Prompt: Dr Samuel Brisbane becomes first doctor in west African nation to die, as second US healthcare worker is infected One of Liberia's most high-profile doctors has died of Ebola, a government official said on Sunday, and a second US healthcare worker has been infected in what the World Health Organisation (WHO) is calling the largest outbreak ever recorded of the disease. Dr Samuel Brisbane is the first Liberian doctor to die in an outbreak, which the WHO says has killed 129 people in the west African nation. A Ugandan doctor working in the country died this month. Brisbane, who once

served as a medical adviser to the former Liberian president, Charles Taylor, was working as a consultant with the internal medicine unit at the country's largest hospital, the John F Kennedy Memorial Medical Center in Monrovia. After falling ill, he was taken to a treatment centre on the outskirts of the capital, where he died, said Tolbert Nyenswah, an assistant health minister.Under the supervision of health workers, family members escorted the doctor's body to a burial location west of the city, Nyenswah said. He said another doctor who had been working in Liberia's central Bong County was being treated for Ebola at the centre where Brisbane died. The situation "is getting more and more scary," Nyenswah said. Last week Sierra Leone's top Ebola doctor fell ill with the disease and in Liberia, Samaritan's Purse, a Christian charity, announced at the weekend that an American doctor was infected. Dr Kent Brantly had been isolated at the group's Ebola treatment centre at the ELWA hospital in the Liberian capital, Monrovia. A second American, Nancy Writebol, later tested positive for the virus at the same medical compound, said Ken Isaacs, of Samaritan's Purse. Isaacs said Writebol, who works with the allied aid group SIM, was in a stable but serious condition at a hospital near Monrovia. Brantly received intensive treatment on Sunday and was talking to his medical team and working on his computer, said Melissa Strickland, a spokeswoman for Samaritan's Purse. "We are hopeful, but he is certainly not out of the woods yet," Strickland said. In Nigeria, officials announced on Friday that a Liberian official had died of Ebola after flying from Monrovia to Lagos raising fears that other passengers could take the disease beyond Africa. The WHO says the outbreak has also killed 319 people in Guinea and 224 in


Prompt: Mazen Hajjar makes his 961 Beer in Beirut and exports it worldwide. Output is modest, at 200,000 cases last year. (961 BEER) “I’m the lunatic who makes beer in Lebanon!” announces Mazen Hajjar as he rises to extend his hand. That’s Lebanon in the Middle East — not Pennsylvania. Hajjar’s brewery, 961 Beer (named after the international dialing code for Lebanon), is a five-minute drive from Beirut. With his shoulder-length dark hair and full beard, he might be mistaken for a graduate student who wandered into ChurchKey near Logan Circle to down a few drafts after banging out his thesis.

But this youthful 39-year-old has a remarkably varied résumé: Before brewing caught his fancy, he worked as a photographer covering the war in Serbia; he spent nine years as an investment banker; and he made an unsuccessful attempt to start the Middle East’s first low-fare airline. Within minutes we’re clinking glasses of 961 Lebanese Pale Ale, a marriage of European brewing tradition and Levantine cuisine. Hajjar supplements the hops with a melange of Middle Eastern herbs and spices: mint, sumac, anise, chamomile, sage and za’atar. The pale ale is delicate but flavorful, with a dry, herbal, savory flavor that would pair nicely with a skewer of well-seasoned chicken or lamb. 961 Lebanese Pale Ale is available in kegs and 11.2-ounce bottles. Hajjar’s American importer, St. Killian in Kingston, Mass., carries four other 961 varieties in bottles only, all solid interpretations of classic European styles. They are a clean-tasting golden lager; a red ale balancing citrusy American hops with lots of caramel malt; a Belgian-style witbier incorporating wheat from Lebanese farmers; and a roasty porter full of mocha flavors. Many U.S. craft brewers like to talk about their baptism of fire in a highly competitive industry, but Hajjar literally was under siege when he hatched his grand plan. “I started in 2006,” he says. “Israel and Hezbollah were bombing . . . each other. The electricity was off; I was sitting on my balcony reading the first chapter of “Beer School” by Steve Hindy and Tom Potter. That’s when I thought, ‘Eureka!’ ” Hajjar took inspiration from Hindy, a former Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press. Like Hajjar, Hindy had to dodge bombs and bullets; he was sitting in the grandstand behind Anwar Sadat in 1981 when the Egyptian leader was assassinated. Like Hajjar, Hindy was led by the region’s


Prompt: BlackBerry Ltd. has created a new business unit that will combine some of its most innovative technology and patent portfolio as the company focuses away from handheld devices. The unit, to be called BlackBerry Technology Solutions, will be headed by Sandeep Chennakeshu, the former president of Ericsson Mobile Platforms and former chief technology officer of Sony-Ericsson. "Combining all these assets into a single business unit led by Sandeep will create operational synergies and new revenue streams, furthering our turnaround strategy," said John Chen, BlackBerry's executive chairman and chief executive officer. Blackberry turns back on handsets Under Chen, BlackBerry has stripped

out much of its consumer-oriented businesses, sold real estate and laid off employees. He told employees earlier this month that the Waterloo, Ont.-based company — best known for its smartphones and email services — had completed its downsizing phase and was ready to make acquisitions and do some "modest" hiring in certain areas of the business, such as product development and sales. Independent technology analyst Carmi Levy said the new unit reinforces the fact that Blackberry's days primarily as a handset vendor are behind it as it moves "very aggressively" toward a different business. "This is probably the most tangible evidence yet of the company's transition into something very different than it was even a year or two ago," Levy said. "It suggests they are no longer as dependent on handset-based revenue as they once were and as a result they have both the financial foundation as well as the corporate organizational confidence to more concretely move away from those lines of businesses into areas that are largely based on its intellectual property." He said the move was positive for Blackberry, noting that it has struggled with its product launches and faced stiff competition from other smartphone makers while it has received little credit for its range of capabilities, especially when it came to software. "It's fair to say that much of the company's transition over the last couple of years has been judged based on criteria that don't reflect the full breath of the business," he said. "It is not simply a company that makes smartphones, it is a company that has a rich legacy of creating and marketing intellectual property." Chennakeshu, who has 73 patents to his name, has 25 years of experience in research, product development, and intellectual property licensing in the wireless, electronics and semiconductor industries.


Prompt: Bernd Lange, the chairman of the European Parliament's important trade committee, has indicated that he now expects the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations will probably fail, following a major leak of confidential documents from the talks. Greenpeace Netherlands has released half of the entire TTIP draft text as of April 2016, prior to the start of the 13th round of TTIP negotiations between the EU and the US, which reveal US demands in detail for the first time. Although the EU has improved transparency recently, and routinely publishes its offers for each TTIP chapter, the US has consistently

refused to do so. Even MEPs and MPs have faced extreme restrictions on what they are allowed to look at, copy, or even say when it comes to the US position. The new leak by an unknown whistleblower represents a major blow to US attempts to keep its negotiating demands confidential, and provides important information to the both the EU and US public for the first time. US wants ISDS and regulatory cooperation The new documents confirm some of the fears expressed by many organisations and commentators regarding two key areas discussed previously here on Ars: the Investment-State Dispute Settlement ( ISDS ) mechanism, and regulatory cooperation As Ars noted last September, in the face of massive public concerns about ISDS, the European Commission is proposing a modified approach, the Investment Court System (ICS), which it claims addresses the problems of ISDS. However, even though the ICS idea was formally presented to the US last year, one of the TTIP leaks shows that it was not even discussed during the 12th round, something that the European Commission's public report on the negotiations omitted to mention. This confirms earlier indications that the US is not interested in ICS, and will insist on including standard ISDS in TTIP, regardless of EU worries. A leaked chapter on "Regulatory coherence, transparency and other good regulatory practices" indicates that the US wants all regulations, even those concerning health and safety or environmental issues, to be judged by the yardstick of their effects on trade: "When developing a regulation, a regulatory authority of a Party shall evaluate any information provided in comments by the other Party or a person of the other Party regarding the potential trade effects of the regulation that it receives during the comment period." In practice, this means that companies will be


Prompt: Previous Next I had gone to a lot of trouble to build my first phase of an army, all individuals with reasonably respectable backgrounds and some degree of know-how. It had required planning, subverting the gangs of a small city, subverting Fray’s plans, and then weeks and months of acclimatizing the students to life beyond the academy. Months more work still remained to do. “I can’t believe they lost,” I said. “Surrendered,” Jessie said. “I’m so disappointed,” I said. I surveyed the situation. The area we’d left our people in had seen some sparse gunfire and some fires that had

already petered out. We were in the process of creeping up on a row of apartments where our guys’ carriages were still parked outside, only half of the bags still mounted on them. “Against a tenth their number,” I said. “There’s no evidence of that,” Jessie said. “There’s no telling what their numbers are.” Our guys were inside and we could only see glimpses. Their guys were mostly inside, with a few standing guard. Helen draped over Jessie, who was helping her to walk. Helen wasn’t lifting her head, and our improvised medical care had her wrapped up awkwardly in several places, but she was an oddity, a creature that only a very select few could really work on. That was what made me worry. Halfway across the city, her brother was hunched over, only his shoulders and part of his back visible over the skyline. Now and then he moved, producing a horrendous crashing sound. “I wonder if he’s having fun,” I asked. Helen smiled through the curtain of blood-stained hair that covered her face, moving her head to try and look up at her brother. She couldn’t seem to see him with the way she slouched forward and then let her head droop, conserving energy. Her resilience in the face of multiple gunshots was giving me a newfound respect for what her brother must be like. “Does he enjoy things? Does he have good days? Imagine the Lambs with him in tow. There’s Evette, there’s Jessie, then you’ve got Ashton, Gordon, Helen, Lillian, and-” “You’re leaving yourself out? And including me as a girl?” “Just imagining hypotheticals. So you’ve got the core group, and the dice fell down differently and so there’s no Sylvester, maybe throw Hubris in there from an earlier point of view, because I like


