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In an official statement, Google explained that its aim is to provide a better advertising experience for online users.
"As part of that, we’ve decided to stop supporting 30-second unskippable ads as of 2018 and focus instead on formats that work well for both users and advertisers," said a Google spokesman.
Ads shorter than 30-seconds, including the 20-second spots, can be made unskippable.
In April last year, YouTube introduced the six-second unskippable bumper ad format. It’s understood that the platform intends to promote this format more heavily in the year ahead. This includes all formats, including TrueView.
This move is a logical one, agreed experts. "YouTube realises that consumers don’t like unskippable ads," commented Andrew Peake, managing director of integrated creative agency, VCCP. "At the end of the day, if you’re doing creative work that will engage right from the start, you haven’t got to worry too much."
While this move will not please advertisers, Callum McCahon, strategy director for Born Social, said it is the price YouTube is willing to pay to keep people watching.
"I’m reading this as a signal that YouTube is very worried about Facebook," he added. "We know that video is right at the very core of Facebook’s roadmap. Their video offering is becoming ever more attractive to brands by the day, and YouTube is panicking."
Phil Smith, director general of ISBA welcomed the move. "The industry needs to improve the user experience of online advertising and this is one step in the right direction, based on consumer reaction and announced with sufficient notice to give advertisers and agencies time to adjust their plans." |
President Donald Trump on Monday gave an inaccurate explanation of how foreign-made pipes are made and shipped to the United States.
The president made the comments as part of his case to convince oil and gas pipeline makers to use U.S. materials and equipment rather than imported parts.
Speaking to a group of small business leaders, Trump described a process that "hurts the pipe" — suggesting that many miles of America's pipelines contain substandard parts which presumably would have to be replaced. But he simultaneously indicated that he is not actually familiar with how pipelines are made, using a variation of "I imagine" three times and saying "I assume" as he explained the process.
"These are big pipes. Now, the only way I can imagine they [ship them] is they must have to cut them. Because they're so big, I can't imagine — they take up so much room — I can't imagine you could put that much pipe on ships. It's not enough. It's not long enough," he said.
"So I assume they have to fabricate and cut, which hurts the pipe, by the way," he said.
A spokesperson for the Association of Oil Pipe Lines said he had never heard of foreign pipe makers cutting segments into portions to send them overseas. Manufacturers create pipes in lengths that can be shipped rather than chopping up vast lengths of pipe.
TransCanada, the company behind the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, also told CNBC that pipes it buys from overseas are not cut into smaller segments before being shipped.
The White House did not immediately return a CNBC request for further explanation. |
In March 2011, the Tara, a 36-meter schooner, sailed from Chile to Easter Island — a three-week leg of a five-year global scientific expedition. All but one of the seven scientists aboard the ship spent much of their time on the sun-drenched deck hauling up wondrous creatures such as luminous blue jellyfish and insects known as sea-skaters, which spend their entire lives skimming the surface of the ocean far from land.
At the stern of the Tara, a shipping container was bolted to the deck, with a door and a tiny window cut through the metal walls. One of the scientists, Melissa Duhaime, spent most of the voyage inside the dark, tiny cell, where she fought off an endless bout of seasickness.
“People would come in to see what I was doing and leave pretty quickly,” Duhaime said.
Inside her cell, Duhaime sat next to a hose as wide as an outstretched hand. A pump drew water through the hose from several meters below the boat and then pushed it through a series of filters. Each filter was finer than the last, blocking smaller and smaller life forms. The setup stopped animals first, then zooplankton and algae. The last filter in the hose, with pores just 220 nanometers wide, was fine enough to block bacteria. Scrubbed of all these living things, the water finally flowed into three 30-liter vats.
To the untrained eye, these vats might seem to be full of sterile water. But they were seething with ocean life — or life-like things, at the very least. The three vats held up to 1 trillion viruses.
The ocean contains many mysteries, but none so great as its viruses. Scientists estimate that there are 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 virus particles in all the world’s seas. They outnumber all cellular life forms by roughly a factor of 10. Scientists have been dimly aware of the staggering scale of the ocean’s virosphere since the late 1980s, but many of the simplest questions about it remained open for years. Scientists couldn’t even say how many species of viruses there were in the oceans. It’s as if zoologists were dimly aware that many places on Earth were home to things called mammals, but their knowledge was based only on a few squirrels in a cage.
Duhaime and her colleagues joined the Tara Oceans Expedition to change that, by collecting ocean viruses on a scale never attempted before. As they report in the May 22 issue of Science, they gathered enough samples to confidently estimate the total number of distinct populations of viruses in the sunlit upper reaches of the ocean. Out of the 5,476 populations they identified, only 39 were previously known to science.
The researchers have gone on to study where these species live and how they affect the ocean’s ecosystems. For years, scientists have suspected that viruses alter the very chemistry of the world’s oceans and may even influence the planet’s climate. Now, the data from the Tara are going to give researchers a much better handle on the full power of the ocean’s viruses.
To Duhaime, who is now at the University of Michigan, getting a glimpse of the ocean’s virosphere made three seasick weeks in a darkened metal hut worth the discomfort. “You’re in this moment in nature where all these important cycles are going on all around you in the ocean. You’re just trying to take a snapshot of that,” she said. “That never gets old.”
An Explosion of Viruses
Scientists first discovered viruses in sickly tobacco plants in the late 1800s. Yet for nearly a century, marine biologists assumed that the oceans were virtually virus-free. When they looked at seawater under microscopes, they simply didn’t see any viruses, and so they concluded that the oceans were too harsh for viruses to survive in great numbers.
In the 1980s, a biologist named Lita Proctor decided to take a more careful, systematic look. Her surveys of water from places like the Caribbean and the Sargasso Sea revealed a surprising abundance of viruses. Other researchers went on to confirm that the oceans are indeed a viral soup.
It became clear that viruses are an important part of the ocean’s ecology, but scientists struggled to study them. Simply staring at a virus through a microscope doesn’t tell you all that much about it. Two viruses that look nearly identical may infect completely different hosts. Since scientists couldn’t tell which hosts the viruses needed in order to replicate, they struggled to rear them in the lab.
Then in the 1990s, a new way to survey life emerged. Scientists would add chemicals to a sample of seawater (or soil or lake mud or some other material) that would rip apart all the proteins and membranes it contained. Out of that detritus, the scientists could extract all the DNA from the sample in a jumble of fragments. The researchers then sequenced the fragments and pieced them together into larger DNA segments. Finally, they could compare these genetic sequences to those of known species — finding either an exact match, or a sequence from a closely related species.
This method, known as metagenomics, quickly gave scientists a wave of new discoveries about bacteria and other microbes. It transformed the study of human health by allowing scientists to catalog the thousands of species of microbes that live in and on the human body, which had previously been unknown because they couldn’t be grown outside of our inner jungles.
But ocean viruses don’t surrender their secrets so easily to metagenomics. All cellular species, from E. coli to fin whales, have a core set of genes in common. Viruses, on the other hand, have no such universal set of genes. When scientists gather genes from a virus that’s new to science, they often find that almost none of its genes bear any resemblance to any previously discovered viral gene. In addition, viruses often pick up new genes, either from other species of viruses, or from their hosts. When scientists isolate one piece of genetic material from an unknown virus, it can be difficult to determine where it came from.
In recent years, scientists have managed to bring some order to this chaos. Matthew Sullivan, an environmental virologist at the University of Arizona, and his colleagues have developed a method to identify new species of viruses. They start with viruses that share some of the same genes. Then they measure how similar their DNA is. When they plot those measurements on a graph, the viruses do not spread out into a hazy, inscrutable cloud. Instead, they huddle in tight clumps. These clumps, Sullivan and his colleagues argue, represent distinct species of viruses.
Sullivan joined the leadership of the Tara Oceans project to put these new methods to work on a global scale. His team of researchers filtered seawater in every ocean on Earth, along with the Red Sea, the Mediterranean and the Adriatic, visiting 43 sites in all. They processed the water with iron chloride to make the viruses stick together in particles, filtered the water again, and shipped the virus-clogged filters to labs around the world.
Sullivan and his colleagues examined the viruses under microscopes and sequenced their genes. All told, they extracted 2.16 billion pieces of DNA, each piece containing 101 base pairs on average. The scientists found that many of the pieces overlapped with each other. In jigsaw-puzzle fashion, they assembled long stretches of DNA and began to recognize the full sequence of virus genes.
As they compiled this genetic catalog, they began to sort it. Sullivan and his colleagues combined closely related genes into clusters. A pair of genes that encode for similar proteins would be placed into the same cluster. All told, they identified 1,323,921 clusters.
Now they were left with a crucial question: What fraction of all the virus genes in the world’s oceans had they collected? Had they just skimmed the surface, or did these 1.3 million clusters represent most of the viral genes in existence?
There’s a clever statistical trick scientists can use to answer a question like this. Sullivan and his colleagues began by randomly picking a gene from their catalog. Then they picked another one and noted whether the two genes belonged to the same cluster, or to two different ones. Then they picked out a third gene and compared it to the first two. At each step, they marked their progress by plotting a point on a graph, where every novel gene made the graph tick up.
At first the curve was steep, because each new gene typically didn’t belong to any cluster identified so far. But after a while, the curve flattened as the new genes fell into existing clusters. By the end of the process, it was rare for the scientists to pick a gene that was new. Repeating this exercise over and over again with randomly selected genes produced the same flattened curve.
This flattened curve told Sullivan and his colleagues something profound: that they have probably found almost all the virus genes in the upper oceans of the entire planet. There are not billions of additional genes lurking out there, waiting to be sucked into a hose.
“That’s nice,” Sullivan said, “because it’s a finite number we can work with.”
The scientists then used this catalog to figure out how many different kinds of viruses there are in the world’s oceans. (For now, Sullivan is careful to call these distinct kinds of viruses “populations,” but he’s confident that with further research, he’ll be able to show that these populations are, in fact, true species.) By comparing the genes in the clusters to one another, the scientists were able to identify 5,476 distinct populations.
With this single expedition, the scientists have dramatically increased our view of the ocean virosphere. When Sullivan and his colleagues tried to match their 5,476 populations to species that scientists have already documented, they succeeded just 39 times. In other words, 99 percent of the viruses they discovered were new to science.
The flattened curve of genes tells Sullivan and his colleagues that if they went out on a new expedition, using the same methods to identify viruses, they wouldn’t find many more new ones. But Sullivan is quick to point out that the total number of species of ocean viruses will turn out to be more than 5,476. In recent years, for example, scientists have found a number of so-called “giant viruses” that are as big as bacteria. The filters that Duhaime and others used on the Tara Oceans Survey prevented any giant viruses from getting into the vats they studied.
In addition, the scientists sequenced only viruses that use DNA to encode their genes. Some viruses, such as influenza and HIV, use RNA, a single-strand version of DNA, to encode their genes. By one estimate, as many as half of the viruses in the ocean are RNA viruses. What’s more, the Tara Oceans survey only took samples from the surface of the ocean. The deeper regions have viruses, too, as does the sediment at the bottom of the sea.
Nevertheless, the Tara Oceans survey leaves Sullivan confident that the total number of ocean viruses will only be in the tens of thousands.
“It’s a smaller number than I expected,” Sullivan said. Based on smaller studies, some scientists had speculated that there might be hundreds of thousands of species of ocean viruses and billions of viral genes. But the Tara Oceans survey suggests that’s not the case. “It is what it is,” Sullivan said.
What Viruses Do
With such a comprehensive picture of ocean viruses, Sullivan and his colleagues can start drawing some broad conclusions about them. Each virus population is more common in some areas than in others, for example. That’s likely due to the fact that their hosts thrive at certain temperatures or with certain levels of oxygen.
But Sullivan and his colleagues found viruses from most populations everywhere they looked. In other words, every part of the ocean is like a seed bank for viruses. As soon as the right host comes along, a relatively rare virus will infect it and replicate itself into a huge population.
Now that scientists have such a clear picture of the diversity of ocean viruses, they can hope to gain a better understanding of how these viruses are affecting the planet. Viruses kill vast numbers of hosts. Some researchers have estimated that they kill up to 40 percent of all bacteria in the ocean every day. Paradoxically, though, this daily massacre could actually increase the biomass of the oceans. Mathematical models of ocean ecosystems suggest that by killing so many microbes, viruses could release carbon and other organic nutrients back into the environment, providing an easy source of nutrients for other organisms. Carbon that isn’t consumed may drift down into the deep ocean, thereby causing vast supplies of carbon to fall to the seafloor rather than escape into the atmosphere.
Until now, scientists haven’t known enough about ocean viruses to create precise models of these effects. So they haven’t been able to say with confidence what the viruses are doing to our world. Duhaime said that the data coming from the Tara Oceans survey will go a long way toward pinning those models down. “We’re very far from doing that,” she said, “but the path is there.”
Despite all this new data, Sullivan still considers the ecology of ocean viruses to be in its infancy. “The virus stuff isn’t as mature as counting zebras,” he said. “That’s because it’s easier to observe zebras and define a zebra species than it is for viruses.”
But Sullivan and his colleagues have built a pipeline they can now use to pump huge numbers of additional viruses. Animal ecologists have a head start that stretches hundreds of years, but according to Sullivan, “we may quickly be ahead.”
Correction on May 22, 2015: Sullivan estimates that the total number of oceanic viruses will be in the tens of thousands; previous estimates had been in the hundreds of thousands. |
Selekt Few are a hip hop trio from the south side of Perth who have been working together since early 2009. We are happy to introducing their debut album MD, which is available now.
MC Shareef and Producer / MC Percuss (aka Ruxton) made their first mark on the scene with their song Words that appeared on the Australian Hip Hop Supports CanTeen album in released in 2011. Now joined by new member DJ Tek, you can catch Selekt Few launching their album, May 16th at Mojos Bar, North Fremantle. The night will feature live performances from Wisdom2th, FG, Paradox and Jamahl Ryder. You can also purchase a ticket/CD combo, by following the links below. Cover artwork by RLSM (Sam Shields). Colour, design & layout by Damian Ots for Inkandescent Design.
MD Tracklisting:
1. Rights & Responsibilities feat. MD & Charley Caruso
2. Pretty Woman feat. FG & Callum Presbury
3. Tired
4. One of Those Days
5. Spatters
6. Hacker Mentality
7. Words (2013)
8. One of Those Days (Paradox Remix)
9. Hacker Mentality (Lenny Rudeberg Remix)
Purchase || Facebook || Official || Twitter |
Marine Le Pen | EPA/LAURENT DUBRULE Prosecutor seeks acquittal in Le Pen hate speech trial Far-right leader’s comments on Muslim street prayers are called ‘free speech.’
A prosecutor in the French city of Lyon has recommended the acquittal of far-right chief Marine Le Pen in a trial over hate speech charges, French media reported Tuesday.
Le Pen, president of the National Front party, was standing trial on suspicion of having broken hate speech laws over comments she made in 2010 comparing street prayers by Muslims to the occupation of France by Nazi troops during World War II.
"If we're talking about the Occupation, we could talk about [the prayers], because that, for one, is an occupation of the territory," she said, referring to the street prayers by Muslims who could not find space to pray inside mosques.
The prosecutor argued that Le Pen had been referring to "a certain number of people and not the entire Muslim community," newspaper Le Parisien reported.
"Mrs. Le Pen, by denouncing street prayers in a public space, which were due not to a majority but a minority of the Muslim community, was only exercising her right to free speech," the prosecutor, Bernard Reynaud, said in his ruling.
Marine Le Pen showed up smiling to the courtroom and criticized the proceedings as a "political trial."
However, the National Front still faces legal troubles as 10 officials are under investigation for various counts of fraud in a case linked to alleged misuse of public campaign funds. |
I made these guys for the creature of the week's 300th round. It was a gigantic task where people were required to come up with 9-17 creature designs in one month. I wanted to combine features from insects and mammals and I'm pretty happy with my final entry as a whole. This round almost killed me but I learned a lot from it.The entire brief as copy pasted from ca.org:Biodiverse Colony Creatures!!When it comes to the organization of a civilization, labor is divided among the citizens, often splitting people into groups specializing in a specific task. With humans, since we are all anatomically the same animal, we have to develop tools to accomplish these specialized tasks. What if, however, a creature had evolved such that its anatomy was completely different based on what its role in their society was. Think about the Zerg, from Starcraft: the zerg assimilate other species' and incorporate genes they find useful into their own code. They are anatomically very diverse, but are clearly of the same origin. This kind of unified biodiversity is your task for the next month.A list of different roles for the colony of creatures will be available for you to choose from. Your job is to take those different roles and create creatures which feel unified as a whole, but which have anatomy specialized to the task for which they are responsible. Bear in mind that these creatures should not use tools or accessories, they should rely solely on their own anatomical adaptations to take on their assigned roles within the colony.Requirements:-Each creature is equipped with the necessary tools (anatomically, no accessories please) for it's assigned tasks within their society-All of your creatures are of the same species, however their appearances vary from one another based on their specific roles and tasks, but include common elements within your designs that can help link their familiarity with one another.-Below is the list of creatures you will need to design with a short brief to go with each of them. You will need to design creatures for each category, giving you a minimum of 9 creatures out of 9 categories, and a maximum of 17 creatures if you decide to do all of the optional creatures.The Monarch-An organized society usually needs someone to run the show. For our colony you are going to design one creature that is the alpha male/female. Keep in mind, the monarch is fully dependent on the colony in order for it to survive, so it need not have any sort of specialized tools or weaponry within it's anatomy. The appearance of this individual must have a very authoritative look to it, but it also must be visually appealing! Think of human monarchs for example compared to 'commoners'. This is probably the most important creature you will be designing for the month so make it look very significant, not just in its appearance, but also in your final delivery!-Design 1 creature.Builders-These are the architects. They are responsible for creating housing and shelter for the colony. How they build and what they build with is up to you. Remember that they must use their own anatomical tools for building.-Design 1 creatureMiners-Diggers and tunnelers that are responislbe for extracting valuable materials and minerals.-Design 1 creatureHunters-Gatherers/Farmers-Any society cannot survive without obtaining sustinence. There are two primary methods for gathering food within any organized society; 1) Foraging: leaving the colony to forage this includes hunting and fishing as well as gathering fruits, nuts, fungi, etc. to bring back to the colony 2)Agricultural: Farming, growing crops and tending to livestock safely within the colony boundaries. You may choose to design just one of the two or you can design both if you so desire.-design 1 or 2 creatures (Foragers and Farmers)Warriors-Civilization rarely comes without conflict, even in the animal kingdom. As a means for both offense and defense the colony has soldiers who either invade other colonies or defend their colony. I will allow the choice to design either one creature that has the capability to defend their hime turf or invade other colonies, or two variants representing both the colonies offense and defense.-design 1 or 2 creaturesNursers/Healers-Even peaceful colonies will run the risk of sickness or injury, these creatures in particular have developed natural aids that helps to treat the sick and injured amoung the colony.-Design 1 creatureScouts-Every society is looking for different ways to expand, through building or territorial domination. For such tasks they need scouts that can view the world outside of the boundaries in order to bring information back to the colony. You only need at least one creature for this specific role. But you can create up to three variants if you wish (ie. land, sea, and air specialized scouts)-Design 1-3 creaturesBreeders-These particular colony members are responsible for birthing and/or tending to the infants. They could have similar roles to that of human midwives or they could do all the labour and children's aid themselves. How does this species give birth? Do they give birth themselves? Do they grow them in the ground like plants? Does the monarch give birth and the breeders care for the young? it's up to you guys. You can show us some infants if you wish, but you only need the breeder.-Design 1 creature-You may design the infants if you wishTaskmasters-Generals, captians, supervisors, managers, whatever you want to call them. They give orders throughout the colony. Think of a unique way they would communicate with the other members of the colony. Pheromones? Telepathy? A swift backhand to the head? Do they take orders from the colony monarch? or do they make all the major decisions in the colony themselves? They must also have some way to show discipline to their peers as sometimes other individuals may be disobidient. Behind the monarch these guys would be second in command, their appearance must reflect this.-design 1 creatureOptional creatures:-show some prey or livestock that is used as the primary foodsource for the colony, try to limit it to just 3 creatures-Colony Infants (Remember all of these creatures belong to the same species) |
Volkswagen of America has announced plans to begin accepting the first 500 pre-orders for the 2015 Golf R on January 8th.
The first 500 models will all be identical and feature a Lapiz Blue Metallic exterior with bi-xenon headlights and 19-inch Cadiz-style aluminum wheels with summer performance tires.
The cars will also come equipped with GPS navigation, a Fender audio system, Park Distance Control and a DCC adaptive damping system.
Power will be provided by a 2.0-liter TSI engine that develops 292 bhp (217 kW) and 280 lb-ft (379 Nm) of torque. It will be connected to a six-speed DSG dual-clutch transmission and a 4MOTION all-wheel drive system which will enable the hatchback to accelerate from 0-60 mph in 4.9 seconds before hitting a limited top speed of 155 mph (250 km/h).
The first 500 owners will also receive a special VolkswagenDriver Gear R accessory kit that includes a serialized Volkswagen R watch, a serialized carbon fiber / stainless steel keychain and serialized VIN-specific certificate.
The cars will cost $39,090 - excluding an $820 destination and delivery charge - and reservations can be made with a $500 deposit placed through the VW.com/GolfR website.
Check out the press release for additional information |
Webelinx, a Serbian gaming company, has recently established partnership with GameCredits to produce a new form of gaming cryptocurrency.
Given the growing awareness of the potential of digital currency coupled with the aspiration to involve children and teenagers into the process of its universal adoption, several gaming platforms have already found ways to incorporate cryptocurrency into video games systems.
Serbian company Webelinx has recently created partnership with GameCredits, the first free opensource gaming currency, which, according to its website, “will revolutionise in-game purchases and bring developers a monetization based on fair-play rules.”
In the recently published press release Vladimir Mitic, CEO of Webelinx, predicted that digital currency will influence the gaming industry unlike anything else: “Crypto-adoption is one of the fastest growing trends nowadays… GameCredits is paving its way to become an important currency outside the crypto-world, so it’s a win-win situation. Bearing in mind the great success of BTCs, I am sure that introducing this new monetization option may only have positive results. Users will love it since it will make their lives easier.”
Webelinx is a growing IT company founded in 2011 and located in Nis, Serbia.
Anna Lavinskaya |
This Letter presented projections of future sea-level rise based on simulations of the past 22,000 years of sea-level history using a simple, empirical model linking sea-level rise to global mean-temperature anomalies. One of the main conclusions of the Letter was that the model results supported the projections of sea-level rise during the twenty-first century that are reported in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Unfortunately, we have since found that our projections were affected by two oversights in our model approach. First, we tested the sensitivity of our results to the length of the time step used in the integration of the model for the period of deglaciation, which we found to be robust. However, we overlooked that the simulations of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries are sensitive to this time step, which led to an overestimation of the sea-level response to warming in the simulations for these centuries. Second, we did not include the effect of the uncertainty in the temperature reconstructions since the Medieval Climate Anomaly in our uncertainty estimates for the twenty-first-century projections. This led to an inconsistency between the twentieth-century simulation used to test the predictive capability of the model and the twenty-first-century simulation, owing to a provisional allowance for warming since the Little Ice Age in the twentieth-century simulations. Thus we no longer have confidence in our projections for the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and for this reason the authors retract the results pertaining to sea-level rise after 1900. Both our simulations of the last deglaciation, and the result that the equilibrium response of sea-level change to temperature is non-linear over the last deglaciation, are robust to the length of the time step used, and are still valid. |
Search Continues for Missing Monkey in N.H.
Search Continues for Missing Monkey in N.H. See web page for video footage: http://www.whdh.com/news/local6.shtml DANVILLE, N.H. -- Roughly a dozen people, including Fire Chief David Kimball, say they recently saw a large monkey on the loose in this small town of 3,800 people in southern New Hampshire. "I couldn't believe what I was seeing," he said. Neither could his wife. "She told me I had flipped when I told her." Kimball said he was driving through town recently when the monkey jumped into the middle of the street, hopped a bit, then lunged away. On Sunday volunteers and animal control officers used bananas and oranges to try to attract the monkey. Experts hope to capture the monkey before it gets any cooler. They said otherwise the creature is unlikely to live past November. Kimball thinks he identified the monkey as a Humbolt's woolly monkey, which is native to the Amazon, after watching television programs on the Adventure Channel. "It would be quite tall, maybe about four feet, if it were standing straight up, but they walk on all fours, a bit hunched over," he said. He described the creature as very woolly and dark brown all over with a red hue. Kimball said he thinks somebody in the area was keeping the monkey as a pet, but won't admit it escaped because it is illegal to keep monkeys in New Hampshire. He said his research indicated Humbolt monkeys supposedly make good pets. He said it is legal to purchase monkeys in Massachusetts. Kimball said he knows of at least eight other people who have spotted the monkey around town. "They're all getting the same reaction when they tell someone they've seen it," he said. "People tell them they're crazy." The chief said the town's animal control officer has contacted a wildlife expert, who has expressed interest in trying to trap the monkey. "Fish and Game had no interest in it because it's not a native animal," Kimball said. Animal Control Officer Denise Laratondo said she is trying to find the monkey's home. "We aren't going to press any charges," she said. "We just want to do what's best for this animal and keep it alive." She also said it is best that people not try to capture the monkey. "Please let the experts handle it," she said. (AP) --------------------------------- Do You Yahoo!? Get email alerts & NEW webcam video instant messaging with Yahoo! Messenger. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/monkeywire/attachments/20010910/0b6d5213/attachment.html |
If you've ever taken a class in marketing, chances are you've heard how Chevrolet had problems selling the Chevy Nova automobile in Latin America. Since "no va" means "it doesn't go" in Spanish, the oft-repeated story goes, Latin American car buyers shunned the car, forcing Chevrolet to embarrassingly pull the car out of the market.
But the Problem With the Story Is ...
Chevrolet's woes are often cited as an example of how good intentions can go wrong when it comes to translation. There are literally thousands of references to the incident on the Internet, and the Nova example has been mentioned in textbooks and often comes up during presentations on cultural differences and advertising.
But there's one major problem with the story: It never happened. As a matter of fact, Chevrolet did reasonably well with the Nova in Latin America, even exceeding its sales projections in Venezuela. The story of the Chevy Nova is a classic example of an urban legend, a story that is told and retold so often that it is believed to be true even though it isn't. Like most other urban legends, there is some element of truth in the story ("no va" indeed means "it doesn't go"), enough truth to keep the story alive. Like many urban legends, the story has the appeal of showing how the high and mighty can be humiliated by stupid mistakes.
Even if you couldn't confirm or reject the story by looking into history, you might notice some problems with it if you understand Spanish. For starters, nova and no va don't sound alike and are unlikely to be confused, just as "carpet" and "car pet" are unlikely to be confused in English. Additionally, no va would be an awkward way in Spanish to describe a nonfunctioning car (no funciona, among others, would do better).
Additionally, as in English, nova, when used in a brand name, can convey the sense of newness. There's even a Mexican gasoline that goes by that brand name, so it seems unlikely such a name alone could doom a car.
GM, of course, isn't the only company to be cited as making advertising blunders in the Spanish language. But upon closer examination, many of these tales of mistranslation prove to be as unlikely as the one involving GM. Here are some of those stories:
The Tale of the Vulgar Pen
Story: Parker Pen intended to use the slogan "it won't stain your pocket and embarrass you," to emphasize how its pens wouldn't leak, translating it as "no manchará tu bolsillo, ni te embarazará." But embarazar means "to be pregnant" rather than "to embarrass." So the slogan was understood as "it won't stain your pocket and get you pregnant."
Comment: Anyone who learns much about Spanish learns quickly about such common mistakes as confusing embarazada ("pregnant") for "embarrassed." For a professional to make this translating mistake seems highly unlikely.
Wrong Kind of Milk
Story: A Spanish version of the "Got Milk?" campaign used "¿Tienes leche?," which can be understood as "Are you lactating?"
Comment: This might have happened, but no verification has been found. Many such promotional campaigns are locally run, making it more likely this understandable mistake could have been made.
Wrong Kind of Loose
Story: Coors translated the slogan "turn it loose" in a beer ad in such a way that it was understood as slang for "suffer from diarrhea."
Comment: Reports differ on whether Coors used the phrase "suéltalo con Coors" (literally, "let it go loose with Coors") or "suéltate con Coors" (literally, "set yourself free with Coors"). The fact that accounts don't agree make it seem unlikely that the mistake actually happened.
No-Coffee Coffee
Story: Nestlé was unable to sell Nescafé instant coffee in Latin America because the name is understood as "No es café" or "It isn't coffee."
Comment: Unlike most of the other accounts, this story is demonstrably false. Nestlé not only sells instant coffee under that name in Spain and Latin America, it operates coffeeshops with that name. Also, while consonants are often softened in Spanish, vowels are usually distinct, so nes is unlikely to be confused for no es.
Misplaced Affection
Story: A slogan for Frank Perdue chicken, "it takes a strong man to make a tender chicken," was translated as the equivalent of "it takes a sexually aroused man to make a chicken affectionate." |
Recycled crafts are so fun and I love the cost (free)! You'll be decorating glass pickle jars with fabric scraps and embellishments – very easy.
I've done a lot of Mod Podge projects, and decorating glass jars is one of my favorites! Recycled crafts are SO FUN. I really like to make crafty organization projects, I think because I lack organization in my own life. It’s hard for us crafters, right? Creative and organized don’t always mix!
To celebrate back to school as well as the crazy crafter in all of us, I’ve whipped up these “stuff” jars. I did these with pickle jars, but you can apply the same concept to baby food jars or other small glass containers for the same results.
I forgot to mention the best thing about this project – it was free! I recycled the jars, and had the rest in my stash. How did I do it?
Decorating Glass Pickle Jars
Gather These Supplies
Pickle Jars – 3 large, recycled
Mod Podge Gloss
Fabric scraps – I had 3 fat quarters in my stash
Ribbon – each jar needs about 20″
Felt Flowers
Buttons
Craft Glue
Chipboard letters
Scrapbook paper
Flat paint brush
Scissors or cutting mat and wheel
Tape measure and pencil
Wax paper or something to protect your table
Start with these lovely supplies – soak the jars in water to get the labels off. This is why I love recycled crafts. I didn't have to pay anything for the jars!
You will want to prepare the fabric. I cut some oversized pieces of fabric out of the fat quarters. Then wash and dry the fabric (do not use fabric softener) in your next load of laundry. Iron and then lay out on a covered work surface. Wax paper is preferable for covering your table.
Using a brush, paint a light coat of Mod Podge Gloss onto your fabric. Allow to dry. This will allow you to cut the fabric like paper without frayed edges.
Time to trim the fabric to fit the jars. I have a cutting wheel and mat, but if you don’t just measure and then do it with your scissors. Make sure you leave about 1/2″ extra so that the fabric can overlap in the back.
Time to decoupage! You are going to apply the fabric, but first you need to lay down a Mod Podge base. Paint a few inches of Mod Podge at a time. You’ll need to smooth the fabric around the jar, smoothing and applying Mod Podge a few inches at a time. Make sure that you add a little more Mod Podge at the seam in the back.
Smooth everything with your fingers and then allow to dry for about an hour.
After the jars are dry, add the ribbon at the top and bottom. I used the craft glue to apply. It was really easy because pickle jars have a ridge (at least these did), and that is where the ribbon sat. Make sure to seam the ribbon in the same place that you did the fabric. You now know where the back of the jar is.
Clean up any craft glue that comes out of under the ribbon with a cotton swab. Doing it with your finger will smear it everywhere (can you tell I tried that?).
The last part is easy. Break out your stash and plan what you are going to do. I had some felt flowers and buttons, so I laid everything out and kept switching buttons until I was happy. Attach everything with craft glue or decoupage down. Let dry before using.
Here’s what I used to embellish each jar:
Blue Jar – blue grosgrain ribbon, eight felt flowers, eight blue buttons
Seafoam Jar – seafoam velvet ribbon, small scrap of coordinating paper (Mod Podged behind the letters), chipboard letters spelling “Pens”, 24 coordinating buttons
Orange Jar – orange grosgrain ribbon with a green edge, large felt flower piece attached with craft glue
I’m so happy with my recycled jars. I want to make one of them for everything in my apartment. They are so fun!
If you like decorating glass jars, check out these other ideas from some of my friends! |
AURORA, Colo. — A woman walking in a neighborhood was bitten by a rattlesnake, Aurora Fire Rescue said.
The woman was in the area of East Duke and East Doane drives while her children were riding bicycles when she was bit.
The attack pushed Aurora Fire Rescue to issue a warning for residents, advising them to be on alert, especially as temperatures heat up.
“Rattlesnakes live along the Front Range, and Aurora is not different,” an official said.
If someone gets bitten by a rattlesnake, they are advised to remain calm, and call 911 or the local poison control center at 800-222-1222.
The bitten body part should remain below heart level and the victim should note the time the bite happened.
Officials advise to not suck out the venom, but remove tight clothing and jewelry, and leave the bite alone.
To avoid interactions with rattlesnakes, officials advise to stay on trails, and keep pets leashed and supervised at all times.
Rattlesnakes might use trails to bask on cool days or early mornings. They also might shelter in grass, shrubs or prairie dog holes. |
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Sorry to do this to all of you for so long. It has truly been my intention to get back into the swing of doing Happle Tea for quite some time now but life and my own self doubt seems to get in the way. Rather than say too much about what I hope to do, I will simply endeavor to do it. I’ll interact more with all of you lovely people when I feel confident that I won’t let everyone down.
That said, I am alive and healthier than I have been in a long time. I’ve been sorting through some of my weird hangups when it comes to writing Happle Tea, and I finally have a diagnosis for what the hell has been wrong with my stomach and body for years. I’m taking some medication that, surprisingly, should help clear it all up in no time at all. Hard to imagine that last bit, really but I’ve been assured that I should be normal in, at most, a couple of months.
Anyway, I do apologize for being abysmal at updating and interacting in the last year and half or so. I hope to get better at it again.
<3 |
Confused? Check out the advanced-stats glossary here.
1. Two years
Two years ago, Clemson had me confused. The Tigers were regressing on paper, but they had managed to win the ACC anyway. The offense was beginning to show immense potential, and the defense was an unmitigated disaster. A 10-win 2011 campaign was a sign of a breakthrough, while a 70-33 loss to West Virginia in the Orange Bowl was a debacle in every possible way. Getting an accurate read on the program as a whole was nearly impossible.
Can you trend in the right and wrong directions at the same time? If so, it would make sense that Clemson would be the one to figure out how. [...] On paper, Swinney has addressed his team's weaknesses and enhanced its strengths. But on paper, this defense shouldn't have been anywhere near this bad last year either, so why should we automatically think it will change [...] It is difficult to ignore the magnitude of upside the team will possess in 2012 (and, probably, 2013 and beyond); but it is also difficult to ignore the wackiness that generally accompanies Clemson football.
Since I wrote that in summer 2012, Clemson has gone 22-4. The Tigers are undefeated against teams not named Florida State or South Carolina. They've taken down LSU, Ohio State, Auburn (in 2012, yes), and Georgia. They've gone 14-2 in the ACC. They've scored 1,055 points and allowed just 611. They have built one of the best defensive lines in the country. They have held onto ace offensive coordinator Chad Morris. They have all but defeated the notion of "Clemsoning."
(Orange Bowl conqueror West Virginia, by the way, has currently lost 14 of 20 games.)
Stereotypes exist until they don't. Clemson has destroyed pretty much everything you had come to believe about Clemson in two years.
2. When the stats have high expectations
Even a rather sophisticated projection system -- and I've never claimed mine is all that sophisticated -- has to lean on generalizations to project future success. It's not necessarily going to know which breakthrough freshman is going to change everything, and it's definitely not going to know which key injuries are going to shift the narrative and affect the national title race. But it's going to tell you who has and hasn't earned the benefit of the doubt. And according to my May S&P+ projections, Clemson has all sorts of benefit at the moment.
Now, I cannot necessarily justify placing Clemson in the top five, not with a new quarterback, not without Sammy Watkins and Martavis Bryant. But if you view projections as the best starting point for conversation, this projection hints at just how much Clemson returns and just how well Dabo Swinney and his staff have been recruiting. The Tigers are going to have an absolutely ferocious front six/seven on defense, and while they're replacing quite a few difference makers on offense, they're making replacements from a deep pool of former four- or five-star recruits.
With trips to Athens and Tallahassee on the docket before September 21, we won't have to wait long to find out if Clemson is indeed in better shape than we think. And even with losses in both of those games, this team has a pretty high floor and could very well be playing like a top-10 team by the end of the season.
We live in a college football world where Clemson is suddenly one of the country's most trustworthy commodities. I'm jinxing the hell out of this, aren't I...
2013 Schedule & Results
Record: 11-2 | Adj. Record: 11-2 | Final F/+ Rk: 16 Date Opponent Opp. F/+ Rk Score W-L Adj. Score Adj. W-L 5-gm Adj. Avg. 31-Aug Georgia 22 38-35 W 35.4 - 30.8 W 7-Sep S.C. State N/A 52-13 W 20.4 - 23.9 L 19-Sep at N.C. State 92 26-14 W 23.1 - 26.6 L 28-Sep Wake Forest 81 56-7 W 46.2 - 19.6 W 5-Oct at Syracuse 75 49-14 W 47.4 - 18.6 W 10.6 12-Oct Boston College 65 24-14 W 27.1 - 13.5 W 12.4 19-Oct Florida State 1 14-51 L 32.7 - 27.3 W 14.2 26-Oct at Maryland 63 40-27 W 38.6 - 23.0 W 18.0 2-Nov at Virginia 79 59-10 W 39.9 - 16.7 W 17.3 14-Nov Georgia Tech 34 55-31 W 49.2 - 22.2 W 16.9 23-Nov The Citadel N/A 52-6 W 35.0 - 14.7 W 18.3 30-Nov at South Carolina 10 17-31 L 34.1 - 15.9 W 20.8 3-Jan vs. Ohio State 9 40-35 W 52.2 - 21.9 W 23.8
Category Offense Rk Defense Rk Spec. Tms. Rk F/+ +13.0% 19 +14.0% 13 -0.4% 78 Points Per Game 40.2 8 22.2 24 Adj. Points Per Game 37.0 13 21.1 13
3. Ignition
I'm talking a big game about Clemson here, considering the Tigers finished 2013 with an F/+ ranking of only 16th. But by the end of the season, this was one of the five or six best teams in the country.
Adj. Points Per Game (first 3 games) : Opponent 27.1, Clemson 26.3 (minus-0.8)
: Opponent 27.1, Clemson 26.3 (minus-0.8) Adj. Points Per Game (next 5 games) : Clemson 38.4, Opponent 20.4 (plus-18.0)
: Clemson 38.4, Opponent 20.4 (plus-18.0) Adj. Points Per Game (last 5 games): Clemson 42.1, Opponent 18.3 (plus-23.8)
Clemson's ratings got penalized a bit by the fact that Georgia got destroyed by injuries (the Tigers were actually the only team to face the full-strength Dawgs all year, and one Georgia starter had already fallen by the end of the first quarter) and NC State collapsed after September. They faced the strongest version of both of those teams and played just well enough to survive.
But both the offense and defense found their respective grooves against Wake Forest, and things just escalated from there. The Tigers weren't good enough to keep up with Florida State, but nobody was. They whipped mediocre teams, and they fared as well as just about anybody in taking on two top-10 teams away from home to finish the season. This wasn't an elite team in September, but it almost certainly was in January.
So now we get to find out who was most responsible for last year's breakthrough. If Brent Venables' defense was the primary catalyst, that's very good news for 2014 -- Clemson returns most of a dominant unit and all of its defensive line. If the offense was still carrying most of the weight here, that could be problematic, at least at the start of the season. Morris' offense is going to be raw, inexperienced, and full of upside it might not realize until later in the year.
