Prompt: The search for the Holy Grail in aging has long been a focus in regenerative medicine, which poses the question: why do some of us age better than others? Now growing evidence in Genomic Studies shows that there are key genetic players in the Aging game… Ever since the Human Genome Project, which began 25 years ago, the tools available to researchers have transformed our understanding of population genetics and the complex nuances which lie within our own individual genomes. ADVERTISEMENT In a recent paper published in PLOS Genetics, teams from several European research centres have revealed there is indeed

a tangible molecular mechanism behind the complex phenotype of ‘super longevity’ (long-life). And this has been roughly linked to certain single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs – simple mutations in the code) at particular genetic locii… In the study led by Stuart Kim at Stanford University (US), researchers looked to pool data from the other research centres also studying aging, to expand the sample group size (800 people over 100 and about 5000 over 90). This meant a large enough sample size was able to identify several key genes as a link to the ‘longevity phenotype’. Such Genome-Wide Association studies (GWAS) also offer an unbiased means to understand the genetic basis of certain traits… The New England Centenarian Study (NECS) led by Boston University identified 4 key genetic influences in Long-life: 1. ABO Locus Controls blood type. The study results showed that centenarians are more likely to have the O blood group than controls. People with blood type O have been reported to be protected from coronary heart disease, cancer, and have lower cholesterol levels. 2. CDKN2B/ANRIL Implicated in the regulation of the cell life cycle, SNPs from this region have previously been found to be associated with a surprising diversity of age-related diseases. These include cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, intracranial aneurisms, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and several cancers in the case of Anril (through a study at the Paris Descartes University). For cardiovascular disease, this locus shows the strongest association of any locus in the genome, with each copy of the risk allele increasing one’s risk of disease by 20–30%. 3. APOE/TOMM40 APOE was initially investigated because its ɛ4 allele was known to increase the risk of Alzheimer’s and coronary artery disease, and in the study the disease-allele was shown to be depleted in long-lived populations. There was also a relationship


Prompt: The simplest explanation is that music producers compose or produce music while sound engineers record and mix music. The designation ‘Music Producer’ has come in vogue in the past twenty years or so. Sound Engineers have existed since the era of radio broadcasting that commenced in the 1920s. These lab coat-wearing personnel looked quite different from the modern sound engineer. It is important to understand the history of names and designations used in the field of music over the past hundred odd years. Before the advent of music technology, music was composed by composers on paper. A composer would write

down his musical ideas as music notation on staff paper. Think of classical greats such as Beethoven and Mozart. A composer would use instruments such as a piano or an organ to work on his compositions. A ‘transcriber’s help might be taken to formally notate the compositions. Lets take the example of a symphony. A symphony is meant to be performed by a large orchestra. The composer himself might conduct the orchestra or a ‘conductor’ might be commissioned for the recital. Imagine a 60 piece symphony orchestra performing for a live audience in the 18th century. There was no audio technology in the form of microphones and loudspeakers to take advantage of. But the audience had to be satisfied aurally. This was achieved through the acoustic properties of the concert hall. Acoustics happens to be the oldest field of sound engineering (Ancient Greeks were the first to delve in to the field of acoustics). A skilled ‘Acoustician’ would design the room to constructively enhance and amplify the sound of the orchestra so that every person in the audience would receive optimum quality of sound. Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone and Thomas Edison invented the Phonograph. Collectively they initiated the field of ‘Audio Technology’. Sound could be now converted into an electrical signal and also stored as a recording. With the emergence of Radio as a mass media format and also with the increasing popularity of vinyl playback systems, the masses became used to the idea of listening to music over loudspeakers. Electric Guitars became popular in the fifties and led to the development of blues, jazz and rock. Technology was influencing the style of music, the methods used to capture the performers and the manner in which the audience consumed music. Singers, Songwriters and Bands replaced the Composer as


Prompt: Loren Schmidt managed to garner critical acclaim and recognition as a talented up-and-coming indie developer with his pixelated platformer, Star Guard. I found out just what makes Loren tick. Age? 28 Location? Oakland, California Development tool(s) of choice? I’ve used AS3, Java, and Processing, and I’m currently limping along in C++. For art and sound, I use used GIMP and sfxr. I’m hoping to become increasingly familiar with making sound effects, because I don’t know a lot about it and it seems like a lot of fun. How did game development come into your life? My parents were somewhat anti-media,

and I didn’t have a lot of exposure to television or games at home. I was introduced to games through fleeting encounters with arcade machines and visits to friends’ houses. While I would have loved learning to make games as a young child, we didn’t have a computer when I was young. I didn’t have an opportunity to start until much later in life. Looking back, though, there were a lot of indications of where I was headed. I used to draw a lot. I made mazes with my friends, built castles out of blocks and spent countless hours building things with Lego. I was fascinated with interactivity. I loved Choose Your Own Adventure books. I made up a lot of board games, many of which imitated video games in some way. I distinctly recall making up a broken turn based version of Space Invaders on a checkerboard. Bad tuning! What are your goals as an indie developer? One of my favorite things is seeing a project where all the parts come together and fit perfectly. Solo development is very appealing to me, because that happens so naturally. The same is true of making games with a small team. Like a lot of other people I know, in the past I’ve had trouble with taking on too many projects and not bringing any of them to fruition. Right now one of my goals is to get better about finishing things. Do you have any plans to collaborate with any other developers at some point in the future? Is there anyone in particular that you feel is on a similar wavelength to yourself? I really enjoy collaborations. Though none of them have been released, I have done a few projects with other developers. I made a little maze game with Oryx


Prompt: The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not represent the views of Townhall.com. If you prize clarity, then these past weeks were some of the best in memory. 1. When America leads, the world is better. For the first time in eight years, the allies of America and the world's decent people celebrated America's return to leadership. Just about all of them understand that if the United States doesn't exercise its power, the worst regimes on Earth will. The left claims to care about the downtrodden of the world, but this concern is a moral fraud. The

downtrodden the left most care about are American blacks, women and gays. And Palestinians. But these groups aren't downtrodden; they are merely a vehicle by which the left attacks America and Israel to gain power. The truly downtrodden -- that is, the most oppressed people in the world, such as Christians living in the Middle East, and the victims of Syrian President Bashar Assad's tyranny -- know who really cares about them: Trump and America's conservatives. 2. The terrible presidency of Barack Obama is beginning to be acknowledged. Following President Trump's order to attack Syria about 63 hours after the Syrian regime seemingly used chemical weapons, even many in the mainstream media couldn't help but contrast his prompt response with Obama's nonresponse to Assad's use of chemical weapons in 2013. And almost every report further noted that Obama failed to do anything after having promised that he would regard the use of chemical weapons by Assad as crossing a "red line." Likewise, Obama's do-nothing policies vis-a-vis North Korea are being contrasted with Trump's warnings to leader Kim Jung Un about further testing of intercontinental ballistic missiles and pressure on China's leaders to rein in the North Korean regime. These contrasts are important for a number of reasons, not the least of which being there is now hope that Obama's star will dim as time goes on. This will come as somewhat of a surprise to those on the left, but many of us who are not on the left believe that Obama did more damage to America than any previous president -- economically, militarily and socially. Regarding the social damage, as the first black president in American history, he could have been an unprecedented force for racial healing but instead left America more racially divided than any modern president. In


Prompt: (Photos: David Bacon)OAKLAND, California – Since the Golden Arches rose above the first Southern California drive-ins, workers have labored in their shadows for the lowest legal wage a boss can pay. Other fast-food chains have mushroomed since, copying the same ideas. Pay workers the least possible. Keep them guessing from week to week how many hours they’ll get. If anyone gets upset, there are always many more people on the street, ready to step behind the counter, clean up the dirty tables or stand at the grill in the heat and smoke. Is it a surprise that many people in

those jobs came to this country to feed their hungry children or give a future to those they left behind? People will put up with a lot when they’re hungry enough. They’ll take ibuprofen to get through the shift or line up for food at the local food pantry at the end of the month, because their paychecks won’t stretch that far. All to keep that job. These days, many of those workers have heard about strikes and work stoppages. The word is out about protests asking for $15 an hour instead of the $8 minimum. So fast-food chains are finally discovering what building service contractors and garment sweatshops have known for years. They’ve “suddenly realized” their workers are immigrants, and maybe some don’t have good immigration papers. By asking for papers and firing those who can’t come up with good ones, the restaurants imagine they’ll restore the previous willingness of workers to accept the minimum, no questions asked. Is that what happened at Jack in the Box in Oakland? Did the corporate office simply decide that the time had come to give workers a good scare? And did the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency of the Department of Homeland Security help them? It wouldn’t be the first time. In each of the past five years, ICE has audited the records of more than 2,000 employers, ordering them to fire undocumented workers. The mass firings include thousands of janitors and sewing-machine operators, as well as workers in farms, factories and meatpacking plants. Now these so-called “silent raids” have arrived at fast-food joints, just in time to scare workers as they stage more walkouts and protests. The government says forcing bosses to fire workers is more humane than deporting them. Instead of mounting the kind of factory raids immigration authorities did