Prompt: Gambling addiction was a contributing factor in nearly 130 suicides in Victoria over the past decade, according to figures released by the Victorian coroner. The report identified 128 gambling-related suicides between January 2000 and December 2012. Almost all – 126 – were of people with a gambling addiction, while two were of people who were adversely affected by a partner's problem gambling. Men accounted for 84% of the suicide toll, with the figure peaking for those aged between 30 and 39. While the coroner could not identify the type of gambling engaged in by 105 of the people who took

their lives, of the remaining 23 deaths, 19 were linked to poker machine addiction. Two deaths were linked to TAB gambling, one to online gambling and one to roulette wheels. In addition to the suicides, the coroner reported two murders linked to problem gambling, in which someone with a gambling addiction killed their partner before committing suicide. A 2010 report suggested that gambling was a factor for one in five suicidal hospital patients in Victoria. Poker machines have been regularly cited as the leading cause of problem gambling in Victoria. Last year, $2.49bn was spent on Victoria's 26,000 poker machines – down $184m on the previous year. The Victorian government has removed all ATMs from gambling venues. The coroner's report shows that gambling-related suicides may be on a downward trend, with two suicides in 2012 and five in 2011, compared with 17 in 2001 and 16 in both 2002 and 2003. Federally, the new Coalition government has promised to help problem gamblers kick the habit, although it has come under fire for its plans to abolish the national gambling regulator, with a gaming industry-headed advisory body in its stead. The anti-pokie campaigner Tim Costello, also chief executive of World Vision Australia, told Guardian Australia the figures showed the need to introduce $1 bet limits. "I've known of these suicides for a while because I've taken funerals as a minister," he said. "There are also cases such as babies who died in cars during summer because their mothers have gone in for a quick play of the pokies and forgotten about it. It's clear that gambling can cause the ultimate catastrophe, not just crime or broken marriages. "This is an optional entertainment and it's the state's duty to protect the vulnerable. It's not prohibitionist to have $1 maximum bets – people


Prompt: FOR a politician whose party leader called a General Election because the opinion polls told her that she’d get a whopping majority, only to discover once the votes were in that she’d lost the slender majority that she had, you’d think that Ruth Davidson would be a bit more circumspect about demanding that parties in power make decisions based on opinion polls. But no, Ruth Davidson wants the Scottish Government to drop the bill that’s already been passed by the Scottish Parliament, and she wants them to drop it on the basis of an opinion poll. You’d have thought a

Tory would have learned their lesson about relying on opinion polls, but not Ruth. It’s not even as though the opinion poll in question, which purportedly showed that 60 per cent of people oppose another independence referendum, was unbiased and neutral. It asked a ridiculously leading question, a question phrased in such a way as to positively beg people to say “no”. The truth is that asking people whether they want another independence referendum is a meaningless exercise, in whatever way the question is phrased, and the reason it’s meaningless is because it takes no account of circumstances or motives. I’m hugely keen on the idea of independence, you may have noticed, but if I was asked in an opinion poll if I wanted a referendum tomorrow, I’d say no. I want another referendum when the circumstances are right for one. I want another referendum when we’re going to win it. So, despite the fact that I spend much of my time travelling the length and breadth of Scotland talking about independence and encouraging the formation of grass roots Yes groups, Ruth Davidson would still take my opinion and include it in whatever she’s citing at FMQs as “proof” that Scotland doesn’t want another independence referendum. The best time for another independence referendum is at the time that the Scottish Government originally proposed to have it – when the Brexit negotiations have played out and we know what sort of deal the UK has struck with the EU. The people of Scotland have a right to vote on that. Ruth doesn’t want us to have that right. She wants us to take whatever it is that the UK chucks at us and to be grateful for it. What Ruth Davidson is demanding is that the people of Scotland surrender now


Prompt: Detailed Response Book of Mormon Elder Christofferson Quote The absence of evidence is not proof. Here’s one small example: Matthew Roper in a FairMormon Blog on June 17, 2013, writes about a criticism repeated many times over the years about the mention of steel in the Book of Mormon. In 1884, one critic wrote, “Laban’s sword was steel, when it is a notorious fact that the Israelites knew nothing of steel for hundreds of years afterwards. Who but as ignorant a person as Rigdon would have perpetuated all these blunders.” More recently, Thomas O’Dea in 1957 stated, “Every commentator on

the Book of Mormon has pointed out the many cultural and historical anachronisms, such as the steel sword of Laban in 600 B.C.” We had no answer to these critics at the time, but as often happens in these matters, new discoveries in later years shed new light. Roper reports, “It is increasingly apparent that the practice of hardening iron through deliberate carburization, quenching and tempering was well known to the ancient world from which Nephi came. ‘It seems evident,’ notes one recent authority, ‘that by the beginning of the tenth century B.C. blacksmiths were intentionally steeling iron.’” In 1987, the Ensign reported that archeologists had unearthed a long steel sword near Jericho dating back to the late seventh century B.C., probably to the reign of King Josiah who died shortly before Lehi began to prophesy. This sword is now on display at Jerusalem’s Israel Museum. The museum’s explanatory sign reads in part, “The sword is made of iron hardened into steel, attesting to substantial metallurgical know-how.” —Elder D. Todd Christofferson, "The Prophet Joseph Smith", Brigham Young University-Idaho Devotional, September 24, 2013. Jeremy's Response Elder Christofferson creates the following strawman: "There was steel in the Middle East around the time of Lehi, so maybe there was steel in America at the same time." The problem, however, doesn’t lie with the ability or knowledge to produce steel at the time Lehi lived. The problem lies in the fact that no ancient American steel tools or weapons (or traces or evidence of them or their manufacture) have ever been found. Elder Christofferson is using a strawman by sidestepping the actual argument (that no steel has ever been found in ancient America) and refuting a weaker argument (that steel was not capable of being manufactured at the time of Lehi). The Book of


Prompt: Society says that once a woman becomes a wife, has kids or reaches a certain age then they are no longer allowed to express their sexuality. Women who breach this outdated social norm are slut-shamed, condemned, criticised and judged for the way they dress, act and speak. They say ‘Is that dress really appropriate for a mom to wear? What kind of example are you setting for your daughter?’ They say ‘you’re 60, you should cover up.’ They say ‘how does he [the husband] allow his wife to dress like that let alone go out in public.’ They say ‘you’re

a bad role model for young women.’ They say ‘you have no self-respect.’ Well, the star who needs no introduction. The one and only Madonna recently posted a number of semi-nude photos onto her Instagram under the caption “Still Acting my Age!!!” accompanied by some choice words: “How do i know I’m still acting my Age? Because its MY age and its MY life and all of you Women Hating Bigots need to sit down and try to understand why you feel the need to limit me with your fear of what you aren’t familiar with. You know what happens to Bigots? NOTHING! Nothing happens to people who. Think in a limited way. Facts… ” wrote Madonna. Yaassss girl Yasssss! Thank you for living your life how you want and not how society says you must. Thank you for fighting against this sexist expiry date that dictates when a woman can or cannot express their sexuality. Thank you for fighting to dismantle the sexist social expectations placed upon women. But at a time where women need the support of other women to fight the patriarchy and these sexist social expectations- unfortunately, in many cases it’s other girls who are doing the hating. Let’s be real. Girl on girl hate exists. And it sucks. Girl on girl hate, however unfortunate, is unsurprising. We live in a culture where girls are constantly pinned against each other as rivals. It’s always a ‘Who Wore it Better’ between two women, instead of a ‘They Both Slayed.’ As prominent novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie pointed out in her personal essay We Should All Be Feminists and in Beyoncé’s song ‘Flawless’: “We raise girls to see each other as competitors — not for jobs or for accomplishments, which I think can be a good thing, but for


Prompt: Protesters take to the street in Chicago after recent grand jury decisions in police-involved deaths in New York, Cleveland and Ferguson, Mo. (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images) Congress reauthorized legislation this week that will require states to report the number of people killed during an arrest or while in police custody. "You can't begin to improve the situation unless you know what the situation is," Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), one of the bill's sponsors, said in an interview with the Washington Post. "We will now have the data." The Death in Custody Reporting Act was originally passed in 2000, but

expired in 2006. Scott has attempted to reauthorize the bill unsuccessfully four times since then. The first time the bill was passed, it took years for data to start coming in, and it expired shortly thereafter, Scott said. "It's the way government works," he said. "You're trying to get local governments to make periodic reports. It just takes some time for this to become routine." The lack of reliable information about how many people are killed by police annually has come into focus following the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. In place of government-provided data, crowd-sourced efforts like Fatal Encounters and one by the Gawker Media-owned sports Web site Deadspin have been created that rely on local media reports and volunteers who input information. Fatal Encounters, founded in 2012 by Reno News & Review editor and publisher Brian Burghart, has recorded 3,010 deaths, with another 9,000 in its "development queue" where various leads from places like Wikipedia and FBI data are available for users to research. The site sees an increase in traffic whenever a death captures the public attention, and since Sunday, Burghart said, there's been about 600 new records submitted. But despite the reauthorization of the Death in Custody Reporting Act, Burghart said he'll continue collecting data and keep the site up. "I don't know that anything changed," he said of the first time the law was passed. But if its second iteration produces meaningful data this time around, he said, then he might consider shuttering the project. "I hope [the law] really means something," he said. Lawmakers are confident it does. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a sponsor, said the law "will give the information needed to strengthen trust at every level." "Alarmingly, on an issue this profoundly important and potentially explosive, there is no reliable