Youth is often a reason for September-to-November improvement, and while that doesn't explain 2013, it might explain 2014.
Offense
FIVE FACTORS -- OFFENSE Raw Category Rk Opp. Adj. Category Rk EXPLOSIVENESS IsoPPP 1.23 27 IsoPPP+ 107.2 32 EFFICIENCY Succ. Rt. 49.2% 14 Succ. Rt. + 118.0 12 FIELD POSITION Def. Avg. FP 27.2 16 Def. FP+ 103.4 21 FINISHING DRIVES Pts. Per Trip in 40 4.7 27 Redzone S&P+ 97.7 72 TURNOVERS EXPECTED 23.6 ACTUAL 24 +0.4
Category Yards/
Game Rk S&P+ Rk Success
Rt. Rk PPP+ Rk OVERALL 9 13 12 8 RUSHING 56 32 16 43 PASSING 9 10 14 7 Standard Downs 9 11 25 Passing Downs 24 31 24
Q1 Rk 17 1st Down Rk 16 Q2 Rk 13 2nd Down Rk 29 Q3 Rk 24 3rd Down Rk 13 Q4 Rk 46
4. A new, old identity
When you look at the above numbers and forget what you know about Clemson's 2013 personnel, you see what is kind of a straight-forward spread attack. Efficiency-based passing. Passing to set up the run. Super-duper pace. Great efficiency and shaky red zone production. These sound pretty normal, which makes sense -- Chad Morris cut his teeth in Texas high school coaching, where the spread was first to emerge and take hold. He knows those principles well, and he teaches them even better.
At Clemson, however, this nearly generic vision of the spread took on a new identity when handed over to Tajh Boyd and Sammy Watkins. With Boyd, Clemson had a quarterback who was half Cam Newton and half Brett Favre, an efficient runner with a stubborn streak, a passer willing to take a hit in the name of getting the ball downfield. And in Watkins, they had one of the best all-around play-makers in the country, a receiver with strong hands and route-running and an athlete capable of taking a short pass a long way.
Without these two (and Martavis Bryant, a less unique weapon but a lovely post-up target downfield), the Morris offense became something distinguishable from other spreads. Without them, it will just be a spread.
Now, because of Morris' own abilities, and because of the blue-chip prospects around him, "less unique" doesn't equal "bad." There is enough depth at both running back and receiver to spread the ball around in a both effective and unpredictable fashion. It just won't be the same, is all.
Quarterback
Note: players in bold below are 2014 returnees. Players in italics are questionable with injury/suspension.
Player Ht, Wt 2014
Year Rivals Comp Att Yards TD INT Comp
Rate Sacks Sack Rate Yards/
Att. Tajh Boyd 283 413 3851 34 11 68.5% 31 7.0% 8.2 Cole Stoudt 6'4, 210 Sr. 3 stars (5.6) 46 58 413 5 0 79.3% 2 3.3% 6.8 Chad Kelly 10 17 58 0 0 58.8% 1 5.6% 3.1 Deshaun Watson 6'3, 190 Fr. 5 stars (6.1)
5. Stock up on bubble wrap
For all intents and purposes, Clemson currently has two quarterbacks on the roster. Granted, they're pretty damn good -- Cole Stoudt is a longtime backup who was nearly flawless in scrub time against S.C. State and Wake Forest last year and was at least competent against Florida State and Virginia, while freshman Deshaun Watson is a five-star, no-ceiling talent who was in for spring ball.
You could do much worse than having Stoudt and Watson on your two-deep. But to fill out a three-deep, you need to add a walk-on. Chad Kelly is gone, leaving CU with two and no more.
Watson suffered a broken collarbone this spring, and while he is expected to be fine in August, it was a scary reminder that the threat of injury is always lingering. And if Clemson suffers two of them in short succession this year, all bets are off. For all we know, former walk-ons Austin McCaskill and Nick Schuessler would fare just fine. But Swinney and Morris probably don't want to find out for sure.
(Through this lens, the thought of the line replacing three starters, including all-conference tackle Brandon Thomas, is a bit scary. Still, two full-time starters return, as do three others with starting experience. Recruiting hasn't been as high-caliber up front as it has in other units, but this was a good line last year and should be at least decent this year.)
Running Back
Player Pos. Ht, Wt 2014
Year Rivals Rushes Yards TD Yards/
Carry Hlt Yds/
Carry Opp.
Rate Roderick McDowell RB 189 1025 5 5.4 4.4 45.5% Tajh Boyd QB 123 614 10 5.0 3.3 45.5% D.J. Howard RB 6'0, 195 Sr. 3 stars (5.7) 57 213 2 3.7 4.2 28.1% Zac Brooks RB 6'1, 190 Jr. 4 stars (5.8) 48 246 2 5.1 3.3 41.7% C.J. Davidson RB 5'10, 190 Jr. NR 34 155 4 4.6 3.2 35.3% Chad Kelly QB 15 119 1 7.9 8.8 53.3% Cole Stoudt QB 6'4, 210 Sr. 3 stars (5.6) 12 62 2 5.2 2.4 58.3% Jay Jay McCullough TE 6'3, 235 So. 3 stars (5.5) 6 43 0 7.2 2.5 66.7% Tyshon Dye RB 5'11, 215 RSFr. 4 stars (5.8)
Wayne Gallman RB 6'1, 200 RSFr. 3 stars (5.7)
Adam Choice RB 5'10, 200 Fr. 4 stars (5.9)
Jae'lon Oglesby RB 5'11, 175 Fr. 4 stars (5.8)
Receiving Corps
Player Pos. Ht, Wt 2014
Year Rivals Targets Catches Yards Catch Rate Target
Rate %SD Yds/
Target NEY Real Yds/
Target RYPR Sammy Watkins WR 131 101 1464 77.1% 27.6% 64.5% 11.2 343 11.1 220.6 Martavis Bryant WR 65 42 828 64.6% 13.7% 67.9% 12.7 320 12.6 124.8 Adam Humphries WR 5'11, 190 Sr. 2 stars (5.4) 52 41 483 78.8% 10.9% 77.1% 9.3 32 8.4 72.8 Roderick McDowell RB 37 29 199 78.4% 7.8% 30.3% 5.4 -121 5.4 30.0 Germone Hopper WR 6'0, 180 So. 4 stars (5.9) 36 22 147 61.1% 7.6% 100.0% 4.1 -127 2.2 22.2 Mike Williams WR 6'3, 205 So. 4 stars (5.8) 30 20 316 66.7% 6.3% 55.0% 10.5 78 9.4 47.6 Stanton Seckinger TE 6'4, 230 Jr. 3 stars (5.5) 30 21 244 70.0% 6.3% 65.4% 8.1 0 8.2 36.8 Jordan Leggett TE 6'5, 240 So. 3 stars (5.7) 21 12 176 57.1% 4.4% 50.0% 8.4 21 13.0 26.5 Sam Cooper TE 6'6, 250 Sr. 2 stars (5.4) 13 6 50 46.2% 2.7% 33.3% 3.8 -37 5.4 7.5 Charone Peake WR 6'2, 205 Jr. 4 stars (5.9) 11 8 84 72.7% 2.3% 63.6% 7.6 -7 7.9 12.7 D.J. Howard RB 6'0, 195 Sr. 3 stars (5.7) 9 8 123 88.9% 1.9% 20.0% 13.7 40 11.9 18.5 Daniel Rodriguez WR 5'8, 175 Jr. NR 8 7 20 87.5% 1.7% N/A 2.5 -53 0.0 3.0 Jay Jay McCullough TE 6'3, 235 So. 3 stars (5.5) 5 4 17 80.0% 1.1% N/A 3.4 -27 0.0 2.6 Artavis Scott WR 5'11, 185 Fr. 4 stars (6.0) Kyrin Priester WR 6'1, 185 Fr. 3 stars (5.7) Demarre Kitt WR 6'1, 195 Fr. 4 stars (5.9) Trevion Thompson WR 6'3, 185 Fr. 4 stars (5.8) Milan Richard TE 6'3, 235 Fr. 4 stars (5.8)
6. New blood, for better or worse
A well-executed spread run by a strong quarterback can overcome a lack of standout skill-position talent, as long as there is plenty of competence. We really don't know about standouts at this point, but there are options.
It's an interesting mix of limited veterans and high-upside youngsters. At running back, you've got senior D.J. Howard and juniors Zac Brooks and C.J. Davidson, who combined to average 4.4 yards per carry (decent efficiency, no explosiveness) backing up Hot Rod McDowell. You've also got two four-star true freshmen and two high-caliber redshirt freshmen.
At receiver, you've got veteran possession receivers Adam Humphries and Charone Peake (combined: 11.6 yards per catch, 78 percent catch rate in 2013), four-star sophomores Germone Hopper and Mike Williams, four four-star true freshmen, and three nearly interchangeable tight ends. I'm excited about Williams as a Bryant-type of downfield threat, but this unit's strength will be in its numbers, not its singular upside.
Of course, you'd still like to have the go-to star to go to in crunch time, and there's a good chance that if one emerges, he won't truly become the clear No. 1 until after the Georgia and FSU games.
Offensive Line
Category Adj.
Line Yds Std.
Downs
LY/carry Pass.
Downs
LY/carry Opp.
Rate Power
Success
Rate Stuff
Rate Adj.
Sack Rate Std.
Downs
Sack Rt. Pass.
Downs
Sack Rt. Team 112.1 3.15 3.53 42.5% 74.2% 18.8% 107.1 5.6% 6.6% Rank 21 32 38 29 31 59 60 88 60
Player Pos. Ht, Wt 2014
Year Rivals Career Starts Honors/Notes Brandon Thomas LT 36 2nd All-ACC Tyler Shatley RG 27 David Beasley LG 6'4, 320 Sr. 3 stars (5.7) 19 Gifford Timothy RT 17 Ryan Norton C 6'3, 280 Jr. 3 stars (5.6) 13 Kalon Davis RG 6'5, 340 Sr. 3 stars (5.6) 8 Shaq Anthony RT 6'4, 280 Jr. 3 stars (5.7) 5 Isaiah Battle LT 6'7, 275 Jr. 3 stars (5.7) 4 Reid Webster LG 6'3, 300 Sr. 3 stars (5.7) 0 Joe Gore RT 6'5, 300 Jr. 3 stars (5.7) 0 Eric MacLain LG 6'4, 295 Jr. 4 stars (5.9) 0 Jay Guillermo C 6'3, 315 So. 3 stars (5.6) 0 Tyrone Crowder RG 6'2, 345 RSFr. 4 stars (5.8)
Defense
FIVE FACTORS -- DEFENSE Raw Category Rk Opp. Adj. Category Rk EXPLOSIVENESS IsoPPP 1.32 117 IsoPPP+ 91.4 107 EFFICIENCY Succ. Rt. 34.0% 5 Succ. Rt. + 125.8 5 FIELD POSITION Off. Avg. FP 31.6 33 Off. FP+ 100.5 55 FINISHING DRIVES Pts. Per Trip in 40 4.5 96 Redzone S&P+ 121.4 11 TURNOVERS EXPECTED 25.7 ACTUAL 30.0 +4.3
Category Yards/
Game Rk S&P+ Rk Success
Rt. Rk PPP+ Rk OVERALL 24 11 5 31 RUSHING 53 12 7 26 PASSING 16 17 9 53 Standard Downs 13 5 105 Passing Downs 18 12 79
Q1 Rk 12 1st Down Rk 15 Q2 Rk 23 2nd Down Rk 5 Q3 Rk 17 3rd Down Rk 27 Q4 Rk 28
7. ATTTAAAAAACK
Some defenses master the art of the bend-don't-break, handing you four to six yards but never allowing big plays.
But in 2013, a set of defenses brought back the art of the killing-machine defense. Michigan State, Clemson, Baylor, and Oklahoma State all packed the line of scrimmage and risked big plays in the name of minimal efficiency, and it worked quite well. Michigan State led the way, but Clemson did just fine as well, ranking 13th in Def. F/+ for the season.
Third-year defensive coordinator Brent Venables didn't need much time to craft a defense that works a lot like his 2007-08 Oklahoma defenses, which had a deep roster of attacking options of the line and allowed him to go to a semi-permanent nickel formation. Four linemen up front can almost create blitz pressure themselves, allowing seven super-fast defenders to sink into coverage.
Clemson leveraged offenses into short gains and mistakes. When the Tigers allowed a big play, it was a huge one -- they ranked 44th in allowing 175 10+ yard gains but ranked 81st in allowing 28 30+ yard gains -- but you can allow occasional big gains when you're forcing countless three-and-outs and 30+ turnovers. Clemson was fun and aggressive on defense in 2013, and while there may be a few more glitches in the secondary this year, the overall identity probably won't change much.
Defensive Line
Category Adj.
Line Yds Std.
Downs
LY/carry Pass.
Downs
LY/carry Opp.
Rate Power
Success
Rate Stuff
Rate Adj.
Sack Rate Std.
Downs
Sack Rt. Pass.
Downs
Sack Rt. Team 121.4 2.63 2.46 31.7% 58.1% 25.1% 169.6 6.9% 12.9% Rank 9 26 9 6 17 9 3 18 2
Name Pos Ht, Wt 2014
Year Rivals GP Tackles % of Team TFL Sacks Int PBU FF FR Grady Jarrett DT 6'1, 295 Sr. 3 stars (5.5) 13 45.0 6.1% 10.5 2.0 0 0 0 0 Vic Beasley DE 6'2, 235 Sr. 3 stars (5.7) 13 36.0 4.9% 23.0 13.0 0 6 4 1 Corey Crawford DE 6'5, 270 Sr. 4 stars (5.8) 13 35.0 4.7% 10.5 2.5 1 4 1 0 Shaq Lawson DE 6'3, 270 So. 4 stars (5.8) 13 23.5 3.2% 10.0 4.0 0 1 0 0 D.J. Reader DT 6'2, 325 Jr. 3 stars (5.7) 13 17.0 2.3% 5.0 3.0 0 0 0 0 Josh Watson DT 6'4, 290 Sr. 4 stars (6.0) 13 16.0 2.2% 3.0 1.0 0 0 0 0 DeShawn Williams DT 6'1, 295 Sr. 3 stars (5.6) 13 15.5 2.1% 1.5 0.0 0 1 0 0 Tavaris Barnes DT 6'3, 270 Sr. 4 stars (5.8) 13 7.5 1.0% 2.0 1.0 0 1 0 0 Roderick Byers DE 6'3, 290 Jr. 3 stars (5.6) 6 5.5 0.7% 1.0 0.0 0 0 0 0 Martin Aiken DE 6'2, 230 So. 3 stars (5.7) 12 5.0 0.7% 0.5 0.0 0 0 0 0 Kevin Dodd DT 6'5, 275 Jr. 3 stars (5.6) 4 4.5 0.6% 0.5 0.0 0 0 0 0 Carlos Watkins DT 6'3, 295 Jr. 4 stars (5.9) 3 3.5 0.5% 1.5 0.0 0 0 0 0 Scott Pagano DT 6'2, 290 RSFr. 4 stars (5.8) Ebenezer Ogundeko DE 6'2, 255 RSFr. 4 stars (5.8) Dane Rogers DE 6'3, 270 RSFr. 3 stars (5.7)
8. If this isn't the best defensive line in the country ...
... it's in the top three or four. Clemson's was one of only three defenses to rank in the top 10 in both Adj. Line Yards and Adj. Sack Rate (the others: Virginia Tech and Tulane), and the entire two-deep returns in 2014. Senior end Vic Beasley is one of the best pure pass rushers in college football, and while he takes some risks and falls out of position from time to time, the rest of the defense is adept at covering for him. The tackles position is loaded and deep, and in Shaq Lawson, Corey Crawford, and others, Clemson has quite a few ends capable of standing up to run blocking. This is a nearly flawless unit; it's amazing to think of how much this line struggled barely two years ago.
Linebackers
Name Pos Ht, Wt 2014
Year Rivals GP Tackles % of Team TFL Sacks Int PBU FF FR Spencer Shuey WLB 13 74.5 10.1% 6.5 1.0 0 1 0 1 Stephone Anthony MLB 6'2, 245 Sr. 5 stars (6.1) 13 70.5 9.5% 15.0 4.5 1 3 2 0 Quandon Christian SLB 13 32.0 4.3% 9.0 1.0 0 2 1 1 Tony Steward WLB 6'1, 230 Sr. 5 stars (6.1) 13 16.5 2.2% 2.5 1.0 0 0 1 0 Ben Boulware WLB 5'11, 230 So. 4 stars (5.8) 11 16.5 2.2% 1.5 0.0 1 0 0 0 Kellen Jones LB 6'1, 225 Jr. 3 stars (5.7) 3 6.5 0.9% 2.0 1.0 0 0 0 0 T.J. Burrell SLB 5'11, 215 So. 3 stars (5.5) 13 3.5 0.5% 0.0 0.0 0 0 0 0 B.J. Goodson MLB 6'1, 235 Jr. 3 stars (5.6) 7 2.0 0.3% 0.0 0.0 0 0 0 0 Dorian O'Daniel SLB 6'2, 210 RSFr. 4 stars (5.9) Korie Rogers LB 6'2, 220 Fr. 4 stars (6.0)
Secondary
Name Pos Ht, Wt 2014
Year Rivals GP Tackles % of Team TFL Sacks Int PBU FF FR Robert Smith S 5'10, 210 Sr. 3 stars (5.6) 13 59.5 8.0% 2.5 1 1 4 0 0 Bashaud Breeland CB 13 47.5 6.4% 5 2 4 10 2 0 Jayron Kearse S 6'4, 205 So. 4 stars (5.8) 12 35.5 4.8% 0.5 0 4 0 1 0 Travis Blanks NB 6'0, 200 Jr. 4 stars (6.0) 11 28.0 3.8% 0 0 0 0 2 0 Darius Robinson CB 13 27.0 3.6% 3 0 3 1 0 0 Martin Jenkins CB 5'9, 185 Sr. 3 stars (5.5) 13 23.5 3.2% 1 0 1 1 0 0 Garry Peters CB 6'0, 185 Sr. 4 stars (5.8) 10 18.5 2.5% 4.5 0 0 4 1 0 Korrin Wiggins NB 5'11, 190 So. 3 stars (5.7) 12 13.0 1.8% 0.5 0 2 2 0 0 Jadar Johnson S 6'1, 195 So. 3 stars (5.7) 11 6.0 0.8% 0 0 0 0 0 0 Jerrodd Williams S 12 5.5 0.7% 0 0 0 1 0 0 Taylor Watson S 5'10, 210 Sr. NR 11 5.5 0.7% 0 0 0 0 0 0 Cordrea Tankersley CB 6'0, 195 So. 3 stars (5.7) 12 4.5 0.6% 0.5 0 0 0 0 0 C.J. Jones CB 9 1.5 0.2% 0 0 0 0 0 0 T.J. Green S 6'3, 195 So. 2 stars (5.4) Mackensie Alexander CB 5'11, 185 RSFr. 4 stars (6.0) Adrian Baker CB 5'11, 165 RSFr. 3 stars (5.7)
9. An impeachable back seven
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As good as the line was, it got plenty of help from the rest of the defense. Linebackers Spencer Shuey, Stephone Anthony, and Quandon Christian were spectacular in run support (24 non-sack tackles for loss between them), and corners Bashaud Breeland and Darius Robinson were aggressive on the outside, combining for seven interceptions and 11 break-ups.
Four of the five players I just mentioned are gone. Anthony's back, as are last year's top three safeties (Robert Smith, Jayron Kearse, Travis Blanks), but there might be some holes to exploit. If you think of the line as a unit that doesn't have much room for growth, one that is already as good as it can be, then losses in the back seven could cause this defense to regress overall.
"Could." There's still upside. Either five-star senior Tony Steward or four-star sophomore Ben Boulware will replace Shuey. Super-aggressive senior corner Garry Peters could hold up while playing a larger role, and sophomore Cordrea Tankersley and redshirt freshman Mackensie Alexander both surpassed Peters on the post-spring depth chart. Clemson still has more speed and depth than most of its ACC brethren, so it's conceivable that the drop-off will be small or non-existent. Still, it's something to watch.
Special Teams
Punter Ht, Wt 2014
Year Punts Avg TB FC I20 FC/I20
Ratio Bradley Pinion 6'5, 230 Jr. 56 39.4 0 N/A 20 N/A
Kicker Ht, Wt 2014
Year Kickoffs Avg TB OOB TB% Bradley Pinion 6'5, 230 Jr. 79 60.6 38 3 48.1% Ammon Lakip 5'10, 200 Jr. 11 60.4 1 1 9.1%
Place-Kicker Ht, Wt 2014
Year PAT FG
(0-39) Pct FG
(40+) Pct Chandler Catanzaro 61-62 9-10 90.0% 4-4 100.0% Ammon Lakip 5'10, 200 Jr. 5-5 0-1 0.0% 1-1 100.0%
Returner Pos. Ht, Wt 2014
Year Returns Avg. TD Sammy Watkins KR 14 20.9 0 Germone Hopper KR 6'0, 180 So. 4 17.3 0 Adam Humphries PR 5'11, 190 Sr. 20 10.6 0 Daniel Rodriguez PR 5'8, 175 Jr. 5 6.2 0
Category Rk Special Teams F/+ 78 Field Goal Efficiency 24 Punt Return Efficiency 121 Kick Return Efficiency 73 Punt Efficiency 26 Kickoff Efficiency 78 Opponents' Field Goal Efficiency 78
2014 Schedule & Projection Factors
2014 Schedule Date Opponent Proj. Rk 30-Aug at Georgia 10 6-Sep S.C. State NR 20-Sep at Florida State 1 27-Sep North Carolina 35 4-Oct N.C. State 66 11-Oct Louisville 16 18-Oct at Boston College 69 25-Oct Syracuse 67 6-Nov at Wake Forest 83 15-Nov at Georgia Tech 44 22-Nov Georgia State 128 29-Nov South Carolina 7
Five-Year F/+ Rk 17.9% (19) Two-Year Recruiting Rk 13 TO Margin/Adj. TO Margin* 6 / 2.0 TO Luck/Game +1.5 Approx. Ret. Starters (Off. / Def.) 12 (4, 8)
10. Welcome to the starting lineup, Cole (or Deshaun)
Now go on the road beat Georgia and Florida State.
Schedule will dictate perceptions for Clemson in 2014. Even if the Tigers indeed finish the season in the F/+ top 10, there's a good chance they won't be good enough right out of the gates to win at Georgia or Florida State. Hell, a certifiable top-10 team might go 0-2 in those games. A 1-2 start, followed by eight straight mostly non-noteworthy games, will likely create a "Clemson's rebuilding" narrative.
But if the Tigers play well at home (and therefore take down both UNC and Louisville), they could very well be 9-2 when South Carolina visits.
I like this team. Both Clemson and South Carolina this year could be examples of the power of depth over star power. Both are losing irreplaceable players, but both have tons of options in creating a new identity.
The offensive line and cornerback positions give me pause, but only Georgia and Florida State can fully exploit the former issue, and less than half the schedule can exploit the latter. This might not actually be the fifth-best team in the country, but I'll be shocked if a three-year streak of 10+ wins isn't four at the end of 2014.
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How many people in the United States identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT)? A large, nationally representative survey conducted by Gallup last year put the overall number at 4.1% of the U.S. population. It is worth noting that this number increased from 3.5% in 2012, which suggests that as the LGBT community has made more social and political gains--including nationwide marriage equality--more and more Americans have decided to come out.
The overall number is just one small part of the story here, though. What is even more interesting about this survey is that it reveals a major generational divide when it comes to how many Americans identify as LGBT. You can see exactly what I'm talking about in the table below.
Percentage of Americans responding affirmatively to the question "Do you personally identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender?" by birth cohort (2012-2016) |
Filed: Tuesday, 17th June 2014
By: Staff Writer
West Ham have completed the 9million signing of Anderlecht defender Cheikhou Kouyate. According to De Standaard, the Senegal international has signed a four-year contract with the Hammers after successfully completing a medical yesterday.
The Hammers are reported to have paid circa 9million - approximately £7.2million - for the highly-rated 24-year-old, who has been on West Ham's radar for several weeks.
Anderlecht are set to replace Kouyate with Polish international Gregorz Krychowiak, who was also watched extensively by West Ham in recent months.
Although at the time of writing the signing is yet to be confirmed by West Ham United, Kouyate becomes the club's second new arrival of the summer following the capture of Argentinian forward Mauro Zarate last month.
Kouyate's first interview (courtesy of whufc.com)
Cheikhou 'Wile E' Kouyate: Season stats
2013/14: Anderlecht P46 G1 Y4 R2
2012/13: Anderlecht P45 G1 Y7 R1
2011/12: Anderlecht P48 G0 Y4 R0
2010/11: Anderlecht P33 G2 Y6 R0
2009/10: Anderlecht P33 G2 Y2 R0
2008/09: KV Kortkijk P30 G3 Y2 R1
2007/08: Brussels FC P10 G0 Y1 R0
Anderlecht P46 G1 Y4 R2Anderlecht P45 G1 Y7 R1Anderlecht P48 G0 Y4 R0Anderlecht P33 G2 Y6 R0Anderlecht P33 G2 Y2 R0KV Kortkijk P30 G3 Y2 R1Brussels FC P10 G0 Y1 R0
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A few years ago I was diagnosed with two illnesses that I was told I would have my whole life, and that they were absolutely incurable. I was told I would have to take daily medications and weekly IV infusions to keep the illnesses at bay, but even then I would still have them. These two illnesses were Crohn’s Disease and Rheumatoid Arthritis. Today, I don’t have any symptoms of either of these illnesses. I don’t take any daily medications (besides a multivitamin) and I also am not getting any IV infusions. I even had a blood test done, which showed that I am in perfect health, have no signs of infection or inflammation and here’s the most interesting part… the test showed no signs that my body EVER had these illnesses in the past, although I definitely did. The CAT scans, colonoscopies, and the chronic daily pain (unbearable pain) I used to have confirmed that. So was it a “miracle”? Did the illnesses just go away on their own? Not exactly.
After months of research, I figured out the best alternative remedies, natural supplements and “techniques” I could do that would apparently help to cure these illnesses. I believe that there wasn’t just one “cure-all” supplement I was taking that stopped the symptoms of my illnesses, but rather the combination of different supplements and alternative remedies that I give the credit to. I want to share these supplements and remedies with you, so you can use them to help with (or potentially cure) any illness or condition you may have. I highly suggest you take notes, or simply copy-and-paste this article into somewhere on your computer, or print it out.
* Disclaimer: This is information that has worked for me, but may not necessarily work for you. I do not make any medical claims or promises that this information will work for you. All information is intended for your general knowledge only and is not a substitute for medical advice or treatment for specific medical conditions.
For those with IBS, Crohn’s, inflammatory illnesses and autoimmune disorders:
Before I get to the list of the top 3 things that can be used to treat (and potentially cure) any illness, I must mention something that highly contributed to curing my symptoms. I had found a PDF called “No More Crohns” which I had downloaded and printed out. I don’t have the link to it anymore, but you may be able to find it somewhere online.
However, the PDF consisted mostly of a diet and supplements. I don’t remember the exact diet in the PDF, but the most important part of the diet is foods that are ALKALINE. This is because disease and illness can not survive in a body that is alkaline, instead of acidic. Simply do a search on Google for alkaline foods, or click here for a list of alkaline foods that you will want to consume as much as possible. You can also buy alkaline water, which will help as well.
The second part of the ebook consisted of 3 supplements you want to take everyday. These 3 supplements are: Bosweilla, Olive Leaf and L-Glutamine. These supplements get rid of inflammation in the body, and will help you tremendoulsy, especially when taken during a flare up. However, I recommend taking them every day. Lastly, the PDF also recommended taking small amounts of food grade hydrogen peroxide on a daily basis, also known as stabalized oxygen, and I will talk about this (and why it works) in the list below.
1) Your thoughts and emotions directly affect your body and your health. Negative thinking and negative subconscious beliefs about yourself create illness and disease.
There is too much information to go into detail about how our thoughts and emotions affect our health, but all you need to know right now is that this theory is backed up by scientific evidence and you can do your own research on this, if you want to learn more. There’s a TON of information about this. I’m putting this as the #1 technique that helped me cure the illnesses, because I really do believe it was what contributed the most. I won’t go into my life story and my past because it’s not really necessary for me to go into that. The point is, you need to start practicing being completely and constantly aware of your thoughts and your emotions.
Most of us think we’re aware of our thoughts and emotions, but we actually go through life on auto-pilot and many times we let our emotions get the best of us. Stop becoming angry or upset (at others OR yourself) stop holding grudges and let the past stay in the past. Start becoming aware of the present moment and realize that everything is simply an experience. When you let negative thoughts and emotions get the best of you, you actually are affecting your body and your health in a negative way. Other than practicing being aware of your thoughts and emotions, one way to get rid of negative emotions is practicing EFT (emotional freedom technique) and you should Google or YouTube this to learn it. It’s a very simple process to learn and trust me, it WILL help you tremendously. You can also simply click here to learn the basics of it.
Many of the negative thoughts and beliefs that cause illness and disease are actually subconscious beliefs, that we may not even be consciously aware of. These are negative beliefs that are created from past experiences, usually when we are very young. The great thing about EFT is that it allows you to permanently clear/release these negative subconscious beliefs, even if you are not aware of them. For instance, one of the negative subconscious beliefs associated with inflammation and stomach problems is “I am not good enough” and not truly loving yourself. By using EFT, you can clear this subconscious belief and even install a new positive belief of “I AM good enough” and “I love myself”. If you want a step-by-step guide, I go into detail about EFT and many other clearing techniques in my program Theta Energetics.
2) Get Colloidal Silver and Food Grade Hydrogen Peroxide.
Both colloidal silver and food grade hydrogen peroxide (aka “stabilized oxygen”) are supplements that are very good at getting rid of inflammation and illness in the body, and you can buy both of them online or at most health food stores. I recommend taking a tablespoon of the colloidal silver once a day for a week, then skip a week, and again every day for a week and so on. Take a tablespoon of the food grade hydrogen peroxide once a day every day. Both of these things will actually kill off any bacteria and microbes in your body. There is one product that includes both colloidal silver and food grade hydrogen peroxide which I recommend, and actually tastes pretty good. You can find it here:
http://www.iherb.com/OxyLife-Stabilized-Oxygen-With-Colloidal-Silver-and-Aloe-Vera-Mountain-Berry-16-oz-473-ml/12974
3) Get a Zapper. This is a small device you wear either during the day, or at night while you sleep which will also kill off any bacteria and microbes in your body. It uses a very low voltage alternating current pulsing from two electrodes that you won’t feel, but it is enough to do it’s job. You can find one here:
http://www.orgoniseafrica.com/clark-zapper-shop/orgone-zapper.html#.UrNyhL8yCl0
The combination of those 3 things should be enough to help you out. You can (and should) also look into specific natural supplements for your illness or condition using Google, as well as looking into “emotional root causes” for your illness or condition. Click here for my chart of emotional root causes.
The main point of this post is that, if you do your research, you may just be able to cure a condition you have that you thought was incurable. Also, your beliefs play a large role in it. I hope this information helps you, and I wish you the best of luck. If you have enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing to my newsletter (with the form on the sidebar) and/or sharing this post on Facebook or Twitter.
You can also contact me directly at gwpmike@gmail.com
To your health and wellness,
Mike Sheehan
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Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, infamous as one of the co-founders of The Pirate Bay Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, infamous as one of the co-founders of The Pirate Bay torrent tracker , is facing even more hacking charges, this time in Denmark
Warg had just stood trial in Stockholm over major hacking charges and is awaiting a decision.
The co-founder and an unnamed 20-year-old Danish man have been in arrested and are accused of accessing the country's driver's license database, social security database and stealing the emails and passwords of over 10,000 police officers and tax authorities.
If convicted of all charges, both men could face six years in prison.
Warg had stood trial in Sweden over charges of hacking Logica, an IT firm that works with Swedish tax authorities. That attack eventually led to 9,000 Swedes having their personal identity numbers unveiled. |
Audio's been the canary-in-the-coal-mine of digital interactivity, with digital video riding its coattails, and it's no wonder because, done right, video requires lots more digits than audio.
The winding course of the broadband river to the home is straightening bionomically, as Michael Rothschild might put it (http://www.bionomics.orgwww.bionomics.org). What the entertainment ecosystem demands, the network flaura and fauna will supply. We are the beneficiaries of a rising tide of digitization, a bionomic flood, and the global competition for our attention (and wallets).
The transition from acoustic to electric was far more savage than that from electric to digital. Rights holders eventually figure out the customer is always right (whether or not we agree with the customer, no copyright law can force open a wallet), and here too money will find a more efficient path between artist and fan regardless of the rightholder reluctance.
Ultimately, interactivity will be direct to centralized servers. In the meantime, buffers and caches will cover for network inefficiency, whether controlled by the network or the end-user, as with smart buffers like Tivo (now sporting USB ports) or Replay (now shipping with Ethernet built-in). |
Donald Trump, for instance, won about two-thirds of whites without a college degree—the most for any Republican since Ronald Reagan in his 1984 landslide—and they provided almost exactly half of his total votes, even though they represented only about one-third of the electorate, according to media exit polls. Similarly, 152 House Republicans, out of 241 total, represent heavily blue-collar districts where the white population exceeds the national average and the portion of those whites with at least a four-year degree lags below the national average. The GOP’s overwhelming advantage in those working-class districts underpins their House majority.
Using results from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey, with supplemental data from an Urban Institute analysis of transfer payments, the new CBPP study challenges the frequent assumption that government anti-poverty programs primarily benefit minority communities. Instead, by examining the experience of working-age adults ages 18 to 64, the study presents evidence that education levels, not race, are the key dividing line in the programs’ reach.
“Safety-net programs are particularly beneficial for adults without a college degree,” wrote the study’s authors, Isaac Shapiro, Danilo Trisi, and Raheem Chaudhry. “The vast majority of working-age adults lifted above the poverty line by government benefits and tax credits are people lacking a college degree.”
The study’s biggest surprise may be how many of those beneficiaries are the non-college-educated whites critical to GOP fortunes. The study found that without accounting for government benefits, the poverty rate stood at nearly 25 percent for working-age white adults in families where no one holds at least a four-year college degree. That represents 14.1 million people in all.
But after accounting for the impact of federal anti-poverty and income-support programs—including Social Security, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (known formerly as food stamps), Supplemental Security Income, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (generally described as welfare), and the earned-income and children’s tax credits—6.2 million of those non-college-educated white adults were raised above the poverty line. That reduced their poverty rate to less than one in seven, and meant that government benefits lifted fully 44 percent of otherwise poor, non-college-educated whites above the poverty line.
African Americans, Hispanics, and members of other races without advanced degrees confronted even higher poverty rates than working-class whites. But they didn’t gain quite as much from the federal anti-poverty programs. Although the CBPP analysts have not fully isolated the cause of that disparity, they say one factor may be the important role of Social Security in lifting people from poverty. That benefits whites most because they comprise the vast majority of today’s older Americans. |
The trial of two activists who occupied the roof of the G4S corporate headquarters near London will be used as a further opportunity to highlight the company’s complicity with Israeli apartheid Stop G4S
British firm Good Energy has announced that it will end its business relationship with G4S, the private security giant with a track record of complicity in Israel’s human rights abuses.
Good Energy claims to be committed to high ethical standards but had contracted a G4S company to conduct door-to-door energy meter readings since 2008. G4S provides equipment and services to Israeli prisons and checkpoints in the occupied West Bank and has been involved in serious abuses in the UK deportation system and other privatized services that were previously in public ownership. The recent decision not to procecute G4S or any of its staff over their role in the death of Jimmy Mubenga, an Angolan who died on a deporation flight while being “restrained” by G4S guards, has sparked outrage.
In a statement published on its website last week, Good Energy hinted that it had felt the pressure by campaigners, saying that “feedback from customers” was one of the reasons behind its decision to drop G4S. This small but significant victory shows that the rapidly emerging campaign against G4S is already succeeding in toxifying the G4S brand.
G4S in the dock
The Good Energy annoucement came as the trial of two activists who occupied the roof of the G4S headquarters near London last month got underway.
As Corporate Watch reports, both activists entered “not guilty” pleas to charges of aggravated trespass under Section 68 of the 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act:
Both defendants pleaded “not guilty” on the basis that, among other things, the activity they are accused of obstructing/disrupting is unlawful (in reference to G4S’s contract with the Israeli Prison Service and services to Israeli settlements and military checkpoints, the use of unlawful restraint techniques in immigration detention centers and so on). Section 68 states that a person commits the offense of aggravated trespass if he or she trespasses on land where persons are engaged in a lawful activity with the intention of intimidating those persons, obstructing or disrupting that activity. The draconian bail conditions that had been imposed by the police (not to trespass anywhere in the UK, not to enter the borough of Crawley, and not to enter any land or building associated with G4S anywhere within the UK) were varied by the court. The first two conditions were removed altogether and the third was limited to the boundaries of the G4S HQ concerned. The court seemed to agree with the defendants that the original condition meant they could not enter or use numerous public and private buildings “associated with G4S” (where the company provides security, for example), from banks, hospitals and stations to prisons and possibly the court building itself. A court hearing date was set for 3 and 4 December 2012 at Horsham and Haywards Heath magistrates courts. |
As co-founder and GM of BioWare, I’m very proud of the ME3 team; I personally believe Mass Effect 3 is the best work we’ve yet created. So, it’s incredibly painful to receive feedback from our core fans that the game’s endings were not up to their expectations. Our first instinct is to defend our work and point to the high ratings offered by critics – but out of respect to our fans, we need to accept the criticism and feedback with humility.
To Mass Effect 3 players, from Dr. Ray Muzyka, co-founder of BioWare
As co-founder and GM of BioWare, I’m very proud of the ME3 team; I personally believe Mass Effect 3 is the best work we’ve yet created. So, it’s incredibly painful to receive feedback from our core fans that the game’s endings were not up to their expectations. Our first instinct is to defend our work and point to the high ratings offered by critics – but out of respect to our fans, we need to accept the criticism and feedback with humility.
I believe passionately that games are an art form, and that the power of our medium flows from our audience, who are deeply involved in how the story unfolds, and who have the uncontested right to provide constructive criticism. At the same time, I also believe in and support the artistic choices made by the development team. The team and I have been thinking hard about how to best address the comments on ME3’s endings from players, while still maintaining the artistic integrity of the game.
Mass Effect 3 concludes a trilogy with so much player control and ownership of the story that it was hard for us to predict the range of emotions players would feel when they finished playing through it. The journey you undertake in Mass Effect provokes an intense range of highly personal emotions in the player; even so, the passionate reaction of some of our most loyal players to the current endings in Mass Effect 3 is something that has genuinely surprised us. This is an issue we care about deeply, and we will respond to it in a fair and timely way. We’re already working hard to do that.
To that end, since the game launched, the team has been poring over everything they can find about reactions to the game – industry press, forums, Facebook, and Twitter, just to name a few. The Mass Effect team, like other teams across the BioWare Label within EA, consists of passionate people who work hard for the love of creating experiences that excite and delight our fans. I’m honored to work with them because they have the courage and strength to respond to constructive feedback.
Building on their research, Exec Producer Casey Hudson and the team are hard at work on a number of game content initiatives that will help answer the questions, providing more clarity for those seeking further closure to their journey. You’ll hear more on this in April. We’re working hard to maintain the right balance between the artistic integrity of the original story while addressing the fan feedback we’ve received. This is in addition to our existing plan to continue providing new Mass Effect content and new full games, so rest assured that your journey in the Mass Effect universe can, and will, continue.
