Cespedes: A guy needs to know where to schedule his tee times this summer. 2. Dexter Fowler: C'mon, Joe Maddon will even write a letter of recommendation. 3. Howie Kendrick: The last second baseman the Dodgers jettisoned went on to win the NL batting title. But Kendrick is no Dee Gordon. 4. Yovani Gallardo: The leftover bin of starting pitchers remains pretty well stocked. 5. Doug Fister: One year ago, he was slated to be part of one of the greatest rotations in recent memory. Cough, cough. 7. Pete Rose in the Hall Gary Landers/Associated Press Yes, the news bulletin you saw Tuesday is true: Pete Rose is going to the Hall of Fame. The Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame. Not only that, the club will retire his No. 14 during the Reds' Hall of Fame Induction Weekend, June 24-26. Good for them, and good for MLB for allowing this to happen. While it is true that Rose is banned from the Baseball Hall of Fame for being on the game's suspended list, individual club Halls of Fame are a different, more localized version. They don't necessarily have to play by the same rules as they do in Cooperstown. Reds owner Bob Castellini said in a statement Tuesday that this will be "a defining moment in the 147-year history of this storied franchise. He is one of the greatest players to ever wear a Reds uniform and it will be an unforgettable experience watching him be honored as such." Incidentally, word of the honor did reach Cooperstown. And not everyone there is opposed to this, or even greater honors, for Rose: 8. The Mo-Man Reappears, Long Live the Mo-Man! JON HAYT/Associated Press There is only one Mo-Man, the long-retired Mike Morgan, who pitched for 12 teams (then a record) between 1978 and 2002. The fourth overall pick by Oakland in the 1978 draft, he went straight to the majors, never looked back and pretty much had a rubber arm the entire way through. I came across him in Minnesota when he was playing for the Twins and I was covering them. He had a very unique way of viewing the world and of speaking. What I most remember is when he had a poor start. He'd meet the media afterward, shrug and simply say, "Bob Seger, man." That was his code for one of Seger's most well-known songs: "Turn the Page." Yep, forget about a bad start, turn the page and get 'em next time. There were dozens more just like that. Now 56, Morgan has been gone for a while: When there was no interest in him following the 2002 season, he went home to Utah, hurt (not physically—his feelings were hurt) and went into a sort of self-exile. He reappeared at the Diamondbacks' fantasy camp last week. "I can still throw seven days a week," he told MLB.com's Steve Gilbert. "I can still throw the hammer [curveball]. It's not 12-to-6 anymore, it's 12-to-3. Four-seamers, two-seamers, sliders. "I still get guys asking me to throw the hammer so they can see it out of my hand. And I always tell them, 'Just tell me where to meet you and I'll come throw to you.'" 9. Farewell, Monte Irvin Mike Derer/Associated Press One of the first African-Americans to play in the majors and a mentor to the great Willie Mays, Monte Irvin passed away last week in Houston at the age of 96. A Hall of Famer as both a player and a person, Irvin spent three years in the Army during World War II and, as Commissioner Rob Manfred said last week, "was a true leader during a transformational era for our game." And, he said this, and amen, amen, amen: 9a. Rock 'n' Roll Lyric of the Week We're barely halfway through January and already 2016 has been painful. Last week we lost David Bowie, this week Glenn Frey. Though he's a little more known, you might say, for his great hits like "Tequila Sunrise" and "Peaceful Easy Feeling," there was a time, believe it or not, when Frey wanted to become a baseball broadcaster. Not only does he do so for a day here with Vin Scully in 1985, he gives a tremendous home run call: You left us way too soon, Glenn, but thanks for the words and music. "City girls seem to find out early "How to open doors with just a smile" — Eagles, "Lyin' Eyes" Scott Miller covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report. Follow Scott on Twitter and talk baseball.
I've been working in documentary film for the past few years, but this is my first opportunity to direct a film that I've written. The short is based on a true story told to me by a friend, and it's one that I think is equal parts hilarious and moving. The whole film takes place in a retirement community where John, a magazine writer, is going to visit Mastow, a complete stranger who is living in the home. I don't want to give away too much, but the reason for John's visit is pretty far from what you'd expect. The story is about being afraid to get old and learning to age with grace. It's about the ways in which losing people affects us. It's about connecting with people much older or younger than you are. Oh, and it's also a little bit about hallucinogens. At any rate, it's a story I very much believe in. This is something that I want to do right if I'm going to do it at all. Production value - from cinematography, to design, to score - is very important. I'm lucky to have some incredibly experienced and talented friends and colleagues here in Austin who have agreed to work on the film, so we've got an amazing crew committed to the project (many volunteering their time and expertise). That brings us to the fundraising part. First and foremost, good equipment is pretty darn expensive to rent. Our camera, for example, shoots a beautifully soft HD picture with tremendous color and depth...and it costs upward of $500/day. You add in lights, dolly, jib arm, sound equipment, and everything stacks up pretty quick. Then there are set costs, crew, and the entire post-production process from editing to color-correction to score. I feel as though having the crew and story that we do, we're 90% of the way to something really amazing - but that last 10% is as important as anything. With your help, I know we can make a beautiful short film - to play in festivals, online, and possibly end up on iTunes or somewhere similar. For me, personally, I feel like this is a huge step toward doing what I want to do with the rest of my life. Take a peek at the video for a little more info, and see the set and a few dress rehearsal stills with the actors! And thank you!!! Matt
by Sunny Hundal A growing number of East London citizens are being harassed by a (likely very small) group of religious fanatics calling themselves ‘The Muslim Patrol’. The men video themselves confronting people on the streets and ask them to throw away alcohol or tell women to cover up. In one video (below) they harass and abuse a man by calling him a “bloody fag” and tell him to leave from what they say is a ‘Muslim area’. The disgusting tactics are straight out of the play-book of the now banned group al-Muhajiroun, who also occasionally surface as ‘Muslims Against Crusaders’ and have been known to burn poppies on Remembrance Day, hold pickets against British soldiers returning from abroad and demonstrate in front of the US embassy. The group is also shunned from almost all British Mosques. East London Mosque released a statement last week condemning the men: Individuals claiming to be self-styled ‘Muslim patrols’ have been harassing members of the public on the streets of east London late at night, including outside our mosque after it has closed. They have anonymously uploaded their exploits to the internet. These actions are utterly unacceptable and clearly designed to stoke tensions and sow discord. We wholly condemn them. The East London Mosque is committed to building co-operation and harmony between all communities in this borough. The actions of this tiny minority have no place in our faith nor on our streets. The Mosque says they’ve also got in touch with the police to report incidents. For many activists the videos are reminiscent of a campaign last year by a group of men (very likely the same) who kept putting up homophobic stickers around East London. That campaign came to an abrupt end when 18 year old youth was arrested and found guilty. Videos uploaded by the ‘Muslim Patrol’ . (via @PatrickStrud, @bobchurchill and Tower Hamlets Watch) UPDATE: Thanks to @bashaa, a local imam from East London Mosque gave a sermon specifically criticising and addressing these incidents. [The story was first broken by The Commentator, and then the East London Advertiser.]
muaz@khaleejtimes.com Filed on September 15, 2015 \| Last updated on September 15, 2015 at 09.00 am Climber to bring Pakistani peaks on global community's wish-list As far as 'big' challenges go, Suzanne Al Houby has conquered it all. She holds the distinction of being the first Arab woman to climb the Mount Everest, Kilimanjaro, Mont Blanc, Elbrus, Toubkal, Aconcagua and Vinson. She is now eyeing the mountains of Pakistan. "I still haven't worked out the logistics for the climb in Pakistan but it will take place next year during the summer season. When I end up climbing the mountains in Pakistan, I am going to do it for a cause. I want to raise funds for some causes which will help the people there," she says. Al Houby returned from her second visit to Pakistan this week and she is hoping to get up, close and personal with the peaks during her next trip. "When I went there the first time, we couldn't go close enough to the mountains. There are many viewpoints and several peaks which offer beautiful views of the Himalayas. The view looks like heaven on earth. From all my travels, it is the most scenic view I have ever seen," Al Houby says. Her latest climbing mission hopes to bring the peaks of Pakistan in sight of the international climbing community. "What the media is saying is not what I saw there. People are welcoming and kind in Pakistan. They go out of their way to make you feel safe and secure. Everywhere I went, people were kind and supportive." When she isn't climbing mountains, Al Houby manages a day job as the CEO of Rahhalah Explorers, an adventure tourism outfitter. An avid nature-lover, Al Houby has a long list of accomplishments with many "first summits" to her name. "I am not driven by the heights of summits - it is the climb and journey which makes the experience worth it. Pakistan has the highest concentration of mountains and it has taken a hit because of the political unrest. "The international climbing community also shies away from coming here for expeditions. I want to bring back the climbers and trekkers to a country where the peaks still remain unexplored," she says. Originally from Jaffa, Palestine, Al Houby travelled to the US for her higher education before returning to live in the UAE. Having travelled to more than 100 destinations, Suzanne still plans to keep travelling. "I want to visit the north of the Arctic Circle and Scandinavian countries. One of my dreams is to chase the northern lights." muaz@khaleejtimes.com Muaz Shabandri Education reporter at Khaleej Times. Dabbles with technology, photography and design in free time. Talk to me food, education and good stories! Share More > Vote Click/tap here to subscribe to Khaleej Times news alerts on WhatsApp. Make sure you save the phone number under Contacts on your phone for uninterrupted service. ERROR: Macro /ads/dfp-ad-article-new is missing!
TV Broadcast Schedule Marquette University men's basketball fans will be get an exclusive look at the program's 2015 foreign tour to Italy and Switzerland this past August with the debut of Inside Marquette Basketball Friday afternoon on FS2. Produced by 3 Penny Films, Inc., the 30-minute program provides behind-the-scenes access to the travel party's journey, beginning with its arrival in Rome and concluding in scenic Lake Como. The program will debut on FS2 at 2 p.m. CT on Friday, Oct. 16 and will also air at 9 p.m. CT on Oct. 17 and on Oct. 19 at 2:30 a.m. WITI-TV in Milwaukee will feature the program at 5:30 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 24 in advance of its college football coverage that evening. FS Wisconsin, which carries a number of game broadcasts in 2015-16, is slated to show the program a total of 21 times Oct. 17 through Nov. 14. Coverage also continues on FOX College Sports Central. GoMarquette.com will include the feature beginning on Oct. 26 and it will also be added to the department's official YouTube channel (/muathletics).
Donna Brazile, interim chair of the Democratic National Committee, gestured as she left the stage at the Democratic National Convention in July. (Scott Audette/Reuters) Donna Brazile is not apologizing for leaking CNN debate questions and topics to the Hillary Clinton campaign during the Democratic primary. Her only regret, it seems, is that she got caught. “My conscience — as an activist, a strategist — is very clear,” the interim chair of the Democratic National Committee said Monday during a satellite radio interview with liberal activist and SiriusXM host Joe Madison. She added that “if I had to do it all over again, I would know a hell of a lot more about cybersecurity.” In other words, Brazile would have made sure that her improper disclosures — which prompted CNN to drop her as an analyst — would not show up in hacked emails published by WikiLeaks. The lesson, apparently, is to pick up the phone or perhaps meet John Podesta in a dark alleyway. Madison hardly objected. In fact, he said CNN should have expected this kind of thing. “The one thing folk need to understand at CNN, MSNBC and all of this: When you hire folk who are, as you say, the, you know — their responsibility is to their candidate and their party,” Madison said, “they're going to do whatever they can to win. That's just — that's the nature of the beast.” What a cynical view. Sure, Brazile is a longtime Democratic operative, but the network should have been able to trust that Brazile would care about the integrity of her employer's debates, too, and not abuse her position. Notice that Brazile said her conscience is clear “as an activist, a strategist.” She is basically confirming one of the most negative perceptions of political operations — that the guiding ethos is whatever it takes to win. According to this cutthroat code of conduct, she did the right thing by putting her party's front-runner above all else. [As CNN dumps Donna Brazile, questions about the value of partisan pundits] For journalists who believe it is time to purge cable news of partisan pundits, Monday's remarks by Brazile will only strengthen their resolve. She is suggesting that when operatives double as commentators, their true loyalties are in politics, not journalism, and they will try to use their positions in the media to advance their causes.
Last Wednesday the Ohio House of Representatives voted 69 to 15 to pass HB 234, a bill with numerous pro-gun measures, to Governor John Kasich for his signature. The bill is widely supported by Second Amendment advocates, and would reform the concealed carry process, legalize hunting with suppressors, and recognize handgun licenses from other states. “Our work today makes it easier for law-abiding citizens to exercise their right to bear arms while putting in safeguards—real safeguards—to keep people safe in Ohio,” Senator Joe Uecker (R-Miami Township) told Cleveland.com last Tuesday, when the bill was approved in the state Senate by a 24 to 6 vote. In addition to other provisions, the bill would reduce the number of mandatory training hours for a concealed carry license from 12 to eight. HB 234 will also throw out a rule that required concealed carry applicants to be a resident of Ohio for at least 45 days, and a resident of their county for 30 days. The bill would also bring Ohio into compliance with the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, so firearm purchasers do not have to undergo a separate NICS check if they already have a state handgun license. For hunters, however, the ability to use suppressors is perhaps the biggest news. The devices can significantly reduce the noise level of a gun shot. Last month Florida legalized the use of suppressors after a strong push from hunters, and in spite of opposition from gun control activists. Gun control groups have also criticized HB 234 over its concealed carry measures. The NRA praised the state for moving in a pro-gun direction. “The NRA thanks you for contacting your state legislators to help finally pass this comprehensive pro-gun legislation,” The NRA said in a statement on its Institute for Legislative Action website. “Please now contact Governor Kasich and politely ask him to sign HB 234 into law.” Image by user Augustas Didžgalvis on the Wikimedia Commons What's Your Reaction?
The best thing about DC’s new Midnighter series is that it doesn’t shy away from the gay hero’s personal life, exploring facets of the gay lifestyle that are rarely touched on in superhero comics. Writer Steve Orlando has fully embraced Midnighter’s homosexuality in his scripts, and moments like the hero going on a date with someone he met on Grindr or battling homophobia in Russia make this title stand out. It’s quickly become one of the highlights of the DC YOU campaign thanks to its fine balance of introspective character work and the pulse-pounding superhero action Midnighter is known for, and this week’s issue #3 continues to offer both as the hero faces off against the villainous Multiplex after hitting a nightclub with a few friends. Midnighter #3 features the return of artist ACO and after last month’s exceptional fill-in art from Alec Morgan, and this preview highlights the crisp detail and bold layouts that ACO (with ink assists by Hugo Petrus) brings to the title. The opening page is appropriately hectic as it sets up a fight between Midnighter and a villain that can duplicate himself to create an entire gang, and the flurry of small panels around Midnighter establishes just how outnumbered he is in this brawl. The layouts open up when the hero is at the club, creating a much more relaxed atmosphere when combined with Romulo Fajardo, Jr.’s pink and purple color palette, but by the final page of the preview, those busier layout return when Midnighter uses his superpowers to absorb the details in a house as he looks for a missing girl. (For more on Midnighter, read last month’s Big Issues on the second issue.) Advertisement Advertisement
DENVER -- Authorities are holding a man on suspicion of criminal mischief after someone threw a rock through a window at the Donald Trump campaign office in Denver, narrowly missing a 10-year-old child. According to police, Michael Ferrara, 33, is currently in custody in connection with the crime, CBS Denver reports. Michael Ferrara has been arrested by Denver police in connection to throwing a rock through the Trump’s campaign office. Denver Police Department via CBS Denver Police rushed to 18th and Clarkson just before 9 p.m. Friday where they found a rock thrown through the Trump campaign field office. The campaign office serves as the headquarters for Trump’s Denver team. A security officer with Trump’s campaign detained Ferrara until police arrived. About two dozens Trump volunteers and staff were inside making calls at the time. No one was hurt. Denver campaign co-chair Steve Barlock said the rock left a melon-sized hole in the window and the man fled. “He ran and one of our volunteers was across the street talking to an off-duty police officer. An armed security guard and the volunteer ran him down and captured him,” Barlock said. On-duty police responded from several blocks away and took the man into custody. No injuries were reported. Earlier in the day, someone painted graffiti on the same building. No arrests have been made in that case. Police are still searching for the person who painted graffiti at the Denver office of the Trump campaign CBS Denver Trump held a campaign rally scheduled in Denver on Saturday night. The graffiti and rock-throwing follows the firebombing of a Republican office in North Carolina last month.
CORDOBA, SPAIN — A Spanish man calmly drank beer with his mates in a bar with his murdered girlfriend’s head in a bag, according to newspaper reports. After leaving the bar on Sunday, the 34-year-old climbed an electrical tower, was hit by a shock and plunged 30 metres to the ground, dying that evening in hospital. According to a report in the ABC daily newspaper, citing witnesses, the man told friends in the bar in Cordoba, southern Spain, that he had decapitated his 30-year-old partner. But he was so calm they did not believe him, despite bloodstains on his shirt. “A while later when several customers left the bar and saw a pool of blood in the road, they immediately realised this was not a macabre joke. Horrified, they discovered a bag near the bar, inside of which was the victim’s head,” the ABC daily said. Police confirmed they had found the woman’s body with knife wounds, and that her suspected killer, identified only by his initials MRTR, had fallen from the electrical tower, later dying in a Cordoba hospital. Near the tower they found a knife believed to be the murder weapon, said a Cordoba region spokeswoman for the national police, Rosa Ortiz. Police were unable to provide details about the murder because they were interviewing witnesses and had yet to file a judicial report, expected on Wednesday, she said.
I identify as “selfie morality” the phenomenon of characterizing substantive disagreement or criticism as “oppression,” “aggression,” “bashing,” “hating,” “shaming,” or “bullying” without providing any substantive response to the criticism. Selfie morality is nothing but narcissism. And it is inherently speciesist. So, for example, when abolitionist vegans make a reasoned argument that the moral status of nonhuman animals requires recognition of veganism as a moral imperative, they are hit with the predictable chorus of welfarist whinging that such a position “shames” or “hates on” nonvegans. Think about this for a second. Those who are engaging in, or support violent, exploitative, or otherwise morally objectionable conduct involving nonhuman animals accuse those who oppose victimizing animals as “aggressive,” “hateful,” or “violent.” They seem to think that any reasoned criticism of their unreasoned position per se runs afoul of the principle of nonviolence. That is just unabashed narcissism. It says, in essence: “To hell with the animals; to hell with sound moral theory. The only thing that matters is my feelings and I don’t like being criticized.” Indeed, that is the sort of position that gives narcissism a bad name. Selfie moralists will often accuse people who have a reasoned moral position in favor of veganism as a moral baseline of being “cultists.” Think about that. The defining characteristic of a cult is forbidding rational thought. So who is being a “cultist”–the person who has a rationally defensible position, or the person whose only argument is, in effect: “You disagree with me. You are being violent. You are shaming me. I am on a ‘journey'”? Another manifestation of “selfie” morality: “Anyone who disagrees with me or does not acknowledge that I am awesome and important is a racist or a sexist.” Once again, we don’t look at the position being advanced. It’s all about the speaker and anything that is not liked by the speaker must be wrong. People are classified as morally good or morally bad based on the whims of the speaker. That is completely narcissistic. Selfie morality is the moral rot of the “animal movement.” ********** If you are not vegan, please go vegan. Veganism is about nonviolence. First and foremost, it’s about nonviolence to other sentient beings. But it’s also about nonviolence to the earth and nonviolence to yourself. If animals matter morally, veganism is not an option — it is a necessity. Anything that claims to be an animal rights movement must make clear that veganism is a moral imperative. The World is Vegan! If you want it. Learn more about veganism at www.HowDoIGoVegan.com. Gary L. Francione Board of Governors Distinguished Professor, Rutgers University ©2015 Gary L. Francione
There’s no question that quantum fluctuations play a crucial role in modern cosmology, as the recent BICEP2 observations have reminded us. According to inflation, all of the structures we see in the universe, from galaxies up to superclusters and beyond, originated as tiny quantum fluctuations in the very early universe, as did the gravitational waves seen by BICEP2. But quantum fluctuations are a bit of a mixed blessing: in addition to providing an origin for density perturbations and gravitational waves (good!), they are also supposed to give rise to Boltzmann brains (bad) and eternal inflation (good or bad, depending on taste). Nobody would deny that it behooves cosmologists to understand quantum fluctuations as well as they can, especially since our theories involve mysterious aspects of physics operating at absurdly high energies. Kim Boddy, Jason Pollack and I have been re-examining how quantum fluctuations work in cosmology, and in a new paper we’ve come to a surprising conclusion: cosmologists have been getting it wrong for decades now. In an expanding universe that has nothing in it but vacuum energy, there simply aren’t any quantum fluctuations at all. Our approach shows that the conventional understanding of inflationary perturbations gets the right answer, although the perturbations aren’t due to “fluctuations”; they’re due to an effective measurement of the quantum state of the inflaton field when the universe reheats at the end of inflation. In contrast, less empirically-grounded ideas such as Boltzmann brains and eternal inflation both rely crucially on treating fluctuations as true dynamical events, occurring in real time — and we say that’s just wrong. All very dramatically at odds with the conventional wisdom, if we’re right. Which means, of course, that there’s always a chance we’re wrong (although we don’t think it’s a big chance). This paper is pretty conceptual, which a skeptic might take as a euphemism for “hand-waving”; we’re planning on digging into some of the mathematical details in future work, but for the time being our paper should be mostly understandable to anyone who knows undergraduate quantum mechanics. Here’s the abstract: De Sitter Space Without Quantum Fluctuations Kimberly K. Boddy, Sean M. Carroll, and Jason Pollack We argue that, under certain plausible assumptions, de Sitter space settles into a quiescent vacuum in which there are no quantum fluctuations. Quantum fluctuations require time-dependent histories of out-of-equilibrium recording devices, which are absent in stationary states. For a massive scalar field in a fixed de Sitter background, the cosmic no-hair theorem implies that the state of the patch approaches the vacuum, where there are no fluctuations. We argue that an analogous conclusion holds whenever a patch of de Sitter is embedded in a larger theory with an infinite-dimensional Hilbert space, including semiclassical quantum gravity with false vacua or complementarity in theories with at least one Minkowski vacuum. This reasoning provides an escape from the Boltzmann brain problem in such theories. It also implies that vacuum states do not uptunnel to higher-energy vacua and that perturbations do not decohere while slow-roll inflation occurs, suggesting that eternal inflation is much less common than often supposed. On the other hand, if a de Sitter patch is a closed system with a finite-dimensional Hilbert space, there will be Poincaré recurrences and Boltzmann fluctuations into lower-entropy states. Our analysis does not alter the conventional understanding of the origin of density fluctuations from primordial inflation, since reheating naturally generates a high-entropy environment and leads to decoherence. The basic idea is simple: what we call “quantum fluctuations” aren’t true, dynamical events that occur in isolated quantum systems. Rather, they are a poetic way of describing the fact that when we observe such systems, the outcomes are randomly distributed rather than deterministically predictable. But when we’re not looking, a system in its ground state (like an electron in its lowest-energy orbital around an atomic nucleus) isn’t fluctuating at all; it’s just sitting there. And in de Sitter space — empty space with a positive cosmological constant — all of the fields are in their ground states. If we were to probe empty de Sitter space with a particle detector, it would certainly detect particles — but there are no particle detectors around, so in fact the quantum fields are sitting there quietly in a stationary state with no definite particle number. Therefore, these kinds of fluctuations aren’t “really happening.” To get into a bit more detail, there are two things going on here: a certain interpretation on the meaning of “quantum fluctuations,” and some claims about de Sitter space. As far as quantum fluctuations are concerned, we readily admit that our analysis relies heavily on the Everett/Many-Worlds formulation of quantum theory. In that view, there is nothing truly random and unpredictable about quantum dynamics. There is only the smooth, unitary evolution of the wave function according to the Schrödinger equation. Apparent unpredictability arises because that smooth evolution can take a quantum state from a single connected “world” into several distinct “branches,” each of which features certain entanglements between subsystems (like the spin of a particle and the readout of a measuring apparatus that just measured that spin). But such branching doesn’t happen willy-nilly; it’s crucial that the system undergoes decoherence. Roughly speaking, that’s when a macroscopic quantum system becomes entangled with an unobserved environment. Macroscopically different states of the system (like different readouts on a measuring apparatus, or alive/dead states of a cat in a box) become entangled with different environment states. Once that happens, the two states of the macroscopic system can never talk to each other again, and in particular cannot experience mutual quantum interference. It’s as if they have become part of two different worlds. So in the Everett picture, a quantum system in its lowest-energy state (or in any state of precisely-defined energy) isn’t fluctuating at all. It’s just sitting there, until some nosy measuring device comes poking at it. From the point of view of any given observer, the outcome of those pokes is intrinsically random. Because our brains are wired for classical physics, we therefore sometimes speak as if the system is fluctuating around even when we’re not looking at it — as if an electron is actually bouncing around in the vicinity of the nucleus of an atom, and its orbital represents the likelihood of it being in one place or another. But that’s not right: the orbital (the wave function) is the electron, it doesn’t represent our knowledge of it. And when nobody is observing it, literally nothing is fluctuating. What does this have to do with cosmology? We often contemplate situations in which space is completely empty other than for vacuum energy — perhaps during inflation in the very early universe, or perhaps in our own future once all the matter and radiation has been dispersed by the expansion of the universe. We’re left with de Sitter space. Back in the 70’s, Gibbons and Hawking showed that de Sitter space, just like a black hole, has a temperature. That’s because, just like a black hole, de Sitter space comes with an horizon. That horizon cuts off the degrees of freedom to which any observer has access, leaving them in a thermal state at a well-defined temperature. It’s as if — but, we are claiming, only as if! — the cosmological horizon is radiating into the interior, just as the black hole horizon radiates to the outside world. But this quantum-mechanical “thermal state” is different from our intuition, once again trained by classical mechanics, of a bunch of particles randomly bouncing around inside a box. Globally (including outside the horizon), the quantum state is static. It only appears thermal to an observer because the horizon cuts them off from the rest of the world. This gives us a mixed state, in which the local observer doesn’t know exactly what state they’re actually in — but all of the allowed possibilities are completely stationary. So once again, nothing is actually fluctuating. My confidence in this story about quantum fluctuations and de Sitter space is extremely high, even though it does conflict with the way many cosmologists think about the situation. The less secure part of our story is when we move from the idealization of pure de Sitter space to the messy real world. In the real world, you might think you’re in de Sitter space once and for all, but you could actually be in a temporary false-vacuum state. If there is only one vacuum, we can appeal to a “cosmic no-hair theorem” (analogous to similar theorems for black holes) that says a universe with a cosmological constant will eventually dissipate all of its excitations and turn into de Sitter space. But when there are false vacua, the situation is admittedly tricker. We’ve thought about it, and decided that the story we told above for de Sitter space is the one that is usually right, even if you’re in a false vacuum. (There are some subtleties dealing with complementarity and the dimensionality of Hilbert space, but that’s the typical situation.) The ramifications are very interesting. The idea that Boltzmann brains fluctuate into existence and should count as “observers” in a multiverse cosmology has been a troubling one, and now we’re saying it might not be nearly as severe as people have thought. Whereas before Boltzmann brains were hard to avoid if your cosmological model ever entered a de Sitter phase, now we think it’s quite hard to get them to appear in any appreciable abundance. This might mean that the last paper by Kim and me, asking whether the Higgs field could provide an escape from the BB problem in our actual universe, is addressing a non-problem (in at least some models). You might worry that our dismissal of quantum fluctuations is too sweeping — after all, don’t we see their effects in the cosmic microwave background? Fortunately, no. The standard story says that the inflaton field undergoes quantum fluctuations, which then get imprinted as fluctuations in density. What we’re saying is that the inflaton doesn’t actually “fluctuate,” it’s just in some calculable quantum state. But there’s nothing “observing” it, causing decoherence and branching of the wave function. At least, not while inflation is going on. But when inflation ends, the universe reheats into a hot plasma of matter and radiation. That actually does lead to decoherence and branching — the microscopic states of the plasma provide an environment that becomes entangled with the large-scale fluctuations of the inflaton, effectively measuring it and collapsing the wave function. So in our picture, all of the textbook predictions for inflation perturbations remain unchanged. Eternal inflation is a different story. The idea there is that the inflaton field slowly rolls down its potential during inflation, except that quantum fluctuations will occasionally poke the field to go higher rather than lower. When that happens, space expands faster and inflation continues forever. Like Boltzmann brains — and unlike density perturbations — this story relies on the idea that the “fluctuations” are actual events happening in real time, even in the absence of measurement and decoherence. And we’re saying that none of that is true. The field is essentially in a pure state, and simply rolls down its potential. Clearly a lot more careful analysis has to be done here, and we’ve started thinking about it. The stakes are substantial: the fact that inflation is eternal is a key part of its motivation in the minds of many cosmologists. (Note that we’re not saying eternal inflation is impossible; if you are stuck in a false vacuum with a very tiny decay rate, you can stay there for an arbitrarily long time. But the set of models in which inflation is eternal might be much tinier than was previously believed.) As with the Higgs and Boltzmann brains, this might be another case where I am undermining one of my own previous papers. So be it — in science you have to be willing to change your mind when faced with new data or better ideas. (I think that both the Higgs paper and the out-of-equilibrium paper are perfectly correct, given their working assumptions; I just think that the assumptions are much less likely to apply than I used to.) Finally, it’s interesting to note the role of “interpretations of quantum mechanics” in this story. (I don’t like that term, since we’re not discussing “interpretations,” we’re comparing manifestly different physical theories.) In the Everett formulation, the wave function is a direct reflection of reality; when it is stationary, so is the quantum system. Other approaches take a very different tack. There are formulations of quantum mechanics where collapse of the wave function is truly random and unpredictable; there are others with hidden variables, in which the true state of the universe isn’t defined by the wave function. In any of those cases, our analysis is completely beside the point. It’s interesting to think — but perhaps unsurprising in retrospect — that the correct formulation of quantum mechanics might have crucial implications for the evolution of the universe.
What Goes on In Your Head [Infographic] The inside of your head is where all of our thoughts, functions, and feelings come from. This vintage infographic shows where all of the important jobs of our brain are located within our heads. When you hear of someone who has had a head injury and certain bodily functions stop working this is because our mind has specific sections for each each function. When trauma occurs in these areas our functions can be affected. It is fun to think of your brain like the infographic has shown, with rooms for each job. The general manager is in the center and everything else revolves around that. The infographics shows the mind like a business working to make everything run smoothly and just like any business if one office shuts down the other areas can be affected. I love the analogy of the infographic and the images that are in each room effectively represent each function in the brain. This was a clever and detailed vintage infographic. Download this infographic.
ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE —As scores of pilgrims from around the world gather in Krakow, Poland, to participate in the week-long Catholic rally called World Youth Day with Pope Francis, hundreds of illegal immigrants in Texas received a special message from him: “Live enthusiastically and go forward!” without being deterred by “walls.” “I want to tell you to always look forward, always look towards the horizon, don’t let life put walls in front of you, always look at the horizon,” Francis said in a video message sent to the young in the diocese of Brownsville, which lies on the Mexican border and is considered one of the most impoverished areas of the United States. “Always have courage to want more, more, more … with courage, but, at the same time, do not forget to look back to the heritage you have received from your ancestors, from your grandparents, from your parents; to the legacy of faith that you now have in your hands, as you look forward,” he said. On Tuesday, simultaneous with the opening of World Youth Day (WYD) in Krakow, this Texas diocese hosted a celebration for hundreds of young people aged 13-18 on Tuesday in an impoverished rural area known as Peñitas. An estimated 10,000 people live in the region, many of them lacking legal immigration status, making it impossible for the youth to travel to Poland- or even to dream of being able to afford the trip to Poland. For this reason, Francis sent them a video message, in Spanish, in which he asks them, as he did the youth in Brazil back in 2013, during his first ever WYD, to live “the game of life” to its fullest. The “wall” reference is an important one, seeing that the Republican presidential candidate, billionaire turned politician Donald Trump has repeated over and over again his plan to build a wall in the border with Mexico and “make them pay for it.” The pope is on record saying that candidates who promise to build walls to keep migrants out are “not Christians.” The expression “the game of life” is a very familiar one used in Spanish, a reference to soccer (though it’s also the name of a very famous Mexican telenovela from the early 2000s). “Play life to the full! Today, take life as it comes and do good to others,” Francis told them, because “In the world today, a game is being played out in which there is no room for substitutes: either you’re in the team or you’re out.” He also told the young to always look forward, and not to be deterred by walls, meaning, the obstacles, life puts on their path, because “God calls you to be fruitful! God calls you to transmit this life to others. God calls you to create hope. God calls you to receive mercy and show mercy to others. God calls you to be happy. Do not be afraid! Do not be afraid. Play life to the full! That is life.” In many ways, this short, two-minute video is a preview of what Francis is bound to say during his July 27-31 visit to the land of St. John Paul II. The youth are obviously the pope’s primary audience for these days, but the question of migration has been his key social concern throughout the year.
Four Toronto police officers have been arrested and charged with 17 offences — nine counts of obstructing justice and eight counts of perjury, Chief Mark Saunders told a news conference this morning. The four officers charged are: Const. Jeffrey Tout , 41, 17 years of service, assigned to 55 Division. It is alleged he provided false court testimony, and is charged with two counts of obstructing justice and two counts of perjury. , 41, 17 years of service, assigned to 55 Division. It is alleged he provided false court testimony, and is charged with two counts of obstructing justice and two counts of perjury. Det. Const. Benjamin Elliott , 32, nine years of service, 55 Division. Charged with three counts of obstructing justice and three counts of perjury. , 32, nine years of service, 55 Division. Charged with three counts of obstructing justice and three counts of perjury. Const. Michael Taylor , 34, 11 years of service, 51 Division. Charged with two counts of obstructing justice, one count of perjury. , 34, 11 years of service, 51 Division. Charged with two counts of obstructing justice, one count of perjury. Det. Const. Fraser Douglas, 37, 14 years of service, 55 Division. Charged with two counts of obstructing justice, two counts of perjury. "We will not tolerate any bad behaviour of any kind," Saunders told reporters Thursday after announcing the charges. "Anything that questions the integrity of the Toronto Police Service concerns me." Saunders would not comment about the specifics of the case, but said he has assembled a special team of professional standards investigators to look at other cases involving the officers, to see if there is "any other cause of concern." CBC Forum "I think police recruitment standards need to be updated across the country..." - a comment to our CBC Forum. Read the whole discussion here. The four officers have been suspended with pay while the case goes to court. Saunders says that under the Police Services Act, their pay can't be suspended while the case works its way through the court system. Mayor John Tory, at a morning news conference streamed live on CBC.ca shortly after the charges were announced, said he believes the case "will be dealt with appropriately." "In a big organization like this, are you going to have incidents like this — sometimes in bunches — that are incidents that are troubling and concerning? Of course. The real measure is how you handle those and how you deal with those," Tory said. The charges arise from the arrest of Nguyen Son Tran on January 15, 2014. The investigation was carried out by TPS Professional Standards. Charges against man dismissed Last September, an Ontario Superior Court judge dismissed charges against the man, who was accused of possessing heroin on Jan. 13, 2014. Justice Edward Morgan concluded the officers concocted a false story about why they stopped the man and searched his car. Morgan also ruled the officers falsely testified they found loose heroin powder on the dashboard, which led to a search that uncovered 11 more grams of the drug wrapped and hidden behind the car's steering column. Morgan ruled the drugs seized during the search were not admissible as evidence and dismissed the charges against Tran. Week of bad news 'an anomaly,' chief says The charges against the four officers come during an already difficult week for Canada's largest police force. Earlier this week, Const. James Forcillo was found guilty of attempted murder in the shooting of 18-year-old Sammy Yatim aboard a Toronto streetcar in 2013. On Wednesday, a Toronto police officer was charged under the Police Services Act for firing 14 bullets into the engine block of a stopped car during an arrest in September that was captured on video. Saunders said these incidents are not evidence of a wider problem within the force, and the majority of Toronto police officers do their work with honour and integrity. "It certainly has been an anomaly week when it comes to our service," said Saunders. "We will get through this and we will do our best to get the public trust back that we have lost in some areas." Police union head Mike McCormack says the officers were arrested earlier this morning and released before 9 a.m. All are scheduled to appear in court on March 11. Our CBC Forum asked, "Do you still trust your police?" Can't see the forum? Click here.