Prompt: Photo Read in Chinese | 点击查看本文中文版 Andrew G. Walder is a sociologist at Stanford University who has written extensively on the Cultural Revolution and life in Maoist China. His latest book, “China Under Mao: A Revolution Derailed,” published this year by Harvard University Press, incorporates the latest scholarship on this tumultuous era, when bedrocks of Chinese society — especially private property and communal religious life — were destroyed in favor of Communist-style collectives. He argues that Mao lurched from crisis to crisis, inspired less by a new vision of Communism than a simplistic understanding of Stalinist ideology. Photo In painting

this bleak picture, Mr. Walder helps explain why in the late 1970s, after Mao’s death, China embarked on far-reaching market-oriented economic liberalization — the basis for its prosperity and power today. In an interview, he discussed how the Communist victory in the civil war informed Mao’s approach to politics, who was responsible for most of the violence during the Cultural Revolution and what elements of Mao’s rule can be seen in President Xi Jinping’s administration today. Excerpts follow: Q. Why do we need a new book on Mao Zedong and the first decades of Communist rule in China? A. Some really good material on the Maoist era only really came out well into the reform era, but most social scientists were focusing on China’s reforms. The reforms were dramatic and unexpected, and so most of the attention focused on them. And these materials, as they gradually became available, languished. It took scholars like Roderick MacFarquhar, Michael Schoenhals, Frederick Teiwes and Warren Sun to begin to put this picture together. These works brought into focus the politics at the top. They dispelled many misperceptions. I see my role as connecting what happened at the top of the political system with the outcomes. Q. What sort of misperceptions did they dispel? A. Teiwes and Sun, for example, showed that what we thought of as the “two-line struggle” [between Mao and other leaders over economic policy in the early 1960s, in the aftermath of the Great Leap Forward, when famine killed at least 30 million] wasn’t really like that. The original idea was that Deng Xiaoping and Liu Shaoqi staked out positions different from Mao. This view was derived from the polemics of the period. Mao and his side criticized Deng and Liu, so scholars thought that this reflected a deeper reality. That


Prompt: (CNN) When it comes to shocking developments in the winding probe into President Donald Trump's campaign, the 2016 election, the Russians, hacking, allegations of collusion, and who-knows-what-else, the revelation on Thursday that special counsel Robert Mueller had issued grand jury subpoenas somehow managed to feel like an anticlimax. Mueller's particular concern in this case appears to be Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Russian lawyer, among others, at Trump Tower in June 2016. But the real news here has less to do with the particulars than the existence of the grand jury itself -- and where that leads. This investigation,

triggered by Moscow's meddling, is now expanding. Mueller is on the money trail, with an eye on Trump and his associates' financial ties to Russia . That is a potential rabbit hole that could lead to some very weird places, including those with no bearing or relation to the 2016 election. So again, while the panel will in theory allow Mueller and his team to expedite their work and help bring about some kind of legally and politically satisfying conclusion to what is -- and who would disagree at this point? -- a generational fiasco, it could also prolong and deepen it. A photograph showing former White House intern Monica Lewinsky meeting President Bill Clinton at a White House function submitted as evidence in documents by the Starr investigation and released by the House Judicary committee September 21, 1998. History would vote for the latter. Just ask former President Bill Clinton. Or the special prosecutor who led the probe that took us from Whitewater to Monica Lewinsky's blue dress. Ken Starr, in an interview on CNN Friday, warned about the danger of Mueller ranging too far from his mandate -- remarks that, as CNN's Chris Cillizza noted, confirmed irony's untimely death . But years have gone by and there is, perhaps, an argument that Starr, as much as anyone, has a sense of precisely how these things can go haywire. We are coming up now on the 19th anniversary of Clinton's big grand jury testimony, the first given by a sitting president into an inquiry focused on his own behavior. Nixon took his turn after leaving office . Clinton answered the Starr team's questions from the White House, his image and voice beamed out over closed-circuit television. Given Trump's predicament, the subject matter that day underlines a certain ironic twist.


Prompt: Robbins v. Lower Merion School District U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania Full case name Blake J. Robbins, Michael E. Robbins and Holly S. Robbins, individually, and on behalf of all similarly situated persons v. Lower Merion School District, the Board of Directors of the Lower Merion School District, and Christopher W. McGinley, Superintendent of Lower Merion School District Date decided Settled October 2010 ($610,000)[1] Docket nos. 10-cv-0665 Judge sitting Senior U.S. District Judge Jan E. DuBois Case history Related actions Hasan v. Lower Merion School District (filed July 27, 2010) Robbins v. Lower Merion School District

is a federal class action lawsuit,[2] brought in February 2010 on behalf of students of two high schools in Lower Merion Township, a suburb of Philadelphia.[3] In October 2010, the school district agreed to pay $610,000 to settle the Robbins and parallel Hasan lawsuits against it.[1] The suit alleged that, in what was dubbed the "WebcamGate" scandal, the schools secretly spied on the students while they were in the privacy of their homes.[4][5] School authorities surreptitiously and remotely activated webcams embedded in school-issued laptops the students were using at home.[6][7] After the suit was brought, the school district, of which the two high schools are part, revealed that it had secretly taken more than 66,000 images.[8][9] The suit charged that in doing so the district infringed on its students' privacy rights.[6][10][11] A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction, ordering the school district to stop its secret webcam monitoring, and ordered the district to pay the plaintiffs' attorney fees.[12][13][14] The lawsuit was filed after 15-year-old high school sophomore (second year student) Blake Robbins was disciplined at school for his behavior in his home.[6][14] The school based its decision to discipline Robbins on a photograph that had been secretly taken of him in his bedroom, via the webcam in his school-issued laptop. Without telling its students, the schools remotely accessed their school-issued laptops to secretly take pictures of students in their own homes, their chat logs, and records of the websites they visited. The school then transmitted the images to servers at the school, where school authorities reviewed them and shared the snapshots with others.[15] In one widely published photo, the school had photographed Robbins in his bed.[16] The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), U.S. Attorney's Office, and Montgomery County District Attorney all initiated criminal investigations of the matter, which they combined


Prompt: Holy crap. Hockey is almost here. That means it's time to brush up on who's who when it comes to the Detroit Red Wings. What have we covered so far? The grinders have been checked off the list. Whether you prefer the wingers or centers. We've got you covered. If you're looking to read about the defensmen that we wish weren't here… well then we've got you covered in that department too. Today, though, it's time to talk about the kids who really aren't kids anymore. While both Danny DeKeyser and Brendan Smith might not be considered kids anymore, they've

still got a lot of experience to gain at the NHL level. Danny DeKeyser #65 / Defenseman / Detroit Red Wings Height: 6-3 Weight: 190 Born: Mar 7, 1990 The Danny that we actually like and want on this team just happens to be the Danny that isn't even signed yet. The 24-year-old is still relatively inexperienced when it comes to the NHL. He has 76 regular season games under his belt and an additional seven in the playoffs. That's just over one full season. There's still a lot of room for DeKeyser to grow. Strengths: DeKeyser is solid defenseman. He's right up there near Jonathan Ericsson as the biggest d-man on the roster. He sees the ice well. He isn't known for being a top offensive guy, but he's got some skills to put up some points here and there. He's smart on the ice and can play in all situations if called upon. Weaknesses: I've personally never been a guru by any means when it comes to fancy stats. I'm not anti-fancy stats, but I'll freely admit it's just not something that's my forte. But I know just enough (and have read enough from my talented co-workers on this site) to know that DeKeyser could be better when it comes to zone entries. He dumps the puck in quite a bit. He had the worst rate of any defenseman on the team last season. Expectations: Sign a damn contract. I think, first and foremost, that has to be the top expectation when it comes to DeKeyser. Ken Holland didn't do himself any favors when he re-signed Kyle Quincey. Now it's just about finding that magic bridge contract that falls somewhere between Quincey and Smith. On the ice, I'd like to see him be a little more physical. Depending


Prompt: Quote of the Day: “Opposing the status quo generates a cloak of media invisibility regardless of party or ideology.” – Steve Dasbach, co-founder, DownsizeDC.org Lately, we’ve gotten a lot of messages accusing us of being mean-spirited Republicans. Let me be blunt in response . . . We don’t like political parties. We believe that partisanship… And we believe our job is to afflict the comfortable leadership of both parties – to speak truth to whichever POWER needs to hear it. Of course, those criticizing us might be suggesting we have some sympathies with the GOP. Well, I ask you… What

leading Republicans do you know who would post ALL of the following new ACTION ITEMS on their blog? Frankly, the GOP is part of the problem in every one of these instances… 1. Now Playing At Security Theater: The Sting Did you know that most terrorist plots are concocted by the FBI? Want to see the proof, and then do something about it? Retweet: http://twitter.com/#!/DDCDispatch/status/108629637835403265 2. I rage against cuts that don’t cut The Republican-controlled House and Democrat-run Senate haven’t really “cut” anything. One party is lying about false accomplishments, while the other is hysterical about something that doesn’t even exist. Do you want real cuts? Retweet: http://twitter.com/#!/DDCDispatch/status/108630458501312512 3. Statism means always having to pay other people’s bills Did the politicians steal $103 million from you so that other people could get broadband cable? Tell them to stop robbing Peter to pay Paul, and robbing you to pay both of them! Retweet: http://twitter.com/#!/DDCDispatch/status/108631061394755584 4. Patriot Act Deployed Against Wikileaks Even we know this is a HERESY! You might disagree. The State hates those who expose wrongdoing, and seeks to silence, even punish them. But what Republican leader would say this? Heck, what Democrat leader is defending the free press in this instance? We think the politicians need to hear from you about this. We hope you agree. Retweet: http://twitter.com/#!/DDCDispatch/status/108631725927702528 And, to the people who’ve written us, or thought of writing us, saying we’re in the Koch brother’s pockets… Downsize DC has never solicited Koch help The brothers have never given Downsize DC a dime And, borrowing from the list above, you’ve suspended deep thought, lack imagination, and bear a closed mind We’re doing what we’ve done from day one: We’re turning to everyday people like you who will stand with us because we’ll speak the hard truth, even when it’s