The reaction to the release of Mass Effect 3 has been unprecedented. On one hand, some of our loyal fans are passionately expressing their displeasure about how their game concluded; we care about this feedback, and we’re planning to directly address it. However, most folks appear to agree that the game as a whole is exceptional, with more than 75 critics giving it a perfect review score and a review average in the mid-90s. Net, I’m proud of the team, but we can and must always strive to do better.
Some of the criticism that has been delivered in the heat of passion by our most ardent fans, even if founded on valid principles, such as seeking more clarity to questions or looking for more closure, for example – has unfortunately become destructive rather than constructive. We listen and will respond to constructive criticism, but much as we will not tolerate individual attacks on our team members, we will not support or respond to destructive commentary.
If you are a Mass Effect fan and have input for the team – we respect your opinion and want to hear it. We’re committed to address your constructive feedback as best we can. In return, I’d ask that you help us do that by supporting what I truly believe is the best game BioWare has yet crafted. I urge you to do your own research: play the game, finish it and tell us what you think. Tell your friends if you feel it’s a good game as a whole. Trust that we are doing our damndest, as always, to address your feedback. As artists, we care about our fans deeply and we appreciate your support.
Thank you for your feedback – we are listening.
Ray
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Hamas claimed responsibility for a car ramming terror attack in Jerusalem on Wednesday in which a Palestinian man drove his car into pedestrians, killing a border policeman and injuring more than a dozen other people.
The Islamist terror organization, which rules the Gaza Strip, also called for a third intifada in Jerusalem.
Hamas spokesman Mushir al-Masri tweeted a message of support for the attack.
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“We join hands with those who avenge the blood of those injured in al-Aqsa,” he wrote, referring to the Temple Mount enclosure.
The Islamic Jihad terror group described the attack as “heroic” and said it was the response of the Palestinian people to continued attacks on the al-Aqsa Mosque, Israel Radio reported.
Palestinian Ma’an news agency identified the terrorist as 48-year-old Ibrahim al-Akary, from Shuafat in East Jerusalem.
Police said the driver plowed into several pedestrians at a light rail station on the corner of Bar Lev and Shimon Hatzadik streets, close to the Border Police headquarters on Route 1, and then continued driving along the tracks, hitting several cars along the way until finally crashing to a halt.
Akary got out of his commercial van and began attacking a group of policemen with a metal bar before Border Police at the scene shot and killed him.
Hamas’s Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades tweeted out pictures it said showed the man, who it called Akazi, one of which showed him lying on the ground after being shot.
The attacker’s brother, Musa Muhammad al-Akary, served 19 years in an Israeli prison for the 1992 kidnapping and murder of IDF soldier Nissim Toledano. He was released in the 2011 deal that freed IDF soldier Gilad Shalit from Hamas captivity, and was expelled to Turkey.
The incident came amid increasing violence in East Jerusalem and on the Temple Mount as security forces clash with Palestinian rioters.
On Wednesday the site was briefly closed after Palestinians attacked police with rocks and fireworks. Police dispersed the masked rioters near the Mughrabi Gate to the compound with methods including stun grenades, a police spokesman told The Times of Israel.
Israel Radio reported that police chased the rioters into the al-Aqsa Mosque. Police took the rare measure of entering several meters into the mosque, where they saw a stash of stones, bottles, and Molotov cocktails that the demonstrators had prepared. |
CNN says it kept Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway off the air Sunday, in part, because she lacks “credibility.” But when has that ever stopped the network before?
The move came after Conway defended President Trump’s restrictions on refugees and immigrants entering the country by noting President Barack Obama had also ordered a “ban” on Iraqi refugees, after two Iraqis who’d come to America were “behind the Bowling Green [Kentucky] massacre.”
No, there was no “massacre.” Conway later said she just misspoke — she’d meant to say “terrorists,” not “massacre.”
No matter: The left pounced, accusing her of trying to spread “fake news.” Then The New York Times reported that CNN said it nixed Conway in part because of “serious questions about her credibility.”
How rich. Just weeks ago, CNN itself spread the fake news about Russian operatives having “compromising personal and financial information” on Trump.
Nor did CNN see any reason to ban then-UN Ambassador Susan Rice for falsely claiming the Benghazi attack was a response to an anti-Muslim video. And unlike in Conway’s case, that false story was driven by intentional efforts to avoid embarrassing Obama during the 2012 campaign.
OK, everyone knows CNN and Team Trump aren’t on the best of terms. The White House even threatened to stop letting top staffers appear on the network.
But when Trump’s folks did offer to send Conway — one of the president’s chief aides — CNN turned her down.
Let’s get real: Conway couldn’t possibly have expected anyone to think there was an unreported “massacre” in Kentucky. She simply misspoke. And she later linked to an ABC News story about “several dozen suspected terrorist bombmakers” who may have been let into the country as refugees.
Two al Qaeda-Iraq terrorists in Bowling Green, the story said, admitted they’d attacked US soldiers in Iraq, and the State Department then stopped processing Iraqi refugees for six months — “even for many who had heroically helped US forces.”
Conway’s defense of Trump, that is, was largely sound. Maybe that’s why CNN nixed her? |
In 1936, the Jat-Pat-Todak Mandal (Forum for the Break-up of Caste), a Lahore-based Hindu reformist group, invited B.R. Ambedkar to deliver its annual lecture. They wanted a copy of his speech in advance, and when Ambedkar shared it with them, the progressive-minded, reformist, anti-caste Hindus found the contents “unbearable". They withdrew their invitation. Ambedkar never got to deliver his speech. He ended up self-publishing it — at his own expense — under the title ‘Annihilation of Caste’.
Three-quarters of a century after its publication, Annihilation of Caste (AoC) still remains largely unread by its target audience — caste Hindus, or the people Ambedkar called ‘the Touchables’ (the terms ‘Touchables’, ‘privileged castes’, ’caste Hindus’, ’savarnas’, and ’non-Dalits’ are used interchangeably in this essay).
All these years, AoC has been kept in circulation, in multiple translations, largely by small Dalit presses and Dalit readers. It has served, and continues to serve, as an inexhaustible resource for Dalit political mobilization. It has been a well spring of spiritual succour and moral support for Dalits who have had the misfortune of being born, growing up, and having to make their lives in a society that assaults their dignity and questions their self-worth on a routine basis.
Now this revolutionary classic is all set to gain a wider, savarna readership — the audience whom Ambedkar could not address. The Delhi-based anti-caste publishing house, Navayana, has just published an annotated critical edition of AoC, with an introduction by Arundhati Roy.
The background
On the face of it, this special publication, with an introduction by a writer of the stature and international fame of Roy, and detailed annotations by the Navayana publisher S. Anand, ought to be a good thing, and worth celebrating. Given the recent resurgence of the Hindu Right in the Indian political landscape, one could even consider it timely.
But this edition of AoC, though widely welcomed in non-Dalit circles in India and abroad, has evoked fierce objections from Dalits, with many even calling it an insult to the Dalit community.
The Ambedkarite website, Round Table India (RTI) published an open letter to Arundhati Roy questioning, among other things, her motives in writing this introduction, her suitability for such a task, her excessive focus on Gandhi in her essay, and the politics surrounding her decision to write it.
Roy replied to the letter explaining the logic behind her choices. Anand, who’s also copped a lot of flak from Dalits, especially on social media, has published his response on the Navayana website. Unlike Anand and Roy, both of whom have shown a willingness to engage with their Dalit critics, other privileged caste writers have come down heavily on these Dalit voices, accusing them of intolerance, fanaticism, misogyny, and of trying to curb the freedom of expression of non-Dalits. This piece hurls the ultimate insult at Dalit writers and activists angered by the Navayana edition, charging them with practising “the politics of Brahminism".
In view of the limitations of length imposed by a column of this kind, one can either review the book or engage with this debate. I propose to do the latter, as I believe it offers an important opportunity for savarnas (like myself, I might add) to introspect on how privilege determines their very subjectivity and worldview.
Given the complexity of this debate — on the politics of publishing a seminal text of Dalit resistance with an introduction by a celebrity non-Dalit who has almost no history of engagement with Dalit politics nor any track record of Dalit scholarship — I intend to do no more than present the broad contours of it, and end by attempting to show why this Navayana edition, for all its good intentions, constitutes a typical example of the politics of appropriation.
Who can represent Ambedkar?
If one were to sum up the Ambedkarite position in this debate in one line, as enunciated by Dalit writers such as Anoop Kumar , it would be this: You want to represent Ambedkar without bearing — or having borne — the burden of being Dalit in a society that oppresses Dalits. How could you?
First of all, does Roy’s introduction qualify as a form of representation? Well, it certainly does – not in terms of talking for, but in terms of talking about. As for the act of annotating, it is a practice embedded in what the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu calls the “scholarly habitus", which, again, is so tied up in structures of power and privilege that, in the field of caste, it is available to a Dalit only rarely and against heavy odds.
Roy has defended her act of representing/introducing Ambedkar by asking: “If it is your case that only Dalits can write an introduction about Ambedkar, then I must disagree with you. What if tomorrow Gujarati banias say only they can write about Gandhi? Or Mahars say that their understanding of Ambedkar is more authentic and more radical than that of other Dalits?"
Raising the question of how, given that caste is a graded system of inequality, anybody can arrogate to themselves the status of the “authentic victim", she cautions Dalits against “essentialism". This might be a good place to point out that all those who practice identity politics have always been susceptible to the charge of essentialism. It is the very reason why, for instance, a Dalit cannot take a stand on an issue unless she can also demonstrate that it is the unified stand of the entire Dalit community, whereas no savarna intellectual is ever expected to be a representative of all savarnas. While it is true that any self-proclaimed Dalit stand will necessarily be essentialist, the charge of being essentialist can only ever be made by other Dalits with divergent points of view on the issue at hand. When voiced by a non-Dalit, it necessarily will be — and should be—be met with suspicion.
For Roy, the only thing that matters is this: “The point is, whatever my privileges are – or yours for that matter – are we fighting against Brahminism or strengthening it? If it is your argument that through my introduction I am somehow actually perpetuating caste please tell me how that it so."
Anand, in his statement, makes a similar case, asking: “What is it that we do with privilege? Sharpen it into a weapon and wield it against the very banyan tree of brahminism that entangles us with its roots in the air? Or should we just enjoy the shaded comfort of this tree? I believe it is the former that this edition of the book attempts." He further adds, “While I understand the anxiety and politics over who gets to introduce or annotate Ambedkar, I do strongly believe Ambedkar belongs to all." Well, does he, now, is what some of his Dalits interlocutors are asking.
The dynamics of privilege
Let us assume for the sake of argument that both Dalits and the privileged castes have an equal right to introduce Ambedkar. Do both of them also have equal power to exercise that right? If they do not – and both Roy and Anand would readily acknowledge that they do not – how should a Dalit interpret a savarna’s assertion that they both have an equal right, if not as an instance of insincerity?
Moving on from the assertion to the action, if we acknowledge that Dalits do not enjoy the kind of opportunities for exercise of knowledge capital that members of the privileged caste such as Anand and Roy do, Roy’s writing of the introduction and Anand’s annotations are an exercise of exactly the same privilege that is being denied to Dalits day in and day out on some ground or the other. That is why Dalits find it offensive.
Given that Navayana is the foremost anti-caste publisher in the world – a Dalit writing the Introduction could have yielded a tremendous amplification of a Dalit voice. But Navayana believed that Ambedkar’s text would be better amplified by a celebrated writer who commands a ready audience across the globe.
To paraphrase what Chippewa poet Lenore Keeshig-Tobias says in her essay, ‘Stop stealing Native stories’, Roy, having squeezed out the possibility of a Dalit intellectual introducing AoC, turns around and tells Dalits to write their own introductions. Dalits can ask, like Keeshig-Tobias does, “How can we?" Even if they had access to the means to do so, they would be told — it’s already been done, and done by none other than Arundhati Roy.
From this standpoint, even this very essay, showcasing a savarna writer laboring to present a Dalit perspective, is an absurdity that is fully deserving of the scorn of Dalit critics. Far from seeking to defend myself, all that I (or anybody else in my position) am entitled to do is to acknowledge it as a valuable reminder of my own status as an oppressor perched on the higher reaches of the dung heap of privilege.)
One argument trotted out time and again in support of the claim that Ambedkar belongs to all is that that his work is now a part of the global intellectual heritage of ideas that anyone should be free to engage with irrespective of their caste identity. Dalits, most prominently Kumar, have maintained that Ambedkar is their deity, and that non-dalits who seek to represent him are appropriating the Dalit deity. Savarna writers have responded to this by arguing, as Roy does, that we should not turn Ambedkar into another ‘God’ and instead recognize that he too is a human being, with his merits, flaws, and so on.
History, however, offers ample evidence that such modes of representation can and do serve as mechanisms of appropriation. Music, for instance, was one mode of political resistance that was available to Black Americans. But the histories of jazz, rock n roll, and now rap, are all of them testaments to white appropriation.
“How can any non-Dalit be part of a Dalit movement when you will not even concede that they have the right to engage with Ambedkar?" asks Roy. Well, for starters, a sense of entitlement to every single intellectual, political, and cultural space available is precisely how the power of privilege operates.
The story-teller’s tale
At the launch of AoC in Mumbai, Roy spoke eloquently about the importance of story-telling, and how it wasn’t as if she was picked to write the Introduction only because she was famous – if she was famous, she said, she was famous “for something" – implying that she was chosen to write the Introduction because of her exceptional story-telling skills, and the story of Ambedkar and Gandhi and the politics surrounding AoC is such an important story that it can only gain by someone of Roy’s caliber telling it to an audience that has so far not been interested in hearing it.
Roy’s argument here is deeply flawed on at least three grounds.
Firstly, nobody can, of course, dispute Roy’s genius as a story-teller. She has behind her an unmatched body of work, uniquely among Indian writers, wherein she recounts, with imagination, passion and empathy, the courageous struggles of the oppressed and the marginalized against the might of a corporate state. But to even attempt to say — based on Roy’s story-telling skills or ready command over a vast global readership or any other criteria one might care to bring up — that she is therefore the best possible candidate to narrate the tale of ‘the doctor and the saint’ is to fall back on the dubious ‘merit argument’ whose notoriety Anand and Roy are all too familiar with.
Secondly, neither Anand nor Roy can say that she wrote this introduction or he did the annotations to help the Dalit cause – for the simple reason that to say so would be an insult to all Dalits. To their credit, neither has said anything like it in so many words. But they ended up further stoking Dalit anger by implying it, for instance, by saying that they have done it (published this edition) only for the noble cause of fighting Brahminism.
Thirdly, in the savarna view of the world, for Ambedkar to be just a Dalit deity is not an exalted enough status given his great intellect. He must, therefore, whether the Dalits like it or not, be elevated to his true position in the global, non-Dalit, pantheon of intellectual giants. And this requires transporting him – in a Brahmin bag -- from the claustrophobic confines of a Dalit temple to the open air of the global free market.
Structural privilege, as in the case of racism or casteism, invariably displays two properties. The first is invisibility: by its very nature, it is invisible to its biggest beneficiaries. The second is it induces blindness. Brahminical privilege induces blindness to the possibility that there might be alternative value systems that rule out exporting a cultural property or commodifying it. And nobody can deny that this edition of AoC, targeted at a non-Dalit audience, for many of whom caste is “an exotic Hindu thing" (Roy’s words), will render Ambedkar as an object available for consumption.
Strangely enough, Roy herself has written, most eloquently, about how it is the prerogative of the Dongria Kondh adivasis to keep the bauxite in the Niyamgiri hills, and about the central role of their deity, Niyamraja, in giving them a sense of identity and community. If Dalits wish to keep Ambedkar for Dalits alone – for after all, they, and not the savarnas, have been the ones who have kept his legacy alive all these years – how can she then say that Ambedkar belongs to all? How different is it from an industrialist saying that the minerals in the mountains belong to all and not just the adivasis who happen to live there? How can she acknowledge the political power of the Niyamraja for the adivasis, and be blind to the political power of Ambedkar the deity for the Dalits?
One could make the argument that it is not as if Ambedkar doesn’t already belong to all --- for isn’t he the father of the Indian Constitution? Well, the Ambedkar that the Dalits revere as a deity is not the same as the non-deified avatar the savarnas admire as a legal luminary and scholar. And for Dalits, AoC as a text signifies the former, and not the father of the Constitution. Incidentally, Ambedkar was hardly pleased with the document he is credited with fathering. He had this to say about it: “The Constitution was a wonderful temple for the gods, but before they could be installed, the devils have taken possession."
Again, borrowing Keeshig-Tobias’ argument against white appropriation, the savarnas have a lot of intellectuals and gods and revolutionaries to write about and discuss and worship if they choose to. But Ambedkar is all that the Dalits have – “to fight off illness and death".
As regards story-telling, Keeshig-Tobias writes, “So potent are stories that, in native culture, one storyteller cannot tell another’s story without permission." Did Roy take the Dalits’ permission to write the Introduction to AoC? Or is it the case that “maybe they just know a good story when they find one and are willing to take it, without permission, just as the archeologists used to rob our graves for museums"?
Ambedkar as a cultural good
AoC embodies Dalit labour. And not just Dalit labour but Dalit pain and Dalit humiliation have gone into its creation and its post-publication life. But the royalties, as well as the social and cultural capital accruing from this Navayana edition – which is a private, cultural property and not part of the Dalit commons -- would not be flowing into the estate of a Dalit writer. If even this is not appropriation, then it is difficult to understand what appropriation means.
Roy’s argument that she has written the introduction to AoC not as an authority on Ambedkar but simply “from the position of a writer who engages with things that she feels are important to her, and to the society that she lives in" is a textbook instance of romantic individualism that proclaims the absolute right of an author to the entire realm of cultural and intellectual resources in the name of a common public domain – dismissing any restrictions as a form of censorship – while ignoring the fact that such a common public domain of ideas is not equally accessible to all. Roy seems unable to recognize that such authorial self-assertion, in this case, coming from a position of privilege in the face of protests voiced from the margins, cannot but be complicit with the relations of power that undergird this so-called common public domain of ideas.
All this does not mean that no political or social good can ever come from those who, by no fault of their own, happen to occupy positions of privilege. Had that been the case, no white person could ever have played any role in the anti-slavery and civil rights movements in the United States, no man could have played any part in women’s liberation movements, and no heterosexual could ever take part in LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) struggles for equality. But any such intervention on the side of the oppressed from those occupying positions of privilege needs to be done with sensitivity to the immediate political context of inequality and exclusion that structures all such engagements.
The ethics of exercising rights
So, should Roy have written her essay at all? Of course, yes. And she has produced, as usual, a brilliant piece of writing that not only situates AoC in its historical context but also carries out the epistemologically and politically important maneuver of reprising the Dalit perspective on Mahatma Gandhi for a non-Dalit audience. Even so, Dalits have pointed out serious flaws in it, especially in its presentation of the Ambedkar-Gandhi encounter – but this is one aspect of the ongoing debate that I cannot go into here as it is beyond the scope of this already very long essay.
Roy’s essay, for all its faults, is bound to be unsettling and disturbing for most caste Hindus, who ought to read it for that very reason. But what could have been avoided is its presentation as an introduction to AoC. If the main thrust of her essay, in her own words, is to move the Gandhi monument out of the way so that savarna readers can get to Ambedkar, then this operation could very well have been carried out in a standalone publication. Why did it have to be presented as an introduction to AoC?
All said and done, one positive fallout of the entire debate triggered by this initiative of Navayana’s – “a historical mistake", as Anand calls it – is that it just might awaken savarnas to the possibility that the real magnitude of their caste privilege is something they may never really be able to grasp either intellectually or morally – at any rate, not to the same degree or with the cosmic immediacy with which it bears down on the personhood of those who bear the brunt of it.
Perhaps the savarnas can take a hint from a self-proclaimed white appropriator of a black invention, the rap artist Macklemore. Here is someone who is not only sensitive to his own white privilege but is respected by Blacks for his readiness to acknowledge, in his work, that his adoption of rap – which ought to be his right as an artist -- is itself an act of racist appropriation.
Macklemore sums up it up well in this song where he talks about the nature of white privilege:
“Hip-hop started off on a block that I’ve never been to
To counteract a struggle I’ve never been through
If I think I understand just because I flow, too?
That means I’m not keeping it true, I’m not keeping it true."
Roy and Anand both flow, for sure, but have they kept it true? In their 416-page edition of AoC, there is not a single acknowledgement anywhere that their enterprise, notwithstanding its indubitable merits, is essentially a casteist one – not merely an exercise of Brahminical privilege but a Brahminical exercise of privilege. If Dalits are angry, it’s because they have every reason to be. |
It turns out that sailing through interstellar space isn't so peaceful.
NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft — the only object made by humans to reach interstellar space — might still be caught what scientists have described as a cosmic "tsunami wave," a shock wave that first hit the probe in February, according to new research. You can hear the eerie interstellar vibrations in a video, courtesy of NASA.
"Most people would have thought the interstellar medium would have been smooth and quiet," study researcher Don Gurnett, professor of physics at the University of Iowa, and the principal investigator of Voyager 1's plasma wave instrument, said in a statement from NASA. "But these shock waves seem to be more common than we thought." [Photo Timeline: Voyager 1 in Interstellar Space]
Such a shock wave was what helped scientists determine that Voyager 1, which launched in 1977 on a "grand tour" of the outer planets, had officially left the solar system.
Last year, researchers keeping tabs on the car-sized spacecraft (12 billion miles away) analyzed measurements the Voyager 1 made in the aftermath of a powerful eruption from the sun known as a coronal mass ejection, or CME. This solar blast occurred in March 2012 and hit Voyager 1 from April to May 2013. The shock wave caused the particles around the spacecraft to vibrate substantially. Based on the frequency of these vibrations, scientists could measure the density of the probe's surroundings.
The density of the particles around Voyager 1 was 40 times higher than scientists had previously observed when the space probe was still in the outer layers of the heliosphere, the giant bubble of charged particles and magnetic fields that surrounds the sun and the planets in our solar system. Voyager 1 team members concluded that the spacecraft had exited the heliosphere and entered a new cosmic realm. After researchers went back and looked at old data, they concluded that Voyager 1 crossed into interstellar space on August 25, 2012.
Voyager 1 detected its third and most recent interstellar shock wave in February. The vibrations were still going on as of November data, according to NASA. That's remarkable considering that over the course of this event, the spacecraft has traveled 250 million miles (400 million kilometers).
The researchers say they are not sure how fast the wave is moving or how big a region it covers. And they're still trying to understand what they can learn from these waves.
"The density of the plasma is higher the farther Voyager goes," Ed Stone, project scientist for the Voyager mission from the California Institute of Technology, said in a statement from NASA. "Is that because the interstellar medium is denser as Voyager moves away from the heliosphere, or is it from the shock wave itself? We don't know yet."
The latest findings were presented Monday (Dec. 15) at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.
Follow Megan Gannon on Twitter. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com. |
McCree’s huge revolver from Overwatch – Peacekeeper – has been turned into a 3D print a few times already, but it has never been done this patriotically.
One prop maker has created their own version of the weapon with the flamboyant American skin. Because this skin does not change the gun’s model in the game, the effect was simply achieved with some paint.
Unfortunately there is a big omission in the lack of stars and stripes which are visible on the handle. We suppose this isn’t a problem if you’re going to be holding the thing for cosplay purposes, but you’ll want to paint that in if you’re making a display piece.
To do that you’ll need the files from MyMiniFactory, and a few non-plastic parts.
The rotating cylinder which can also be popped out requires a pair of screws and a washer for the movement, and a magnet to keep it in place.
This print joins our long and updated list of Overwatch props where you can also find McCree’s belt buckle and flashbang grenade. |
I saw it coming. The octopus genome was sequenced, and one scientist gushed about the differences between cephalopods and vertebrates, calling them "alien", and that became the news. People really need to read the paper before reporting on it, because it emphasizes the relatedness of octopuses to other animals.
But the creationists don't care about facts. They're motivated to lie. The latest: Darwinism Versus the Octopus: An Evolutionary Dilemma.
No, it's really not.
The author, Eric Metaxas, cites his friend, the intelligent design creationist Stephen Meyer, so it's no wonder he gets everything wrong. Really, read the paper, rather than relying on second or third or fourth hand anecdotes filtered through other creationists, and you wouldn't say stupid things like this.
A study published in the journal “Nature” describes how researchers sequenced the octopus genome and found something surprising. Compared with other invertebrates, the DNA of the octopus was “alien”: nothing like the genetic codes of what they thought were similar animals, like clams and sea snails.
Pet peeve: the "genetic code" refers to the triplet nucleotide code that translates a DNA sequence into an amino acid sequence in a protein. It does not mean the genetic sequence itself. Huckleberry Finn and Moby Dick use the same English code to translate a collection of 26 letters into words and sentences and paragraphs, but the words and sentences and paragraphs are different. The genetic code of octopus is the same genetic code used by humans.
But the rest of that claim is flatly contradicted by the paper. For one, the word "alien" isn't used once in the entire paper; for another, they didn't find octopus and clams and sea snails radically different.
In gene family content, domain architecture and exon–intron structure, the octopus genome broadly resembles that of the limpet Lottia gigantea, the polychaete annelid Capitella teleta and the cephalochordate Branchiostoma floridae. Relative to these invertebrate bilaterians, we found a fairly standard set of developmentally important transcription factors and signalling pathway genes, suggesting that the evolution of the cephalopod body plan did not require extreme expansions of these ‘toolkit’ genes.
Read those two sentences carefully. They say the exact opposite of what Metaxas wrote! Keep that in mind when you read the rest of the essay: Eric Metaxas has not read the paper, does not understand the paper, and is making shit up that is contradicted by the paper.
Now, octopi aren’t from another planet, but they are, figuratively speaking, out-of-this-world. They can change color and texture, they use ink to make a quick getaway, and they’re shockingly clever. They can unscrew jar lids and squeeze their soft bodies through just about any opening. One nineteenth century naturalist tells of an octopus climbing out of its tank, ambling across the room to a neighboring tank, and gorging itself on fish before returning home! The key to this uncanny intelligence is the octopus’ so-called “alien” nervous system, brain, and eyes. But these features are not alien to the animal kingdom at all. In fact, they’re quite common in higher vertebrates. The octopus genome shares key similarities with ours, including the development of high-powered brains and “camera eyes” with a cornea, lens, and retina. Now here’s the problem for evolution: according to Neo-Darwinists, we’re not related to octopi—at least not within the last several hundred million years. That means all of these genes, complex structures, and incredible capabilities came about twice.
We're related to octopus (not "octopi" -- how much can this guy get wrong?), but we've diverged for over half a billion years. What was found is that we share the same basic toolkit, a collection of genes that evolved before the expansion of multicellular animals 600-700 million years ago. We find the same gene families in cephalopods, vertebrates, fruit flies, whatever: the genome work did not discover aliens, but familiar genes for zinc finger proteins, protocadherins, G-protein coupled receptors, sialins, etc., etc., etc. They were just expanded from their simpler beginnings in different ways.
In just the same way, Herman Melville and Mark Twain learned the same ABCs and grammar and rules of writing as young people, and then went off and wrote their own damned books. You can read them and see very different stories, but at the same time they aren't alien to each other: same language, same culture, same American roots.
A comparison of cephalopod genomes to other animals reveals the same phenomenon: the same metazoan roots, the words writ in unique arrangements.
But I imagine we're now going to see a couple of decades worth of creationist distortions, all built around the one word "alien" rather than the actual data. They should be ashamed, but they never are. |
Show Notes
On this episode of Word Balloon, Jonathan Hickman is back to tell us about the wrap up to his epic 3 year story in Fantastic Four. He’s not done with the Four, or the Future Foundation (FF), and tells us what to expect in the months to come. You’ll hear about his writing chores on the upcoming Avengers Vs. X-Men projects, and what it was like co writing with his architect buddies Brian Bendis, Jason Aaron, Ed Brubaker, and Matt Fraction We also discuss SHIELD and his run on The Ultimates.
Then we go in depth on Jonathan’s creator owned books past and present at Image Comics. From the debut issue of The Manhattan Projects drawn by Nick Pitarra to next month’s start of the spy series Secret with artist Ryan Bodenheim. Hickman also made a big splash at Comixology releasing all of his earlier creator owned works as digital products, including one big bundle of all 5 works The Nightly News, Pax Romana, Red Mass For Mars, Transhuman, and The Red Wing. He gives us all the details in his decision to release them now, and in the formats he chose.
Then, artist writer Francis Manapul is back to tell us what’s been happening in the pages of The Flash for DC Comics. We talk about his unique art choices to display the hero’s super speed, and the Flash’s point of view when faced with the choices of how to stop a crime or disaster from happening. Francis also talks about his writing process with his co-writer and colorist Brian Buccelatto, and what it’s like to have put The Flash back in the top 10 of comics ordered by direct market stores. |
RIO DE JANEIRO — The colossal graft scandal surrounding Brazil’s national oil company engulfed the country’s most prominent political figure on Friday, former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, as the police raided his home and took him into custody.
More than any other politician, Mr. da Silva embodied Brazil’s rise as a global powerhouse. Universally known as Lula, he helped usher his country onto the international stage as president from 2003 through 2010, winning admiration at home and abroad.
But as a sweeping corruption scandal rips apart the political establishment, the once towering political figure is coming to symbolize something else: Brazil’s crashing ambitions.
In an operation that began at 6 a.m., officers from the Federal Police swarmed Mr. da Silva’s home in São Paulo. He was taken to a federal police station, but he was not arrested or charged. He was released after about three hours of questioning, which he later derided as a “media show.” |
Monsters of Godville Schizophrenic Hydra Class Hydra Habitat Usually forests, but has also been sighted in caves, near lakes and very rarely, on open fields. Description Giant multi-headed monster
The Schizophrenic Hydra is a giant and fearsome creature.
Description
The Schizophrenic Hydra usually has at least five heads and is at least five meters tall. Compared with other hydras in Godville, the Schizophrenic Hydra is larger but has no wings.
Behavior
The personality of the Schizophrenic Hydra is something that has interested many researchers in Godville. It seems that this kind of hydra has a split personality. It can rage, laugh and cry at the same time. Each head seems to think something different each moment. Most likely this is because each head has its own brain, although this is not exclusive to the Schizophrenic Hydra. Annals from long, long ago tell all kinds of different stories about the hydra. One story is that one of them destroyed a small village. The day after, the hydra helped rebuild the village. There are many more of these two-sided stories.
Attributes
Strengths
Unpredictable. One moment it wants to make friends, the next it chews on your head.
It is a hydra. That means that for every head you cut off, two heads will grow back.
It is large. There is quite a large possibility that you will get trampled.
There is a slight chance that his brabblings will make you mad.
Weaknesses |
Announcing the One Nation of Gamers Overwatch Invitational
Ben Goldhaber Blocked Unblock Follow Following Mar 19, 2016
It’s going down.
The best teams in the beta face off for the biggest prize pool yet. Double elimination. Every. Match. Broadcasted.
NOTE: prize pool has been increased to $3,000 thanks to our newest sponsor, Infiniscene!
Been sitting on this for a while, so I gotta be admit, feels damn good to finally put this in writing.
I’ve been working behind the scenes for some months to organize the next chapter to the FishStix Overwatch Invitational which took place all the way back in November. As with the first Invitational, the goal from inception was to push the boundaries for what’s been done in the scene — to organize something fresh, unlike anything else thus far. And, with the help of One Nation of Gamers, GEICO Gaming, and the Video Game Voters Network, we may have done just that.
We want to show just how competitive and exciting Overwatch can be at a high level. We want to make the best possible show for the community.
With further ado…
Let’s get to the details
Invited teams
North America:
EnVyUs
Cloud9
Luminosity Gaming
Life of Hanzo
Europe:
IDDQD
Reunited.GG
#FlatEarth
Melty
Tournament format
8 team invitational (4 NA / 4 EU).
Double elimination bracket.
Round 1–4 (bo3) → WB/LB finals (bo5) → grand finals (bo5)
Day 1: play thru ‘till WB/LB finals.
Day 2: WB/LB finals & grand finals.
Brackets
Live brackets will be updated on GosuGamers.
Rules/scoring
Payload and Capture Point maps will be decided by traditional Stopwatch rules — after taking turns attacking and defending, the quicker time set or the furthest progression wins the point.
If both teams get stuck on the same objective soon then the map will be counted as a tie, and no points awarded to either team.
A win on a Control map counts as a point.
NO hero limit. 6 D.vas all day, if you want.
Map selection process
Use OWDraft.com to select maps — higher seed picks first. Loser picks next.
Bo3 up until WB/LB finals
Bo5 for WB/LB and Grand Final. Grand final bracket can be reset by LB.
Servers
Higher seed picks first. Loser picks next.
Prize pool
$3,000 USD base (subject to change to do additional sponsorships or community support)
$1500 $900 $600
Broadcast logistics
Dates: April 9th-10th from 10am PDT — 6pm PDT
Channel: twitch.tv/onenationofgamers
Shoutcasters: FishStix & AskJoshy
Secondary EN channels / Foreign language channels:
English: Hex & ZP at twitch.tv/gosugamers
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Credits
None of this would be possible without these folks…
Lynnea “Shayed” Tabatha Rose — lead admin
Daniel “Imagine” Tompos — stream producer
Markus “Mysca” Gur — graphics designer
Deric Ortiz — One Nation of Gamers
Phew. Glad to finally get this out there. If you have any questions you probably already know how to get ahold of me. In the mean time, why don’t you go watch the FishStix Invitational 1? It was pretty sweet, and I’m almost over 10k views on YT. ;) |
A video shot by fans at the Tour de San Luis on Tuesday shows riders struggling up the day’s final climb as they were buffeted by extremely strong winds, some grinding to a halt altogether.
The 16 kilometre ascent to Filo Sierras Comechingones has an average gradient of 7.8 per cent but must have seemed much more to the cyclists at the rear if the race whenever the road took them into the wind head-on.
Video: Peter Sagan channels his inner John Travolta
Nicknamed ‘the autobus,’ it’s not often you get to see pictures from this end of the race, with TV cameras concentrating on the battle for the stage win further up the road.
Il vento sul Filo de Merlo Giuseppe Righi Miriam Terruzzi Laura Chi Fabiola Ratti Roberto Barni Fabian Melo Rodolfo Andres Torres Agudelo Barbara Brusa Rita Foglio Stobbia Alvaro Pizzato Roberto Miodini Giovanni Ellena Vasile Morari Karola EnlaRuta Posted by Giancarlo Ramazio Bravetto on Sunday, 24 January 2016
There’s a camaraderie among those who just want to get through the climb inside the time limit – exemplified here by Peter Sagan giving a helping hand to Androni-Sidermec sprinter Francesco Chicchi.
both would finish the stage almost half an hour behind the day’s winner, Astana’s Miguel Angel Lopez. |
Why Oscar? There are many claims about how this golden gentleman got his name, but the generally accepted story is that the Academy librarian, Margaret Kerrick, when seeing the figure for the first time, said it reminded her of her Uncle Oscar.
Why Oscar? There are many claims about how this golden gentleman got his name, but the generally accepted story is that the Academy librarian, Margaret Kerrick, when seeing the figure for the first time, said it reminded her of her Uncle Oscar.
The first awards in the 1928 ceremony were handed out in eight minutes in front of just 200 people.
No television audience yet. All the entries were silent films, and the Best Picture winner was Wings.
One actor with a bit part in the film would later become famous. His name was Gary Cooper.
* During the Second World War, Oscars were made of plaster to save metal for the war effort. Afterwards, winners received the real thing. In 1938, a special Oscar made of wood was awarded to American ventriloquist Edgar Bergen for "his outstanding creation", his dummy Charlie McCarthy.
* For her part as blind, deaf and dumb Helen Keller in the 1962 film The Miracle Worker, Patty Duke won Best Supporting Actress. She spoke just one word - "water". In 1998, Judi Dench won her Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her seven-minute appearance as Elizabeth I in Shakespeare In Love.
* Having won Best Actor Oscar in 1972 for The Godfather, Marlon Brando didn't show up. He sent a woman garbed in American Indian attire to refuse the Oscar for him - a way of protesting at what he considered to be Hollywood's unfair portrayal of Indians.
* When David Niven was about to announce a 1973 award, a naked man suddenly streaked across the stage. "Must be a small bit player," Niven quipped as streaker Robert Opal was hauled away. Six years later, Opal was murdered in his San Francisco sex shop.
* Meryl Streep - who, last year, received her 13th nomination as Best Supporting Actress in Adaptation - has now notched up a record number of nominations, more than the legendary Katharine Hepburn. Back in 1979 when she won her first Oscar (as Best Supporting Actress in Kramer vs Kramer) Streep accepted it and was then so excited that she had to go to the ladies room, where she temporarily left it!
* Only one Oscar winner has ever been disqualified after receiving the award. It happened in 1968 when it was discovered that Best Documentary The Young Americans had, in fact, been released theatrically in the previous year. The Oscar had to be returned.
* When the then 71-year-old Jack Palance won his Best Supporting Actor award for his role in City Slickers in 1991, he dropped to the stage floor to do one-handed push-ups.
* Greer Garson's 1942 Best Actress acceptance speech (for her most famous role in Mrs Miniver) is the longest of all the Awards - just under six minutes.
* When, in 1932, Walt Disney won the first of his many Oscars for the creation of Mickey Mouse, the Press tagged Mickey as the "first non-human to win an Oscar." |
Cardsharp2.2 new improved classic: The evolution of the highly successful Cardsharp® 1 & 2. New improved construction with three-stage and child-proof Zytel® safety lock prevents accidental opening and gives the knife excellent rigidity in both open and closed positions. The new improved Zytel® rivet secures the blade to the body. A stiffer and textured medical grade Borealis™ polypropylene body (living hinges guaranteed for life) adds extra rigidity and aids grip.
Just three ingenious folding operations turn the card into an elegant pocket utility tool. Less bulky than a pocket knife and as sharp as a scalpel. Cardsharp® is the first real innovation in penknives since the first folding knife, which has been around for over 2000 years and is virtually unchanged from today's Swiss Army™ penknife. Cardsharp® is thinner, lighter and due to its use of 420 series surgical stainless steel: sharper. Sharp enough in fact, that it can cut through an automobile safety belt in an emergency.
Cardsharp® was originally designed as a lightweight surgical knife that can be easily transported and safely disposed of by hospitals and medical centers together with paramedics and aid workers throughout the world (without needing expensive and wasteful sharps containers).
Cardsharp's unique surgical blade technology features an extra long 65mm cutting edge that ensures longer lasting sharpness (conventional utility knife blade edge is only 25mm long). A good test for Cardsharp® is to carefully cut through a tennis ball or two inch foam which is more difficult using a normal carton knife.
Cardsharp2.2 weighs only 13 grams (regular Stanley® type utility knife weighs around 150 grams, Leatherman® same sized blade knife weighs around 85 grams). Less weight equals carrying and storing convenience plus reduced carbon footprint.
Cardsharp® is a great chef's knife. The blade is sharp – rated 'very good' by CATRA – long and thin enough to cut bread and also extremely useful for fast cutting of ultra thin slices of vegetables including tomatoes, cucumber, garlic etc. Great for camping and expedition use; Cardsharp® is an essential outdoor companion/survival tool. |
There are a lot of newcomers on this week's list of potential pickups at the corner infield spots as several players seeing the first regular playing time of their careers are starting to produce consistent results. Granted, there are always more question marks about an unproven player, but there is also more upside. Perhaps more importantly, these players tend to be available to pick up off waivers later in the season. With that in mind, here is a closer look at this week's top pickups.
Third Base Waiver Wire Pickups
Josh Harrison (2B/3B/OF, PIT)
32% Owned in Yahoo, 12% Owned in Fleaflicker
BALLER MOVE: Add in NL-Only Formats
ANALYSIS: Injuries have given Harrison a chance to get regular playing time, and he has taken advantage of the opportunity. He has been doing a little bit of everything, and for the year, he is currently hitting .304 with 5 home runs and 22 RBIs to go along with 27 runs scored and 5 steals.