Prompt: So this is the year that libertarianism, a political philosophy advocating minimal government across the board and thus annoying as hell to both conservatives and liberals, finally up and died. Not really, but that’s the new official story, at least as told by media types who have been prophesying the end of libertarianism for as long as they’ve been writing. There’s a superficial plausibility to the charge, especially among those who confuse partisan politics with the real America. Among high-profile Democrats and Republicans, the constituency for more-open borders is zero and there’s nothing like Islamic terrorism in France and California

to rev up the war machine and ignite bipartisan calls for encryption backdoors or a ban on secret communications altogether. After a few years of an unintended pause, our elected officials have even managed to put aside their differences and are once again cranking up spending. But the main case that libertarianism is finally, finally, finally dead this time is the zombie walkabout that has been Rand Paul’s presidential campaign and the juggernaut that is Donald Trump’s. I think it’s a major category error to equate libertarianism with partisan politics, but for folks who believe the only important political question is who wins the presidency, the divergent fortunes of Trump and Paul tell the whole story. There’s no doubt that Paul’s presidential campaign is on life support. What started out so promisingly as an unstoppable drive to the White House got a flat tire before it even left the parking lot. In February, Paul won the presidential straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) for the third year running, cruising past Scott Walker (remember him?) and positively crushing Donald Trump by over 20 points. As recently as June, Paul was topping polls of Republican contenders! And yet just a couple of weeks ago, Paul was reduced to special pleading to even get on the main stage of the latest Republican debate. He’s now scraping by with Pataki-like numbers, even as his fellow senators, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, duke it out for what might come if and when Trump hits the skids. What happened to Rand Paul? He has run a bad campaign, especially from an ideological perspective. Conservatives have never been especially fond of libertarian-leaning Republicans to begin with and Paul seemed eager to show time and again that he wasn’t, well, that libertarian. Sure, he had


Prompt: Image copyright IWM Approximately 1.3 million Indian soldiers served in World War One, and over 74,000 of them lost their lives. But history has mostly forgotten these sacrifices, which were rewarded with broken promises of Indian independence from the British government, writes Shashi Tharoor. Exactly 100 years after the "guns of August" boomed across the European continent, the world has been extensively commemorating that seminal event. The Great War, as it was called then, was described at the time as "the war to end all wars". Ironically, the eruption of an even more destructive conflict 20 years after the end

of this one meant that it is now known as the First World War. Those who fought and died in the First World War would have had little idea that there would so soon be a Second. But while the war took the flower of Europe's youth to its premature grave, snuffing out the lives of a generation of talented poets, artists, cricketers and others whose genius bled into the trenches, it also involved soldiers from faraway lands that had little to do with Europe's bitter traditional hatreds. The role and sacrifices of Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians and South Africans have been celebrated for some time in books and novels, and even rendered immortal on celluloid in award-winning films like Gallipoli. Of the 1.3 million Indian troops who served in the conflict, however, you hear very little. Find out more Shashi Tharoor is a former minister in India's Congress party and a former UN diplomat. He is the author of a number of books on the history, culture, politics, and foreign policy of India. Delhi - Parting Words broadcasts on BBC Radio 3's The Essay: World War One Round the World on Thursday 2 July at 22:45 BST as part of a global year-long partnership between the British Council, BBC World Service and BBC Radio 3 called The War That Changed the World. You can catch up via the BBC iPlayer. As many as 74,187 Indian soldiers died during the war and a comparable number were wounded. Their stories, and their heroism, have long been omitted from popular histories of the war, or relegated to the footnotes. India contributed a number of divisions and brigades to the European, Mediterranean, Mesopotamian, North African and East African theatres of war. In Europe, Indian soldiers were among the first victims who suffered the


Prompt: Cloanto Releases Amiga Forever and C64 Forever 2012 August 26, 2011 - Cloanto released today Amiga Forever 2012 and C64 Forever 2012, the latest versions of the official Commodore/Amiga preservation, emulation and support suites for Windows. By adding powerful content authoring and integration functionality, Amiga Forever and C64 Forever 2012 close the circle between gaming, productivity and preservation of digital culture while adding new features and providing easier access to a universe of free and legal downloads. The new versions build on a powerful synergy of original components: RP9 file format, which is a compressed cross-platform archive containing media images,

configuration, description and ancillary data, developed by Cloanto RetroPlatform Player and API to interface with different emulation plugins Cloanto's unique portfolio of ROM and OS licenses The new packages can emulate the full range of 8-bit (C64, VIC 20, PET/CBM, etc.) and 16/32-bit systems (Amiga, CDTV, etc.) using an intuitive media player-like interface. The advanced RP9 authoring functionality sets new references in preserving and making accessible digital culture from the 1980s and 1990s. Content created or edited with the Windows software can be played back on other systems, including mobile devices (in part under development). The 2012 versions not only include hundreds of software enhancements, but also add content of historical interest, like new interviews with Amiga legends RJ Mical and Dave Haynie, also with HD-quality video footage. Amiga Forever 2012 is available now in three editions: Value Edition (downloadable installer for Windows systems) Plus Edition (downloadable ISO image with additional Windows and platform-neutral content) Premium Edition (physical Plus Edition content plus additional videos on 3 DVDs) C64 Forever 2012 is available now in three editions: Amiga Forever and C64 Forever passed official Windows 7 logo tests on both x86 and x64 systems. Prices for both Amiga Forever and C64 Forever start from $9.95 (special upgrade offers). Graphics Permission is granted to use the following unmodified graphics in the original context, with attribution. Premium Edition box shots Detail of new features Workbench 1.3 and 3.X AmiKit and AmigaSYS integration AROS and Walker integration Player detail Player options detail Close options detail RP9 files RP9 Title Editor RP9 Toolbox Plus Edition CD AutoRun menu Tip of the Day Workbench 3.X environment detail Workbench 1.3 environment detail KX Light boot sequence Cloanto Logo Links Amiga Forever Home Page https://www.amigaforever.com Screenshots https://www.amigaforever.com/screenshots/ Premium Edition Box Shots https://www.amigaforever.com/screenshots/box-premium/ New Features https://www.amigaforever.com/whatsnew/ Quick Instructions for


Prompt: We’ve always pictured Scandinavia as the home of grisly crime fiction, weird pop music and IKEA. But it looks like there’s a growing custom scene too. Shops like the Wrenchmonkees and Unique Custom Cycles need no introduction. But straight after last week’s Norwegian Yamaha GTS comes this radical Honda tracker from Marcus Moto Design of Sweden. It has no seat, it’s painted in a vivid Arctic White, and it’s the custom equivalent of an ice-cold shot of Aquavit. The builder is Marcus Carlsson, a 41-year-old engineer who lives just outside Stockholm. “Bikes that are unique or a bit ‘weird’ are

what get me going,” he says. “Too many custom bikes look the same nowadays.” Five years ago, Marcus caused an internet meltdown with his stunning Ducati F1 Tracker. He then started work on an Aprilia SXV 550, but killed that project after deciding he didn’t like the look of the frame. (“I move slowly on my bike builds,” he admits.) That’s fair enough—he builds his bikes in a small one-car garage, and has a full time job managing a team of 15 people for Ericsson. When his wife and 7-year-old twins are asleep at night, he sneaks into the garage to build. “I go in for a couple hours, and I basically just sleep less than them,” he says. After the hiatus with the Aprilia, Marcus found a 2006-model Honda CRF450 that lived near his family’s summerhouse, out in the country. It was a much better base for his vision of the ultimate street tracker. “Ultimate in my mind means minimal bodywork, centralized weight distribution, lightweight carbon fiber and a ‘concept motorcycle’ feel,” he says. And with a modern aluminum motocross frame and a powerful four-stroke thumper engine, the CRF fitted the bill. Marcus might work slowly, but he does everything himself—even the paint. So he welded and modified the FMF exhaust, welded on the aluminum sub frame, and made the foam bases for the new bodywork. The gas tank, belly pan and remaining body panels were then hand-shaped with carbon fiber. Various other parts were designed in the CAD program NX, before being 3D printed. The weight loss program is extreme: There’s no seat. “Every surface has been questioned,” says Marcus. “Is it needed or not? Seats are for touring bikes!” Marcus has lowered the forks for road use, but the frame and swing arm are stock: Honda motocross