Prompt: More Than 2K Barrels Of Oil Will Continue To Flow, Even With Cap On BP’s successful capping of the damaged wellhead in the Gulf of Mexico is yet another temporary solution to the 12,000 – 30,000 or more barrels per day that have been spewing unto the ocean since April 20. According to the Deepwater Horizon respond command center, BP will be able to capture 90 percent of the oil with the new cap. The other 10 percent of the oil will flow unto the water. Ten percent is a low percentage estimate being made by BP — who has

a bad reputation at presenting factual numbers. When the math is done, however, the number of gallons that will continue to spew with the cap on will be: 2,000 to 4,000 barrels of oil per day. That’s still quite significant. Originally, the American people were led to believe that only 5,000 barrels of oil per day were being poured on the Gulf. But, the estimate went much higher as pressure to BP from environmental advocates forced the oil giant to explain why the spill was growing at the rate it did. Scientists and BP later admitted that the damaged wellhead was spewing as much as 12,000 to 30,000 barrels of crude per day. Some estimates put the leak at 56,000 to 84,000 barrels a day! Having succeeded at placing the cap on the damaged blowout preventer, has given BP some relief since this bit of “good news” could ease tensions with the White House and the people on the Gulf. However, there are still unresolved issues that need to be dealt with which require continuous news coverage: 1) The continued flow of 2,000 to 4,000 barrels of crude per day 2) The fast moving oil sheen to the beaches at four states 3) The death of sea life and migratory birds 4) The oil trapped in the marshes of Louisiana 5) The economic impact that will continue to take a toll on Gulf communities and businesses. 6) The potential health impacts on the fishermen who continue to lay boom. 7) The future health of oysters, shrimp, and fish from Gulf waters. This spill has become the biggest environmental disaster in US history and it is now almost three times bigger than the Exxon Valdez in Alaska. It will not be until August that this nightmare will be over. That’s when


Prompt: MYRIAD May 22-24, 2018 Details Musician, composer, and Mercury Prize nominated-producer Oneohtrix Point Never‘s world-building approach to creating works spans across the mediums of film, poetry, and visual art. Having just won the best Soundtrack Award at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival for the film Good Time, Oneohtrix Point Never comes to the Armory with a project of unprecedented scope: a hyperstitial “concertscape” imagined from the perspective of an alien intelligence. MYRIAD is Oneohtrix Point Never’s most ambitious project to date, and builds on a practice of site-specific concertscapes presented at the Museum of Modern Art (2011), Tate Britain and

MoMA PS1 (2013), and Edinburgh International Festival (2015), amongst many others. Pulling from long-standing fascinations with film and television tropes, abstract sculpture, game ephemera, poetry, apocryphic histories, internet esoterica, and philosophies of being, MYRIAD generates a conceptual spectrum that is as much a speculation on the unthinkable future as it is an allegory for the current disquiet of a civilization out of balance with its environment. Oriented around behaviorally choreographed set pieces and lighting, the theatrical installation takes a directly formal approach to themes latent in his work by placing the audience inside the architecture of the music itself. Using the scale of the Wade Thompson Drill Hall to explore disorienting relationships between space and sound, MYRIAD mutates forms of live musical performance. The world premiere of MYRIAD is presented as a four-part epochal song cycle by the Park Avenue Armory and the Red Bull Music Festival New York City. Music performed at MYRIAD will be released as a new album—“Age Of”—on June 1st on Warp Records. The release is his most cohesive and richly composed work to date, weaving a tapestry of disparate musical histories—early music, country and folk balladry, melodic pop, computer music, and much more—that demonstrate both the complexity and range of the artist’s repertoire. With sounds that are unsettlingly familiar and uniquely his own, “Age Of” guides us through an unclassifiable new world. #PAAMYRIAD World Premiere Presented by Park Avenue Armory and The Red Bull Music Festival New York City MYRIAD is supported in part by a gift from Daniel Clay Houghton. Return to Arts at the Armory Listing Visit Buy Tickets May 22–24, 2018 Tuesday, May 22 Doors at 8:00pm Performance at 9:00pm—SOLD OUT! Thursday, May 24 Doors at 6:00pm Performance at 7:00pm—SOLD OUT! Doors at 9:00pm Performance at 9:45pm—SOLD OUT! Tickets: $40 (plus fees)


Prompt: The Nasa 'space drink' that can rub out sun spots: Fruit juice developed to protect astronauts reduces wrinkles and reverses the telltale signs of ageing in four months These startling images may prove that a fruit drink developed by Nasa to protect astronauts from radiation can rejuvenate the skin. A groundbreaking study has shown that the concoction, known as AS10, dramatically reduces wrinkles, blemishes and sun damage after four months. Visia photographs – which reveal the condition of the skin below the surface by using different types of light exposure – were taken of 180 participants at the start of

the trial, and again after four months of drinking two shots of AS10 a day. By the end UV spots were reduced by 30 per cent and wrinkles by 17 per cent. Out of this world: The dramatic effect of AS10 on pigmentation as seen through Visia photographs, before on the left and after on the right AS10 was developed as a nutritional supplement for astronauts to protect them from the damaging effects of high levels of radiation outside the Earth’s atmosphere. The drink contains a blend of fruits including cupuacu (a Brazilian fruit from the cacao plant family), acai, acerola, prickly pear and yumberry, which all provide vitamins and phytochemicals – compounds known to block the harmful effects of radiation. Other ingredients are grape, green tea, pomegranate and vegetables. Radiation particles alter oxygen molecules in the body to create reactive oxygen species (ROS) – so-called ‘free radicals’ which damage cells in a process known as oxidative stress. This process has been linked to diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer’s. The toxic molecules are also thought to play a role in the skin ageing process. ROS are created naturally within the body as cells generate energy, but also through environmental factors such as chemicals and ultraviolet light from the sun – the strongest stress to skin. Mobile phone radiation, cigarette smoke and alcohol also generate ROS. Space-age: AS10 was developed in conjunction with Nasa for the Astronaut Programme to ensure they received enough fruit and vegetables ‘Think of them as little Pac-men taking bites out of molecules that are essential for cells to function,’ says Dr Aaron Barson, the nutritional scientist from Utah who carried out the AS10 study after patients reported dramatic improvement from the drink. AS10 is thought to improve skin condition because the drink’s large quantities of


Prompt: This article is going to be somewhat different in that I’m not really writing it for the typical embedded systems engineer. Rather it’s kind of a specialized topic, so don’t be surprised if you get bored and move on to something else. That’s fine by me. Anyway, let’s just jump ahead to the punchline. Here’s a numerical simulation of a step response to a \( p=126, q=130 \) Padé approximation of a time delay: Impressed? Maybe you should be. This is a goal that’s been bugging the heck out of me for a few months, and I’ve finally reached something

useful. Let’s start with a quick overview. 1. Denial Padé Approximants If you’ve done any studying of linear time-invariant (LTI) systems, you know that the transfer function of a time delay T is \( H(s) = e^{-sT} \). An exponential function. Very simple, but it’s kind of an oddball. That’s because most transfer functions are written as a ratio of polynomials \( H(s) = \frac{P(s)}{Q(s)} \) — in other words a rational function — and analyzed by standard techniques to find their poles and zeros and do some sort of numerical calculation with them. So we can’t find the “poles” of \( H(s) = e^{-sT} \), because there aren’t any. Huh. Okay, so what do we do instead? If you’re using Simulink to model something, it’s fine to just add a time delay. Simulink has some secret recipe for handling time delays and it works just fine. But what if you want to perform some kind of continuous-time analysis where you need a rational transfer function? Well, you could try to convert everything to a discrete-time approximation, where a time delay is very easy and becomes a shift in a state variable array. Or you can approximate a continuous-time delay with a rational function. And whenever you see the words “approximate… rational function”, the first thing that should come to mind is Padé approximation. This is a technique to compute the “closest” rational function to a given function using power series. It’s kind of the rational-function equivalent to a Taylor series — it’s based upon the function and its derivatives at a single point — and if you’ve read my article on Chebyshev approximation, you’ll know I don’t particularly like Taylor series, but it has its place, and so does Padé approximation. Padé approximation has a reputation for being a


Prompt: American Heart Association and the European Society of Cardiology released a statement about when and how to resume sex. Two groups are urging doctors to inform patients that sex is possible after a heart attack. (Photo11: Getty Images) Story Highlights Groups: Intimacy is possible after heart attack Sexual health is important, researcher says Advice depends on patient's overall health CHICAGO — Many heart specialists are hardly Dr. Ruth — sex is not something they relish bringing up with patients. But new guidance says they should, early and often, to let survivors know intimacy is often possible after a heart attack.

Discussions should involve everything from when and how to resume sex, to what position might be best for some conditions or not advised for others, according to a consensus statement released Monday by the American Heart Association and the European Society of Cardiology. It's billed as the first scientific statement with detailed guidance on resuming sex after a heart attack, stroke or other cardiac condition and is based on a review of medical literature. "Sexual health is an important part of the overall health of the individual," even for the oldest patients, said Elaine Steinke, a researcher and professor of nursing at Wichita State University in Kansas. Steinke was the lead author of the statement published in the heart association's Circulation journal and the European Heart Journal. Co-author Tiny Jaarsma, a professor and heart failure researcher at Sweden's Linkoping University, said in an email that doctors and nurses "rarely discuss sex 'spontaneously', but often wait until the patient brings up questions around sex. Health care providers often are afraid to upset patients or might feel embarrassed themselves." Fears and anxieties about resuming sex are often numerous: Will it cause another heart attack? Can I use Viagra? What if my defibrillator goes off during sex? And many are too shy to ask, so heart doctors, nurses and other health care workers should take the lead and initiate the discussion with men and women patients of all ages and their partners, according to the statement. Many heart patients can safely resume sexual intercourse after first checking with their doctors, and the answers to many questions depend on each patient's overall health, the guidance says. Patients with mild, stable chest pain face a low risk for a sex-triggered heart problem, whereas patients with advanced heart failure should postpone sex until their condition is


Prompt: The pivotal ally on NATO’s eastern flank is at risk. Terrified by Russia’s extra-territorial push into Ukraine, Crimea, and the Baltic Sea, Poland now faces its own homegrown threat. In just three months, the newly elected Law and Justice Party government has challenged and unilaterally changed Poland’s constitution, and ordered a nighttime raid on a NATO facility. It has slapped state controls on media, spurred walkouts, and quickly installed its own party loyalists to top posts. The radical turn has drawn tens of thousands of Poles to the streets in protest, and put American and European allies on alert. The