Race From Space Coincides with Race on Earth Image to right: Flight Engineer Suni Williams is running the Boston Marathon on a station treadmill. Credit: NASA TV Image to left: Flashing a thumbs up sign here, astronaut Sunita L. Williams, Expedition 14 flight engineer, circled Earth at least twice as she participated in the Boston Marathon. Image credit: NASA Eldora Valentine NASA's Johnson Space Center 210 miles above Earth, Expedition 15 crew member Sunita Williams attempted something no other astronaut has ever done. She ran the Boston Marathon while in orbit.Williams circled Earth at least twice, running as fast as eight mph but flying more than five miles each second, as she completed the Boston Marathon on a station treadmill. Her official completion time was 4:23:10 as she completed the race at 2:24 p.m. EDT Monday.Williams ran under better weather conditions than her Boston counterparts. In Boston, it was 48 degrees with some rain, mist and wind gusts of 28 mph while station weather was 78 degrees with no wind or rain with 50% humidity.The Boston Athletic Association had issued Williams bib number 14,000. The bib had been sent electronically to NASA, which had forwarded it to Williams. She’s a Needham, Mass., native and says her reason for running the marathon is simple. “I would like to encourage kids to start making physical fitness part of their daily lives. I thought a big goal like a marathon would help get this message out there.”Regular exercise is essential to maintaining bone density while in space for astronauts. “In microgravity, both of these things start to go away because we don’t use our legs to walk around and don’t need the bones and muscles to hold us up under the force of gravity,” Williams said.No one knows that better than Steve Hart. For two years, he’s been Williams’ flight surgeon. “There are specific challenges to staying healthy while in space. Sunita wants to make fitness the hallmark of her expedition stay. She wants to educate and motivate others about being physically fit in general.”Williams, an accomplished marathoner, has been training for the marathon for months while serving a six-month stint as a flight engineer on board the ISS. She runs at least four times a week, 2 longer runs and 2 shorter runs.Williams qualified for the marathon when she ran a 3:29:57 in the Houston Marathon last year. Her biggest challenge running in space will be staying harnessed to a specially designed treadmill with bungee cords. Williams says running on the TVIS which stands for Treadmill Vibration Isolation System can sometimes be uncomfortable. The machinery puts a strain on the runner's hips and shoulders.Mitzi Laughlin is an Astronaut Strength, Conditioning and Rehabilitation coach at Johnson Space Center. She’s been involved in planning Williams' rigorous exercise routine for a year and a half. “We’ve done a lot more TVIS work than we would normally prescribe for any astronaut. Suni has a superb fitness level. She’s dedicated and perhaps one of our best runners.”Here on Earth, Williams has a huge support network. Fellow NASA astronaut, Karen Nyberg, Williams’ sister Dina Pandya, and long-time friend Ronnie Harris will be among the 24,000 other runners participating in the marathon. Harris met Williams during their days together at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. “Anything regarding Boston makes Suni light up. Her running passion is manifested in the best marathon in the world, which happens to be her home town. You need to experience the Boston Marathon to understand why she is gonna do it in orbit.”Race organizers say this will be their first satellite venture, and they are thrilled about it. "Suni running 26.2 miles in space on Patriots' Day is really a tribute to the thousands of marathoners who are running here on Earth. She is pioneering new frontiers in the running world,” said Jack Fleming, Boston Athletic Association.
Captain Dave Facer from New Albany (IN) sent in these photos of their crib packs. As you know from previous posts, we are big fans of efficient ways of storing and carrying equipment on the rigs and on the fireground. The nice thing about this particular idea is that it does both; it stores well and carries well. Their crib packs utilize 18” long unpainted, non-pressure treated soft wood cribbing. Each crib-pack consists of (8)-4×4’s, (4)-2×4’s and (4)-4×4 wedges. Each pack builds an 18” platform when used as a 2×2 box crib stack. The 3/4” plywood can be utilized as a base when working in soft or uneven terrain. The plywood can also be utilized as a sliding base allowing the crib stack to be built from beside (not under) the vehicle, eventually being slid into position. The plywood can also be used as a shield in-between the patient and the tools when working in tight situations. As you can see, basic notes were drawn onto the plywood for quick reference for their crib stack capacity, heights, configurations, and airbag information to make sure everyone is on the same page. The rubber mat (commercial mud flap) can be used for soft victim protection or for protecting lift bags when the need arises. The plywood is sandwiched by the cribbing and secured with two 1” ratchet straps. Each crib pack takes little time to assemble but deploys quickly and provides a fast and convenient way to transport a fair amount of cribbing. Each pack weighs about 30 lbs. and one firefighter can carry two Crib Packsacks without difficulty. The 6×6 cribbing is bundled with 3 small loops (yellow) and one large loop (red) that holds all 4 pieces together with one handle. This allows one firefighter to carry two bundles to the scene and build a 22” box crib for each trip made from the rig. The different colored webbing handle makes it easy to remember which loop is the “main loop” and keeps the bundle organized and compact. This is simple and effective way to store, and efficiently carry, cribbing to the scene. Taking a little extra time to come up with efficient methods like this go a long way on the emergency scene.
BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB) shares have gained 32% this year through yesterday. The stock jumped another 3.56% in pre-market trading Tuesday to $10.18 after reports that Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) may ditch Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) in favor of BlackBerry’s QNX OS. According to this chart by Eagle Bay Capital (via Business Insider), the ‘sell BlackBerry and buy Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’ trade has flipped. Shares of the iPhone maker are down 5.97% this year so far. Wall Street notices improving sentiments around BlackBerry Wall Street has definitely noticed improving sentiments around BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB). Hedge fund manager Dan Loeb of Third Point revealed a 1.9% stake in the Canadian company. On the other hand, money is flowing out of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL). J.C. Parets of Eagle Bay Capital told Business Insider that he believes the ailing smartphone maker has the potential to double its stock price. He said sentiment plays a crucial role. If investors believe that a stock is sinking, there comes a point when everybody with that belief has acted on it (sold the stock). That’s the case with BlackBerry. And then there are few sellers, with a large number of buyers. A good thing about this scenario is that the subsequent rally lasts longer, and goes beyond the standard uptrend. Not too long ago, hedge funds loved shorting BlackBerry Parets says we have seen the exactly opposite thing with Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL). All the big news around the company was priced in by the end of 2012. Now the trend is likely to see a reversal. According to a report by Goldman Sachs, BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB) was among the 50 stocks with a market value above $1 billion that hedge funds liked shorting the most. In the same report, Apple appeared on the VIP list. FactSet data shows that the biggest 50 hedge funds raised their Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) exposure by 3.6% during the fourth quarter. But the research firm pointed out that hedge funds have begun to lose interest in the iPhone maker since Carl Icahn dropped his proposal to squeeze the tech giant for another $50 billion buyback. BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB) launched two new smartphones Z3 and Q20 for Indonesia. These devices will be released in other countries at a later date.
With four picks in the loaded 2014 NBA Draft, the Phoenix Suns have a real chance to add more young assets to an already promising roster. Their first pick doesn’t come in until No. 14, but in such a deep draft class, the Suns have a good opportunity to fix some of their problem areas by adding talent on the wing. While dreams of sneaking into the top three at the 2014 NBA Draft Lottery were tantalizing, more realistic expectations have set in about what Phoenix should be expecting with its first draft pick. A look back on the history of the No. 14 pick in the last few years probably won’t excite too many Suns fans. The last time Phoenix had the No. 14 pick it used it on Earl Clark, who never showed any flashes of potential with the Suns and is no longer with the team. Other teams haven’t been particularly successful in landing steals at No. 14 in recent years either, as the likes of Shabazz Muhammad, Al Thornton, Rashad McCants, Frederick Jones and Troy Murphy are scattered across the last few drafts. However, names like John Henson, Patrick Patterson and even the Suns’ Marcus Morris provide a hopeful look at the kind of valuable role player Phoenix could add to its roster with another No. 14 pick. And although the Suns whiffed on their last No. 14 pick, the last time Phoenix had a No. 14 pick, they used it on a guy named Dan Majerle, who just so happens to be a Suns legend. Clyde Drexler, Tim Hardaway and Maurice Lucas are other outliers that worked out exceedingly well after being drafted at No. 14 as well. With that in mind, here are a few prospects that may still be on the board by the time the Suns’ first pick rolls around that Phoenix would do well to consider.
Ex Machina finally finds its way to a larger release this weekend. "Hey baby. Wanna make out?" Ex Machina will go down as one of the smartest and sleekest looking science fiction films of 2015. Pitting the fresh talents of Domhnall Gleeson and Oscar Isaac into this futuristic masterpiece is just the tip of the intellectual iceberg. The film captures the perversity of man and his scientific antics into a captivating dialogue that comes up just short of perfection. Based upon common themes and visual elements, the cast is astounding, the music is breathtaking, and the story is like an artistic melding of an old Twilight Zone episode mixed with unadulterated sci-fi in its purest form. Ex Machina questions man's persistence in creating artificial intelligence and offers the answers we may not have been looking for. Between its well crafted script and two of today's best young actors, Ex Machina finally brings the science in fiction back to the forefront. Gleeson and Isaac are both in picture perfect form, each offering elements we may not have seen from them before. Isaac is cold and calculating while the boundless Gleeson is desperate and unsure. Alicia Vinkander plays Ava with a robotic but slightly human feel that is sad yet engaging. Between her dead on physical performance and the way she communicates with her beautiful eyes, each moment spent with her robotic character is just as convincing as the last. "Dude. Everyone likes Jell-O. What's wrong with you?! Ex Machina takes the chances that most modern science fiction movies are lacking. Instead of showing off beautiful AI graphics the whole time, the environments and mood take a large part, giving this a dynamic reliant on dialogue and plot. Much like Moon, Ex Machina has a claustrophobic feeling that forces audiences to fixate on hand crafted elements of emotion and fear. This only lets up when the main characters are allowed to wander the rich color palette that lies just beyond the facility's doors. Audiences will breath a sigh of relief each time they step outside. Centered on the duality of their characters and the beautiful AI known as Ava, Ex Machina is seething with an intensity that is rooted in the base components of excellent storytelling. Tension, growth of character, and finality all play a key role and each are delivered with precision. There's a heart to this story that lies just under the surface of a synthetic being that's waiting to be seen and heard. Other than a few minor stumbling points, Ex Machina is a must see movie.
Seeso, NBCUniversal’s oddly named subscription service aimed at cord cutters, is now live. The ad-free streaming service is solely focused on comedies, pulling together well-known titles and fan favorites, including Monty Python classics, “Parks and Recreation,” “The Office” (US and UK versions), “The IT Crowd,” “The Kids In The Hall,” and many others, plus next-day access to full episodes of “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” and “Late Night with Seth Meyers” as well as over 40 years of “Saturday Night Live,” along with original programs and stand-up specials. In total, there will be over 2,000 hours of original content provided at launch, with more being added every day, the company says. Pricing for the service, which had previously been in private beta, is a fairly reasonable $3.99 per month. Consumers can access Seeso from the website, or from the just-launched iOS and Android applications. Both online and on mobile, Seeso is easy to use – it offers simple navigation, a search engine, tools to build playlists and a favorites list, and its various sections help you quickly find its originals, exclusives (like Monty Python), top shows (like SNL), and genres (like standup). Taking a cue from other efforts underway in the subscription video market, NBCUniversal isn’t only relying on its back catalog of content and current programs to make its new service appealing. The company is also investing in exclusive, original programming – just as streaming video giants Netflix, Amazon and Hulu now do. Included in this lineup are originals like “The UCB Show,” from the hosts, creators and founders of “Upright Citizens Brigade,” including Matt Besser, Amy Poehler, Ian Roberts and Matt Walsh. There are also shows like “Dave and Ethan: Lovemakers,” from Broadway Video’s Above Average Productions; “Sammy J & Randy in Ricketts Lane,” a musical comedy about mismatched housemates – one attorney and one puppet; “Before the Morning After,” which features comedians, drunk in a diner at 2 a.m. at The Edinburgh Fringe Festival; and there’s an animated sketch series called “The Cyanide & Happiness Show,” based on a popular web comic. The first episodes of all five shows were made freely available during Seeso’s beta, which has now wrapped with today’s public launch. However, a subset of Seeso content will remain free indefinitely. Starting today, new episodes will be added on a weekly basis – a release schedule that’s more like traditional television, rather than Netflix’s model of dumping entire seasons at once to encourage binge-watching. That decision could ultimately backfire on Seeso, as it doesn’t allow fans to fully immerse themselves in the original series. After all, getting addicted to a new show often takes a good handful of episodes. Other originals are already planned for release later this year, including “HarmonQuest,” from Dan Harmon and his Comedian Companions; “Bajillion Dollar Propertie$,” a reality show spoof; a dark family comedy “Flowers,” starring Julian Barratt and Olivia Colman; a stand-up series “Take My Wife” from creators and hosts Cameron Esposito and Rhea Butcher; and others. In addition to TV shows, original and otherwise, Seeso will also be the home to live stand-up comedy – a type of programming that has proved to be very popular on other streaming services, like Netflix, which has a large catalog of standup specials available at any given time. Seeso, meanwhile, is experimenting with running live stand-up specials. It delivered the first live over-the-top stand-up special during its beta when it ran “The Guest List: Live From The Barrel House” – which is now available in the Seeso library. And on January 13, it will go live again with another special. Planned specials include “Besser Breaks The Record,” an hour-long routine from Upright Citizens Brigade’s Matt Besser and “Rory Scovel: The Charleston Special,” another hour-long special from Rory Scovel. The channel will also offer daily doses of stand-up comedy from comics around the U.S., it says. Seeso’s model is similar to Hulu’s – that is, you don’t have to subscribe to watch some of its content. Instead, Seeso has a “free-forever front porch,” a company rep explains, meaning that a subset of content will remain free forever. You don’t have to put in a credit card to view the videos, just an email address. The idea is to get people hooked on the programming and originals by offering them for free, then convert them to paying subscribers over time. The question, however, for Seeso and other niche streaming services, is whether or not consumers today will go for these lower-cost additions to complement their preferred, and much larger streaming subscriptions, like those from Netflix, Amazon and Hulu. Without some hugely popular draw, like HBO has with “Game of Thrones,” which pulls in subscribers to its over-the-top effort HBO NOW, consumers may not see the need to subscribe to these sorts of niche services in large numbers.
An MH-60S Sea Hawk helicopter, assigned to the “Chargers” of Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 26, prepares to land on the flight deck of guided-missile destroyer USS Gonzalez (DDG 66). (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Pasquale Sena) The Pentagon has placed a small number of U.S. advisors on the ground in Yemen to support Arab forces battling al-Qaeda, military officials said on Friday, signaling a new American role in that country’s multi-sided civil war. Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said U.S. personnel had been in the country for about two weeks, supporting Yemeni and Emirati forces that are fighting a pitched battle against militants near the southeastern port city of Mukalla. “We view this as short-term,” Davis told reporters. Officials said the U.S. military is also providing Emirati forces with medical, intelligence and maritime support, and is flying surveillance and aerial refueling missions. It has also staged a ships from the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit off Yemen’s coast. The flotilla includes the USS Boxer, an amphibious assault ship with Marine infantry and aircraft, and two destroyers, the USS Gravely and the USS Gonzalez. Col. Patrick Ryder, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, said the United States was helping the Arab forces plan operations as part of its “limited” mission in and around Mukalla. “We welcome operations undertaken by Yemeni Forces, with the support of Arab Coalition Forces, to liberate the Yemeni port city of Mukalla from control by al- Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP),” Ryder said in an email. A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive operations, said that the U.S. presence, approved at the request of the United Arab Emirates, was “way small.” Even a tiny military footprint marks a milestone for U.S. involvement in the Yemeni conflict, which brought an end a year and a half ago to a long-running U.S. mission there against AQAP. After the internationally recognized Yemeni government, unable to contain Shiite Houthi rebels, collapsed at the end of 2014, the United States was forced to pull out Special Operations troops who had been training and advising their Yemeni peers. [Yemen is turning into Saudi Arabia’s Vietnam] The departure was a blow to U.S. efforts to battle AQAP, which has long been considered the most menacing al-Qaeda branch and which has seized on the chaos of the ongoing conflict to strengthen its military position. Since then, the United States has confined its military activities mostly to supporting a Saudi-led coalition battling the Houthi rebels, which the Kingdom sees as an Iranian proxy force. The Pentagon has provided some intelligence and aerial support to the Saudi-led air war. The new American advisory team will support the Emirati troops and Yemeni forces loyal to the old government as they seek to capitalize on recent headway against AQAP in Mukalla, which was seized by militants last year. Saudi Special Operations forces have also been taking part in the campaign against AQAP around Mukalla. Ilan Goldenberg, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, said the U.S. presence would reinforce an encouraging trend. “This is exactly the type of [situation] where a little bit of American support goes a long way,” he said. President Obama’s preference for using small Special Operations teams to conduct targeted operations or advise partner forces has been a hallmark of his global security strategy. American officials also considered the Mukalla offensive a success because it marked an unprecedented coalition action against AQAP. U.S. officials have long encouraged Saudi Arabia to broaden its focus in Yemen beyond the Houthis, and have also complained of high civilian casualties in a conflict that has killed at least 6,000 people. The United Nations continues to seek a political solution in peace talks in Kuwait City. Military officials declined to say what type of U.S. personnel were on the ground in Yemen or provide their exact location. “They are not in harm’s way,” the U.S. official said. [U.S. targets al-Qaeda in Yemen airstrike that kills dozens, Pentagon says] Even after the end of its training mission, the United States has tried to contain AQAP’s growth using periodic airstrikes of its own. Davis said the United States has conducted four strikes against al-Qaeda militants since April 23, killing 10 militants and wounding one. In March the Pentagon announced it had killed more than 70 al-Qaeda fighters in Yemen in one of the largest U.S. strikes conducted in the country since the beginning of operations there. According to a Long War Journal database, the United States has conducted roughly 140 airstrikes in Yemen since 2002.
Image copyright Getty Images The eurozone's economy grew by a faster-than-expected 0.6% in the first three months of the year, according to official statistics. The growth rate in the 19-nation bloc doubled from the 0.3% rate recorded in the previous quarter, and was above analysts' expectations of 0.4%. However, separate data from Eurostat also indicated that deflation had returned to the eurozone. Inflation in the bloc fell to minus 0.2% in April, down from zero in March. Other Eurostat figures showed the eurozone's unemployment rate fell to 10.2% in March, the lowest rate for four-and-a-half years. Uncertainties remain The latest growth figures suggest that the eurozone's economy is now bigger than it was before the start of the financial crisis eight years ago. The eurozone has recently benefited from a fall in oil prices and the euro, particularly in Germany. Looser budgetary policies by government have also freed up resources in some of the region's debt-laden economies. Howard Archer, economist at IHS Global Insight, said the eurozone should be able to sustain a growth rate of about 0.4% quarter-on-quarter in the future, but warned the rate could ease in the three months to June. "Global economic uncertainties and problems are still a handicap for eurozone growth, not only through limiting exports but also through weighing down on business and consumer confidence," he said. "The risk of recurrent terrorist attacks and the possibility of the UK voting to leave the EU in June's referendum are also uncertainties that could impact on eurozone growth." Image copyright Reuters ECB action The inflation figures showed that energy prices fell 8.6% year-on-year in April, while unprocessed food prices rose 1.2%. Stripping out those items, the core inflation rate showed consumer prices rose 0.8% year-on-year in April - less than a 1% increase in March. The European Central Bank's target is to keep the headline inflation close to, but below, 2%. In March, the ECB cut interest rates further and expanded its bond-buying stimulus programme in an attempt to drive growth in the eurozone and push up inflation. Analysis: Andrew Walker, BBC economics correspondent Deflation returns. Falling energy prices are keeping inflation very low for sure, but that was not what made the headline figure slip below zero once again. Energy price falls actually slowed slightly. The key factor was a dip in services inflation to just 1%. Compare that with the European Central Bank's inflation target of below but close to 2%. The gap between the data and the target is too wide for the ECB's liking. The view there is that there are economic costs when prices rise too slowly. With luck the drop into negative territory might be a consequence of the early Easter, as some economists are saying. And at some stage the impact of oil price falls will stop dragging overall inflation down. Still, the figures are a telling reminder of how the ECB is struggling to achieve its objective.
As we noted a few weeks ago, the Iron Law of Republican Politics is that the GOP moderates always cave. But the cave is never without a stage managed drama. And that appears to be the part of the story we’re now entering. Axios just reported that Sen. Shelley Moore Capito is expressing concern over Medicaid cuts in the Senate Trumpcare bill. “I don’t look favorably on it, that’s for sure,” Capito told Axios. Please. It’s been clear from the word go that taking an axe to Medicaid was the entire point of this exercise, indeed, an inevitable end point given the budgetary priorities. These are beyond ending Medicaid expansion. They’re the starvation diet Republicans put Medicaid on after kicking everyone off their coverage kicks in. This is sort of a subchapter of what I discussed in my last post about ‘policy literalism’. It is not only that the ‘GOP moderates always cave.’ It is that we are asked to (and almost always do) indulge this fainting couch routine or a furious bout of chin stroking that comes as a prelude to the cave. If Capito doesn’t get that this was part of the plan all along she’s literally a fool since this has been a publicly discussed goal from the git-go. This is almost to a certainty a safety-net version of what wingnuts now commonly call “virtue-signaling”, in this case a staged demonstration or interlude put on for effect to soften the blow of signing onto the policy outcomes that are frankly unconscionable. In other words, virtue-signaling but virtue-signaling in bad faith. This isn’t negotiating or putting a foot down. It’s play acting. It is so consistent, routine and predictable that it needs to be reported as such. Much like hiding behind the lack of a legislative text, on the off chance Sen Capito is serious, she should do something to make that clear. Otherwise, it’s just a yarn, just more nonsense to hide the ball and pave the way for the preordained outcome.
One day in 1981 or 1982 Jean-Louis LeRoux, the conductor of the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, and Marcella DeCray, the group's harpist and administrator, and I, the Associate Conductor, had a meeting that included a discussion of fundraising ideas. In a moment of creative misunderstanding, incorrectly believing that Frank Zappa, well-known as a fan of the composer Edgar Varese, had begun conducting Varese's music in Classical concert venues, I suggested we hire Zappa to conduct Varese during the founding Modernist's upcoming Centennial. (It turned out that Zappa had only once helped to produce a Varese concert, and had never conducted in public. It's a good thing I had the facts wrong, or I would never have suggested Zappa conduct.) Jean-Louis thought it was a good idea and said to me "You write the letter inviting him, and I'll find out where to send it." So I wrote the letter inviting Frank Zappa to conduct Classical music. Frank accepted, and was wonderful to work with. One of the most sober and serious minds I had met up to that time, he coached in conducting with Jean-Louis and was thoroughly prepared to conduct the Varese Ionization and Offrandes. I coached the soprano Judith Cline on the Offrandes, and wrote the program notes. Frank also contributed an essay to the notes. Zappa was marvelously diplomatic in rehearsal. The first rehearsal of the Ionization was in the Ballet Room at the Opera House. The best percussionists in the Bay Area were in that group. At one point, someone kept making the same slight error in a group of three sixteenth notes, at a place where the error could affect others. Frank caught the error but though persistent in getting it right was very artfully oblique about who was at fault. Not blaming anyone, he told the player something to the effect "Please play the second note sooner." The player then got it right and the rehearsal moved forward with no loss of intensity or good will. Grace Slick was Mistress of Ceremonies, and gave a short talk at the beginning of each half of the program. She was there with the Jefferson Airplane bassist Paul Kantner. At a loss for how to tell him I liked his bass playing, I said "I like your work." He replied "It isn't work." The concert was a tremendous success and was the group's first fundraiser with a noticeable profit from actual ticket sales. It was one of the first events sponsored by the clothes store called the Gap. During intermission I cruised the halls to get a feeling for the audience's experience of the event. The place was electrified as it seldom gets. I thought the gap was closed between audience enjoyment and the knowledge so wrongly believed to be required of anyone to "appreciate" Contemporary music when I heard one member of the audience say to another, obviously speaking about Ionization, "I loved the rhythm piece." Zappa went on to write a number of interesting compositions in a more "concert music" style than his Rock-n-Roll, which was of course never uninteresting either, and regularly participated in Classical venues for the rest of his life. The Futurist statement on the cover seemed to me to capture the spirit of the event, and its historical context, admirably well. Posted 8/12/2015
I’ve been neglectful lately. I last posted on Thursday . I’m not sure what’s going on. I sit down at my computer and everything feels daunting: writing posts, editing photos, even just keeping up with Facebook and Twitter have felt like too much. But all that is my problem, not yours. May I beg forgiveness for my absence with a delicious treat and reminder that you can still enter to win a Canon Rebel I have some excuses. Want to hear them? Well, I had no choice, but to spend all day Saturday watching Mad Men. Sunday was a belated birthday gathering for Steve. Monday we gals had a wonderful play date with our friends Emma and April. Yesterday was time for Clarissa and Veronica’s dental check up and cleaning. How could I have fit time for blogging into all that excitement? < —By that, I mean that I use all my spare time to watch Mad Men. It’s a problem, people. I haven’t just been busy. I have other pathetic excuses for not blogging. Rather than creating new recipes, I’ve been testing cookies for the book and cleaning out the freezer for suppers. Using up all those tidbits of tofu marinade and such, makes for an easy meal, but means I don’t have a recipe to share. And now…I’m sick. Woohoo! But I have a recipe for you today. I can’t take credit for this recipe idea. The recipes themselves are my own, but the concept for a brownie all dolled up with a peanut butter cookie crust and sandwich cookies inside? That’s the doing of Kimberly, the Doctor Who/Captain Jack loving gal behind the blog Treats & Trinkets. There is no way to go wrong, with a dessert inspired by the very dreamy Jack Harkness. This recipe has four layers, with two separate recipes, but it’s not difficult and doesn’t take too long. Don’t look at the length of the recipe below, and be scared off. You will not regret making this indulgent treat.
Get the biggest Aston Villa FC stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email Reports this morning are suggesting that Tom Cleverley could still move to Villa. The Manchester United midfielder was at his club's training ground way into the early hours of this morning trying to sort out a loan move to the Midlands. Villa appeared to be out of the running late last night as the 25-year-old looked set to join Everton. But sources claim that Villa made another late move when his switch to Goodison Park fell through. Villa had originally bid £8million for Cleverley and United accepted the offer. His wage demands proved to be too high, though, which effectively priced him out of a permanent move. If the Premier League accept the paperwork from the early hours of this morning, Cleverely could still join Villa on loan. More to follow later.
This email has also been verified by ap.org DKIM 1024-bit RSA key RE: HRC profile From:JPace@ap.org To: john.podesta@gmail.com Date: 2015-04-09 18:42 Subject: RE: HRC profile Hey there – Nick told me to pester you about this again! Would love to chat with you for a few minutes since I think you’d have some great insight into this process. 202-379-8902. And looking forward to some of this famous Podesta cooking tonight! Julie I'm in China with bad comms. Sorry. On Mar 30, 2015 12:45 PM, "Pace, Julie" <JPace@ap.org<mailto:JPace@ap.org>> wrote: Hi John, hope you’re doing well! Not sure if word of this has made it to you yet, but I’m working on a Hillary Clinton profile that’s going to run after she formally announces her candidacy. I’m trying to delve into how she went about making this decision. The sense I get in talking to people is that it was a long process and something she really went back and forth on – in contrast to what people might think about this being an inevitable campaign. But I’m in need of some more detail to back that up. Without that, I fear this is just going to look like a campaign spin job and no one is going to actually believe it. So – I’m hoping you can help me fill in some of the details. What were the inflection points in the process? What kind of information was HRC seeking? What kinds of questions was she asking? Did she consult with people that voters might find surprising? I have a draft of the story due on Thursday, so hoping you might have time to talk before then. Happy to talk on background if that’s easier and everything would be embargoed until the story runs after the announcement. Thanks! Julie Julie Pace White House Correspondent The Associated Press 202-641-9494<tel:202-641-9494> (office) 202-379-8902<tel:202-379-8902> (cell) jpace@ap.org<mailto:jpace@ap.org> Twitter: @jpaceDC The information contained in this communication is intended for the use of the designated recipients named above. If the reader of this communication is not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that you have received this communication in error, and that any review, dissemination, distribution or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify The Associated Press immediately by telephone at +1-212-621-1898<tel:%2B1-212-621-1898> and delete this email. Thank you. [IP_US_DISC] msk dccc60c6d2c3a6438f0cf467d9a4938
The final public event on Stephen Harper’s annual summer tour was very nearly derailed Friday after a journalist from China’s state-owned newspaper shoved a female staffer from the Prime Minister’s Office and was pulled away by members of Harper’s security detail. The incident occurred during a question-and-answer session with the media, after the formal portion of the announcement at Raglan Mine, in Quebec’s far northwest, had ended. As the prime minister was taking a question from the CBC’s James Cudmore, People’s Daily Canada bureau chief Li Xue Jiang began insisting to PMO staffer Julie Vaux that he was next in line to ask a question. She corrected me several times, so I pushed her Moments later Li was being hustled by three Mounties to the back of the room, a large steel warehouse. Eyewitnesses saw Li shove PMO staffer Julie Vaux twice during the altercation. In an interview later, he claimed she had shoved him first. But he acknowledged pushing her. “I was in the line. She corrected me several times, so I pushed her,” Li said. “We’ll be raising the matter with the Press Gallery, and Mr. Li should apologize immediately,” the PMO’s communications director, Andrew MacDougall, tweeted later. “Agree or disagree with how things are run, there was no excuse for Mr. Li to get physical with our staff.” Agree or disagree with how events are run, there was no excuse for the Chinese state reporter to get physical with our staff…(1/2) — Andrew MacDougall (@AGMacDougall) August 23, 2013 Asked whether he would apologize, Li said: “They should apologize to me, for being not fair. For depriving my right to ask questions.” Harper was visiting Raglan to trumpet a $750,000 federal investment in wind power generation for the remote nickel mining site. Li had wanted to ask Harper to clarify Canada’s foreign investment regulations, he said, in light of China’s state-owned CNOOC’s takeover of Calgary-based Nexen last winter. Earlier, it had been agreed among the pool of reporters travelling with Harper — among them journalists from CBC, Radio-Canada, the Toronto Star, CTV, The Canadian Press, Global, Sun Media and Postmedia — that Li would ask one of five questions allowed by the PM in Friday’s media availability. It is Harper’s practice to limit the number of questions he takes from reporters — typically on this trip, four from the national media, one from any local media present, and one from Radio-Canada. Because of the limit on questions, reporters typically pool their efforts, and also determine by consensus who will pose them, and in what order. Questions are not shown to PMO staff in advance. However, when the reporters’ list of questioners went back to the PMO, word came back that Harper had declined to take a question from Li. Throughout this six-day swing through the far North — Harper’s eighth as prime minister — Li and another Chinese-language journalist, Xinhua news bureau chief Dacheng Zhang, have complained they were being unfairly kept away from tour events made accessible to Canadian journalists. Li was unhappy on Wednesday that he was not among those boated out by Zodiac to the deck of the Coast Guard icebreaker Sir Wilfred Laurier, in the harbour of Gjoa Haven on King William Island, to hear a briefing by the prime minister and others about ongoing efforts to locate the remains of the lost Franklin expedition. PMO staff said the spots on the Zodiacs were limited and a majority of reporters agreed with the decision to restrict access to Canadian media for that event. Both Chinese journalists have made a habit during the trip of photographing and interviewing their colleagues, as well as taking numerous photos of the interior of the Royal Canadian Air Force‘s C-130J aircraft. Such images are public and not subject to any security restrictions. Asked whether he relays any information or photographs he gathers in the course of his work in Canada to the Chinese government, Li said he does not. “No, just my paper,” he said.
Names and prior election cycles Edit Scheduling Edit Delegate allocation Edit Results Edit See also Edit Notes Edit The New Mexico Democratic Caucus came down to provisional ballots. The counting process took 9 days to complete. † The Kansas state legislature voted to neither fund nor hold a primary in 2008. [20] The Kansas state legislature voted to neither fund nor hold a primary in 2008. ‡ West Virginia Republicans will select 18 of their 30 delegates on February 5, with the final 12 chosen on May 13. [20] West Virginia Republicans will select 18 of their 30 delegates on February 5, with the final 12 chosen on May 13. § Montana Republicans chose to select delegates using a "closed caucus" comprising approximately 3,000 Republican elected officials and state party officials, such as precinct captains. [22] Montana Republicans chose to select delegates using a "closed caucus" comprising approximately 3,000 Republican elected officials and state party officials, such as precinct captains. ¤ American Samoa is an unincorporated territory of the United States with three delegates to the Democratic National Convention, but no vote in the Presidential election. American Samoa is an unincorporated territory of the United States with three delegates to the Democratic National Convention, but no vote in the Presidential election. (C) denotes states and territories holding caucuses. denotes states and territories holding caucuses. (WTA) means Winner Takes All, and applies solely to Republican contests. Popular Vote Percentages reflect the percentage within each party, not state overall total votes cast.
New Texas Longhorns head coach Shaka Smart secured his first signature moment in burnt orange by securing a commitment from Columbia (S.C.) Dreher small forward Tevin Mack during a ceremony on Tuesday. Mack wasted little time during his ceremony in announcing his decision, keeping it short and simple: The consensus four-star prospect who originally signed with Smart at VCU narrowed his list to Texas, Georgia, and Clemson in the days before his decision. Kansas had also been in the mix, but never received a visit and took a commitment from former SMU pledge LaGerald Vick. Following Smart's departure, the Rams granted Mack his release, which resulted in another unofficial visit to Georgia -- at least his 10th trip to Athens -- and then another unofficial visit to Austin, his first. Though the 6'6, 185-pounder didn't reveal much about his visit in the immediate aftermath of his trip to Austin from May 8-11, he did share a few thoughts with midlandhssports.com: The excitement in Mack's voice was apparent as he told us of the "unbelievable place" he found the UT campus to be. Among the highlights of his trip was spending time with head football coach (and former Columbia resident) Charlie Strong, hanging with basketball coach Shaka Smart as he threw out the first pitch at a Lady Longhorns softball game, and being able to experience campus life while school was in session. Clearly, the visit made enough of an impact for Texas to secure a commitment from Mack, who will not be able to sign a National Letter of Intent, having already signed one with VCU during the early period. Instead, he will sign a financial aid agreement ahead of his likely June enrollment. Mack explained his decision to Scout: "I chose them because I signed to play for coach Smart in the beginning," Mack said. "I wanted to stay with him and follow him and stick with the same plan. It feels like a great fit." "I feel like it's a better opportunity actually," he added. "I think it's a blessing from God. That was one of the my favorite programs from the beginning." Had to get a hook 'em @sl0wbucks pic.twitter.com/uLrti3EUUg — Amber Lynn Pennycuff (@PennycuffSports) May 19, 2015 Ranked as the No. 54 prospect overall, the No. 9 small forward, and the No. 2 player in South Carolina, Mack held 17 offers during his recruitment. Though he's classified as a small forward, he considers himself a shooting guard. Either way, Mack is the type of lengthy wing with excellent athleticism who is a perfect fit in the pressing defense that Smart prefers to run. Future150.com believes that Mack needs to improve his shooting from long distance, from mid range, and off the dribble, but he's not incapable in those areas, a key requirement for Smart when he assesses prospects. For his long-term projections, the fluidity, high release, and apparent purity of his shot bodes well for improvement in that area with practice. Here's an evaluation from a camp last summer: NBA Top 100 Camp: (June 18th-21st, 2014) The 6-foot-6 wing is an absolutely lethal scorer, and he has shown that with his performance so far at camp. He has excellent body control and finishes well around the rim. He also has gained upper body strength and is effective posting up smaller defenders as well. Since Smart wants to get out in transition after defensive rebounds and forced turnovers, the ability to get to the wing and finish is also a key requirement for his scheme. And, in fact, Smart spends a lot of time focusing on that ability in the one-on-one drills he uses in practice. As Mack adds weight to his rather lanky frame, his ability to post up and finish through contact should also improve. Mack's primary competition for playing time in 2015-16 will be sophomore Jordan Barnett, who wasn't ranked nearly as highly as Mack coming out of high school last year, but is probably a more refined scorer at this point. However, Barnett struggled with his shot in hitting only 33% from the field and only played more than 10 minutes three times in conference play. So unless Barnett can improve his scoring from last season or become a lock-down defender, Mack should be able to find playing time because of hi superior athleticism and slashing ability. With the new head coach securing his first commitment in Mack's significant pledge, it feels as if the Shaka Smart era has truly begun.