Harrison has been particularly dialed in at the plate lately, collecting 14 hits and 3 steals in his last seven games. Thanks to his across-the-board production, Harrison is expected to hold on to a starting spot even after the Pirates are at full strength. He is currently owned in just 29 percent of Yahoo! leagues, and his ability to help out in several offensive categories and play multiple positions could make him a nice pickup, especially in NL-only formats.
Cody Asche (3B, PHI)
3% Owned In Yahoo, 6% Owned in Fleaflicker
BALLER MOVE: Continue Scouting, Add in NL-Only Leagues
ANALYSIS: Asche was just finding his groove at the plate before being sidelined for nearly a month, but there have been no signs of rust since he was reinserted into the Phillies' lineup. Asche has gone 6-for-15 with 3 RBIs in his first four games back, and he had gone 10-for-24 prior to hitting the disabled list. For the year, he is hitting .274 with 4 homers and 21 RBIs in 135 at-bats, and more importantly, his best days appear to be ahead of him.
Asche was a popular breakout candidate in his first full year in the majors, and while a slow start and an injury have curbed expectations, he could still provide some value the rest of the way. Asche is owned in just 2 percent of Yahoo! leagues so you can afford to keep tabs on him for a bit before making a move, but be ready to scoop him up in NL-only leagues if he continues to swing a hot bat.
Kris Bryant (3B, CHC)
7% Owned In Yahoo, 6% Owned In Fleaflicker
BALLER MOVE: Continue Scouting
ANALYSIS: After crushing Double-A pitching for most of the year, Bryant picked up where he left off upon his promotion to Triple-A Iowa last week. He homered in his first game and smacked a pair of homers Sunday.
Team president Theo Epstein recently said that he doesn't expect Bryant to reach the majors this year, but the 22-year-old star prospect could change that in a hurry if he continues to blast home runs. Bryant's ceiling is tremendous, and he should already be owned in any type of keeper league. He is currently owned in 7 percent of Yahoo! leagues, and you may want to stash him sooner rather than later if he keeps raking in Triple-A.
First Base Waiver Wire Pickups
Adam LaRoche (1B, WAS)
62% Owned In Yahoo, 40% Owned in Fleaflicker
BALLER MOVE: Add in All Formats
ANALYSIS: He has been experiencing a bit of a power outage in June, but LaRoche's overall offensive numbers remain more than respectable. He is currently hitting .310 with 9 homers and 39 RBIs to go along with a .919 OPS, and if not for a stint on the DL, his totals would be even higher. When healthy, LaRoche has always been good for around 25 homers so the power should come back around.
In the meantime, he is enjoying his most consistent season at the plate, and he is hitting in the middle of a Washington lineup that will welcome back both Bryce Harper and Ryan Zimmerman in the near future. LaRoche is owned in 63 percent of Yahoo! leagues, but that number is still low enough to take some time to see if he is still available. After all, LaRoche is a top-15 first baseman in any format and a solid source of average, home runs and RBIs.
C.J. Cron (1B, LAA)
15% Owned In Yahoo, 4% Owned In Fleaflicker
BALLER MOVE: Add in Deeper Leagues
ANALYSIS: Cron has gone deep in three consecutive games, and more importantly, he is primed for a full-time role as the Angels DH with the recent release of Raul Ibanez. The former first-round pick is in his first year in the majors, and in 112 at-bats, he has 6 homers and a .536 slugging percentage.
His biggest asset is his power, but with regular at-bats in a lineup that also features the likes of Mike Trout, Albert Pujols and Josh Hamilton, Cron should get plenty of RBI opportunities. He is only owned in 15 percent of Yahoo! leagues, but with Ibanez out of the picture, Cron has enough upside to warrant adding in deeper formats immediately. He could also be worth a flier in standard formats if you are hunting for power numbers.
Steve Pearce (1B/OF, BAL)
10% Owned In Yahoo, 5% Owned In Fleaflicker
BALLER MOVE: Continue Scouting, Add in AL-Only Leagues
ANALYSIS: He broke into the majors back in 2007, but Pearce has never really had a chance to get regular playing time until this season. He has quietly been making the most of the opportunity, and he is currently hitting .336 with 6 homers and 19 RBIs and has already surpassed his career-highs in several offensive categories.
Pearce has been particularly hot at the plate over the past week, collecting 11 hits, 2 homers, 7 RBIs and 6 runs scored in his last six games. He is currently owned in just 9 percent of Yahoo! leagues, and while it is hard to see Pearce suddenly becoming a factor at 31 years old, he is swinging the bat well and is in a decent situation in Baltimore. He is at least worth keeping an eye on. |
Faux Hawk haircut is the new trend that you are seeing now a days so we also decided to share some of these hairstyles also check the images and look what’s the new trend.
This is the new hair trend that is being circulating in the Hollywood celebs styling the images that you will see in the image gallery at the end of this post are all Hollywood beauties that were spotted with faux hawk haircut.I wanted to handy your existence, so i have found three very interesting faux hawk hairstyles that will blow your intellect and make you are attempting them all.
Every tutorial is very convenient and rapid and you gained’t have any difficulties to reap them. In the event you don’t be aware of how one can do them, ask your mom or a friend to help you. I must respect that that they will look very complex, but they aren’t.
There are lots of effortless approaches to gain these flattering hairstyles and entire your outfit in no time. The easiest manner is to take small sections of hair on every side, in reality, you have to create a small ponytail or a braid. Don’t worry when you’ve got a short hair, considering the fact that that you could curl it and add an facet to your seem. Everybody desires alterations, so why now not to try this type of hairstyles.
Let’s take a look on the gallery and add some freshness to your hair.Faux hawk or fohawk is a playful steadiness of class and edginess and it looks very sublime to whole your everyday seem, elegant for dinner parties and wild for night outs.
See More:-Hairstyle Trends Of 2015
The hairstyles that you will see listed below are perfect for the women that love hawk kind, however they aren’t so courageous to shave off the sides so why not try something different this time you can try this on Christmas eve too. |
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PANAMA CITY, Fla. -- People are furious after pictures of a Florida Walmart's 9/11-themed Coke display began to circulate on Twitter Tuesday afternoon.
Twitter user Shawn Richard Tweeted a picture of the display, which presented Coke Zero in place of Ground Zero and spurred thousands of angry retweets about the beverage company's marketing ploy.
“We stopped and stared at it like, oh my god,” Richard said, according to BuzzFeed News. “Nobody seemed to be noticing it, it wasn’t very crowded, and I got the feeling that it had just been assembled. So we took some pics and went on our way.”
Orlando Weekly reports the display has been taken down and that Walmart initially approved the design.
In less than two days, the post has more than 2,492 retweets and 4,114 likes. |
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I really fly Aton? Yes! In Film mode, Aton virtually flies itself. You just direct Aton where you want it to go. You do not have to know how to fly at all.
What if I mess up? Press the Return To Home Button on the transmitter and Aton will immediately stop what it was doing and use GPS to quickly return to its home location.
What if I run out of battery? Aton will tell you when the battery is getting low. If the battery gets too low, Aton automatically returns to home.
How do I set it up? Turn on the transmitter and plug in a charged battery. Aton will then take about a minute to locate the GPS satellites. When you see four solid green LEDs on Aton's status bar, Aton is ready for take off.
Don't I have to go through some complicated calibration first? No calibration is required. We calibrated Aton at the factory so that you don't have to.
How do I take off? Aton features auto-take off. Move the left throttle stick to the halfway point and Aton takes off and hovers about 10-feet above the ground waiting for the next command.
How do I control it? Aton virtually flies itself in Film Mode. Simply move the control stick in the direction you want to go. Move the throttle stick up to go up, down to descend, and then back to the middle to hover in place.
How do I know if Aton is going up or down? When Aton is far away, it can be hard to see if it is moving slowly up or down. The transmitter emits audible beeps to alert you that you are either ascending (up) or descending (down). There is no tone when you are hovering. This patent pending feature is exclusive to Aton.
How do I land it? Press Return To Home and Aton lands itself. You can also slowly descend until Aton is safely on the ground.
How far away can I fly? Out of the box, Aton has a GPS geofence of about 500 feet (150 meters). This radius can be changed using the Traxxas Flight Link app. In good conditions Aton has the ability to fly beyond an average person's line of site.
What if I operate it beyond its radio control range? No problem. If the radio signal is lost, Aton simply returns to home by itself.
How does the camera mount? Aton includes a fixed mount with vibration-damping that is compatible with the GoPro® accessory system. Aton Plus features a 2-Axis gimbal that includes a mount for GoPro® HERO® 3 and 4 series cameras.
What is the difference between Aton and Aton Plus? Aton has a fixed camera mount and 3000mAh capacity battery. Aton plus adds a 2-Axis motorized gimbal and replaces the 3000 mAh battery with a higher capacity 5000mAh battery (for longer flight time).
In some pictures, Aton does not have its landing gear installed. Why is that? The landing gear is installed to protect the camera. When the camera is not in use, the landing gear is easily removed to reduce weight and drag.
What is a gimbal? A gimbal is a motorized device that stabilizes the view of the camera so that your video is not affected by Aton's flight motions.
Does Aton have a Gimbal? Aton Plus includes a 2-axis precision motorized gimbal (available separately for Aton). A 3-axis gimbal equipped with FPV framing is coming soon.
Why does a gimbal have 2 or 3 axis? The number of axis defines the movement. A 2-axis gimbal counteracts pitch (forward and back) and roll (side-to-side) movement. A 3-Axis gimbal adds the ability to counteract yaw movement (rotation clockwise or counterclockwise).
How long does Aton fly? Aton flies about 18-20 minutes on the included 3000mAh battery. The 5000mAh battery (Aton Plus), increases flight times to around 25-28 minutes. Adding the weight of the camera and gimbal reduces flight times by approximately 5-7 minutes. Variables such as wind and temperature also affect flight time.
How long does it take to charge the battery? The included 3-amp AC charger will fully charge the included battery in 1-hour or less. Traxxas iD chargers (sold separately) can cut the charge time in half and charge two batteries at the same time.
What is battery iD? Traxxas' exclusive patent pending iD system makes battery charging a snap by eliminating the need to program charger settings. Just plug in the battery and press the start button.
Who is Sport mode for? You don't have to know how to fly to have fun with Aton, but if you do want to explore learning to fly, Sport mode's 6-axis flight control makes it easy. Air brakes and Return To Home are always there to help out when you need it.
Who is Expert mode for? Expert mode is for a small group of the most experienced, hardcore pilots who want to take full control of Aton's incredible power and flight capabilities. |
MobsterMania
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Location: Spacefaring SporelingJoined: 03/07/2010 03:04:35Messages: 6231Location: Wasting his life. Youth is sure wasted on the young.
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Your daily schedule of epic adventure playing and rescues, support, and ambush missions is abruptly interrupted by a frightening call from the officer in charge of you. You've been condemned for taking part in a bombing in the downtown of one of your race's colonies. Over 500 people were killed. How did the commanding officer find out? Investigations have found files referring the Captain on confiscated intel from suspected terrorist bases. Of course, you never committed the crime, and was instead framed by an unknown, yet clever criminal.
The penalty for such action is execution, however after your trial you were actually sentenced to exilation from your race. Your escort ship brings you to a known wasteland planet and drops you down there with only a one-message only radio and a newspaper copy of the incident. You fear the worst. You've heard of this planet; a barren rock with no known source of food or water on it.
However, this planet is not as empty as it seems....
Prologue: Words of the Wasteland
It's a clicky, so play now!
Words of the Condemned
Words of the Forsaken
Words of Realization
Words of Hospitality (fifth episode!)
Words of Identity *NEWEST*
OVER 15000 plays TOTAL!
It's a clicky, so play now! This message was edited 10 times. Last update was at 08/09/2011 03:21:15 |
There are new developments in the case of the
News 4 has learned the driver of that truck, Brian Brandt, filed a police report in 2014 claiming he was drugged and raped during an encounter with Bunny Ranch owner Dennis Hof and several other people.
Brandt claimed in the police report, a copy of which was obtained by News 4, that the incident happened in 1998 at Oxbow Park in Reno. He said he waited 16 years to report it because he suffers from PTSD and his memory of the event was blacked out all those years.
Brandt also reached out to News 4 recently to say he wanted to tell his story. That was before Brandt allegedly backed his big rig truck into the brothel on Thursday, May 25.
He was arrested wearing full body armor. Nobody was injured in the incident.
Bunny Ranch owner Dennis Hof told News 4's Joe Hart he has never heard of the report and he says he was never contacted by police about it.
We reached out to Reno police to find out if the complaint was ever investigated, but they had not responded to us by the time this story aired.
News 4-Fox 11 spoke with Brandt's stepfather on Thursday. He said the 40-year-old has a history with mental illness and may have stopped taking his medication. |
GREEN BAY, Wis. -- John Kuhn is still working out, still living in Green Bay, still planning to play another NFL season.
And he's still holding out hope that it'll be with the Green Bay Packers.
The veteran fullback and folk hero remains a free agent, and while it appears the Packers have moved on and are ready to go with second-year fullback Aaron Ripkowski, there was some sentiment earlier this offseason within the organization to bring back Kuhn.
Kuhn, who'll turn 34 the week of the Packers' regular-season opener at Jacksonville, said in an interview with SiriusXM NFL Radio's Jim Miller and Pat Kirwan on Friday afternoon that he hasn't "directly" heard from the Packers about a possible return but that he believes it might be "an option" at some point.
If the Packers don't call, John Kuhn said his only criteria for going elsewhere is he wants to sign with "a competitor." AP Photo/Ben Margot
"I'm not done," said Kuhn, who joined the Packers off waivers from Pittsburgh in 2007 and played 139 of a possible 144 regular-season games for them during the last nine seasons. "I work out four or five times a week and I'm putting in what I have to on the front end, expecting somebody to make my phone ring here at some point in time. If not this week, if not next week, sometime in August, somebody's going to have a need for somebody who's willing to come in, work hard, do some of the dirty work that not everybody does anymore.
"That's what I'm preparing myself for. I can't predict the future. I don't know which team is finally going to make my phone ring. Of course I'd love it to be the Packers, but they've got 90 [players] on their roster right now. So they have visions of where they're going to go. But things change sometimes. I can only control myself, and I've been doing the best I can to make that happen."
Kuhn played in all 16 games for the Packers last season but touched the ball only 15 times (nine carries, six receptions), his fewest since 2009. Quarterback Aaron Rodgers, when asked about the unsigned Kuhn's absence during the offseason program, called him "a dear friend" and did little to hide his disappointment that the team hasn't brought him back.
Kuhn, one of the few Packers players who makes his offseason home in the Green Bay area, said he has enjoyed this offseason and the bonus "family time" his free agency has given him, but with the Packers set to open camp Monday, he's getting the itch.
"That is probably the most concerning part," Kuhn said of being unsigned with the Packers' first camp practice scheduled for Tuesday morning. "Training camp is when you use practice to get ready for a season. Every week I miss in training camp, I miss an opportunity to get my pads down low, I miss an opportunity to make reads in the secondary and do things that you've got to do mentally. That's the only thing that gives you a little bit of high anxiety.
"[But] I've been around the block a time or two. I've just got to reassure myself that this is something that I've done before and that I'm ready to do again."
If the Packers don't call, Kuhn said his only criteria for going elsewhere is he wants to sign with "a competitor" and said he's not worried about having to learn a new playbook after so many years in Green Bay.
"At this point in my career, I want to play because I still enjoy it, I still love it, I'm still in shape, I'm still ready to go," Kuhn said. "I [just] want to be on a team that I think can go somewhere and do some damage." |
More than 200 civilians are reported to have been killed in a single US-led coalition raid on Mosul, as the United Nations warns the worst was yet to come for those still trapped in the Iraqi city.
Some 230 bodies of mostly women and children were pulled from three adjoining houses in the Jadida neighbourhood of west Mosul overnight Wednesday and into Thursday morning, according to witnesses.
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) had taken over the buildings to use as sniper positions and had been holding civilians there which they had rounded up to use as human shields.
A Mosul resident who has been documenting life under Isil and now the battle for the city under the name MosulEye told the Telegraph one of the trapped residents called him yesterday pleading for help, saying they had been without food and water for four days. |
Legal Action Taken Against Dragon Quest X Cheaters
For the first time ever cheaters Dragon Quest X cheaters are facing criminal charges and legal action for hacking the massively multiplayer game. The National Police Agency’s Cyber Crime Division is investigating 5 players accused of hacking with a criminal intent in Dragon Quest X.
The five players are accused of hacking into the code of the server and changing the drop rate of a super rare item from being super duper mega rare to dropping 100% of the time. There’s a pretty chunky breakdown of exactly what happened on the official announcement on the Dragon Quest X website involving a lot of graphs.
The main gist of the issue is not so much the act of getting the item more easily, but the graphs that made it clear to Square Enix the observable effects on the economy, specifically in the Astor Tier trading centre. This could not only be considered detrimental to other players of the game, but could also be seen as directly devaluing Square Enix’s core product of Dragon Quest X. They say that while the overall economy was largely not affected, at the time of the hack several specific areas of trade were.
The game’s producer, Yosuke Saito, posted this announcement on the official website (our own translation):
Good afternoon everyone! I am Saito, the producer of Dragon Quest X. An announcement has been made regarding “5 suspects have been identified to have cheated in Dragon Quest X by NPA”. These documents were about using external tools/applications to modify the game in order to get rare items. This is so-called cheating. Moreover, the suspects were trying to help other players to cheat as well. In reality it’s already qualified for two offences “Illegally modifying the server without permission” and “The action of helping other people cheat”. rice Regarding this issue, we had a discussion with the police in the last Nov, and we helped collect necessary information about the suspects. And it led us to now announcing this. We also suspended 29 accounts for good caused by this incident. We are sorry to have made such a worrying situation. This incident is not only a violation of the game, but a serious crime in real life as well. It’s important to understand the consequences of your actions. To make it a reliable game, this has been clearly noted in our policy and we show no mercy of any violations like this. Thank you very much for your continued support.
It’s an interesting first to observe. Video games are quite young in the grand scheme of things, but things like video game digital economies are even younger. I’m not really sure what to think. On one hand it is just a game, but on the other digital economies can have real effects on real people. Bryce, our resident Japanese speaker, thinks “they should be shown mercy”. What do you think? Let us know! |
Malcolm Gillis, the sixth president of Rice University, died Oct. 4 at age 74.
A University Professor, the Ervin Kenneth Zingler Professor of Economics and a professor of management, Gillis served as president from 1993 to 2004, one of Rice’s most active periods. He was a well-known economist who consulted with numerous countries on economic public policy.
“Malcolm served Rice as its president for 11 years with extraordinary distinction and dedication, raising the university to new heights,” President David Leebron said. “His efforts bettered not only the university, but the city of Houston, the state of Texas, the nation and the world. He continued to serve Rice in many capacities in the 11 years since his presidency, including as teacher, scholar and global ambassador.
“As my predecessor, he was an important and sympathetic adviser. Malcolm was a world-renowned scholar of development economics. During and after his presidency, he dedicated himself in particular to fostering the creation of new universities. His enthusiasm and friendship spanned the entire university — and globe. We will deeply miss him here at Rice.”
Provost Marie Lynn Miranda has been a friend of the Gillis family for more than 30 years. “Malcolm Gillis was an energetic, gregarious and impassioned advocate for higher education,” she said. “He was a global citizen who served the world in so many ways. In over three decades of knowing the Gillis family, I was always struck by Malcolm’s ability to do so much professionally while still making his family the center of his life. Like so many others, Malcolm warmly welcomed my own family into his. He was a great fisherman and a captivating storyteller.”
Born in Dothan, Ala., in 1940, Gillis worked his way through college and received an Associate of Arts degree from Chipola Junior College in Marianna, Fla., and then transferred as a junior to the University of Florida, where he received Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees. He also earned a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois. For the first 25 years of his professional life, he taught economics and helped some 20 countries apply economic analysis to public policy. His first faculty post, as an assistant professor of economics at Duke University, was followed by a 15-year stint at Harvard University. He returned to Duke, where he served as dean of the graduate school, vice provost for academic affairs and then dean of arts and sciences before coming to Rice in 1993.
His achievements as president of Rice were lauded in 2004 when he and his wife, Elizabeth, were awarded the Association of Rice (ARA) Alumni’s Gold Medal, the association’s highest honor. The ARA noted that Gillis developed and implemented the first strategic plan spearheaded by a Rice president since the early 1960s. That plan became the platform that launched the university’s first comprehensive capital campaign, Rice: The Next Century Campaign. Under Gillis’ leadership, Rice undertook more construction of new buildings and renovation of older facilities than it had during any previous decade. Among those projects were Martel College, a new facility for Wiess College, the Humanities building, the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management building, Reckling Park, renovations to Keck, Herring and Rayzor halls and construction of Dell Butcher Hall, which became the home of the world’s first center dedicated to nanotechnology, now called the Smalley-Curl Center.
The ARA also noted that Gillis guided investment in information and computational technology, biotechnology, nanotechnology and environmental and energy technology. He consistently promoted the humanities and social sciences as no less important than the natural sciences and engineering to contemporary life and endeavor. Collaborative efforts between Rice and various institutions of the Texas Medical Center increased from just a handful in the early 1990s to more than 80, the ARA noted. Gillis encouraged expansion of the School of Continuing Studies program, and he fostered Rice’s educational outreach. Rice’s James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy was established during Gillis’s presidency and has earned a global reputation as one of the country’s premier policy think tanks.
In 1997 Gillis helped guide the founding of International University Bremen (now known as Jacobs University Bremen) in Germany, an institute modeled on Rice. He later helped found several other international universities, including Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, the first private university in North Korea, Tan Tao University in Vietnam and Catholic University of Chile. He was appointed to the board of directors of the Vietnam Education Foundation, an independent U.S. federal agency founded by Congress to promote closer education and research relations between the U.S. and Vietnam.
Gillis also recognized the increasing importance of a global education and helped increase the number of Rice undergraduates studying abroad. He was also a strong advocate for underrepresented minorities. He created the President’s Council on Minority Affairs and initiated the Office of Minority Community Affairs at Rice.
“Malcolm and Elizabeth Gillis have served Rice unstintingly throughout the past decade,” read a Gold Medal nomination signed by all the speakers of the faculty who served during Malcolm’s tenure as president. “They have opened their home to countless guests, attended innumerable events on campus and off, worked closely with alumni across the country and served as models of academic hospitality. Under Malcolm’s leadership the university has taken great strides forward in facilities, faculty and finances. The Gillis era will be recorded in history as one in which Rice made significant advances, especially in research and scholarship, international reputation and aspiration.”
After his presidency, Gillis resumed his teaching career under the title University Professor, Rice’s highest faculty designation. His research interests included fiscal theory and policy, economic development, environmental policy and natural resources (theory and policy). He co-authored the popular textbook Economics of Development and served as co-editor for the Quarterly Journal of Economics. He published in the leading journals of his fields, including Quarterly Journal of Economics, American Economic Review and Journal of Development Economics.
“Malcolm Gillis was a pioneer in the field of development economics,” said Department of Economics Chair Antonio Merlo. “A prolific and influential scholar, Professor Gillis was a firm believer in the importance of economic research for the formulation and assessment of public policy in developing countries. Here at Rice, he also was an eminent and dedicated teacher who always provided extra care to the students with his tireless involvement in mentoring, advising and guiding them throughout their academic career and beyond.”
In 2008 Texas Gov. Rick Perry appointed Gillis to an oversight committee for the new Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT). Gillis was elected vice chair of CPRIT, which is charged with issuing $3 billion in general obligation bonds over 10 years to fund grants for cancer research and prevention.
Gillis founded and later led several academic organizations, including the Texas/U.K. Research Collaborative on Nano and Bio Technology, the Boniuk Center for the Study of Religious Tolerance at Rice and the Duke University Center for Tropical Conservation. He was a founding member and later a chairman of the board for BioHouston. He also served as a director of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank.
Two university professorships are named in Gillis’s honor: the Malcolm Gillis University Professor at Rice and the S. Malcolm Gillis Professorship of Public Policy at Duke.
Last week the ARA named Gillis an honorary alumnus — a title that the association has awarded to only 10 others.
Gillis is survived by Elizabeth, three children – Nora, Heather and Stephen – and grandchildren.
A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. Oct. 28 in Stude Hall at Alice Pratt Brown Hall.
Editor’s note: Fondren Library’s Woodson Research Center has an extensive collection of materials about Malcolm Gillis in its Rice Presidents and Provosts exhibit. |
Facebook is pretty much everywhere nowadays, and it looks like they’re putting their extended reach to good use. The social networking giant has reached out to partner with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to bring AMBER Alerts to everyone’s News Feeds. If you’re unfamiliar, the AMBER Alert program is a child abduction alert system that broadcasts missing children information on televisions, radio networks and straight to our smartphones. The AMBER Alerts that will show up on Facebook are based on local results, so you’ll only get alerts that happen around your area. The alerts will include photographs and basically as much information as the organization has on the child. Once you see an AMBER Alert post on your feed, you can share it with whomever you’d like, allowing the information to spread as quickly as possible. The alerts will begin going out today and will show up on desktop, Android and iOS Facebook applications.
If you’re already receiving these alerts on your smartphone and not through your Facebook app, you’re not alone. Most smartphones already have this functionality built-in but it doesn’t necessarily help as much as you might think. If you receive an AMBER Alert on your phone you’ll hear a loud ring, followed by a few lines of text, linking to the AMBER Alert website. This method is convenient and certainly makes users look at their devices, though it doesn’t really give out that much information for people to gather. Facebook aims to give you as much information as possible with each alert they send out, hopefully warranting more results.
Some may not think this is a big deal right now, but this is a big step forward in hopes to find more missing and abducted children. |
One of the biggest flaws with the EU, was the idea that they could house dozens of cultures with distinct histories and languages, all under one roof, and expect them to thrive. You can’t hold 28 nations together under one union, when all of these countries have wildly different interests, expectations, and priorities. Every time the EU faces a problem, some states will get their way while others get shafted, and another stake is driven through the union.
These nations have differences that can’t be reconciled, and each time a crisis arrives, it only serves to drive a wedge between each government. And history will likely view the latest immigration crisis as the final straw that led to the dissolution of the European Union.
Europe is currently being swamped with Middle Eastern refugees who are fleeing their shattered homes. Just last month saw 107,000 refugees arrive in the EU, and Germany alone is expected to take in 800,000 people by the end of the year. You can already see how this is starting to divide the European superstate. Take a look at how Germany’s current chancellor is responding to the crisis.
Chancellor Angela Merkel said Germany must help those seeking asylum and fleeing war as Europe confronts its biggest refugee crisis since World War II. “This is not a natural catastrophe, but there have been some catastrophic situations,” Merkel told reporters Monday in Berlin. The right to asylum is a “foundation” of Germany’s constitution as the country prepares for as many as 800,000 refugees this year, she said. Germany’s government will assemble a “comprehensive” package to confront tide of refugees on Sept. 24, Merkel said.
Now compare that with how the President of the Czech Republic, which is one of Germany’s neighbors, is responding to the crisis.
The Czech Republic should defend its borders, using the army to expel “illegal immigrants” because the European Union isn’t curbing the influx of refugees into the bloc, President Milos Zeman said. Zeman’s comments echoed those of other politicians calling for the EU to take action to stem the flood of people into the region from Syria and other conflict areas as they travel through Greece and the Balkan states to western Europe. “Of course I would wish for the EU to strengthen its borders, but I don’t see any real action,” Zeman told reporters in Prague castle on Monday. “Therefore I believe the Czech Republic should take of its borders alone and expel illegal immigrants from the borders, including with the use of the army.”
Does this sound like a Union that can be held together? In this case, one government is willing to accept a group of people that another government views as a threat to its very existence. And now Germany expects every other EU nation to share the burden of these refugees.
And these differences don’t just exist between governments. They’re growing between governments and their citizens. In Germany there have been numerous attacks against refugee camps perpetrated by right-wing protestors, and that kind of sentiment will be the real death knell of the EU. Every wave of migrants that arrives in Europe, helps fuel nationalist movements across the continent. The popularity of Eurosceptic parties has been exploding in recent years, in part because of the growing number of foreigners that are settling into Europe.
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The European Union in its current form is only a little more than 20 years old, and it’s already practically insolvent, and bursting with secession movements and anti-EU political parties. If you ask me, its days are numbered.
Joshua Krause is a reporter, writer and researcher at The Daily Sheeple. He was born and raised in the Bay Area and is a freelance writer and author. You can follow Joshua’s reports at Facebook or on his personalTwitter. Joshua’s website is Strange Danger. |
I still remember that one-room rented flat where we lived. My grandfather, at an age when he should have retired, was serving as the Vice Principal of a private school. My granny used to take care of me while my parents were busy restoring the life they had just lost.
My granny had told me the stories of Kashmir- the heaven. As a kid, I imagined sitting inside a houseboat sailing calmly on the Dal Lake surrounded by lotus and Shikaras. A couple, both of them wearing Pheran (Kashmiri Dress), exchanging glances and Kangri. The warm affordable Kangri resting warmly in their pherans. I often wondered that if Kashmir was so beautiful, why did they leave?
Different metaphors and similes describing Kashmir gave me a strong urge to visit the valley. But whenever I asked my family to take me on a holiday to our Mini Switerzland, all they replied was, “Teth chun vyan kehin, che kya karakh tayatnas” (There is nothing left now. What will you do there?)
I grew up listening to the stories of Kashmir, which I had never heard earlier. Stories that shocked me. Stories about the atrocities that my family members faced. A sudden adrenaline rush and a sense of hatred would overpower me and my urge to visit the valley increased manifold.
It was hard for me to imagine the masses gathering outside the mosques and shouting Anti-Indian and Anti-Pandit slogan.
For a moment, I started looking at my Muslim friends with with suspicion. But my granny convinced me otherwise with the stories of brotherhood and about how her Muslim neighbours helped them during the tough times and assured me that there were a handful of fundamentalists who spewed venom across the valley.
I visited Kashmir for the first time and I finally felt at home. Passers-by looked familiar and I was stunned by those beautiful snow-clad mountains. A crystal clear reflection of the moon in the Dal lake and the cold wind playing with my hair gave me goose bumps and made my stomach flutter. The Valley stole my heart. It was love at first sight.
Paradise it will always be, in the hearts of Kashmiri Pandits, even after the exodus took everything with itself and left behind few bitter and sweet memories. And I believe that one day I’ll go back home. |
Hearthbreakers may have aired over three months ago, which is AGES in pony time, but that doesn't mean we aren't still celebrating all of the new characters it added. Two families came together, with one side being completely fleshed out to match their (possible) Apple Family cousins. How does a writer cope with such a giant task? How does one handle 10 characters all getting some love in a single scene?Nick Confalone, the writer behind it, decided to release a few notes showing off what exactly went into doing just that. Head on down below for it!And just in case you were all curious about how show staffers react to our surprise love of their new character additions, have these awesome responses to Marble Pie's popularity:And go follow him on Twitter |
Snap, Inc. is building a presence in China despite the fact that its Snapchat app is banned in the country, according to a report from CNN. Snap’s Chinese operation will reportedly focus on Spectacles. The company already assembles the video-recording sunglasses in China, but the new recruits will focus on research and development. Job applications were spotted on WeChat by the Chinese tech news website NetEase. The job description requires potential hires to have at least three years of experience, and Snap is particularly interested in engineers who’ve worked at well-known Chinese tech companies such as Tencent, Baidu, or Alibaba.
Snap is seeking applicants with three years of work experience, preferably in large technology companies
China represents a lucrative market for many technology companies, given that it boasts the world’s biggest population and highest number of internet users. However, heavy censorship rules have made it extremely difficult for some US tech companies to establish a strong presence in China. Apps like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter are all blocked and access is only possible through roundabout solutions like VPNs.
Snap is offering its China hires a possible transfer to its US headquarters as well as stock options. Despite Snapchat’s ban in China, the company has drawn interest from local technology companies. Alibaba was reported to have invested $200 million in 2015, and Tencent was believed to have been part of its $60 million fundraising round in 2013.
It’s been a big year for Snap. The company released its first hardware product with Spectacles and followed that up by filing for its initial public offering, reportedly aiming to raise up to $4 billion with the IPO expected to come as early as March. |
On the night of 21 February 2016, Sunday, five students of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) came out in public for the first time since the Delhi police charged them with criminal conspiracy and sedition on 12 February. Umar Khalid, Ashutosh Kumar, Rama Naga, Anirban Bhattacharya, and Anant Prakash Narayan appeared at the administrative block of the university around midnight. The five of them had gone missing since the arrest of JNU Students’ Union president Kanhaiya Kumar on 12 February on the charges of sedition and criminal conspiracy. The reason they had not come out in public before, Khalid later said, was not because they feared arrest, but because they were worried about a “mob lynching.”
The charges against these students were levied following their alleged organisation of an event on 9 February, which was held to mark the hanging of Mohammad Afzal, who was convicted for his alleged role in the 2001 terrorist attack on the Parliament. This event kicked off the spate of protests that continues to this day. Although the organisers had originally received permission to conduct the programme, they were told at the last minute that the administration had withdrawn the permission. This was supposedly after the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), a right wing student organisation allied with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) had complained that the event was “anti-national”
While Kumar’s “anti-national” credibility was firmly cemented in the public eye due to his alleged sloganeering, Khalid has been declared, by sections of the media, as a terrorist. Arnab Goswami, the editor-in-chief of Times Now and ET Now, repeatedly asked during a debate on the “anti-nationals of JNU” on his show, The Newshour, “Who are these people? What do we know about them?” Even before a panellist could respond, we heard a hint of the answer from Goswami: “When we seek to identify who are the terror groups—we don’t know. And in this case we don’t know who these people are.” This did not stop him from speculating about the JNU organisers’ pro-Pakistan connection.
A step ahead of Times Now’s paranoid coverage, was Zee News. Sudhir Chaudhary, the editor of the channel, called Khalid a “traitor.” A special report on the same channel also declared that the country now “recognises the face” of the agitation—Khalid—as being against the Indian constitution and law. The report went on to dismiss the fairly low position at which Khalid’s name was listed on the poster for the 9 February event, “It does not matter on what number is Umar Khalid’s name in the poster for the event that was organised in the JNU. But is it not the truth that he is the torchbearer of this entire movement?”
NewsX, another news channel, tweeted that Khalid was a Jaish-e-Mohammad sympathiser, quoting an unidentified Intelligence Bureau report that was later debunked by intelligence officials, who called it “a figment of someone’s imagination.” The channel has yet to issue a correction. It was not just the press that had a markedly specific view of Khalid, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh had stated that the JNU protest had the backing of Lashkar-e-Taiba chief, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, following a tweet by an unidentified individual. Intelligence and police sources, however, told The Indian Express there was no evidence to support this and that the account, (now suspended by Twitter), also misspelt the spelling Saeed has used for his name in the past. |
Image: (Kobi Gideon/Flah90/WEF/U.N./Graphics by Uri Fintzy)
Introduction
The rulers of the two most powerful authoritarian regimes in the Middle East are launching major wars to reconfigure the Middle East. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has declared war by proxy on Iran, announcing full-scale military mobilization within Israel (July 27 -29) and organizing the biggest political campaign of ultra Zionist Jews in Washington. The purpose of this two-pronged propaganda blitz is to defeat the recently signed US-Iranian agreement and start another major Middle East war. Ultimately, Netanyahu intends to take care of his ‘Palestinian Problem’ for good: complete the conquest and occupation of Palestine and expelling the Palestinian people from their homeland – the single most important foreign policy and domestic goal of the Jewish state. In order to do this, Israeli leaders have had to systematically campaign for the destruction of the Palestinians regional supporters and sympathizers – Iraq, Libya, Syria, Lebanon and Iran.
Erodoğan’ s Multiple Wars
At the same time, Turkish President Erodoğan has launched a major war against the Kurdish people and their aspirations for a Kurdish state. This has followed closely on several recent incidents beginning with the bombing (with cooperation from Turkish intelligence ) of a Kurdish youth camp, killing and wounding scores of young secular activists. Within days of the massacre of Turkish-Kurdish youth, Erodoğan ordered his air force to bomb and strafe Kurdish bases within the sovereign territories of Iraq and Syria and Turkish security police have assaulted and arrested thousands of Kurdish nationalists and Turkish leftist sympathizers throughout the country. This has all occurred with the support of the US and NATO who provide cover for Erodoğan’s plans to seize Syrian territory, displace Kurdish civilians and fighters and colonize the northern border of Syria – under the pretext of needing a ‘buffer zone’ to protect Turkish sovereignty. Such a massive land grab of hundreds of square kilometers will end the long standing support and interaction among Syrian, Iraqi and Turkish Kurdish populations who have been among the most effective opponents of radical Islamist groups.
Erdoğan’s newly declared war on the Kurds has complex domestic and regional components (Financial Times 7/28/15, p 9): Within Turkey, the repression is directed against the emerging electoral-political power of the Kurdish People’s Democratic Party. Erodoğan plans to discredit or outright ban this political party, which had won a surprising number of seats in the recent parliamentary election, call for new elections, secure a ‘majority’ in Parliament and assume dictatorial ‘executive powers’.
Regionally, Erodoğan’s invasion of Syria is part of his strategy to expand Turkey’s borders southward and westward and to provide a platform from which Turkey’s favorite jihadi clients can launch assaults on the secular government in Damascus and Aleppo. The bombing of Kurdish villages and camps in Iraq and Syria are designed to reverse the Kurd’s military victories against ISIS and will justify greater repression of Kurdish activists backing autonomy in southeastern Turkey.
Erodoğan is counting on Turkey’s agreements with the US and NATO for overt and covert collaboration against the Kurds and against Syrian national sovereignty.
Netanyahu’s Proxy Wars
Netanyahu’s multifaceted political offensive is designed to drag the US into a war with Iran. His strategy operates at many levels and in complex complimentary ways. The immediate target is the nuclear agreement recently signed between the White House and Iran. Part of longer-term strategy to destroy Iran includes the formation of a coalition of Middle East states, especially Gulf monarchies, to encircle, confront and provoke war with Iran. This political-military strategy is being pushed by leading Zionists within the highest circles of the US Government.
All the major Israeli political parties, and most Israeli voters support this dangerous policy against Iran. The Presidents of the 52 Major American Jewish Organizations in the US have been mobilized to bully, bribe and bludgeon the majority of Congress into following Netanyahu’s dictates. Every US Congressperson is being ‘visited’ and presented with propaganda sheets by leaders, activists and full time functionaries of AIPAC, the Jewish Confederations and their billionaire political donors. All the major US press and TV media parrot Netanyahu’s call for ‘war on the peace accord’ despite massive US public opinion against any escalation of the conflict.
At the highest levels of US Executive decision-making top Zionist officials avoid association with AIPAC’s public polemics and thuggish bluster, all the while promoting their own political-military ‘final solution’ …for eliminating Iran as an adversary to Israeli-Jewish supremacy in the Middle East. In the State Department and Departments of Commerce, Defense and Treasury, US-Israeli agents acting as specialMiddle East advisers, ambassadors and insiders push Netanyahu’s policies to undermine any normalization of relations between the US and Iran.
A recent proposal written by Professor Phillip Zelikow in the Financial Times(7/23/15, p. 9 ) entitled “To Balance (sic) the Nuclear Deal, Defeat ISIS and Confront Iran” is chilling.
The former ‘Executive Director of the ‘9/11 Commission Investigation Report’, uber-insider Zelikow promotes the formation of an ingenious coalition, in the name of fighting ISIS, but whose real purpose is to “confront Iranian ambitions”. Zelikow’s “coalition” includes Turkey, which will be assigned to attack Iran’s regional allies in Syria and Lebanon (Hezbollah) – all in the name of “fighting ISIS”.