Prompt: THE BREAKDOWN N.C. State 1. N.C. State 2. Ole Miss 3. William & Mary 4. Binghamton 1. N.C. State2. Ole Miss3. William & Mary4. Binghamton North Carolina State will not be a fun team to face this weekend in the Raleigh Regional. The Wolfpack finished the regular season and conference tournament with a very impressive 18-10 mark vs. RPI Top 50 teams, but were snubbed out of a national seed, with Oregon getting the nod for the No. 8 spot. N.C. State's starting rotation has been kind of a revolving door this season, but keep an eye on imposing left-handed

pitcher Carlos Rodon, who was up to 93 in the ninth inning last weekend against North Carolina, and had his usual devastating 83-85 slider working extremely well, particularly in on right-handed hitters. Left-handed pitcher Brad Stone is a tall lanky-framed guy who has shown flashes of greatness this season, making his 5.81 ERA rather deceptive, while Logan Jernigan was in the rotation last weekend and has a 1.07 ERA in 25 1/3 innings of work. Meanwhile, the strength of this team is the bullpen with quality arms such as Grant Sasser (1.18, 29 IP), Josh Easley (1.62), Andrew Woeck (2.86) and Ryan Wilkins (4.00) leading the charge. Also keep an eye on consistent closer Chris Overman, who doesn't have overpowering stuff, but is a bulldog who throws strikes. Meanwhile, from an offensive standpoint, the Wolfpack have the potential to put up some runs if they get on a roll. Third baseman Grant Clyde, who's hitting .291 with four homers and 24 RBIs has been solid lately, while shortstop Trea Turner leads the way with a .376 batting average, six homers, 40 RBIs, and of course, 24 stolen bases in 30 attempts. Bryan Adametz and Jake Fincher also are tough hitters, while imposing Tarran Senay, who's hitting .284 with six homers and 49 RBIs, has good power and is a run producer. Ole Miss As usually seems to be the case, the Rebels are a rather frustrating team this season. After losing several key cogs from last year's team at the plate, the Rebels appeared to be a team ready to move forward earlier in the season. However, they've been struggling at the plate and enter the postseason hitting .276. Catcher Stuart Tuner is a bright spot both offensively and defensively, hitting an impressive .381 with 15 doubles, five homers and


Prompt: As a little boy Lou Ferrigno put on a hearing aid every morning. Other kids teased him, which led to schoolyard fights that Ferrigno lost. For comfort he would read “The Incredible Hulk” comic book, one of his favorites. “ I felt devastated and emotionally insecure. I would just read the comics and it would give me inspiration and hope,” Ferrigno said. Ferrigno didn’t stop there. He began to lift weights and body build to gain the super strength his comic book hero had. By the age of 22, Ferrigno had won the “Mr. Universe” title twice. “The Incredible Hulk”

series went in to production in 1977 and the producers needed a muscular type for the title role that played opposite the diminutive Dr. David Banner. At first they turned to Arnold Schwarzenegger, but he wasn’t tall enough, so, the producers signed on the seasoned actor Richard Kiel, who would become most recognizable for his part of “Jaws” in James Bond movies. But, as Ferrigno explained, “He (Kiel) was too big. He didn’t have the muscles and he didn’t have the look.” Even one of the director’s sons complained that Kiel didn’t look like the Hulk from the comic book. Though shooting was well underway, the producers recast the part with the only person in Hollywood with the height and the build to play the Hulk: Lou Ferrigno. The most difficult challenges of playing the Hulk were putting on six layers of green makeup and the 16-hour work days. In one episode, a scene called for Ferrigno to flip a car with the aid of a steel cable lift, but it broke. Ferrigno, exhausted and annoyed from still being on the set at 4 a.m., was not going to wait for a new cable. Instead, he took matters in to his own hands–literally. “Do you think I am not going to turn that car over? I think I really became the Hulk,” Ferrigno said about his feat of tilting the car up off a road and pushing it down an embankment. Ferrigno was surely the right man for the part. Living a Childhood Dream Prior to being cast as The Hulk, Lou Ferrigno had no experience as an actor but he knew the character of the Hulk very well. “I got beat up a lot as a kid and I wanted to be so strong, so invincible so I could


Prompt: This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form. AMY GOODMAN: President Bush has named Solicitor General Paul Clement to serve as acting attorney general. Meanwhile, there has been much speculation about who Bush will nominate to replace Gonzales. Names mentioned in the press include Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, former Solicitor General Theodore Olsen, Homeland Security Adviser Frances Fragos Townsend, and former Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson. Jesselyn Radack joins us now from Washington, D.C. She’s a former attorney in the ethics department of the Justice Department. She worked at the Justice Department after the

September 11 attacks and dealt with the John Walker Lindh case. At the time, Michael Chertoff headed the Criminal Division of the Justice Department. Two years ago, Jesselyn Radack was a vocal critic of Chertoff’s nomination as homeland security director. Jesselyn Radack, take us through what happened with John Walker Lindh, right through Michael Chertoff’s involvement. JESSELYN RADACK: Michael Chertoff was involved from the get-go. I had been the ethics adviser at the Justice Department in the case of the so-called American Taliban, John Walker Lindh. And I had basically advised not to interrogate him without counsel. AMY GOODMAN: Explain again who John Walker Lindh was. JESSELYN RADACK: John Walker Lindh was an American citizen who was caught fighting alongside the Taliban, along with Yaser Hamdi, another U.S. citizen, who was recently released to Saudi Arabia. And we prosecuted him. He was one of the first people tagged with the dubious “enemy combatant” label by the Bush administration. AMY GOODMAN: And so, tell us what happened, and your role, and then Michael Chertoff’s. JESSELYN RADACK: Basically, the Justice Department disregarded the advice of the ethics unit not to interrogate him without a lawyer, went ahead, interrogated him and, by the pictures we’ve seen worldwide, tortured him, and then went ahead to prosecute him. Basically, Judge Ellis, who was overseeing the prosecution, ordered that all Justice Department correspondence related to the Lindh interrogation be turned over to the court. That order was concealed from me. I found out about it inadvertently from the prosecutor. And when I went to comply with the order, my emails with the advice not to interrogate him without counsel and the fact that the FBI had committed an ethics violation in doing so were missing from the file. I resurrected those emails from my computer archives


Prompt: The stage is set for another showdown in Texas over a controversial bill aimed at preventing transgender students from using restrooms according to their gender identity. On Tuesday, Gov. Greg Abbott called for a 30-day special session, partly to revive the fight over Texas' bathroom bill that critics say would sanction discrimination against transgender students. The bill, put forth by Republican legislators with a great deal of support from Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, would require individuals to use school bathrooms that accord with the gender identity assigned to them at birth. "At a minimum, we need a law that protects

the privacy of our children in our public schools," Abbott told reporters at the Capitol in Austin, according to The New York Times. The governor also called state lawmakers back to Austin to consider so-called "sunset bills," or legislation that must be passed in order to keep some state agencies afloat in terms of funding. Abbott, in an attempt to make those funding bills a priority, stated that agency-related legislation will be considered prior to the bathroom bill. Critics say the Texas bathroom bill is harmful to transgender men, women, and children. “Gov. Abbott has called a special session partly dedicated to discriminating against transgender Texans,” said JoDee Winterhof, senior vice president of policy and political affairs for the Human Rights Campaign, in a statement. "In doing so, he has caved to the demands of the fringe politicians who are using LGBTQ people as pawns to win cheap political points." Drew Anthony Smith/Getty Images News/Getty Images Chuck Smith, who heads the LGBTQ advocacy group Equality Texas, expressed a similar sentiment, telling The New York Times that if passed during the special session, the Texas bathroom bill would amount to discrimination. "This is a 100 percent political issue, and the only reason for it is to target, demonize and stigmatize transgender people," Smith said. The Texas legislation is not unlike the 2016 North Carolina bathroom law that sparked widespread backlash and a boycott that could cost up to $3.6 billion in lost business. Texas' bill, however, is more specific. It limits the bathroom restrictions to municipal and school building restrooms. Nonetheless, LGBTQ rights advocates opposing the bill say they have been heartened by the support their cause has received. “I never thought I’d see that many people show up in Texas on a topic specifically related to trans people,” Lou Weaver,