Home » Blog » Oregon's Local Halloween Fun Guide, Halloween Headlines October 30, 2017 By Chelsea T. The National Weather Service in Portland has predicted the first rain-free Halloween for the city since 2007. Residents have celebrated the holiday in the rain for the past 10 years and so far, it is shaping up to be a beautiful day. Meteorologist David Bishop told Oregon Live, "2007 was the last time that Halloween didn't have any measurable rainfall for the Portland area." He also stated that the outlook is "outstanding" and that the night should be nice and clear, with a bit of cloud coverage "here and there." Looks like families can keep the umbrellas and rain coats at home and can enjoy an evening of trick-or-treating in their Halloween get ups! Hopefully this year will begin a new tradition for Portland and the nice weather will stay for years to come!
The presiding judge of Montgomery's municipal court on Thursday was suspended without pay for 11 months after agreeing that he had violated canons of judicial ethics regarding the jailing of poor people who couldn't pay fines. Judge Armstead Lester Hayes III was suspended under an agreement he reached with the Alabama Judicial Inquiry Commission (JIC). He will get credit for the amount of time he has already served under suspension since the original charges were brought in November. His suspension ends Oct. 1. The agreement was approved by the Alabama Court of the Judiciary on Thursday. Under the agreement Hayes is adjudicated guilty of seven charges of violating the Canons of Judicial Ethics as alleged in the JIC complaint. Hayes also will have to pay the $4,312 cost of the proceeding, including the amount incurred by the JIC, according to the agreement. Montgomery city judge suspended amid ethics charges; jailed those who couldn't pay traffic fines "Judge Hayes, as presiding judge, not only permitted this system to operate, but actively participated in its abuses," the Judicial Inquiry Commission charges state. While the Montgomery city court made changes in 2014 to prevent poor people from being jailed without proper procedures and efforts to make sure other alternatives are considered, the Court of the Judiciary expressed concerns in its order on Thursday. "In considering the complaint filed in this matter, this court finds the allegations deeply troubling," the Court of the Judiciary stated. "In adopting the parties' proposed resolution, this court notes Judge Hayes's acceptance of responsibility in this matter; his apparent efforts, beginning in 2014, to remedy the problems that eventually gave rise to this proceeding; and his cooperation with the Commission (JIC) in attempting to resolve this matter." "This court also notes that Judge Hayes's current term as Presiding Municipal Judge is set to expire in January 2018, roughly four months after he completes his suspension in this matter," the court stated. Hayes' attorney responded Thursday with a statement regarding the suspension. "Judge Hayes is a good man. He was a good judge and he will be in the future," according to a statement released by Hayes' attorney Joe Espy. "He has been the driving force behind judicial reform in Montgomery and Alabama." "Judge Hayes has enormous respect for the Court and the process," Espy stated. "The problems that led us to today primarily deal with the administration and operation of the Municipal Court and the application of certain legal principles in that Court, most of which were addressed and resolved by Judge Hayes and the Court staff over two years ago." "He accepts full responsibility as you would expect of a man of his character," Espy stated. Judge Hayes has received overwhelming support from the community and he sincerely appreciates the prayers an support of so many people." In the agreement Hayes denies certain allegations in the JIC complaint, but agreed that others had occurred, among them the following: - On many occasions prior to 2014, Hayes incarcerated traffic offenders for failure to pay fines and costs without first, in compliance rules to make a making sufficient inquiry into the offenders' financial, employment, and family standing to determine if the offenders had the ability to pay court-ordered financial assessments; determining reasons for offenders' inability to pay or failure to pay; and/or considering alternatives to incarceration other than initially providing additional time to pay, resulting in the incarceration of indigent defendants, in some cases for several months. - On numerous occasions Hayes failed to permit a traffic offender to fully explain the reason for either the offender 's failure or inability to pay court-ordered financial assessments. - Judge Hayes ordered some defendants to a private entity called Judicial Correction Services, an entity which was commonly referred to as a private-probation company. Hayes delegated to JCS the judicial functions of ordering monitored defendants to appear in court to show cause why they should not be removed from Judicial Correction Services's oversight and/or issuing a summons to a 'probation revocation' hearing. In connection with his use of Judicial Correction Services, Judge Hayes placed some municipal court defendants who appeared before him on what was nominally referred to in the court's order as 'probation' even though they had not received a suspended sentence or any jail time, but had been given only fines and court costs. JCS at one time had contracts with more than 100 cities across Alabama. The company was subject to a number of state and federal lawsuits that claimed it was responsible for continually adding on fees of indigent defendants and threatening jail if the fines and fees were not paid. The company late last year announced it was leaving Alabama amid the claims of abusive and unconstitutional practices. The JIC, however, stated that JCS was responsible for only collecting less than a quarter of the Montgomery court's collections. JCS was allowed to charge defendants a $10 start-up fee followed by a $40 per month "supervisory fee, according to the JIC charge. In 2010, for example, JCS remitted to the city $2.4 million and retained $1.15 million for itself. Collection tactics by the court had helped Montgomery's municipal court system collect millions of dollars in fees and fines that are three or more times the amounts collected in Birmingham and other large Alabama cities, according to the charges, according to the JIC's original complaint. Hayes' and the court system made changes in the wake of three federal court lawsuits against Montgomery regarding the tactics of the court and jailing of poor defendants for inability to pay. The lawsuits have been settled. Sam Brooke, deputy legal director at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said the suspension should serve as a warning. "Nobody, not even a judge, is above the law. Today's sanctions against Judge Hayes are a reminder that it is absolutely illegal to jail someone simply because they are poor. The good news is, we believe the Montgomery court has changed its practices," said Brooke. "The bad news is, for far too long, jailing those who could not pay was standard practice." "Any other judge who is still doing this should be on notice their practices won't be tolerated." Hayes COJ Agreement by KentFaulk on Scribd
Wāng Pronunciation Wāng (Mandarin) Wong (Cantonese) Waan (Shanghainese) Ong, Ang (Hokkien) Wang (Korean) Uông (Vietnamese) Language(s) Chinese, Vietnamese Origin Language(s) Chinese Wang is the pinyin romanization of the Chinese surnames 王 (Wáng) and 汪 (Wāng). Wáng (王) was listed 8th on the famous Song Dynasty list of the Hundred Family Surnames; it is the most common surname in mainland China.[2] Wāng (汪) was 104th of the Hundred Family Surnames; it is the 58th-most-common surname in mainland China. The name Wang is also used in several European languages, with completely unrelated meanings despite an accidentally identical spelling. Romanizations [ edit ] 王 is also romanized as Wong in Hong Kong, Macau, Cantonese, Hakka and Hainanese; Waan or Waon in Shanghainese; Ong or Bong in Hokkien; Heng in Teochew; Uōng in Gan; Vang, Vaj, or Vaaj in Hmong; Vương or Vong in Vietnamese; Wang (왕) in Korean; and Ō or Oh in Japanese. 汪 is typically romanized identically, despite its distinct tone. It is also Wong in Cantonese, Ong or Ang in Hokkien, Wang (왕) in Korean, and Ō or Oh in Japanese. However, in Vietnamese, it is written Uông. Distribution [ edit ] Wáng is one of the most common surnames in the world and was listed by the People's Republic of China's National Citizen ID Information System as the most common surname in mainland China in April 2007, with 92.88 million bearers and comprising 7.25% of the general population.[3][4] It was the 6th most common surname in Taiwan in 2005, comprising 4.12% of the general population.[5] Wāng was listed by the NCIIS survey as the 58th most common surname in mainland China[3] and by Yang Xuxian as the 76th most common surname on Taiwan.[6] Ong is the 5th-most-common surname among Chinese Singaporeans and Wong the 6th.[7] There were 88,000 Wongs during the year 2000 US Census, making it the 7th-most-common surname among Asians and Pacific Islanders and the 279th most common surname overall. The 63,800 Wangs ranked 10th and 440th, respectively.[8] Wang (Hangul: 왕) is a fairly rare surname in South Korea. The year 2000 South Korean Census listed only 23,447 Wangs.[9] Origins of Wáng [ edit ] 王 is the Chinese word for "king". William Baxter and Laurent Sagart reconstructed the Old Chinese form of Wáng as ‍ɢʷaŋ and the Middle Chinese as hjwang.[1] The modern bearers of the name Wáng come from many different backgrounds, but the principal origins of the modern surname were four: the Zi, the Ji, the Gui, and the adoption of the name from ethnic groups outside the Han Chinese.[10] Zi house [ edit ] The most ancient family name of Wáng was originated from the surname Zi. The Chinese legend mentions that near the end of Shang Dynasty, King Zhou of Shang's uncle Bi Gan, Ji Zi, and Wei Zi were called "The Three Kindhearted Men of Shang". King Zhou was violent in his rule, and Bi Gan repeatedly remonstrated to the king regarding his behavior. The king shunned his comments and killed Bi Gan instead. Bi's descendants used Wáng as their surname as they are descendants of a prince and were known as "The Bi clan of the Wáng family".[11] The Zi clan has existed for about 3100 years through Qin Dynasty to Tang Dynasty and exists today. The Zi clan of Wáng lived predominantly in Henan during these times and developed into the famous Wáng family of Ji prefecture.[12] House of Ji [ edit ] More Wáng were originated from the royal family of Zhou Dynasty. The original surname of the royal family of Zhou Dynasty was Ji. However, many of them have separated out of the family due to the loss of power and land. Because they once belonged to the royal family, they used Wáng as their surname. This family of Wáng traced its ancestry to Wang Ziqiao[13] According to the classical records, after King Wu of Zhou defeated the Shang Dynasty, he established the Western Zhou Dynasty. During the reign of the 21st king, King Ling of Zhou (571 - 545 BCE), the capital was in Chengzhou, which is the present day Luoyang, Henan. A son of King Ling, Wangzi Qiao or Prince Qiao, was reduced to civilian status due to his remonstration to the king. His son Zong Jin remained as a Situ in the palace, and because of the people at the time recognized him as the descendant of the royal family, they called his family the "Wáng family".[14] During the Tang dynasty the Li family of Zhaojun 赵郡李氏, the Cui family of Boling 博陵崔氏, the Cui family of Qinghe 清河崔氏, the Lu family of Fanyang 范陽盧氏, the Zheng family of Xingyang 荥阳郑氏, the Wang family of Taiyuan 太原王氏, and the Li family of Longxi 隴西李氏 were the seven noble families between whom marriage was banned by law.[15] Moriya Mitsuo wrote a history of the Later Han-Tang period of the Taiyuan Wang. Among the strongest families was the Taiyuan Wang.[16] The prohibition on marriage between the clans issued in 659 by the Gaozong Emperor was flouted by the seven families since a woman of the Boling Cui married a member of the Taiyuan Wang, giving birth to the poet Wang Wei.[17] He was the son of Wang Chulian who in turn was the son of Wang Zhou.[18] The marriages between the families were performed clandestinely after the prohibition was implemented on the seven families by Gaozong.[19] The Zhou dynasty King Ling's son Prince Jin is assumed by most to be the ancestor of the Taiyuan Wang.[20] The Longmen Wang were a cadet line of the Zhou dynasty descended Taiyuan Wang, and Wang Yan and his grandson Wang Tong hailed from his cadet line.[21] Both Buddhist monks and scholars hailed from the Wang family of Taiyuan such as the monk Tanqian.[22] The Wang family of Taiyuan included Wang Huan.[23] Their status as "Seven Great surnames" became known during Gaozong's rule.[24] The Taiyuan Wang family produced Wang Jun who served under Emperor Huai of Jin.[25] A Fuzhou-based section of the Taiyuan Wang produced the Buddhist monk Baizhang.[26] House of Gui [ edit ] In Qi, the descendants of Tian An (田安) received the surname Wáng.[clarification needed] Origins of Wāng [ edit ] 汪 means "vast" in the Chinese language, and is often used to describe oceans. In the modern vernacular Chinese, it is also the onomatopoeia for the sound of a barking dog. Baxter and Sagart reconstructed it as qʷˤaŋ and 'wang, respectively.[27] Chinese Muslims [ edit ] Unlike other Hui people who claim foreign descent, Hui in Gansu with the surname Wāng are descended from Han Chinese who converted to Islam and married Hui or Dongxiang people. A town called Tangwangchuan in Gansu had a multi-ethnic populace, the Tang (唐) and Wāng families predominating. The Tang and Wang families were originally of non-Muslim Han extraction, but by the Twentieth Century some branches of the families had become Muslim by intermarriage or conversion.[28] The surname in other countries/ethnic groups [ edit ] Korea [ edit ] Wang Hangul 왕 Hanja 王 Revised Romanization Wang McCune–Reischauer Wang The surname Wang has a Goguryeo origin and was the royal surname of Goryeo dynasty which was founded by Wang Geon. It is said that when Goryeo fell, many changed their surname to Jeon(全)/Jeon(田)/Ok(玉) to avoid severe persecution from the succeeding Joseon Dynasty. The Kaesong Wang lineage traces its ancestry to the Goryeo rulers. Japan [ edit ] Ō (Japanese: 王) is a rare Japanese name, mostly held by those of Chinese descent, such as the baseball player Sadaharu Oh (王貞治), also known as Wang Chen-chih. Indonesia [ edit ] In Indonesia, the surname is often romanized as "Heng", "Bong" or "Ong" for people of Hokkien descent,[citation needed] and more commonly as Ong by Chinese Peranakan. Scandinavia [ edit ] Wang is also a completely unrelated surname in Sweden and Norway. It is a variant spelling of the name Vang which is derived from the Old Norse word vangr, meaning field or meadow. Wang is also a surname in the German and Dutch languages. The name is derived from Middle German wang/ Middle Dutch waenge, which is literally "cheek". However, in southern German, its meaning, "grassy slope" or "field of grass", is similar to the Scandinavian surname. Notable people surnamed Wang [ edit ] Note: people generally romanized as "Wong" are listed in the " Wong " article. People generally romanized as "Ong" are listed in the " Ong " article. People with the family name "Vuong" are listed in the " Vuong " article. People generally romanized as "O" or "Oh" are listed in the " Ō " article. Historical figures [ edit ] Notable People from Asia [ edit ] 汪 [ edit ] John Clang (born Ang Choon Leng) - Singapore born American artist See also [ edit ] References [ edit ] Citations [ edit ] Sources [ edit ]
19 December 2017 Aled Brew has extended his stay with Bath Rugby, the Club is delighted to announce. Having initially joined last season on a short-term contract, Brew quickly established himself as an integral member of Todd Blackadder’s squad. He is currently enjoying a rich run of form, having scored four tries in 11 appearances so far this season. “I’m really enjoying my rugby again here at Bath, so I didn’t hesitate to re-sign,” said the Welsh international winger. “We’re a close, ambitious squad, and there’s a real hunger and drive to keep working hard and develop, both as a team and as individual players, which is a really powerful environment to be in.” Director of Rugby Blackadder added, “Aled has been fantastic for us. He brings a real energy to the squad, on and off the pitch, and he is so committed to everything he does. He’s got a lot of experience to draw on, but also still has a real appetite to learn and improve, which is a great attitude and exactly what we’re looking for in our players.”
Vancouver Island is home to some of the last remaining old-growth forests on the continent. The enormous trees that exist within these ecosystems used to cover most of North America before being cut down for industrial and agricultural purposes. Unfortunately, some of these forests now confront similar threats today from numerous logging companies in the area. These are the trees they want to cut down. This is what they want to turn them into. 73% of Vancouver Island's old-growth forests have already been lost. Only 6% of Vancouver Island's productive forest lands are protected in their parks system. Two Documentaries From left to right (Rebecca Billings, Adam Monzella, Jacob Wise) Our names are Jacob, Rebecca and Adam, and we're Environmental and Documentary students from Ithaca College in Ithaca, NY. In order to protect the final 27%, we will fly out to Vancouver Island in British Columbia to make two documentaries about its unique and imperiled ecosystems. The first film will be a traditional investigative documentary detailing the ecological community's current circumstances. For this film we're hoping to interview a variety of individuals including representatives from logging companies, local environmentalists and citizens, and experts in relevant fields. By gathering a variety of opinions we hope to paint a clear picture of the current situation facing these forests, as well as present a wide range of views on the subject and its potential impact on global sustainability. The second film will be a non-verbal piece showing these ecosystems and their enormous trees in their natural beauty, as well as the precarious nature of their existence. By non-verbal, we mean that the film will be made up entirely of images and soundscapes, rather than interviews and narration. These images will be used to bring the viewer through a variety of themes and vibrations that resonate throughout the forests in order to bring forth understanding and connection, as well as give weight to the current events. Thus, the films act as companion pieces to each other. There's just one catch, though. We need to get there first. That's where you come in. With your help, we will be able to afford: Round-trip plane tickets Lodging Rental costs for production equipment such as lenses and camera rigs. Everything else, including cameras, equipment, supplies, sustenance and determination, is already accounted for. If we manage to exceed our goal, the extra funds will be put to use in either increasing the quality of the film or a donation towards the protection of these lands. As a way of showing our gratitude, we've put together a plethora of incentives which you can see on the right side of this page. If you can't afford to donate, we would be grateful if you would share this project on your Facebook, Twitter, and with friends and family. We have a limited time to raise funds and appreciate all the help we can get! These films are not being made for personal gain. We are making them in the hopes of reconnecting people with the planet that they are a living part of - the same planet that is currently on the brink of widespread environmental degradation, destruction and contamination. For us, this film isn't a choice or a career move. It's what all of us feel we need to be doing with our lives at this point in time. By donating to this project, you are funding more than just a couple of films. You are helping to raise awareness and support for an ever-expanding environmental movement made up of people that want to keep our planet healthy and beautiful. The fact that old-growth forests are being logged, and will potentially continue to be logged until they are extinct speaks for the need of a societal reconsideration of the health and workings of our biosphere. Through the films that you help to complete, we hope to instill this sentiment in others. “To those devoid of imagination a blank place on the map is a useless waste; to others, the most valuable part.” - Aldo Leopold
A Year of Change Alexey Migutsky Blocked Unblock Follow Following Nov 27, 2016 I want to share this story of mine. A story of long-anticipated changes. A long journey, which took me 12 months. I have changed my lifestyle completely! For good. To be honest, I never thought I can pack so many things in a year. Some of you may find it to be “just a normal life”, but for me it is a huge achievement. I owe this post to those people who were supporting me all that time. I hope it will inspire some of you to make changes in your live. I truly think anyone can do the same, the question is just in having vision, determination and applying some life hacks on top of that. Some background My story began in November 2015. There were no NY resolution or “starting from Monday” kind of stuff. But as it usually happens, most big changes start with a crisis (you can find nice examples in The Power Of Habit, I won’t expand much on this topic). I’ll spare you some details, they are not really relevant. I have made some controversial (maybe even stupid) decisions during my recent years, which led me to a weakened state of body and mind (I’ll dive into some details later). I always knew there were some trade-offs and “debts” I would have to pay back as a result of my deliberate choices. That’s why I was studying the ways other people get better, knowing that “one day I will do it, but it can wait…” I’ve tried some productivity and lifestyle-changing stuff during my life: GTD, meditation, dieting… Nothing really stuck. It was a question of starting and maintaining the inertia long enough. And I was postponing the starting point in my timeline. This time I’ve really got a lucky chance to leverage the crisis and do everything right. The main lesson I learned this year: You have to take actions. Self-development is not the knowledge you possess, but the actions you take, based on the knowledge you get.
Skips are a snack from the United Kingdom and Ireland; which were first launched in 1974 in prawn cocktail flavour. The snacks are made by KP Snacks under licence from Meiji Seika Japan. In the United Kingdom, they are made with tapioca starch and in Ireland with potato starch. Skips are similar to Chinese prawn crackers, although they are smaller and have a finer texture that makes them fizz and 'melt' on the tongue.[1][2] Other flavours, such as pickled onion, Caribbean Spice curry (teal blue bag), Hot from Rio chilli (orange bag), Chinese spare rib (purple bag), a limited edition ReBoot Dots Doughnut (pink bag) and a ReBoot pizza flavour, and a Sweetcorn Relish (yellow bag)[3] have been available in the past. Since early 2006, Skips have seen a 30% reduction in saturated fat and a 10% reduction in sodium and are made with 100% sunflower oil. Skips contain no artificial colours or flavourings, and have fewer than 100 calories per packet. Packets of Skips often have jokes or tongue twisters written on the back, which are aimed at children. The children's theme has been extended in previous years with the sponsorship of Dragon's Fury, a popular attraction at Chessington World Of Adventures. Ex-EastEnders actress Daniela Denby-Ashe, who played Sarah Hills in the show and Janey Harper in My Family, appeared in a Skips advert as a teenager.[citation needed] Also in the 1980s, wrestler Giant Haystacks appeared in a TV advert for Skips, with the closing line "Dainty aren't they?". Action Biker, a mid-1980s budget computer game from Mastertronic, featured the Clumsy Colin character from the then-current Skips adverts, as well as KP Skips branding on the case artwork. See also [ edit ]
San Marcos, CA – Fresh off winning a Gold Medal at the 2015 Great American Beer Festival in the Wood and Barrel Aged Sour Category for Veritas 015 (Blonde Sour with Peaches, Apricots and Nectarines), The Lost Abbey announced the release of Veritas 016 this November. The Veritas line has been an ongoing experiment of the relationship between fruit, Brettanomyces and barrel aging. Inspired by one of their previous draft-only blended sours (Spontaneous Cheer) this is the 16th iteration in the Veritas series. Veritas 016 is a blended Oak-Aged Sour and the first in the Veritas line to include white peaches. As in years past, the initial sale of Veritas 016 will coincide with The Lost Abbey’s Annual Barrel Night, which kicks off San Diego Beer Week on November 7th. The very limited 150 tickets are $200 and include dinner by local San Diego Executive Chef, Christian Graves of J-Six, 5 single-barrel samples from the depths of The Lost Abbey Oak Aging Program, and 4 bottles of Veritas 016. Tickets for The Lost Abbey Barrel Night will go on-sale Tuesday, October 6th at 12pm (PST). For anyone who happens to miss out on tickets to Barrel Night, a secondary sale of Veritas 016 will take place at 12pm (PST) on October 13th with bottle pickups scheduled over 3 sessions (early/late Saturday and one on Sunday) on the weekend of November 14th and 15th. Bottles are $41 ($1 service charge included) and are limited to 3 bottles per person. Additional information and links to Barrel Night and bottle on-sale are forthcoming next week via The Lost Abbey’s blog (lostabbey.com/blog) as well as The Lost Abbey’s social media outlets. About Port Brewing / The Lost Abbey / The Hop Concept Founded in 2006, Port Brewing and The Lost Abbey produce an extensive line-up of continental and American- inspired ales and lagers. Under the direction of visionary brewmaster and co-founder Tomme Arthur, the brewery has garnered dozens of awards including the 2007 Great American Beer Festival Small Brewery of the Year, The 2008 world Beer Cup Champion Small Brewery and the 2013 Champion Brewery at the San Diego International Beer Festival. The company’s beers, many of which are aged in oak barrels for 12 months or longer, are universally recognized for their complexity, unique flavors and bold boundary-pushing styles. For more information, contact Port Brewing / The Lost Abbey at 155 Mata Way, Suite 104, San Marcos, CA 92069, telephone (800) 918-6816, and on the web at www.LostAbbey.com
Michael Allan Jacobs tried to pin the shooting of Tamworth police officer David Rixon on drug dealer and convicted killer Terry Price for good reason. "He nominated that person because he was a likely candidate to give credence to the story," Crown prosecutor Pat Barrett said. "He wasn't to know that Terry Price was at home in bed with his girlfriend at the time." A jury didn't buy Jacobs' defence that Mr Price was the man who pulled the trigger on that grey morning on March 2, 2012, taking less than an hour on Monday to find him guilty of murdering the 40-year-old highway patrol officer and father of six. Jacobs, who kept the calm and straight-faced demeanour he had shown throughout the trial as the verdict was read out, now faces life in jail for the murder of an on-duty police officer.
UC SAN DIEGO SCHOOL OF MEDICINEOver the past five years, optogenetics—a method for stimulating genetically engineered neurons with light—has taken the life sciences by storm. Now researchers also have the option of engineering subsets of neurons and activating them with ultrasound, according to a study published today (September 15) in Nature Communications. Researchers from the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, have used the method, dubbed “sonogenetics,” to control the movements of nematode worms. Study coauthor Sreekanth Chalasani, a molecular neurobiologist at the Salk Institute, explained that sonogenetics will complement optogenetics, as sound can travel deep into the brain unimpeded while light scatters when it hits opaque tissues. People using optogenetics in mammals, for instance, must surgically insert a probe, whereas stimulation with ultrasound will require no such surgery. “This is noninvasive,” Chalasani said. “It’s the first demonstration of this genetic enhancement of ultrasound neurostimulation,” said Stephen Baccus, a neurobiologist at the Stanford University School of Medicine, who was not involved in the study. “It’s an awesome study because it really opens up new possibilities for how we modulate biology,” said Jamie Tyler, a neuroscientist at Arizona State University who led the first group to directly stimulate neurons with ultrasound in 2008. “It shows the mechanical sensitivity of ion channels and that you can use ultrasound to directly perturb a neuronal circuit in an intact organism.” In the past, other groups used relatively high-pressure ultrasound to stimulate cells, which ran the risk of damaging them. Chalasani and his colleagues decided to use low-pressure ultrasound waves and engineer only a subset of cells to respond to them. The researchers took advantage of mechanosensitive channels found in the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans. The worms ordinarily use these neuron-embedded TRP-4 channels to sense when their bodies are stretching. When the worms stretch, the channels open and allow calcium to flow through. The team hoped to engineer small groups of worm neurons to express TRP-4 channels and then to open the channels through the mechanical force of ultrasound waves, while allowing non-engineered neurons to remain unperturbed. But the researchers found that their low-frequency waves caused such small mechanical deformations that worms could not detect them. They then decided to change the acoustics with 2- to 6-micron gas-filled lipid microbubbles. “Depending on the size of the bubble, they resonate at the frequency of the ultrasound transducer,” Chalasani said. By surrounding worms with these bubbles, which can rest on the surface of an agar plate, the researchers were able to amplify ultrasound waves and activate neurons. The researchers added TRP-4 channels to neurons known to make worms reverse directions and were able to influence the worm’s movements by stimulating those neurons with ultrasound. They next decided to try out sonogenetics in a set of poorly understood worm cells called PVD neurons. The researchers found that stimulating these neurons reduced the likelihood that the animals would change directions. Finally, the researchers tested whether they could use sonogenetics on neurons 25 microns beneath the worms’ cuticles. They used calcium imaging to show that the engineered neurons lit up when stimulated with sound. The team is now working on adapting its technique for use in mice. Chalasani noted it may not even be necessary to use microbubbles to amplify the sound waves. “We expect that perhaps because the mammalian brain is bigger, the deformation might be sufficient to cause the neuron to detect it,” he said. Or, if the researchers do end up needing to use microbubbles, they may inject them into the mouse bloodstream. The bubbles should travel into the tiny blood vessels of the brain. In this case, each neuron should be within 20 microns of microbubbles-filled capillaries. The researchers would like to see sonogenetics used on humans down the line, perhaps as a less invasive form of deep-brain stimulation. The researchers will need to figure out how to genetically engineer human cells safely to express mechanosensitive channels. And if microbubbles are necessary for amplification, the team will have to establish their safety. The bubbles dissolve after about an hour in blood vessels. But Baccus warned that sometimes microbubbles undergo a phenomenon called inertial cavitation, in which they expand and damage tissue. Baccus added that, while genetically modified cells respond more markedly to ultrasound, the amplified ultrasound waves also do appear to affect some other neurons. “It’s not he same thing at this point as optogenetics, where it’s really an all-or-none thing,” he told The Scientist. But sonogenetics has taken a large step in its path to maturity. “This is the first paper that shows, ‘Look, you really can directly modulate ion channels using acoustic pressure,’” said Tyler. “I think it will probably lead to even more people going into the field.” S. Ibsen et al., “Sonogenetics is a non-invasive approach to activating neurons in Caenorhabditis elegans,” Nature Communications, 6:8264, 2015.
Cultivate skills. Connect with community. Create change. SAALT 2018-19 Young Leaders Institute “YLI is a place where I found community amongst like-minded South Asians Americans who are passionate about justice.” –Jasveen, The New School, 2016 YLI Fellow “I felt empowered to create change. New ideas were forming in my mind on how to involve my campus in the revolution.” –Priya, University of Florida, 2015 YLI Fellow SAALT’s Young Leaders Institute (YLI) is an opportunity for students and young adults ages 18-22 in the U.S. to build leadership skills, connect with activists and mentors, and explore social change strategies around issues that affect South Asian and immigrant communities in the U.S. SAALT welcomes applications from young leaders who are not enrolled in academic institutions. We also accept applicants from all types of academic institutions including universities, colleges, community colleges, vocational training, etc. Applications of young adults who are older and/or in graduate school will also be accepted and considered. The Institute is designed to cultivate skills to deepen knowledge and awareness, strengthen and nurture relationships with diverse communities, and empower young leaders to be agents of change. Applications for the 2018-19 Young Leaders Institute is now closed. Our 2018-2019 Young Leaders Institute (YLI) cohort will identify strategies and craft projects to support those highly impacted at their academic institutions and/or local South Asian communities. An overview of projects can be found here. Review the Young Leaders Institute Frequently Asked Questions page here Meet past SAALT Young Leaders Institute Cohorts
Gov. Pat McCrory on Wednesday signed House Bill 2, which overrides all LGBT nondiscrimination ordinances in the state. Republican leaders worked to pass the bill in a one-day special session. AP / Gerry Broome Republican leaders of the North Carolina General Assembly on Wednesday rushed through a bill to repeal all local LGBT nondiscrimination ordinances in the state and ban transgender people from certain restrooms. Introduced and passed within 10 hours, the bill then went to Gov. Pat McCrory's desk. He signed it around 10 p.m. Wednesday, citing North Carolina residents' expectation of privacy and "basic community norms." I signed bipartisan legislation to stop the breach of basic privacy and etiquette, ensure privacy in bathrooms and locker rooms. Republicans had unveiled the legislation Wednesday morning, arguing the measure was needed to protect women from transgender people and sex predators. They were reacting to an ordinance in Charlotte — which had been scheduled to take effect April 1 — that would protect LGBT people from discrimination in housing and public accommodations. The governor and other critics claimed the public accommodations portion of the city ordinance posed a safety threat by allowing transgender women, whom they called "men," to prey on women and girls. “The basic expectation of privacy in the most personal of settings, a restroom or locker room, for each gender was violated by government overreach and intrusion by the mayor and city council of Charlotte," McCrory said in a statement that explained why he signed the bill into law. The Charlotte ordinance, he continued, "defies common sense and basic community norms by allowing, for example, a man to use a woman's bathroom, shower or locker room." The House voted 83–25 for the bill in the afternoon, and the Senate voted 32–0 Wednesday evening — a unanimous vote only because every Democratic senator walked out. Senate Dems have started presser while session is still going on. They walked out of session. #ncga #ncpol McCrory said the bill was "passed by a bipartisan majority," presumably referring to some votes from Democrats in the House. House Bill 2 mandates that state law supersede all local ordinances concerning wages, employment, and public accommodations. Despite the focus on Charlotte, the state's pre-emption law does more than stymie that city's ordinance. House Bill 2 mandates that state law supersedes all local ordinances concerning wages, employment, and public accommodations. It also restricts single-sex public restrooms and locker rooms in publicly run facilities to people of the same sex on their birth certificate. In addition, it bans transgender students from school restrooms that correspond with their gender identity — teeing up a potential legal clash with the federal government, which has found that civil rights laws ban transgender discrimination in schools. The American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal are exploring a legal challenge to the law. The advocacy groups warned in a statement that North Carolina could "lose billions in federal funds" for running afoul of Department of Education rules that ban transgender discrimination in public schools. Nine other jurisdictions in the state have LGBT ordinances similar to Charlotte's. Democrats and some businesses, including Dow Chemical, decried the bill as discriminatory on Wednesday, as did the state's attorney general, Roy Cooper, who is running for governor. "That North Carolina is making discrimination part of the law is shameful," said Cooper. "It will not only cause real harm to families, but to our economy as well." Democratic lawmakers had not been given a chance to read the bill Wednesday morning, which was introduced just an hour before its first committee vote. Democratic Rep. Bobby Richardson told fellow members of the House Judiciary IV Committee, “I’m not really sure what is in this bill." In testimony before the committee, Christian conservatives said they were furious that Charlotte’s nondiscrimination ordinance would allow transgender women to use women’s restrooms, thereby letting “men” prey on women and girls. John Rustin, president of the North Carolina Family Policy Council, told senators the Charlotte ordinance “means men could enter women restrooms and locker rooms — placing the privacy, safety, and dignity of women and the elderly at great risk.” AP / Gerry Broome House Speaker Tim Moore The specter of “men in women’s bathrooms” has been a common refrain among opponents of LGBT rights around the country. Echoing those talking points, leaders of the House and Senate called the special session on Monday. Lt. Governor Dan Forest and House Speaker Tim Moore, both Republicans, said in a statement they would address "a radical Charlotte City Council ordinance allowing men to share public bathrooms and locker rooms with young girls and women.” However, there are no known instances in 17 states and 225 cities with laws banning LGBT discrimination of the policies being used to promote or defend predatory behavior in bathrooms or locker rooms. "Repeating a lie over and over does not make it true," said Reverend Mykal Slack, taking on the anti-transgender bathroom message. "I am a transgender male, and I am not a threat to you," he continued. "I go to work every day and go to church ever Sunday." But LGBT groups have been reticent to directly rebut the bathroom messages in Charlotte or before Wednesday's legislative session, instead focusing on the broad protections of the city law for LGBT people. That approach appears to re-create the same strategy that ultimately failed to prevent voters from repealing Houston's LGBT ordinance last fall. #HB2 debated in the NC House during special session. #KeepNCSafe #PatPromised In contrast, transgender women have a well documented history of being the targets of hate-motivated assault and homicide. Alex McNeill, a transgender man who lives in North Carolina, told reporters on a phone call Tuesday, “A female friend of mine was punched in face exiting the women restroom by someone who thought she had been in the wrong bathroom.” Trans women experience a greater risk of homicide than LGBT people as a whole, according to a June 2015 report by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs. The report found hate-motivated violence against transgender people rose 13% in 2014 compared with the year before. The Charlotte ordinance would ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression in housing and places of public accommodation. “I am a transgender male, and I am not a threat to you," Reverend Mykal Slack told senators.
You must enter the characters with black color that stand out from the other characters Message: * A friend wanted you to see this item from WRAL.com: http://wr.al/mNto — Raleigh police said Tuesday that they plan to charge an Athens Drive High School student who allegedly shoved a school administrator into a plate-glass window during a lunchtime fight. Steven Miller, an assistant principal, was taken to a local hospital around noon Tuesday after he was injured while trying to break up the altercation. He was treated and later released. Investigators did not identify the student or say what charges might be filed. Students said there were numerous fights within about 15 minutes and that Miller was trying to break up one of those, near the cafeteria. Sophomore McKenzie McCarthy said a student grabbed Miller's shoulders and shoved him into the glass. "To see him just manhandled like that, it was really scary," she said. "It's like something that happened right in front of you, and your principal is harmed, and you're like, 'What are you going to do?'" Mike Charbonneau, a spokesman for the Wake County Public School System, said school administrators are looking into what started the fights but that none of them appeared to be related. "Safety and security is the top priority for all of the students in Wake County, and anytime an incident happens, our security staff has procedures and protocols in place," Charbonneau said. "They jump right in to ensure that all students stay safe in the process." Charbonneau did not say what disciplinary action might be taken against students.
25User Rating: 2 out of 5 Review title of Rarely Alive Multiple freezing issues Bought three copies of this for me, girlfriend, & little brother who lives out of state so we have another game to play online together. We have tried three different games & ablut half way through, the timer would freeze & you couldnt do anything besides pause & unpause back to the frozen screen. We've tried different people hosting, different maps, different game settings & nothing works. Its a lot of fun, but we can't even finish a full game together online. Please update & fix. I will re-rate when fixed. Only other complaint I have is that this game isn't dominating the world, it's dominating cities. Kind of a bummer & not what we were expecting before purchasing.
Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonREAD: Cohen testimony alleges Trump knew Stone talked with WikiLeaks about DNC emails County GOP in Minnesota shares image comparing Sanders to Hitler Holder: 'Time to make the Electoral College a vestige of the past' MORE barked like a dog on Monday to taunt Republicans for not telling the truth. “One of my favorite, favorite political ads of all time was a radio ad, rural Arkansas, where the announcer said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if somebody running for office said something, we could have an immediate reaction as to whether it was true or not,' ” the Democratic presidential candidate told an audience during a rally in Reno, Nev. ADVERTISEMENT “ 'Well, we've trained this dog,’ ” she continued, paraphrasing the ad. " 'And the dog, if it's not true, he is going to bark. And then the dog was barking on the radio. And so people were barking at each other for days after that.' “I'm trying to figure out how we can do that with the Republicans. We need to get that dog and follow them around, and every time they say these things like, ‘Oh, the Great Recession was caused by too much regulation’ — arh, arh, arh, arh!” The former secretary of State’s barking inspired mimics in her crowd of listeners, CNN reported Monday. “I think we could cut right through a lot of their claims,” Clinton said.
At the 2017 Frankfurt Auto Show, BMW will unveil a new version of the i3 electric car. The BMW i3S – short for Sport – will be the top model of the electric range with a series of subtle styling updates that help to visually differentiate it from its four-year-old predecessor and performance improvements. Built upon the current i3, but with tech and features from the upcoming i3 facelift, the i3s is expected to deliver between 10 and 15 more horsepower than the current model – which offers 168 horsepower and 184 lb-ft of torque – enough to propel the i3 from 0 to 62 mph in 7.3 second. The slight bump in power will offer a faster standard sprint. The front-end will feature a re-profiled front bumper housing new slim line fog lamps in place of the round units used today, altered LED headlight graphics, revised sills underneath the doors, reworked tail-light lenses, a deeper and reshaped rear bumper, new alloy wheels and a wider range of optional two-tone exterior colour schemes. The body kit has also been extended by a few millimeters while the standard tires have been enlarged as well, for a beefier look. if (pl_is_mobile()) { ? } ? Inside, the new i3 Sport will receive a mild facelift, mostly consisting of the new trims and upholstery options. It is rumored though that the new electric vehicle will bring to market some new technology updates, but those are unclear at the moment. The increased performance of the i3S iPerformance is achieve through a number of detailed chassis tweaks, including the adoption of a 40mm wider front track and a 10mm reduction in ride height over the standard version of the updated i3. BMW has also reprogrammed the dynamic stability control system of the i3 to provide the facelifted model with added grip and traction in wet conditions. The new i3 Sport will enter production this November and it’s expected to arrive at dealers at the beginning of the 2018.
Syria to hit back 'painfully' if Israel strikes again DAMASCUS- Agence France-Presse A damaged pick-up truck is seen on a street filled with debris in the Khaldiyeh district in central Homs May 9, 2013. REUTERS/Yazan Homsy Syria will "respond immediately" to any new Israeli attack against its territory, its deputy foreign minister told AFP on May 9, after two reported Israeli strikes on military targets last week.In an exclusive interview in the Syrian capital, Faisal Muqdad also said Syria is ready to receive a UN team to investigate claims of the use of chemical weapons in the country's conflict."The instruction has been made to respond immediately to any new Israeli attack without (additional) instruction from any higher leadership, and our retaliation will be strong and will be painful against Israel," Faisal Muqdad said.Senior Israeli sources said the strikes targeted weapons bound for the powerful Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah, a close ally of Damascus. Muqdad denied that."They absolutely did not achieve their objective and they lied when they said they are targeting Hezbollah," he said. There is "no way Syria will allow this to happen again," he added.Israel reportedly targeted military sites near the capital Damascus early on May 3 morning and again early on May 5 morning, with at least 42 soldiers reported dead in the second strike.The strikes last week were the third time Israel is thought to have hit sites inside Syria since the beginning of an uprising against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad in March 2011. That first was in January of this year.Muqdad meanwhile said Assad, like his US counterpart Barack Obama, believes the use of chemical weapons would be a "red line" in the country's conflict."We were ready and we are always ready, right now, to receive the delegation that was set up by [UN chief] Ban Ki-moon to investigate what happened in Khan al-Assal," Muqdad said.Syria first asked for the inquiry shortly after accusing opposition rebels of using chemical weapons at Khan al-Assal near Aleppo on March 23 in an attack in which authorities say more than 30 people died.There have since been unconfirmed reports of the possible use of chemical weapons elsewhere in the strife-torn country."Once the investigation in Khan al-Assal proves to be professional, and proves to be honest and neutral, we will let them look into other issues," said Muqdad.The UN says Damascus has refused the deployment of investigators, while Britain and France have also accused the Syrian regime of using chemical weapons in Khan al-Assal and in Homs, in central Syria, on December 23 last year."The rumours started that Syria prevented the mission from coming, which is absolutely incorrect, crazy and unacceptable," Muqdad said. "This is a big lie." A UN commission of experts was mandated at the end of March by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to investigate the possible use of chemical arms in Syria. The UN said the Syrian regime was responsible for blocking the experts' entry.In late April, the UN chief a new plea to Damascus to stop blocking the international inquiry, adding that he "takes seriously" US reports that such weapons were probably used. He said an investigation should "proceed without delay and without any conditions".But Muqdad blamed Britain, France and insurgents fighting Assad's regime for putting pressure on the UN to stop the commission from deploying. "It is not that we in Syria were delaying or preventing the team established by the secretariat of the UN... it is the secretariat, under instruction and pressure from Britain, France and the armed groups. They don't want to come," he said."Many people speak about red lines, including President Obama, against the use of chemical weapons. This is also a red line for President Assad. President Assad will never, ever use chemical weapons, if Syria possesses them, against the people in Syria," said Muqdad. "So we are sure those who used chemical weapons are the others," he added, referring to insurgents."They absolutely did not achieve their objective and they lied when they said they are targeting Hezbollah," he said, adding there is "no way Syria will allow this to happen again." In Beirut, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said Syria would supply his movement with "game-changing weapons" and open up the front to "resistance fighters" against the Jewish state on the Golan Heights.Israel captured the Golan from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day war and subsequently annexed it."You Israelis say your objective is to stop the capability of the resistance (against Israel) from growing... but Syria will provide (Hezbollah) with game-changing weapons it has not had before," Nasrallah said in his televised speech."If you (Israel) see Syria as a corridor of arms to (Hezbollah), Syria will provide the resistance with those arms. This is a highly strategic decision." Israel has repeatedly warned it will intervene to prevent the transfer of advanced weaponry to Hezbollah, with which it fought a devastating 2006 war.Hezbollah is battling alongside Assad's troops in several parts of the country.The regime is relying increasingly on its alliance with Hezbollah, and Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar quoted Assad on May 9 as saying Syria would "give Hezbollah everything" for its loyalty.
With another high profile disciplinary meeting, and possible excommunication on the horizon this week, there are some things that we as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints need to remember. This is applicable to those who consider themselves “mainstream” or “conservative” and those that consider themselves, “liberal,” “progressive,” “uncorrelated,” and so on. The Church gets to make up the rules that govern itself — as does any church. For Mormons, those rules come from the Lord via His prophet. As members of the Church we should have a testimony of the declaration found in Doctrine & Covenants 1:38, “What I the Lord have spoken, I have spoken, and I excuse not myself; and though the heavens and the earth pass away, my word shall not pass away, but shall all be fulfilled, whether by mine own voice or by the voice of my servants, it is the same.” The prophet speaks for the Lord in all things. The Church gets to set up the rules and terms of membership. If you are a temple attending member of the Church, every other year, when you go in to renew your temple recommend, you have the chance to declare your belief in these things. We also covenant at baptism and then re-covenant later on in the temple to be obedient. Stake presidents and bishops are totally within their rights and required as a judges in Israel to make sure the members of their flocks, the people over which they have stewardship, are abiding by the rules and doing what they have covenanted to do. So, if a person or groups of people are actively promoting ideas that are contrary to the doctrines and rules of the Church, they are going to account for their actions with their stake presidents and bishops. It is not unfair, judgmental, patriarchal, or full of unrighteous dominion to have to account for ourselves if we wish to be counted among the Latter-day Saints. The Book of Joshua, tells us, “Choose you this day whom ye will serve, but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” (Joshua 24:15) This sentiment is repeated in the Book of Matthew (6:24) and in The Book of Mormon (3 Nephi 13:24), “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” As we wade through the sometimes murky waters of the Bloggernacle, we have to choose – who we follow, who we serve, and which way we face. There are many members of the Church who are in the middle of a crisis of faith for various reasons. I think it’s safe to say that we all have these crises at times in our life. I am a lifelong member of the Church. I have even had my doubts about doctrines of the gospel, about my place in the Church, about my place in God’s kingdom, and if I wanted to stay. When I was 27, I was visiting a non-member friend in Toronto. She started to ask me about the Book of Mormon and the things Mormons believed. I found myself standing on the frozen banks of the St. Lawrence Seaway, having my own “Rev Tevye” moment. Did I really, truly, actually believe the things I was about to tell her? I did believe them. But I also realized at that moment, I had some work to do on my testimony and my wavering faith. There have been other times in my life as well, when I have had to make a choice and be accountable for my faith and beliefs. Faith and the maintenance of a testimony is an everyday, and a lifelong endeavor. We cannot do “all the right things” for a period of time, and expect that to carry us through the rough waters of life for years and years. We have to continually add oil to our spiritual lamps and reserves. We must become familiar with how God speaks to us, so that we will not be deceived. Make no mistake, the adversary knows us, he knows how to speak to us, and he will use any and all means at his disposal to trick, dupe, blind, and mislead us. We have to draw our spiritual oil from the scriptures, the words of the modern and living prophets and from the teachings and example of Jesus Christ, so that when we are confronted with false teachings we can see them for what they really are. Moroni chapter 7, the in The Book of Mormon, gives us a good litmus test to use for time when we struggle and doubt. Verses 11-17 read, “ 11 For behold, a bitter fountain cannot bring forth good water; neither can a good fountain bring forth bitter water; wherefore, a man being a servant of the devil cannot follow Christ; and if he follow Christ he cannot be a servant of the devil. 12 Wherefore, all things which are good cometh of God; and that which is evil cometh of the devil; for the devil is an enemy unto God, and fighteth against him continually, and inviteth and enticeth to sin, and to do that which is evil continually. 13 But behold, that which is of God inviteth and enticeth to do good continually; wherefore, every thing which inviteth and enticeth to do good, and to love God, and to serve him, is inspired of God. 14 Wherefore, take heed, my beloved brethren, that ye do not judge that which is evil to be of God, or that which is good and of God to be of the devil. 15 For behold, my brethren, it is given unto you to judge, that ye may know good from evil; and the way to judge is as plain, that ye may know with a perfect knowledge, as the daylight is from the dark night. 16 For behold, the Spirit of Christ is given to every man, that he may know good from evil; wherefore, I show unto you the way to judge; for every thing which inviteth to do good, and to persuade to believe in Christ, is sent forth by the power and gift of Christ; wherefore ye may know with a perfect knowledge it is of God. 17 But whatsoever thing persuadeth men to do evil, and believe not in Christ, and deny him, and serve not God, then ye may know with a perfect knowledge it is of the devil; for after this manner doth the devil work, for he persuadeth no man to do good, no, not one; neither do his angels; neither do they who subject themselves unto him.” If the things we are engaging in take us away from the Church, if they are at odds with the revealed doctrines of the Church, and more in line with popular sentiments and trends, if they cause contention in our families, and among our ward members, that should serve as a large red flag waving at us, and warning us to rethink, reassess, and repent. When it comes down to it as well, the Church is not going to bend its doctrines to line up with pop-culture and sentiment. The Lord does love us, and wants all of us in His kingdom, but he has outlined in the scriptures, and via His prophets what that way is. In the October 2014 General Conference, Elder Lynn G. Robbins of the Presidency of the 70, in his talk, “Which Way Do You Face?”, stated, “Trying to please others before pleasing God is inverting the first and second great commandments.” In that same talk he also asked us, “Which way do you face?” In the end, every single one of us will have to declare who we serve and which way we face. We cannot continue to believe that we can embrace the philosophies of the world as truth and not be held accountable for those choices and beliefs. Again, as Doctrine & Covenants 134:10 states, “We believe that all religious societies have a right to deal with their members for disorderly conduct, according to the rules and regulations of such societies; provided that such dealings be for fellowship and good standing.” When individuals or groups are acting outside of the “rules and regulations” of the Church, the Church is within its rights to ask them to stop and to disassociate with them, if they refuse. The Church and the individual priesthood leaders do not rejoice in these times. Nor should we as members of the Church. A final word to those who read this who feel they are in a crisis of faith. Know that you are loved and cared for by our Heavenly Father. Know that you probably have people like your family, a bishop, a home or visiting teacher, a Relief Society President, and friends praying for you, and who want to help you. If you are not currently in a crisis of faith, but know someone who is, approach them in the spirit of service, to comfort and mourn with them as they need. Allow them the space they need to think, ponder, pray, repent and to grow. No one wants to feel like their struggles are not important or valid. No one wants to be reminded of “who they once were” after they have had a “mighty change of heart”, as Alma called it. Once a person has changed and has come thru their crisis, let the crisis be in the past, and help them move forward in faith. This being said, there will be a time for all of us to account for our actions and the things we believe in. President Dieter F. Uchtdorf reminds us in his talk, “Come Join With Us” (October, 2013, General Conference), “My dear brothers and sisters—my dear friends—please, first doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith. We must never allow doubt to hold us prisoner and keep us from the divine love, peace, and gifts that come through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.” When in doubt, seek Jesus Christ. When you have a question, seek Jesus Christ. When you are hurting, seek Jesus Christ. When you do not fully understand the situations before you, seek Jesus Christ, and have faith in His promise in John 14: 27, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”
The ABC's digital service is a winner with the public Posted Peter Costello may question why the ABC offers services across digital platforms, but the vast majority of Australians are thankful they have a strong, robust, independent public broadcaster delivering in new ways, writes Mark Scott. The former federal treasurer and current director of the Nine Network, Peter Costello, has asked the question: why does the ABC need to offer services across digital platforms? His response is hardly surprising. He has never been a friend of the ABC. But as is the fate of some former political leaders, it is easy to lose touch with the current reality and the sentiment of the public. The ABC is a digital public broadcaster because the law says it must be - it is in the ABC charter. And the ABC's most important stakeholder and owner, the Australian public, have demanded it be digital to remain relevant to audiences today and in the future. If you want to be a contemporary media organisation, you have to have a digital strategy that allows you to deliver across multiple channels to different audiences on different devices. In its year in review, the Department of Communications found 42 per cent of households paid for television services in 2015, a clear sign of the audience expectation for digital services. In Australia, the ABC's iview led the way - the number of plays per month has doubled this year to 40 million. New Australian talent is being discovered and showcased on programs premiering on iview. More than 125 million ABC radio programs have been podcast or streamed this year. ABC News websites see growing traffic, particularly around mobile offerings. Of all local broadcasters, the ABC has been acknowledged as the innovator and leader in the digital space and Australians love it. It's not just the technology that is important though - it is the stories. Without a well-funded ABC we would not have the quality television dramas that help define our culture and that tell our stories. The Secret River, The Slap, The Code and Glitch all told great Australian stories on TV and iview. Without a well-funded ABC we would not have commercial free children's programming in this country on ABC Kids or ABC3. Try telling all the parents out there those services are no longer required - and the ABC Kids iview app and Play School app shouldn't have been created. The most recent view of the public was captured by Newspoll, which showed 84 per cent of the Australian public believes the ABC represents good or very good value for money. We would no longer have the strong news services so vital to our democracy or the rolling coverage of ABC News 24 - news services Australians rate as more trustworthy, by far, than any other news outlet in the country. Forget about the contribution made by Four Corners investigative journalism, overseas coverage from our network of award-winning correspondents, the live debate of Q&A, regional stories from Back Roads or the valuable programming of our Mental As campaigns or Hitting Home, the series on domestic violence. The community conversations of ABC Local Radio, the national conversations of RN or the soundtrack to our summers provided by triple j and Double J would all be under threat. Is that really the outcome wanted by most Australians? Mr Costello may find some programming that is not to his taste and sensibility sometimes - at times, so do I. Not everything is for everyone. I suspect he is not a great listener to triple j - but on Australia Day millions of younger Australians will party and listen to the hottest 100 countdown. And they will not even blink at the language warnings. As the Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, said in his former role as communications minister, the role of the ABC is now as vital as ever. Current or departed politicians usually concede in their honest moments, that the public usually get it right. The public certainly gets it right on the ABC. The most recent view of the public was captured by Newspoll, which showed 84 per cent of the Australian public believes the ABC represents good or very good value for money. A level of support that must make an old politician (let alone a Channel 9 director and a News Corporation columnist) weep. Overwhelmingly the Australian public believes the ABC does a good job in the service of the community. This year has given many great examples on television, radio, online and mobile. The vast majority of Australians are thankful they have a strong, robust, independent public broadcaster in the ABC, delivering in new ways for the digital era. There will always be some who want to weaken it, harm it, shrink it - and ultimately see if fade away. The Australian public know better. Mark Scott is the Managing Director of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Topics: broadcasting, information-and-communication, radio-broadcasting, television-broadcasting, digital-multimedia
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange held an hourlong Facebook interview with The New York Times today. Assange accused the “liberal press” of “erecting a demon” by not covering Hillary Clinton’s record of corruption and failure. The Washington Times reported: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Wednesday accused “the American liberal press” of “erecting a demon” by shielding Hillary Clinton from criticism. Mr. Assange took part in an hourlong interview with The New York Times on Facebook Live to discuss his role in influencing the 2016 presidential election. He told journalist Jo Becker from the Ecuadorean embassy in London — where he has evaded extradition to Sweden for five years — that reporters were doing the nation a disservice by not properly covering Mrs. Clinton’s record. “The American liberal press, in falling over themselves to defend Hillary Clinton, are erecting a demon that is going to put nooses around everyone’s necks as soon as she wins the election, which is almost certainly what she’s going to do,” Mr. Assange said. The newspaper pushed Mr. Assange on his own potential biases, to which he replied that WikiLeaks‘ “enormous range” is not highlighted in the news. He said that his organization has exposed high-level corruption in numerous countries via the release of 10 million documents, including money-laundering schemes and the “oil-money mill” in Russia.
"I'll be the first to admit there is not a lot of innovation in this. It is an old-school law firm," he said. Networking crucial Mr Prangell said his clients could pay as little as a third of the price of a typical law firm because he bills $350 an hour – rather than $750 an hour typical for a partner at a law firm – and he does not go over the quote. For example for a copyright licence, a law firm may quote between $2500 and $4500 but clock it up to $6000 due to duplication of work, whereas he would be charging $2000 or less. Mr Prangell said at the start, he was spending 90 per cent of his time networking and meeting people at co-working start-up spaces such as Fishburner, and was doing all kinds of work ranging from wills to conveyancing. However, now he spends 80 per cent of his time doing actual legal work, specialising in the start-up industry. But even in his first year, he said, he was earning more money as the owner of his legal practice than when he was an employee at a law firm. "You only need to bill one day a week in order to make good money." He said a job at a traditional law firm no longer offered lucrative salaries due to competition. Advertisement "There are about two generations of kids who grew up thinking, 'If you get good marks at school, you should become a lawyer and earn good money'. But the influx of too many lawyers means that is not true any more." Hive Legal a game-changer Two months ago Jessica Kinny left Gadens, after four years of practice, to set up her own commercial law firm, Kinny Legal, specialising in the age care and retirement sector, commercial litigation and commercial transactions. She said the advent of virtual law firm Hive Legal changed the legal landscape and clients are now picking and choosing lawyers for different projects rather than hiring all-service firms. From day one she had work: a client approached her with litigation work she could take on because they were not a Gaden's client. Since then she has been getting her work through referrals from solicitors and barristers and through her connections in the aged care and retirement sector. She said working solo meant she did not incur the additional cost of multiple lawyers working on the same matter. "For the kind of work that I do, which involves high-level advisory, it's not necessary for me to have high overheads through extra fees. At large law firms, duplication may contribute to additional costs and it may be difficult to turn work around quickly," she said. Advertisement Niche the way to go Phillip James Briffa, who set up his own wills and estates practice in July 2013 after 2½ years of practising at Swaab Attorneys, said the days of generalist, "suburban" lawyers are over. The 29-year-old said as general legal information becomes more widely available, practitioners will need to become an expert in a field so they can get work through referrals. "We tend to be ultra-specialised and just really focus on one niche. It's basically about making a name for yourself in an area so you can attract work from other lawyers," he said. "[Suburban lawyers] will definitely struggle, because the general public will be doing a lot more research online and there are a lot of cheaper alternatives out there. If it's not a warm lead, clients are much more price sensitive." he added that a significant number of his clients come through referrals from professionals. Unlike Ms Kinny, Mr Briffa set up the firm with no client base, which meant he had to spend the first six months networking with other lawyers, accountants, financial planners and mortgage brokers. On an average week, he would attend at least two networking events and follow them up with multiple meetings during the day. "Being a people person is an absolutely essential ingredient," he said, without which "you will struggle". Mr Briffa said working alone means he can keep overheads low and meet clients outside business hours. It also means clients can deal with him directly from start to finish. Advertisement More lucrative career path He said a solo practitioner could earn as much as senior associates who work at the big end of town on a salary up to $140,000, if not more, and offers a more lucrative career path than at a big law firm. "You're quite restricted in the larger firms in terms of the pathway to partnership. The carrot is getting dangled further and further away. It used to be 10 years until partnership, and now it's 15, 20 years. "So a lot of lawyers are now saying, 'You know what? It's just not worth it'. With technology, you can go and set up your own business, make a name for yourself and do financially better."
This sex and relationship expert thinks every woman should learn the benefits of vaginal weightlifting. Sure, you can birth humans and Kegel like a vaginal ninja warrior, but can you hoist a variety of tropical fruits off the ground using only your pelvic floor muscles and your feminine grit? This woman can, and she won’t stop preaching the benefits of vaginal weightlifting until every woman in the world can “ping pong balls from her vagina.” Yup, according to Kim Amami, that’s your new fitness goal. Amami is a holistic sex and relationship expert, who has also spent the past 20 years pumping iron with her lady bits. It’s called vaginal weightlifting — or as she calls it, Vaginal Kung Fu — and Amami says it’s based on “ancient Taoist practices women used 5,000 years ago to strengthen the pelvic floor and increase sexual pleasure.” To do it, you simply tie a piece of string to a jade egg, insert the egg into your vagina, and then use your pelvic floor muscles to lift whatever random ass objects you can tie to the other end of the string: fruit, donuts, an assortment of appliances, a motherfucking surfboard. A photo posted by Kim Anami (@kimanami) on Jan 2, 2015 at 3:55pm PST Here Kim is lifting a chandelier with her vagina, as one does at Christmas parties and other family gatherings from time to time: A photo posted by Kim Anami (@kimanami) on Jan 18, 2016 at 5:01am PST What, is that not impressive enough? Well, then you’ll be glad to know she brings party snacks too: A photo posted by Kim Anami (@kimanami) on Jan 18, 2015 at 5:30pm PST Advertisement A photo posted by Kim Anami (@kimanami) on Feb 17, 2015 at 5:59am PST Amami says that, even though it looks weird as hell, her practice actually has some practical applications — especially for women who’ve given birth vaginally. According to her website, routine vaginal weightlifting strengthens the pelvic floor, eliminates urinary incontinence, increases libido, and enhances sexual enjoyment. It’s sort of like Kegel exercises, except way more intense and everyone will look at you like you’re insane if you try to do it in public. Vaginal weight lifting also serves the purpose of helping women understand what their vaginas can do and empowering you to embrace your womanhood, says Amami. On her website, she writes, “Connecting to your sexual energy and your vagina involves a lot more than just what you do in bed… My sexual energy fuels my life and my relationships. My vagina is sensitive, articulate and my source of power.” Ahem. Well, then. We better get on it. After all, there’s nothing worse than an insensitive, inarticulate vagina. How will it ever make friends?
Three and a half years ago, before Because the Internet, before Nothing was the Same, and mere months before Camp and Take Care (both dropped on Nov. 15, 2011,) Childish Gambino, or Donald Glover, was asked about the waning importance of street-cred in Hip Hop. “Here’s the thing, streed-cred is code for ‘real’. That’s all it is. When people say street-cred, what they really mean is ‘you’re not lying,’” Gambino said in an interview on Q with Jian Ghomeshi. “Like, Drake raps about real stuff and people feel like they know him,” Gambino continued. Camp was released shortly after, along with a 1.6 review from Pitchfork. The review attacked Glover’s credibility as an emcee, criticizing how someone who first found fame through Youtube comedy sketches and NBC sitcoms could use something as perceivingly incredulous as his struggles with racial identity to craft a “false outsider persona.” According to the reviewer, the narrative of the life of Donald Glover was one that was unnecessary in Hip Hop at this point in time. Afterall, the reviewer claims, how do you explain Drake? Camp Confused Us Because Why Wasn’t It Campy? For his follow up to Camp, Gambino took a new approach. After posting a set of sullen — yet honest — notes to Instagram, and locking himself in a mansion with core crew members including close friend Fam and producer Ludwig, the artist recorded the Grammy-nominated existential Rap project, Because the Internet. With impromptu public listening sessions, and a 72 page screenplay that came along with it, the release broke the traditional mold for the Rap album by creating an immersive experience that transcended the music. Whereas an album like Good Kid, m.A.A.d City used the music to communicate a narrative that was cinematic in scope, Because the Internet also used the Internet to show the complexity behind the fact that our closest connections with people are through fiber optics and Facebook posts. And what’s more campy, more cormy, more kitsch than faux interactions replacing intimate, personal ones? Meanwhile, Drake has shattered records set by The Beatles, hosted the Espy’s, and taken Kanye’s spot as “the most popular man in rap.” Nowadays, Gambino has something else to say about Drake. “I knew when I was doing Childish Gambino from the beginning, like, ‘They’re not gonna let me do this,’” Gambino said in an interview with Peter Rosenberg. “‘They already have a rapper, singer, actor guy who’s black.’ That’s really what it was. ‘If he was white, it would be different.’ They’d be like, ‘They’re not the same.’” Those facts seem to be the only common denominator between the two audiences, but aside from that, nothing is the same about their careers or how audiences receive them. Authenticity Is a Hell Of A Drug In this Grantland piece published shortly after the release of Take Care and Camp, Rembert Browne prophecizes that Camp, while as exceedingly honest as Take Care, was a risky album, and perhaps the last release we could see from Gambino because of the way he bared all his insecurities as a confused black kid growing up in America. Unlike Drake, Browne writes, Gambino used his platform to “spread a non-mainstream, unpopular message to as diverse an audience as possible.” And in retrospect, he has. In an appearance late in 2014 on Hot 97, Gambino brought to light his influence on a generation of affluent black kids that didn’t exist decades ago. This includes Malia Obama, Seven Benjamin, and Jaden Smith, the embodiment of the privileged, disillusioned character in Because the Internet. There’s a juxtaposition between how each of these kids view themselves and how the world views them, one that can be navigated through Gambino’s music. From selfies in Pro-Era shirts to appearances on mixtapes, these kids are all participating in Hip Hop as culture, so it must grow to include them. Gambino laments that despite his love for “Fancy,” “What made hip hop cool was how real it was. Really, we’re cultural influences. That’s what black kids are…they really change the culture of not just America but the world.” The authenticity of the black kid that Gambino represents is why the Obama’s and Smith’s latch on to him, but his influence is prevalent in kids who don’t share that affluence, along with kids who aren’t even black. As a student at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Glover’s alma mater, there’s no doubt a number of students credit him for giving them the inspiration to cultivate their own creative ambitions. In addition, Kevin Abstract recently wrote about how Childish Gambino’s music made things easier for kids like him. That’s why when a Pitchfork writer dismisses Gambino’s credibility because Hip Hop has already seen the likes of Lil B, Kendrick Lamar, Odd Future, and Danny Brown, it comes across as muddled to a high school kid in suburban Los Angeles, who felt Camp spoke to him more personally and directly than any release from those other artists. Therefore, authenticity is not the issue at hand. Mr. Glover doesn’t betray what’s true to his experience, rather, it’s listeners who have trouble accepting that experience. What Gambino raps about is real, and that’s why he’s captivated an audience of outsiders (“I don’t listen to rap, but I love Childish Gambino!”) and black nerds. But outside of his core fanbase, listeners are just too afraid to take off their cool for the Atlanta rapper. “Time” explicitly stated this in their review of Because the Internet. Sadly, Hip Hop fans are just as hesitant to admit that they watch Friends as they are to admit that they listened to a Childish Gambino record. But they still watch Friends. A majority of Gambino’s subject matter borders on, “This is all happening but nobody wants to talk about it,” and while this can lead to some good conversation, it still ends on the note that nobody wants to talk about it. Mixtapes As Dreams Gambino’s recently released S T N M T N mixtape follows Glover as he dreams of running Atlanta. As the mixtape reaches its conclusion, and Glover gets closer to awakening from his fantasy, he rhymes, (“They want the old Bino, so they try to rewind, the new Bino’s too ahead of his time,”) on “Candler Road.” With his TV Show “Atlanta” slated to premiere this year on FX, maybe this dream isn’t too far from becoming a reality. The show will ideally give Glover the platform to establish himself outside of 140 characters and a mixtape. Perhaps then, a wider audience will be willing to admit that they watch Friends. Nevertheless, Glover’s profile has certainly heightened since the release of Because the Internet, culminating in a nomination for Best Rap Album. While Rap fans have likely given up on the Grammy’s as a true measure of an artist’s work, a Childish Gambino win for Best Rap Album over Iggy Azalea’s The New Classic could present a historical moment for the category. Older, out of touch Academy Voting Members may split their votes between The New Classic and “The Marshall Mathers LP 2”, making “Oxymoron” and Because the Internet the main contenders for the category. Following last years upset over Macklemore’s win, it would be triumphant to see the award go to an album as innovative in its execution, scope, and vision as Because the Internet is. Those were the words I wrote before it came to be that MMLP2 won the Best Rap Album Grammy. Whether he deserved it or not is of no matter. It was just a joy to see an album like Because The Internet nominated in the first place. And not winning a Grammy might be at this point a sign of having a great album — at least in Hip Hop —so there. If it’s any sign of the times, Vince Staples called Because the Internet the best album of 2013 in an interview with HipHopDX. Staples also had some comments on authenticity. “Music is like the zoo, especially Rap music and black music in general,” Staples said. “Like, you got all these people sitting outside the glass and it’s cool to point at the lion and shit, but nobody gonna hop they ass in that motherfuckin’ box.” The essential issue with Childish Gambino and Donald Glover is that he invites everyone to hop in the box. And at the moment, it’s easier to say he’s not cool or he’s corny, than it is to say “I don’t want to have this conversation.” While Drake wears short shorts on SNL, Gambino wears them on stage. As the barrier between the glass of the TV and the audience converges, Hip Hop fans will have a greater chance to decide whether or not Gambino is “real” enough for them. Will Gambino’s TV Show, along with a possible Grammy win, give audiences the chance to view him as more than just a Drake replacement, and give him the platform to compete with him in album sales, primetime hosting gigs, and critical acclaim? We’ll give it time, and hopefully they’re both still around a decade from now. That’s real. “Christopher Cole is a native of Rancho Cucamonga, CA (Yes, from Next Friday), and he studies Film and Television Production at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. He is an aspiring screenwriter, Kanye West defender, Netflix binge watcher, and has written for Washington Square News. Follow him at@ChrisCole95.”
I don’t’ know about you ladies, but I find the hardest part about going to an event is getting dressed. I spend the entire day obsessing over what to wear (because let’s face it, I never plan that far in advance). And sadly, Matt is usually no help at all to me. When I ask, he’ll say, “Uh that one dress.” I don’t think he cares about what I wear (because he loves everything I own) as long as I show plenty of cleavage! I do love to dress up and buy sexy clothes. Sometimes I get nervous about the outfit I choose and I wonder if the dress is too revealing! Matt always says that that’s impossible but still… I do appreciate it when there is a theme but that doesn’t always help. Sometimes the themes are ones that I am not interested in or I just don’t own things that go with the theme. Recently we went to a party and when we RSVP’d there was a loose theme of red, white and blue. I tried on 3 different dresses and wound up in a red sparkly dress. I think the way around this stress of getting dressed is to do some more shopping! I need more clothes but don’t we all! I love that I have two closets and a huge shelf area for shoes, and Matt is ok with this. He has actually said I need more shelves and closet space and you know what? I’m ok with that! My closets are filled with appropriate going out clothes and then there is the naughty closet. The fun one is filled with dresses that cannot be worn anywhere other then a Lifestyle party or vacation. Matt and I are going on the cruise in November (so very excited about that!) and I have already started my wishlist of evening wear and shoes! The other day I bought a dress to wear around (in Vanilla world) and found it funny that Matt said “Huh, it’s a little conservative.” I know he would be fine with my bits and pieces hanging out at all times, but there are some people out there who frown upon that! Which is why I cannot wait to get naughty and naked on the cruise! How do you choose what to wear when going to a party? Do you always wear an outfit that corresponds to the theme of the night? Ohhhh big question, (I could almost write another blog about this one!) how long does it take you to get ready and do you have any special things that you do to get ready maybe to help get you in the mood? I drink a martini while getting ready, always a good idea when curling your hair!
The Indian Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) has this week moved forward with its plan to develop 10 special Solar Zones designed to accelerate the development of large-scale solar PV capacity in the country. Eyeing 2022s 100 GW of solar PV target, the Indian ministry has sanctioned the implementation of these zones, which will each cover approximately 10,000 hectares of government-owned or privately owned wasteland, uncultivable land or fallow land in one or more than one patches. Development of the first of these 10 zones will begin this year, with the project expected to span five years. Funding for each zone will be provided by the government to the tune of INR 440 million ($6.5 million). The purpose of each Solar Zone is to act as a flagship demonstration facility highlighting the efficacy and affordability of solar power, with the aim being to encourage project developers and investors to pour more funds and effort into Indias growing solar industry. Each Zone will enable states to attract significant investment and create employment opportunities while also contributing towards meeting Renewable Purchase Obligations (RPO), according to the MNRE. The ministry has outlined a set of ground rules for the development of each zone, with the onus very much on individual state governments to run both feasibility checks and then to follow through with the successful build and ownership of each zone. There are, however, a few stipulations. The type of land eligible basically brownfield of uncultivated farmland is outlined, and the Zone must receive daily average insolation of more than 4kWh per square meter in order to be granted funding. India is seeking a number of ways to increase its large-scale solar PV sector, and recently announced that it will aim to reach 40 GW of utility-scale solar by 2020.
John Palermo, the movie producer behind ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’ and ‘X-Men: The Last Stand’, has refused to apologise for referring to Anderson Cooper’s partner in a derogatory fashion on Facebook. The former business partner of Hugh Jackman recently posted a homophobic slur about the CNN presenter attending his boyfriend’s bar opening in New York City, Palmero wrote on Facebook: “#SmellsLikeLubeAndHIV.” He also made several racist remarks. “I’m crazy about Julie Chen!!!” he said following the American Big Brother presenter’s revelation that she had undergone eye surgery in order to work in US television. “Now that her eyes are finally open, she should leave Monster Moonves [Leslie Moonves, her husband, and president of American network CBS],” Palmero added. When it emerged that Kim Kardashian and Kanye West had moved to Bel-Air, he said: “There goes the neighborhood!!! It looks like a Poor Persian Palace, where’s Kris Jenner when you need her?! #MoneyCantBuyADumbN****Class.” On Thursday, the 34-year-old refused to apologise for his remarks. He told E! News: “Ever since the Emmys I have cancelled my Facebook account because it is so easy for things to be misread,” adding to The Hollywood Report: “I stopped caring about what Hollywood thinks of me years ago. I’ve got nothing to lose, nothing to gain. I’m a bored dude, unemployed, sitting at home in the Valley. For me, some of the best ways to overcome serious issues is to laugh about them. Because then you truly understand where that ignorance is coming from.”