28-member European Commission meets Wednesday to conduct what it calls an internal debate on Poland’s Rule of Law. Seizing on rising public discontent over economic and security concerns, the Law and Justice Party’s October landslide victory pushed out the European-oriented, center-right Civic Platform, after an eight-year run managing Poland’s fast-paced transformation into Europe’s sixth largest economy. The new ruling party gathered steam in recent years among groups whose only common denominator is frustration. This is especially the case among Polish youth, who make up a third of the population and are seething over poor living standards despite the GDP gains of the past decade. Many of the groups engage in hate speech, calls for violence, and espouse the virtues of Polish purity (xenophobia burns hot in the country, the most homogeneous on the European continent). Some express shock at the new government’s brazen moves; others have long been wary of actions portending anti-democratic rule. Like most Eastern European nations, Poland is a study in contrasts. Along Warsaw’s Vistula Riverbanks, heavy, oversized, Soviet-style architecture abut contemporary steel and glass. In Warsaw and other large cities, poor pensioners pushing carts and peddling trinkets share sidewalks with smartly dressed nouveau riche shopping for luxury brands, throwing into stark relief one of the deepest socio-economic divides on the continent. Poland’s national consciousness is also bifurcated: an aging population that survived World War II repression and destruction followed by communism’s shortages, intrusions, and punishment gave birth to a generation that has only known Poland as an unequal member of the European Community, saddled with poor job prospects and stunted incomes. Poles under 25 make up a third of the nation’s nearly 39 million population; more than a quarter are jobless and a third of those under 18 receive some form of government aid. Poverty is


Prompt: Image caption People took the streets again on Friday in Cairo, the traditional day of protest On chilly, rain-soaked streets, activists turned out for a peaceful march to al-Ittihadiya, the presidential palace in Cairo's well-off Heliopolis district. "Step down, step down, Muslim Brotherhood!" and "Freedom is for us and for you!" were among the chants. Some carried placards showing a red cross through the face of President Mohammed Morsi. Meanwhile, in Tahrir Square, the scene of renewed clashes between protesters and police over the past week, numbers swelled to several thousand after Friday prayers. Rallies against Mr Morsi also took

place in cities along the Suez Canal where he imposed emergency measures to try to halt recent violence. Demonstrators carried pictures of young men killed in the fighting. More than 60 people died in the latest wave of unrest that added to the sense of a deep crisis in Egypt. The numbers at the latest demonstrations were lower than expected and greatly diminished from those seen two years ago, at the height of the Egyptian uprising. However, they were another expression of the anger and disappointment that many Egyptians feel over the performance of their new Islamist leader who narrowly won last June's presidential election. 'New authoritarianism' Mr Morsi's critics accuse him of betraying the values of the 2011 revolt and imposing a new brand of authoritarianism that concentrates power in the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood, the religious organisation from which he stems. Image caption Protesters say they want to purge the country's judiciary and interior ministry The main opposition coalition, the National Salvation Front (NSF), demands a national unity government and amendments to the new Islamist-tinged constitution. Revolutionary groups also call for reforms. "We're not for or against Morsi. He just hasn't fulfilled his electoral promises," says Mohammed Adel, a leader of the 6 April Youth Movement which helped organise the latest protests. "We want the constitution to be changed, we want the judiciary and interior ministry to be cleansed and we want violence by the state to stop." The president's supporters argue that his detractors refuse to accept the results of a free and fair election and are trying to seize power through the street. Mr Morsi has not ruled out a committee to re-examine the rushed new constitution but says a new government will be decided after parliamentary elections in a few months. "After the elections


Prompt: WALTHAM, Mass. -- Boston Celtics second-year big man Jordan Mickey made a promise, and that's what brought him to a suburban Party City where he towered above most of the pint-sized customers hunting for Halloween costumes. Mickey's shopping list: an Aladdin costume that might fit his 6-foot-8 frame. A couple weeks earlier, Mickey had promised the daughter of teammate Jae Crowder that he would dress up as the Disney character of her choosing for a princess-themed 3rd birthday party. After some discussion, Mickey and young Jada settled on Agrabah's beloved thief. "[Mickey] probably thought she was going to forget. But

she didn’t forget and she reminded him time after time of what he was going to be," said Crowder. "He didn’t lose a bet. It wasn’t rookie duties. He just made a promise to my little one and she never forgot." Mickey couldn't find an actual Aladdin costume, but pieced together a pirate outfit and Fez hat to achieve the desired look. Mickey didn't look particularly thrilled in a snapshot that teammate Jonas Jerebko posted to Instagram but said he never intended to go back on his word. went to princess Jada's birthday party. @jmick_55 @iamamirjohnson @bossmann99 #reallifealaddin A photo posted by Jonas (@jonasjerebko8) on Oct 22, 2016 at 1:30pm PDT "We were all just talking one day around [Crowder's] house, and it came up that Jada was having her birthday party and it was princess-themed. She was just naming off characters, and she kind of told me that’s what she wanted me to be," said Mickey. "I just did it for her. I’ll do anything for a kid. That’s what she wanted so that’s what I came dressed up as." It wasn't just Mickey who came in costume. Fellow 2015 draftee Terry Rozier and his girlfriend came as Mickey and Minnie Mouse. Their efforts weren't lost on Crowder, who seemed genuinely touched that his teammates went so far to brighten the day for his own princess. Crowder, maybe more than any other veteran on Boston's roster, has opened his doors to Boston's youngest players. It's not uncommon for the Crowder family to host Mickey, Rozier, or rookie Jaylen Brown. And the bond those players have built off the court is reflected in the party snapshots that found their way onto social media. "It’s more than basketball. We’re trying to build a brotherhood. Trying to be there for one another,"


Prompt: Albano Brás, the owner of the small café, recalls them very well. They were regulars, “good lads”, calm, who appeared at the end of the day or at the weekend and always in a group. However much he attempted to recall some incident, the 52 year old emigrant – in Leytonstone for the last two decades – is unable to point to any particular warning sign that the “boys” might have given. They laughed at the comments of others, there were no Muslim items of clothing nor was there any reference to either the Koran or to Islam. They just

did not consume alcohol. They watched the football with a bottle of Sumol orange or pineapple soda. And there was no censure should one of their friends drink a Super Bock beer. Religion was left very much at the door of the Cascais. Between 2012 and 2013, the five began sharing an apartment in Leyton, located between the calm Dawlish Road and Sidmouth Road, next to a children’s park with squirrels running through the trees. However, the Portuguese spent very little time there. It served only for sleeping, washing, praying and watching jihadist propaganda videos on the Internet. There was no television – out of choice that they stuck to with pride. The rent and daily needs were paid for by low level jobs in clothes stores or cleaning. There was not much money left at the end of the week but, then again, the group was not given to great extravagances. As a friend stated: “They did not need much to live. The remained satisfied with very little.” The house was just a minute from a bus stop serving routes 58 and 69, which would take them not only to Café Cascais but also to the University of East London, in Stratford, where most of them studied, and the mosque they attended in Forest Gate. They would head off to work or the faculty in the morning and return in the evening, a daily routine similar to the rest of the immigrants living in the neighbourhood. Leyton proves little more than a dormitory for its approximately forty thousand inhabitants, over half of whom belong to an ethnic minority, a ratio far higher than the Greater London average. Here, the unemployment, poverty and criminality rates are also way above the national averages. And, this is where one of Britain’s largest


Prompt: I. Introduction In the midst of working on this paper, I learned that a friend of ours, an extraordinarily beautiful woman in all senses of the word, found that her equally beautiful nine-month old boy has a virulent strain of muscular dystrophy. For that bright-eyed and laughing little boy with a genetic time bomb, the future points to progressive wasting, immobility, and death before adulthood. It is easy to see in this little boy the transformations already affecting his body and to feel the sharp sting of how things will unroll in time. There is a clear sense of inevitability,

of time being "a river which sweeps him along." Although just as true for ourselves, we easily see in him that time is a devouring tiger and a consuming fire. Ill show that understanding something about time in Buddhism and modern physics deepens our sense of how "Time is the substance I am made of." Such understanding also helps us appreciate how we are the devouring tiger and the consuming fire. Beyond its inevitability and destruction, time has other crucial features. We can reflect on past events and learn from them, but we cannot influence them. The past has a fixity that contrasts sharply with the more malleable future, where we make choices and influence events. Therefore, we experience a directionality to time, expressed by a metaphorical arrow pointing from the past, through the present, and into the indefinite future. In contrast, the fundamental equations of physics are all time symmetric, meaning that they have no directionality in time. All the fundamental interactions can proceed in the reverse direction without violating any laws of physics. For a simple example, bounce a ball off the floor and take a movie of it. If you run the movie backwards, nothing looks strange because the time-reversed motion violates no laws of physics. Or, take a movie of our solar system from a distant star and play it backwards. All the rotations and revolutions of the sun and planets will be reversed, but no laws of physics are violated and nothing looks strange. The same is true for quantum mechanical examples. Let an excited atom decay and emit a photon. Run the process backwards and you have an atom absorbing light and ending in an excited state. Yet, many complex processes do display clear temporal directionality. The ruptured balloon, dangling from the tearful childs


Prompt: We are collecting cases of discontinuous technological progress, to inform our understanding of whether artificial intelligence research is likely to undergo such a discontinuity. This page details our investigation. We have verified that five technological trends underwent a discontinuous jump in improvement equivalent to more than a decade at previous rates, three of which underwent more than a century of progress. Details Motivations We are interested in whether artificial intelligence research is likely to undergo discontinuous progress in the lead-up to human-level capabilities, or whether it will get there via incremental steps. If the former, we are interested in the

nature of such discontinuities. Why are we interested in this? If discontinuity is likely, a transition to AI is more likely to be abrupt, more likely to be soon, and more likely to be disruptive. Also, if we think a discontinuity is likely, then our research should investigate questions such as how to prepare or be warned, and not questions like when the present trajectories of AI progress will reach human-level capabilities. As well as being decision relevant and important, this question appears to attract substantial disagreement, making it particularly important to resolve. This project aims to shed light on the potential for discontinuities in AI by investigating the degree and nature of discontinuities in other technologies. This seems an informative baseline for our expectations about AI, especially if we have no strong reason to expect artificial intelligence to be radically unusual in this regard. We are interested in several specific questions, such as: How common is abrupt progress in technology? Where there are discontinuities, how much progress do they represent? (relative to previous rates of progress) What predicts such discontinuities, if anything? We are also interested in overall distributions of size of progress increments, but searching specifically for the very largest increments bears on this in a less straightforward way, so we are likely to investigate it by other means later. Methods We have collected around fifty instances of technological change which are contenders for being discontinuous. Many of these are suggestions offered to us in response to a Facebook question, a Quora question, and personal communications. We obtained some by searching for abrupt graphs in google images, and noting their subject matter. We are taking these cases one by one, and assessing whether each involved discontinuous progress on plausible and interesting metrics. For instance, if we were told