The bland, bespectacled and most respectable Professor Zelikow lays out Netanyahu’s own bloody hit list down to the most minute detail – but tidied up with a thin veneer of ‘confronting ISIS’ to obscure his real agenda. This is no blustering AIPAC thug or open Neo-Con war monger beating the drums…
Zelikow’s ‘anti-ISIS coalition’ will ultimately go after the Iraqi Shia militia and their main supporters among Iran’s Revolutionary Guard – hewing closely to Netanyahu’s strategy!
Zelikow was a major inside advocate of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Twelve years after the US invaded, occupied and destroyed Iraq, Zelikow pops up again to promote a policy of sending US combat troops to serve Israel’s regional interest. He writes, “The military side [of the ‘coalition’] will need more Americans on the ground to offer meaningful combat support among the coalition”. (FT ibid).
Zelikow is clearly aware of US public opinion in favor of diplomacy with Iran and against the US engaging in more ground wars in the Middle East, when he writes that a ‘military effort is not an alternative to diplomacy.” Zelikow and his bosses in the Israeli Foreign Office know any US military intervention with such a “coalition” would lead to the destruction of the US-Iran Agreement and another major ground war with US troops fighting for Israel once again!
Considering his position as a highly connected insider, Zelikow’s attempts to sabotage the Iran-US agreement presents a far greater danger to world peace than all the noisy lobbying by the 52 Zionist organizations active in Congress.
Zelikow has been a highly influential security adviser to the US Executive and State Department since the early 1980’s under Reagan. He was appointed ‘special adviser to the State Department’ in 2007, a position held earlier by Neo-Con operative Wendy Sherman and followed by war-monger, Victoria Nuland. In 2011 President Obama appointed him to the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board.
He came to national prominence when President Bush appointed him Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission where he directed the highly controversial (and highly censored) 9/11 Commission Report against much public opposition. The appointment was made after Bush first choice of Henry Kissinger had created a media storm – Kissinger was never a serious choice with an insider-gatekeeper like Zelikow waiting in the wings. He was a controversial choice because of his role as intimate advisor to Condaleeza Rice and his authorship of the notorious Bush national security strategy promoting pre-emptive war, published in September 2002.
Phillip Zelikow suppressed any discussion of Israel’s role as a major catalyst for US involvements in the Afghan and Iraq wars. As executive-director of the 9/11 Commission Report, Zelikow assumed the role of editor and censor. He ignored the history of Israeli Mossad operations in the US, especially in the run-up to the attack on September 11, 2001. The report made no mention the fake ‘moving’ van filled with Israeli spies arrested on September 11, 2001 while celebrating and photographing the destruction of the World Trade Center complex. Nor did he discuss the quiet ‘deportation’ of the Israeli agents. The report contains no discussion of the scores of phony Israel “art students” who operated in South Florida around US military installations and in the vicinity of the apartment of the alleged 9-11 hijackers. They too were quietly arrested and deported.
He also suppressed discussion of the Defense Department’s ‘Able Danger Project’, which showed US intelligence awareness of the hijackers presence and activities much earlier dating back to 1997.
In October 2001, the first ‘anthrax attack’ occurred – first sickening and killing a photojournalist at a scandal sheet in Florida. National news programs featured an interview with… the re-packaged ‘al Qaeda’ and ‘bioterrorism’ expert Professor Zelikow (his lack of Arabic and scientific credentials notwithstanding…) who declared the anthrax to be ‘weapons grade’ and ‘definitely from a state sponsored military lab’, implying Iraq. (He was correct in the ‘military lab’ part of his declaration – only the facility was the US Weapons Lab at Fort Detrick. Zelikow’s role in accusing the embargoed and beleaguered regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein of the anthrax hysteria was crucial in the public build-up for the case to invade Iraq, echoed Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s call for the destruction of Iraq. Master-performance complete, ‘scientist’ Zelikow’s interview (among others) has disappeared from the ‘web’.
Zelikow’s ‘expertise’ (such as it is) and usefulness to Israel derives from his articles on the political usefulness of ‘false flags’ and catastrophes – events concocted or instigated by imperialist powers to push a traumatized public into unpopular wars and draconian domestic police state policies. His work has centered on the manipulation and exploitation of ‘events’ to push public policy – and include the Cuban Missile Crisis, the re-unification of Germany, policing Northern Ireland, (but not Middle East studies or bio-weaponry’). His expertise is in the historical use of the ‘public myth’- whether the Riechstag Fire or Pearl Harbor. In Foreign Affairs, November-December 1998, he co-authored an article with the current US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, entitledCatastrophe Terrorism where a ‘watershed event’ could result in ‘horror and chaos’ pushing the US public to accept the destruction of ‘their civil liberties, wide-spread surveillance, detention and use of deadly force…’
Zelikow continues to push the “false flag” script: In 2001 with the “anthrax hysteria” and now with the “Iran threat hysteria” . . . What is not surprising is that in both instances he hews closely to Israel’s strategic goal of utterly destroying countries, which have opposed Israel’s dispossession, occupation and expulsion of Palestinians – Iraq, Syria, Libya, Lebanon and now Iran.
Zelikow is a long-term, major asset for Israel, working quietly and effectively while the AIPAC bullies break down the doors of Congress. He never held a prominent position in the Cabinet or White House post like the brazen Zion-Cons Wolfowitz, Feith, Libby, Perle, Abrams and Levey who aggressively pushed the country into war with Iraq. Wolfowitz and company have scuttle back into obscurity under the cover of lucrative private positions while Zelikow continues to work inside pushing the Iran war agenda out of the limelight.
Zelikow’s role is far more discrete and important to Israel over the long haulthan the loudmouths and thugs of AIPAC and other Zionist fronts. On the surface he pursues his academic and university administrative career (an excellent cover) while repeatedly inserting himself into crucial public discussions and quietly assuming strategic positions to advise on events or policies which have ‘turning point’consequences and where his deep ties to Israel are never discussed.
Zelikow has one asset, which his bullying and blustering Zionist comrades lackand another which he shares with them. Zelikow is a great con-man – claiming knowledge about anthrax, Middle East relations, and military strategy. He spouts …. pure unadulterated rubbish with authoritative finesse!.. Claiming legal and investigativeexpertise he controlled the 9/11 Commission Report and denied the American people any open and relevant discussion of the event. He even likened the Commission Report skeptics to ‘an infection’ within American public opinion – apparently relying on his ‘expertise’ in biological warfare…
What Zelikow does have in common with the raging bulls of Zionism is his constant resort to vituperation against any country or movement identified as a target by Israel. He consistently refers to the secular government of Syria (under attack by jihadi terrorists) as a “terrorist regime”. He calls the Iraqi militia fighting ISIS “Shia torture squads”. This is part of a build-up to push the US into ground war for Israel against Iran and its allies.
Unlike Turkey’s Erodoğan who uses his own armed forces to launch an all-out war to dispossess, terrorize and colonize ethnic Kurdish territories in Syria, Iraq and Turkey, Israel’s Netanyahu relys on his overseas (US) high level operatives to set in motion the wheels of war. Within days of attacks of September 11, 2001, Israel’s leading mouthpiece in the US Senate, Joseph Lieberman presented the roadmap for US wars for the next decade and a half – declaring that “the US must declare war on Iraq, Syria, Libya, Lebanon and Iran”, despite the complete absence of these countries’ involvement in the event.
Is he a prophet or just a highly successful agent? Zelikow will push for a ‘coalition’ of Middle East dictators and monarchs to fulfill Israel’s dream as dictated by Joseph Lieberman in September 2001. This is a dream of waging devastating war against Iran leading to its partition, similar to the de facto partition of Iraq, Syria and Libya, resulting in a Middle East forever ravaged by sectarian strife, foreign occupations, balkanized and devoid of any possibility of regaining civilized life. Israel can then carry out its brutal final solution: the dispossession and expulsion of all Palestinians and establishment an expanded, purely Jewish state – surrounded by unspeakable destruction and destitution…
Conclusion
Erodoğan expands ‘Turkoman frontier’ into Syria and Iraq – despite the fact that Turkey has never shown any interest in the Turkoman minorities. To that end, he allies with ISIS terrorists to uproot Kurds, everywhere extending into Turkey. Erodoğan, like, Netanyahu, wants a ‘pure’ ethnic state – one Jewish, the other Turkish! Both leaders have no regard for the sovereignty of neighboring states, let alone the security of their civilian populations. Both depend on the military support of the US. Both are in the process of igniting wider and more destructive wars in the Middle East. Netanyahu and Erodoğan want to reconfigure the Middle East: Turkey seizes Kurdistan and Syria; Netanyahu expands military dominance in the Persian Gulf through the destruction of Iran.
These two leaders appear to hate each other because they are so similar in arrogance and action… But according to Professor Zelikow, the US will step in ‘god-like’ to ‘mediate’ the different power grabs among what he mindlessly refers to as the ‘partners of the coalition’. |
Battered by scandals, lawmakers in California on Monday moved forward on a bill banning lobbyists from throwing lavish fundraising parties at their homes for candidates and elected officials.
The bill, which passed the state senate unanimously, is one of several measures introduced in the wake of the scandals, which include criminal indictments against two senators, the conviction of a third and fines by the state’s political ethics watchdog against a fourth.
“The public deserves more transparency in political practices, and this measure is a crucial element in a wave of important reforms,” said Senate Democratic leader Darrell Steinberg, of Sacramento.
The legislature’s approval rating has fallen since the scandals began in January with the conviction of Democratic Senator Roderick Wright for perjury and voter fraud after prosecutors said he did not live in the Los Angeles area district he sought to represent.
The following month, Democratic Senator Ron Calderon was indicted on federal corruption charges and in March, Democrat Leland Yee of San Francisco was indicted on corruption and gun-trafficking charges.
“I did not expect that these sorts of issues would dominate my last year in what has been a really great run,” said Steinberg, who has backed several reform bills since the scandals began piling up, including limits on gifts that lawmakers can accept, and tightened campaign finance and disclosure laws.
His signature legislative goals, including a plan to offer free access to nursery schooling for four-year-olds in the state, have to a degree been overshadowed by the need to respond to the ongoing scandals. But the longtime lawmaker said he will now leave a legacy of reform.
Steinberg and Democratic Senator Kevin de Leon, who will take over as senate leader after Steinberg leaves office later this year, have proposed prohibiting senators from raising money during the last four weeks of the legislative session.
Steinberg also required senators to attend a day-long ethics training, and suspended the three criminally charged senators with pay.
The scandals, however, persisted. Last week, Steinberg fired a Senate peace officer after it was discovered he had taken marijuana and cocaine the night he had been involved in an off-duty gun fight. He also accepted the resignation of the Senate’s long time sergeant-at-arms, who admitted to knowing about the peace officer’s drug use.
The bill passed Monday was introduced after dozens of officials received letters from the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission questioning fundraising parties thrown by lobbyists and ultimately fining one advocate a record $133,500.
(Reporting by Jennifer Chaussee in San Francisco; Editing by Sharon Bernstein and Miral Fahmy) |
New York has the smartest basketball fans in the world, and they're always willing to explain why.
It's a passionate and educated crowd with roots throughout Brooklyn and Queens who have been schooled by Joe Lapchick, Red Holzman and Pat Riley. Bernard King, Patrick Ewing, Willis Reed and Clyde Frazier taught them about greatness. These fans know basketball and how it works.
Then why have a stream of Knicks general managers and presidents played them for fools for so long?
The unspoken code at Madison Square Garden was always that if the Knicks stripped it down and started over, New Yorkers would revolt. That mentality resulted in quick-fixes, sloppy patchwork jobs and overspending just to keep the roster fluid. These former GMs, mindful of tickets that cost the equivalent of two-bedroom condos, always feared the chance of hearing it from bean-counters (and maybe owner Jim Dolan) if the Garden went half-full.
Melo Talks Return Carmelo Anthony on Wednesday discusses the status of his injury and when he might return to the court.
You've probably heard it before: New York needs and craves stars, New York must have competitive teams every year, New York won't sit still for rebuilding, blah, blah. Those in charge of shaping the Knicks fell for it and have tried to build a winner every way except the most sensible way.
And they embraced this approach in part because they feared the fans. That doesn't make sense, because New York fans are wiser than that. They know the difference between a smokescreen and a Charles Oakley screen. They'll be patient if the blueprint makes sense and if they can see results.
Knicks president Phil Jackson is finally getting around to realizing this, although at first, he fell in line with those who came before him. Remember, in the preseason, he was thinking playoffs with these Knicks. (They're now 5-35, losers of 15 straight are on pace to be the worst in franchise history ... and we're just into January). He was adamant about using the triangle offense with a bunch of role players who will be gone after the season. He gave a ton of money, and in essence turned over the team to Carmelo Anthony, a scorer who hasn't taken any team anywhere special and now is dealing with left knee soreness.
But now, Jackson is doing whatever is necessary to ensure a crummy finish, get a high pick in the 2015 Draft and clear cap space for trades and possible free-agent signings. He has all but taken out an ad in the New York Times, saying that everyone not named 'Melo is available for the right price. Jackson wants to sell, sell, sell -- even if the Knicks don't exactly drip with assets.
GameTime: Phil Jackson Antawn Jamison and Stu Jackson analyze Phil Jackson's comments to the media regarding the Knicks' dismal season.lll
The stripped-down Knicks will be lucky to win more than 15 games or finish ahead of the tanking Sixers -- unfathomable to Jackson just a month ago -- and guess what? Knicks fans understand. They knew this team reeked back in November, well before injuries hit and J.R. Smith and Iman Shumpert were traded for pennies on the dollar.
Why stay the course, win about 25 games and lose out on the odds of getting a better Draft pick? Why waste 'Melo and his 30-year-old knees on this clown of a season? Just sign a bunch of NBA D-Leaguers and be done with it. Better to lose with a purpose than to stink without one, something the Knicks have done for the better part of two decades.
"Obviously I didn't do the right thing in picking the group of guys that we have here," Jackson said.
It's good that Jackson issued a "mea culpa" last week, conceded his Plan A was a reach and that he's better off tanking (not his word, but still). Jackson is getting around to do what he should've done this summer, especially once he unloaded Tyson Chandler.
The only GM who rightfully tried to fumigate the place was Donnie Walsh. At first he got interference from Dolan, then he got fired by Dolan. The owner usually lets his people do their jobs, but in this rare instance, Dolan screwed up.
Walsh wanted the Knicks to wait until the summer of 2012 to sign Anthony as a free agent, rather than swing a deal with Denver by the trade deadline and surrender assets. But Dolan, frightened that 'Melo might get traded instead to Brooklyn -- once again, the owner was fearful of losing the "star" that New York supposedly craves -- pulled the trigger on a mega-trade. And then he dumped Walsh.
GameTime: Aldridge On Carmelo David Aldridge gives his take on whether Carmelo Anthony should sit and nurse his injuries, amidst a dismal Knicks season.
From there, the Knicks had a fool's-gold season in 2012-13 when 'Melo and Amar'e Stoudemire were healthy and they reached the East semifinals. Since 2000, the Knicks have made just four playoff trips and had zero East finals appearances because they've never had a sound plan in place.
When Isiah Thomas took over the Knicks in December 2003, he smirked when asked if he was prepared to break it down and start over. A man who'd been in New York for 5 minutes said: "New York won't stand for that."
Rather than trade Allan Houston, who had a $100 million contract that was still movable at the time (Houston scored 53 against the Lakers six months earlier), Isiah kept him. Those Knicks were an average team with four expiring contracts, making them ripe for a summer makeover. Instead, in January of 2004, Isiah traded for Stephon Marbury and that was the beginning of the end.
Jackson on Loser Mentality Phil Jackson said a loser mentality is being embedded in to the Knicks.
Nobody would ever compare 'Melo to Marbury. But just as Isiah was forever linked to Marbury, Jackson has hitched his rep as a GM to 'Melo. That was somewhat risky when Jackson re-signed Anthony to the max if only because a volume scorer like him can be hard to build around. From a win-now perspective, Anthony would've been better off signing with the Chicago Bulls last summer. But 'Melo insists he isn't ready to admit a mistake in hindsight.
"I want to be part of what's going on," Anthony said. "This is my future. This is why I wanted to come back and be part of that plan. I want to be part of the plan."
Meanwhile, the team leading the East is the Atlanta Hawks, built smartly (and rather quickly) by Danny Ferry. When he arrived two years ago, he had none of the financial assets the Knicks enjoy, plus a pair of hard-to-move franchise players in Joe Johnson and Josh Smith.
Ferry traded Johnson to Brooklyn and got value (Draft picks) in return. He let Smith sign with the Pistons. Suddenly, the Hawks are flourishing as a team that doesn't lean on any specific player to get it done. The ball moves, they shoot 3-pointers and swarm on defense.
Jackson on Triangle Offense Phil Jackson said their was too much negativity put on the triangle offense which stunted the Knicks learning abilities.
They'll still need to prove themselves in the playoffs, and teams without stars traditionally don't win titles. Yet, this is exactly the type of team that Knicks general managers feared New York would never accept.
Jackson has a chance to do it right. He's armed with this summer's lottery pick, which he must use wisely because the Knicks don't own their 2016 first-rounder. He'll have upwards of $30 million in cap room when Amare Stoudemire and Andrea Bargnani are off the books. And as always, he'll have Dolan's millions to go over the cap if necessary. What Jackson needs to do is get value, as Ferry did with the Hawks, and sign the right players at the right prices.
In short, Knicks need everything except a small forward. You wonder if a first-timer like Jackson is ready for the challenge of creating a contender efficiently rather than hastily. For years, Jackson and Michael Jordan often mocked GM Jerry Krause for some of the decisions he made during the Bulls' dynasty. Yet, in what seems like a bit of comeuppance, both Jordan and Jackson (so far) have struggled to find the right touch as team-builders.
Jackson can't afford to repeat the mistakes of past Knicks GMs like Scott Layden, Thomas and, to a lesser extent, Glen Grunwald. He shouldn't necessarily feel the urge to win now, even with 'Melo. With lots of advantages this summer, he shouldn't have any excuses, either.
What he does, and how he does it, will dictate the direction of the Knicks for the next few years. Is that a scary thought, or a comforting one?
Veteran NBA writer Shaun Powell has worked for newspapers and other publications for more than 25 years. You can e-mail him here or follow him on Twitter.
The views on this page do not necessarily reflect the views of the NBA, its clubs or Turner Broadcasting. |
September of Sly
I like the idea of sly: like slime, but cooler. Less conservative with changes, less concerned about backwards-compatibility, more features, cleaner implementation, etc. But I don’t know that much about it in detail, and I’ve never tried it - until now.
I’m going to use sly exclusively for the month of September. As I bump into differences from slime, I’m taking notes and will share them here. I hope to give people an idea about what it’s like to switch and help them decide if it’s worthwhile for them, and figure out if I’ll be switching back on October 1.
So here are a few quick notes from getting started:
Pretty easy to install, but not as easy as quicklisp-slime-helper - I can make a sly-helper in the future
Would not start initially because I had a reference to the swank package in my ~/.swank.lisp file. Referencing swank in a swank init file seems reasonable so it was a little annoying to have to add some #+swank/#+sly conditionalization.
package in my ~/.swank.lisp file. Referencing swank in a swank init file seems reasonable so it was a little annoying to have to add some #+swank/#+sly conditionalization. I use slime-selector a lot, and it’s moved into a keymap in sly - I like that it now uses a standard Emacs UI instead of a custom UI …but it’s missing the “l” binding, which I use a hundred times a day, so I wrote a little bit of elisp to add it back docstring of sly-selector-map helps explain what to do Window management in sly-selector confuses me - expect REPL to replace current window, but it seems to go somewhere else every time
comma commands are different! I use ,chTAB and ,cdRET a hundred times a day, and now they are ,set package (which has nice completion) and ,set directory
and a hundred times a day, and now they are (which has nice completion) and Much more verbose repl output for integers at least: (+ 1 1) => 2 (2 bits, #x2, #o2, #b10)
M-RET in REPL history does what I expect
Not 100% sure how to get started with stickers, but C-c C-s ? has good starting points
Should read manual…
Stay tuned for more! |
European Commission President José Manuel Barroso offered a public show of support to Prime Minister Antonis Samaras in his first visit to Greece in three years, but warned that the nearly bankrupt country must make good on promises to reform.
"The key word here is deliver. Deliver, deliver, deliver!" Barroso said, adding he was convinced the Samaras government would make sure that the country would continue to benefit from a bailout administered by the ‘Troika’ – the EU, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank.
"Greece should stay in the euro as long as commitments made are being honoured," Barroso said in his speech.
His visit coincided with another Troika visit, which is due to assess whether Athens deserves to receive more payments under its €130-billion rescue programme. Reforms in Greece have been delayed by two elections and ensuing coalition-building.
Barroso’s visit also coincided with a setback for Samaras. Earlier in the day, his conservative-led government failed to clinch political agreement on a plan to slash €11.5 billion in spending over the next two years in the hope that this will help convince the country’s lenders to release further bailout funding for Athens.
The savings measures – affecting welfare benefits, pensions and rents on ministry buildings – failed to win the blessing of Samaras' allies, the Socialists and the small Democratic Left party (see background). The talks are due to resume on Monday.
The daily Kathimerini reported that among these are reductions in “special salaries” in the civil service, which are mostly paid to security forces. Samaras is reluctant to cut these wages, which would save just over €200 million per year. There were is also strong opposition to cutting pensions.
“I agree that some of the efforts seem unfair. But I ask people to recognise the other alternatives which will be much more difficult for Greece and will affect even more the most vulnerable in the Greek society,” Barroso said.
The chances of Greece leaving the euro in the next 12-18 months have risen to about 90% and Athens is most likely to quit the single currency within the next two to three quarters, US-based Citi bank said in a report, quoted by Reuters.
In more bad news for Greece, ECB data released on Thursday showed deposits at Greek banks hit their lowest level in six years in June as savers worried about the country exiting the eurozone pulled their money out.
Without sufficient progress, Greece may not receive the final part of its bailout worth €31.5 billion and could be unable to pay its civil servants.
The troika is due to wrap up its visit in early August , but the Commission said it didn't expect a decision on giving Greece the next chunk of cash before September.
Speculation about Greece’s membership of the euro continued on Thursday. Bavaria’s Finance Minister Markus Söder became the latest German politician to suggest that Greece should leave the eurozone, saying, “It can’t or doesn’t want to make it.”
Socialist leader Evangelos Venizelos hit back at the continuing speculation. “If there are some who believe Greece must be sacrificed in order to save the eurozone, they are wrong,” he said, adding that it “would be suicide” for the single currency. |
Satya Nadella at the Microsoft Build conference in April. Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
At the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing on Thursday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said something very weird. He told an audience that was assembled to celebrate women’s achievements in tech (an industry that has diversity problems in nearly every metric) that women shouldn’t ask for raises.
ReadWrite reports that during a fireside chat-type discussion with computer scientist and Harvey Mudd College President Maria Klawe, he commented, “It’s not really about asking for a raise, but knowing and having faith that the system will give you the right raise.”
And he said that women who stay silent have an advantage. “That might be one of the initial ’super powers,’ that quite frankly, women [who] don’t ask for a raise have. … It’s good karma. It will come back.” What would Grace Hopper think?
As the United States continues to struggle with the gender wage gap, and murmurs about improving diversity in tech finally grow into a broad discussion, it seems pretty clear that Nadella’s comments are crazy talk. Carnegie Mellon University economist Linda Babcock told All Things Considered in 2011 that a woman’s failure to ask for a raise early in her career could mean “leaving anywhere between $1 million and $1.5 million on the table in lost earnings over their lifetime.”
But public figures are human, right? Maybe Nadella just sort of lost context for a minute. Oh, and he apologized! See, everything is gonna be fine.
Was inarticulate re how women should ask for raise. Our industry must close gender pay gap so a raise is not needed because of a bias #GHC14 — Satya Nadella (@satyanadella) October 9, 2014
So at least he knows he screwed up. And, yes, one important goal is for women to be paid the same as men so they don’t have to ask for raises just to bridge that gap. But even in that utopia, it will still be in everyone’s interests, both men and women, to advocate for themselves and request increased compensation at various strategic points in their careers.
Achieving wage equality between men and women is important, but so is creating a new normal where women are rewarded—or at least not penalized—for being assertive the way men currently are. |
Donald Trump and Wayne Allen Root (YouTube/screen grab)
Wayne Allen Root, who has spoken at presidential rallies with Donald Trump, this week called for stripping voting rights from welfare recipients and women who use “free contraception” provided by the Affordable Care Act.
During a discussion with radio host Rob Schilling on Monday, Root explained that conservatives would “win every single election” if people who received government services were barred from voting, Right Wing Watch reported.
“So if the people who paid the taxes were the only ones allowed to vote, we’d have landslide victories,” Root told Schilling. “This explains everything! People with conflict of interest shouldn’t be allowed to vote.”
“If you collect welfare, you have no right to vote. The day you get off welfare, you get your voting rights back,” he continued. “The reality is, why are you allowed to have this conflict of interest that you vote for the politician who wants to keep your welfare checks coming and your food stamps and your aid to dependent children and your free health care and your Medicaid, your Medicare and your Social Security and everything else?”
Root added that he didn’t think Medicare and Social Security recipients should be prevented from voting “because you paid into the system.”
“But all the other stuff,” he said, “all the other goodies, free Obama phones, free contraception, you know what, you can get them but you shouldn’t be allowed to vote, it’s a conflict of interest. Take that away, we’d win every single election in this country.”
Listen to the audio below via Right Wing Watch. |
Artist's conception of Genting Group's Resorts World Las Vegas development. Courtesy of Steelman Partners. (Photo11: PR NEWSWIRE) Story Highlights Genting Group will pay $350 million for 87 acres on the Las Vegas Strip
It is the site of Boyd Gaming's moribund Echelon project
New project called Resorts World will break ground next year
LAS VEGAS (AP) — A Malaysian conglomerate said Monday that it will break ground next year on a project that could breathe new life into a tired stretch of the Las Vegas Strip, where work stalled during the recession.
The Genting Group said it will pay $350 million for the 87-acre site where the partially built Echelon project by Boyd Gaming came to a halt nearly five years ago.
Genting intends to build a multi-billion dollar casino with 3,500 hotel rooms, a convention center and a 4,000-seat theater.
Echelon was one of several multibillion-dollar projects that has stalled in Las Vegas as the economy crashed.
The northern end of the Strip once boasted casinos considered the cutting edge of luxury and style. But in recent years it has become the home of huge empty lots and darkened projects, including Las Vegas Plaza and Fontainebleau Las Vegas, a hulking bluish-green tower that was 70% finished when work stopped.
Genting's "Resorts World Las Vegas" project is its first in Las Vegas and the latest sign that the area where it's located might be turning around. Developers also broke ground last month on renovations to the Sahara hotel-casino that went dark in 2011 and is expected to reopen next year as SLS Las Vegas.
Genting plans to start construction in 2014 and open in 2016, creating tens of thousands of jobs while revamping a project many thought would sit silent for years. Genting said it will build on the steel and concrete skeleton of the Echelon.
"The entrance of one of the world's leading resort gaming developers into Nevada is another fantastic sign that Las Vegas and the Strip are poised for great things moving forward in 2013 and beyond," Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval governor said.
The Echelon was intended to be a mixed-use development with 5,000 rooms in six hotels, lush landscaping and luxury amenities. The 48-year-old Stardust resort was demolished in 2007 to make way for the $4.8 billion project that had been slated to open next to Circus Circus by 2010.
Construction workers toiled for a year and built 12 stories on the corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Desert Inn Road before credit markets choked.
The Genting conglomerate opened its first casino in 1971 in Malaysia and now operates sites in New York state, the Philippines, United Kingdom, Singapore, and the Bahamas.
"This is an unparalleled opportunity to showcase what has made the Resorts World brand a globally recognized success for the past several decades," CEO KT Lim said about the Las Vegas project.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/XOH0ny |
Invited to nitpicking by Jacek Laskowski in his latest post titled Processing in Clojure, I decided to write my own version of his flower-drawing application. I find it an interesting challenge and illustration for my previous post about functional thinking and the use of language and decomposition.
Full source code is below, but let’s start with what I did not like and decided to rewrite.
I find Jacek’s code rather structural and hard to comprehend. Everything happens in one big function and it takes quite a while to understand what it does and how. It’s hard to see why angle is an angle, and variables called a and value don’t make it any easier.
Thus my first two improvements are: Break it down into smaller pieces and use more informative names. For instance, value is in fact scale . I extracted drawing flower to a separate function with clear distinction to drawing petals and the central piece. I also paid more attention to variable names and hid the more complex concepts behind simple, well-named functions.
The second type of improvements is use of functional features. After a while of careful inspection I observed that angle is a simple linear sequence, and scale is result of a simple function on this sequence. I decided to replace it with a dedicated infinite sequence.
In the end, this code is longer and has more levels of abstraction, but I think it’s more functional and comprehensible. Functions are much shorter. Details no longer obscure the view, but are hidden behind more descriptive names. Now you can actually see that the applet’s draw draws a flower which consists of petals and the central piece. The central piece is a simple circle, while petals are several circles of random size and color around the center. Then only if you want you can delve into details of how their color and size are generated.
Like I mentioned in the first paragraph, I find it a nice illustration of what Paul Graham describes as building a language for the solution. |
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - The overflowing dumpster at a Westside apartment complex has been emptied.
Residents at Lenox Court Apartments said maintenance men picked up all the trash off the ground Tuesday after the dumpster was dumped the first time, and the dumpster was filled to capacity again.
The dumpster was emptied again Wednesday morning.
The trash hadn't been picked up in a couple of weeks and was attracting flies and wild animals, and creating a foul smell and dangerous conditions for kids playing near it.
The complex was two months overdue on its garbage service payments, and Advanced Disposal hadn't serviced the complex because it owed them $6,000. The trash company said the complex had promised to pay several times over the phone and hadn't.
Advanced Disposal agreed Tuesday to empty the dumpster on good faith that the complex would overnight a check for just February like it promised to.
Lenox Court management would not speak about the incident and said to contact its corporate office, which did not returned several calls for comment.
Copyright 2014 by News4Jax.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. |
According to some, all it takes to be a hipster is to wear plaid shirts and Rayban sunglasses and drink Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. For others, it means gentrification, cultural elitism or insincerity and the over-use of irony. But here is something that most of us can probably agree upon – these are some of the most hipster images ever.
Some may even argue that hipsters are a paradox – what happens to a group of people who hate all things mainstream when they themselves become mainstream?
For all the different ways that people see or define hipsters, we’re sure that you’ll all find some sort of common ground among these images. Inspired by Buzzfeed’s list that they compiled largely from Imgur, we collected some more images that we thought were intensely hipsterish.
(via: buzzfeed.com, imgur.com)
1. This guy riding a camel down city streets (against traffic)
2. Whoever parked their penny-farthing bicycle at the Apple store
3. This guy who brought a portable record player to a bar in London
4. This lady using a spinning wheel at a BMW service center
5. The owner of this cat (and probably the cat too)
6. This guy taking a selfie with an antique phone
7. This pet crab owner who thinks dogs are too mainstream
Image credits: unknown
8. This guy who has a seeing-eye person so he can text more
9. This guy who’s checking out the view with an antique spyglass
10. The guy whose bicycle is actually a fence
Image credits: unknown
11. This guy who brought his typewriter to his local cafe
12. The guy with a bunch of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer cans in his beard
13. This guy who has beanie hats for his ears
14. Whoever owns this USB shovel
15. This guy typing poems about anything in the street on his typewriter
16. This guy riding the most attention-grabbing bicycle he could find
17. Whoever’s wearing this mini grandfather clock on their wrist
18. This guy who goes to parties and hangs out on the fridge
19. The guy riding this 2×4 skateboard
20. The owner of this typewriter interface for their touch-screen device
21. The owner of this plank bicycle
22. The guy who went shopping here
23. This guy with a llama who thinks pet crabs are too mainstream
24. This guy using over $1k of technology to emulate a $20 instrument
25. …and this guy. |
China, the world's most populous country, might be described as cricket's greatest untapped resource. And now Cleethorpes Cricket Club are doing something about it.
Perched on the estuary of the Humber, in northern Lincolnshire, Cleethorpes CC could already claim, with some justification, to know a thing or two about east Asia.
Now they know a little more, for they have engaged the services of the first cricketer from mainland China to play in an overseas league. That player is Jiang Shuyao, 24, whose vivid, blood-red batting gloves, the ones he wears when representing China, focus the minds of potentially dismissive opponents.
"Shu", as he is popularly known throughout the club, has scored 196 runs for Cleethorpes' second team, in the Lincolnshire League, for an average of 24.5 and with a top score of 50, in the middle order. For the academy side, opening or going in first wicket down, he has scored 362 at 51.7, with five fifties and a top score of 98.
"When I wait to bat I want team-mates to get out so I can go in," he says, with a mischievous grin and what sounds dangerously like KP-ish solipsism.
Meeting him in the pavilion, however, is to realise that he is immensely well-liked in the dressing room. As he watched an under-13 game between Cleethorpes and Doncaster, calls of "Hello Shu" or "Hi Jonty" – a reference to Jonty Rhodes, the great South Africa fielder, for Jiang is prodigious in the area of point – came at regular intervals. Someone bought him a drink. Another player, who lives locally, has given him a room, lent him his bicycle and taken him shopping.
The young man from Shenyang, in the north-east of China, is getting to know Lincolnshire, that sprawl of a county that borders Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire to the west while somehow appearing to rub shoulders with the North Sea. When he arrived, in May, he spoke hardly any English, making him impervious to sledging, though early mastery of the words "yes" and "no" prevented the mayhem in running between the wickets which has been the downfall of so many.
He bowls very little, though he has tried leg-spin, and is frequently and understandably asked whether he is a purveyor of "the chinaman", the delivery bowled by a slow left-arm wrist-spinner. "He doesn't bowl it," says his friend Matt Smith, "but while in China I saw a man who did, and it made me fall about with laughter."
Smith, 41, who played for Cleethorpes for 10 years and now lives in Shenyang, where he is an English teacher at the local Aerospace University, is the man responsible for introducing Jiang to club cricket in England. "Two years ago I saw him play a really good knock and I thought he was one of the very few players in the country who really was a cricketer. He just had that little bit of understanding of when to play and when to leave it, and how to build an innings.
"The remarkable thing is that he's been playing for only four years. He had a trial for Shenyang Sports University, to get credit for his PE degree, and within a month the national coach was asking him to play for China in an international tournament in Thailand.
"I set up a cricket team at my university, and because we played regular matches against Shu's university I watched his development. When I came back to Cleethorpes one day I said I was involved with cricket in China and they said: 'Yeah, right, when are you going to send some Chinese kids over here?' We had a joke about it. Now I've done it. Last year I was convinced that he was ready to come."
Smith paid Jiang's travel costs – though he has been promised a refund by the Asian Cricket Council (ACC), of which China is a member. The player's parents have covered his costs since he arrived at the start of the season, though he eats at the club three or four times a week.
"He's on a special visa which entitles him to stay for six months," says Smith. "He is allowed to take part in a sporting event and the league season for the Lincolnshire League is deemed a sporting event. We weren't sure we'd get the visa. He is good enough for Cleethorpes' first team."
At the moment, though, Jiang cannot appear for the first team, who play in the Yorkshire League, because their overseas player must have played first-class cricket.
The world's governing body, the ICC, to which China – coached by the former Pakistan Test player Rashid Khan – is affiliated through the ACC, has taken a great deal of interest in the game in that country, even though most of the clubs there are made up of British expats. Because of its population of almost 1.4bn and its huge marketing potential, China is at the forefront of the ICC's global development programme. It has sent a working party out there and the MCC sent a team under the captaincy of Mike Gatting.
"They are struggling to create the right environment," says Smith. "We grow up with the game here. And there are so many other sports there. But progress is being made and one of Shu's team-mates will be going to Sydney this winter to play for Western Suburbs."
Wind and rain drove the Cleethorpes and Doncaster youngsters from the field. But Jiang was still smiling, happy to be involved in cricket in this environment. "When I started, I thought you bowl from just one end, because that's how it is in China, with a mat on top of concrete. There is only one proper cricket ground in China."
He does not see himself becoming a professional cricketer. "I'm too old. But after just four years I cannot do without cricket in my life. I hope I can coach, or umpire."
Meanwhile, he is happier with the more gentle training schedule at Cleethorpes CC, where Darren Pattinson – memorably once an England cricketer – played. "I like training for one or two hours here. In China we train for four hours, have some rice and then train for another four. And here you can say 'hello' to another player in training. If you do that in China you must run 10 laps of the pitch."
Cricketers are at last emerging from China; the cricket culture will take a little longer to establish itself. |
Rachael D'Amore, CTV News Toronto
A woman has been arrested after she allegedly pulled out a knife at a Canadian Tire in Scarborough while reportedly voicing her support for the Islamic State, a source tells CTV News Toronto.
The incident unfolded inside the store at Cedarbrae Mall, near Markham Road and Lawrence Avenue, at around 5:15 p.m. Saturday.
Toronto police say the woman initially walked to the paint section of the hardware store with a golf club where she began swinging it at a customer and store employees while uttering threats.
They say employees and customers were able to restrain the woman and call the police.
At some point before officers arrived, the woman pulled out a large knife from underneath her clothing.
A store employee told CTV News Toronto that when the woman brandished the knife, she started to express support for the Islamic State.
That same employee said they believe the situation unraveled after another employee approached her after suspecting that she was shoplifting.
Police say another employee was eventually able to disarm the woman by grabbing her wrist and prying the knife out of her hand.
She was arrested when officers arrived at the scene.
A suspect identified as 32-year-old Toronto resident Rehab Dughmosh has been charged with a two counts of assault with a weapon, one count of assault, one count of uttering threats to cause death, two counts of possession of a weapon for committing an offence and one count of carrying a concealed weapon.
She made a brief court appearance Tuesday morning.
A CTV News Toronto reporter inside the courtroom during the proceeding said the woman was wearing a green prison sweatsuit, a black niqab and handcuffs.
When asked to say her name, the woman responded by saying, “ISIS… I pledge to the leader of the believers – Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.”
She was remanded into custody until a second court appearance on June 21 at 9 a.m. |
Monster Energy Japanese drift driver Daigo Saito has unveiled the world’s first Lamborghini Murcielago drift car for upcoming D1GP Tokyo drift event. The car has been heavily modified by Liberty Walk Team based in Japan and it took almost 7 months to complete this project.
The Video released showcases a dedicated Murcielago drift car with rear wheel drive setup and modified front and rear facia. The car was fully dissembled at the start of the project and reassembled with customized body parts including newly designed braking and suspension components by Liberty Walk team.
The other modifications include front and rear wheel arch extensions, large rear wing spoiler, side skirts, custom wheels and vents. This monster rolls on custom bright green Forgiato wheels and the car is equipped with 6.2 Liter V12 engine tuned to produce 650HP. This matte black monster features vinyl cut decals (stickers) with Liberty Walk signatures and Monster Energy livery.
Stay tuned to Indyacars to receive more updates as Daigo will put this beast to test in Odaiba for the D1GP Tokyo Drift scheduled to start on October 24th. It will be definitely an eye treat to watch this new drifting machine in action.
Video |
CTV Toronto
More than 100 seniors have been given eviction notices as their homes in a complex north of Toronto are scheduled to be bulldozed to create a new condo.
The Heritage Village complex in Markham, Ont., which is part of the Unionville Home Society, was sold to regional municipality of York. The municipality later teamed up with Canadian developer Minto Group to build a new seniors' condo on the property.
The sale means that the 110 seniors who currently live in the quiet complex will be out of a home by 2016.
Some of the seniors are over the age of 90, and have lived in the complex for decades.