The Cold War standoff between the Houston Dynamo and Montreal Impact has come to a resolution. The clubs announced on Thursday that they have reached an agreement for the Dynamo to reacquire franchise hero Brian Ching in return for a conditional first-round pick in the 2013 SuperDraft, bringing the star striker back to the team that left the door wide open for his departure nearly four months ago. Ching is expected to join the Dynamo at training on Thursday morning. “I am very happy to have Brian back with the team,” Dynamo head coach Dominic Kinnear said in a statement. “This is a very important year for the Dynamo, and if anyone deserves to be involved with the team, it’s Brian.” Ching will take a pay cut as part of the deal in order to help provide the Dynamo payroll flexibility this season, but the Houston Chronicle has reported that Ching has been guaranteed a front-office job with the club when he retires, perhaps as early as 2013. Ching, an original Dynamo player and the club’s all-time leading goalscorer, was selected by the Impact in the 2011 MLS Expansion Draft in November. Ching returns to Houston among the leaders of several franchise records, including games played (fifth, 168), games started (fourth, 144), and assists (third, 24). His club-record 63 goals is nearly twice the amount of the second player on the all-time list (Dwayne De Rosario, 32 goals). “It’s been a long and difficult process over the last few months, but we’re happy that ultimately we got the right result and Brian will be a part of the club again,” Dynamo president Chris Canetti told MLSsoccer.com. Looking at the last three months, “difficult” is an understatement in regards to the process it took to bring Ching back to Houston. Starting with the controversial decision to include Ching’s name among the unprotected and his ultimate selection in the Expansion Draft, the negotiations between the each side and raw emotions involved played out for all the public to see with all three sides commenting on the situation. Ching initially said he would never play for Montreal and then backtracked last month when he showed up for the club's first day of preseason workouts in Montreal. Kinnear, for his part, admitted last week that the Dynamo were "a little bit rude" in how they handled the situation. Add in the peculiar sight of Ching with the Impact against the Dynamo during a recent preseason scrimmage, and there was drama at every turn in the league's biggest offseason soap opera. "We have made this decision based on reasons that we felt were beneficial for both the desires and needs of our club and the wishes of Brian Ching," Impact head coach Jesse Marsch said in a statement. "We wish him luck on his return to Houston and thank him for his commitment and professionalism while a member of our organization." According to Canetti, all the attention simply added to an already unique situation. “I think everything about this deal was a challenge,” Canetti said. “Brian’s an iconic figure in our organization and there was a unique circumstance with the Expansion Draft and there were a lot of things like that were challenge, especially being in the spotlight. With who it is and what he represents to our club and community there was a lot of emotion and passion involved.” Ching was limited to 20 appearances due to injury last season, but still tied for the team lead with five goals. He was also instrumental in Houston’s run to the MLS Cup 2011 final and in the playoff series victory against Philadelphia, he assisted on the game-winning goal in the first-leg win and scored the lone goal in the second game, the final MLS goal scored at Robertson Stadium. WATCH: Ching lights up 2006 opener On Monday, the rumor mill began swirling again about a potential deal, as the Impact granted Ching a release for “personal reasons.” The rumors were true, as Ching was headed to Houston to discuss restructuring his contract, in part to make a deal easier. “It’s uncommon anywhere in life, not just in sports because money’s a very important factor to people,” Canetti said. “It shows what type of person and leader he is. It shows that he was willing to put the big picture ahead of himself. It shows how he feels about the community and what he is to the city so it speaks volumes in that respect.” Despite Ching’s willingness to redo his deal, Houston still had to finalize a trade agreement with Montreal. But after nearly three months of negotiations, the two sides reached an amicable compromise and one of MLS’ biggest offseason stories was resolved. “I don’t know what changed to be honest, but it’s a huge relief,” Canetti said about the deal being done. “For Brian, he’s in a place he wants to be and will part of a lot of great things this year and the fans love him and will be happy to see him as part of the team again. From the organization’s perspective there are a lot of reasons why we want to have Brian around. Having this behind us is a positive thing.” Darrell Lovell covers the Houston Dynamo for MLSsoccer.com. Follow@DarrellLovell
[Photo] Tami Knight "How does one become a famous climber?" Mark Westman, unknown Alaskan hardman, is hanging from two flaring cam placements in a rotten sea of granite on the left side of the Ruth Gorge. Rain and snow collect on the brim of his duct-taped-anorak's hood and drip into his week-old beard. I burrow into my rubberized fishing jacket to avoid an avalanche of slush. Soon we'll rap off; another stormbound week of cards, chocolate and Mark's sheep jokes await us in our tent. Why isn't Mark famous? He says it's because his ascents aren't hard enough. But during the last seven months alone, he's climbed up to 5.11 WI7 M8 in poor conditions, ticking off Mermoz, St. Exupery, Aguja Rafael, Fitz Roy, a new mixed route on Mt. Grosvenor, the third ascent of the Escalator on Mt. Johnson, the west face of Kahiltna Queen, a new route on the east face of Broken Tooth and the Mini-Moonflower. As Mark starts the first rappel, I use the wait to come up with some advice for how he can attain his long-overdue sponsorship. 1. HAVE UNREALISTIC PLANS. You don't actually have to climb anything to gain publicity and corporate cash. Tell everyone you're going to climb the northwest face of Devil's Thumb or the Shark's Fin on Meru: more grant money has been lavished on failures on these two objectives than the gross national product of several South American countries. Start selling posters with a direttissima red line showing your new ascent before you leave. This will guarantee that your expedition is a commercial success—and really, who needs anything more? 2. CREATE CONTROVERSY. Even bad press is good press, right? Climb fragile national park icons in the media's lens and folks will take notice. Make first ascents of obscure peaks in the Alaska Range in impeccable style and no one will put you on their cover. 3. MAXIMIZE YOUR PHOTO OPS. Forget fast-and-light, two-man teams. Take at least three people with you to ensure good photos. Wear bright new clothes with large labels to ensure product placement. The duct-taped, neo-lumberjack look has not helped Mark at all. 4. EPIC, EPIC, EPIC. Ignore weather reports, climb slowly, drop your pack, be unprepared and survive an ordeal and you can have your own movie. Do climbs within your skill level, prepare before attempting hard routes and no one will pay any heed. There is no human drama in rapping off before things turn disastrous. Cut off your arm and you'll have a story; avoid dropping an 800-pound boulder on yourself in the first place and you won't. 5. DEVELOPE AND PROMOTE A PERSONA. Aleister Crawley had Satan, Alex Huber wears leather pants, and Dean Potter embodies the raven-spirit guy. For Mark, I'm thinking "Professor Death." When he leaves a belay station, he already says, "On Death?" (The rhetorical exchange follows suit: "Death on." "Dying." "Die on.") He could help his image by giving his new routes names like "Necrolover" and describing the possibility of his demise with such enthusiasm that nearby climbers will run for a rescue (see #4). 6. OVERRATE YOUR ROUTE. So the length of your route isn't impressive enough? Try adding meters by placing the start of your climb deep within a crevasse or counting traversing pitches as vertical gain to increase the reported size (something male alpinists in particular should have no trouble doing). Don't be afraid to describe your route in dimensions that go against a topographic map: no one will check for accuracy. If your route is only 5.9 A2, add a "++" or say it in a tongue-and-cheek tone, as if to hint, "this climb is too hard to rate" or "ratings are for hotels." 7. DON'T BE AN ABLE-BODIED WHITE GUY. No one is lining up to sponsor the next up-and-coming Joe who overcomes nothing more than his personal demons. Trace your family tree: there might be an Bangladeshi, Guyanese or Inuit angle in there somewhere. Got a disability? Exploit it. One note: myopia, vericosities and toe fungie don't count. 8. CONTROL THE MEDIA. Write your press release before you pack. Bring enough heavy electronic communication devices along on your climb to ensure catastrophic failure (#4 again) and you will be bound to reach the peak of fame and recognition. BACK IN THE SOGGY TENT, after surviving a core shot to the rope when rockfall struck us during one of our rappels (no one was hurt, so #4 was out), I try to get Mark to listen to my fame-generating ideas, but he interrupts me: "How did the Scotsman find the sheep in the tall grass?" "Please Mark, no more sheep jokes." I don't know if I can stand a week of these.... "Very satisfying." I try to get him back on topic, before he can think of another one. "So Mark, what are we going to call our new route? How about Deathmonger, 5.4c++—because ratings are for hotels? An instant-classic death sandbag soon to be on everyone's must-do list?" Before I can even propose a title for our slideshow tour, Mark interrupts me again: "New route, Jeff? Classic? We only climbed eight pitches of at most grungy 5.8 on a thirty-pitch wall. It's a lame new bail at best." He pauses. "What's the difference between the Rolling Stones and a Welshman?" He still doesn't get it.
Are more children suffering from anxiety disorders, or are doctors too quick to write a prescription? It's a tough subject, but one that guidance counsellor Boyd Perry does not shy away from. Perry, who is also vice-president of the Newfoundland and Labrador Counsellors and Psychologists Association, said anxiety is the number one issue seen by guidance counsellors in schools across Newfoundland and Labrador. "What we see most as counsellors right through the province is an increase in a child's inability to deal with the stressors in their lives," he said. According to the Canadian Mental Health Association, between 10 and 20 per cent of children are affected by a mental health disorder. American estimates put the number between 12 and 13 per cent. Children as young as kindergarten are being diagnosed with anxiety disorders, Perry said. At the high school level, anti-anxiety medications are commonplace. When mom and dad can't fix that particular situation, they fall apart. - Boyd Perry Perry worries children may be developing unhealthy methods of coping, enabled by quick diagnoses from doctors and a willingness to overprescribe. "We're seeing a lot of young teenagers that are on medication for anxiety, for depression," Perry said. "Don't get me wrong, there's young people out there suffering significantly." Misdiagnosed and overprescribed? However, guidance counsellors are concerned not all of these children should be on anti-anxiety or anti-depressant medication, Perry said. "I don't feel all these children are disordered. They're not mentally ill. They're ill-equipped." Anti-anxiety medications could be overprescribed to students, says guidance counsellor Boyd Perry. (istockphoto.com) As a parent and a guidance counsellor, Perry said the bubble parents created around children is conducive to a lack of coping skills when stress arises in a child's life. If we take that away as a young child, they have nothing to fall back on as they get older. - Boyd Perry Parents don't want to see their children hurt or disappointed, so they shield them from it for as long as possible. "We create situations whereby they don't experience those things. Or when they are experiencing these things, we'll fix it for them." Without exposure to stressful situations, Perry said children are unable to develop healthy coping skills. "They need to feel [stressors] in order to develop that resiliency, that thick skin," he said. "If we take that away as a young child, they have nothing to fall back on as they get older. "When mom and dad can't fix that particular situation, they fall apart." Problems are intensified at certain times of the year, including exam season. Students will get doctor's notes exempting them from exams or making arrangements to write them in a different room. Anxiety needs to be assessed in a different light, Perry said, or the problem will only continue to get worse. "I'm a little scared. I'm scared we're not going to put the brakes on fast enough."
For anyone struggling with choosing the perfect literary present this holiday season, there’s a large, vocal, and opinionated group that just might be able to help: the more than one million subscribers to the Books category on Reddit, the popular social media Web site. As one users asks, “I am looking for a good history book for a Christmas gift... any suggestions?” The book discussions are far-flung and varied—other prompts include, “How do you decide when to stop reading a book?” and “In your opinion, who is the best-written ‘bad guy’?” Reddit was established in 2005 by entrepreneurs Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, and it boasts more than five billion page views and over 90 million unique visitors per month. The company, which bills itself as “the front page of the Internet,” serves as a platform for Web-based communities, which gather in vast subcategories, known as subreddits, to share images, articles, and post topics of conversation. The Books subreddit, referred to by Redditors as /r/books, is now one of the most robust channels on the site, with 40,000 new subscribers signing up each week. In July, the Books and Television categories replaced Politics and Atheism as “default” subreddits—those identified by the company as the biggest, most visible communities in the network, based on traffic, number of new subscribers, and general activity levels. “/R/books is really becoming one of the largest book-based communities on the Web,” said Victoria Taylor, Reddit’s director of communications. The Books subreddit has split off into deeper, niched communities; subcategories devoted to science fiction, horror, and fantasy genres are especially popular, and there is an entire subreddit dedicated to the Kindle, and yet another to libraries. Books even has its own official book club, moderated by a group of subscribers. The club’s roughly 12,000 members vote on the monthly picks; December’s Modern Book of the Month selection is One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, and the Big Read is Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote. The club’s Project Gutenberg Book of the Month, which members select from the titles in the Project Gutenberg catalogue of free e-book downloads, is James Joyce’s Dubliners. The Books subreddit is not only a gathering place for like-minded book lovers—it’s also, in the direct-to-consumer era, emerging as a valuable promotional and fan-engagement tool for publishers and authors alike. Ask Me Anything (AMA) is a popular series across Reddit in which members conduct interviews with various subjects, including public figures like President Barack Obama. Major authors are beginning to enlist—R.L. Stine’s AMA, posted in the larger AMA community, prompted over 7,000 comments; Dan Brown’s interview, featured in Books, generated over 1,500. A recent AMA with And the Mountains Echoed author Khaled Hosseini resulted in nearly 2,600 questions and comments from Reddit users. Because AMAs are designed to raise awareness around a particular project, such as new books and promotions, each author is free to drive users to an official site, or to retailers that carry his or her book. The forum has also proven useful for self-published authors. Travis Bughi sold over 3,000 copies of his self-published title, Beyond the Plains, during his AMA in August, despite the fact that he was also offering the book for free. “Self-published authors are leveraging Reddit to do the same thing that traditionally published authors would,” said Taylor, adding that the Reddit community seeks to help aspiring authors in subreddits like Writing and Keepwriting. Reddit even brought on Elda Rotor, editorial director of Penguin Classics, for an AMA. “She helped a lot of amateur authors and other people who are looking to break into the publishing industry,” explained Taylor. Whether it operates as a virtual salon for bookworms or an online q&a forum with some of the biggest writers in the business, the community’s overall success and escalating growth, according to Taylor, can be attributed to something not yet disrupted by the digital revolution: a passion for reading. The Books subreddit is “based on personal opinions and personal passions,” she said. “And when those can be challenged, it drives everything to new levels.”
VIDEO: SingularDTV on Decentralizing Hollywood The Challenges Filmmakers Face in a Centralized Entertainment Industry Breaker Blocked Unblock Follow Following Apr 27, 2017 An in-depth discussion about film distribution, Hollywood and SingularDTV with Zach LeBeau (CEO), Kim Jackson (President of Entertainment) and Jason Tyrrell (VP of Content). The entertainment world is evolving rapidly, intertwined with technology and the companies that are best deploying it. The independent film industry, just one segment of this huge tapestry, has transformed from a space of busy competition between dozens of entities on a reasonably level playing field, to a much more centralized paradigm, where a very few companies are poised to control the majority of the funding, the creators, AND the audience. An independent film distributor aiming to compete with one of these players over content is going to find an almost impossible hill to climb. Yet the real problem is that this structure continues to support a paradigm where a very few gatekeepers and intermediaries hold the content and the audience hostage. At SingularDTV, we’re working to create an alternative path, a relationship and partnership that evolves and grows directly between the content creators and curators on one side, and the global audience on the other. — Jason Tyrrell, VP of Content for SingularDTV Come join the discussion on the SingularDTV Slack.
In the lead up to this week’s meeting between President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, multiple reports suggested that one of Netanyahu’s main goals would be pushing Trump to impose new sanctions on Iran, a move that could dangerously escalate already high tensions between the U.S. and Iran and put us one step closer to war. Among other similarities, both leaders have been staunch opponents of the Iran nuclear agreement, which lifted sanctions against Iran in exchange for Iran scaling down its nuclear program and fulfilling obligations that verifiably block its potential paths to obtaining nuclear weapons. During the campaign, Trump pledged to “dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran.” Should he fulfill that pledge, the best means of ensuring Iran cannot obtain nuclear weapons would be gone, and the dangerous and counterproductive alternative of bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities would be hailed by some as the necessary next step. While Netanyahu probably stopped short of asking Trump to abandon the agreement outright, he may have pushed for further sanctions against Iran that could ultimately serve to unravel the deal. That may be the point. Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute (AEI), was quoted in the Washington Post last month as saying, “What’d I’d like to see is them [the Trump administration] going along with the deal, but subtly antagonizing the Iranians enough so the Iranians want to scrap it… More non-nuclear sanctions. Pushing the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] to inspect more. We can force them to be the ones to pull the trigger.” The subtext of this shameless strategy, a strategy shared and expressed by other conservative foreign policy operatives, is to create a situation in which the administration can argue that Iran is to blame for the agreement’s collapse, effectively creating a false pretense for war. Congress, for its part, seems to have gotten that memo. Since the convening of the 115th Congress, at least three separate bills have been introduced that would impose new non-nuclear sanctions on Iran. The signing of any of these bills into law could violate the nuclear agreement, and would likely be perceived that way by Iran even if the letter of the agreement were followed. While the bills have yet to pick up steam, they certainly could if Congressional leadership got behind them. That may be why Netanyahu’s trip includes meetings with Congressional leaders on both sides of the isle. Meanwhile, the administration has been implementing a range of actions that also seem to follow the “antagonizing the Iranians” playbook. Trump’s executive order on refugees, the realization of his campaign promise of a Muslim ban, was the administration’s first jab at Iran. In addition to being a dangerous and discriminatory executive order, Trump’s Muslim ban blocked citizens of Iran from traveling to the U.S., including dual nationals from allied countries. In so doing, it may have violated the spirit, if not the letter, of the nuclear agreement, which states that the U.S. “will refrain from any policy specifically intended to directly and adversely affect the normalisation of trade and economic relations with Iran.” After Iran’s recent ballistic missile test, which did not violate the agreement, then national security advisor Michael Flynn (who resigned on Monday less than a month after assuming the role) announced that the U.S. was “officially putting Iran on notice.” Unclear on his meaning, reporters asked whether military options were being considered, to which a White House official replied, “We are considering a whole range of options.” Thus with a couple of vague statements, the administration raised the prospect that it might start a war with Iran regardless of whether it continues to abide by the nuclear agreement. Since then, Trump sanctioned 25 Iranian individuals and entities and deployed a Navy destroyer off the coast of Yemen, where the U.S. has been backing a brutal bombing campaign against Houthi rebels, who have received some Iranian support, since 2015. While the administration may not have violated the letter of the nuclear agreement so far, each rattling of the sabre has increased tensions and empowered hardliners in Iran months before its upcoming presidential election. To make matters worse, Trump may be considering new escalations. One option reportedly under consideration is designating the IRGC, a branch of Iran’s armed forces, as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO), which could in fact violate the letter of the agreement. Another report suggests that the administration is considering pressuring the IAEA to demand access to Iranian military sites in the course of its work to ensure compliance with the nuclear agreement, a move specifically called for in the strategy outlined by Rubin. While the deal allows for this if the IAEA suspects Iran is using a military site for nuclear purposes, there’s no indication that the IAEA harbors any suspicion, let alone evidence. Needless to say, Iran would be furious if the IAEA demanded access absent a reasonable suspicion, and may even refuse to grant it, to which Trump could claim a violation of the deal.
Two people have been found dead in eastern Indonesia's Papua province, a day after security forces stormed a pro-independence assembly, police said. Hundreds of paramilitary police and army troops fired warning shots, used tear gas and beat participants at the Third Papua Congress on Wednesday in the town of Abepura outside the provincial capital Jayapura. "The two men's bodies were found this morning in a mountainous area behind a local military office about two kilometres away from the rally site," Papua police spokesman Wachyono told AFP on Thursday. One victim was found with a head injury and the other had a wound above his left hip, he said, adding that he could not confirm if the men were victims from Wednesday's clashes and that autopsies were being carried out. For decades, ethnic Papuans have rejected the region's special autonomy within Indonesia, and demanded a referendum on self-determination for its estimated 3.6 million population.
Travel Through Borders ( 1.30 compatible) this mod will change the game's behavior when the player reaches a region border, instead of proposing a fast travel you will now be teleported to the adjacent region , for example if you reach the northern border of Novigrad you will reach kaer morhen, the southern border in Velen will get you to white orchard ... Installation - unzip the file in your game Main folder, example : "...your steam directory\SteamApps\common\The Witcher 3" Version 2.1: Version 2.0 : Version 1.1 : (Debug Console Enabler is needed to use command but not for the mod to work) added some console commands to help with the mod when necessary : TTBdisable TTBenable TTBtpback once 1 mn after each travel disable Use this if you got teleported accidentally and you want to get back without taking the long road . Notes "fastTravelEntity.ws" locomotionDirectController.ws r4Game.ws issues: other mods : The Daily Monster Hunt Challenge - updated for version 1.22.- Toussaint is accessible through the southern borders of white orchard and Skellige.- taking the river in north Toussaint will get you back to Skellige. any other way will lead to white orchard.- added the option to disable traveling to -quest locked- regions, for example traveling to kaer morhen before first arriving there in the " Ugly Baby Quest ".- added the option to disable traveling when in combat.- added a config menu in : mods --> travel through borders,where you can enable/disable the mod or one of the two options above.: will disable the mod.: this will enable it.: this command will automatically teleports you back to your previous position before traveling, it can only be usedand only within, and it will alsothe mod .- this mod changes, "" and "" and it will probably not work if you are using any othermod that changes one of those files, you can still merge the mods into one mod and use them both at the same time.- if you find any unexpected behavior just post it here and i'll try too look in to it.- if you are using a boat when traveling the boat will still be moving at arrival, you can stop it by pressing and releasing the directions key once.i'm trying to fix this for the moment.
Mogilnoye, Ukraine (CNN) -- In the Ukraine house where she grew up, Oksana Balinskaya's hazel eyes transfixed on television images of Moammar Gadhafi. He was now a fallen leader, a fugitive sought for justice. He had been known as the ruthless leader of a pariah state, a butcher, a delusional man divorced from reality. But Balinskaya, 25, who served as one of Gadhafi's five Ukrainian nurses for nearly two years, had always seen him in a different light. She had checked his blood pressure, monitored his heart, stuck him with a needle to draw blood, gave him vitamins and pills for his ailments, though he didn't seem to have many. He was a healthy man. She even called him "Daddy." All the Ukrainian nurses did. It was a nickname they used to speak about him among themselves, without attracting attention. "Daddy gave us jobs, money and a good life," she said. Far removed now from the sands of Libya, Balinskaya sat at the kitchen table with her Serbian husband, looking upward at the boxy TV set atop the refrigerator. Images of Gadhafi's fiery defiance flashed in the face of ouster. She would feel sorry for him if he were killed or captured, she said. "Gadhafi was quite considerate to us," she said. "He would ask us whether we are happy and whether we have everything that we need." Every September, on the anniversary of his rise to power, Gadhafi presented souvenirs to his Ukrainian nurses and other members of his inner circle. Balinskaya received a medallion and a watch etched with his picture. She took turns with the other nurses accompanying him on foreign trips, sometimes sparking rumors spread in the media about Gadhafi's harem. All of what was being said about Gadhafi seemed contrary to what she knew about the man -- including the allegations by Gadhafi family nannies and domestic staff that they were tortured and abused. Gadhafi, she said, always treated her very well. Her job now lost to Libya's civil war, she pitied the nation. "If it were not for Gadhafi, who else would have built it?" she said. "It was he who constructed it. He has transferred Libyans from camelbacks into cars." The rules were strict: No lipstick By the time Gadhafi visited Ukraine in October 2009, Balinskaya had graduated from nursing school in Kiev and been working in the area of her native Mogilnoye for three years. But life was not easy in Ukraine; she was making only $125 a month. She knew of opportunities in Libya and had already submitted an application for work there. It was an opportunity to make a better life for herself. Salaries were higher in Libya and she would receive housing and other perks. She had been waiting for about a month to hear back when Gadhafi arrived on his state visit to Ukraine. A meeting was arranged for him to meet six personal nurse candidates. Balinskaya was one of them. She knew little about Gadhafi then and felt nervous at their first meeting. Three of the six nurses had already worked in Libya and knew Arabic. Balinskaya thought she did not have a chance. Gadhafi greeted them but Balinskaya found nothing special in the selection process. "I don't know how he made the choice; perhaps he was a good psychologist," she said. She learned later that he understood people from that first handshake, from that first gaze into their eyes. Soon, she was on her way to Tripoli. Her job was solely to treat Gadhafi and his large family. The rules were strict. The attractive Ukrainian nurses wore no flashy makeup or revealing clothes. "Our appearance was very humble so as to not attract anybody's attention," she said. "We would never put on lipstick going to his house and have vivid colors in our clothes." She was always surrounded by others -- Gadhafi's wife, children, grandchildren, officials within his inner circle. "None of us had ever been one on one with him," she said. "There wasn't even a single room in his household where we could have possibly been left alone with him." That's why she was shocked by the gossip that Gadhafi had sexual relationships with his foreign nurses. Veteran Ukrainian nurse, Galina Kolonitskaya, 38, who had worked with Gadhafi for nearly a decade, was described in a U.S. diplomatic cable posted by WikiLeaks as a "voluptuous blonde" who "knows his routine." It said the Libyan dictator was deeply attached to her. "Galina was the same kind of nurse as we all were," Balinskaya said. "She is of course a glamorous and very kind woman with a big heart. She helped me a lot. "I don't know who created this image about us nurses, as well as about his female bodyguards," she said. "How could anyone in sane mind assume that we could have had any intimate relationship with Gadhafi?" Hoping to return to Libya Both Balinskaya and Kolonitskaya left Libya in February when the uprising against Gadhafi took root. But it was not just the threat of war that prompted Balinskaya to leave. She was pregnant then and had started showing. She returned to her native Mogilnoye, a village south of Kiev. Her husband Dejan, a 38-year-old Serbian businessman, joined her there. A month ago, as Gadhafi's regime teetered, Balinskaya gave birth to a baby boy. Journalists were also eager to hear Kolonitskaya's tales of Gadhafi, lining up at her apartment door. But she has avoided publicity. "All that gossip about her is untrue," Balinskaya said. "She was totally fed up. There was too much attention on her for no reason." The nurses, she said, had no personal relationship with Gadhafi. "I can only say good things about him," she said, thinking of the comfortable life she had in Libya, dreaming of how to make it happen again. "I very much hope that we will return to Libya," she said, flipping through an album with photographs of herself in Libya. Only, it will be a different Libya now. One without Gadhafi. Without "Daddy." CNN's Maxim Tkachenko reported from Mogilnoye, Ukraine, and Moni Basu reported from Atlanta.
Today’s news coverage features a vigorous debate over last night’s announcement that a grand jury in Missouri declined to indict police officer Darren Wilson for his role in the death of Michael Brown, an unarmed African-American teenager. Some believe that Wilson clearly should have been indicted for an unnecessary and unjustified killing; others counter that the grand jury process allowed the development of facts which show that Wilson acted well within the rules governing law enforcement and self-defense. In this column – which we hope to make a recurring feature on the blog – I hope to situate this legal news in the context of relevant Supreme Court decisions (here, decisions about how grand juries work), and in doing so help to advance a better understanding of both the news and the law. An eye-catching graphic based on data from Ben Cassleman at FiveThirtyEight.com shows that, at least in federal cases, what happened in this case is extraordinarily rare. Grand juries almost always bring the indictments that prosecutors request. But which way does this cut? Maybe it goes to show that this case really was the rare one in which the evidence just didn’t support the charges: As Cassleman notes, one “benign” reason why the rare cases that do not result in an indictment often involve police shootings is that prosecutors feel compelled in such cases to bring charges they otherwise wouldn’t bring. (Andrew Sullivan just published a reader’s email to the same effect.) News accounts make clear that there was a lot of conflicting eyewitness testimony; given all the exculpatory evidence, many who are hardly inclined to defend the Ferguson police department have said they can “see why the grand jury would have reason to doubt whether Officer Wilson committed a crime.” On the other hand, Cassleman says, his graphic might support a theory of bias – either against the minority victim or in favor of the police. It might be that the jurors were just less inclined to believe that Brown was shot for no reason because he is black, or more inclined to believe Wilson because he is white or wears blue. And it might be that prosecutors just “tend to present a less compelling case against officers, whether consciously or unconsciously,” because they (after all) are law enforcement officers too, who consistently work with the police. What’s missing from this discussion – and the rest of the coverage I’ve seen – is that this grand jury result may have been different from almost any other because the process was unlike almost any other. And that’s because of a contentious Supreme Court decision from two decades ago. The question in United States v. Williams was whether it is prosecutorial misconduct, requiring the dismissal of an indictment, for the prosecutor to withhold from the grand jury “substantial exculpatory evidence” in his possession that might lead the grand jury to reject the indictment. The Supreme Court said no. Justice Scalia, joined by four other Justices, held that the Constitution does not require exculpatory evidence to be disclosed, even when it is directly contrary to the prosecutor’s theory of guilt. That is partly because the grand jury’s role is not to determine guilt or innocence, but rather to decide whether there is enough evidence of a crime that a conviction is possible. The grand jury itself can say “we’ve heard enough,” and so the Court declined to impose on the prosecutor a burden to present it with all of the evidence. Justice Stevens dissented, in an opinion that was joined by the other three Justices. For him, the idea of the prosecutor withholding known exculpatory evidence was inconsistent with the grand jury’s historic role in preventing “hasty, malicious and oppressive persecution” and its “function in our society of standing between the accuser and the accused.” Notably, however, even Justice Stevens’s dissent admitted that the prosecutor need not “ferret out and present all evidence that could be used at trial to create a reasonable doubt as to defendant’s guilt.” He suggested that it would be enough to require prosecutors to present evidence known to them that “directly negates the guilt of a subject of the investigation” – a requirement taken from the (unenforceable) United States Attorneys’ Manual. [Special note for law nerds: The absence of a federal constitutional rule requiring disclosure does not mean that there can be no laws or policies requiring some. Those there may be, but I am not aware of them, and we would have very little idea of how they were implemented in practice given the near-total secrecy of grand jury proceedings. Also, Missouri could have a different requirement under state law, but that appears not to be true.] What does this mean? It means that when a prosecutor really wants an indictment, you would not expect the grand jury process to look anything like what happened in Darren Wilson’s case. The prosecutor would have no obligation to put forward the conflicting eyewitness testimony, or introduce pictures of Officer Wilson’s injuries – although grand jury members could ask for them if they somehow knew they existed. Instead, the prosecutor could put forward only the first few witnesses corroborating his own theory, along with the evidence that Wilson fired ten shots from a substantial distance away. Eventually, all the exculpatory evidence would have to be shared with the defense before trial, under a line of cases that started over fifty years ago with Brady v. Maryland. But once charges are on the table, the prosecutor has enormous leverage in bargaining for the kind of plea he wants – a case like Wilson’s, for example, might even include the threat of the death penalty. And indeed there has been a lot of coverage of how prosecutors use their charging authority (which goes more or less unchecked by the grand jury) to bring hugely punitive indictments that allow them to simply bargain for the sentence they want, without ever having to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. One of the critics has actually been Justice Scalia himself. This is a complicated takeaway for all sides. If you are the kind of person who thinks the police get too much deference for dubious uses of force, while other criminal defendants are too often treated as guilty until proven innocent, you certainly might raise an eyebrow at the likely truth that the prosecutor here gave Wilson a lot more process than the rules require – and than the average defendant seems to get. (In fact, reviewing the end of the last volume of the grand jury proceedings, the prosecutor’s discussion appears almost impartial to a fault – in the literal sense.) But one should think hard about whether that means the rules should change, and everyone should receive more and better legal process, or whether the prosecution instead should have thrown the book at Wilson just because it could. At a minimum, though, we should not get the wrong idea about the grand jury process we have: It protected Wilson because the prosecutor was willing to let it; nothing requires any similar caution in other cases. So maybe this is a case about prosecutorial or institutional bias in which Wilson was treated far too well, or – maybe – it is a case about reviving a much more robust role for the grand jury, so that others get the same legal process on display this week. Recommended Citation: Eric Citron, Cases and controversies: Not your typical grand jury investigation, SCOTUSblog (Nov. 25, 2014, 3:00 PM), https://www.scotusblog.com/2014/11/cases-and-controversies-not-your-typical-grand-jury-investigation/
Another year has passed, another arc on the grand spiral of time. Your (April's) spirit/essence has lengthened profoundly in breadth as well as height and depth. It has been an expansive year and one of deep integration and joyful alignment. A time of receiving from Spirit and nourishing Soul unlike any other. You are no longer you, as you have grown/expanded beyond identity, beyond human description, beyond light/dark, beyond form, beyond many such illusory boundaries – while still contained within a human vessel. You have reclaimed the knowledge, the wisdom, the truth contained within the deepest parts of Self, your ancestral blood, your connection to Gaia, Source/Creator, and your connection to worldly and otherworldly allies, seen and unseen (heavenly and planetary). You have served as a bridge, a friend, a code bringer, collaborator, and healer between worlds and as a result, have restored your sense of empowerment, strength, vitality, inner calm, and sense of belonging on this planet.This is every human's divine birthright and intended role, though many still struggle to break through the fog (the counter influences and illusions both internal/external), and claim it. But this is indeed what the collective is striving toward. Not only the reintegration and healing of fragmentation and separation, but also the healing of relationships throughout the Web of Life in order to restore greater harmony between worlds. And to be candid, this is the only thing slowing down the actualization of the new paradigm, the ascended Earth experience, or the re-enchantment/sacralization of the world. Everything else has been given and continues to be gifted.Many lightworkers as well as other spiritual initiates working for the greater good and upliftment of humanity and planetary conditions need to realize, as you did , that as a multidimensional being there is more than one aspect of Self, and that these Selves need to be retrieved, integrated and aligned in order to fully reclaim and actualize their divine birthright and ascend as well as to better aid in the ascension/restoration of planetary life.– at least to some degree. Or to put it plainly, it's time for the rounding out of one's spiritual/mystical education in anticipation of the next stage of human evolution – the soulful spiritual evolution/revolution that will see humanity throw off the shackles of illusion and claim its rightful place among Creation. But first, one must awaken to the full truth and glory of who they are. May they come to realize as you have, that your Higher Self (also known as “star or upper world walker” in other traditions) is only one aspect – there is also in the main the Physical Self, and the Dream/Underworld/Soulful Self.The Higher Self walks and communes with the Heavenly/Cosmic Hierarchy and receives glimpses into the divine cosmic plan and overall cosmology; the Dream/Underworld/Soul Self walks and communes with the Divine Mother /Planetary Hierarchy and receives glimpses of the divine template for Earth/Gaia and this Self keeps one's vessel and one's energy vital and alive; lastly one's Physical Self serves as the manifest/material world bridge and point of expression/communication and integration between the other two. It is through the Physical Self that you express this inner/outer integration.Most spiritual path initiates (in whatever tradition they work with) tend to focus and express through mostly two of these aspects of Self. But all three must be activated, brought into active partnership, aligned, and consciously worked with. Many lightworkers for instance, prefer only to commune with Higher Self and do not want to ground within the Earth/Gaia. There is too much pain, misery, suffering they say, instead they cannot wait to go home – and yet how are they to transmute it and complete their work if they do not want to get their feet (or chakras) dirty? They do not want to accept or embrace their full nature but by being born and incarnated into a human body they are as much of Earth (and soulful living) as Cosmic in origin (and spiritual living), and there is no avoiding passing through both those levels of initiation/education in order to further progress as individuals, as well as help the healing of this planetary world in theand most effective way possible.In general, one must be open to learning to work and commune with all orders of Life (seen and unseen) within the local system of which they are a part – or at the very least, become aware and respectful of their presence. As you have discovered, powerful bonds and alliances can be created through friendship, exchange, and support that serve you as much as them. And the vast majority of them, want nothing more than the restoration/ascension of the Gaiac/Earthly experience. Humans were never meant to walk alone, for true strength, empowerment, and vitality comes with the recognition of our inherent unity with other forms of life and/or other forms of consciousness. And these consciousness forms/orders of life are broken or stunted in some way as well, because of the brokenness in humanity.– not to be an island upon themselves. And this has been the greatest lie thrust upon humanity – that one is on their own, that one is somehow separate – that other realms or forms of life (seen/unseen) don't exist and if they do, they are evil, untrustworthy and not to be meddled with. And yet they all exist in the first place to be of service to humanity's growth, evolution, and the overall planetary experience. After all, Earth was meant to be a place of rich experience and higher learning - not one of egregious suffering.Many earthly realms are considered dark, shadowy, and hellish in nature. The Earth has been bathed in the blood of the suffering, how could it not be so? And while yes, these imprints and memories have been stored within the Earth, within one's psyche's, within one's blood (as you are born of the Earth), they are not evil or out to get anyone. They simply seek acknowledgment, love and healing (just like humanity does) and must be integrated if a healing and eventually a restoration is to be realized, in Self and the greater Collective. There are also many beautiful, joyful and magical realms within Earth to experience as well and many lost aspects of Self within these soulful depths to be retrieved and integrated. All of these things are certainly worth the trouble of such deep excursions.For example, the template (or divine plan) that must be restored dwells within the depths of the Earth. It's always been there, a brightly glowing seed/sun that has continued to hold the original intent or etheric blueprint of Earth as well as the etheric blueprint of the Adam Kadmon. Aside from these blueprints, also found within Earth and its many realms are the Planetary Hierarchy including: the Council of 7 (the other councils extend outward from Earth), the world soul (the Divine Feminine/Mother) , one's Soul Self, one's ancestors when not incarnate (moving throughout the inner mansion worlds/lower heavens and yet still attuned to you), the spirits of the plant and animal kingdoms, the mineral intelligences who are very high orders of beings incarnating a small aspect of Self within the planetary experience, the Sidhe/Faery or the “shining ones” and/or Argathans (those who are further along in Earth's evolution than current humanity and who long ago went underground), the elemental and directional spirits, and the spirits of place, not to mention the inner passage from Earth to her many sister realms as recorded in the myths of old.Indeed, there is much magic, wonder, wisdom and even great healing and vitality to be discovered within the planetary realm/lower world. And most all beings within these realms, great and small, visible and invisible, seek to be united once again within The World/Cosmic Tree, so that the great Song of Life/Creation may be heard once more in its proper and pure frequency/resonance. For once the connection between these worlds is restored, humanity will once again experience what is known as 5D and/or a much greater experience of universal unity consciousness. The veil is already thinning remarkably fast now, as signs of the mysterious, supernatural and the miraculous gain visibility. Even many of your mainstream scientific institutions and disciplines can no longer deny the light of illumination and/or greater awareness that is shining across the land and within these fields in regard to this type of phenomena. It is recommended that if a spiritual initiate has not worked in a very committed way with their Dream/Underworld/Soul aspect of Self that they consider study and practice within an earth and/or creation-based path and/or Shamanic tradition. Learn to observe the seasons, cycles and sacred days of old. Soulful reflections and creative explorations can also aid one in getting in touch with this realm or aspect of Self. If on the other hand, an initiate is quite familiar with this aspect of Self but not with their Higher Self (or star/upper world walker Self), that they work on developing this aspect of Self through prayer, meditation and the exploration of their morals and values. Many of your world's religious and spiritual traditions can assist with this as long as one is not pulled into the more rigid and dogmatic side of a particular tradition. And again, keeping in mind that the end goal is the expression and integration of all aspects of Self (the vertical of Spirit and Soul and horizontal physical plane), within the physical or everyday personality Self.The reason these additional aspects of Self are being highlighted at this time, and the reason you personally were triggered to move more fully into them these last few years, is not only for personal development but because very soon the many secrets that have been kept hidden from humanity, including its true past/history, will be made known. Add to that the flood of memories that will be activated/released within the blood/DNA of individuals as these shadow secrets are revealed layer by layer (often going back many generations) and concurrently, as the higher energy inductions from space continue to catalyze the awakening process, a great deal of confusion and upheaval is likely to ensue. In fact in large part it has already begun and you can easily see the early effects of this on an unprepared populace who still want to classify and assign blame to such things in dualistic frames (for example, democrat and republican, black and white, male and female, the have and have-nots, etc...)If one is not grounded in their various aspects of Self, it may become very disorienting to at first process all the information and revelations coming forward, then put those pieces together correctly and in the right higher frame, as well as discern truth from false memory and related emotional imprints that arise in one for transmutation and/or clearing. It is here that caution is also warranted for those light-workers and spiritual initiates who feel triggered into social action/justice responses...be sure you are fully aware of the full scope and breadth of a situation before making a judgment and going gangbusters on it (do not react purely out of emotion), as you may end up inadvertently causing more harm in the form of fear and separation in the collective by doing so. There may be certain facets of the situation that have not yet been revealed and/or one made aware of. Make sure you truly understand the other side of an argument or conflict from a place of openness, curiosity, compassion and if possible, positive personal experience, even if that experience comes in the form of listening deeply to another's story.You and others like you (in touch with multi-dimensional aspects of Self) will help the masses make sense of what is happening. You will be needed as stabilizing and grounding forces for individuals and the collective on multiple levels: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. You will also have a much truer and broader sense of what is actually transpiring in any given moment due to these expanded energetic linkages. And remember, you won't be doing this alone, you will have your new allies (seen and unseen) assisting as well. Making you a rather formidable force against those seeking to keep the planetary experience a lowly one.Much of the prerequisite work has been done, the process begun – soon this unification process will intensify greatly. In many ways it has already begun to do so. This means, any structures supporting the illusion of separation are soon to come crumbling down. That includes structures internally constructed by individual minds. It is recommended that all spiritual initiates, lightworkers, healers or way-showers spend this remaining time firming up their alliances, relationships, and/or co-creative partnerships and actively work toward their own inner unification and reclamation process. For those already working at this level, such as yourself, it is recommended that they continue deepening and building out their alliances and further integrating various aspects of Self. For soon, all streams will converge.See also Recommended Reading section
America, we have reached the point of no return! The government of the United States is about to embark on a course that will prove to be ruinous for our country. This morning, Congress is jubilantly announcing a tentative agreement on the Wall Street bailout plan. The plan, if approved this week by the full Congress and signed by the President, is a betrayal of the constitutional oath taken by our leaders. It is a violation of the public trust and an extreme abuse of the fiduciary responsibilities that each member of Congress and the President has to the American people. In short, any member of Congress who votes for the measure is guilty of treason and should be dealt with accordingly. Why is voting for the plan a treasonable offense? One reason is because it gives enormous power to the Treasury Secretary, who is an unelected official. He will have power to buy deeply distressed mortgage-backed securities and other bad debts held by banks and investment firms with taxpayer money. This includes bad debts held by foreign banks that do business in the U.S. So essentially, by approving the plan the Congress will be handing over $700 billion of taxpayer money to an unelected official and an imperial president. The whole thing reeks of fascism. In all of the debate over the bailout plan, no one (except Ron Paul) has questioned whether the move is constitutional. Congressional leaders are ignoring the will of the people where polls indicate that only thirty percent of Americans approve of the legislation. The Treasury Secretary and the President are being given extraordinary new powers to act as economic dictators. And the federal government through the plan is again turning to public debt to stimulate the economy to presumably put us back on sound economic footing. As this government induced crisis worsens, Washington is acting more and more like Italy under Mussolini than America under Jefferson. Without question, it is a government induced crisis. For nearly twenty years, Alan Greenspan as chairman of the Fed embarked on a policy of easy money – low interest rates and expanding money supply. He became the parent who just couldn't say no to the American people. His policies as Fed chairman led to the dot com bubble and bust in the late 90s. To stimulate the economy after 911 he lowered the federal funds rate to an unbelievable one percent! The rate stayed there for a year and was increased slowly for the next three years after that. Rates were low enough for a long enough period of time to cause severe misallocations in the economy. Thus, the housing bubble was born. Of course, it also took the absolute stupidity of many Americans to get into debts that they could not afford – a concept that seems to be an implied right of American citizenship which is expressed through laws like the Community Redevelopment Act. Lastly, by sprinkling in some fraud by lenders and borrowers alike you have the recipe for the disaster that looms over us today. So, what do our esteemed leaders propose to get out of this mess? They are proposing more of the same things that got us into this mess. Passing a $700 billion bailout package is easy money to the politicians and says to the stupid and fraudulent that any mistakes or criminal actions you may have committed will be remedied by the deep pockets of the American taxpayer. Congress will appropriate this money as if there will be no repercussions down the road. This sounds very familiar to the mindset of Fed governors when they lowered rates to one percent. Congress is also being as stupid as those Americans who got themselves into debt that they couldn't afford. The U.S. government doesn't have $700 billion dollars to spend. Hell, it doesn't have $10. It has $9 trillion in debt on the books with at least another $50 trillion in future obligations like Social Security. At some point soon, foreign countries will stop loaning the U.S. money. Our currency will become worthless and our standard of living will deteriorate. Yes, debt does matter whether you are a business, a family, or a huge government. Lastly, fraud is a component part of our leaders' proposal to get us out of this mess. We are being told that this “rescue” plan is for Main Street not Wall Street. We are being told that somehow putting up huge sums of taxpayer money to buy bad assets is the best answer to get out of the mess that deregulation of the financial industry caused. The lies go on and on. Make no mistake about it, the politicians will pass this plan to help their benefactors on Wall Street – those that have helped them get elected. It is a fraudulent use of taxpayer money. If not the politicians plan than what should be done to remedy the crisis? Immediately, the government should cease intervening in the crisis. Let the market determine its own equilibrium. Former private assets like Fannie and Freddie should be liquidated. Government spending, especially military spending, should be reduced. The budget should be balanced, taxes cut and regulations on businesses eliminated. Any protectionist measures enacted by Uncle Sam should immediately be repealed. In the area of foreign affairs, the U.S. should bring troops home from bases around the globe and stop riling up hostilities with Pakistan, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela. These moves would free up funds to be used at home where they are needed and not on high-risk, no gain military adventures. In conclusion, any member of Congress who votes for the bailout package is betraying their constitutional oath, violating the public trust and abusing their fiduciary responsibility to the American people. On November 4th they should be thrown out of office and not replaced with a clone from the other major party. Instead, minor party candidates should be elected to return our government to “We the People”. I urge all Americans to write letters to the editor, talk to community groups, friends and family, become involved in minor party candidate campaigns and vote your conscience. The vicious cycle perpetrated on us by the politicians in Washington must end. But it cannot end without the efforts of all of us. Kenn Jacobine teaches History and English for the American International School of Lusaka, Zambia. Send him email at lovesliberty@gmail.com.