Prompt: The history of Nexus Nexus started as a vision of improving the Bitcoin protocol and at the same time cleaning the cryptosphere from scam coins. Lead Developer Colin Cantrell (Viz) studied the foundations of the Bitcoin Core code, understanding how Satoshi structured Bitcoin and identifying opportunities for improvement. At this time, the altcoin market was being flooded with scams and pump and dump schemes where coins pushing promises, buzz words, and the allure of quick profits were used to swindle BTC from communities. Fom Vizs vision, Coinshield (CSD) was born. The first CSD block was mined on September 23, 2014

at 16:20 UTC-7, and the project soon-to-be named Nexus was live. At that point, the project had one channel of mining: a Prime Mining channel (CPU). On October 23, 2014, the Hashing (GPU) channel was launched as the second proof channel. The blocks included a first-ever subsidy, where a portion from each mined block would be sent to one of 13 developer accounts and another portion would be sent to one of 13 exchange accounts. On January 24, 2015, CSD was listed on Bittrex Exchange. Shortly afterwards, Viz drafted the first whitepaper that outlined how the network would work to recycle and merge the economies and communities of these scam coins. The goal was to help the people in those communities, bring them into the CSD community, and at the same time help clean up the cryptosphere. The exchange accounts would be used to merge these economies by exchanging the coins for a portion of CSD. On April 11, 2015, Viz announced the intention to rebrand to Nexus. Discussion pursued about the ticker symbol, and NIRO was chosen to represent Nexus. On July 24, 2015, Nexus version 2.0 was released with Nexus Proof of State (nPOS) and the introduction of the Trust Network. This laid the foundation for the broader scope of Nexus. At the beginning of September 2015, Videlicet revealed his identity as Colin Cantrell. In October 2015, a more formal team was formed to promote development, build the community, and market Nexus. The ticker symbol was revised to NXS. Discussions on Nexuss direction led to the decision to abandon the recycling and merging that was part of the Coinshield project. The technical work required to implement the merging was done, but with the explosion in the number of new cryptos, the process would have had little impact. Therefore,


Prompt: heic1217 — Science Release Hubble helps find candidate for most distant object in the Universe yet observed By combining the power of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and one of nature’s zoom lenses, astronomers have found what is probably the most distant galaxy yet seen in the Universe. The object offers a peek back into a time when the Universe was only 3 percent of its present age of 13.7 billion years. We see the newly discovered galaxy, named MACS0647-JD, as it was 420 million years after the Big Bang. Its light has travelled for 13.3

billion years to reach Earth, which corresponds to a redshift of approximately 11 [1]. This is the latest discovery from the Cluster Lensing And Supernova survey with Hubble (CLASH) [2], which uses massive galaxy clusters as cosmic telescopes to magnify distant galaxies behind them, an effect called gravitational lensing. “While one occasionally expects to find an extremely distant galaxy using the tremendous power of gravitational lensing, this latest discovery has outstripped even my expectations of what would be possible with the CLASH program,” said Rychard Bouwens (Leiden University, Netherlands), a co-author of the study. “The science output in this regard has been incredible.” Along the way, 8 billion years into its journey, the galaxy’s light took a detour along multiple paths around the massive galaxy cluster MACS J0647.7+7015. Due to the gravitational lensing, the team observed three magnified images of MACS0647-JD with Hubble. The cluster’s gravity boosted the light from the faraway galaxy, making the images appear far brighter than they otherwise would, although they still appear as tiny dots in Hubble’s portrait. “This cluster does what no manmade telescope can do,” said Marc Postman (Space Telescope Science Institute, USA), leader of the CLASH team. “Without the magnification, it would require a Herculean effort to observe this galaxy.” The object is so small it may be in the first stages of galaxy formation, with analysis showing the galaxy is less than 600 light-years across. For comparison the Milky Way is 150 000 light-years across. The estimated mass of this baby galaxy is roughly equal to 100 million or a billion suns, or 0.1 - 1 percent the mass of our Milky Way’s stars. “This object may be one of many building blocks of a galaxy,” explained Dan Coe (Space Telescope Science Institute), lead author of the study. “Over the next


Prompt: After my exam earlier was postponed due to some problems between Pearson VUE and VMware Lab communications, I did my VCAP-DTM deploy last Friday. And it was a pass on the first attempt 🙂 Woohoo. The exam is a whopping 3,4 (or somewhat with 205 minutes) hours getting through tasks where time management is the most important piece. Well next to actually knowing what you need to be doing. I missed some questions in the end, but 30 questions seem to be enough to barely pass. I was a bit slow as deployment is something I do differently in real

life, irritated about the backspace not working (arrow del key combination is not my cookie) while my Pavlov keeps hitting that key and in the last part of the exam I had to keep pushing radio buttons several times before they got active. Some tips for the time management when you will attempt the exam: Prepare your exam lab experience. Do VMware Hands on Labs from the EUC mobily courses. Is it not for the subjects, is it knowing how to operate the lab environment. The exam lab is the same as the hands-on labs. I used several HOL-1751-MBL-1 and so on. Do note the Horizon are not the versions used in the VCAP6 version, but most items are still in the right place. I have also used Ravello Cloud for my labs. Bonus with the HOL’s is that you already have the password to use in the exam drilled. Familiarize with the subjects. Read through the exam objectives and practice those in your own lab or hands on labs. These blog posts were very helpful: Going through the VCAP6-DTM Deploy Study guide several times with this blog post series: https://szumigalski.com/2016/08/01/vcap6-dtm-study-guide/. Prepare yourself about the exam lab environment with this blog post: http://sostechblog.com/2016/07/26/vcap6-dtm-desktop-and-mobility-deployment-exam-launch/. Schedule your exam. Have something to work to. Do this before starting to study, but allow for a reasonable study preparation period. There is no non-native English speaker time extension, 205 minutes is what everyone gets. A VCAP study group with peers is worth it, especially working together on a shared goal and for sharing experiences, tips and tricks. At our company ITQ (http://itq.nl) we did VCAP Bootcamps were we had multiple sessions and let some of the team present an objective. Don’t have peers at your company that go for the same kind of exams? Well


Prompt: BY: Follow @FBillMcMorris General Motors has shied away from promoting the Chevrolet Volt in 2013 as the federal government begins selling off its final shares of company stock, a move one expert said may have been made to avoid reminding the public of the federal bailout. GM press releases have avoided discussing the plug-in hybrid that was once hailed as the "halo car" and a "moon shot" that could increase GM’s market share in green technology. GM’s public press releases mentioned the Chevrolet Volt roughly 111 times per month when it launched in 2010 and 92 times the following year.

However, the company began drawing less attention to the vehicle in November 2011 when the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration launched an investigation into claims that the vehicle’s fire hazards. From December 2011 to December 2012, the company mentioned the Volt just 31 times per month. The acceleration of the federal government’s withdrawal from the company has also coincided with decreasing attention drawn to the Volt. GM press releases have mentioned the vehicle just 11 times per month on average through September 2013. Despite record-breaking sales in August, GM mentioned the Volt only once, as part of a press release focused on overall company performance. "The Chevrolet Volt had its best month ever, as did the Chevrolet Spark, Chevrolet Sonic, Cadillac XTS and Buick Verano," the release said. Auto analyst Ed Niedermeyer said that GM has every reason to distance itself from the car because it served as a reminder of the company’s ties to Washington and the $50 billion taxpayer bailout, which he says tarnished the brand. "More than turning a profit, Volt was supposed to give GM a ‘green halo’ like the one the Prius bestows on the Toyota brand," he said. "Because the Volt is so closely associated with the bailout, it has turned out to be a net negative in terms of public relations." The Treasury Department sold $3.4 billion worth of stock between January and August of 2013, before announcing in September that it would sell off the remaining 101.3 million shares in taxpayer holdings. GM did not respond to request for comment. Company executives have been doing their best to turn the page on the bailout in recent years, especially as it attempts to unveil a new line of pick-up trucks, SUVs, and a revamped Corvette. GM North America President Mark Reuss said in


Prompt: The Rumpus Interview with Mark Danielewski At the beginning of the new millennium, I was writing content for a dodgy print-on-demand publisher in Manhattan’s Silicon Alley. In the first week of January, I received a call from Sophie Cottrell, who was then the publicity director of Pantheon, a venerable Random House imprint. Sophie had a debut author who’d written an epic literary novel, part of it created while living a fist-to-mouth decade in Paris. The novel was called House of Leaves and the author was Mark Z. Danielewski. Sophie asked me if my website might want to do something that

had never been done before: Did we want to do a complete online serialization of the 734-page House of Leaves before the publication date? After our initial surprise, my company agreed. Using semi-primitive web technology, our coders in Nebraska spent hundreds of hours uploading seventy pages of House of Leaves every several days for a five-week period, up to the March 17, 2000 publication date. To prevent mass piracy, the book could only be downloaded one page at a time. House of Leaves is a literary novel disguised as horror fiction, with an innocuous house in Virginia concealing a labyrinth that eventually consumes a film crew. Danielewski also takes the reader into the turbulent and violent life of Johnny Truant, a hero of the novel. The online serialization caused a good media stir and some unsettling buzz in the publishing world. The difficult downloading process led to some comical moments. A book reviewer for Seattle’s alt weekly The Stranger read the whole book online and complained of blood on her keyboard. Danielewski himself was a larger-than-life author, with high cheekbones, broad shoulders, and blue hair. Like a happy warrior, he dove into promotion. When attacked by participants in an online chat, he would give a full-throated laugh of appreciation. After the serialization, Danielewski undertook a massive national book tour. He paired up with his rock-star sister Poe and toured with Depeche Mode, performing original House of Leaves music onstage from Poe’s album Haunted and doing spoken word from the novel. The book sold an incredible 200,000 copies in hardback. Danielewski’s golden career continued. Only Revolutions, a fantastical history of the violence and triumph of America told in verse by two runaways driving down America’s highways in souped-up cars, was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2006. His short