Prompt: ‘“This invention, O king,” said Theuth, “will make the Egyptians wiser and will improve their memories; for it is an elixir of memory and wisdom that I have discovered.” But Thamus replied, “Most ingenious Theuth, one man has the ability to beget arts, but the ability to judge of their usefulness or harmfulness to their users belongs to another; and now you, who are the father of letters, have been led by your affection to ascribe to them a power the opposite of that which they really possess. For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who

learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory.’ Plato, Phaedrus Socrates and the Internet It’s funny isn’t it? How a text written over two thousand years ago can be so relevant to the problems we face in modern society today. In this particular quote from Plato’s Phaedrus Socrates uses the supposed dialogue between the Egyptian Gods Theuth, the inventor of letters, and Thamus, the king of Egypt, to explain to Phaedrus the dangers of writing, and the worrying effects it could have on human wisdom. Theuth believes that through his creation of letters he has found a way to preserve and improve the memories of the Egyptians; in other words he thinks that the externalisation of conscious thoughts into the written word will provide the Egyptian people with a wisdom that extends beyond their natural capacities. However, Thamus argues that Theuth is mistaken. His new invention–this revolutionary new technology–will not help the Egyptians to become wise at all. Instead of granting them new powers of memorisation, they will delegate their memory to a technological system, and in turn will lose their natural capacity for internal memory, the foundation stone of knowledge. Their memories, and thus their wisdom, will degrade as knowledge becomes ever increasingly stored in external symbols. Now let’s fast forward 2500 years or so to 2015. Let’s imagine the invention that Theuth has created is not letters or the written word, but the internet. It’s quite startling how well the above quote still applies. In Socrates’ terms, the internet would perhaps be the single biggest system of collectivised memory loss in the whole of human history. The internet’s capacity to store human memories is limitless, and although books have been shown to improve the capacity of memory (something I will come back to in a


Prompt: Trump's alleged racism: who may cast the first stone? We need to forgive repentant historical figures like Gen. Lee August 22, 2017 Then came Peter to him, and said, "Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Until seven times?" Jesus says unto him, "I say not unto you, Until seven times, but until seventy time seven." (Matthew 18: 21-22) And the Scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, saying, "Who is this which speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins, but God alone?" But Jesus, perceiving their thoughts, he answered and said unto them, "What

reason have you in your hearts? Which is easier, to say Your sins are forgiven you; or to say, Rise up and walk? But that you may know that the Son of man has power on earth to forgive sins (he said unto him that was palsied:) I say unto you, Arise, and take up your couch, and go into your house." (Luke 5:21-24) And when he was alone, they that were about him with the twelve asked of him the parable. And he said unto them: To you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables: That seeing they may see, and not perceive, and hearing they may hear, and not understand; lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them. (Mark 4:10-12) Take heed to yourselves: If your brother sin against you, reprove him: and if he do penance, forgive him. And if he sin against you seven times in a day, and seven times in a day be converted unto thee, saying: I repent: forgive him. And the apostles said to the Lord: Increase our faith. (Luke 17:3-5) The demand also has something to do with the elitist faction's desire to suppress all thought of the venerable American view that "resistance to tyranny is obedience to God." This view led many Southerners who rejected slavery to object to interference with what they (mistakenly) believed to be the North's interference with their right of self-determination. It's a view understandably repugnant to the snarling demagogues presently intent on establishing elitist, totalitarian government in the United States. In the context of what actually happened to the Confederacy, and the people and states of which it was composed,


Prompt: (CNN) There were wild celebrations in the Zimbabwean capital Harare when Robert Mugabe bowed to the inevitable and resigned as President on Tuesday . But as Zimbabweans feted his demise, it was unclear whether they would welcome the man in line to succeed him with such enthusiasm. Until Mugabe fired him as vice president earlier this month, Emmerson Mnangagwa's entire political career had been hitched to Zimbabwe's 93-year-old former leader. But Mnangagwa has been eying the presidency and maneuvering to dethrone Mugabe for some time. Sources told CNN that he was instrumental in the military's apparent coup that led to

Mugabe's political demise. Mnangagwa is expected to be sworn in as president by Thursday, according to Simon Khaya Moyo, the spokesman for Mugabe's ZANU-PF party. 'From one tyrant to another' It is not the first time that Mnangagwa has been in line to lead Zimbabwe A core member of Mugabe's ruling circle and a combat-hardened veteran of the struggle for liberation from white-minority rule, Mnangagwa was mooted as a potential presidential successor in leaked US diplomatic cables as far back as 2000. Those cables, part of a huge cache leaked to whistleblowing website Wikileaks by US army soldier Chelsea Manning, paint a picture of a canny political operative, who has surfed the waves of Zimbabwean politics, navigating periods both in and outside of Mugabe's trusted inner circle. JUST WATCHED Robert Mugabe: What you need to know Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Robert Mugabe: What you need to know 01:58 They also hint at Mnangagwa's dark past. In late 2000, a cable written by Earl Irving , then a US diplomat in Harare, described Mnangagwa as "widely feared and despised throughout the country," warning he could be "an even more repressive leader" than Mugabe if he were to succeed him. Fear of Mnangagwa stems from his position as Mugabe's enforcer and head of the Central Intelligence Organization (CIO), or secret police, and his alleged role in the 1983-84 massacres of the Ndebele ethnic group in Matabeleland, a region in Zimbabwe's southwest that was a center of political opposition to Mugabe's regime. The International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), an international nonpartisan organization, estimate at least 20,000 civilians were killed by the CIO and the armed forces. "Most of the dead were shot in public executions, often after being forced to dig their own graves in front of their family and


Prompt: ST. PETERSBURG — Police departments usually aren't interested in drawing attention to the vehicles they use to monitor crime suspects. The goal: Be bland and blend in. That's what makes the St. Petersburg Police Department's newest surveillance truck stick out so much. It's large, lime green and has two giant eyeballs on its side underneath the ominous phrase, "We are watching …" Discreet, it is not. "Our purpose with this thing is to be very overt," said police Chief Chuck Harmon. "We want people to see it." It will start showing up around the city soon. The concept is this:

Authorities will park the armored truck in a neighborhood or crime hot spot and leave it there for up to 48 hours. It will be recording that whole time. The goal, Harmon said, will be to send a message and displace, if not eliminate, the crime in that area. The city got the truck for $1 from Brinks, Harmon said. Drawing money from the city's forfeiture fund, the agency spent about $12,000 hardening the vehicle and $18,000 to outfit it with 360 degrees of camera equipment. "The real positive for me is its visibility," Harmon said. The truck is being debuted as city leaders are grappling with another type of surveillance. The city bought 26 powerful security cameras for the Republican National Convention in August. Now they have to decide what to do with them. But despite concerns about where those cameras would go and how they would be used, city leaders seemed fine — even enthused — about using the truck as a new crime-fighting tool at a recent meeting. "I think it's a good start," said City Council member Wengay Newton. Newton and others on the council have campaigned for years to put cameras in high-crime neighborhoods where drug dealing and prostitution are blatant. People in those areas need to know authorities are watching, they said. "Privacy … is a big issue for all of us," Mayor Bill Foster said. "But I think you'd have to be a real idiot to deal your drugs in front of this thing." Harmon said recordings will be kept for about 30 days. The truck "may or may not be" manned, he said. He also left open the possibility that it could be used in other ways, either for education purposes or perhaps crowd control. The department recently tested the truck, parking