Signup to receive a daily roundup of the top LGBT+ news stories from around the world The National Assembly for Wales is marking LGBT History Month by flying the flag from 10 February. The flag will fly above the Assembly’s Cardiff Bay and Colwyn Bay estate. The Assembly’s staff network will celebrate the month by displaying a presentation of LGBT role models in the Senedd and doing internal awareness-raising for staff and Assembly Members. The Presiding Officer, Dame Rosemary Butler AM, said: “I am proud that the Assembly does so much positive work to make the workplace more inclusive”, she added “But we cannot rest on our laurels; there is still much work to be done.” The PO stated that part of that work is to proudly fly the flag above the estate of the Assembly. The National Assembly has been recognised by Stonewall for its efforts to be LGBT inclusive, it was ranked fourth in the UK in Stonewall’s 2014 Workplace Equality Index. It was named the top public sector gay-friendly place to work in Wales. Sandy Mewies AM, the Assembly Commissioner with responsibility for equalities issues, added: “The National Assembly continues to excel in terms of its work in the equalities field. “The LGBT History Month is all about celebrating diversity and cultural pluralism and I am delighted that once again the Assembly is marking LGBT History Month.”
For other committees, she diagrams a web of money that moved from donors associated with Mr. de Blasio into party committees in several counties, and then was spent on, or by, the candidates’ campaigns. The report detects a level of coordination that, in her view, achieved its purpose: to frustrate both disclosure requirements and contribution limits. She cites an email from the campaign manager for a Senate candidate in Ulster County to the treasurer of the county Democratic committee. “Has the check for $60K cleared?” the campaign manager asked. “Below is our banking info, we need the 60 transferred over ASAP please.” This email shows that they “previously had discussions about this matter,” Ms. Sugarman wrote, adding, “This pattern of activity indicates that the committees already had committed to these expenditures prior to receiving the funds.” Thus, the everyday plaintive wails of political operatives trying to win elections — I need that check ASAP! — was rendered as an act in a nearly sinister conspiracy. Others might see this as tactical spending and fund-raising; to Ms. Sugarman, it amounts to an evasion forbidden by law. It certainly has a long history. Mr. de Blasio’s predecessor as mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg, sent $75,000 to the New York State Senate Republican Campaign Committee during the last days before a special election on Long Island in 2007. The check was delivered on Jan. 26, for an election held 11 days later. The money supported a single Republican candidate, in one campaign, with a donation many times the limit Mr. Bloomberg would have been permitted if he had given the money directly to the campaign. Mr. Bloomberg spent heavily in similar fashion during his time as mayor to prop up the Republican Senate majority, using his own money. Mr. de Blasio has spent heavily in hopes of attaining a Democratic majority, though he has taken the precaution of using other people’s money. If it seems strange that Mr. de Blasio is now on the griddle when so many others could just as easily have provided fixings for the same meal, it’s important to remember that the corrupting force of campaign money was part of the work of the Moreland Commission in 2013 and 2014. The city, unlike the state, has a reasonably strong and effective public financing law. Elsewhere, money in politics finds its own level. It is not a heartening sight, said Bill Cunningham, a former executive director of the state Democratic committee. “That level,” he said, “is somewhere between a bog and a swamp.”
An Ottawa author is calling for the Canadian government to better protect its citizens from being harassed by American border guards while still on Canadian soil. Amal El-Mohtar, 32, says she was asked violating questions and had her luggage, journal and phone searched for hours by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials at the Macdonald-Cartier International Airport in Ottawa last week, forcing her to miss her flight to New York for a writer's retreat. If only the lottery were this kind of random. - Amal El-Mohtar , Ottawa author "Something needs to give. The system has been broken for my entire adulthood," El-Mohtar told CBC News on the weekend. "It's been broken and it only gets more broken and more terrible and something needs to be done to change it." El-Mohtar said she burst into tears after the experience because she felt overwhelmed, and because she felt as though the questions had violated her family's privacy. She put her story up on Twitter, garnering dozens of responses — and hearing from people who'd experienced worse. I've been up since 4:00. I'm hungry & tired & I don't know if I'll be able to go to this magical retreat I've been looking forward to for weeks. But more than that, the violation of it hits me all at once. —@tithenai Expects racial profiling El-Mohtar, born and raised in Ottawa, has been crossing the border into the U.S. three to four times a year for at least the last five years because that's where many of her fans are. With an Arabic-sounding name, she said she expects to be racially profiled, endure intense questioning and pat downs. "Every time, I'd get the allegedly random extra screening. Every time. To the point where I'd always make jokes about, if only the lottery were this kind of random." This time, however, she was sent for secondary screening, which she said was particularly degrading. El-Mohtar said she arrived at the airport an hour and 40 minutes before her flight, but was sent to secondary screening where she was taken to a private room and detained for two hours. Her bags were thoroughly searched, she said, and she was forced to provide her phone's unlocking code before it was taken from her. She also said she was questioned about any trips she'd taken to the Middle East, as well as about her parents' background. She was asked to provide her siblings' birth dates and names, as well as whether they had any contacts in the Middle East. Despite her numerous visits to the U.S., she'd only been sent for secondary questioning once before, in May, when she was flying out of Toronto. She called Thursday's situation a violation — not only for her, but for her family. This time I was alone, they took my phone after forcing me to unlock it, asked questions about the friends I was going to see, wanted the birthdates of my siblings as well as parents, & rifled through all my belongings. <br><br>S l o w l y —@tithenai "The thing that keeps upsetting me the most is that they've put me in a situation where I have to give them information about people who are not travelling and have not consented to me sharing this information," she said. "But somehow they [feel they] have some right to it." El-Mohtar said she's particularly worried about whether officers cloned or copied her phone after it was taken from her. She was handed a document titled "Inspection of Electronic Devices," which told her that her electronic device had been "detained for further examination, which may include copying." She said she believes at least some of her phone's applications were affected. Amal El-Mohtar was given this information sheet by U.S. Customs and Border Protection when they took her phone. A line on the sheet states electronic devices are being examined, "which may include copying." (Submitted) Travellers can apply for redress Aaron Bowker, the chief customs and border protection officer and public affairs liaison for the Buffalo field office, told CBC News he couldn't speak about specific cases. He maintained, however, that travellers are not racially profiled. "We understand that 99.99 per cent of travellers are law abiding, so [officers are] looking for that needle in a haystack. They're looking for that one person out of a massive crowd that they want to find," Bowker said. "It's a hard job to do. So sometimes it does take that extra questioning. Sometimes it does take that extra secondary to make sure you get it right, because you don't get to do it over." If travellers are unhappy with the screening process, they can seek recourse by contacting the Department of Homeland Security Traveler Redress Inquiry Program, Bowker said. El-Mohtar said she'd applied for redress through that program after the incident in May, handing over multiple documents to prove her identity. She said Saturday she doesn't feel there's been much benefit. "I just end up caught in this limbo of not wanting to let the bad guys win by stopping myself from travelling. But also not wanting to let them steal my time the way that they are."
ADEN (Reuters) - More than 50 people were killed in Yemen in the past two days in fighting pitting an Arab coalition against Houthi fighters backed by troops loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, medical sources and residents said on Sunday. A tank used by fighters loyal to Yemen's government is pictured at the frontline of the fighting against Houthi rebels in Yemen's northern province of Marib November 8, 2015. REUTERS/Stringer In Taiz, medical sources told Reuters 29 people including eight civilians were killed in clashes in Yemen’s third largest city, where relief workers have said fighting has blocked food supplies and left thousands of people in extreme hunger. About 30 people were killed in fighting in Damt district in Dhalea governorate in the south, residents said. At least 5,600 people have been killed in seven months of war in Yemen, the poorest country on the Arabian Peninsula, and the United Nations says the humanitarian situation, exacerbated by the Arab coalition’s blockade of Yemeni ports, grows worse every day. The conflict pits the Iran-allied Houthis and army units loyal to Saleh against armed groups who support exiled President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi alongside a Saudi-led Arab coalition. The coalition is fighting to restore Hadi to power following the Houthis’ seizure of control of much of Yemen in late 2014 and early 2015, and reverse what it sees as an expansion of influence by Iran, the regional rival of Riyadh. Residents and officials said that pro-Hadi forces seized of two strategic entry points to the city of Damt on Sunday after being air dropped weapons by coalition warplanes, solidifying their control over southern Yemen. Peace efforts have made only limited progress. All major combatants have publicly agreed to implement U.N. Security Council Resolution 2216, which calls on Houthi and Saleh forces to withdraw from the country’s main cities and surrender arms captured from Yemeni government forces. But while Hadi and the coalition have previously demanded that this happen before talks begin, the Houthis and Saleh want talks to address the mechanism for implementing Resolution 2216.
The video will start in 8 Cancel Get the biggest Liverpool FC stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email Alberto Moreno has emerged as a fitness doubt for Liverpool's Europa League showdown with Manchester United. The Spanish left-back pulled up complaining of pain in his hamstring during Wednesday night's training session at Old Trafford. Moreno, who had been tasked by Jurgen Klopp with whipping crosses into the penalty box, played no further part in the exercise and was later seen deep in discussions with head physio Chris Morgan. Liverpool insist it's too early to say whether he will miss the last 16 second leg tie and Moreno will be assessed by medical staff on Thursday morning before a decision is made. If Moreno misses out then Brad Smith is likely to deputise at left-back. The Australia international hasn't featured under Klopp since the FA Cup defeat to West Ham last month. It would be the biggest night of Smith's career. The 21-year-old has only made eight senior appearances and his only previous European outing came away to FC Sion in December. Jon Flanagan would have been the more experienced option but he isn't registered for Europa League duty. WATCH: Klopp wants Liverpool to silence Old Trafford
Teen Rebellion Marks Subconscious Separation from Parents CONTACT: Emily Gersema, 213/740-0252 gersema@usc.edu The rebel has a cause. Using brain scans, USC psychology researchers have found that teenage rebellion is a sign of teens separating from parents in their transition to adulthood. The researchers believe this study is the first of its kind to record images of teenage brains as they responded to videos of peers and, separately, videos of their parents. “The more they were activating a central part of the brain to the unfamiliar peer versus to their parents, the more risky the behavior was that they were reporting,” said Darby Saxbe, assistant professor of psychology at USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. For the study, researchers tracked the brain activity of 22 teens, ages 16 to 18, through Magnetic Resonance Imaging. The psychologists found that the MRIs of teens who reported engaging in the most risky behaviors — sex, drug use or reckless driving, for instance — were more responsive to watching videos of other teens than videos of their parents. Researchers observed that when the rebellious teens saw the videos, a central region of their brains responded more to their peers than to their parents. In fact, the MRIs revealed a spike in activity in the precuneus — a portion of the brain that controls awareness about the thoughts and behaviors of others. Although studies have shown that teens tend to hang out more with their peers than their parents as they reach adulthood, Saxbe said that parents shouldn’t let their teens separate entirely. She said that the results seem to indicate that parents should be sure to maintain a strong bond with their children, even when they become adolescents. Based on this study, the potential lesson for teens and their families is “Keep your friends close but your parents close, too,” Saxbe said. The study was published this week in Social Neuroscience.
Tobaku Mokushiroku Kaiji (賭博黙示録カイジ, lit. Gambling Apocalypse Kaiji) is a Japanese manga series about the art of gambling, written and illustrated by Nobuyuki Fukumoto. It is published by Kodansha in Weekly Young Magazine since February 1996. The series has currently been divided into six parts. The current story arc, Tobaku Datenroku Kaiji: 24 Oku Dasshutsu-hen, started in 2017. The first part of the manga was adapted as a 26-episode anime television series called Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor, which aired between October 2007 and April 2008. A live-action Kaiji movie was released in 2009 in Japan with Tatsuya Fujiwara playing the role of Kaiji Itō, followed by a sequel in 2011. A second anime television series based on the second arc of the manga, entitled Kaiji: Against All Rules, premiered April 2011 and ran until September 2011. A more loosely adapted Chinese live-action movie, titled Animal World, was released on June 29, 2018 in China and other countries. The first part of the manga has been licensed by Denpa in North America and it will be released in six omnibus volumes, and the first volume will be published on April 24, 2019. Kaiji is a popular series in Japan and the manga has sold over 20 million copies. In 1998, it was the winner of the 22nd Kodansha Manga Award in the General category. Plot [ edit ] After graduating from high school in 1996 in Japan, Itō Kaiji moves to Tokyo to get a job, but he fails to find steady employment because the country is mired in its first recession since World War II. Depressed, he festers in his apartment, biding his time with cheap pranks, gambling, liquor and cigarettes. Kaiji is always thinking about money and his perpetual poverty frequently brings him to tears. Kaiji's unrelenting misery continues for two years until he is paid an unexpected visit from a man named Endō, who wants to collect an outstanding debt that Kaiji has carelessly co-signed for his former co-worker. Endō gives Kaiji two options - either spend ten years to repay this outstanding debt, or board the gambling ship Espoir ("hope" in French) for one night to clear the debt. Using a con, Endō pressures Kaiji into accepting the deal, believing he will never come back from the voyage. However, Kaiji survives the gamble and is invited to another gambling night, this time at the Starside Hotel. Although initially wary about the offer, he is spurred by his acquaintance Sahara to go. After being the only survivor of the Human Derby, Kaiji decides to avenge his friends by competing in another gambling match the Teiai Corporation has prepared; E-Card. Kaiji, despite losing an ear, defeats Tonegawa, his opponent in E-Card. He goes all-in once again in a new game. This time, he loses both the money he had won in the E-Card battle and four of his fingers. Though Kaiji survives the Starside Hotel he now has a debt of over 9.5 million Yen. He contacts Endō in hope of being able to take part in another high-stakes gamble. However Endō betrays Kaiji and sends him to Teiai's underground labour camp, where he will have to work off his debt for 15 years. In the labour camp Kaiji is paid 91,000 pelica per month (10 pelica are equal to 1 Yen) to dig an underground kingdom. This is reduced to 45,000 pelica after Kaiji loses to Ōtsuki in Chinchirorin. However Kaiji allies himself with other 45ers (those earning 45,000 pelica per month) to defeat Ōtsuki and win enough money for the one-day pass. Although Kaiji manages to get out of the labour camp with 800,000 Yen using the 1-day pass, he only has 20 days to earn the 60 million Yen he needs to buy his freedom and release the other 45ers. Fortunately Kaiji comes across Sakazaki who tells him of a pachinko game known as the Bog in a high-stakes casino where Kaiji can win over 550 million Yen. Kaiji agrees to help Sakazaki beat the Bog. However, the casino is owned by Teiai Corporation, and the Bog has been rigged in several ways to ensure that it won't pay out. After finally clearing his debt Kaiji has been living with Sakazaki and his family until Sakazaki kicks Kaiji out with 3 million Yen in cash. Kaiji then agrees to help the former 45ers Miyoshi and Maeda beat the president of a casino at his Minefield Mahjong game and win 480 million Yen. Characters [ edit ] Kaiji Itō ( 伊藤開司 , Itō Kaiji) The main character of the story. Kaiji is in poverty - he lives by himself in a slum and is constantly in debt. He bides his time by playing cheap gambling games with neighbors, though he always loses. In spite of this, when his life is in danger, he displays a remarkable hidden capacity for gambling, which allows him to endure the hardships he faces in the manga. He is shouldered with a 3,850,000 yen debt at the beginning of the story by a co-worker who convinced him into cosigning a loan, leaving Kaiji with the full weight of the debt compounded over a year. Masato Hagiwara, the voice of Akagi Shigeru reprises his role as lead in the second anime adaption of a Nobuyuki Fukumoto work, opposite Masane Tsukayama who again plays an elderly, refined villain. Kazutaka Hyōdō ( 兵藤和尊 , Hyōdō Kazutaka) Wealthy socialite and president of the powerful financial consulting firm "Teiai" ( 帝愛 , "Love Emperor") , not to mention owner and sponsor of underground gambling tournaments like those on board Espoir. He is believed to be seventy years old and worth several hundred billion yen. Driven mad by wealth, conventional hobbies fail to entertain him, so he funds gambling tournaments to watch the destitute of society struggle against overwhelming terror and despair. He has no concerns for the suffering of others and his own happiness is all that matters. He meets Kaiji in the final segment of the first series of manga, where Kaiji is selected by lottery to compete in the "Castle of Despair". Hyōdō's talents for winning in anything have earned him the title of "king" by some, though others merely call him "very lucky". His first full manga appearance was in volume 8 - prior to that, all readers saw of Hyōdō was his finger tapping. Yūji Endō ( 遠藤勇次 , Endō Yūji) A loan shark with ties to the yakuza and the Teiai corporation. He lends large sums of money to desperate people, but charges an extortionate interest rate. After a client of his, Furuhata, disappears without repaying a loan, he tracks down Kaiji who acted as the loan guarantor in an moment of weakness. Aware that Kaiji could never repay the loan, Endō offers him the opportunity to board the gambling ship Espoir, where he may be able repay his debt and make some money as well. After Kaiji defeats Tonegawa his organization suffers because they now lack any connection to the upper management of Teiai. After Kaiji approaches Endō for another high risk gamble, Endō drugs Kaiji and sends him to an underground labor camp. When Kaiji is released he goes to Endō again for a loan to get enough money to beat the Bog. Endō helps Kaiji borrow 50 million Yen to beat the Bog and helps Kaiji weaken it. During the battle with the Bog Endō loans Kaiji another 10 million Yen at a very high rate of interest. After Kaiji's victory he drugs Kaiji, takes the extra money owed to him, and leaves. Part 1 - The Ship of Hope, Espoir [ edit ] Jōji Funai ( 船井譲次 , Funai Jōji) [4] Portrayed by: Taro Yamamoto (live-action)[5] Voiced by: Hideo Ishikawa Portrayed by: Taro Yamamoto (live-action) One of the veterans of previous voyages on the Espoir, Funai is an excellent conman and uses the fears and worries of the other competitors to his advantage. He "befriends" Kaiji during his first night and explains the unofficial rules to him, and the two agree to form an alliance - both will exhaust their number of gesture cards without having to lose any star pendants. However, at the last minute, Funai backstabs Kaiji and scams him out of two star pendants, leaving him with a single card and a hopeless situation. He is defeated by Kaiji and loses five star pendants to him in a sudden death gamble near the end of the voyage. Takeshi Furuhata ( 古畑武志 , Furuhata Takeshi) Debtor and one-time coworker of Kaiji. One year before the first tournament on the Espoir, he lured Kaiji into cosigning a loan for him, making Kaiji liable in case Furuhata did not repay the loan. Although believed to have disappeared, Kaiji discovers him on Espoir and makes an alliance with him after Funai's betrayal. Furuhata is the sharper of Kaiji's allies, and is able to follow and quickly adapt to Kaiji's strategies. Furuhata betrays Kaiji and attempts to use his funds to escape the ship. Mamoru Andō ( 安藤守 , Andō Mamoru) A bespectacled, fat man who forms an alliance with Kaiji and Furuhata after losing all of his gesture cards. Unlike Furuhata, Andō is more opportunistic and tried to backstab the group within minutes of it forming. He usually has to have Kaiji's strategies explained to him by Furuhata. After the gamble of Restricted Rock, Paper, Scissors ends, he betrays Kaiji, and has no regrets about it. Kitami ( 北見 ) A clear-headed man who came up with a strategy of buying up all the rock cards and holding them constant; as the other cards deplete, he and his men then prey on those who have scissors. However, he was surprised to learn that Kaiji discovered the same strategy and purchased all the rocks, so in turn he purchased all the paper cards, effectively making Kaiji's strategy useless. After defeating Andō and Furuhata, Kitami approaches Kaiji and admits he was impressed another contestant figured how to manipulate the game, offering him the honor of being his final opponent. He is outsmarted by Kaiji, then blackmailed into selling all of his paper cards to him. Yukio Tonegawa ( 利根川幸雄 , Tonegawa Yukio) A powerful business magnate and the second highest ranking executive in the financial firm Teiai (Love Emperor). He serves as the host and overseer for both the Restricted Rock, Paper, Scissors on the ship Espoir and Human Derby games at the Starside Hotel while acting as the opponent for the E-Card gamble. A stout man of middle-age, Tonegawa is a staunch realist, believing those who risk their lives in Love Emperor's tournaments to be street trash at the mercy of society and those with superior abilities and initiative. By reputation Tonegawa is a master of human psychology and the art of observation, displaying acts of insight so profound his abilities appear supernatural. He is defeated by Kaiji in E-Card, forced to undergo the Roasting Kneeling ( 焼き土下座 ) punishment and thrown out of power by Kazutaka Hyōdō. With his downfall, a power vacuum appears in Love Emperor's inner circle, leading to chaos among the management. Many of those who are loyal to Tonegawa's faction within the company, notably Kaiji's debtor Endō Yuuji, disappear without a trace. Tonegawa himself is led away after his defeat and is not seen again. Part 2 - The Skyscraper of Darkness, Starside Hotel [ edit ] Kōji Ishida ( 石田光司 , Ishida Kōji) A debt-ridden man who opted to participate on Espoir in an effort to clear his debts, but failed. He was saved from death on a whim by Kaiji, but to spare his wife and son from debt he agreed to participate in another gambling tournament, the Human Derby. In the first leg of the race, Ishida accomplished second place, earning a certificate redeemable for 10,000,000¥. During the second part of the race, while overcome by immense fear, Ishida recognized that he was not a man born to be a success in this world, and entrusted his certificate to Kaiji, who he felt had the skill, power and confidence to survive. He urges Kaiji to go forward and not look back, and while Kaiji is concentrating on maintaining his balance, Ishida falls from the steel bridge, covering his mouth so Kaiji would not hear his screams. Makoto Sahara ( 佐原誠 , Sahara Makoto) Kaiji's younger co-worker at a convenience store he found employment at following his survival of Espoir. Sahara dreams of finding his big break in life, and like Kaiji feels he is getting nowhere with his dead-end job. He begs Endō to permit him to participate in the Human Derby, despite warnings from Kaiji. Sahara's youthful strength and impulsiveness benefit him greatly in the gamble, and he gets a strong lead on the other racers, earning first place in Kaiji's block and receiving a certificate redeemable for ¥20,000,000. In the second leg of the race, Sahara is the first to reach the other side of the second bridge - however, before he can cash his earnings from the Starside Hotel, he falls into a trap set up by Kazutaka Hyōdō and is killed. Part 3 - The Bog of Desire [ edit ] Yoshihiro Kurosaki ( 黒崎義裕 , Kurosaki Yoshihiro) Kurosaki has served in Teiai Group for years and is a friend of Hyōdō. He was promoted to the position of second-in-command of Teiai Group one year after Kaiji defeats Tonegawa; replacing Tonegawa's faction as the dominant faction. Kurosaki seems to be more friendly than Tonegawa as he praised Ōtsuki for his Chinchirorin rules but states that because Ōtsuki failed to think of a worst case scenario this caused him to be defeated. He also promotes fairness, such as refusing to let Ōtsuki back out of his bet, rather than threatening people. Kurosaki appears to be in charge of the underground labor camp where Kaiji is sent and resides nearby. This was demonstrated when he was shown watching Kaiji gambling with Ōtsuki at Chinchirorin but was able to travel to the labor camp and arrive after Ōtsuki got his safe. Ōtsuki ( 大槻 , Ōtsuki) Foreman for group E in the underground labor camp and Kaiji's supervisor. Together with Isawa and Numagawa he makes a lot of money selling food, alcohol, and tobacco at twice their retail price to those in the labor camp and by winning at Chinchirorin. Though he was initially friendly to Kaiji this was a ruse to encourage Kaiji to spend his all money buying food and alcohol from Ōtsuki. Ōtsuki then loans Kaiji some money to play Chinchirorin, then wins this money back from him, and forces him to work for half-pay to repay his debt. After Kaiji figures out that Ōtsuki is cheating by using 4-5-6 dice (dice without the number 1, 2, or 3 on them) he exposes Ōtsuki in front of everyone. Ōtsuki then agrees to let Kaiji and the other 45ers use rigged dice against him thinking he will only have to pay 2 or 3 times the amount bet, however Kaiji and the 45ers uses rigged dice that only roll 1 so Ōtsuki has to pay 5 times the amount bet (under Ōtsuki's rules if the 3 dice all show 1 the player wins 5 times their bet). After being dealer for 2 rounds Ōtsuki loses over 18 million pelica. Tomohiro Miyoshi ( 三好智広 , Miyoshi Tomohiro) Another person in group E paying off their debts by working in the underground labor camps. He keeps a record of all the wins in Chinchirorin which makes Kaiji realize how Ōtsuki is cheating. He and several others earning 45,000 pelica help Kaiji defeat Ōtsuki. Kōtarō Sakazaki ( 坂崎孝太郎 , Sakazaki Kōtarō) A middle aged man who seeks to beat the Bog and win enough money to buy a house so his wife and daughter will return to him. At first he wants Kaiji to help him beat the Bog but later helps Kaiji defeat the Bog. Ichijō ( 一条 ) Manager of the casino that owns the Bog. He has worked at Teiai Group for many years and is one of the subordinates of Yohishiro Kurosaki. He is well manicured and with a cautious personality (he increases security around the Bog to prevent Kaiji tampering with it). After Kaiji beats the Bog Hyōdō demands that Ichijou pay back the 700 million Yen Kaiji won by working for 1050 years in the labor camp. As Ichijou is dragged away Kaiji encourages him to return and challenge him again. Part 4 - Minefield Mahjong [ edit ] Takashi Muraoka ( 村岡隆 , Muraoka Takashi) The casino president employs Miyoshi and Maeda. He has Miyoshi and Maeda convince Kaiji to gamble against him in Minefield Mahjong, which he has rigged in his favor by having Maeda looks at Kaiji's tiles while Miyoshi gives Kaiji false information. Though Kaiji initially loses all his money Kazuya Hyōdō loans him more money so the game can continue. After several draws where the wager is doubled the wager reaches 160 million Yen. By tricking the casino president into thinking he had another tile, Kaiji is able to win 480 million due to him having ura-dora. Kazuya Hyōdō ( 兵藤和也 , Hyōdō Kazuya) Son of Kazutaka Hyōdō, he enjoys gambles as much as his father. After Kaiji loses all of his money he keeps loaning Kaiji money so Kaiji can continue to gamble; however, he tells Kaiji that if Kaiji cannot repay the debt then Kaiji will either be sent back to the underground labor camp or will have his body parts removed (which body part will be removed is determined by a lottery wheel). He reveals to Kaiji that he detests the life he leads, and claims to not know true friendship or love, as everyone he meets kisses up to him due to the influence of his father. As a result, he thinks human beings are naturally detestable and likely to betray others, and additionally he finds no issue in wasting money for his gambles and schemes, and instead wants to be an author. As a means of finding out if true bonds actually exist, Kazuya sets up a series of deadly games designed to test the bonds between people, which influence the ideas for his novels. In addition, he runs a company called "Kazuya Corporation", which deals in covering up murders under the guise of suicides or construction accidents. Gambles [ edit ] Series 1 Restricted Rock, Paper, Scissors ( 限定ジャンケン , Gentei Janken) The gambling tournament the first night Kaiji spends on Espoir, has an average survival rate of 50%. The rules were outlined after the issuing of war funds, which were done a minimum of 1,000,000¥ and 10,000,000¥. The money was in effect a loan, equaling the debt of the contestant and compounded at 1.5% every ten minutes for the four-hour voyage; contestants who hold onto their funds for the length of the trip would have to pay 140% of what they invested, thus putting an incentive to finish games early. Money that exceeded the amount needed to repay the loan to the Espoir hosts would be pocketed by the contestant. The rules of the game are similar to the original Rock, Paper, Scissors game but with a twist - the hand gestures are represented by cards, and contestants are given twelve cards, four of each gesture. Contestants are also given three plastic stars as collateral to bet on each round of play - whenever a player loses a round, the winner gets a star from the loser. To survive the night, contestants must retain their three star pendants and use all of their gesture cards. Cards cannot be destroyed or thrown away, to do so is subject to instant disqualification. Due to the simple nature of the game, single matches can be completed within ten seconds, and players can win or lose in a matter of minutes. Winners are allowed to go upstairs, where any extra star pendants are exchanged for cash and they lounge in a small cafe. In the event of a loss, individuals are taken to away to a back room by men in black suits. Steel Frame Crossing ( 鉄骨渡り , Tekkotsu Watari) The gamble seen during Kaiji's competition at the Starside Hotel, consisting of two parts – Human Derby ( 人間競馬 , Ningen Keiba) and Electric Current Steel Frame Crossing ( 電流鉄骨渡り , Denryū Tekkotsu Watari) . In contrast to Restricted Rock, Paper, Scissors, contestants are not briefed on the rules of the Human Derby, and are unaware of the nature of the gamble until they accept participating in it. Contestants are loaded into numbered "coffins" and are elevated several floors up the Starside Hotel to a platform overlooking a concrete courtyard. Contestants are expected to walk across four long, steel beams - the first to arrive on the other side of the beam nets 20,000,000¥, the second place finisher 10,000,000¥. The steel beams become more narrow as the contestants begin to cross them, though touching the beam with hands at any time disqualifies the contestant. The pushing of contestants to get out of the way is not condoned but is in fact encouraged, since the contestants (the "horses") are being bet on by spectators below, who enjoy the struggle to the other side. Contestants who fall from the beams suffer severe injury - depending on how and where they land, their injuries can range from serious to fatal. Once the winners of the first leg of the race have been identified, they are given coupons redeemable for their prize with a set time limit. To cash the coupons, the contestants must cross similar but more dangerous steel beams twenty two stories or 75 meters above the ground and 25 meters long. Falling from this narrow bridge means instant death. Since the hosts concluded that the crossing of the bridge would not be entertaining if the contestants could give up and use their hands to assist in their retreat off the bridge, a strong electric current is run through the steel beams - while not powerful enough to cause serious injury or be fatal, the current is enough to stun contestants, causing them to lose balance and fall from the bridge. Psychologically, this bridge is much more challenging because of the greater peril involved. What's more the end of the bridge is not the end goal. Rather a glass stairway is set up at the end that reveals the true end goal but due to the dark lighting, it's hard to make out and requires a leap of faith in order to reach. E-Card ( Ｅカード , Ī Kādo) E-Card (Emperor Card) is a card game similar to Restricted Rock, Paper, Scissors in that it uses three card types: the Emperor (koutei), the Citizen (shimin), and the Slave (dorei). The game is meant to be a simplification of society that Kazutaka Hyōdō refers to right before the game begins. The Emperor has ultimate power to give money (ie. most powerful card). Citizens cannot disobey him because they want money (i.e. Emperor card beats the Citizen card). The Slave has nothing to lose and has no use of money, therefore the slave can defeat the Emperor (i.e. Slave card beats the Emperor card