Prompt: Pastor Maldonado's victory in yesterday's Spanish Grand Prix as well as strong showings from Grosjean in the last two races and from Sergio Perez in Malaysia is highighting an important point about F1 and the relative state of the drivers. Do we often not give enough credit to the drivers in midfield cars? For years F1 races have been won by an elite of drivers from top teams with perhaps only 7 drivers managing to visit the F1 podium in the course of an entire season. In five races this season, we've already had 9 drivers on the podium and

five different winners. But this year with the performance of a number of cars so close and with the way the Pirelli tyres work, it is offering an opportunity for more drivers to shine. Traditionally when drivers arrive in F1 they have usually won races and championships in junior categories, but then they find that in midfield teams they struggle to shine. Fans dismiss them because they aren't able to fully evaluate what they are able to do, as they are lost in the soup of midfield. However in 2012 we've seen some stunning drives from the likes of Perez and particularly Maldonado yesterday, which makes everyone realise that success has been more about opportunity and car pace rather than elite driver ability. Of course the cream rises to the top and the leading drivers are in top teams with big salaries for a reason. They become the elite because of the consistently high peaks of performance from Alonso, Vettel, Hamilton and other top stars. They have always won because their teams build them fast cars, get them set up to maximise the tyres and then take advantage of the car pace to get the strategy right. That has always been the way of F1. But the positive thing about the racing this year is that it shows that given a chance with a car which can use the tyres well, a wider range of drivers can shine. It was a similar story in 2009 when Jenson Button showed that his poor results with Honda were to do with the car, not him and that he was capable of winning a championship. Perez and Maldonado were dismissed as 'pay drivers' because they have strong sponsor backing from their home countries. But after Malaysia everyone was talking about Perez getting a


Prompt: Please note that this page has not been updated since early 2015. I now recommend stack Rationale I’m trying to learn the Haskell programming language, and I’m tripping over the cabal-install package management system sufficiently often that it’s putting me off putting time into learning the language. Here are my requirements for a development environment I’m willing to learn in: don’t leave Debian Wheezy 32-bit; Debian Jessie will be out soon, but its versions of GHC and the Haskell platform are still very old so upgrading early is not a way out. minimise how often I have to delete all

of ~/.cabal and ~/.ghc ; when using cabal sandboxes, again, minimise the number of core libraries that need to get rebuilt in every sandbox; be simple enough to integrate cleanly with the existing ways I manage my OS installation and the contents of my home directory; be simple enough that I can understand everything as a Haskell beginner and can get things working (again) quickly and get back to trying to write Haskell. In this document I will describe the combination of home directory and system-wide installations that fit these requirements, and the workflow for sorting out packages so that I can get on with trying to make my programs do input and output, and other fun Haskell beginner stuff. Alternative approaches The following two approaches don’t satisfy the requirements given above. Do everything manually This involves having nothing installed system-wide, including the Haskell Platform. Install GHC and Cabal in ~/local/src and then install things into their own sandboxes and add the .cabal-sandbox/bin directories to your $PATH . Someone on reddit describes a balance between installing stuff into .cabal/bin and having sandboxes in which related packages are built and then symlinking those directories. But this requires lots and lots of rebuilding over and over and lots of manual $PATH additions. System-wide Debian packages mitigate this. This might facilitate such an approach. Fails (2), (3) and (4). Use a clever automatic sandboxing solution Halcyon and the Nix package manager (which doesn’t require the full NixOS) are the projects I’ve come across that try to do this. They aim to avoid even more rebuilding than my approach avoids. The Halcyon author doesn’t want to support 32-bit Debian, and I don’t want to be a Nix early adoptor at the same time as trying to learn how to get my programs to take


Prompt: In the latest wave of protests in the Asian financial hub, a group of Chinese demonstrators on Thursday unfurled a huge banner on Hong Kong's famous "Lion Rock," which overlooks many poor neighborhoods across the region's harbor. The stunt came following comments made by Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying on Monday when he claimed that full democracy would give the poor too much power. 'Genuine universal suffrage' The 28-meter-long (30.6-yard-long) yellow banner, emblazoned with the slogan "I want genuine universal suffrage" and a picture of an umbrella, which has become the symbol of pro-democracy protesters, was hung by a

climber wearing a Spiderman suit. "The small circle electoral committee (who voted for Leung in 2012) and the Chief Executive only care about the rich on Tai Ping Shan and not the poor under Lion Rock," said the disguised protester who, according to police, was one of 10 climbers belonging to the group who call themselves "Hong Kong Spidie." 'Umbrella Revolution': Protests have been going on for almost a month Tai Ping Shan is the local name for Victoria Peak, the famous hill that dominates Hong Kong Island and is home to some of the world's most expensive properties. 'Lion Rock Spirit' Associated with "Lion Rock" is the concept of "Lion Rock Spirit" - a phrase which has been adopted by Cantonese speakers to encapsulate Hong Kong's reputation as a place where hard work and perseverance meant a brighter future. However, many among Hong Kong's youth feel that the city's "Lion Rock Spirit" has been stifled by the political elite. Faced with rising inequality and soaring housing costs, many young Hong Kongers are left with little hope of renting, let alone buying, their own home in a city with one of Asia's widest wealth gaps. One month of protests On Tuesday talks began again between government officials and leaders of the student protest movement. However, hopes remain low for any breakthrough. Beijing believes it has offered enough concessions to the former British colony in the past and sources say it will not change its position. Pro-democracy campaigners have now been protesting in Hong Kong for almost a month, where they continue to demand a free choice of candidates to become the city's chief executive in the 2017 election. China's National People's Congress decided in August that any candidates would have to be vetted by Beijing before appearing on the ballot.


Prompt: Tell Canada It Has No Excuses Left For Seal Cull by: Judith B. recipient: Prime Minister Stephen Harper The various justifications put forth to support the brutal cull of hundreds of thousands of harp seals in Canada have always been shaky. Now the argument that it is necessary "to protect fish stocks," always scientifically dubious, holds no water at all. Climate change means seals are struggling to breed anyway. This year, it is predicted that thinning ice sheets over the Artic will lead to a very tough year for seals, with many if not most of the pups not surviving

at all. Last year, an estimated 80 percent of the pups died simply because of a lack of sea ice. Too many seals is not going to be a problem, if indeed it ever was. The problem is now protecting them and their fragile habitat. The last thing in the world the seals needed is another brutal cull. Tell the Canadian Government to stop the commercial seal hunt when the species is struggling to survive anyway. read petition letter ▾ In 2011, an estimated 80% of that year's seal pups failed to survive simply because of decreasing sea ice. With harp seals now struggling to cope with new threats, a cull is completely unnecessary and could tip the populations of a once common species over the edge. We ask that the Canadian Government finally face reality and recognise that the commercial seal hunt is not in any way beneficial. It does not help Canada’s wildlife, environment, reputation or even its fish stocks. We ask that the commercial harp seal hunt ends in 2012. We the undersigned ask that the Canadian Government cease the commercial harp seal hunt. Whether or not seals did once pose a threat to fish stocks, the species is now suffering the effects of climate change and overpopulation is certainly not an issue.In 2011, an estimated 80% of that year's seal pups failed to survive simply because of decreasing sea ice. With harp seals now struggling to cope with new threats, a cull is completely unnecessary and could tip the populations of a once common species over the edge.We ask that the Canadian Government finally face reality and recognise that the commercial seal hunt is not in any way beneficial. It does not help Canada’s wildlife, environment, reputation or even its fish stocks. We ask that the


Prompt: On this page you will learn about Barclays Premier League tips. You'll learn about odds, bookmaker, best tipster, ranking and fixtures. Premier League Tips & Fixtures Planning your future betting can prove beneficial to making consistent profits. Take a look at the next set of Premier League fixtures. Take advantage of the free betting data and statistics too! Next Premier League Fixtures Best Premier League Tipsters The Premier League is renowned for being a tough league to bet on successfully. This is shown by the number of different title winners in recent years. There are so-called 'surprise' results week in

week out. The strength of the division shouldn't be underestimated. There can be much value in betting on the sides who are considered 'lesser' teams. This is the case especially when these sides are playing at home. This is where our bettingexpert tipsters can point you in the right direction. You'll find thousands of EPL betting tips here with us throughout the season. As well as the standard Match Result tips, our predictions can be based on a range of markets. Anytime Goalscorer, Both Teams To Score and Asian Handicap markets are amongst those covered. Whatever the tip, remember that each prediction found on our site is completely free! We rank all of our tipsters in order of success. This means you can find Premier League predictions from only the best of our tipsters. See those who can boast excellent yield percentages and profits. Take a look at our most successful Premier League tipsters from the last two seasons below. See if they can help you make consistent profits too! Premier League Tips & Odds Formed in 1992, the Premier League has become the most popular football league in world football. It generates more than a staggering £1.6 billion per year in domestic and international television rights. The League is broadcast in 212 different countries. There is a potential audience of approximately 4.7 billion people. This makes it the most watched league in the world by some distance. Since its inception in 1992, only six clubs have lifted the coveted Premier League trophy. Manchester United have won it on 13 occasions, all under the guidance of Sir Alex Ferguson. Chelsea have won it on five seperate occasions. London rivals Arsenal have won the title on three occasions, their last coming in the 2003/04 season. Manchester City have also won it