Prompt: Undoubtedly, many of the seasoned public accounting hacks out there have received some variation of the following email: From: [Bored L.A. Assurance Associate] Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2013 1:36 PM To: [Everyone at BDO, allegedly] Subject: Available Hello All, I have some free time today so if you would like for me to help out with something feel free to let me know. Thanks, [Bored L.A. Assurance Associate] In most instances, an email such as this is only sent to a few senior associates and managers. The recipients talk amongst themselves and figure out what to assign to the poor

little buggar so that (s)he can be billable for at least a few hours. Of course when you send a request to the entire firm then, to no one's surprise, assignments can come rolling in because a number of people around the country are certainly busy. In this particular case, a number of requests that were sent to the bored L.A. associate were shared back and forth between some BDO staff (an infrequent acceptable use of "reply-all") and one of the participants was kind enough to share it with us: From: [Midwest Assurance Senior Associate] Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2013 1:39 PM To: [Other Assurance Professionals] Subject: RE: Available I’m thinking [this was sent to] everyone hahah. I’m drafting an email to send him some work. [Midwest Assurance Senior Associate] Three minutes! That's a quick turnaround. Thanks, Michigan! What else is out there? From: [West Coast Assurance Senior] Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2013 1:41 PM To: [Other Assurance Professionals] Subject: RE: Available Having second thoughts. Is it a [dick thing] to send the following? Hey [Bored L.A. Assurance Associate], Thanks for volunteering! You must be a new L2? Could you stop by my client in Sunnyvale to pick up some confirms? Regards, [West Coast Assurance Senior] Not a dick thing at all! If traffic isn't bad (rare), it's only a five hour drive from L.A. to Sunnyvale. What's next? From: [Texas Senior Assurance Associate] Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2013 1:45 PM To: [Other Assurance Professionals] Subject: RE: Available Haha, I sent – Hey [Bored L.A. Assurance Associate], My client has some inventory on consignment w/ a customer in LA. We need to perform a recount of their inventory. Do you think you can take an hour or so to recount for me? We are looking at about 25 items. Thanks!


Prompt: For the past few years I have charted the trends in American education spending and performance (see below). The goal is to see what the national data suggest about the productivity of our education system over time. Clearly, these data suggest that our educational productivity has collapsed: the inflation-adjusted cost of sending a student all the way through the K-12 system has almost tripled while test scores near the end of high-school remain largely unchanged. Put another way, per-pupil spending and achievement are not obviously correlated. Not everyone is happy with these charts, and in this post I’ll respond to

the critics, starting with the most recent: Matt DiCarlo of the Albert Shanker Institute, an organization that honors the life and legacy of the late president of the American Federation of Teachers. DiCarlo finds the chart “misleading,” “exasperating,” and seemingly designed to “start a conversation by ending it.” Since we’re actually having a conversation about the chart and what it shows, and since I’ve had countless such conversations over the years, perhaps we can agree that the last of those accusations is more of a rhetorical flourish than a serious argument. DiCarlo links to a couple of earlier critics to do the heavy lifting in support of his antipathy, but he does admonish the use of a single percent-change y-axis as “not appropriate for and totally obscur[ing] changes in NAEP scale scores.” This is ironic. When I first began to publish these charts, I used two separate y-axes, as shown in the image below which dates back to around 2009. This, DiCarlo may be exasperated to hear, was roundly critized for the ostensible crime of using… 2 separate y-axes, which, apparently, is only done by knaves and charlatans according to several e-mails I received at the time. But of course the use of 2 separate y axes is not inherently misleading. It depends on why they are used, whether or not the scales are sensible, etc. But when you are trying to reach a suspicious audience, it’s not very effective to just say: “no, you’re mistaken, there’s nothing wrong with this use of 2 y-axes.” They’ll just put that down to more knavery on your part. So, thinking I would eliminate one source of spurious objections, I switched to a single percent-change axis. And now we have DiCarlo’s objection to that. Catch-22. But let’s investigate DiCarlo’s criticism. Does the percent


Prompt: Nine hundred years ago an Arab traveler, as he walked through what is today Iraq, observed: “To the right of the road to Mosul is a depression in the earth, black as if it lay under a cloud. It is there that God causes the sources of pitch, great and small, to spurt forth.” (washingtonpost.com, Oct. 21) That pitch was oil, which should be a source of wealth and prosperity to all of Mosul’s and Iraq’s residents. But the craving by U.S. imperialism for control over the ocean of oil in Iraq, which led to the overthrow of the Iraqi

government in 2003 and long years of the Pentagon’s occupation of the country, has wreaked terrible death and destruction on the Iraqi people. And nowhere is that suffering more clearly evident than in the city of Mosul. For nearly nine months, 100,000 troops from the Iraqi central government and from the Kurdish region, supported by 5,000 U.S. trainers and special troops and U.S. air power, battled the Islamic State group (IS) that had seized and occupied the city of Mosul since 2014. This “coalition” dropped 29,000 bombs on the city. The second largest city in Iraq, Mosul had a population of 1.8 million in 2003. But the 2003 U.S. invasion and occupation took a terrible toll on the city’s residents. And in the battle with IS, some 897,000 people were made homeless, with just 600,000 remaining in the city. (pri.org, July 13) During an eight-year occupation of Iraq, U.S. and British officials maintained their rule by creating and exacerbating religious and ethnic conflicts in the country. When the bulk of U.S. forces left in 2011, the imperialist-supported Iraqi government, and reactionary sectarian militias associated with it, carried out punitive measures against the resistance forces close to the former ruling Ba’ath Party, which were often majority Sunni Muslims. Thus, when IS forces invaded the country in 2013 and took control of Mosul in 2014, Mosul residents hostile to the Baghdad regime at first gave them some support. But over time the fanaticism and brutality of the IS regime caused Mosul residents to drop their support. And as the battle raged for control in the city, the population became hostages of the war between IS and the U.S-supported Iraqi government. Airwars, a group that monitors casualties caused by the anti-IS coalition, estimates that at the least nearly 6,000 civilians were killed in


Prompt: Four hours after three suicide bombers killed at least 41 people and wounded hundreds more at Istanbul’s Ataturk airport, CIA Director John Brennan said the attacks bore the grim hallmarks of ISIS and warned that the fanatically violent Islamic terrorist group wants to conduct similar large-scale attacks in the United States. “I am worried from the standpoint of an intelligence professional who looks at the capabilities of Daesh … and their determination to kill as many as people as possible and to carry out attacks abroad,” Brennan said in an exclusive interview at CIA headquarters with Yahoo News. Brennan credited

effective homeland security measures and intelligence for the fact that ISIS has been unable to attack America directly — the Orlando and San Bernardino shootings were carried out by radicals inspired by ISIS but not under its control — but he believes the group will keep trying to penetrate American defenses. “You look at what happened in the Turkish airport, these were suicide vests. It’s not that difficult to actually construct and fabricate a suicide vest … so if you have a determined enemy and individuals who are not concerned about escape, that they are going into it with a sense that they are going to die, that really does complicate your strategy in terms of preventing attacks.” He added: “I’d be surprised if Daesh is not trying to carry out that kind of attack in the United States.” Daesh is an acronym for the Arabic name of the Islamic State, better known as ISIS or ISIL. Without confirming that the airport bombings were carried out by ISIS, which as of Wednesday morning had not claimed responsibility, Brennan indicated that the method of attack — suicide bombers wearing explosives-laden vests — pointed to the Islamic extremist group rather than to Kurdish nationalists, who have been waging a campaign of violence against the Turkish state. “It was a suicide bombing [which] is usually more a Daesh technique,” Brennan said. Moreover, Brennan said that ISIS has a motive to spread its terror to Turkey, which has been targeting ISIS terrorists across the border in Syria. Until recently, Ankara’s failure to police its border with Syria was a sore point with Washington. “Turkey has been cracking down on some of the transit of foreign fighters who are flowing into, as well as out of, Turkey, and they are part of part of the