"The thought of having to go is devastating," one resident told CTV Toronto on Thursday. "These are my sisters. We do everything together."
According to the Village's tenants’ association chair, many of the residents learned of the news during a Canada Day tea-and-cake gathering.
"After the cake was served, then the CEO told us that our homes will be gone and we would be displaced," Jeannine Harpell said.
The residents have been promised help with finding a new home and they've also been guaranteed units in the new building. But many are still devastated by the news.
"They have no idea where they are going to live," Harpell said.
She says instead of evicting the residents, they should be able to stay until the new condo is move-in ready.
"If in fact they are building another building here on the campus, build it first, move the seniors in and then demolish these residences."
According to the Unionville Home Society, many of the units in the complex require updating and have become too expensive to maintain.
The residents are expected to move out no later than Dec. 31, 2016.
In the meantime, many of the seniors have been given a transition package. They are also fighting the eviction notice. A meeting was scheduled at the complex's community centre for Thursday afternoon. A member of York Region was expected to attend.
With a report from CTV Toronto's Zuraidah Alman |
African-Americans own smartphones at a rate higher than Americans overall, according to [download page] a report released in September 2011 by The Nielsen Company. Data from “The State of the African-American Consumer” indicates 44% of US African-American adults owned smartphones in Q1 2011, 22% higher than 36% among the overall population.
In addition, African-Americans ages 25-34 have the highest penetration rate of all (53%), followed by ages 18-24 (51%). The lowest African-American smartphone penetration rate is found among those age 65 and older (20%).
African-Americans Talk on Smartphones 2X Rate of Whites
Nielsen analysis indicates African-Americans tend to use phones primarily for talking and texting. African-Americans talk an average of 1,298 minutes a month, more than twice that of white Americans, who talk an average of 606 minutes a month.
African-Americans also exhibit high use of phones for emailing (43%) accessing the mobile internet (41%) and visiting social networking sites (37%).
Other common African-American smartphone activities include app usage (33%), app alerts, playing pre-installed games and and text downloads (31% each). In addition, African-Americans send and receive an average of 907 texts a month.
Android Leading African-American Smartphone Platform
Mirroring the trends seen in the general population, Android has distanced itself from competitors in terms of platform penetration among African-Americans, taking 37% of the smartphone market share in that group. Unlike the general population, where the Apple iPhone runs a close second to Android, African-Americans are next-most-likely to use RIM Blackberry (30%), with iPhone a distant third (16%), followed by Microsoft Windows Mobile (13%).
Pew: Non-Whites Text More than Whites
Non-whites text more often than whites, according to data released by the Pew Research Center in September 2011.. Non-Hispanic blacks average 70.1 texts a day, which is 43% more than the Hispanic average of 48.9 texts per day and 125% more than the non-Hispanic white average of 31.2 texts per day. |
Editor’s note: This is one in a series of articles on the legalization of marijuana, produced in partnership with the 2015 Carnegie-Knight News21 national student reporting project.
PORTLAND, Ore. — Jon Tester and Jeff Myers come dressed to work each day in newsboy caps, round-rimmed glasses and suspenders — plus a bowtie for Tester and a dark buttoned shirt for Myers. Together, they own the Brooklyn Holding Company, a medical dispensary in the guise of a 1920s speakeasy.
“From the time that you open the door, you walk into a time warp, you are in a turn-of-the-century speakeasy with a few modern upgrades,” Tester said of their store in the heart of Portlandia.
Tester and Myers said they attract patients because Oregonians’ taste in marijuana compares to their taste in beer — craft is best. Now that legal recreational sales are on the horizon, the two are preparing to open their doors to many more discerning customers.
This July, Oregon joined Colorado, Washington and Alaska as the only states to have legalized recreational marijuana. Possession and home growing of marijuana became legal July 1, and the state will soon allow dispensaries to begin making some recreational sales.
Southeastern Oregon sits on the northern tip of the Emerald Triangle, a region famous for growing potent (and often illegal) marijuana. “Oregon has built a reputation over the last 20 years for having this phenomenal cannabis,” said dispensary owner and grower Case Van Dorne. “People have started to really realize that Oregon is a place of such a high-grade product.”
But as Oregon Liquor Control Commission draws up the rules for the new recreational market, it has heard one consistent request from local growers and growers-to-be: Keep Oregon’s marijuana industry indie.
“They were very vocal about wanting the growing operations in Oregon to be small boutique type operations, much like the winery business was when it started in Oregon,” said Tom Towslee, communications director for the commission’s recreational marijuana program.
The duo at Brooklyn Holding Company believe that Portland deserves an artisanal weed experience. They plan to control every step of marijuana production, from seed to sale, in order to maintain a premium reputation.
“The whole concept of Brooklyn Holding was about trying to set ourselves apart from what’s already out there,” Myers said. “We’ve got to pay attention to quality, we have to pay attention to branding, we got to pay attention to how it feels when you are in here.”
“I really see the idea of the craft cannabis dispensary, and craft cannabis in general catching on and staying around,” Tester said.
Video by Kathryn Boyd-Batstone. Words by Nick Swyter. |
Imagine wings.
The millions of people who watched the first trailer for July’s Spider-Man re-reboot, Spider-Man: Homecoming, have seen a certain character have his Susan Lucci moment. Spidey’s latest onscreen foe is an airborne jerk who goes by the nom de guerre the Vulture. Played by the dependably movie-improving Michael Keaton, the baddie will join Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, and Venom as big-screen antagonists for the wall-crawler. It’s natural that the Vulture would be on the short list of villains to showcase in a Spider-Man flick — he’s been around since 1963, making his debut in Amazing Spider-Man No. 2, and he’s been a chronic terror ever since, swooping into hundreds of issues of various Spider-Man series. But his spot at the top of the B tier of the Spider-Man’s rogues gallery isn’t the only reason his appearance in a film is a long time coming. Rather, Keaton’s casting is the fourth known attempt to get the Vulture into a movie — and, suffice it to say, the only one to play out successfully. This is what happened to the other three.
Spider-Man 3
Once the initial run of Tobey Maguire Spider-Man movies had already used up Doc Ock and the Goblin in the first two installments, Vulture was understandably floated as an option for 2007’s Spider-Man 3. According to that movie’s producer Grant Curtis, director Sam Raimi and his brother and co-writer, Ivan, cooked up a story treatment that would have teamed Vulture up with another classic Spider-fiend, Sandman (who did end up in Spider-Man 3, played by Thomas Haden Church). The idea was to present a kind of villainous duality: “Whereas Sandman is dangerous yet conflicted and misunderstood, the Vulture is dangerous, opportunistic, and cunning,” Curtis wrote in his book, The Spider-Man Chronicles. “Sandman keeps his emotions in check; the Vulture wears his on his wings.”
The pitch: Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man would throw Vulture in jail, leaving the latter to stew in his hatred and cook up a plot for revenge; Sandman would become his cellmate and they’d team up to bust out and wreak havoc; in the end, Spidey would offer a truce to Vulture, who would refuse and die during their big fight, thus “illustrating to Peter the ramifications of a heart hardened by an inability to forgive.” The Vulture character is traditionally portrayed in the comics as an older man, and (according to Curtis) the producers came close to casting Ben Kingsley in the role. The crew even built a model for the character’s wings and did a demonstration in which a stuntman was flown around them at 30 mph. However, the Raimis eventually decided to use Venom in the place of Vulture and Curtis recalls that, on March 15 of 2005, the avian menace was removed from the script.
Spider-Man 4
Hope sprang anew when Sam Raimi began work on a fourth Spider-film near the turn of the decade. According to Movieline (in a scoop obtained by our own Kyle Buchanan, in a previous job), as of 2009 Sony was looking to hire John Malkovich to play the Vulture and Anne Hathaway to play Spidey’s frenemy-flame Felicia Hardy. Felicia is usually portrayed as possessing the criminal alter ego Black Cat, but the movie reportedly would have pulled a fast one on geeks and featured her turning into someone called the Vulturess (which is not a thing in the comics). But the sinister soaring never occurred, as creative differences between Raimi and Sony scuttled the whole film in 2010.
Drew Goddard’s Sinister Six Movie
The Vulture had a third shot at the spotlight a few years later. In 2012, Sony rebooted the franchise with The Amazing Spider-Man, helmed by a new director (Marc Webb) and starring a new actor (Andrew Garfield). It shared no continuity with the previous films, and was a solid box-office performer, leading the studio to make a sequel. Even before it premiered, there were already plans to make a Drew Goddard–directed spinoff about longtime supervillain clique the Sinister Six — of which Vulture was a founding member in the comic books. Once again, though, the character was grounded — this time by disappointing returns on 2014’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2.
Following the lukewarm response to that film, Sony engaged in negotiations with Marvel Entertainment, which had long coveted the Spider-Man film rights that its comics division had long ago sold off. The two firms reached a deal and aimed to reboot Spidey once again, this time as a character situated in the enormously lucrative Marvel Cinematic Universe. Plans for Sinister Six were postponed indefinitely to make room for this new approach. And yet, against all odds, this past July brought redemption for the always-the-bridesmaid villain, when Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige told a packed San Diego Comic-Con panel that Vulture would be the antagonist of Homecoming. At long last, the curmudgeonly weirdo with the mechanical wings will take cinematic flight. |
Schalke's USA youth international striker Haji Wright has joined Bundesliga 2 side Sandhausen on a season-long loan deal.
"I am delighted about my contract at SV Sandhausen," the 19-year-old forward enthused. "I want to achieve a lot here, score many goals and play a successful season with SVS."
Wright, who joined Schalke's academy from New York Cosmos in early 2016, spent last season playing for the Under-19s. He was promoted to the first team earlier this summer, and made a handful of appearances during pre-season, most notably scoring four times in a friendly win over SpVgg Erkenschwick.
"Haji is on a very good path," said sporting director Christian Heidel of the two-time USA U-19 international, who still has three years left on his current Schalke contract. "What he now needs most of all is game time. He has the opportunity to get that in Sandhausen. He will return to Schalke next summer and will continue his development with us."
Click here for more Schalke club news |
tomorrow
Tuesday, December 16"
8:30 a.m. meeting
UPDATE: The Detroit Free Press has published renderings of the proposed development of the old Tiger Stadium site. They include smaller retail along Michigan Avenue, a mix of for-rent and for-sale housing, a new headquarters for the Detroit Police Althletic League along Harrison, and a preserved ball diamond. Click here for details Following a vague press release from the Economic Development Corporation (EDC) of the City of Detroit stating that it "will consider redevelopment plans for the former site of Tiger Stadiumat anin the offices of DEGC on the 22nd floor of the Guardian Building, Historic Detroit , a website promoting the history of Detroit places, posted this on its Facebook page "We have more details on tomorrow's Tiger Stadium site announcement in #Detroit: Sources tell us Larson Realty Group's proposal beat out one by Roxbury Group, which is redeveloping the David Whitney Building. Larson's plan calls for smaller retail along Michigan Avenue, as well as a mix of for-rent and for-sale housing -- and yes, the field WILL be saved as a park. And sorry, George, there's no Walmart."The last baseball game was played at Tiger Stadium in 1999, and the structure stood vacant until it was demolished in 2008. Since then, a group of volunteers calling themselves the Navin Field Grounds Crew has maintained the historic playing field at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull. |
Last Wednesday, the Russian MoD delivered a lengthy presentation which contained compelling visual evidence of a connection between Islamic State’s illegal and highly profitable trade in stolen Iraqi and Syrian crude and Turkey. Here are some highlights:
After loading up with oil, a truck convoy in east Syria heads toward Turkey in direction Al-Qamishli:
October 18: in the Drer-ez-zor region a satellite imagte reveals 1772 oil trucks:
November 14: in the Tavan and Zaho regions, in the zone where coalition forces are active, one can see a gathering of oil trucks:
November 28: in the region Kara-Choh on the territory of an oil refinery one can see 50 oil trucks:
The routes of alleged oil smuggling from Syria and Iraq to Turkey:
A substantial part from east Syria enter a refinery in Batman, Turkey (100km from the Syria border):
The slide show, hosted by Deputy Minister of Defence Anatoly Antonov, featured photos of oil trucks, videos of airstrikes and maps detailing the trafficking of stolen oil. It was the latest PR snafu for Erdogan who is struggling to convince Turkey’s allies that The Kremlin’s accusations are unfounded and that Ankara isn’t set to put NATO in an awkward position by effectively instigating a shooting war with Russia.
Washington came to Erdogan’s defense in the aftermath of Moscow’s claims as State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the US is confident that Ankara “is not complicit in Islamic State oil smuggling.” Russia seemed to take that denial in stride, but after US special envoy and coordinator for international energy affairs, Amos Hochstein, said on Friday that the amount of oil smuggled into Turkey from Syria is "of no significance from a volume perspective", Moscow appears to have had enough.
On Saturday, Russia accused the US of participating in a cover-up. “Our colleagues from the State Department and the Pentagon have confirmed that the photo-proof, which we presented at a briefing [on December 2], of the origin and destination of the stolen oil, coming from the areas controlled by the terrorists, is authentic. However, the US claim that they ‘don’t see the border crossings with tanker trucks crossing the border,’ raises a smile, if only, because the photos are still images,” Major General Igor Konashenkov, a Defense Ministry spokesman said. “We advise the American side to have a look at how the tanker trucks not only drive through checkpoints at the Turkish border, but pass through them without even stopping.”
As RT notes, an unnamed US State Department official confirmed to Reuters on Friday that the Russian photos of thousands of oil tanker trucks in Syria were authentic [but] stressed that he hasn’t seen “the imagery of the border crossing with trucks crossing the border, and that’s because [the US doesn't] believe it exists.”
Well, here it is:
"The declarations of the Pentagon and the State Department seem like a theatre of the absurd," the MoD added, before noting that Washington should "watch the videos taken by its (own) drones which have recently been three times as numerous over the Turkey-Syria border and above the oil zones". That, by the way, is an attempt to mock Washington for increasing the number of drones monitoring the situation while failing to actually conduct strikes. Earlier this week, Russia said that despite Washington's claims, the US and its partners are actually not bombing ISIS oil infrastructure or convoys.
In case the above isn't clear enough, here's more from the Russian MoD's Facebook: "When US officials say they don't see how the terrorists' oil is smuggled to Turkey... it smells badly of a desire to cover up these acts."
We have on any number of occasions suggested that Washington has avoided striking ISIS oil convoys in an effort to ensure that the group retains the funding it needs to continue to destabilize Syria and the Assad government (see here for instance) and in order to preserve amicable relations with Ankara which appears to benefit from the trafficking of illegal crude both from Kurdistan and Islamic State.
And so, Russia once again turns the screws on the West in an effort to expose what at this point looks to be a coordinated effort to facilitate the funding of international terrorism via the establishment and maintenance of smuggling routes for some 50,000 b/d of oil looted from fields in eastern Syria and northern Iraq. If the US is indeed complicit in this, it might be time to cut ties with Erdogan because Moscow is on the PR warpath and it's just a matter of time before the smoking gun emerges. |
SACRAMENTO -- The journey of an NBA player is complex. For those who adapt and evolve, there is the possibility of fulfilling potential. For those who don’t, there is a revolving door. Someone is always waiting in the wings to steal one of the 450 coveted roster spots in the league.
For the Kings’ Omri Casspi, the road just to get into the league was a longshot at best. And his fight to stick on an NBA roster has been epic.
Rarely do you see a player start in one city, bounce around the league and then return home for a second go. But Casspi has always been an exception to the rule. He has spent a career redefining and reinventing who he is as a player.
Now seven seasons into his career, Casspi has found a niche as a versatile reserve and team leader.
THE YOUNG PLAYER
Sacramento selected Casspi with the 23rd overall selection in the 2009 NBA Draft. In dire need of a small forward, the 6-foot-9 wing stepped in and played major minutes in year one.
“Coming in, I didn’t know what to expect,” Casspi said. “I felt like, I don’t know if I’ll be able to play here. You always see those big names on TV and it’s been really hard to realize that you can be able to play in this league.”
The pressures placed on a young player are immense, but for Casspi, they were magnified ten-fold. Not only did he have to make the jump from a Euroleague basketball player to the NBA game, but he had so much more weight to carry than the average import.
“I think it was a real difficult transition for him to make, trying to play in the NBA and then dealing with all the off-the-court responsibilities,” Kings play-by-play announcer Grant Napear said.
Developing as a young NBA player is tough in and of itself, but the demands away from the hardwood for Casspi were brutal. As a 21-year-old kid, he would walk into every arena in the league and witness a sea of Israeli flags. He wasn’t playing just for himself or his teammates, he was carrying the hopes and dreams of an entire country.
“It was hard,” Casspi said. “It’s an experience though. I was fortunate enough to be the first Israeli ever to play. Sometimes it’s hard to say no. People were excited about it. They want to support you and I look at it as a good experience. Now I’m a lot more mature and I know my responsibility on and off the court.”
Casspi didn’t say no. He met with large groups of people before and after games both at home and on the road. He was an iconic figure to so many and he willingly gave his time and energy, at times to his own detriment.
“I think a lot of people forget that when he first came into the league, he had so much pressure on him,” Napear said. “Everywhere we went, he had to spend, honestly, an hour before the game, sometimes 45 minutes after the game because there was such a demand on him.”
“There were things that he had to go through, which a lot of times people didn’t understand,” color analyst Jerry Reynolds added. “Just being around it at the time, I don’t know how he did it. I think he got about three years experience in one.”
There were stretches that first season where you could see Casspi fade. When he eventually hit the rookie wall in late February, he spiraled for more than a month. You can only spend so much of your time trying to be everything to everyone before you break.
Casspi finished his rookie season averaging 10.3 points and 4.5 rebounds in 25.1 minutes a night. He showed a knack for hitting the three-ball and his lightning-quick first step had many believing that he could be a special player on the court.
LEAVING THE NEST
Sacramento was a young team from top to bottom during this stretch. Geoff Petrie, the Kings president of basketball operations at the time, was faced with major salary constraints by the failing Maloof family. Out of necessity, Petrie was forced to make calculated risks to fill holes in the roster without adding additional money to the team budget.
A draft day deal added John Salmons to the roster and Petrie looked to rebalance his roster before free agency began. With Salmons in tow, the Kings dealt Casspi, along with a future first-round pick, to Cleveland in the summer of 2011 for power forward J.J. Hickson -- a move that haunts the team to this day.
[RELATED: Kings trade Casspi to Cavs for Hickson]
It was a difficult blow to a player who had been welcomed in Sacramento with such open arms.
“When you’re going through ups and downs as a young guy, you kind of think the world is going to collapse,” Casspi said.
The post-LeBron James era in Cleveland was not a good situation for anyone. After a mediocre first season with the Cavs, Casspi played just 43 games in year two, averaging a career-low 4.0 points in 11.7 minutes per contest.
“I felt like those two years in Cleveland were a big turning point in my career,” Casspi said. “I really felt like I was undervalued and then from that point, I had to go get my respect and my confidence back.”
His career was at a crossroads. No longer on his rookie scale, Casspi’s NBA future was in question. In July of 2013, at 25-years-of-age, Casspi signed a league-minimum deal to join the Houston Rockets.
The Rockets were coming off a 45-win season and were looking for depth. Casspi filled a role on a team that would go on to win 54 games under former head coach Kevin McHale.
Casspi played 71 games for the Rockets during the 2013-14 season, posting 6.9 points in 18.1 minutes a game. But his evolution as a player was now taking shape. Gone were the inefficient mid-range jumpers and half-hearted defensive efforts.
“I think what got in my head was my year in Houston,” Casspi said. “They really preach open threes and layups and free throws. I took some time off after Houston, watched some tape and I realized that the game has just changed. Every team has one or two players that can take what we call bad shots, but everyone else has to follow the system.”
Casspi’s numbers from Houston confirm that he had figured out how to become a role player. Maybe he hadn’t fully realized his potential as a three-and-D player, but he now understood his place when it came to the NBA game.
“Everybody has to accept their role,” Casspi said. “I’m not going to be DeMarcus Cousins or James Harden. I want to play alongside those guys and I want to help to compete and to be able to win a championship. That’s what everybody has to do.”
[RELATED: Kings' Casspi confident he can shine in Karl's system]
It sounds simple, but it’s not. After being the best player on a high school team and then a college team, young players come into the NBA looking to be a star. For the majority, it doesn’t work out that way.
“There’s an awful lot of guys that we forget about that go away, that don’t figure it out, that can’t adjust to a particular role or what they need to do to be valuable in the league,” Reynolds said. “Those guys’ careers are cut short and that’s why Omri will have a 10 or 12 year career.”
What Casspi has accomplished is perhaps even more impressive than the average player. He wasn’t just the best player from his high school or college team, he was the best player in an entire country. Accepting a lesser role meant adjusting the expectations for himself and countless others.
COMING HOME
The Houston experience helped mold Casspi, but it was short-lived. In the summer of 2014, he was traded to the New Orleans Pelicans and then waived. He once again found himself unemployed and looking for a spot to land.
Late last summer, a window opened for Casspi to return to Sacramento, albeit on another NBA minimum contract. He jumped all over the opportunity to come back to where it all began.
[RELATED: Omri Casspi agrees to return to Sacramento Kings]
Early in the season, Casspi searched for a role in Mike Malone’s system. He attacked the rim in what little opportunity he did get, but he shied away from the long-ball that had made him so valuable in Houston.
As the season developed and the Kings cycled through head coaches, Casspi gravitated back to the player he was in Houston and the results jumped off the page. During the Kings’ final 30 games under Karl, Casspi averaged 11.2 points on 46.2 percent shooting from three-point land. In Sacramento’s final eight games, Casspi bumped those numbers up to 19.9 points on 50 percent shooting from distance.
“He’s just a better all-around NBA player,” Napear said. “He’s improved his three-point shot more than significantly. He has a better understanding of the game. Whether you start him or whether he’s coming off the bench he’s a guy that you pretty much know what you’re going to get every night.”
Casspi played a variety of roles under Malone, Tyrone Corbin and George Karl. But each of the Kings three coaches asked him to provide a spark, regardless of whether he started or came off the bench.
“He’s always just a huge energy guy -- a bundle of energy,” Reynolds said. “Now he’s channeling that a little bit. I think he’s become a very productive player.”
It’s not hard to see the difference in Casspi’s game from his first stint in Sacramento until now. Even his demeanor on the court has improved greatly as he’s matured as a player.
“He used to be really hard on himself to a point that I thought it was detrimental, because he’s a perfectionist,” Napear said. “You want that, but I don’t think he channeled it the right way. At times, when things weren’t going well, he was so hard on himself that became more difficult to dig out of a hole.”
GROWING UP IN THE NBA
Casspi doesn’t dig holes for himself anymore. In fact, he has developed into a team leader and voice of reason both on and off the floor for Sacramento. In seven seasons, he has gone from a young man looking to please everyone to a veteran willing to do anything to help the team win.
“He was a wild boy when he first came in,” DeMarcus Cousins said. “Just to see him grow as a professional, as a man, he’s one of my good friends as well. If there’s one guy I know I can go into battle with, it’s Omri.”
That is high praise from Cousins. The two were close as young players, but they are even closer now. Cousins joined his friend and teammate on a trip to Israel this summer and the bond they share runs deep.
“It just opens your eyes,” Cousins said of his journey to Israel with Casspi. “Problems throughout the world, other cultures -- it’s a beautiful thing. I’m glad I could experience that.”
Cousins lived through the early years of Casspi’s career, but the secondary commitments of his teammate were likely lost on the All-Star big man. The Israel visit helped add perspective.
“He’s an icon to many people over there,” Cousins said. “The way he carries himself -- true professional. He carries himself like a grown man, the way I want to carry myself and the way a lot of people should carry themselves.”
Casspi and Cousins share an agent, and according to the big man, he lobbied both sides to ensure the forward’s return. The result was a two-year, $6-million deal this summer to remain in Sacramento, a place where he would love to finish his career.
“He’s going to bring it every night, he’s going to play hard every possession, he’s going to leave it all on the floor,” Cousins said. “I respect those types of players.
It’s been a journey and Casspi is just 27-years-old. From Sacramento to Cleveland to Houston and back to Sacramento, this is the life of an NBA player.
“There are a lot of ups and downs,” Casspi said. “I learned a lot about yourself, my family, my close circle. I’m happy to survive through the waves and be in a position now to help this team.”
He is comfortable in his own skin. When asked whether he would prefer to come off the bench or start, he just lays back in his chair and says: “Whatever helps the team win is fine with me.”
The ego of a young man is gone. The confidence of a mature adult is obvious.
Casspi has grown up in the NBA. Under an even brighter light than the typical player, he has survived a league that has chewed up and spit out plenty.
He has found a place to settle down and to make roots. He is engaged and plans to marry next summer after the season ends.
“I used to move around from apartment to apartment, and now I have a house, a home, pictures all over, a family,” Casspi said. “My fiance is with me, someone to talk about whatever, whenever -- somebody to go to the movies with. You can just really focus on what you need to do. I feel like my fiance really helped me to grow my game.”
Seldom does a player have a career come full circle like Casspi’s has. He still has plenty of time to leave his stamp on the game, but he is appreciative of everything he has lived through in his seven seasons in the league.
“Every day that goes by I’m fortunate to be in this position,” Casspi said. “Every time I step on that court, I play my heart out, not because of the money, not because of whatever. It’s because of my teammates, it’s because I love this game, and I’m really blessed to be in a position to play in the NBA.” |
BREMERTON, Wash. -- A Bremerton woman needs your help finding her vintage car that was stolen last week from the driveway of her home, and she fears thieves will chop it up for parts.
"It was my first car. My father and I bought it together," said Mellissa Clark-Palau.
When Clark-Palau turned 18, more than 30 years ago, she bought the 1970 Ford Mustang with her dad's help.
"We worked on it together when I was younger," said Clark-Palau. "I knew nothing about cars but he told me if I was going to have it I was going to have to work on it with him."
Throughout the years, Clark-Palau put a lot of money into restoring the car and also built a lot of memories while driving the vehicle.
"They'd always think it was my boyfriend's car 'cause girls didn't have muscle cars so much back then and they didn't think I knew anything about the cars either but - my dad making me work on them - I ended up learning," Clark-Palau said.
Clark-Palau drove the Mustang until she started a family, then took it off the road. She stored it in her parents' heated garage for many years then moved it to her rental property in Bremerton, located in the 5800 block of Kitsap Way.
"We pulled in and I looked at my husband and he looked at me and I was like, 'the car's gone!' " said Clark-Palau.
The Mustang was stolen from the driveway of the rental property. Clark-Palau moved the car outside a few months ago while a contractor was fixing the garage door.
"Somebody had to have known what they were doing to get it out of here. Had to know when to come, when there wasn't going to be anybody here," said Clark-Palau.
The tires on the car were flat so that's one reason why Bremerton Police think whoever took the car towed it from the property.
"That's probably the best information we have at this point considering the condition the vehicle was taken- it wasn't drivable, it was missing the transmission," said Lt. Pete Fisher of the Bremerton Police Department.
Clark-Palau said the missing vehicle is a bright blue 1970 Ford Mustang Mach 1 with square quarter panels that have rust-colored primer on them. The car also has deep dish rims that were painted the same color as the body of the car. The word "Mustang" was painted in a lighter shade of blue, in cursive, on the rear of the vehicle.
"My main concern is they're going to chop it up," said Clark-Palau. "I would want whoever took it- if they're not going to give it back to me - I would prefer at least it gets restored and not cut into pieces."
For Clark-Palau, the Mustang isn't just a car- it's a connection to her parents who both have died.
"With them both being gone, it's really important and my Mom just died after being sick for a year," said Clark-Palau. "To be missing is just something else that's gone."
Clark-Palau said she got a fraud alert on her bank account after the Mustang was stolen. She believes there were items stored inside the car that thieves may have found.
Bremerton Police are now investigating. |
BOSTON, May 6, 2016—In a stunning attack on freedom of association, Harvard University announced today that members of independent, single-sex, off-campus organizations will be blacklisted from Rhodes and Marshall scholarships and banned from leadership of on-campus organizations or athletic teams.
Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust stated that next year, members of fraternities, sororities, and “final clubs” will begin to be denied these opportunities in an effort to foster “inclusion” and “address deeply rooted gender attitudes.” According to Dean Rakesh Khurana, who recommended the changes, such organizations have been independent from Harvard since 1984. They operate as off-campus entities and do not receive any recognition or benefit from the university.
“Outrageously, Harvard has decided that 2016 is the right time to revive the blacklist,” said Robert Shibley, executive director of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which defends freedom of association on campus. “This year’s undesirables are members of off-campus clubs that don’t match Harvard’s political preferences. In the 1950s, perhaps Communists would have been excluded. I had hoped that universities were past the point of asking people, ‘Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of a group we don’t like?’ Sadly, they are not.”
TAKE ACTION: JOIN FIRE IN DEMANDING HARVARD RESTORE STUDENTS’ FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION RIGHTS
“Harvard’s decision simply demonstrates that it is willing to sacrifice students’ basic freedom of association to the whims of whoever occupies the administrative suites today,” said FIRE co-founder, civil liberties attorney, and Harvard Law alumnus Harvey Silverglate. “Who’s to say that Harvard’s leaders five years from now won’t decide that Catholics or Republicans should be blacklisted because they might not line up with Harvard’s preferred values?”
FIRE strongly opposes President Faust’s illiberal decision and is preparing a formal response. In the meantime, those who wish to take action and contact President Faust to urge her to reverse her decision are encouraged to do so through FIRE’s website.
FIRE is a nonprofit, nonpartisan educational foundation that unites civil rights and civil liberties leaders, scholars, journalists, and public intellectuals from across the political and ideological spectrum on behalf of individual rights, freedom of expression, academic freedom, due process, and rights of conscience at our nation’s colleges and universities. FIRE’s efforts to preserve liberty on campuses across America can be viewed at thefire.org.
CONTACT:
Katie Barrows, Communications Coordinator, FIRE: 215-717-3473; media@thefire.org |
One of the big focal points of Breitbart in the past was its watchdog-level attention to what the Media said and did. Frequently, these were pointed out in posts detailing the Media’s dishonesty when it came to both stories and their headlines.
In the interest now of being fully-committed to its role as propaganda arm of the Trump Administration, a curious headline went up about Lindsey Graham. It read “Graham: ‘You’re Not A Republican And You’re Not A Patriot’ If You’re Celebrating Trump Victory.”
The articles story is the same story we covered earlier today: “Sen Lindsey Graham: If You’re Cheering Russia, You’re Not a Patriot.” Joe Perticone of the Independent Journal pointed out the deception on Twitter.
https://twitter.com/JoePerticone/status/818479208976543746
You can disagree with Lindsey Graham all you want. I’ve found plenty of reason to disagree with him over the years (though I must say, he and I appear to be on the same side as of late). However, I don’t see any reason to lie about what he was talking about.
Nor, frankly, do I see any reason why the folks over at Breitbart would equate Russia’s involvement with Trump’s victory when that’s precisely the opposite thing that Trump would even want portrayed. What’s more, I definitely don’t see why what Graham said was bad, which is the message Breitbart’s headline gives.
The folks over there should know better. But, when you weaponize a website for the purpose of supporting one candidate/politician and put everything else as a distant second to that, you risk making these frankly dumb decisions. |
As you’ve likely picked up on in the two trailers released to date, Santa Monica Studio has some big, bold ideas for Kratos’ impending PS4 adventure.
Gone are the gods of Olympus. With his vengeance complete, Kratos now quietly resides in the realm of Norse gods and monsters. But he’s not alone. Central to the studio’s bold reimagining of its long running series is the introduction of Atreus, Kratos’ son. The youngster will be at your side throughout the game, as father and son embark on a deeply personal quest into the Norse wildlands.
However, this is not your typical stroll in the woods. The pair’s quest represents both a physical journey from point A to B, but also an emotional one. Atreus is Kratos’ second shot at fatherhood, and to get where he needs to go in that regard, he’ll need to confront his rage and rediscover his humanity. Conversely, Atreus will need to come to terms with his own destiny and learn how to behave less like an emotionally vulnerable child and more like a god. Like I say – no teddy bear’s picnic.
To find out more, we sat down with Game Director Cory Barlog at E3 last week, and he was happy to give us a step-by-step rundown of how the character has taken shape:
Deciding on Atreus’ appearance wasn’t easy…
Once Cory Barlog had settled on the game’s central conceit, the first challenge was deciding what Kratos’ offspring should actually look like. Given the protagonist’s enormous personality and iconic appearance, this was no small task…
“At first I tried to describe to our artists what Atreus was about to go through, and what he had gone through,” recalls Barlog. “I gave them an idea of the world he was about to experience – a world that is not going to be friendly. But I don’t think that really helped the team figure it out.”
Next, Barlog and his team collated reference images, but again, they continued to struggle to visualize Atreus.
“At one point we actually sat down and said to ourselves, ‘What would Kratos actually look like aged 10? Let’s do a drawing of that and see if there’s something analogous we can work from’. But that didn’t work either – it was just really goofy and weird.”
Atreus’ look is based on a real person
The team continued to run up against a brick wall, right up until the casting process began. But then serendipity struck…
“We met Sunny Suljic and his audition knocked it so far out of the park, that I was like ‘Gosh, this kid is incredible.’ And here’s the crazy thing – he looked exactly like I imagined Atreus should look.
“And it just went from there. The initial images after we scanned his face were just so striking, and that was even before we had hair on him. He has these big blue eyes and that look of innocence, but he also looks like he’s seen things. He was perfect.”
Kratos and Atreus relationship was defined in a short story
Just as challenging as deciding on his appearance, was crafting Atreus’ personality and the dynamics of the father/son relationship. The bones of this were initially defined by a short story that Cory wrote at the very beginning of development to serve as a foundation stone for his writing team – Rich Cobert and Matt Sofos.
It was straightforward – just a brief snapshot of Kratos and Atreus out on a hunting expedition in the woods – but it gave the team vital context to help them make Barlog’s vision a reality.
“I created that story for the rest of the team,” recalls Barlog. “They could read it, they could visualise it, they could feel like they were there. They could go, ‘Ah, that is who Kratos is now, and that is his son.’ I think that short story really helped the team frame it.”
Sure enough, that short story became the basis of the E3 2016 reveal trailer.
Defining Kratos’ ‘parenting style’ took time…
So, exactly what kind of dad is Kratos? After all, this is the guy who ripped Helios’ head off and used it as a lantern – he’s not exactly the touchy-feely nurturing type.
“Figuring out how to nail that was hard,” agrees Barlog.
“Kratos is not a guy who’s going to talk to you a lot. I think a lot of us have fathers who are from a generation that is not very loquacious. They were men of few words. It doesn’t mean you had a bad relationship, it just meant you weren’t very chatty a lot of the time.”
It took time for the new, more mature Kratos’ to take shape, and the writing team’s first attempts didn’t always hit the mark.
“Certain people on the team had a lot to say about our early drafts,” recalls Barlog. “I think one person said a very early version was actually depressing to play; that Kratos was just too hard on Atreus and we had gone too far.
“But that feedback eventually led us to the magical moment in the original E3 reveal, where Kratos is starting to yell at Atreus and then catches his breath. He has to calm down, speak through gritted teeth and explain to Atreus what he did wrong. And that’s real; that’s a moment of truth. It didn’t come immediately; it came from that initial struggle with the rest of the team.”
How do you teach a boy to become a god?
As noted above, there are two ambitious narrative arcs in God of War on PS4. Firstly, how exactly do you chart the journey of a regular boy on his way to becoming a god? That’s a tough ask for any writing team.
“Well, it’s not so much Kratos teaching Atreus how to be a god, but how not to make the same mistakes he did,” Barlog clarifies.
“To Kratos, being a god is a disease. It’s a disease that he’s passed onto his kid, and he doesn’t want that. In our children, we often see our own mistakes – the worst parts of ourselves amplified. But Kratos hates everything about being a god. All he wants to do is make sure that the mistakes he’s made are not passed on and repeated.
“But then, of course, he also needs to make sure his kid can take care of himself – it’s not a friendly world out there…”
And how do you teach a god to be human?
In turn, it’s up to Atreus – albeit perhaps subconsciously – to teach his father how to be human. So, of the two, who has the toughest job?
“Atreus!” replies Barlog without drawing breath.
“Kratos’ humanity is locked up in a vault deep inside him. The way to get to it is long and hard. But once Kratos gets there, relating to his son will be like riding a bike. It’s just been stamped down for so long.” |
UPDATE (Nov. 6 4:32 p.m.): Bakersfield Police said the victim in the officer-involved shooting on Saturday was a suspect in a shooting from that night.
BPD also said the firearm that was found at the shooting scene was determined to be a stolen KCSO firearm.
RELATED: Victim in officer-involved shooting was a shooting suspect, missing KCSO gun found on scene
==========
UPDATE: (4:39 p.m.): The officer involved in the shooting has been identified as Warren Martin, the son of Bakersfield Police Chief Lyle Martin.
BPD says Chief Martin is aware of the shooting and has recused himself from the investigation and the review process. Chief Martin has assigned Assistant Chief Greg Terry to oversee the investigation.
Officer Warren Martin has been employed at BPD for one year. Before BPD, he worked for the California State University-Bakersfield Police Department and the Kern County Sheriff's Office.
=========
UPDATE (3:28 p.m.): Family has identified that the man who was killed as 20-year-old Augustus Joshua Crawford.
=========
UPDATE (4:52 a.m.): Bakersfield Police sent the following press release regarding the officer-involved shooting in south Bakersfield Saturday night.
"On November 4, 2017 at 10:47 p.m., two Bakersfield Police Officers operating a two- officer patrol unit conducted a traffic stop on a vehicle at South H Street and Planz Road. As the vehicle stopped in the 1800 block of Planz Road an adult male passenger fled from the vehicle and led the officers on a foot pursuit. During the foot pursuit an officer involved shooting occurred. Medical aid was immediately requested and the suspect was transported to a local hospital where he later died as a result of his injuries. During a search, a firearm was located in the area of where the officer involved shooting occurred.
The investigation is ongoing and the name of the decedent will be released by the Kern County Coroner’s Office.
The officer that fired his weapon will be placed on routine administrative leave pending review by the critical incident review board.
Anyone with information regarding this investigation is asked to call Detective Brian West (661) 326-3813, or the Bakersfield Police Department (661) 327-7111."
UPDATE: (1:00 a.m.) Bakersfield Police confirm one man is dead after an officer involved shooting in South Bakersfield Saturday night. Police say after conducting a traffic stop on Planz Road and South H. Street, a man exited his car and took off on foot. Police say after a short chase an officer-involved shooting occurred.
Check back for more details.
=============
Around 10:30 Saturday night, an officer from the Bakersfield Police Department was involved in a shooting in the area of Planz Road and South H Street.
At least one other person was involved, and their condition is unknown at this time.
Bakersfield Police confirm that the officer was not hurt in the incident.
Refresh this page for update on the latest regarding this incident. |
If you too guessed the Redditor who had boasted he originated the CNN-bashing GIF used by President Donald Trump suddenly apologized for same because he found out CNN knew who he was — congratulations!
And, if you also guessed “HanA**holeSolo” has pleaded with CNN not to reveal his identity because he’s scared for his personal safety, and because it would embarrass him to be outed as the person behind the GIF and various anti-Semitic and racist Reddit rants – go to the head of the class.
CNN reported Tuesday night it has agreed not to reveal the guy’s name, but reserves the right to do so should he ever repeat his “ugly behavior on social media.”
“HanA**holeSolo” initially boasted he originated the GIF behind Trump’s tweet in which Trump is seen pounding on the head of a man whose face has been swapped for the CNN logo.
HAS first shared the GIF last Wednesday; CNN reports it could find no earlier instance of the GIF that subsequently was edited to add sound before being tweeted by Trump on Sunday.