Prompt: Given such a singular vintage, it may be hard to draw conclusions about the region in general. Nonetheless, it’s clear that, as in California, a new wave of Oregon producers is striving to make wine in a lighter, more restrained style. Although this has been true for several years, a vintage like 2011 certainly played to their strengths. Not one of the bottles in our tasting hit 14 percent alcohol, remarkable among New World wines that habitually leave that mark in the dust. While most of the bottles ranged from 12.5 to 13.5 percent, some went as low as 11

and 10.5 percent. Why the disparity? Remember, though 13.5 percent is just 3 percentage points higher than 10.5 percent, that amounts to almost 30 percent more alcohol. I think it’s fair to say that some producers felt it necessary to take the legal step in Oregon of adding sugar to the fermenting grape juice in order to boost alcohol levels and add richness. This technique, chaptalization, has a long history in cool-climate wine regions, although I doubt that it alone would account for a difference of 3 percentage points. In my opinion, it is one of the more benign manipulations available to modern winemakers. Those working in the most natural style possible would be among the least likely to chaptalize. For what it’s worth, neither Teutonic Wine Company’s Bergspitze Laurel Vineyard pinot noir from the Chehalem Mountains (10.5 percent) or Bow & Arrow’s Medici Vineyard, also from Chehalem (11 percent) made our cut. I am a big fan of both producers and love many of their wines. Both of these were light and pure, and while I found them deliciously gulpable, others thought they were too dilute. I will say that at $36 and $30 respectively, it’s possible to find equally thirst-quenching wines for far less money. Our favorite was Soter Vineyards North Valley cuvée, made from purchased grapes rather than from Soter’s estate vineyard, a deep, earthy, deliciously tangy wine that was our best value at $29. Right behind was the Soléna Hyland Vineyard from the McMinnville region, with persistent complex flavors of red fruit and minerals and a sleek, almost gossamer structure. We also very much liked the harmonious Les Dijonnais from Brick House in Ribbon Ridge, which gave a slightly richer impression, and the bright, graceful Beaux Frères Willamette Valley. Two of the more unusual bottles in


Prompt: Sarah Harrison speaks at the re: publica 2014 in Berlin station. May 6, 2014. (Photo: re:publica 2014 / Flickr) Journalism with real independence and integrity is a rare thing. Help Truthout keep publishing grassroots journalism and bold ideas – make a tax-deductible donation today. This interview with Sarah Harrison of the Courage Foundation is based on a radio interview conducted by Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese on Clearing The FOG, originally heard on We Act Radio, 1480 AM in Washington, DC, and also available by podcast. Sarah Harrison is a British journalist, legal researcher and WikiLeaks investigation editor. She works

with WikiLeaks and is a close adviser to Julian Assange. Harrison accompanied National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden on a high-profile flight from Hong Kong to Moscow while he was sought by the United States government. She is director of the new Courage Foundation, which seeks to defend whistleblowers as well as our right to know. Kevin Zeese: Sarah, tell us what the Courage Foundation is and what the goals of the organization are. Sarah Harrison: The Courage Foundation was born from the idea that whistleblowers need protection from prosecution. When we first started to help Edward Snowden, there were many other NGOs and organizations around the world that should have been able to help him; but, when it comes to high risk people with huge persecution from places like the United States, the reality is that to move quickly and robustly to provide the support they need is actually very difficult. So after we helped Snowden, we realized that there was a need for an organization that was able to do this for future Snowdens as well. So we set up Courage on that basis. In addition, Courage will be fighting for policy and legal changes to give whistleblowers the protections they deserve. I’m very pleased that you accepted to be on our advisory board Kevin. Kevin Zeese: Thank you for inviting me to be on the board. I also like the way you frame the issue of the public’s right to know as part of the agenda because I think that is essential to having any kind of freedom of speech in the 21st century. It is important to frame it as not just our right to speak, but our right to have information. Sarah Harrison: In the United States, they are aggressively going after whistleblowers and truth


Prompt: Waukegan will squeeze in one more beach season before temporarily shutting down the lakefront's main access route after the City Council voted Monday night to approve a $7.3 million contract to rebuild the Grand Avenue bridge east of Sheridan Road. The nearly half-century-old bridge, which spans the Union Pacific Railroad tracks and leads to Waukegan Harbor via Pershing Road, has been targeted for an overhaul since at least 2012, when it was rated in poor condition by the U.S. Department of Transportation. In August 2014, the city signed off on a $6.2 million plan to rebuild the bridge in a

project that would have started last fall and neared completion this spring, but Public Works Director Tom Hagerty said the plan ended up being re-bid by the Illinois Department of Transportation, which is overseeing the project. The new contract with F.H. Paschen & S.N. Nielson and Associates includes a $1.8 million contribution from the city, which will be drawn out of Motor Fuel Tax funds over the next two fiscal years. The scuttled 2014 contract had the city paying $1.43 million, with the remainder of the overall funding coming from the federal Surface Transportation and Bridge Replacement program. Now that the city has signed off on its end of the deal, Hagerty said work will begin at the end of summer. "We're going to shut it down sometime in September and it should be open and substantially completed by next June 1 and completed by July 1," Hagerty said after the council voted unanimously to concur with the IDOT contract. "There's not an exact time yet. It will be sometime in September, but it will be after Labor Day. We're certainly not going to close it before Labor Day." Also known locally as the Mathon Bridge, the deck is the most direct route from the downtown area to both the harbor and Municipal Beach. During its closure, traffic to the lakefront will come from Belvidere Road on the south and Greenwood Avenue on the north, both of which link to Pershing. Dan Moran, Lake County News-Sun The pothole-riddled Grand Avenue bridge across the Union Pacific Railroad tracks in Waukegan will be closed this fall for a $7.3 million, nine-month reconstruction project. The pothole-riddled Grand Avenue bridge across the Union Pacific Railroad tracks in Waukegan will be closed this fall for a $7.3 million, nine-month reconstruction project. (Dan Moran, Lake County


Prompt: ArenaNet seems to have a bit of a problem with finding good names relating to the heavily armoured profession that serves as the Monk’s spiritual successor. It’s understandable, really. While the guardian has many similarities with existing archetypes, the precise composition of the guardian is something that doesn’t really have an established name in the genre. While the ‘paladin’ archetype is probably closest, the guardian extends much broader (as I discussed after the guardian’s release) and paladins are typically associated with having a specific religious belief, which would fit poorly with the range of religious positions (or lack thereof) of

the playable races. With that said, the term ‘guardian’ has made for a fair label. It may not be as evocative as terms like ‘ranger’ and ‘elementalist’… however, it is functional and descriptive enough for the guardian’s abilities and role, and there aren’t really any more exotic terms that fit. The term ‘dragonhunter’, on the other hand… Skyrim jokes aside, it feels a bit like a development placeholder term that never got replaced. While both terms are somewhat pedestrian at first glance, ‘guardian’ is descriptive to the general (but not exclusive) focus on defensive magic while remaining generic enough that it is easy to expect any organisation to include guardians within its ranks (some more than others, of course). Similarly, each of the other profession names, including the chronomancer specialisation, focus on abilities rather than goals. Unlike the Chronomancer, whose name identifies their abilities, the name ‘dragonhunter’ seems to dictate the character’s objectives and personality while saying little about their abilities. For the dragonhunter, this is turned on its head. The term says little about the character’s abilities, while limiting the character in goals: by its name, a dragonhunter is implied to only be focused on fighting the dragons, rather than pursuing other threats and goals. In the latest Ready Up, in fact, we are explicitly told that dragonhunters focus their efforts on hunting dragon minions, including taking up something of a ‘witch hunter’ aspect in sniffing out Mordremoth-influenced sylvari and other dragon-corrupted individuals among their allies. While it is a reasonable assumption that the PCs would have such a primary goal, it does lead to the impression that ArenaNet is telling us what the personality of the character should be, rather than letting the player come to their own opinion of their character’s goals and motivations. Also, unlike the


Prompt: Hello and welcome to the 144th instalment of the SWD . Military events/news are listed below by the governorates: To begin with, the different de-escalation zones have so far achieved its objectives with no major fighting taking place in most of the different frontlines. Raqqa: Early this morning FSA units within the SDF fled from Raqqa Old city after heavy clashes and some unknown casualties. During the day YPG forces pushed into the Old districts and made advances towards the Old Mosque. An ISIS SVBIED hit SDF after reaching the Old Mosque, Hisham Abdulmalik district. Aleppo: Some protests against corruption,

the checkpoints and calling for reforms. Apparently, the protests took place without incidents. Homs: ISIS Amaq News published a video showing an ISIS SVBIED against SAA forces near Araq, in East Palmyra. Hama: The SAA launched new attacks toward ISIS forces in East Hama. Initial reports suggested that the Governmental forces are advancing against ISIS. The possible objectives of this offensive are the strongholds of Uqayribat and Tall Sanimah. The SAA and Palestinian Liwa Al Quds captured Tal Tabarah Al Deeb in the countryside from ISIS forces. At the same time, Desert Hawks captured multiple positions, including the Al-Maksar area and Tal Huway’at east to Salamiyah. An explosion hit a bus station in the centre of Masyaf town in Western Hama, the SVBIED killed 3 people. Damascus: Faylaq Al-Rahman damaged a government’s BMP with a direct hit on Ain Terma front. At the same time, the SAA advanced towards Ain Terma and captured an unknown number of buildings between Zamalka bridge and Ahl al-Safa mosque. Government forces also captured the Shamini Land complex. Daraa: The Syrian Government extended the cessation of hostilities in the whole southern region, which includes Daraa, Kenitra and Swaida, until the end of 07/08/2017. Meanwhile, the newly started rebel offensive against ISIS southern pocket has been reported to have failed. Iraq Nineveh: Iraqi forces made considerable advances against the Islamic State forces in several areas of the Old Mosul district. Preliminary reports inform that ISIS lines had collapsed and the remaining ISIS troops inside the Old city are trapped in small pockets of 500 meters or less. As this article is being written, some reports are announcing the full liberation of Mosul city, although, it is better for all to wait until the Iraqi government confirms the rumours. If true, the Iraqi government would have taken