Prompt: In March of 2013, the script was flipped on the history of the chronograph. The previous belief of the chronograph’s origins was with Nicolas Rieussec, who developed the concept of a device known as a tape chronograph, which recorded time intervals with ink. Some 20 years later, in 1844, Adolphe Nicole developed the “zeroing” function, which is sort of the key to a modern chronograph. And thus, the chronograph took shape; or so everyone thought. It turns out, Louis Moinet (who’s name is still carried on by a modern day watchmaker) may have created the first chronograph in 1816, a

full five years ahead of Rieussec. What’s more, Moinet’s example had a zeroing function, and could measure time down to the 1/60th of a second – quite impressive, considering no one would touch that degree of accuracy until Heuer got it to 1/100th nearly a century later. The last 200 years have brought many iterations and advancements for the chronograph. Today, the two most common types of chronographs can be grouped into cam actuated, and column wheel – the names describe the type of mechanism that controls the chronograph’s function. Generally speaking, we don’t feel that one type is necessarily better than the other, but there are distinct differences, which we break down below. Column Wheel Chronograph The column wheel chronograph is widely thought of as the higher-end mechanism compared to alternatives. Reason being, it’s a bit more labor intensive to produce. Taking one look at the column wheel, you’ll notice the very tiny teeth (these are the columns) on one side of the wheel, making it look like the top part of a castle turret. These columns, when produced with a CNC machine, will likely end up with burring in various spots. While burrs are normal in just about any fresh CNC part, they must be smoothed out to ensure normal operation of the mechanism. Needless to say, removing burrs from in between the teeth is a tedious task. Despite the manufacturing difficulties, the column wheel has one obvious positive attribute for the wearer. The pusher action is often very smooth (this, of course, assumes we’re talking about a quality watch to begin with). Another potential positive is actually not directly related to the fact that it’s a column wheel. When a column wheel chronograph features a vertical clutch (instead of a horizontally coupled chronograph), you will notice is


Prompt: One of the world’s major terrestrial carbon pools is rapidly deteriorating as large parts of Indonesia’s peatlands are deforested and converted to oil palm and paper plantations. No longer a carbon sink, Indonesia’s peatlands are now a globally significant source of emissions. The June fires in Sumatra once again drew international attention to Indonesia’s forests. At the fires’ peak, 140,000 hectares were burnt in just one week. Most fires were in peatland, much of it on land destined to become oil palm, or Acacia plantations for the paper industry. Fire remains the instrument of choice for low-cost land-clearing. The fires

were a reminder of the unsolved problem of peatland protection in Indonesia, and of the need for urgent action against the toxic combination of plantations, fire and poor governance that is destroying one of the world’s major carbon pools. What exactly is peatland? Indonesia’s peatlands are (or were) low-lying rainforests located close to coastal areas. Under the forest lies the peat itself, a below-ground accumulation of carbon-rich decayed vegetation. Formed in swampy conditions where plant material fails to fully decay, peat can build up to a depth of 10 meters or more over thousands of years. The greenhouse significance of Indonesia’s peatlands lies in the fact they can store up to 20 times as much carbon as tropical rainforests on normal mineral soils, 90% of it below ground. Peatlands release carbon for decades after deforestation as the underlying peat decomposes or is burnt. Indonesia has by far the largest area of tropical peatland in the world: 22 million hectares. Sumatra, the Kalimantan provinces on the island of Borneo, and Papua have about a third each. Global significance of Indonesia’s peatlands Indonesia’s peatlands hold at least 57 billion tonnes (Gigatonnes or Gt) of carbon, making them a globally significant terrestrial carbon pool. The pool is comparable to the Amazonian rainforest, which holds about 86 billion tonnes. To limit the world to 2 degrees of warming, we can emit no more than 600 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases between now and 2050. Indonesia’s peatland carbon alone, if released as CO 2 in the atmosphere, is equivalent to one-third of the remaining carbon budget. What then are the chances of Indonesia losing its entire peatland carbon stock? Indonesia’s peatland in a downward spiral Indonesia became a leading raw material supplier in the timber, paper and oil palm industries in the 1970s. Deforestation and


Prompt: He's a "nice guy," she's "a wild child"; will they ever make it work?! That's the question at the core of Love, a new comedy-adjacent series from Judd Apatow and writers-slash-real married couple Paul Rust and Lesley Arfin. Aspiring writer Gus (Rust) and adrift radio producer Mickey (Gillian Jacobs) repeatedly and hesitantly weave into and out of each other's lives, as if trying to determine whether they're looking at a life raft or an anchor that'll drag them into the depths of their worst selves. Rating 2.5 It's not an uninteresting premise. The problem is that Love just takes way

too long to get to a place that makes you realize why Gus and Mickey's relationship merits its own television series. Early on, it meanders just as aimlessly as Gus and Mickey. It moves so slowly that it almost feels like watching their emotional horrorshow in real time, which sounds audacious until you consider that its first four episodes span a combined 142 minutes of screen time. If I weren't committed to watching all 10 episodes of Love for this review, I would have tapped out after the second episode — and that's a shame, because the back half of the series is so much stronger than the early episodes that it's actually shocking. So to make sense of the confusing bundle of insecurities that is Netflix's latest original series, let's get into the good, the bad, and the "wait, what?" of Love. The good: Addiction is incredibly difficult to portray. As Mickey, Gillian Jacobs digs in deep. In Love's shapeless first few episodes, Jacobs's Mickey is by far the more interesting character to watch, even if her constant cursing left me — a New Jersey native whose own mouth tends to run NC-17 — feeling exhausted by the end of the series premiere. The character is a clear proxy for Arfin, who turned her frank "Dear Diary" column for Vice into an equally frank book that discussed her heroin addiction; she's now been sober for a decade. Playing Mickey affords Jacobs the opportunity to stretch in all sorts of unflattering directions, and she rises to the occasion with obvious relish. And once Love peels back Mickey's protective layer of disdain to get to the addict underneath, she's a lot easier to understand. Addiction is tricky to portray accurately; it's even trickier to portray both accurately and comedically. Working through


Prompt: In March of 2007, former FBI agent and freelance investigator Robert Levinson traveled to the Iranian island of Kish, a resort hangout for smugglers and various dubious characters as well as tourists – and promptly vanished. For years, the US government stoutly maintained Levinson was on a private business trip, but now it turns out he was on a mission launched by a "rogue" CIA unit to gather intelligence about the "corruption" of moderate Iranian leader and former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. The Associated Press, which broke the story, has apparently known the real facts – or some version of

them – for years, along with the New York Times, which ran a similar story the day after, but held back from publishing it at Washington’s request. The ostensible reason for the embargo: the hope that Levinson, presumably being held by the Iranians, would be returned to his family. Now that doesn’t seem to be in the cards: indeed, there’s some question about whether the Iranians – who deny all knowledge of his whereabouts – are holding him, or whether he’s in Pakistan or some other part of the Middle East. Wherever he is, the real story here is Levinson’s murky "mission" and how he came to be on the CIA payroll. Our story begins with Levinson’s friendship with one Anne Jablonski, who worked for the CIA’s Illicit Finance Group: Jablonski, like Levinson, is an expert on Russian organized crime, and the two spent a lot of time together with their respective families. Jablonski eventually managed to get her friend a CIA contract dealing with various murky doings in South America, and Levinson established a relationship with the Illicit Finance Group unusual by CIA standards. Analysts, such as those in the Illicit Finance Group, and covert agents are separate: analysts don’t send out undercover agents on missions – they are supposed to simply receive information and, as their title suggests, analyze it. Not so in this case: Jablonski and her colleagues, including unit chief Tim Sampson, regularly sent Levinson out on missions to Panama, Canada, and Turkey without the knowledge of their superiors, collecting intelligence and in effect running their own mini-CIA. Instead of sending his "product" to the CIA, Levinson sent it to Jablonski’s home. As the AP reports: "The whole arrangement was so peculiar that CIA investigators conducting an internal probe would later conclude it was an effort


Prompt: One of the most frequently asked questions when it comes to tiling is - "Can you tile over existing tiles?". There are two sides to this question. Technically - it can be done but in practice it is avoided. This method of tiling depends on the condition of tiles which are already installed. Since these tiles are already worn-out and damaged by humidity or have uneven areas, the tiling over existing tiles is not advisable. There are other factors such as weight and moist absorption which can also make you re-think your plan. First - inspect the current state of

the tiles which you already have. This is important as they are going to be the foundation of your tiling. Your tiling needs to be well-sealed and bond with the base. If your current tiles are well-laid and there are no cavities between them and the base flooring you can lay the new tiles. To check for cavities you can just tap and for a search for hollow sounds. These cavities are usually caused by the lack of adhesive between the tiles and the sub-flooring but can also be a result of an earthquake or a construction site nearby. If the base is plasterboard, consider the additional weight of the two layers of tiles. Plasterboard has a maximum weight limit per square centimeter and exceeding this limit may cause structural damage. Not every type of adhesive is right for tiling over tiles. Since a tile is made to endure humidity and to absorb the least amount of water possible most adhesives won't work. When laying the tiles, bear in mind that your floor will be raised between one and three centimeters. This means that any door frames, kitchen appliances, and furniture and bathroom storage units should be fitted accordingly. You can use a door threshold to level or transition between two types of flooring. If you have to tile only half of the room it is more aesthetically pleasing to remove the old tiles first. If you have put these requirements into consideration and there are no hollow sounds you can proceed to lay the tiles. Before you do that, you should clean spotless your existing ceramic tiles. This step is very necessary and often overlooked. In fact, it is done not because it will look good but because any grease or dust will make it harder for the tile