but loses to the Citizen card). Each hand is played with one side having four Citizen cards and an Emperor card (Emperor side). The other side having four Citizen cards and a Slave card (Slave side). Since it is much harder for the slave side to win (as Slave cards can only defeat Emperor cards) the players of the Slave side get five times more winnings. The game consists of 12 matches, 4 sets of three, where the players alternate between the Slave side and the Emperor side. In each set of 3 rounds, each player must place down one of the 5 cards in their hand until one emerges as the winner of that match. As Kaiji did not have enough money to match the bet, he was given the choice of losing an eye or an ear instead. Tissue Box Raffle ( ティッシュ箱くじ引き , Tisshubako Kujibiki) Unlike the other gambles, this gamble is made by Kaiji himself. After completing E-Card he prepares to leave the hotel but then steps on a tissue box and notices that its sides are open, which he finds fascinating. Upon further investigation of the box Kaiji decide to challenge the Chairman to a raffle gamble with the tissue box as the container for the lots made of small torn squares of paper towel. The winning piece had a circle drawn on it. Series 2 Underground Chinchiro ( 地下チンチロリン , Chika Chinchirorin) A variation on the dice game, Chinchirorin, this game was crafted by Ōtsuki, the foreman of Kaiji's work team in the underground labor camp. Notable rule variations include that the dealer is not fixed and each player can take a turn as dealer. However, each player may opt to pass their turn as dealer, but if they agree to play dealer, then they must be dealer two consecutive times. Pachinko "The Bog" ( パチンコ「沼」 , Pachinko Numa) An elaborate Pachinko game in a high-stakes casino featuring a payout of 100% of the earnings from the machine. Taking this into consideration the house has set up state-of-the-art countermeasures to ensure victory; such as tightening the nails to ensure only 1 in 100 balls go in, using flippers to knock away balls, and tilting the three bottom plates to prevent any balls dropping through the winning holes. Previously only two people have ever beaten the Bog; Hyōdō and Tonegawa. Each ball is worth 1000 times more than a normal Pachinko machine, ¥4000 (around $39), but the payout is 100 million Pachinko balls, each worth ¥4000 (around $39). When Kaiji first comes across the Bog the jackpot is ¥550 million but when he plays it, the jackpot has risen to over ¥700 million. Series 3 Mine Field Game “17 Steps” ( 地雷ゲーム「17歩」 , Jirai Gēmu “17-ho”) A variation of Japanese Mahjong where the game is played with two players who make their best hand from a random draw of 34 tiles. Players do not draw a tile as usual, but instead take turns discarding tiles. Since a win can only be declared with a hand in conjunction with the opponent's discard, ron is the only way a player may win. Their winning hand must be five han or greater to be valid. If neither player achieves ron after 17 turns, the game is considered a draw, the tiles are reshuffled, and the current wager is doubled. Series 4 Salvation game A life-or-death game designed by Kazuya to test if the friendship between three men indebted to Kazuya--Mario, from the Philippines, Chang, from China, and Mitsuyama, from Japan--is a true bond. The three men sit in a stair case formation, strapped to their seats with seat belts which can only be released one at a time with a release button, and are not allowed to look behind them. They each wear a helmet with a light on the top. At the start of each round of the game, the current pot is doubled, and of the three men, one "savior" and two "hostages" is decided via the light on their helmets. The savior must release their seat belt after 30 seconds, but before 60, and press a button across the room, otherwise the helmets of the two hostages will crush their heads. They must use the powers of deduction and observation to determine if they are the savior or the hostage--the player at the top of the staircase is in the best position for this, as he can see the two other players' lights. Halfway through the game, Kazuya reveals that, if the savior fails to rescue the two hostages, he gets double the entire pot of the current round. Kaiji is brought in as an observer to this game, and frequently cheers on the three men and challenges Kazuya's corrupted view of human nature. Series 5 One Poker A card game using two standard decks of playing cards, designed by Kazuya. Rather than deciding the victor via hands such as Straight, Flush, etc., each hand consists of just one card and is ranked according to its normal value, suits not factoring into the value at all. In addition, like in the earlier E-Card game, the absolute weakest card actually beats the absolute strongest card--a 2 is the absolute weakest, and an ace is the absolute strongest, so the 2 wins against an ace. If both players play a card of equal value, it is a tie. At the start of each round, players have two cards, and must play one of them, the most valuable card being the winner. Lights in front of each player indicate whether their cards are "up" (higher value) or "down" (lower value). Standard poker betting rules apply and the cards of both players are always revealed after betting even if one player folds (but they don't affect the outcome in that case). In addition, all of this is played at the top of a large tower, on a mechanical shuffling table Kazuya has designed, which he names "Mother Sophie". The table is placed on a set of tracks, and moves towards the loser's side's edge with each loss. Media [ edit ] Manga [ edit ] Written and illustrated by Nobuyuki Fukumoto, Kaiji is published in Kodansha's Weekly Young Magazine since February 19, 1996.[13] The manga has currently been divided into six parts so far: Tobaku Mokushiroku Kaiji ( 賭博黙示録カイジ , lit. "Gambling Apocalypse Kaiji" ) (1996 – 1999, 13 volumes) (1996 – 1999, 13 volumes) Tobaku Hakairoku Kaiji ( 賭博破戒録カイジ , lit. "Gambling Maverick Kaiji" ) (2000 – 2004, 13 volumes) (2000 – 2004, 13 volumes) Tobaku Datenroku Kaiji ( 賭博堕天録カイジ , lit. "Gambling Advent Chronicle Kaiji" ) (2004 – 2008, 13 volumes) (2004 – 2008, 13 volumes) Tobaku Datenroku Kaiji: Kazuya-hen ( 賭博堕天録カイジ和也編 , lit. "Gambling Advent Chronicle Kaiji: The Kazuya Arc" ) (2009 – 2012, 10 volumes) (2009 – 2012, 10 volumes) Tobaku Datenroku Kaiji: One Poker-hen ( 賭博堕天録カイジワン・ポーカー編 , lit. "Gambling Advent Chronicle Kaiji: One Poker Arc" ) (2013 – 2017, 16 volumes) (2013 – 2017, 16 volumes) Tobaku Datenroku Kaiji: 24 Oku Dasshutsu-hen ( 賭博堕天録カイジ 24億脱出編 , lit."Gambling Advent Chronicle Kaiji: 2.4 Billion Escape Arc") (2017 – present, 3 volumes)[14] In August 2018, it was announcend at Otakon that a new North American manga publishing company named Denpa has licensed the first part of the manga, Gambling Apocalypse Kaiji, and it will be released in six omnibus volumes with 500+ pages each one, and the first volume will be published on April 24, 2019.[15][16][17][18] A spin-off, titled Chūkan Kanriroku Tonegawa (中間管理録トネガワ, lit. "Middle Management Chronicle Tonegawa") began serialization in Monthly Young Magazine on July 20, 2015, and later moved to Kodansha's Comic Days manga app on March 5, 2018.[19] The manga is written by Tensei Hagiwara and illustrated by Tomohiro Hashimoto and Tomoki Miyoshi.[20] A second spin-off series, titled 1-nichi Gaishutsuroku Hanchō (1日外出録ハンチョウ, lit. "One-Day Outing Chronicle Leader") began serialization in combined 4th and 5th issue of Weekly Young Magazine in December 2016. The manga is written by Tensei Hagiwara and illustrated by Motomu Uehara and Kazuya Arai.[21][22] Anime [ edit ] In 2007, in issue #35 of Kodansha's Weekly Young Magazine, it was announced an anime adaptation of the first part of the manga, titled Gyakkyō Burai Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor (逆境無頼カイジ Ultimate Survivor, lit. Suffering Outcast Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor),[23] known simply as Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor.[24] The series is directed by Yūzō Satō and co-produced by Nippon Television, D.N. Dream Partners, VAP and Madhouse.[25] The series aired between October 2, 2007 and April 1, 2008, on Nippon TV,[26] and the 26 episodes were collected into nine DVDs, released by VAP between January 3 and September 26, 2008.[27][28] VAP re-released all the episodes in a DVD box set on October 7, 2009.[29] The opening theme is "Mirai wa Bokura no Te no Naka" (未来は僕らの手の中, The Future is in Our Hands) (based on The Blue Hearts' song of the same name) by Kaiji with Redbourn Cherries, and the ending theme is "Makeinutachi no Requiem" (負け犬達のレクイエム, Requiem of the Underdogs) by Hakūryū.[30] A second season titled Gyakkyō Burai Kaiji: Hakairoku-hen (逆境無頼カイジ破戒録篇, lit. Suffering Outcast Kaiji: Maverick Arc), also known as Kaiji: Against All Rules,[31] was announced in the issue #9 of Weekly Young Magazine in 2011.[32] Based on the second arc of the manga, Tobaku Hakairoku Kaiji, it premiered on April 5, 2011[33] and ran until September 27, 2011[34] on Nippon TV. The 26 episodes were collected into nine DVDs, released by VAP between June 22, 2011 and February 22, 2012.[35] VAP also re-released all the episodes in 2 DVD box sets on September 21, 2011 and February 22, 2012.[12][36] The anime opening theme for the second season is "Chase the Light!" by Fear, and Loathing in Las Vegas, and the ending theme is "C Kara Hajimaru ABC" (CからはじまるABC, The ABC's Starting from C) by Wasurerannē Yo.[37] Live-action films [ edit ] Kaiji has been adapted into two live-action films. The first, Kaiji (Kaiji: Jinsei Gyakuten Game), released on October 10, 2009 in Japan. Directed by Tōya Satō, starring Tatsuya Fujiwara, Yūki Amami and Teruyuki Kagawa.[38][39][40] Two songs, "It's All Too Much" and "Never Say Die" by Japanese pop singer-songwriter Yui were used as a theme song and insert song respectively.[5] A sequel, Kaiji 2 (Kaiji 2: Jinsei Dakkai Game), was released on November 5, 2011. Directed by Tōya Satō, starring Tatsuya Fujiwara, Yūsuke Iseya, Yuriko Yoshitaka, Katsuhisa Namase and Teruyuki Kagawa.[41][42] Both movies are a little different from the manga/anime, both having alternate choices of what Kaiji did, but all have the same settings and events in different orders and rule changes in each gamble.[43][44] A more loosely adapted Chinese live-action movie, Animal World, starring Li Yifeng, was released on June 29, 2018 in China and other countries. Netflix has acquired the global digital rights to the film.[45][46] Reception [ edit ] Kaiji is a popular series in Japan and the manga has sold over 20 million copies as of July 2012.[47][48] In 1998, it was the winner of the 22nd Kodansha Manga Award in the General category.[49] At the Japanese box office, the two live-action Japanese films grossed ¥3.86 billion ($48.38 million), including ¥2.25 billion for Kaiji and ¥1.61 billion for Kaiji 2.[50][51] Overseas, the films grossed $528,248 (including $460,073 for Kaiji, and $68,175 for Kaiji 2 in Singapore),[52][53] for a worldwide box office gross of $49 million for both films.
Poetry about bacon. Woodworking tutorials. A reading of tweets from young female celebrities. A simple YouTube search for “Nick Offerman” yields all of the above results, most of which showcase Offerman’s signature delivery style that his fans have grown to love: his calm yet stern demeanor, dry wit and monotone voice. Nick Offerman will perform at UCLA’s Royce Hall tomorrow night, in a comedy show entitled “American Ham.” The show will feature anecdotes, songs on guitar and some minor nudity. Offerman said that “American Ham” will give an overall morale boost to students who need the extra pep. “Members of our modern society who find themselves depressed and listless, or find their passions in life unfulfilled by modern technology and social networking, will receive 10 tips for prosperity from me at the show. It’s somewhat of a jackass’ guide to the good life,” Offerman said. Nancy & Beth, a duo comprised of actresses Megan Mullally and Stephanie Hunt, will open the show for Offerman. “If the UCLA student body likes foxy and talented young songstresses, then they will love Stephanie Hunt. Everything is great about their performance, except that the show goes steadily downhill once they leave the stage,” Offerman said. Hunt, Mullally and Offerman also star together in the upcoming film “Somebody Up There Likes Me.” The film first premiered this year at the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival, and was later picked up by Tribeca Films. Offerman plays one of three individuals caught up in an awkward love triangle. Offerman’s most widely known role is that of Ron Swanson, on TV’s “Parks and Recreation.” Swanson is director of the Pawnee Parks Department on the show, but more importantly, he is a hyper-masculine libertarian who enjoys steaks and bacon. The character has gained additional fame for his larger-than-life mustache. Alexis De Lucia, a member of UCLA’s Hooligan Theatre Company and Spring Sing’s Company, said that Offerman’s style of comedy is often interesting to look at from a gender standpoint. “I loved the segment on Conan called “˜Nick Offerman Reads Tweets from Young Female Celebrities,’” said De Lucia, a fourth-year Anthropology student. “It’s a joke based around the intensely masculine Offerman actually thinking, “˜It’s a blue nail polish kind of a day.’ The joke is based around a juxtaposition of gender identity which is kind of like how it’s funny when a man wears a dress.” One quickly finds that Offerman, once researched, shares a shockingly high number of similarities with the character of Swanson, such as the fact that they are both carpenters, play saxophone and thoroughly enjoy all types of meat. Writers of “Parks and Recreation” based many of the character’s qualities on Offerman’s actual skills and personality. Offerman recently took part in an “Ask Me Anything,” which is an online, user-based interview through a website called Reddit. Once the most-voted questions reach the top of the page, they are promptly answered by the interviewee in text form. Even President Barack Obama participated in an “Ask Me Anything,” only days earlier. One of the top-voted questions for Offerman, submitted by Reddit user TripSmick, asked for advice on the best way to cook bacon and eggs, to which Offerman replied, “In an iron skillet, over a fire of oak at your cabin.” As Offerman answered questions, one by one, users discovered that he enjoyed implementing his sense of humor whenever possible. Offerman’s intensely dry humor is beloved by his fans. Evan Flores, a third-year Economics student, said that students who aren’t familiar with Offerman’s delivery style will still enjoy the show. “His sense of humor is very dry, which I love. My favorite show is “˜The Office,’ so I’m used to that painfully dry, awkward humor, which Offerman almost always emphasizes.” Flores said. “He’s very good at making people laugh, and even if students haven’t seen him on “˜Parks and Recreation,’ they can still enjoy his clever wit and banter.”
Here’s a secret you should know if you are serious about improving your chess: The most important moment in your development as a chess player, is the moment when you understand that the best way to improve your chess is to improve your thinking methods! It makes sense though. After all, chess is a thinking game. Surely then the thinking methods you use will have a huge impact on the quality of your moves! And one of the best ways to improve your thinking methods, is to do the 10-Day Chess Challenge. Why you should try the 10-Day Chess Challenge Many of my readers who completed the 10-Day course, sent a personal message to tell me how the 10-Day challenge improved their game more than any other training method they have ever tried! Allow me to share just two of the many comments I received. Patrick wrote: This is the third time I am doing these exercises, and I am still learning from it! The point is that in these 10 days there are so many valuable and essential information to become a better player that repetition is needed to automate our “chess thinking system” effectively. Thanks again dear Chess Coach. Keith wrote: I can not believe how much I have learned! More amazing is how it was possible in such small increments. The thinking methods are showing up in my games OFTEN, you have completely transformed the way I play. I took private lessons for 6 months from a FM and those lesson were no where near as impact full as your 10 day challenge. I just wanted to say thank you, I took the game up as an adult and have struggled to find real improvement in my game, largely due to time constraints. My lack of progress was a bit frustrating, but my enjoyment of the game made that acceptable. Now I get to enjoy the satisfaction of getting better and enjoy the game! I have you to thank for that. There are many more such reviews. You can read it here. Why it’s important to improve your thinking method If you want to make progress beyond the initial stages of learning the game, working on your thinking method becomes more important, because: Your thinking methods determine how you apply everything you already know. You should rely on a solid thinking method, else your thoughts will pretty soon become a chaotic mess. Once you improve your thinking method, better results will follow as you will consistently make moves that serve a useful purpose. You will also make fewer mistakes because you will know how to calculate critical variations in the position. Now before this starts to sound “too good to be true”, let me also say that improving your thinking methods doesn’t come easy. It is hard work. In chess there are no shortcuts to long-term improvement. However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t work smart too! But if it’s so important to improve your thinking method, why isn’t such advice more common? I believe the reason for this is because it is hard to explain how thinking methods work. I’ve spend many years researching how to teach effective chess thinking methods and the 10-Day chess challenge is the best way to absorb this information. An overview of the 10-Day Chess Challenge I created the 10-day challenge to provide you with a unique opportunity to improve your chess thinking methods and the focus of the course will be on the two most important thinking methods in chess. They are: How to Calculate Tactics & How to Evaluate a Position In the initial stages of the challenge, I will explain the details of each of the 2 thinking methods. Thereafter I will guide you through a number of exercises and examples that will help you master the thinking methods. And once you understand these two thinking methods, it will forever change the way you play the game – for the better! Give it a try. You will be glad you did!
So, what is AI Vendetta? 'AI Vendetta is top-down puzzle platformer in which the player plays as Proto, a robot with the ability to transform into different modes. Each mode has its own unique playing style and abilities allowing for the player to play the game their own way. Completing the game requires the player to explore and try out the abilities of each mode in order to solve all the puzzles.' Where did the idea come from? 'The core idea and design for AI Vendetta has actually been written a long while ago (way back in 2010), but we decided to wait until a time when we could develop it to its full potential. In 2010 we created a prototype of the game as a school project. We really liked the project and in October 2014 we decided to give it a reboot. Since then the game has been fully re-created and matured a lot in many ways. Soon we hope to share this experience with the whole world!' How long have you been working on it? 'We have been working on AI Vendetta for almost 2 years now! In that time we managed to make the game feature complete and create all the levels that we want. We also perform regular internal quality assurance and sometimes feel the need to change some of the behaviour in the game. Game development is an iterative process of course.
Whole30 Shopping List: Foods Whole30 can be as simple as you want it to be. Despite the huge collection of amazing Whole30 recipes, you don’t need to make it complicated if you don’t want to. Your Whole30 grocery list can be as simple as: Meat Vegetables Fruit Still, we won't leave you hanging. Here's a more comprehensive Whole30 shopping list. Feeling lost and have no idea what Whole30 is? Check out our explanation of the Whole30 diet. Protein (aka Meat and Eggs) You’ll be eating massive amounts of protein during Whole30, so it’s time to stock up! Grass-Fed Beef Organic / Pastured Chicken and Pork Wild-Caught Fish Avoid: Commercially raised processed meats are not permitted (no bacon, sausage, or deli meats - unless you can find the rare Whole30 compliant bacon or compliant sausage). Do I Have to Buy Organic? In an ideal world, you’ll purchase grass-fed, organic, and pastured meat. If you can’t afford it, no worries – just buy the leanest cuts you can and trim the fat and skin before eating. Want to know more about why organic, pastured meat is worth the price tag? Read about it here. Where To Get It: Your best bet for finding organic, grass-fed meat will be natural grocery stores like Whole Foods, although today even regular grocery stores often have a grass-fed and organic section. You can also try visiting a local butcher for fresh, natural cuts of meat. If you can't find meat that meats a match near you, you can actually order grass-fed beef online. Vegetables Veggies are tasty and good for you! Good thing, because you’ll be eating a lot of them. Aim for local and seasonal veggies, which will be the most affordable (with more nutrients too). Remember, frozen veggies are a solid option. They often cost less, can keep for longer in the freezer, and sometimes are more nutritious than fresh produce counterparts. While frozen vegetables are flash-frozen right after being harvested, regular fresh grocery produce spends days (or longer) in cooler trucks being shipped to grocery stores, making them, oddly enough, not as fresh as the frozen stuff. SHOULD YOU GO ORGANIC? Whole30 notes that it’s more important to spend your budget on organic meats over organic produce. One easy way to decide if you should go organic on produce is to consider the peel. If you peel it (or don’t eat the skin), organic isn’t as much a priority (the skin helps keep out pesticides). Whole30 also has a seasonal guide on buying fresh produce, showing which produce is “clean” (no need for organic) and which is “dirty” (better to buy organic when possible). Note: All veggies are allowed on Whole30 except corn, peas, and lima beans! Some vegetable suggestions from my personal favorites for the Whole30 food list include: Broccoli Brussels Sprouts Butternut Squash (try it with this butternut squash lasagna recipe) Spaghetti Squash (great for imitation noodles) Carrots Cauliflower (perfect for cauliflower rice) Eggplant Kale Lettuce (for salads of course) Mushrooms Onion Potatoes (yup, they’re allowed) Spinach Summer Squash Tomatoes Yams Zucchini Fruit When it comes to fruit, organic and/or local fruits are best. Frozen fruit is a fine second option, so go ahead and browse the frozen aisles. If you have a sugar addiction like me, don’t be afraid to stock up on fruit as a sweet-tooth substitute. All fruit is good to go on Whole30. Some of my favorites are: Apples Berries Bananas Cherries (these are my favorite Whole30 desert) Figs (grab a pack of Trader Joe’s Turkish Figs – they taste just like Fig Newtons!) Grapes Grapefruit (great with morning eggs) Lemons and Limes (you’ll find them a lot in recipes) Pineapple Where To Get It: Again, natural grocers will be a great choice for finding healthy produce. Also check out your local farmers markets. Fats Good fats are another important component of your Whole30 shopping list. Healthy fats will keep you full and will serve as a base for your Whole30 meals. Some popular Whole30 healthy fats include: Coconut milk Avocados Coconut Oil Olive Oil Organic ghee Raw nuts With your nuts and trail-mixes, be sure to check your labels! You’d be shocked at how many naughty additives and sugars are slipped into nut packs! Additional Whole30 Food List Resources: In addition to this handy Whole30 grocery list, be sure to check out the official Whole30 shopping list you can print and use at the grocery store. If you're looking for some guidance on recipes, you may also want to consider checking out some of the amazing Whole30 meal planning guides that you can find scattered across the web. PRO TIP: Already dreading the trip to the supermarket to stock up on supplies? You might want to consider trying a grocery delivery service like Instacart! Instacart does your grocery shopping for you and deliver the goods to your doorstep. What's really cool is that they'll do shopping trips at a variety of grocery stores, including Whole Foods! If you're interested in trying it, this link should get you $10 off. Whole30 Shopping List: Bonus Items If you’re looking to cook some great Whole30-friendly dishes, you may want to make a point to pick up these ingredients, which are common in the most popular Whole30 recipes: Coconut Oil. We talked about this earlier, but it's worth spending a few more words on. Coconut oil is the most prominent ingredient in Whole30 recipes – you’ll find it listed absolutely everywhere. It’s a tasty, healthy cooking oil Whole30 folks can’t get enough of! You'll definitely need to include this on your Whole30 shopping list. Ghee. This is another ingredient you’ll see everywhere for Whole30 recipes. Ghee is clarified butter, which is basically butter without the milk solids. Almond/Coconut Flour. Great for breading your meats or for thickening sauces. Use coconut flour with this buffalo chicken fingers recipe which is one of my favorite Whole30 recipes! Apple Cider Vinegar. Apple cider vinegar is an ingredient for many sauces and salad dressing recipes. Mustard. Mustard is one of the few toppings you can buy safely at the store (still, make sure to check the labels). It’s good to have handy for burger nights. Coconut Aminos: Used in many tasty recipes for sauces. If you're lucky you'll find it at a health food store, or you can grab it online. Whole30 Weapons: Cooking Tools For Your Arsenal Julienne Peeler / Spiralizer Julienne peelers or spiralizers are must-haves for creating veggie noodles. Veggie noodles are a main component of many Whole30 recipes, and it’s no wonder. Have you ever tried zucchini noodles? They’re the best! Interested in grabbing your own? We recommend this Julienne Peeler from Precision Kitchenware or this Spiralizer from Paderno World Cuisine. Blender Use your blender to blend frozen strawberries, frozen bananas, or other fruit for the next best thing to ice cream. OK, it’s definitely not ice cream, but you’ll still love it. Be sure to use it with Paleo Leap’s recipe for Banana Ice Cream ( just don't add any chocolate bits). Our top pick goes to the functional and affordable Hamilton Beach blender. Slow Cooker / CrockPot Crockpot recipes are easy Whole30 wins – throw a bunch of stuff in it in the AM, and come home to a 90% ready meal! There are tons of tasty crock pot Whole30 recipes - like this popular Crockpot Balsamic Roast Beef recipe from Primally Inspired. We recommend grabbing this Programmable Crock Pot - you can pre-program when to turn off the heat, allowing for hassle-free slow cooking. Salad Spinner You’ll likely be munching on quite a few salad during your Whole30 experience, and a salad spinner makes the veggie cleaning go by that much quicker. Snatch the OXO Good Grips Salad Spinner - it makes cleaning veggies (and fruit) a ton easier, encouraging you to eat more greens. That wraps up our Whole30 shopping list - is there anything we're missing? Share your favorite Whole30 grocery items and must-have foods in the comments section below
Silicon Valley and the tech industries are the next targets. If you're a manager at a tech company, we'll suggest some ways to protect your people from HR and its emphasis on credentials and affirmative action (AA) over the best fit for a position. Corporate leaders need to be sure their HR departments are managed to prevent infiltration by staff more interested in correct politics than winning products. And we'll show why appeasement of diversity activists is a dangerous strategy that may make your organization a target for further extortionate demands. The next battlefield after high tech is discretion in hiring--which the activists believe must be limited to force employers to hire any candidate "qualified" for a job as soon as they apply. Only a few radicals are proposing this kind of blind hiring now, but continuing successes in getting firms to bow to their diversity demands will result in a list of new demands. We have already seen Seattle pass an ordinance requiring landlords to rent apartments to the first applicant who qualifies. And similar movements in hiring--supposedly to prevent discrimination by eliminating management choice of who to employ--are coming soon. Dr. Helen re views a new book about Human Resources and how SJWS use it to converge corporations:Of course, no one who has read SJWs Always Lie will be even remotely surprised by any of this. The good news is that all of this corporate convergence is creating a whole range of new opportunities as the converged corporations begin to pursue social justice objectives rather than serving their customers. It's not a question of whether SJWs can ruin a company they converge.Once they've entered, it's only a question of when. And as long as we're on the subject of SJWs, this probably as good a time as any to mention the latest from Dark Lord Designs Labels: books, corpocracy, SJW
CARACAS/NEW YORK (Reuters/IFR) - Goldman Sachs Group Inc’s statement that it never transacted directly with the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro when it bought $2.8 billion of bonds for pennies on the dollar was dismissed by the country’s opposition on Tuesday as an effort to “put lipstick on this pig.” Goldman, in a statement late Monday confirming the purchase, said its asset-management arm acquired the bonds "on the secondary market from a broker and did not interact with the Venezuelan government." (A look into Venezuela's economic crisis here) The New York-based investment bank came under fire from Venezuelan politicians and protesters in New York opposed to Maduro, who said the deal provided the cash-strapped government hundreds of millions of dollars in badly-needed hard currency. The deal, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, made Goldman complicit in alleged human rights abuses under the government, they said. “As hard as it may try, Goldman Sachs ... cannot put lipstick on this pig of a deal for Venezuelans,” the head of the opposition-led congress Julio Borges said. Goldman Sachs did not respond to an email requesting comment on Borges’ statement. In its original statement, Goldman had said: “We recognize that the situation is complex and evolving and that Venezuela is in crisis. We agree that life there has to get better, and we made the investment in part because we believe it will.” The opposition-led National Assembly later on Tuesday voted to ask the U.S. Congress to investigate the deal, which they called immoral, opaque, and hypocritical given the socialist government’s anti-Wall Street rhetoric. Related Coverage Venezuela legislature to ask U.S. Congress to probe Goldman Sachs deal Goldman shares fell nearly 2 percent on Tuesday and were the biggest drag on the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which fell 0.24 percent. “31 CENTS ON THE DOLLAR” With Venezuela’s inefficient state-led economic model struggling under lower oil prices, Maduro’s unpopular government has become ever more dependent on financial deals or asset sales to bring in coveted foreign exchange. Venezuela’s international reserves rose by $749 million on Thursday and Friday, reaching around $10.86 billion, according to the central bank. In New York, about two dozen protesters chanting “Shame on you Goldman Sachs” picketed outside of Goldman’s headquarters in lower Manhattan on Tuesday afternoon. “By giving $900 million to a dictatorship, they are funding a systematic human rights violator, they are funding immorality and for Maduro to stay in power while he keeps killing people,” said Eduardo Lugo, 23, a Venezuelan attending college in New York and a leader of the protest. Another protest was planned for Miami, home to a large community of Venezuelans who have fled the country’s economy crisis, on Thursday. Protesters demonstrate outside of Goldman Sachs headquarters after the company purchased Venezuelan bonds in New York. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson In Venezuela, Maduro’s critics have for two months staged street protests, which have left nearly 60 people dead, to demand he hold early elections. Maduro says the protests are a violent effort to overthrow his government, and insists the country is the victim of an “economic war” supported by Washington. Meanwhile, emerging market bond market participants familiar with Venezuelan debt said there was no effective secondary market for the bonds in question, which were first issued by the state-owned oil company PDVSA [PDVSA.UL.] in 2014 and held entirely by the country’s central bank until recently. Goldman paid 31 cents on the dollar for the bonds, which mature in October 2022, Borges’ letter said. At that price, the bonds would yield more than 40 percent compared with their stated coupon of 6 percent. Goldman acquired the bonds from Dinosaur Financial Group, two sources familiar with deal told Reuters. A person answering the phone at Dinosaur’s New York office said the firm had no comment on the matter. Opposition lawmakers said they wanted to investigate intermediaries in the deal. “We’re going to put a magnifying glass on this financial middleman. This small company called Dinosaur, who is behind it, what power does it have?” said lawmaker Carlos Valero before the vote. Slideshow (8 Images) One U.S. broker deeply involved in trading Venezuelan securities told Thomson Reuters IFR that fair value for the bonds should be around 44 cents to 46 cents on the dollar, based on where other bonds issued by PDVSA and the Venezuelan government were trading on Tuesday. The broker said he did not expect the bonds to trade unless Goldman chose to sell them. At $2.8 billion of face value, the firm now owns the vast majority of that series of bonds originally issued by PDVSA, which totaled around $3 billion. Most Venezuelan bond prices were up in Tuesday trading.
One of the most discerning design shops in the country is about to start selling crowdsourced goods. On May 13, 24 Kickstarter-funded items from 20 different international designers will be available for purchase at the Museum of Modern Art’s Design Store. That includes an Instagram projector machine , an adorable talking raccoon , a graphic guide to learning Chinese , and more. It’s a significant step for a store that’s often seen as a barometer of contemporary design trends. Perhaps best known for selling established design objects–whether a Jeff Koons teacup set or a Dieter Rams calculator for Braun–the Design Store also champions the work of up-and-comers. “So many of the most impressive, new, and innovative products we have been finding lately kept leading us back to Kickstarter,” Emmanuel Platt, the director of merchandising, says. That a talking raccoon, which raised more than $80,000 on Kickstarter to help parents playfully communicate with their children, will soon be available at the Design Store speaks volumes about the design industry today: good ideas can float to the top of the heap, no matter how they get to market. Two of the products here are Design Store exclusives (The Annual Clock and Studio Cheha Lamp); everything was funded through Kickstarter. All the products can be bought at MoMA from May 13 to June 16.