After Trump’s tweet, “HanA**holeSolo” took a victory lap, via Reddit: “Holy s—!! I wake up and have my morning coffee and who retweets my s—post but the MAGA EMPORER himself!!! I am honored!!”
CNN reports its KFile identified the man, using information he had posted on Reddit and Facebook. On Monday, KFile reached out to the man by email and phone, but he did not respond.
In one of those incredible coincidences, on Tuesday HanA**holeSolo suddenly saw the error of his ways, and posted a lengthy apology on the subreddit /The_Donald, in which he said he admires and respects the press and all of mankind.
He also deleted his other offensive posts. Moderators of /The_Donald subreddit took down his apology.
After posting his apology, he called CNN’s KFile and confirmed his identity. In that phone interview, “HanA**holeSolo” asked CNN not to name him out of fear for his personal safety and “for the public embarrassment it would bring to him and his family,” the network reported, describing him as sounding “nervous.”
During the phone call, he told CNN the White House had not asked permission to use the GIF, and said he probably would have denied them permission. CNN did not report whether their reporter asked him to square that with above-mentioned “I am honored” gush.
But CNN did ask him about all those racist, Islamophobic, and anti-Semitic posts. The man explained:
“I love people of all races, creeds and origins. One of my best friends is a homosexual and one of my best friends is Jewish and one of my best friends is Muslim.” |
Martin Shkreli. Thomson Reuters Over the past several months, the former pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli has trolled journalists who have written or tweeted about him by purchasing internet domains associated with their names.
After sitting on the domain names for months, Shkreli appears to be customizing the sites, explicitly mocking reporters who have tweeted about him.
A website named after Maya Kosoff, a tech reporter at Vanity Fair, welcomes the visitor and adds, "Here we honor one of the most vibrant Social Justice advocates today," alluding to "social justice warriors," a derisive slur associated with advocacy for liberal causes.
Shkreli wrote a similar message on a website he bought associated with Caroline Moss, an editor at CNBC. A site associated with her name welcomes visitors and says it has "everything you need to know about this CNBC safe spacer," a reference to colleges' so-called safe spaces, which are often mocked by the right.
The former CEO also customized a domain associated with Emily Saul, a court reporter for the New York Post, and offered to sell the domain back to her for $12,000.
Since the beginning of the year, Shkreli has purchased domain names for 12 people, including journalists and commentators from CNBC, Vice, the Post, Vanity Fair, Teen Vogue, AOL, Bloomberg, Dealbreaker, Gizmodo, and Business Insider.
In an email to Business Insider, Shkreli dismissed Kosoff's and Moss' work and described his activity on the sites as "occupying cool namespaces."
"Anything special you want on yours?" he asked.
"I wouldn't call these people 'journalists.' They are the unwitting recipients of liberalism subsidy from large media and telecom companies," Shkreli said, adding that they were "only a few notches above the white supremacists we hear so much about these days."
Shkreli first sparked national outrage in 2015 when his company Turing Pharmaceuticals raised the price of a drug used to treat a disease that can be fatal in people with HIV by more than 5,000%. He has since embraced his image as a provocateur and "pharma bro."
On the day in January when Twitter suspended Shkreli's account for harassing Lauren Duca, an opinion writer at Teen Vogue, the former exec snagged MarryMeLauren.com.
He has continued to mock and criticize journalists who've covered the spectacle surrounding his trial and celebrity, singling out outlets that cover the pharmaceutical industry.
Shkreli has repeatedly blasted CNBC, and he refused to take questions from a CNBC reporter after being convicted this month of securities fraud and conspiracy to commit securities fraud while he was managing his drug company Retrophin.
He livestreamed himself earlier this year purchasing domain names associated with Max Nisen, a pharma reporter at Bloomberg who has written about Shkreli, and Phil Witmer, a reporter at Noisey. Witmer had published a story titled "Lil B Shouts Out Martin Shkreli, We All Die a Little Inside," in which he dubbed Shkreli a "living cartoon gremlin" and called the rapper shout-out a "stain on the BasedGod's good name."
"Can I buy PhilWitmer.com right now?" Shkreli said on the livestream. "Yes I can, and yes I will."
The former CEO has also toyed with reporters in other ways, posting private exchanges with Dylan Scott, a former correspondent for Stat News, to "put this geek journalist on notice" when Scott reached out to him for a story.
After Business Insider published an article in March about Shkreli's actions, he purchased a domain associated with the author and emailed him offering the opportunity to purchase it back.
Disclosure: Moss, Kosoff, and Nisen previously worked at Business Insider. |
(L-R) Amazon's chief Jeff Bezos, Larry Page of Alphabet, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Vice President elect Mike Pence, President-elect Donald Trump, Peter Thiel, co-founder and former CEO of PayPal, Tim Cook of Apple and Safra Catz of Oracle attend a meeting at Trump Tower December 14, 2016 in New York. (TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images)
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) — Eating See’s Candies in Ivanka Trump stilettos while taking an Uber home to watch The New Celebrity Apprentice would be activities targeted by a boycott of President Donald Trump and Trump-friendly businesses spearheaded by a San Francisco woman.
Dozens of businesses nationwide, including some based in the Bay Area, have made it onto Shannon Coulter’s #GrabYourWallet list.
Coulter started the list during the run-up to the November presidential election when she launched a boycott of Ivanka Trump’s clothing and shoe lines.
“We know how strong we are as consumers. We buy a lot of products from these stores. We buy a lot of clothing accessories, shoes, bags, you name it. And many of us are ready to flex that consumer power,” Coulter told KPIX 5 shortly after launching the boycott.
But months after the election, the list has grown to not only include those businesses that sell Ivanka Trump products, but also Trump-owned businesses and the businesses of his advisors and supporters.
San Francisco-based Uber made the list because its CEO has said the company would cooperate with the Trump administration. The company’s cooperation spurred a movement by users to delete the app in protest.
The New York Times reported that more than 200,000 customers deleted their Uber accounts.
And the boycotts may be working.
Uber’s CEO Travis Kalanick announced Thursday his resignation from Trump’s economic advisory council, which could lead to his company getting off the boycott list and regaining the users it lost.
Also on Thursday, Nordstrom’s, which made the list for selling Ivanka Trump products no longer listed Ivanka Trump on their master list of brands and her brand page was blank.
Read Also: Nordstrom To Drop Ivanka Trump’s Clothing, Accessories Line
Coulter’s list includes all the advertisers of Celebrity Apprentice, of which Trump remains an executive producer.
South San Francisco-based See’s Candies made the list because it was deemed to be further enriching Trump as a Celebrity Apprentice partner. But See’s Candies maintains the partnership with the show was in 2015 — before Trump’s election — and that it was for charity. That clarification could lead to the company getting off the boycott list.
At a National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday morning, Trump jokingly urged people to pray for the show’s ratings and host Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Amazon has also made the list, largely because it continues to sell Trump family products, but Coulter notes that Amazon is still advertising on Breitbart News, the only news website to make the list because it “propagates fake news” and is a “hate speech site,” the list states.
Steve Bannon, now the Assistant to the President and Trump’s Chief Strategist, was formerly the executive chair of Breitbart News. On Saturday, Trump took the unprecedented step of naming Bannon as a permanent member of the National Security Council.
There’s also a growing list by the group, Sleeping Giants, that is lauding more than 800 businesses that have vowed not to advertise on Breitbart News.
By Hannah Albarazi – Follow her on Twitter: @hannahalbarazi. |
The Daily Mail sent a reporter to Juarez to see how the city has been doing since the drug war began. High profile crimes have gone down by 95-98% in the city. The reporter went to visit a part of the city once considered 'Murder Valley'. It almost looked like a ghost town.
Two residents who appeared in the video shared horrific stories. One said, 'You get used to seeing dead bodies in the street.' Another man said that he heard his kidnapped daughter being raped over the phone.
According to the story 60,000 residents used to live in the area but as of today only 5,000 are left. Recently the Rockefeller Foundation named Juárez among the world's 100 resilient cities. The cities on the list were named because they were able to overcome big setbacks.
I enjoy going to festivals and events in Juarez. I have family members that live and work in the city and they enjoy it. The government has shown they want to build more things for families and the community in general.
I love going across the bridge to eat and hang out. The people I have encountered have always been nice and friendly. Minus that one time I got in trouble and went to jail but that can happen in any city not just Juarez. |
The latest transfer rumours from around the world.
Things change in the blink of an eye in football. The Football Whispers Index takes the latest transfer rumours and gives them a score out of five; the higher the score, the more realistic and reliable the whisper.
Here are today's top five emerging whispers for the summer. And keep an eye on Transfer Talk for all the latest gossip.
Christian Pulisic to Tottenham
It has been a big season for the latest prospect off Borussia Dortmund's production line. The 18-year-old, capable of playing as an attacking midfielder or winger, has already been linked with Bundesliga giants Bayern Munich and is a Liverpool transfer target too.
Now he is in Tottenham's sights and Dortmund boss Thomas Tuchel has a fight on his hands to keep the teenager at the Westfalenstadion.
Jesus Navas to Roma
Since signing from Sevilla in 2013, Navas has never been a regular for Manchester City. The 31-year-old has fallen even further down the pecking order under Pep Guardiola this season, afforded just 11 Premier League starts.
However, four of those have come in the last month. The Spanish international has been reinvented as a right-back and appears to have Guardiola's faith in his new position -- for now.
Whether or not Navas will remain at City this summer is unclear, though. A big clear-out is expected at the Etihad and the winger -- who has not scored in the Premier League since January 2014 -- is one of those in danger of being moved on.
David De Gea to Real Madrid
The future of Manchester United goalkeeper De Gea is once again uncertain. The Spanish international was left out of United's Europa League quarterfinal against Anderlecht last Thursday before being restored to Jose Mourinho's starting XI for the 2-0 win over Chelsea.
It is expected, however, that De Gea will have to make do with being a substitute once more when Anderlecht visit Old Trafford on Thursday evening with Sergio Romero returning between the sticks with the tie finely balanced at 1-1.
De Gea has been a Real Madrid transfer target for several years now. A £29 million move to the Bernabeu fell through in the summer of 2015 with De Gea promptly signing a new four-year deal. However, with Keylor Navas' future in Madrid under scrutiny, a return for the Spaniard is on the cards.
Pontus Jansson to Southampton
After years of chaos, Leeds United have got their act together this year and find themselves in the Championship playoffs. That is thanks in no small part to the form of on loan centre-back Jansson.
The Swedish international is a fans' favourite at Elland Road and already has a summer move lined up with a permanent switch from Serie A outfit Torino agreed. However, that will not stop Southampton looking at a deal for the 26-year-old, who will cost Leeds £3.5m in the next transfer window.
Strong, aggressive and imperious in the air, Jansson would be the ideal replacement if Liverpool transfer target Virgil van Dijk left Saints this summer.
Vincent Kompany to Everton
It has been yet another season of frustration for Manchester City skipper Kompany, who has managed just four Premier League starts this term.
The 31-year-old has been hampered by injuries in the last couple of years, only managing 17 league starts in two seasons. The Belgian centre-back started Saturday's clash at Southampton and scored his first goal of the season in a 3-0 win.
Everton lost John Stones to City last summer and have been in need of a replacement since. |
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Comedy was once known for having a conscience. At their best, Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, and Lily Tomlin were not only hilarious, but also opened space for marginalized voices to be recognized and appreciated. That tradition has largely disappeared, and now some of the most successful comedians are less likely to poke fun at those with power and privilege than to defend “the right” to make rape jokes with the humorless sanctimony of Steve Bannon or Ann Coulter, living to “trigger the libs.” Ad Policy
An antidote to this for years has been comic Hari Kondabolu. He has built a national following precisely by serving an audience who wants to laugh without feeling like they were either party to—or a future victim of—a hate crime. Like Pryor, he uses laughter to open his audience—from right-wingers to the smuggest of liberals—to ideas they aren’t trying to hear. Now Kondabolu’s act comes at us in documentary form, with a devastating critique of the ultimate comedic sacred cow: The Simpsons. Kondabolu, whose parents are immigrants from India, puts a laser focus on one of the show’s iconic characters, Indian immigrant and Kwiki Mart proprietor Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, in his new TruTV Documentary, The Problem With Apu.
Debuting tonight, The Problem With Apu is an examination of stereotypes, minstrelsy (a white actor, Hank Azaria, has been the voice of Apu for 28 years), and who pays the price when comedy kicks down. Packed with Simpsons clips, as well as with interviews with prominent South Asian actors like Kal Penn, Aziz Ansari, and Sakina Jaffrey (House of Cards), and former Simpsons executive producer Dana Gould, Kondabolu’s The Problem with Apu looks at how a beloved character from a legendary television program—one I adored growing up—also provoked the bullying of a generation of South Asian kids in the United States. All of the South Asian actors, male and female, as well as former US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy tell their stories of being called “Apu” growing up, the character filling the gaping vacuum of South Asian representation. As Kondabolu says bluntly, “Twenty-eight years later, the words ‘Thank you, come again’ still follow me wherever I go.”
The Problem with Apu does not stop at critiquing the character. It also looks at the ways that The Simpsons have used stereotypes of all kinds as a source of humor—but in Apu’s case, the starting point was racist mockery based on his ethnicity. It becomes starkly clear when Dana Gould defends Apu’s stereotypical persona by saying (and I’m paraphrasing slightly), “You need characters with flaws, because that’s funny. Sober Barney wouldn’t be funny. ‘Out’ Smithers [a closeted gay character] wouldn’t be funny.” Hari asks him in quiet voice, “What’s Apu’s flaw?” Gould is silent, and the unspoken answer is that he’s Indian and that’s why “we” laugh.
But the narrative through-line of this documentary is Kondabolu’s efforts to interview the legendary Hank Azaria, who has voiced not only Apu but many of the show’s most iconic characters. This is not only an attempt to confront Azaria on questions of minstrelsy, but to raise an issue that Kondabolu discusses with many of his interview subjects: that of the responsibility of the artist to challenge or reject racism when it comes out of the writers’ room. In one moment that will stick with me, Kondabolu interviews South Asian actor Aasif Mandvi, best known from The Daily Show and films like The Internship, and Mandvi resists criticizing Azaria directly, saying that the racism in the culture is to blame and artists merely work in that culture. While Kondabolu does not explicitly contradict Mandvi, it’s clearly not a view he shares, especially when it comes to the question of minstrelsy. This stands out in shattering fashion when Azaria finally contacts Kondabolu directly. I’m not going to reveal what was said or Kondabolu’s analysis of it, but it’s a gut punch about power, privilege, and control. Whether you’re a Simpsons fan or not, this is must-see work—even though it may make us feel defensive about a character many of us have loved for over a quarter-century. It’s a must-see, in fact, especially if it makes us uncomfortable. Because it’s Kondabolu, at least we’ll laugh through the discomfort. |
A Texas woman wasn't satisfied with merely fighting off a man who'd just carjacked her and two of her young children at knife point; she also ran the man over, so “he didn't hurt anyone else,” she said.
On Friday, Baytown, Texas resident Dorothy Baker-Flugence drove two of her six children to a CVS. When they returned from the store to their minivan, which had been left unlocked, they, according to police, found suspect Ismael Martinez inside, holding a knife. “He had a knife on my son,” Baker-Flugence's husband, Charles, told KRTK. Martinez reportedly demanded that Baker-Flugence drive him to a nearby ATM.
Baker-Flugence immediately fought back, successfully grabbing hold of the knife – cutting herself across the chest and getting bit on the hand in the process – before calling 911, all while still driving. In an attempt to confuse Martinez, she intentionally drove off the road and back onto it. Then she spotted a telephone pole and sped towards it.
"I thought, 'If you swerve and hit the pole, he's not wearing a seatbelt, he'll go through the windshield or at least hit his head, and you can stop him. You can do something to make sure that he doesn't hurt your kids,'" Dorothy Baker-Flugence said. "That's all I was thinking of really, was just to get him away from my kids."
After hitting the pole, she punched Martinez in the face, causing him to flee from the van.
As he ran away, Baker-Flugence put the car in drive and gunned it, running over Martinez in the process.
"I didn't mean to run him over," she said. "I was just trying to stop him so he didn't hurt anybody else."
Martinez was taken to a local hospital where he's being treated for serious injuries. Once discharged, he's expected to face felony charges.
Baker-Flugence suffered minor injuries and her kids were unharmed. "You don't come after people with kids," she said. "I told [Martinez] he messed with the wrong witch."
[via ABC News/Image via KTRK]
To contact the author of this post, email taylor@gawker.com |
It’s a sad fact that as members of a species become rarer they tend to suffer from inbreeding. This lack of genetic diversity can lead to birth defects and other problems, making a species even more endangered as time progresses.
Conservationists regularly test the genetic makeup of many endangered species in order to understand the threats they face and, sometimes, to help them adapt to limited breeding choices. This isn’t always an easy task. Sometimes animals are so rare they’re hard to find in the wild, or the only evidence is hair or feces that may not contain a lot of DNA. Other times collecting a blood or tissue sample for DNA analysis can be dangerous, either to the researcher or the animal. After all, nobody likes to be tranquilized and then poked with a sharp needle.
So, how can conservationists collect DNA samples that will provide maximum information with the least amount of risk to the animals they’re studying? One word: placentas.
Yes, placentas. According to a study published this week in the Finnish journal Annales Zoologici Fennici, placentas can be a valuable source of genetic material that can help identify inbreeding and reveal other important data, such as the genders of the newborns.
The researchers, from several universities and institutions in Finland, tried this out with Saimaa ringed seals (Pusa hispida saimensis), one of the rarest seal species on the planet. Only about 300 of these critically endangered seals remain, all in a land-locked lake in that country, where they face constant pressure from fishermen and climate change, which has caused a high level of infant mortality from lack of ice.
Despite the low population, the seals continue to breed. According to the paper, between 50 and 60 seal pups are born every year. That means a fair number of placentas are left behind for potential testing.
Between 2009 and 2011 the researchers collected 59 placentas from the seals’ ice-bound birthing dens. Most of the placentas were already decomposing, but they still contained enough genetic material for testing. Each placenta offered multiple opportunities for genetic extraction: the uterine side of the placenta for DNA from the mothers and the fetal side and umbilical cord for DNA from the pups.
The researchers also had some actual seal DNA for comparison, but that’s the sad part of the story: the tissue mostly came from stillborn pups found at the birthing sites.
Testing the placentas revealed a lot about the pups’ genotypes, mostly that they exhibited the expected low levels of genetic diversity. The tests revealed nothing about the mothers, nor did they conclusively indicate which pups were siblings (probably because their genetics overlapped so much).
The researchers wrote that this test is the first to prove that placentas have value in genetic monitoring. They added that although the test didn’t yield a huge amount of data, more advanced genetic sequencing tests, coming in the near future, may reveal even more. And this technique could play an especially important role in Saimaa ringed seal conservation because while collecting samples from the “elusive and difficult to capture” wild animals is almost impossible, gathering placentas is relatively easy.
Of course this approach can’t work with every species. Pinnipeds (seals) are one of the few groups that don’t regularly eat their own placentas, so samples might be unavailable for other animals. There are, however, a lot of endangered seal species worldwide, and the researchers predict that the placental testing technique could prove valuable for several of them. It’s one more tool in conservation biologists’ pockets that could help save critically endangered, inbred species from extinction.
Photo by Juha Taskinen, via NOAA Fisheries |
“Fake news” has become a widespread accusation, but what does it actually mean?
Is it something that’s been invented out of whole cloth, like H.G. Wells’ planetary invaders?
Different definitions abound, but I submit that fake news, at its core, is reporting in which the journalist selectively chooses and ignores facts, and interprets or paraphrases those facts to reach an unwarranted conclusion that conveniently validates his own views.
It goes to the heart of how many reporters see their job these days.
Readers may have seen the recent “news” about a physical fracas on the floor of the Texas House of Representatives, which reported that Republican Rep. Matt Rinaldi confronted a Democrat and engaged in aggressive verbal back-and-forth.
The report said the altercation came to a climax when Rinaldi said, “I’ll put a bullet in your head” to the “the Democrat he alleged was menacing,” in the words of the Dallas Morning News account.
For context, this was the last day of the legislative session, and a large and boisterous group of self-described illegal immigrants were holding signs that read, “Illegal and Here to Stay.”
It was in response to this protest that Rinaldi, according to the original report, said to the protesters he was calling Immigration and Customs Enforcement—prompting a physical tussle between Rinaldi and Rep. Poncho Nevarez and then the “bullet in your head” threat.
Media outlets around the country carried this report.
But what actually happened here, and which part was “fake”?
We now know that the demonstration, which was indeed loud and noisy, took place inside the Capitol building and spilled onto the floor of the Legislature, which is highly unusual and not allowed.
The “demonstrators”—or more accurately, the provocateurs—quickly outnumbered and overpowered the legislative security forces. That’s what caused Rinaldi to say, “I’m calling ICE.” (For the record, they never showed up.)
Next, the alleged altercation.
Cellphone video, which appears to have been taken by multiple people and released in the aftermath of the fracas, shows the demonstrators pushing and shoving Rinaldi, who kept his arms to his chest or at his side.
The audio only reveals grunting and the typical sounds of a physical engagement, punctuated by semi-coherent cries of “stop that.”
In the immediate aftermath, Nevarez came up to Rinaldi, got in his face, and said, “When you leave, I’ll get you.” Within minutes, he again came up and said, “You have to leave sometime, and I know where your car is parked and I’ll get you.”
At that point, Rinaldi said something like, “I’m armed and I’ll defend myself.”
Rep. Jonathan Stickland, R-Bedford, was one of two representatives who personally witnessed this and confirmed it by email. [Editor’s note: Stickland’s name was misspelled when this commentary first was published.]
Neither is a personal acquaintance, but it wouldn’t have been very difficult to confirm Rinaldi’s version of the story.
But what did the Dallas Morning News report?
Initially, it noted that Rinaldi did tell it that Nevarez did say he would “come get” him, with just “come get” in quotation marks.
It left out the much more provocative and threatening phrases, “You’ll have to leave sometime,” and “I know where your car is,” plus the fact that Nevarez approached him twice.
Moreover, this sentence was buried in the body of the text.
The allegation that Rinaldi said, “I’ll put a bullet in your head,” came from another Democratic representative, Justin Rodriguez, who admittedly “didn’t witness the initial altercation” and only later said he heard Rinaldi make the comment.
This allegation was also disputed by a number of representatives who were present.
Despite these discrepancies, the Dallas Morning News ran a bold headline quoting the inflammatory words: “’I’ll put a bullet in your head’: Fistfight nearly erupts on final day of contentious legislative session.”
It should be noted that “nearly” is not the same as “did,” and the word “fistfight” overshadows the qualifier “nearly” enough to obliterate it.
Later, Rinaldi issued a statement noting that Nevarez had approached and threatened him, and that he had responded to Nevarez saying he would “shoot him in self-defense.” That’s not exactly what Rinaldi remembers saying, but he let his public statement stand.
Several of Rinaldi’s staff members contacted the Dallas Morning News after the initial story was posted and asked it to change the headline, which they felt was incorrect and misleading.
According to sources with knowledge of the situation, the reporter replied, “There’s no proof he didn’t say it,” adding that because Rodriguez claimed Rinaldi had said it, this was sufficient to justify the headline. The headline remains online today.
Media Aftermath
In the hours and days that followed, dozens of media outlets picked up the “bullet in your head” quote. When the cellphone video came out, several publications did amend their stories to remove allegations that Rinaldi had assaulted Rodriguez or other representatives.
The conservative media, most notably Fox News’ Neil Cavuto, allotted six minutes to report the entire story, complete with video and images of the red-shirted demonstrators swarming the legislators on the floor. Cavuto carefully reviewed the timeline of who said what, and when.
Yet even this past weekend, the Dallas Morning News was still parsing the event and reporting that “Rinaldi acknowledged on his Facebook page that he told Democratic State Rep. Poncho Nevarez of Eagle Pass that he ‘would shoot him in self-defense.’”
There was no mention of Nevarez’s repeated threats (“You have to leave sometime.”).
In addition, the Dallas Morning News was still collecting expert quotes responding to its own description of what happened, rather than what really happened.
One quote was from Southern Methodist University professor Cal Jillson, who said, “In Asia, in places like South Korea and Taiwan, you do have lawmakers with their hands around each other’s throats and fisticuffs. But you don’t usually see that in American politics.”
But as noted above, there was no actual fighting.
Calling Out What’s Fake
This story is tainted by a number of errors.
First and foremost, the quotation, “I’ll put a bullet in your head,” which came from a clearly partisan source, should have been verified and immediately corrected upon learning that it didn’t come from the mouth of Rinaldi.
Next, the original story downplayed or omitted a key part of the story—the initial threats from Nevarez. The comments from Rinaldi were provoked and came in response to aggression from Nevarez. While the Dallas Morning News did include a tweet from Rinaldi mentioning Nevarez’s behavior, there was no mention in the body of the piece about it.
Additionally, the report painted a far more benign picture of the scene on the floor of the Legislature that was accurate. The participants were clearly organized and aiming to provoke a physical response.
Finally, and most “fake” of all, the reporter defended the “bullet in your head” quote of Rinaldi by saying, “There’s no proof he didn’t say it.”
If that’s the standard for journalism today—saying something happened because there’s no proof it didn’t happen—we’ve truly entered the land of the news novella.
What’s the lesson here for ordinary citizens?
Years ago, Erwin Knoll, editor of The Progressive magazine, penned an article titled, “Knoll’s Law of Accuracy in Media.” In that piece, Knoll said: “Everything you read in the press is absolutely true. Except the rare event of which you have personal knowledge.”
That statement proved especially salient in this case, where diving deeper into the evidence makes all the difference.
The lesson for American news consumers is to be skeptical of what you read in all media and take the time to give the facts a second look.
And there’s an additional lesson: Urge journalists to employ a little more self-examination to make sure they don’t cherry-pick the “facts,” quotes, and experts that simply ratify their predetermined conclusions.
And when they do, we should call them on it. |
Kawhi Leonard has spent the past three seasons slowly evolving from a defensive specialist into an all-around offensive force. During Leonard's MVP performance in the 2014 Finals and his subsequent breakout season in 14-15, a complaint familiar to NFL fans began to surface; a subset of fans, analysts, and even players believed Leonard's success was primarily a result of the San Antonio infrastructure. They believed Leonard was a system player.
While some detractors disappeared forever after Leonard followed up his 14-15 campaign with an MVP caliber 15-16, a quick Twitter search reveals plenty of people who still believe his accomplishments should be tempered because of the organization and coach he plays for.
The Spurs have routinely maximized every ounce of potential from their players' skillsets - look no further than Marco Bellinelli, who fell flat in Sacramento after a fantastic run with San Antonio. With that in mind, accusing any player from the Spurs' ecosystem of being a system player is not entirely illogical. Realistically, however, are these allegations correct? Or are they merely another off-base excuse to discredit a superstar caliber talent?
*****
Proponents of the system player theory would likely point to Leonard's three-point shooting as the best evidence that he benefits from his organization more than other superstar players. Leonard shot an unbelievable 44 percent from 3, a nearly 10 percent increase from his previous season, but a closer look shows that those numbers are a bit deceiving in the bigger picture. Over 84 percent of Leonard's attempts from beyond the arc were classified as "open" or "wide open", a luxury many primary scorers do not enjoy. As you might expect, he shot significantly better under those circumstances.
Even with an abundance of open opportunities, Leonard hits his three-pointers at an elite rate. Contextualizing his three-point shooting is important, but it is equally important to remember that his numbers are impressive regardless.
This discovery poses a deeper question - are all these open shots a result of the elegant ball movement of the Spurs, or is this a result of Leonard intelligently picking his spots? The answer lies somewhere in between.
Leonard unquestionably benefits from his position in the ball handling heirarchy - he is usually the secondary ball handler on the floor while taking on duties as the tertiary handler in certain lineups. This allows his teammates to handle primary shot creation duties and draw extra defenders into the paint, leaving Leonard free to fill space without the ball and feast on open catch-and-shoot jumpers (86 percent of Kawhi's three-point makes were assisted). But Leonard is well aware that his shooting ability is best leveraged in catch-and-shoot situations, and he plays with that knowledge in mind. He will occasionally attempt a pull-up three-pointer in the pick and roll to keep defenders honest, but only 22 percent of Kawhi's three-point attempts are off the dribble. He knows what he's good at, and his decision-making reflects his strengths.
On the other hand, Leonard's detractors tend to ignore the fact that his three-point shooting is merely a small piece of his remarkably versatile game. Leonard is a phenomenally efficient offensive player, placing in the 73rd percentile or above in every major offensive role:
Ball Handler: 1.02 PPP, 95th percentile
Isolation: .99 PPP, 84th percentile
Post Up: 1.02 PPP, 89th percentile
Transition: 1.21 PPP, 73rd percentile
Off Screen: 1.15 PPP, 87th percentile
Once again, Leonard's numbers are outstanding regardless of context, but craftier critics will point out that the San Antonio infrastructure provides a buffer that other players do not have. Players like Carmelo Anthony and Paul George may elect to attempt a low percentage shot because it is often a better alternative than what their teammates could come up with late in a possession; Leonard, on the other hand, can trust his teammates to create a decent look even when the initial action fails.
When Leonard gets stuck creating a shot in the final 4 seconds of a possession, he posts a much more reasonable 40.9 percent effective field goal percentage, a figure 4.3 percent lower than Gordon Hayward in the same situations.
This pick-and-choose mentality is reflected in his overall per-game shot volume, another bullet in the collective magazine of Leonard denigrators. Even after controlling for pace, elite scorers like Paul George and Carmelo Anthony take about three more shots per game. Three shots may not seem like much, but they do make a difference - increasing shot attempts while maintaining the same level of efficiency is usually (outside of 15-16 Steph Curry) impossible.
The Spurs accentuate strengths and minimize weaknesses as a whole. Gregg Popovich always puts his players in the best position to succeed; even after switching to an atypical offense (for them) focused more on isolation play, the Spurs used ball and player movement better than any other isolation-heavy team in the league. Constant movement around the court by all five players, over the course of 24 seconds, slowly opens cracks in the defense - cracks that Leonard exploits with ease.
Leonard is at his best when he can get to one of his many spots and eviscerate a reeling defense quickly and decisively - the longer he holds the ball, the lower his shooting efficiency drops. When his touch time eclipses two seconds, Leonard's eFG% plummets by a substantial 14 percent. Taking too long to attack allows the defense time to tighten up, sealing up the aforementioned cracks that emerged during a possession. Higher touch time can also indicate Leonard is more likely to be pounding the rock, and Leonard's handle can be shaky.
Basically, Leonard generates much of his offense opportunistically, which conveniently addresses the most common criticism from the system player troupe - his career high is only 33 points. Since the Spurs were a ridiculously dominant regular season team, Leonard really didn't need to take on a massive scoring load that required him to put up lower quality shots - shots that lower overall efficiency over the course of a season, but allow players to go off for 40+ points when they are hot.
Even with this in mind, it's important to note that Danny Green never scored with such volume and efficiency - clearly Leonard has scoring chops that are underscored by his role within the Spurs offense. This is obvious when Leonard gets closer to the rim - his offensive game within 16 feet of the hoop is almost entirely generated by himself. Even though he has the rare luxury of picking his spots (for a superstar), the onus is still on Leonard to create space to exploit; only 37 percent of Leonard's makes in the paint and midrange areas were assisted by teammates. Leonard also manufactures points in the one-on-one meta game by using his pump fake to great effect - a skill nearly every superstar has mastered.
The Spurs offense clearly puts Kawhi in a position to succeed, but ultimately it is on Leonard to create good shots and score efficiently - a mentality that also applies to every superstar in the league, even if the coaching cannot match that of San Antonio.
As for his defense: if you truly believe Kawhi Leonard wouldn't be a DPOY-caliber player on any other team in the league despite plenty of objective and subjective evidence, trying to change your mind at this point is futile.
**********
It's exceedingly obvious Kawhi Leonard does benefit from his place on the Spurs, as does every other player to put on their uniform in the past 15 years. The whole point of coaching, however, is to put your players in the best possible position - penalizing Leonard for maximizing his role better than any other player in the league is a shallow attempt to demean an MVP caliber talent. Calling Leonard a system player implies he would not be a game changing offensive talent on another team, in another system.
Yet the skillset described above would fit into any system in the league. A secondary ball handler with fantastic decision-making who can efficiently post up, isolate, get out in transition, and run off screens. Where would such a player not have a massive impact?
To answer the question Kevin Durant posed back in June of 2014 - if Kawhi Leonard and Paul George switched places, George's efficiency would increase while Leonard's decreased. Leonard would look worse, and George would look better. No question about that. But that's what happens when you play on a better team, with better coaching and better roster construction. Tim Duncan also played for the Spurs, and the Spurs played to his strengths as well - is Tim Duncan a system player?
It is true that we cannot, and likely will not, see how Leonard would perform absent (arguably) the best infrastructure in the history of sports. But using that infrastructure as an excuse to discredit rather than contextualize one of the most impactful players in the NBA is a fallacy. Leonard would thrive on any team in the NBA.
Do the Spurs place Leonard in the best possible position to excel? Yes.
Do Kawhi's teammates help him do his job better than he would elsewhere? Yes.
Does that make Kawhi Leonard a system player? No. |
It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times…
On March 11, Donald Trump got a curious endorsement from Dr. Ben Carson:
I’ve come to know Donald Trump over the last few years; he’s actually a very intelligent man who cares deeply about America. There are two different Donald Trumps: There’s the one you see on the stage, and there’s the one who’s very cerebral—sits there and considers things very carefully; you can have a very good conversation with him. And that’s the Donald Trump that you’re going to start seeing more and more of.
For his part, Trump initially agreed with Carson, saying, “I think there are two Donald Trumps: There’s the public version, and people see that, and, I don’t know what they see exactly, but it seems to have worked over my lifetime… Perhaps there are two Donald Trumps.”
Then, later, in the same press conference: “I don’t think there are two Donald Trumps. I think there’s one Donald Trump.”
So one Donald Trump agrees that there are two Donald Trumps, and the other Donald Trump does not agree that there are two Donald Trumps.
Well, that definitely clears it up.
Trump is certainly a man of contradictions—though not in the way the phrase is flatteringly deployed to underscore the complex humanity of a person of profound integrity. To the contrary, to say that Trump is a man of contradictions is to highlight his utter lack of a principled core.
He is a man who says he does not want to promote violence, while casually fomenting violence with incendiary rhetoric at every turn.
He claims to want to unite people, despite his entire campaign being a cynical exploitation of divisions rooted in ancient bigotries.
He purports to be a defender of the Constitution, yet suggests that protesters at his rallies should be arrested for protesting, and his campaign targets the press, both rhetorically and physically.
He claims to be a champion for people who are fed up with government corruption, yet his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, “is himself a product of an old-boys network of Republican insiders that imploded when lobbyist Jack Abramoff testified against his friends in Congress.”
He says he is not a politician, but he is as thoroughly practiced in Republican politicking as any other candidate on his side of the aisle.
He asserts himself to be strong and confident, though he constantly comports himself as a deeply insecure person compromised by cowardice and vanity.
He incessantly boasts about being a truth-teller, though he cannot even be honest about his own business failures.
He insists that he will be terrific for women, that he respects women, even as he mounts nakedly sexist attacks on women with whom he disagrees.
He was pro-choice, before he was anti-choice.
He is a man who liked Hillary Clinton and praised her record, before he was a man running against her who now needs her to be undeserving of his praise.
Donald Trump hopes we will look at these contradictions and wonder which is the real Donald Trump; that we will calculate there is a real, authentic, thoughtful man of dignity hiding behind the artifice of a carnival barker.
But the truth is, both Donald Trumps are real. There is the Trump who is a dangerous showman who will do anything to get attention, and there is the Trump who is a calculating opportunist who will say anything to get elected—including and especially pretending that the showman isn’t really doing the terrible things he’s doing.
Yes, Ben Carson was right, there are two Donald Trumps.
There is Trump the Performer and Trump the Deceiver. One makes chaos to get attention. The other makes excuses to get elected.
And neither of them should ever be president.
(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) |
Standing tall above every other skyscraper in Chicago, Willis Tower (formerly known as the Sears Tower) is a 110-story building in the heart of downtown. One of the tallest buildings in the world and the tallest building in America, it is impossible to miss when appreciating the skyline.
In 1969, Sears Roebuck and Company was the largest retailer in the world, with about 350,000 employees. Deciding it needed a central office space for its many employees, the company hired architects Skidmore, Owings and Merrill to design what would become one of the largest office buildings in the world. After breaking ground in 1970, it took three years to complete and used enough concrete to make an eight-lane, five-mile-long highway. The last beam put in place was commemorated by the signatures of 12,000 construction workers, Sears employees, and Chicagoans.
In 1988, Sears Roebuck and Company sold and moved out of the building, but the Sears Tower name remained the same. It was renamed Willis Tower in 2009 after the Willis Group Holdings, the global insurance broker who calls the Tower its Midwest home.
In July 2009, U.S. Equities Realty led the design and construction of a multi-million dollar renovation of Skydeck Chicago, including the development of The Ledge, a series of glass bays on the 103rd floor that extend from the building providing visitors with unobstructed views of Chicago through the windows and glass floors – 1,353 feet straight down. In addition to The Ledge, the new Skydeck visitor center features museum-quality interactive exhibits. The opening of The Ledge has provided the Skydeck with record-breaking visitor counts consistently since its debut.
In May 2011, Skydeck Chicago opened Skydeck Marketplace, a brand new, 7,500 square foot retail and express cafe experience. Visitors can purchase their choice of over 300 unique Chicago, Ledge and Willis Tower items and are treated to authentic Chicago food and beverages including Connie's Pizza and Vienna Hot Dogs. |
COSTA MESA, Calif. (AP) - Los Angeles Chargers cornerback Casey Hayward has left the team to be with his family after his brother's death in a car accident.
Coach Anthony Lynn says he doesn't know whether Hayward will return for Sunday's game against Cleveland.
Jecaives Hayward, 27, died after being ejected from a vehicle and struck by cars on I-75 south near Sardis Church Road.
The Fort Valley man was a passenger in a 2011 Toyota Camry that struck a tractor trailer in the emergency lane on the highway, according to a Bibb County Sheriff's Office news release.
He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Jecaives Hayward died after being ejected from a car Nov. 27, 2017 on Interstate 75 in Macon.
Casey Hayward, a standout during his days at Perry High School, is a key defensive player for the Chargers (5-6), who are on a roll after a 0-4 start. He has started all 11 games and made four interceptions and 30 tackles.
Hayward joined the Chargers in 2016 after four seasons with Green Bay. |
A bunch of Republican propagandists are outraged that the press isn’t showing more interest in PizzaGate Mike Cernovich’s “scoop” that the woman in charge of ensuring our national security under President Obama, then National Security Advisor Susan Rice, sought to fully understand the national security intercepts she was being shown.
There are two bases for their poutrage, which might have merit — but coming from such hacks, may not.
The first is the suggestion, based off Devin Nunes’ claim (and refuted by Adam Schiff) that Rice unmasked things she shouldn’t have. Thus far, the (probably illegally) leaked details — such as that family members, perhaps like Jared Kushner (who met with an FSB officer turned head of a sanctioned Russian bank used as cover for other spying operations), Sean Hannity (who met with an already-targeted Julian Assange at a time he was suspected of coordinating with Russians), and Erik Prince (who has literally built armies for foreign powers) got spied on — do nothing but undermine Nunes’ claims. All the claimed outrageous unmaskings actually seem quite justifiable, given the accepted purpose for FISA intercepts.
The other suggestion — and thus far, it is a suggestion, probably because (as I’ll show) it’s thus far logically devoid of evidence — is that because Rice asked to have the names of people unmasked, she must be the person who leaked the contents of the intercepts of Sergey Kislyak discussing sanctions with Mike Flynn. (Somehow, the propagandists always throw Ben Rhodes’ name in, though it’s not clear on what basis.)