Prompt: Anti-White Narrat ive: Slurs Slurs are names, labels, definitions, or descriptions of any segment of the diverse white American peoples that demonstrate the state of mind of the speaker as one of bullying, deception, hating, bigotry, dehumanization, or supremacy. Here are six principal themes to use in an attackback. Supremacists Attackback by charging the specific slanderer (not his or her demographic affinity group) with claiming supremacy in naming the other. The defamers are supremacists. Tell them so. Bullies Call them bullies seeking to push diverse white American youth around. It's true and it's powerful. Haters Point out that the slur

shows a hate-filled mind. Call them haters. Liars Call them liars for smothering the diversity and nationality, as well as the continental and regional origins, of those slurred. Bigots And the proponents of the anti-white narrative with its slurs are bigots. Tell them so. Dehumanizing In addition, expose them as dehumanizing with slurs that use animal, insect, plant, color, or food names, or by referring to diverse white American youth with a negative label ("non-Hispanic whites") or with a single point of color label ("whites"), always without diversity and nationality. Our all-time favorite dehumanizing hate speech was by the much-lionized critic Susan Sontag who wrote that the white race is the cancer of human history." [Partisan Review, Winter 1967, p. 57] Susan Sontag was part of the Graetz legacy. He launched a propaganda campaign of "scourging" and "flogging" the majority demographic in his home country (Germany) in 1868, as well as a parallel propaganda campaign "to shatter Christianity." WARNING: Here are some concepts not to use in an attackback. (1) Do not attack the entire demographic affinity group to which the slanderer belongs. We can't do it because we are fighting an attack on our entire demographic affinity group. (2) Do not use "rational" arguments based on logic (logic is dead in public discourse), the double standard (it's applauded by our adversaries), racism (it's been defined in a biased way), history (they twist it), fairness (not going to happen), and dictionary definitions (they distract from the state of mind of the slanderer). 3) Do not use "irrational" arguments based on being offended on the grounds that it is infantile and subjective. Attackback on objective grounds that explain that the slanderer opened his or her mind to us to determine as to whether the slanderer was lying, bigoted, a supremacist, a


Prompt: ENGLEWOOD, Colo. (AP) Von Miller is headed for a very different kind of offseason. ”For one, I already know that I’m not going to be Super Bowl MVP,” the Broncos star cracked. No, but he could still win his first Defensive Player of the Year award – if voters look past Denver’s offensive-driven nosedive that will leave them out of the postseason party for the first time since 2010. Even though he’s been stuck at 13+ sacks for three weeks, Miller has grown into a well-rounded linebacker : one who can stuff the run, cover tight ends and torment tackles

as adroitly as he can knock the ball out of the quarterback’s hand. Miller cringes at the term ”pass rusher” because it describes just one aspect of his job, which he says is to ”make plays, big plays, for my team.” ”That’s interesting that he would answer that question like that way because that tells you how much better a player he’s become,” coach Gary Kubiak said. ”Guys get a lot of accolades for sacks and numbers in this league, but really are you a complete player?” In Miller’s case, absolutely. Denver’s inept offense and poor run defense limited his chances down the stretch to have game-turning plays like he piled up earlier, including sack-strips of Andrew Luck and Blake Bortles that sealed victories and a sack of Cam Newton in the opener that was reminiscent of his spectacular Super Bowl. Miller’s 73 tackles are a career high and more than double what he collected last season (35) before embarking on a big playoff run that culminated with probably the greatest defensive performance in Super Bowl history. At midseason, Miller was just about the only player in the conversation for top defender in 2016. Going without a sack for the last three games has opened the door to others, including Khalil Mack of the Raiders (12-3), who visit the Broncos (8-7) on Sunday. Oakland coach Jack Del Rio said Miller and Mack are similar in their disruptive capabilities but ”Von’s the only guy I’ve ever seen that can look like Gumby going around a corner and an inch off the ground and still be going at full speed.” Miller also faces constant double- and even triple-teams that guys like Mack, Vic Beasley Jr. and Ryan Kerrigan don’t usually have to worry about. Sunday will mark the first time in Miller’s


Prompt: The nuclear agreement between the U.S., Iran, and other world powers cleared an important congressional hurdle in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, but don't expect former vice president Dick Cheney to be happy about it. Despite holding no elected office, former vice president Dick Cheney has emerged as one of the most visible—and hawkish—opponents of the Iran deal, delivering a blistering speech Tuesday morning alleging that the accord "will give Iran the means to launch a nuclear attack on the U.S. homeland." “I know of no nation in history that has agreed to guarantee that the means of its own destruction

will be in the hands of another nation, particularly one that is hostile," Cheney told the audience at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington, D.C. think tank, to mark the return of Congress after a summer recess. According to Cheney, the deal—which has garnered widespread support from all corners—will "facilitate and enable the Iranian regime’s support for terror and terrorist groups, including those who have attacked the United States and are threatening our security, our allies and our interests." He also claimed the deal threatens the security of "our Arab allies across the Middle East," Europe, and "the Jewish People." However, just 15 minutes into his speech, Cheney was interrupted by a young woman bearing a different message. "Dick Cheney is a war criminal. We want peace," yelled Michaela Anang, an organizer with the anti-war group CODEPINK. Holding a banner which read: "Wrong in Iraq, Wrong in Iran," Anang was swiftly escorted from the room, but not before momentarily derailing Cheney's speech—and engaging in a game of tug-of-war with an unidentified audience member, who aggressively sought to seize her cloth sign. The incident was captured in the following video footage. "Dick Cheney is a notable war criminal, has committed atrocities during his time as vice president and beyond, and is a known supporter of torture," Anang told Common Dreams following the direct action. "That is something I am not OK with, as a young person and an activist. My generation wants peace. We're tired of war, and we're tired of war mongers like Cheney." Anang was not the only person on Tuesday to question the former vice president's track record. The following video, released by the White House, is entitled, "Vice President Dick Cheney: Wrong Then, Wrong Now." SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT Help Keep Common Dreams Alive Our


Prompt: Next month, Frank Castle and Matt Murdock will battle each other for the soul of Hell’s Kitchen in Daredevil season 2, but it won’t be the first time the Man Without Fear has gone up against the Punisher. Want to know more about Daredevil and Punisher’s long history together before the show returns? Here’s a few comics you should read. Advertisement The Bully Issue: Daredevil #257 (1988) By: Ann Nocenti, John Romita Jr., Al Willamson There’s a certain formula to a Daredevil and Punisher crossover. Frank and Matt both end up tailing the same criminal, they argue whether bringing them

to trial or just murdering them instead is the right thing to do, they punch each other a bit, agree to disagree and team up, and bag the criminal in the end. “The Bully” is no different, but with some interesting twists. Advertisement This story is curious because of its shifting perspectives—it’s actually a retelling of a story told in The Punisher #10, released the same month as Daredevil #257, except from the perspective of Daredevil and the criminal he and Punisher are both on the hunt for, Alfred Coppersmith. In a move that’s tonally perfect for the characters, each issue paints Coppersmith in a different light based on each vigilante’s worldview. In Punisher #10, Coppersmith is a simple, villainous entity—a murderer and threat that has to be eliminated, like so many of Frank’s foes. But in Daredevil, Nocenti has Matt investigate why Coppersmith turned to crime, revealing a picture of a man angry at an evolving world around him, and making him a more sympathetic figure who deserves the right to a day in court. When Daredevil and Punisher inevitably come to blows, we get to see it from Coppersmith’s perspective, his own internal monologue painting Matt and Frank, and their strange relationship with each other, in a different light. Advertisement Daredevil vs. Punisher: Means & Ends Issues: Daredevil vs. Punisher #1-6, 2005/2006 By: David Lapham, Studio F, Chris Eliopoulos The Punisher wants to fight crime through murder; Daredevil wants to fight it through the court of law. These diametric opposites sit at the heart of virtually every tale about the two characters. It’s a debate between the morality and ethics of heroism and vigilantism. Means & Ends doesn’t particularly offer anything fresh on that age-old clash between Punisher and Daredevil, but Lapham (best known for his excellent crime-focused