If you live in a big city, you’ve probably experienced the frustration of rushing to the subway only to realize—eventually—that it’s delayed and you would have been better off walking or taking the bus. What if there were digital screens mounted on street corners that warned you the subway was running late and directed you to other forms of transportation? And what if those screens also notified you of community events, listed daily pollution levels, and solicited your opinion on local government initiatives? Such a scenario may soon be reality in London and New York. Both cities are replacing outdated phone booths with Wi-Fi kiosks that have embedded computing tablets, USB charging ports, keypads for making phone calls, and large screens that display relevant information to passersby. New York, which started installing its “LinkNYC” kiosks in 2016, currently has more than 900 activated across all five boroughs and plans to increase that number to 7,500. The U.K. just started erecting its “InLinkUK” kiosks in London and intends to deploy up to 1,000 across the country. Today, people use the Links primarily to charge their smartphones, take advantage of the fast Wi-Fi, make Internet (VoIP) calls, and search for information about the weather and local restaurants. All these services are free to use, in part because the 10-foot-tall kiosks display ads that generate funds the cities share with the companies that designed and run the technology. These companies, which include Qualcomm and the telecom giant BT, pay for the Links’ installation and maintenance costs. They have estimated that the city of New York will earn more than half a billion dollars in revenue over 12 years from the LinkNYC partnership. A LinkNYC Wi-Fi kiosk on the street. Intersection runs more than 900 of these across New York City. Link is poised to be far more than an advertising and Wi-Fi network, however. Intersection, the company that manages the Link projects in London and New York, is considering upgrading them to support everything from augmented reality to autonomous vehicles. “Phase One was about making sure we’re offering robust services to people,” says Intersection’s chief innovation officer, Colin O’Donnell. “Now we’re figuring out how we can leverage all the different data sets we have access to and make [this technology] as dynamic and responsive as it can be.” Intersection’s ambitions bear attention because it is one of the few private firms that large cities have partnered with on high-profile public-information projects—and its digital technology is likely to spread to other major U.S. cities, such as Chicago, San Francisco, and Seattle, where it holds multiyear municipal and transit advertising contracts. (That’s true despite public concern last year that some people were using the LinkNYC kiosks to watch inappropriate videos and blast music. Intersection says it disabled the Internet browser on the kiosks’ tablets in September 2016 and has received very few complaints since.) Sign up for The Download Your daily dose of what's up in emerging technology Intersection’s vision for the future may also suggest ways that Google parent Alphabet hopes to shape cities through its “urban innovation” subsidiary, Sidewalk Labs. Sidewalk Labs is an investor in Intersection, its CEO is the chairman of Intersection’s board of directors, and the companies share the same Manhattan office. O’Donnell declined to comment on his company’s association with Alphabet beyond saying that he collaborates frequently with Sidewalk Labs on smart-city ideas, with Intersection tackling the more immediate work and Sidewalk Labs focusing on projects that are five or more years out. But it’s easy to see how the companies could sync up on future initiatives. Since Intersection’s LinkNYC and InLinkUK contracts both run for at least 10 years, O’Donnell has been brainstorming new features that would make the kiosks more useful. For example, the Links could be outfitted with environmental sensors. Intersection worked with Argonne National Laboratory to develop sensors that detect about 30 different pollutants and could negotiate with its city partners to add them to the kiosks. Intersection also manages 185 information kiosks inside the New York City subway. Each Link also has two built-in cameras, which face in opposite directions, potentially yielding views up and down the street. Right now, these cameras are only used to monitor for vandalism and damage, but if the city granted permission, Intersection could use them to capture a nearly 360° view of each Link’s surroundings. (Intersection says it does not store video for longer than seven days, unless the footage is necessary to investigate an incident. The company also says it does not use facial recognition technology or track people’s movement through the city.) Eventually, information from Intersection’s future sensors could be combined to create real-time data maps that might be useful for emerging technologies such as self-driving cars. Joseph Chow, an assistant professor of civil and urban engineering at New York University, likes the idea of Intersection using its kiosks as city sensors. He thinks future Links could help facilitate a Department of Transportation project that is researching ways to use roadside infrastructure to communicate information about accidents to cars and other vehicles. “These technologies provide the architecture that smart cities need to operate,” says Chow. “If you use them to collect information about how people are traveling and to detect disruptions, you can react to situations faster and make better decisions.” Next, Intersection is looking to deploy its digital screens in airports, apartment buildings, and office complexes. O’Donnell says the company has spent “tens of thousands of hours” in airports studying ways that connected displays could guide people from arrival through the security process and to their gates. Intersection has also worked with real estate developers, including New York–based Related Companies, to streamline the way people enter and navigate buildings, move through security, and learn about tenant news and events. Its ultimate goal, says O’Donnell, is to build a “dynamic digital infrastructure across the entire city experience.”
Atheists, be ashamed. I find it ironic that self-described “atheist” men are far more hateful and awful towards me online than conservative Christians are. — Feminist Frequency (@femfreq) October 17, 2014 I find it ironic that self-described “atheist” men are far more hateful and awful towards me online than conservative Christians are. No, I’m not annoyed with Sarkeesian: I’m annoyed that the atheist movement has gotten this bad. Here’s a lovely representative response: @noelplum @pzmyers I'm annoyed that anyone is still asserting the atheist labels implies anything other than a lack of belief in gods. — Miles Grimes (@TheDecentTech) October 17, 2014 I’m annoyed that anyone is still asserting the atheist labels implies anything other than a lack of belief in gods. Right. ‘The dictionary doesn’t say atheists have to be decent human beings, therefore I’m going to be more annoyed that you have this expectation than at the fact that some atheists are hateful numpties.’ Whatever happened to the rational idea that we should look at our failings honestly and strive to correct them? You know, when Francis Bacon set out to tell the world about how science should be done, he didn’t just pull a sentence out of a dictionary and be done with it. “Inductive reasoning is best, rah rah rah!” No — he wrote at length about the pitfalls, and spelled out the preconceptions to which we are prone. The idols and false notions which have already preoccupied the human understanding, and are deeply rooted in it, not only to beset man’s minds, that they become difficult of access, but, even when access is obtained, will again meet and trouble us in the instauration of the sciences, unless mankind, when forewarned, guard themselves with all possible care against them. The idols of the tribe are inherent in human nature, and the very tribe or race of man. For man’s sense is falsely asserted to be the standard of things. On the contrary, all the perceptions, both of the senses and the mind, bear reference to man, and not to the universe, and the human mind resembles those uneven mirrors, which impart their own properties to different objects, from which rays are emitted, and distort and disfigure them. But I guess atheists have moved so far beyond mere scientists that self-awareness and recognition of their own errors of perception no longer matter — “There is no god!” is the great All of their philosophy, and no other consideration need be made. Well, at least we’re better than the theists in one thing: our dogma is shorter and easier to memorize.
With apologies to "The Tipping Point" author Malcolm Gladwell, there is no tipping point – at least, not when it comes to global warming and sea ice. Steven Amstrup, a senior scientist at Polar Bears International, has led a team of researchers that discovered that, contrary to expectations, even if all the sea ice in the Arctic disappeared, once the planet cooled back down, it would return. "That was one of the great discoveries that allowed us to continue to instill hope in people that we could do something," Dr. Amstrup says. "Human nature is such that, if you think there's nothing you can do, you don't do anything. So this was a really important find." That scientific discovery, published in 2010 in the journal Nature, is just one of the reasons that Amstrup was honored with this year's Indianapolis Prize, which is awarded every two years to a leader in the field of animal conservation. The winner receives $100,000 and the Lilly Medal. The jury places great importance on the quality of the candidate's scientific research and on whether a species has a stronger potential to survive as a result of the work, explains Michael Crowther, chief executive officer of the Indianapolis Zoo, which administers the prize. "In Steve's case, they were able to answer both requirements with great affirmation," he says. "On the back of the Lilly Medal … there is a quote from John Muir: 'When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.' The polar bear is one of the ultimate examples of a thing by itself" – but Amstrup has shown its connection to everything else. Amstrup, a native of North Dakota, spent 30 years studying polar bears and their habitats as project leader for Polar Bear Research at the US Geological Survey's Alaska Science Center in Anchorage. In 2007, he led a different team of re-searchers that was able to get the bears listed as threatened on the US government's Endangered Species List – the only animal to date to be included because of causes related to global warming. Earlier in his career, Amstrup solved the mystery of where female polar bears give birth. More than half of them dig their dens on ice floes to have their cubs, making the species vulnerable to climate change. "His work on polar bear conservation is tremendously important, not only for polar bears but for the entire Arctic ecosystem, and for the multitude of species around the world that are now at risk from global warming," said Eric DeWeaver, program director of the Climate and Large-Scale Dynamics Program at the National Science Foundation, in a statement. Along the way, Amstrup has camped on the ice (which, he says, gave him a taste – "just a smidgen" – of the conditions 19th-century explorers endured) and biked to work through Alaskan winters ("It's a little bit vigorous," he says.). "I feel very lucky to have a career working on a species that really gets people's attention and has really captured the human imagination," Amstrup says. He's been surprised by polar bears that wandered up to him while he was busy putting a radio collar or ear tag on another bear. Probably his most harrowing encounter, however, came in the early 2000s, when his team was doing research on bear dens and accidentally picked one that was occupied. "We didn't find that out until my foot went through the roof of the lair, and I was just kind of dangling there up to my crotch in the snow, and I looked down and there was the female's head right next to my leg," Amstrup says. "I don't know why she didn't bite me. She looked at me with this really interesting gaze." Amstrup quickly scrambled away. The bear emerged from her den and started to charge him and his assistant. "By then, the helicopter pilot got the helicopter started, and the engine noise scared her away," he says. "To this day, I certainly count my lucky stars." In general, Amstrup finds the bears to be more curious and less bad-tempered than their grizzly cousins. A colleague, he says, calls polar bears "grizzlies on Valium." "Each one has their own personality. They're not all the same – just like dogs and cats and humans," says Amstrup, who points out that some female polar bears will roam 230,000 square miles – a territory nearly the size of Texas – while others prefer to stay close to home, traveling less than 400 square miles. "We have captured a number of young polar bears over the years, and some of them are just like a family pet and some are just chain saws with fur," he says. Over the decades, as sea ice has retreated, Amstrup has observed behavioral changes, most notably polar bears showing up regularly where they had rarely been seen before. "For example, on the north coast of Alaska, where I did most of my research, it used to be that seeing a polar bear on land was not very common. Now, there are polar bears all up and down the coast throughout the ice-free period," he says. "And it used to be that we didn't have an ice-free period." That is, he says, perhaps the biggest change. "When I first went to Alaska, in the early 1980s, you could stand on the beach at the end of summer and see the ice. Now, it's 200 or 300 miles off shore, or more," Amstrup says. "It's a very different world than when I first went." The speed at which changes are occurring in the Arctic makes it important for people to respond quickly, he says. "The world is changing so fast. We need to act fast to change its direction. Time really is of the essence here. Even if you don't care about polar bears, we're talking about changes that affect all life on Earth," he says. "Polar bears just happen to be feeling it first because their habitat happens to literally melt when the temperature rises." Every month or so, he says, someone writes to suggest putting giant floating pieces of styro-foam in the Arctic for the polar bears. While both are white and float, styrofoam isn't capable of sustaining the ecosystem of algae and bacteria that grows on the underside of the ice. It feeds the shrimp that feed the fish that feed the seals, which Amstrup calls "giant fat pills," a rich food source that has helped polar bears become the largest member of the bear family, with males weighing up to 1,500 pounds and measuring more than eight feet in length. Then there are logistical issues: "Two weeks ago, we had lost as much sea ice as 35 times the size of Indiana. How much styrofoam can we make?" Amstrup asks. However, he is hopeful that the world will react in time to save the polar bears. "The problems that are facing polar bears are human-caused problems, and there are human-caused solutions," says Amstrup, who says he gave up his focus on research to share his 30 years' worth of study with the public. "We know the answer to what it takes to save them." To change course will require people to change the way they live to reduce usage of carbon-based fuels, he says, citing things such as having well-insulated homes, energy-efficient furnaces and vehicles, and supporting businesses that engage in sustainable practices. The biggest step, he says, is to find policymakers at all levels of government willing to entertain changes to people's throwaway lifestyle. "The critical thing is that polar bear conservation can't occur in the Arctic," he says. Amstrup and his wife are building an energy-efficient home in northeast Washington, where they will grow their own fruits and vegetables. He also plans to hunt white-tailed deer and turkeys for food. Some of his prize money will go toward solar panels for their home and to replace their aging pickup trucks with fuel-efficient vehicles. "Global warming is really the ultimate nonsustainable activity," Amstrup says. "Even if you don't care about polar bears, if you care about your own future, I think it's important to do what you can [to halt climate change]." Helping wildlife UniversalGiving (www.universalgiving.org) helps people give to and volunteer for top-performing charitable organizations worldwide. Projects are vetted by UniversalGiving; 100 percent of each donation goes directly to the listed cause. Below are three opportunities to help wildlife, selected by UniversalGiving: • The sea turtle program at Osa Conservation works to guarantee the survival of turtles nesting on the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica. Project: Support the sea turtle conservation program. • The GVN Foundation offers opportunities to work with wild animals in captivity through a partner organization in Thailand. Project: Volunteer in Thailand. Get the Monitor Stories you care about delivered to your inbox. By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Policy • Defense of Animals-Africa provides sanctuary for chimpanzees orphaned by the illegal bushmeat trade in Cameroon. Project: Sponsor an orphaned chimpanzee. • Sign up to receive a weekly selection of practical and inspiring Change Agent articles by clicking here.
Update, 14/10/16 : On 14 October 2016, Ched Evans was found not guilty of rape following a retrial. This article was published before this new verdict. Everyone deserves a second chance. This maxim is particularly applicable to our justice system – and even more so to that of the United States, where, as a result of a series of racist laws and judgments, there are now more black men incarcerated by the penal system than had their liberty restricted by slavery. But second chances are not unconditional. We should ask those convicted of a crime to serve their sentence and demonstrate contrition before they are allowed to continue their lives. Neither of these conditions has been fulfilled in the case of the former Sheffield United and Wales footballer Chedwyn Michael “Ched” Evans, who has been seeking a new club since his release from Wymott prison in Lancashire after a conviction for rape. The current club linked to Evans is Oldham Athletic of League One; it faces an online petition with more than 56,000 signatures and criticism from influential supporters and public figures. Despite this, it is reportedly poised to sign him, meaning that rape survivors could soon find themselves standing in a crowd cheering on a convicted rapist. Initially, Evans’s old club, Sheffield United, had seemed likely to take him back on his release but it backed down in the face of huge public opposition and the resignation of several of its patrons. In a gruesome twist, when the Olympic athlete Jessica Ennis-Hill asked for her name to be removed from a stand at the Sheffield United stadium if Evans was re-signed, she was abused and threatened - with rape. In support of Evans, it has been argued that we are witnessing “mob justice” against a man “who has served his time”. This is not quite correct. Evans was given a five-year prison sentence, of which he served half before being released on licence (this is why he cannot sign for any club which would require him to play abroad). Second, he is not contrite – indeed, he maintains his innocence. This is his prerogative - but what is not acceptable is the smear campaign that he and his girlfriend’s family have mounted against his victim. If you want to see the encouragement of mob justice, look no further. A Google search of his name reveals a website dedicated to protesting his innocence, funded by his supporters. It offers “evidence” such as the CCTV footage of the 19-year-old victim arriving at the hotel near Rhyl, where the offence occurred in May 2011. This shows, according to the website, that the woman was not “too drunk to consent” to have sex with Evans and his co- defendant, a fellow footballer named Clayton McDonald, who was acquitted. The CCTV footage is mentioned by supporters of Evans as if it debunks the whole case against him, even though the jury knew of it and watched it. The difference is that the jurors had the benefit of hearing the rest of the evidence, which the legions of armchair detectives encouraged by the website have not. The Attorney General is now investigating the website. It is telling that so many people feel energised over the plight of Ched Evans while his victim’s fate is largely ignored. While Evans was in prison, the young woman was repeatedly named on social media. In November 2012, nine people were convicted of breaching the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1992, which prohibits identifying rape victims, and fined them £624 each. The woman has now had to move house five times in order to escape harassment and her father has said that because of the website footage, she is, in effect, “on trial every day”. Amid all the talk of giving Ched Evans a second chance, we should ensure that his victim is given one.
MADISON, WI (WTAQ) - Another federal court ruling Wednesday upheld Wisconsin's Act 10 -- which stripped virtually all collective bargaining powers from most state-and-local public employee unions. Federal Judge William Conley of Madison struck down arguments made in one of several lawsuits filed against Act 10 -- this one from Madison and Dane County employees. They said the law violates their constitutional rights to assemble freely -- and it violates the equal protection clause because it slaps wage limits on union workers but not on non-union employees. Conley says the 2011 package from Governor Scott Walker still allows union workers to assemble and speak -- but it does not require their employers to listen. Also, Conley said the equal protection clause does not apply. The judge says it's legal for the government to treat union workers differently from those not in unions. In a statement, Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen said, “This case proves, once again, that Act 10 is constitutional in all respects and that the challenges to the law are baseless. I appreciate decisions like this that follow the law, and I look forward to bringing the remaining state court challenges before the Wisconsin Supreme Court, where we expect Act 10 to be upheld once again.” A federal appeals court also upheld Act 10 in a different suit, but there's still a conflicting court decision on the books. The state is still appealing a ruling last fall from Dane County Circuit Judge Juan Colas, which said the law did not apply to local government and public school employees. There's a question, though, as to whether it only affects the plaintiffs in that suit -- Madison teachers and one of Milwaukee's city employee unions. The State Supreme Court agreed to take that case in June.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson had Hollywood director Rob Reiner spinning Thursday night when he came on his show to talk about Hollywood’s latest video declaring that America is at “war” with Russia. “When we say we’re at war, we are talking about a cyber war,” the 70-year-old film producer and member of the Committee to Investigate Russia group explained on “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” “A couple of things. First you’ve aligned yourself with people like Max Boot and David Frum who have long advocated for real wars, hot wars,” The Daily Caller co-founder told Reiner. “Both of them were big advocates of the war in Iraq predicated on the idea that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.” “Well we have people on all sides,” Reiner replied, adding that his group is made up of hawks and doves and insisted this has nothing to do with President Trump’s election. Reiner explained that America has been “invaded in a certain way” by Russia and that’s when Carlson called out Hollywood’s hypocrisy over China. “A lot of this is disingenuous,” the Fox News host said. “Anyone who looks at cyber warfare. Any honest person will tell you. The Chinese military is the primary culprit in the United States, hacked into the White House not that long ago, into the computer system there, into almost every federal agency. Nobody said anything. You guys in Hollywood sell your movies in China. You bow to the imperatives of their propaganda and censorship offices. You change your movies to suit them. And yet no one says we are at war with China and I wonder why.” “So you’re sucking up to this regime that has actually broken in and stolen industrial and military secrets that hurt this country, you say nothing, until Hillary Clinton loses the election,” he added. Reiner insisted he’s not giving China a pass. “If China is a bigger violator in the United States than Russia and I think everyone agrees that it is,” Tucker responded. “Then why are they not in your movie?” Reiner tried to come back with the excuse that China hasn’t “insinuated themselves directly into our democratic process, into our elections.” Carlson called him out on it again. “Are you being serious,” Tucker asked. “Of course they have. They have stolen information directly from the U.S. government. From our political figures, from the Pentagon, from CIA, from the White House. If they are not in our political system, then I don’t understand what the definition is.” Reiner then explained the difference between China and Russia was that they didn’t “utilize that information to try to effect an election.” The Fox News Host responded that maybe Hollywood wasn’t selling as many movies in Russia.
Cornell professor of economics Robert Frank says he’s alive today because of “pure dumb luck.” In 2007, he collapsed on a tennis court, struck down by what was later diagnosed as a case of sudden cardiac death, something only 2 percent of victims survive. Frank survived because, even though the nearest hospital was 5 miles away, an ambulance just happened to be responding to another call a few hundred yards away at the time. Since the other call wasn’t as serious, the ambulance was able to change course and save Frank. Paddles were put on him in record time. He was rushed to the local hospital, then flown by helicopter to a larger one where he was put on ice overnight. Most survivors of similar episodes are left with significant cognitive and physical impairments. Frank was back on the tennis court just two weeks later. Ellen McCollister Frank says his research ideas often come from his own experience, and his work on luck is no exception. His latest book, Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy, argues that the role of luck in life, and specifically in economic success, is not as widely appreciated as it should be. The book claims that if the prosperous were more cognizant of luck’s role in their success they would be more supportive of government efforts to spread opportunity, and of the higher taxes they’d have to pay as a result. Frank’s other writings include the books The Winner-Take-All Society (with Philip J. Cook), The Darwin Economy, and Principles of Economics (with Ben S. Bernanke.) as well as an economics column that has run in The New York Times for over a decade. I spoke to him on the phone recently while he waited for his car to be repaired at a Syracuse dealership. He was warm and engaging and interested in my own experiences with luck and success, answering my questions as if he had all the time in the world. What evidence is there that people don’t appreciate the role of luck in their lives as much as they should? If people want to see a vivid example of that, I would steer them to the website that chronicled the reactions of voters to two political campaign speeches in 2012, one by Elizabeth Warren, the other by Barack Obama. The content of the speeches was essentially the same and if you read both transcripts carefully you’d say, “Wow. There’s nothing controversial here.” What each one said in effect was that, in addition to working hard and being good at what you do, if you’re a business owner, also you ship your goods to market on roads that the community paid for, you hired workers that we helped educate, we hired policemen, firemen to keep you safe. So your success such as it is, is a product not just of your own talents and efforts, but it’s a community project. The reaction was overwhelmingly hostile to the speeches. The people who run businesses seemed to think that Obama and Elizabeth Warren were saying that they didn’t deserve to have succeeded, that they were impostors by occupying these lofty positions that they had won. That wasn’t the message at all, but it was hard for people to hear the totally reasonable and uncontroversial messages of those speeches. The whole process of constructing life narratives is biased in ways that almost guarantee that people won’t recognize the role of chance events adequately. So, you’ve been successful, you’ve been at it 30 years. It’s true that you’ve worked hard all that time, you got up early, you put in a lot of effort, those memories are all very plentiful and available in your memory bank. You’ve solved lots of difficult problems. You remember examples of those, too. You know the formidable opponents that you’ve vanquished along the way. How can you forget them? So, if somebody says, “Why did you succeed?” those things are going to get top billing in your story. Maybe there was a teacher who helped steer you through trouble in the 11th grade. You don’t remember that. Maybe you got a promotion early on when one of your colleagues who was slightly better qualified had to turn it down because he had to stay and take care of an ailing parent. You don’t remember that either. Then there’s all this work on the asymmetry of memory. You’re running into the wind, you’re keenly aware of it every second. You turn the corner and the wind is at your back. That’s good. You like that. But then two minutes into the return course you’ve forgotten completely about the fact that you’ve got something helping you along. Because a headwind is something that you have to work actively to overcome, you almost can’t fail to notice it. But a tailwind helps you along; it’s out of your field of vision mostly. You don’t think about it because you don’t have to think about it. You argue that income inequality has increased in part due to increased competition and in part due to the role of luck. How so? The background of that whole discussion is clear evidence that markets are vastly more competitive than they ever have been in the past. What would make a market less than fully competitive? Well, it might be that there’s a supplier that has a prominent local presence. Buyers don’t know about alternative possible sources of supply. And so, they’re, in a way, captive. They’ve got to deal with that seller. Maybe shipping costs are really formidable. Shipping costs, which are really a metaphor for many, many things, have just fallen across the board. So you think about the value that a product ... There’s some interesting data for computers. It used to be that a much higher fraction of the value of a computer was in the materials used to build it. Every year that fraction gets smaller and smaller and a larger and larger fraction of the value of the computer is the ideas embodied in them. Ideas can ship anywhere at zero cost. You don’t need to ship an idea in a shipping crate. You just click your mouse and it goes anywhere. So the fact that you can ship vastly greater value with a given dollar expenditure of freight expense means that the scope of markets has expanded enormously. And that means that many, many more suppliers can compete for any given buyer’s attention and patronage. Then you have the whole information revolution where if we want something we can search for it online. We’ve got an explosion of options to choose from, from the pop-up and response to the simplest search query. So the idea that you might have a captive consumer that you could exploit in some way as a seller is becoming increasingly a fiction. If you want to find an explanation for inequality or other forms of market failure or other kinds of outcomes that succeed in the market place that you don’t like, the traditional explanation that it’s monopoly or monopsony exploitation just gets weaker by the hour. And there are plausible alternative explanations for that. And that’s where luck comes in, in addition to talent and effort? Talent and effort obviously matter, but if you have technology such that you only need one producer from one person in a job slot, say you need somebody to record Bach’s unaccompanied cello suites. How many people do you need to do that? Well, you need a cellist, same as you did hundreds of years ago. It used to be that there was a market for many thousands of cellists because the way that you would listen to those pieces was necessarily to go to a concert hall, and sit there and listen to a live performance. Now most of us who listen to pieces like that, if we do, are listening to a recording of them. And then, what do we want? Of course, once a recording is made it doesn’t cost anything extra to stamp out copies of it. So if you have a choice between listening to the best cellist perform the piece or the second best, why would you want to listen to the second best? You might be willing to pay a few cents more only to hear the best, because they’re all good. But, even if you’d be willing to pay a few cents more, the fact that there are millions of copies of these things sold means that the fact that the company that bids successfully for Yo-Yo Ma or whoever is regarded as the best cellist is going to get that market all to himself. And so the price that you have to pay to get the best recording artist is set accordingly. One earns eight or nine figures a year while the cellist who is almost as good is teaching music lessons to third graders in New Jersey somewhere. It’s a dogfight now to see who gets to be regarded as that best performer. The person who is eventually successful got there by defeating thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of rivals in competitions that started at an early age. And so, if you think about luck mattering even just a little bit in competitions like that—it’s 99 percent talent and effort but luck still matters 1 percent—then, there’s going to be, with that many contestants, a whole bunch of them bumping up against the ceiling on the talent and effort scales. Find the one who’s highest ranked on those scales. Someone will be better than all the others, but there will be a whole lot of people breathing down his neck. There’s one person who’s best, but he’s not best by much because with so many people crowding up against the ceiling on those scales, there’s bound to be a non-negligible number of them who are just within a tiny amount of talent and effort levels of the top guy. The top guy, if you select only on talent and effort, isn’t going to be any luckier than anybody else. He’ll be average luck. Ok, then find those who are just a hair’s breadth less talented and effortful than he is. And among the set of people in that set, find the luckiest one, and you don’t need a very big set for the luck of the luckiest one to be substantially greater than average, and it’s that person who is going to win the contest most of the time. So, even if luck counts for only 1 percent, you’re going to see the winners most of the time won’t be the most talented people. Most of the time they’ll be among the luckiest of all the contestants. Let luck count for more than 1 percent, and it’s very easy to construct narratives where it matters enormously more. Can you give a specific example of how that can happen in practice? The Bryan Cranston example, I think, is a nice, vivid example. Vince Gilligan wanted to cast him as Walter White right from the beginning. The studio bosses didn’t want that. It was going to be an expensive production. They were experimenting to see if AMC could carve out a new role for itself in the cable firmament. And so they were going to put a lot of money behind this series and they wanted an A-list dramatic actor. I think at the time Cranston was best known for playing the dad in Malcolm in the Middle, which is a sitcom I never even saw. Apparently he was pretty good in that role, but it wasn’t a leading dramatic role to be sure. They wanted a more visible, dramatic actor. At the studio bosses insistence Gilligan offered the part of Walter White to John Cusack. Cusack turned it down. They offered it to Matthew Broderick. Broderick also turned it down. I don’t remember which one had the first crack at it. Both of them turned it down. Gilligan went back to the bosses and again pleaded his case. Finally they reluctantly allowed him to cast Cranston as Walter White. And, you know, White was the breakout part of that series. He got four Emmys in the show’s five seasons. He is today one of the very most sought after actors in his age group. But I still wouldn’t have heard of him except that Cusack and Broderick turned the role down first. But world-class performers like Cranston and Yo-Yo Ma seem like they could be special cases. What about more ordinary jobs? And does the fact that more and more jobs in our economy are service rather than manufacturing jobs figure into the story? Yes. It’s not a fundamentally different story there. Look at real estate. How much more is a good real estate salesman worth than a bad one? In the old days the ability of an agent to serve clients was much more limited than it is now. Now we have cell phones and websites and all sorts of ways of communicating with potential clients that are vastly quicker and more efficient than the old methods that we used to rely on. Now the person who’s a really good sales person can serve many, many more clients than a good sales person could back in the 1950s. And so the distribution of sales commissions has gotten more skewed accordingly. If you’re selling children’s shoes and you’re a really gifted sales person, your talent isn’t being very well utilized. If you’re selling securities to sovereign wealth funds, you’re going to make a much bigger difference to the bottom line of that operation. I think there are much better ways of identifying people that are good at doing basic service tasks like these and much more efficient mechanisms for channeling those people who do prove to be good at it into the kinds of tasks where good performance is really worth something economically. You don’t have brilliant sales people selling kid’s shoes any longer. As far as I know you don’t have anybody selling kid’s shoes. You try them on yourself or you buy them from Amazon. Photofest Digital Library You propose that we should replace the income tax with a very progressive consumption tax, that would tax spending rather than income and that would collect more revenue overall, in particular from the wealthy. What does that have to do with luck? I wrote the book and a lot of people find the transition between the luck chapters and the progressive consumption tax chapter jarring. What’s this doing here? The way I saw it was that the first part of the book tries to establish why chance events are often decisively important and that chance by its very nature is something that we can’t really control. If you can control it, it’s not really chance. The one dimension of things that you as an individual can’t control, so therefore counts as chance on that scale, the most important thing on that scale is where and when you’re born. If you’re born here you’re just so much luckier than if you were born in Somalia. Choosing your parents, what genes you get, what kind of upbringing you’re going to get, and the country where they live is the hugest dimension of all the chance events that effect outcomes in your life. You can’t affect any of those, but we can affect those. We can make the investments that make our environment one that if you work hard and have some talent you’ve got a reasonable chance to succeed, at least on a decent scale, unlike Somalia where no matter how hard you work and how talented you are you’re not ever going to get anywhere. We could affect that outcome. We can’t do it as an individual, but collectively we could affect that outcome. So, we are lucky to have been born in the United States, but you’re saying that we could make the landscape even more prone to good luck. Yes, and the landscape is not as supportive of good luck for people now as it was when I was coming up. I came up in a family that didn’t have much money. I graduated from Georgia Tech debt free. Today to graduate from a good school I’d be $40,000 in debt coming out of college. That’s if I got to college. The poor kids today don’t get to participate in music programs, art programs, sports programs—there’s extra fees for those. There’s this really very grim statistic I mention where if you’re the top scorer in math you’re less likely to graduate from college if you’re from a low income family than if you’re a bottom scorer in math from a high income family. Plus you believe that wealthy people’s happiness wouldn’t be negatively impacted by higher taxes, since the increase would affect them all similarly and just tamp down on what you call a “positional arms race” in their spending. I think the term “positional arms race” is an attempt to tie into the metaphor that everyone’s familiar with and regards as uncontroversial, which is the military arms race. A pair of military rivals buys additional armaments hoping to gain an advantage in their contest, but the effect is merely to restore the balance but at a higher level of expense. Neither one is more secure than if they each spent less on armaments and more on schools and hospitals, and everybody would’ve been better off. That’s why countries sign military arms control agreements. They agree that they won’t build bombs. You need to have inspectors and other enforcement to make those work, but where they can make them work nobody says, “What could the reason for an agreement like that be?” Everybody knows what the purpose of it is. So my aim was to hijack that familiar metaphor and use it to apply to a class of situations that I think is completely analogous. Where you see that play out in transparently wasteful ways is the expenses for weddings. Here I don’t think you need to invoke Bridezillas or any other aberrant human forms to see why things have been getting further and further out of hand financially in the wedding domain. The price of the average American wedding in 1980 was $10,000. In 2014, the most recent figure I had, was $31,000. In Manhattan the average was $76,000. Nobody thinks that the couples that got married paying $31,000 on their event ended up being happier because of that than the earlier couples who’d been spending $10,000. What happened was that the standard that defines “special” escalated between those two dates. Everybody is completely normal to want to send guests away from the event feeling like they had a good time. Everyone knows that if you spend a tenth of what people normally spend on events like that everyone will leave feeling like the event was sub-standard in an obvious way. And so the total expenditure keeps escalating. That’s driven in considerable part, too, by the fact that incomes have been concentrating at the top. So you get this cascade that I wrote about in the book and elsewhere. That’s wasteful. If all the houses get 20 percent bigger, nobody is any happier than before, especially people at the top. The effect is merely to raise the bar that defines how big you need, at what style you need to be able to entertain in to feel like you’re meeting the social demands of your circle. Coming back to luck, how much do you think people’s resistance to higher taxes stems from a lack of appreciation of the role of luck in their success? My research assistant did an experiment. We discussed it, how could we design an experiment that would help to answer that question? What she did was to ask people to describe a good thing that had recently happened to you. She divided people into three groups. The first group, that’s all she asked them to do. The second group, she asked them in addition to describing the good thing that happened, list three things you did that helped cause that good thing to happen. The third group, she asked them to list three things that others did or that were in some way external to you that caused the good thing to happen. Then at the end students got a bonus for their participation experiment and they were told that they could donate some or all, any fraction of their bonus, to one of three charities, their pick, just by saying so to the experimenter. What she found was that people who had listed external causes of the good thing happening donated about 25 percent more of their bonus to a charity than the people who had listed things they had done to cause the good things to happen. The control group was somewhere roughly in the middle of those two. There have been many experiments that have shown if you prime people to feel the emotion of gratitude, they become much more generous toward others, much more willing to pay forward to the common good. Given that, how do we make people who’ve been successful realize how lucky they’ve been? I do think I have a very important practical message to offer, which is don’t try to tell your successful friends that they’re lucky. We saw that when Obama gave his speech in 2012 and Elizabeth Warren gave a similar speech, people didn’t like that. Those speeches were completely reasonable, as I was telling you, but people didn’t hear the reasonable part. The message they heard was that they didn’t deserve their success. That’s not the message of those speeches. If you want people to think about the fact that they’ve been lucky, don’t tell them that they’ve been lucky. Ask them if they can think of any examples of times when they might have been lucky along their path to the top. I’ve tried this many, many times and can report to you that the successful people who would get angered and defensive if they were reminded that they were lucky, instead don’t get angry or defensive at all when they think about the question, “Can you think of examples of times when you were lucky?” Instead their eyes light up, they try to think of examples, they recount one to you, and that prompts them to remember another one, they tell you about that one too, and soon they’re talking about investments we ought to be making. Bob Henderson studied physics, worked on Wall Street, and is now an independent writer focused on science and finance.
The Arizona biker group Lions Guard Arizona announced they will protect Trump supporters from violent pro-Hillary leftists. This comes after several hundred Trump supporters were beaten bloody in San Jose two weeks ago. The Lions Guard Arizona group is made up of mostly retired police and veterans. They released a statement this week. KTAR reported: A group of bikers said it plans to protect supporters from possible violence at a Donald Trump rally scheduled to be held in Phoenix on Saturday. “We’re going to stand between them and any protesters that come onto the property and hopefully protect them from any bodily harm, should it get to that point,” Cindy Perrin with Lions Guard Arizona said. The rally is expected to begin Saturday about 4 p.m. at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum on the Arizona State Fairgrounds near 19th Avenue and McDowell Road. The protest will be held at nearby Encanto Park from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Perrin said the biker group, made up mostly of retired police officers, such as herself, and veterans, will be wearing American flag bandanas so they are easy to identify. “If they have any problems, they’ll be able to locate us and ask us for help,” she said. Perrin said her group is not expecting things to take a violent turn outside of Trump’s rally, unlike several events the presumptive Republican presidential nominee hosted in California. “We’re not expecting it to get to that point in Arizona,” she said. The bikers will not be the only group attempting to keep things calm on Saturday. Arizona Department of Public Safety Capt. Damon Cecil said his organization has reached out to groups both for and against Trump.
Meteorological history Edit Preparations Edit Impact in the Lesser Antilles Edit Impact in the Greater Antilles and the United States Edit Aftermath Edit Criticism of U.S. government response Edit Retirement Edit See also: List of retired Atlantic hurricane names On April 11, 2018, at the 40th session of the Regional Association Hurricane Committee, the World Meteorological Organization retired the name Maria from its rotating name lists, due to the highly extensive amount of damage and loss of life it caused along its path, especially in Dominica and Puerto Rico, and it will never again be used to name an Atlantic hurricane. It will be replaced with Margot for the 2023 Atlantic hurricane season.[259] See also Edit Notes Edit ^ All damage figures in this table are in the USD amounts of their respective year. References Edit Bibliography Edit
Jose Mourinho was not impressed with some of the show-boating from his side Jose Mourinho accused his Manchester United side of disrespecting Basel in their Champions League opener, saying they were more interested in "PlayStation football" than being professional. Goals from Marouane Fellaini and Romelu Lukaku had given United a comfortable 2-0 lead inside an hour at Old Trafford on Tuesday night but what the manager saw after that left him far from impressed. He said: "After 2-0, I think everything changed and we stopped to play, stopped to think, stopped to play seriously. We stopped to make the right decisions on the pitch and we could put ourselves in trouble. "Bad decisions, fantasy football, PlayStation football, tricks and when you stopped to play as a team and when you stopped to play seriously I don't like and you gamble a little bit. "The players probably felt that the game was under control with the 2-0 but football is football and you have to respect your opponent." Substitute Marcus Rashford added a third goal six minutes from time on a comfortable night for the three-time European champions. Mourinho says Marouane Fellaini is a very important player for United Mourinho says Marouane Fellaini is a very important player for United However, Mourinho insists that United are not among the front-runners to claim the Champions League crown ahead of the 'big guys' in Kiev on May 26. He said: "For these teams - Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich - the Champions League starts in February. Now is just the warm-up. "In February, when us English teams are trying to survive after the winter period, they are fresh and ready after this warm-up. "We are in the second level. The second level is "let's qualify, let's make the points" and if we make the knockout phase let's enjoy playing against the big guys."

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