Let me start by saying this. Let’s assume those intercepts remained classified when they were leaked. That’s almost certain, but Obama certainly did have the authority to declassify them, just as either George Bush or Dick Cheney allegedly used that authority to declassify Valerie Plame’s ID (as some of these same propagandists applauded back in the day). But assuming the intercepts did remain classified, I agree that it is a problem that they were leaked by nine different sources to the WaPo.
But just because Rice asked to unmask the identities of various Trump (and right wing media) figures doesn’t mean she and Ben Rhodes are the nine sources for the WaPo.
That’s because the information on Flynn may have existed in a number of other places.
Obviously, Rice could not have been the first person to read the Flynn-Kislyak intercepts. That’s because some analyst(s) would have had to read them and put them into a finished report (most, but not all, of Nunes’ blathering comments about these reports suggest they were finished intelligence). Assuming those analysts were at NSA (which is not at all certain) someone would have had to have approved the unmasking of Flynn’s name before Rice saw it.
In addition, it is possible — likely even, at least by January 2017, when we know people were asking why Russia didn’t respond more strongly to Obama’s hacking sanctions — that there were two other sets of people who had access to the raw intelligence on Flynn’s conversations with Kislyak: the CIA and, especially, the FBI, which would have been involved in any FISA-related collection. Both CIA and FBI can get raw data on topics they’re working on. Likely, in this case, the multi-agency task force was getting raw collection related to their Russian investigation.
And as I’ve explained, as soon as FBI developed a suspicion that either Kislyak was at the center of discussions on sanctions or that Flynn was an unregistered agent of multiple foreign powers, the Special Agents doing that investigation would routinely pull up everything in their databases on those people by name, which would result in raw Title I and 702 FISA collection (post January 3, it probably began to include raw EO 12333 data as well).
So already you’re up to about 15 to 20 people who would have access to the raw intercepts, and that’s before they brief their bosses, Congress (though the Devin Nunes and Adam Schiff briefing, at least, was delayed a bit), and DOJ, all the way up to Sally Yates, who wanted to warn the White House. Jim Comey has suggested it is likely that the nine sources behind the WaPo story were among these people briefed secondarily on the intercepts. And it’s worth noting that David Ignatius, who first broke the story of Flynn’s chats with Kislyak but was not credited on the nine source story, has known source relationships in other parts of the government than the National Security Advisor, though he also has ties to Rice.
All of which is to say that the question of who leaked the contents of Mike Flynn’s conversations with Sergey Kislyak is a very different question from whether Susan Rice’s requests to unmask Trump associates’ names were proper or not. It is possible that Rice leaked the intercepts without declassifying them first. But it’s also possible that any of tens of other people did, most of whom would have a completely independent channel for that information.
And the big vulnerability is not — no matter what Eli Lake wants to pretend — the unmasking of individual names by the National Security Advisor. Rather, it’s that groups of investigators can access the same intelligence in raw form without a warrant tied to the American person in question. |
After two nights of convention speeches focused on Mrs. Clinton’s virtues and attempts to make peace with Sanders supporters, Clinton campaign officials sought to address the threat of radical Islamists — an omission early on that Republicans had criticized. And in a shift from only about a decade ago when they largely avoided the issue, Democrats used much of Wednesday to advocate gun control, sending relatives of those murdered in Newtown, Conn., and Charleston, S.C., as well as a former congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords, to recount their stories.
But virtually all of the anticipation on Wednesday surrounded Mr. Obama and the symbolic passing of the torch to Mrs. Clinton after she became the party’s nominee on Tuesday night.
Mr. Obama’s resounding endorsement of his one-time rival was the final consummation of a political alliance over a decade in the making, since Mrs. Clinton flew to Chicago in 2004 to raise money for a 42-year-old state senator and discovered a phenom.
Back then he was the one who benefited from the imprimatur of a well-established political star, and her support continued to prove critical over the years. After he won the presidential nomination that she expected to be hers in 2008, Mrs. Clinton put aside her resentment and helped him unify a divided Democratic Party. And later that year, she again came to his aid by agreeing to become his first secretary of state.
Mr. Obama is the one riding high now, his approval rating over 50 percent. And his image is only enhanced as voters view him, in his final months as president, through the prism of a race to replace him that features two deeply unpopular candidates. |
The Coventry Pedestrian and Cycling Bridge over the Queensway links the Ottawa train station to a semi-professional baseball stadium, but more importantly facilitates a traverse across the Queensway highway, the most predominant north/south barrier that stretches the width of the city. The following video captures the hasty termination of the oficial launch as it quickly wound down due to cold weather (-14ºC not including wind chill) I filmed the following traverse heading north over the bridge, and down the ramp on the other side to the edge of the stadium.
The following map describes my ride to the event from Centretown (blue line) and back (purple line). The blue cyclist emoji is where the momentous occasion unfolded.
Et voila!
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From 24/7 Wall St.: For the second year in a row, 24/7 Wall St. has identified America’s worst companies to work for. While company management can improve employee satisfaction, most of the companies on our list continue to make workers miserable.
In order to identify America’s worst companies to work for, 24/7 Wall St. examined employee reviews at jobs and career community site Glassdoor. Based on the reviews, Glassdoor scores companies on a scale of one to five with an average score of 3.2 for the over 250,000 companies measured. 24/7 Wall St. identified the nine publicly traded companies that received scores of 2.5 or lower.
Certain industries appear more likely to have lower employee satisfaction than others. Four of the companies on this list — Dillard’s Inc. (NYSE: DDS), Sears Holdings Corporation (NASDAQ: SHLD), Dollar General Corporation (NYSE: DG), and RadioShack Corp. (NYSE: RSH) — are in retail. The majority of the others provide services that require installation and repair. These include companies like home security system provider The ADT Corporation (NYSE: ADT), transaction technology company NCR Corp. (NYSE: NCR), and satellite television provider DISH Network Corp. (NASDAQ: DISH).
In an interview with 24/7 Wall St., Glassdoor spokesperson Samantha Zupan noted that some of the companies are not a surprise. ”When I looked at Radioshack reviews there is a commonality within the reviews where people are talking about customer service and [employees] have a tough time dealing with the customers.”
On the other hand, Zupan pointed out that other companies in the retail sector, like Costco and Nordstom’s, “get rated very highly by their employees.” There are certain things that employers can do to make a job better for employees. Zupan notes that training, “knowing how to deal with different customers and different issues,” and higher compensation are both important to employees.
Not surprisingly, employees most often complained about low wages and poor benefits. Many noted that they were paid even less than the already-low industry average for their job. Benefits, if the company provided any, were either difficult to afford or inadequate.
While some employees at all levels were unhappy, complaints at these companies were disproportionately from sales representatives, customer service agents and technicians. These were generally lower-paid, front-line workers dealing directly with customers.
Issues with middle management were universal among the employees of these companies, but the types of complaints varied. Depending on the company, employees felt they were micromanaged, treated unfairly or like children, or asked to meet extreme demands.
Several of the companies on this list have failed to find a clear path to boost their sales and earnings. RadioShack has attempted to revitalize its brand multiple times by focusing on different strategies and metrics. Employees have seen the electronics retailer change its priorities so often they view these moves skeptically. Other companies have been stubborn and have not pursued any major changes despite overwhelming evidence that they should. Compared to other retailers, Sears Holdings invests little in its stores, a fact that bothers many of its employees.
Employees at poorly-rated companies tend to have low opinions of senior management. The average CEO rating across the companies measured by Glassdoor is 69%, according to Zupan. The majority of the worst-reviewed companies had CEO approval ratings of 40% or less. Only 23% of Dillard’s employees approved of CEO Bill Dillards II’s management. Sears Holdings CEO Eddie Lampert earned 19% approval.
Another attribute shared by many of the companies on this list is the perception that they have been overwhelmed by larger, better-equipped competitors. RadioShack falls into that category. It cannot effectively compete with Amazon.com, or even Best Buy. This is also true for Sears Holdings, which owns Sears and Kmart and competes with Walmart and Target. Dish, which competes with AT&T and large cable companies, faces a similar problem.
In order to identify America’s worst companies to work for, 24/7 Wall St. examined employee reviews at Glassdoor To be considered, companies had to have a minimum of 300 reviews. Of the more than 300 companies with more than 300 comments, 24/7 Wall St. identified the nine publicly traded companies that received the worst scores — 2.5 or lower. This year, Sears Holdings and subsidiary Kmart made the cut independently — both scores are included. These are the worst companies to work for. |
MSNBC national correspondent Joy-Ann Reid has yet to pay off her still open nearly $5,000 tax warrant that attracted a good bit of attention last year. Ditto for the nearly $600,000 for two tax warrants that New York lists for MSNBC host Rev. Al Sharpton.
Here is the backstory.
National Review contributor Jillian Kay Melchior created a stir on April 22, 2015 that Reid and then afternoon host Touré Neblett were in the hock with the Empire State for thousands of dollars. Melchior was apparently following up on a well-circulated report that then-host Melissa Harris Perry was just slapped with a $70,000 federal tax lien.
“In September 2013, New York issued a state tax warrant to Neblett and his wife, Rita Nakouzi, for $46,862.68,” she reported. “Six months later, the state issued an additional warrant to the couple for $12,849.87.”
Additionally, “Last month, New York filed a $4,948.15 tax warrant against Joy-Ann Reid, who serves as managing editor of theGrio.com and until earlier this year hosted MSNBC’s The Reid Report, and her husband, Jason. Reid has called taxes on the wealthy “a basic fairness argument,” also arguing for ‘smart spending and smart tax increases’ to create economic growth.”
Embarrassing stuff but MSNBC rushed to provide the best possible spin to then-Politico media blogger Dylan Byers by explaining Neblett and Reid were in the process of paying down their debt.
Oh, no, excuse me.
MSNBC officially said zilch. That was actually what Byers reported, unsourced and without any corroborating evidence.
Noting that Toure, Reid, Sharpton and Harris-Perry owed the government money Byers assured readers that all four “are believed to be working on paying off their outstanding debt.”
Believed by whom, Dylan?
Phil Griffin? The MSNBC flack who spoke to you on background?
Who else but somebody at MSNBC would even be privy to such information about Toure, Reid, Sharpton and Harris-Perry? Indeed, MSNBC, tried to spin, without attribution and off the record, Washington Post media blogger Erik Wemple about the embarrassing disclosures but he declined.
So, for folks who don’t want the Byers/MSNBC spin, what is the reality as of Monday evening?
Neblett, whose show was canceled last year, settled his $46,862.68 debt in July 2015. He paid New York state the other outstanding bill, for $12,849.87, this March.
Reid, who replaced Melissa Harris-Perry as a weekend host on May 7, still owes the entire sum National Review reported last year.
Meanwhile, Sharpton, whose state and federal delinquencies are the stuff of legend, has, according to records accessed Monday evening at least two open New York tax warrants for nearly $600,000. One judgment, dated May 19, 2009, is for $103,156.06. The other, from December 16, 2008, is for $492,612.41.
Sharpton insisted to the New York Post and New York Times in 2014 that he was paying down his debts. The Times article noted that his insistence conflicted with “information provided by state officials.”
Maybe Byers just concluded that Sharpton who in 1998 was found guilty of defamation for his Tawana Brawley hoax, is eminently trustable these days?
Do tell, Dylan.
Byers and his MSNBC fellow travelers did not reply to requests for comment. |
Thanks Dr. Evil! Fossil Fuel Propaganda Misfire Goes Viral February 12, 2015
Every once in a while we can pull back the curtain and get a good look at the evil elves and Madison Avenue Orcs deployed by the fossil fuel barons. Look hard, climate deniers. This is the man pulling your strings.
Posted by a front group called the “Environmental Policy Alliance”, this corporate forged “viral” video popped up a couple days ago. Had to check and make sure this wasn’t a joke, but it’s real.
Check out the video above for the hilarious/bad caricature of Bill Mckibben, and for the ‘fossil fuel” girl friend, who I guess is supposed to be attractive, but unfortunately for the producers, looks disturbingly like “Mr Hanky” of South Park fame. The piece is getting a lot of views, but maybe not for the reasons the client hoped.
Sourcewatch:
Big Green Radicals is a front group operated by the PR firm Berman & Co. Berman & Co. operates a network of dozens of front groups, attack-dog web sites, and alleged think tanks that work to counteract minimum wage campaigns, keep wages low for restaurant workers, and to block legislation on food safety, secondhand cigarette smoke, drunk driving, and more. Big Green Radicals describes itself as “a project of the Environmental Policy Alliance (EPA), which exists to educate the public about the real agenda of well-funded environmental activist groups” according its website. “The EPA receives support from individuals, businesses, and foundations.” ———-
Richard Berman is the type of corporate hit man that Aaron Eckhart played in “Thank You For Smoking” – amoral, vicious, and dishonest. PR guys like him usually don’t make the headlines, preferring to remain the man behind the curtain – but a few months ago he showed up in the New York Times, because recommendations he made in a presentation were so vile and offensive that even members of the oil industry audience were disgusted.
NYTimes:
If the oil and gas industry wants to prevent its opponents from slowing its efforts to drill in more places, it must be prepared to employ tactics like digging up embarrassing tidbits about environmentalists and liberal celebrities, a veteran Washington political consultant told a room full of industry executives in a speech that was secretly recorded. The blunt advice from the consultant, Richard Berman, the founder and chief executive of the Washington-based Berman & Company consulting firm, came as Mr. Berman solicited up to $3 million from oil and gas industry executives to finance an advertising and public relations campaign called Big Green Radicals. The company executives, Mr. Berman said in his speech, must be willing to exploit emotions like fear, greed and anger and turn them against the environmental groups. And major corporations secretly financing such a campaign should not worry about offending the general public because “you can either win ugly or lose pretty,” he said. “Think of this as an endless war,” Mr. Berman told the crowd at the June event in Colorado Springs, sponsored by the Western Energy Alliance, a group whose members include Devon Energy, Halliburton and Anadarko Petroleum, which specialize in extracting oil and gas through hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking. “And you have to budget for it.” What Mr. Berman did not know — and what could now complicate his task of marginalizing environmental groups that want to impose limits on fracking — is that one of the energy industry executives recorded his remarks and was offended by them. “That you have to play dirty to win,” said the executive, who provided a copy of the recording and the meeting agenda to The New York Times under the condition that his identity not be revealed. “It just left a bad taste in my mouth.” Pdf of Berman’s presentation here.
Speaking of bad taste, “60 Minutes” profiled Berman as an attack dog for the purveyors of poisonous junk food, and he was proud enough of that to post it on his own Youtube channel, below.
John Mashey at Desmogblog:
Berman was paid well by Philip Morris (PM), which stays in business only by addicting people during vulnerable adolescent/young adult brain development, so they can be lifeshort customers. Berman has worked for companies that privatize the profits and socialize the costs. He attacked fine scientists like Steve Schneider (Stanford) and Stan Glantz (UCSF). Following is a small sample from the instructive Legacy Tobacco Documents Library. Philip Morris was quite friendly to Berman, responding quickly with money, at least $600K + ($200K + $200K + $500K) + $350K + $300K = $21.5M in 4 years. 1995.10.19 Barbara Trach (PM) to Ellen Merlo (PM) “We have been looking for a consultant who is both a hospitality industry insider as well as a legislatively astute individual . We believe we have found a worthy candidate who can help us to test these waters and ultimately succeed in achieving our goal.
Rick Berman …General Counsel to The American Beverage Institute (A.B.I). The ABI is an organization of restaurateurs and beverage industry leaders whose goal is to inform government officials and the public on issues involving adult beverages.The primary issue of the ABI is opposing the lowering of the legal Blood Alcohol Content (BAC) level.” (more praise for Berman) 1995.11.25 Berman (GCN) to Elizabeth Culley (Philip Morris) “… I’m hopeful that your company will be able to make a contribution of $500,000 to help us continue our education program on behalf of the hospitality industry and the public consumer.”
And it’s not only the Oil industry that is repulsed by Berman. His own son has some choice things to say.
2009 background story in PRWatch:
Rick Berman’s son, David Berman, is a 42-year-old singer-songwriter who, since 1989, has been the front singer for a popular New York City indie rock band called the “Silver Jews.” Over the years, the Jews have developed a loyal following, but on January 22, 2009 David Berman stunned his fans by posting a note to an online message board announcing that after all these years he was leaving the Silver Jews. The reason? His father, Rick Berman. In scathing language, David disclosed to his fans who his father is, and how leaving the band related to his father’s work. David wrote, “Now that the Joos are over I can tell you my gravest secret. Worse than suicide, worse than crack addiction: My father. You might be surprised to know he is famous, for terrible reasons. My father is a despicable man. My father is a sort of human molestor. An exploiter. A scoundrel. A world historical mother******* son of a bitch. (sorry grandma). You can read about him here: www.bermanexposed.org … A couple of years ago I demanded he stop his work. Close down his company or I would sever our relationship. He refused. He has just gotten worse. More evil. More powerful. We’ve been “estranged” for over three years. Even as a child I disliked him. We were opposites. I wanted to read. He wanted to play games. He is a union buster. When I got out of college I joined the Teamsters (the guards were union organized at the Whitney). I went off to hide in art and academia. I fled through this art portal for twenty years. In the meantime my Dad started a very very bad company called Berman and Company. He props up fast food/soda/factory farming/childhood obesity and diabetes/drunk driving/secondhand smoke. He attacks animal lovers, ecologists, civil action attorneys, scientists, dieticians, doctors, teachers. His clients include everyone from the makers of Agent Orange to the Tanning Salon Owners of America. He helped ensure the minimum wage did not move a penny from 1997-2007! The worst part for me as a writer is what he does with the English language. Though vicious he is a doltish thinker, and his spurious editorials rely on doublethink and always with the Lashon Hara. As I studied Judaism over the years, the shame and the shanda, grew almost too much. My heart was constantly on fire for justice. I could find no relief. This winter I decided that the SJs [Silver Jews] were too small of a force to ever come close to undoing a millionth of all the harm he has caused. To you and everyone you know. Literally, if you eat food or have a job, he is reaching you. I’ve always hid this terrible shame from you, the fan. The SJs have always stood autonomous and clear. Hopefully it won’t contaminate your feelings about the work … In a way I am the son of a demon come to make good the damage. Previously I thought, through songs and poems and drawings I could find and build a refuge away from his world. But there is the matter of Justice. And I’ll tell you it’s not just a metaphor. The desire for it actually burns. It hurts. There needs to be something more. I’ll see what that might be. Ouch. David’s powerful note provides insight into the tortured feelings David has endured as the son of the Lobbyist from Hell. We well agree that Rick Berman is guilty of shamefully obstructing public health and working to crush those who care about public welfare, clean air, the environment, animal rights and other causes. For any normal father, this public note would be excruciatingly painful. For all we know, it might be for Rick Berman, too. But will the pain of this note be enough to change him? We hope David’s public expression of his feelings about his father’s work will make Rick Berman think about what he is doing to society, if not his family. If it isn’t, well then David, we are on your side and are willing to help you in any way we can.
Obviously, a despairing son is not enough to touch the heart of this unrepentant fossil fuel propagandist.
Look long and hard. These are the people I started my blog to counteract. They are funded with millions of dollars earned by the destruction of the planetary life support system. I don’t have that kind of funding, but we are making an impact, the curtain is being pulled back, and we’re no longer on the defensive.
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Strine (Australian English); How it Differs from British and American English Language is born of culture and in turn reflects the history of a culture. This is evident when comparing English in Britain, the United States and Australia. Of the three dialects, British English has the most confusing grammar and spelling rules. This is probably because those involved in English standardisation processes in the 18th century wanted to showcase their French influence and thus differentiate themselves from the uneducated masses. In other words, British English reflects the British preoccupation with class. The US dialect is almost universally recognised as the easiest to understand. In comparison to British English, its spelling is more phonetic, grammar more pattern orientated, and its pronunciation is more legible. In addition, Americans are prone to use persuasive analogies like "the domino theory" in their conversations. The American fondness for a legible and persuasive dialect can probably be traced to the US' religious history, economical liberalist economy and presidential system that rewards those leaders that have been best able to rally the masses behind them. Australian English is different from British and American English in that it has a bias towards invention, deception, profanity, humour and a classless society. At times, this can make it almost impossible to understand and quite offensive to speakers accustomed to formality. It reflects Australia's identity conflicts born out of its penal history. In addition, it perhaps reflects the strong desire of many 19th century Australian to adopt Aboriginal names and words, particularly in rural Australia, which may have influenced pronunciation and inspired the fondness for the diminutive. Inventiveness and deception The bias in Australian English towards invention and deception can be seen as a Convict influence. Nearly two generations after the arrival of the First Fleet, 87 per cent of the population were either convicts, ex-convicts or of convict descent. With such strong convict foundations, it was inevitable that Australia's linguistic traditions would be different from the mother country. According to Sidney Barker, author of the Australian Language (1945): " No other class of society would use slang more readily or adapt it more expertly to their new environment; no other class would have a better flair for concocting new terms to fit in with their new conditions in life " In 1869, British author Marcus Clarke described how Australians devised language to: ' convey a more full and humorous notion of all his thoughts' or to conceal' the idea he wishes to convey from all save his own particular friends'. The most notable method of concealment was cockney rhyming slang. Rhyming slang created an idiom type sentence out of two or more words, the last of which rhymed with the intended word. For example, "plates of meat" were "feet" and "hit the frog and toad" was "hit the road." Although few Australians use rhyming slang today, its inventive legacy may be seen in the prevalence of idioms in Strine. For example, idioms like "kangaroos loose in the top paddock", "mad as a cut snake" and "built like a brick shithouse" all illustrate a creative application of visual imagery to a linguistic discourse. Aside from rhyming slang, another method that the Convicts used to conceal their true meaning was to turn the meaning of a word upside down. For example, "bastard" or "ratbag" were used a terms of endearment as well as insults. The only way to know up from down was to infer from the tone of the sentence and the context it was used in. The diminutive In Australia, it is very common to hear words like arvo being used instead of afternoon. Known as diminutives, they are formed by taking the first part of a word and substituting an a,o, ie, or y sound for the rest. In all, about 5,000 diminutives have been identified in Australian English. There are various explanations of why the diminutive is so common in Australia. One is that the diminutive seems more informal (like slang) and thus reflects the Australian love of egalitarianism. In the words of Nenagh Kemp, a linguistic psychologist from the University of Tasmania: "Australians who use these diminutives might be trying to sound less pretentious, more casual and more friendly than they would by using the full words." Although Kemp's explanation explains why the diminutive is used, it doesn't really explain why dimunitives keep getting invented. Afterall, speakers of other English dialects use slang to appear casual and friendly but don't create dimunitives. Perhaps an alternative explanation for their creation in Australia is that they harmonise many of the sharper English words with the smoother Aboriginal words that are common in the place naming of rural Australia. For example, consider the sentence, “I will be meeting the journalist underneath the coolabah tree by the Tumbarumba billabong.” By changing journalist to journo, the sentence would be “I’ll be meeting the journo underneath the coolabah tree by the Tumbarumba billabong.” By using journo, the later sentence is more harmonic with a more consistent tempo than is the former. Perhaps then, diminutives keep getting invented when English words are used in association with Aboriginal words and subsequently enter conversation where they serve the purpose of slang - even when Aboriginal words are not being used. Profanity and informality There is an Australian saying that proposes, “If the guy next to you is swearing like a wharfie, there is a good chance he may be a billionaire or perhaps just a wharfie.” It is a saying that not only indicates how pervasive swearing is in Australia, but also how it has egalitarian connotations. This love of swearing is also reflected in political circles where politicians use it around journalists in order to signal their membership of the common classes. For example, former Prime Minister Paul Keating was once recording saying, "Now listen mate," [to John Browne, Minister of Sport, who was proposing a 110 per cent tax deduction for contributions to a Sports Foundation] "you're not getting 110 per cent. You can forget it. This is a fucking Boulevard Hotel special, this is. The trouble is we are dealing with a sports junkie here [gesturing towards Bob Hawke]. I go out for a piss and they pull this one on me. Well that's the last time I leave you two alone. From now on, I'm sticking to you two like shit to a blanket." Again, the penal foundations help explain the profane influence. The educated Convict, J.F Mortlock, wrote that Convicts were far more likely to use swear words when around people who would be offended by them. In his own words, "The foul disgraceful language, uttered with increased zest in the presence of anyone supposed to retain a spark of decency, quickly disgusted me." Aside from the use of profanity amongst those who would be endeared by it and those who would be offended by it, the Australian bias towards a classless society is reflected in the reluctance to use formality and titles. For example, in Britain, titles like Mr, Mrs, Ms, Lord and your highness help structure social relations but also reduce social comfort. In Australia, the use of titles is relative rare. Bosses and workers are usually on a first name basis as are students and professors at universities. Pronunciation In regards to Australian pronunciation, different nationalities have heard different things at different times. In her book, The Awful Australian (1911), English woman Valerie Desmond criticised Australian English as being excessively tonal, which she attributed to a Chinese influence: "But it is not so much as the vagaries of pronunciation that hurt the ear of the visitor. It is the extraordinary intonation that the Australian imparts to his phrases. There is no such thing as cultured, reposeful conversation in this land; everybody sings his remarks as if he was reciting blank verse in the manner of an imperfect elocutionist. It would be quite possible to take an ordinary Australian conversation and immortalise its cadences and diapasons by means of musical notation. Herein the Australian differs from the American. The accent of the American, educated and uneducated alike, is abhorrent to the cultured Englishman or Englishwoman, but it is, at any rate, harmonious. That of the Australian is full of discords and surprises. His voice rises and falls with unexpected syncopations, and, even among the few cultured persons this country possesses, seems to bear in every syllable the sign of the parvenu. The Australian practice of singing his remarks I can only ascribe to the influence of the Chinese. During my stay in Melbourne, I spent one evening at supper in a Chinese cookshop in Little Bourke Street, and I was instantly struck by the resemblance between the intonation of the phrases between the Chinese attendants and that of the cultivated Australians who accompanied me." Other people have described the Australian accent as sounding excessively lazy, or like a Jamaican on valium. On the positive side, this has made it extremely easy for Australians to adopt other English accents but difficult for speakers of other English dialects to adopt the Australian accent. In the words of actor Rachel Griffiths, "all we're learning is how to do something, we're not learning how to undo." Some have speculated that the lazy sound is the result of Australians needing to keep their mouths mostly shut to keep out the flies. Perhaps another explanation could be that it reflects an Aboriginal influence. Although Aboriginal languages are extremely diverse throughout Australia, they share a propensity to end each syllable with a vowel sound, thus making sentences sound extremely smooth. For example, consider the sentence: “On walkabout from Ulladullah to Wagga Wagga, I camped by a billabong, boiled a billy and cooked me a wallaby.” The use of Aboriginal words requires the English words be softened to harmonise them with the smooth sounding Aboriginal words. This requires a less defined but more subtle use of lips and tongue and a nasal rather than throaty sound. Admittedly, talking about pronunciation is a bit difficult as pronunciation is not constant among Australians, as it is not constant in Britain and the US. However, the manner of variance reveals something about the identity conflicts that have occured in each country. In England, accents vary according to class and region. In America, they vary according to race and region. Unlike America or England, Australia has no variance in speaking according to class, race or region. Instead, the accent varies according to ideology or gender. Two Australians can grow up side by side, go to the same schools, do the same job, but end up speaking English using different words, different syntax and with different accents. In fact, due to the gender variance, a brother and sister can grow up in the same house and end up speaking differently. Australia has three recognised accents. About ten per cent of Australians speak like ex-prime minister Bob Hawke with what is known as a broad Australian accent. The broad Australian accent is usually spoken by men. 80 per cent speak like Nicole Kidman with a general Australian accent. 10 per cent speak like ex Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser with British received pronunciation or cultivated English. Although some men use the pronunciation, the majority of Australians that speak with the accent are women. It is a myth that working class Australians use cockney like David Beckam. It is a myth that Queenslanders speak differently to South Australians. It is also a myth that Australian-born children of migrants have distinct accents. Although the later are prone to mimic the accent of their parents as a joke, the norm is to speak in a manner consistent with other Australian born. The gender difference in pronunciation can perhaps be attributed to differing expectations about gender identities that are relatively favourable to the Australian male stereotype but unfavourable to the Australian female stereotype. Specifically, expectations that men should be unpretentious, laid back and friendly are relatively consistent with stereotypes of Australian men. Contrasted to men, expectations that women should be refined, proper and neat are relatively inconsistent with stereotypes of Australian women. As a result, arguably more Australian men are comfortable adopting the accent of the Australian stereotype than are Australian women. Although the connotations of stereotypes are subjective, arguably most Australians would agree that the traditional male Australian stereotype is more positive than the traditional female Australian stereotype. The difference in values provides the best explanation for the gender difference in pronunciation with Australian women not wanting to sound, bogan, ocker or stereotypically Australian. Spelling In regards to spelling, Australia uses a mix of American and British spelt words. As a general rule, words less than five letters tend to be spelt in the British style while those over five letters are more likely to be American. Some of the identity politics involved were illustrated in the spelling of labour. The Australian Labor Party adopted American spelling in the early 20th century in order to associate itself with American libertarian ideals. While using American spelling for the Labor Party is acceptable, British spelling for the act of labour is expected due to fears of an American cultural colonisation of Australia. American spelling for words like "organization" is more common than British "organisation", probably because it makes more sense to spell a z sound with the letter z and words over 5 letters are too complicated for some Australians to worry about where it came from. Grammar Like spelling, Australian grammar is a mix of British and American English. In Britain, collective nouns are usually defined as plural. For example, the British would say, "The couple are happy." American grammar is more pattern orientated so a noun is defined as plural when it has an s. For example, Americans would say, "The couple is happy" (singular) but "The two cowboys are happy." In Australia, there isn’t sufficient knowledge of grammar to reject either British or American tradition so both have become standard as a result of American television and American computer grammar checks mixing with traditional British instruction. Australian idioms A shitshow - (disaster) Bee's dick of a chance (no chance) Didn't come down in the last shower (clever) A dog's breakfast (mess) Australian similes As mad as a gum tree full of galahs (crazy) As a mad a cut snake (crazy) Built like a brick shithouse (muscular) As dry as a dead dingoe's donga (thirsty) Rhetorical sayings Is a duck's arse water tight? Words unique to Australia Bludger - (Lazy person riding off someone else's hard work. Derived from bludgeoner; a prostitutes standover man) Wowser - (Someone who mistakes the world as a penitentiary and themselves as the warden.) Larrikin - (Iconic individual that sails close to the wind in regards to rules. Initially used in reference to street criminals) More reading Horvath, B. M. (1985). Variation in Australian English: The sociolects of Sydney. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mitchell, A. G., & Delbridge, A. (1965). The pronunciation of English in Australia. Sydney: Angus and Robertson. Mitchell, A. G., & Delbridge, A. (1965). The speech of Australian adolescents. Sydney: Angus and Robertson. Sussex, R. (1989). The Americanization of Australian English: Prestige models in the media. In P. Collins & D. Blair (Eds.), Australian english: The language of a new society (pp. 158-168). St Lucia: University of Queensland Press. Taylor, B. A. (2001). Australian English in interaction with other Englishes. In D. Blair & P. Collins (Eds.), English in Australia (pp. 317-340). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Tracy, K. (2001). Discourse analysis in communication. In D. Schiffrin & D. Tannen & H. E. Hamilton (Eds.), The handbook of discourse analysis (pp. 725-749). Oxford: Blackwell. Turner, G. W. (1994). English in Australia. In R. Burchfield (Ed.), The Cambridge history of the English language. Vol. V: English in Britain and overseas: Origins and development (pp. 277-327). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Top]
Innovation and Creativity Inventions
Thinking different Economy
It could be described as post-Socialist but also as post Capitalist Strine
Australian English reflects penal history and the influence of Aboriginal languages Poetry
Defying stoicism
Painting
Landscape and Identity
Cuisine
Creativity in the kitchen
Movies
Once were popular
""Shouting", or rather its meaning, is peculiarly Australian. The shortest and most comprehensive definition of "shouting" is to pay for the drink drunk by others." Drinking "Australia has been hailed as a saviour of our soi-disant movie industry. So it could be, irrespective of its box office earnings, if it leads to recognition that we don't have a film industry, despite expenditure over 20 years of $1.5billion in subsidies and perhaps another half billion in tax concessions." Movies "Australians are very difficult to impress; even if you do manage to impress them, they may not openly admit it." Social Rules "a confused mix of landscape, animals, and Aboriginal culture, with a kind of Bible overtone." Painting "A determined soul will do more with a rusty monkey wrench than a loafer will accomplish with all the tools in a machine shop" Wisdom "Gallipoli tends to seem strange to outsiders, as it appears to be a celebration of Australia's greatest defeat, but in essence it is rather a commemoration of those who died serving Australia in battle, be it warranted or not." Anzac “We must be the only country in the world that marks its national day not by celebrating its identity, but by questioning it.” Australia Day "He declared, confidently, that an immense number of women were dying for his diminutive highness, but became terribly angry, when an ugly, red-nosed publican with a hump-back, pretended to recognize him as an organ grinder strolling about with a monkey." Egalitarianism "Yet there are some like me turn gladly home
From the lush jungle of modern thought, to find
The Arabian desert of the human mind,
Hoping, if still from the deserts the prophets come " Poetry |
Chapter Four – Breakfast
As Korra watched her best friend walk away toward the temple's kitchen – surely to get some food for Korra, as she had done religiously for almost three weeks now – the Avatar could not help but feel annoyed at her father for interrupting Asami's comforting words. She knew her dad and the other adults on the island meant well, but when they intruded on her and Asami's private moment it irritated the young Avatar to no end.
Tonraq was still examining the back of her head, checking it for any injuries, while the others gathered around her with sympathetic looks. Although, curiously, Pema had apparently decided to follow the CEO to the kitchen – leaving Korra to contend with Tenzin and her parents.
"Sweetie, are you sure that you're okay?" Tonraq asked her with worry etched into his voice.
"What do you think?" Korra bit out aggravatingly. She didn't mean to sound angry at her dad, but she just couldn't help her mood after his untimely interruption.
Tonraq only stared at his daughter sadly and, gently, picked her up and placed her back in bed on top of the covers. Korra only sighed and softly said, "Thanks dad." A ghost of a smile on her lips as she looked into her father's kind blue eyes.
"Of course." Her dad smiled at her and briefly grasped her hand before moving back to stand in the room's doorway. Senna came forward, knelt down at Korra's side, and took her right hand in her own. Korra's smile grew a little at her mother's action. Tenzin, thoughtfully stroking his beard, asked Korra what had happened.
And so, the Avatar recounted her nightmare to those gathered in the room. After Asami's considerate words and actions, Korra found that it was easier to recount the dream. However, she purposefully neglected to tell the adults about her desire to "give up" and the kiss that Asami had placed upon her forehead. They'd only over react, Korra thought, and besides, I would prefer if only Asami knew about those feelings.
"While Amon's appearance in your nightmare certainly makes sense, do you have any idea why you were... forced to watch Asami's... torture?" Tenzin asked, trying his best to be sensitive to Korra's harrowing dream.
"Tenzin, if it's alright with you, I would prefer not to think about that right now." Korra said somewhat forcefully.
"Of course, but I encourage you to think about why Asami was so involved in your dream at some point." Tenzin thoughtfully said.
"Okay." Korra replied.
"It really is wonderful that you have someone like Asami in your life, you know that right?" Senna asked, as she squeezed her daughter's hand.
"Yeah mom, I do know how lucky I am." Korra sincerely said with a hint of wistfulness in her voice at not having had the chance to finish speaking with her friend. Once Asami returned with her breakfast, she resolved to finish their conversation. She wanted to hear whatever it was that Asami was about to confess to her, she was sure that it was only good news.
As the CEO in question was walking down the dormitories' hallways, she was mentally berating herself. Stupid... I was about to confess my feelings for Korra. The last thing she needs to worry about right now is the way I feel about her. It'd only add to her burden and she's already bearing enough on her shoulders as it is. I just couldn't stand seeing her so sad and... maybe if she knew how I felt... she may-
"Asami!" a familiar motherly voice sounded behind the woman in question, interrupting her train of thought.
The CEO sighed under her breath, but turned around and etched a weary smile onto her face as Pema caught up with her.
"Oh!" Pema exclaimed.
"What is it?" Asami asked.
"You aren't wearing makeup." Pema stated.
Asami laughed quietly and said, "You're not the first person to tell me that today."
Pema offered a knowing smile in response and asked, "I take it you're going to get Korra her breakfast?"
"You even have to ask?" Asami said lightly.
"No, but I wanted to talk to you, in a less open area." Pema stated as she gestured to continue towards the temple's kitchen.
Asami and Pema resumed their walk down the hallway. They entered the kitchen and began to prepare Korra's meal, working in a comfortable silence for a while. After a period of time, Pema picked up their conversation from the hallway.
"You know, I've seen the way you stare at Korra when you think no one is looking." Pema said, as she set the teapot on the stove to boil.
"What!" Asami exclaimed, nearly dropping the dumplings she had just put on a plate.
"It's okay! I think it's sweet. You clearly love her and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that." Pema reassured warmly.
"You can tell how I feel about her just by a look?" Asami asked, as she set the rice to simmer.
"No, it's more than just a look," Pema admitted, "It's in the little things that you do for her, like making sure she's warm enough before going to bed or bringing her tea during sunsets at the gazebo."
Asami felt her cheeks burn at Pema's words and turned to face the woman.
"It's nothing special." Asami said modestly, although she knew that Pema was right.
Pema only offered up a kind smile and said, "No, it really is. Korra always seems happier when you're around her, her sadness seems to be diminished and that empty look in her eyes goes away for a while."
Asami did not reply to this for a few minutes and mulled Pema's words over in her mind. Conveniently, the tea kettle squealed and the rice finished simmering at the same time before Asami could reply.
Pema prepared the tea in a cup, while Asami scooped the rice into a bowl. The CEO then took a tray and placed the dumplings and rice on it and walked over to Pema. She placed the cup on the tray and walked towards the entrance of the kitchen, where she resumed speaking as Asami began the journey back to Korra's room.
"Have you told Korra how you feel about her?" Pema inquired.
"No, I haven't. It just doesn't seem like the right time, what with her injuries and mental state." Asami said sorrowfully.
"You know, Katara once told me that love can be the greatest healer of all. She told me of the time that Aang had nearly been killed by Fire Lord Zuko's sister and how despondent he had been afterwards. She said that it was only through the love and support of his friends that he managed to overcome his wounds and find the resolve to continue on." Pema informed Asami thoughtfully.
"I don't even know if Korra feels the same way and I hardly think it would be appropriate, given everything she's been through." Asami reiterated.
"Of course, I didn't mean to rush you into anything Asami, it's just something to think about is all." Pema reassured. "Trust me, when the time is right, you'll know when to tell her."
As they arrived back at Korra's room, Asami let Pema's words rumble around inside her head as she walked towards her friend's bed with the tray of food. Maybe with enough time Korra could...
These thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the Avatar's voice, "Thanks Asami." As Senna took the tray from Asami's grasp and set it down on her daughter's lap, the CEO fully came out of her reflection.
She looked at best friend and, true to Pema's word, Korra's eyes seemed to sparkle with a hint of life and warmth that had been absent only a while ago. Asami smiled kindly at Korra in response and said, "You're welcome."
The two stared at each other for some time before Tenzin inadvertently broke their gaze by coughing into his arm. Korra uttered a soft laugh at this, and it seemed to fill the room with a sense of solace and warmth that had not been there before the wealthy engineer's arrival. Maybe Pema was right, Asami thought as she looked around the room at Korra's parents and Tenzin, love could really be the medicine that Korra needs most right now. |
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