Prompt: A federal grand jury in Texas returned a two-count indictment for wire fraud against Charles Banks, a financial adviser who is alleged to have mishandled more than $20 million in investments of his ex-client, retired San Antonio Spurs All-Star Tim Duncan. The indictment was unsealed Friday in a San Antonio courtroom, where Banks surrendered himself and was led into the courtroom in handcuffs. Banks surrendered his passport and a $1 million bond was issued for his release pending trial. He is facing a potential maximum sentence of 25 years in federal detainment. Scroll to continue with content Ad “I originally

filed my lawsuits against Charles Banks to stop him from doing to others what he had done to me and my family,” Duncan said in a release through his attorneys. “The U.S. Department of Justice has just taken a big step in exposing and stopping his illegal activities. I thank the U.S. Attorney’s office and the FBI for working tirelessly to bring Banks to justice.” In a lawsuit filed in 2015, Duncan, a five-time NBA champion, alleged that Banks steered him toward multiple investments in hotels, wineries and beauty products despite not revealing his own financial conflicts of interests in the businesses. Court records and documents show that Banks had ownership stakes or financial interests in the investments. Tim Duncan accused Banks of defrauding him on a $7.5 million loan. (Getty) Duncan accused Banks of defrauding him on a $7.5 million loan to Gameday, a company that Banks maintained control over. Gameday also received a bank loan with what Duncan says he believed was his signature on a document that would get him $1.5 million in cash back and lower his guarantee exposure. Banks is alleged to have used that signature to increase Duncan’s guarantee exposure to $13.5 million at Comerica Bank instead of $6 million. Story continues Duncan earned over $240 million in salary in his 19-year NBA career. Banks has also been tied to Minnesota Timberwolves All-Star Kevin Garnett through his financial advice. “We are gratified that the United States Attorney and the FBI discovered Banks’ criminal conduct on the Gameday issue and concluded that Banks, beyond a reasonable doubt, unlawfully extracted money to fund his lavish lifestyle at the expense of Tim Duncan and his family. We thank them for working to discover and expose Banks’ misconduct,” Duncan’s attorneys, Tullos Wells and Michael Bernard, said in a


Prompt: Sorry, St. Louis! But the Rams are moving back to Los Angeles for the start of the 2016 football season. So you'd think that the official website for the team will change from www.stlouisrams.com to www.losangelesrams.com, right? Not so fast. The losangelesrams.com domain is already registered ... to an owner of a used car dealership and storage facility in Rapid City, South Dakota. Is he about to cash in if the NFL wants the domain name? Brian Busch, who owns Anytime Auto Sales and Storage, told me he didn't claim the name with visions of getting a big payout. He

wasn't doing what's known as cybersquatting -- holding a domain name hostage. Busch said he first registered the domain way back in 1997 -- two years after the Rams first moved to St. Louis from LA. He said he's probably spent about $1,000 to $2,000 over the past 19 years to keep the domain for this long. And according to the ICANN domain registration database, Busch has the rights to the website address locked up until January 2024. Related: How the Rams owner beat the NFL old guard to move back to LA Busch said it was never his intention to make money from the domain name. After all, the likelihood of the Rams returning to Hollywood didn't really pick up steam until Rams owner Stanley Kroenke bought 60 acres of land in Inglewood, California in 2014. "I'm a lifelong Rams fan. I bought it in order to set up a tribute site," Busch said. "I have a signed Roman Gabriel jersey in my office." (Gabriel was a quarterback for the Rams from 1962 through 1972 and won the NFL MVP award in 1969.) Busch, 54, is a South Dakota native. But he said he decided to be a Rams fan in the 1970s because all his friends rooted for the Minnesota Vikings -- the closest NFL team to Rapid City. He wanted to be different. "Many people in South Dakota are Vikings fans. I didn't want to be a Vikings fan," Busch said. "The Rams often played the Vikings in the playoffs. I loved their old helmet with the white horns. They looked cool." Busch never wound up developing the website as an homage to those great 1970s teams as planned. It's currently just a parked Web page being hosted by domain registry GoDaddy. "I got busy with life,


Prompt: Kieran Moore – I’m going to start this week’s top 10 rundown with a bold statement: I think that Fraggle Rock might actually be my favorite Henson TV show of all-time. I genuinely think that this show just edges it over The Muppet Show for me. Perhaps it’s the fact that I was 5 when it first aired here in the UK so I was the right age for it, perhaps it’s the fact that it’s totally awesome, who knows? So when I was deciding which Muppet performer to feature this week it occurred to me that I’d been a

bit Sesame Street heavy over the last few weeks and I decided it was time to feature my favorite show. As a kid I always latched on to the artistic, soulful or smart character in whatever show I watched (I guess that’s how I saw myself) so naturally my favorite character was Mokey and as it’s my chart and I get to pick, Kathryn Mullen seemed like the obvious choice to feature this week. I also want to give a brief shout out to my second favorite Kathryn Mullen character, Gaffer from The Muppet Show (I once almost owned a ginger cat with an eye patch, but that’s another story!) As it happens this whole chart is comprised of Fraggle Rock songs, though it wasn’t on purpose, so without further ado let’s “Dance our cares away” and get on with the countdown! 10. Kick a Stone – Mokey While Mokey is the queen of the soulful ballad (more on that later) this song has a gentle lilting guitar riff that sets it apart. Kathryn’s breathy tones at the start of the song are perfect. I wish this song was longer, it’s got a great lazy day vibe going on that you just get into when it suddenly ends. It does also lose a few points for using the cliché rhyme “change” and “rearrange.” If I had a penny for every song that features that particular couplet I wouldn’t be here right now… 9. The Joy – Mokey This is Mokey on familiar territory, singing her thoughts about the world and her place within it. This is a beautiful song, once again cut brutally short. I guess that’s the peril of having to fit several songs into such a short running time each week. Kathryn is doing what she does best


Prompt: There was dismay this week in the 8 Out of 10 Cats writing room. Usually, when a bunch of TV writers express genuine, heartfelt horror it's because a runner has presented them with a plate of the wrong flavour muffins. But this time it was about something serious, or almost as serious: the jailing of Matthew Woods. Nineteen years old, and doing three months for making "grossly offensive" comments about an abducted child. On his own Facebook page. As you might imagine, seeing someone getting a custodial sentence for making jokes, however disgusting and unimaginative they are, didn't exactly play

well among people whose job it is to make jokes. As my fellow writer on 10 O'Clock Live, Alan Connor, put it: "If we've really criminalised attempts to gross out your peers with horrible jokes, then every comedy writer in the UK is, for better or worse, going to be in prison before they take their second sip of coffee tomorrow morning." Everyone I spoke to about Matthew Woods and his beery late-night Facebook posts asked versions of the same question: since when did making sick jokes become a crime? "It seems uncomfortably like an obscenity conviction," said the comic Frankie Boyle. "Millions of horrendous things are said on Twitter every day, how do you police it? Perhaps a better idea would be to police things like direct threats of violence." In this case, the only actual threats of violence were directed at Woods. As Charlie Brooker said, "Presumably Matthew Woods learned a powerful lesson about the potential consequences of tasteless humour when a 50-strong mob turned up at his house and the police had to arrest him for his own safety. Jailing him on top of that is insane. Sick jokes can upset and offend. Hurriedly formed vigilante mobs can kill. If the state earnestly believes that the former pose a greater threat to social order than the latter, the state is nuts." The scariest thing about this nutty judgment is its mob logic. The court deemed Woods's jokes a crime under section 127 of the Communications Act 2003, which outlaws "grossly offensive" messages. The chairman of the bench at Chorley magistrates court, Bill Hudson, explained why this resulted in a custodial sentence: "The reason for the sentence is the seriousness of the offence, the public outrage that has been caused." In other words, the "public outrage" is evidence


Prompt: Lou Dobbs appears on Fox's "Out Numbered" A Fox News panel on Wednesday agreed that women needed to take “personal responsibility” for avoiding rape by not drinking too much. During an interview with WAMU’s Diane Rehm Show last week, former George Washington University President Stephen Joel Trachtenberg argued that women should be “trained not to drink in excess” so they could “be in a position to punch the guys in the nose if they misbehave.” Trachtenberg later insisted that he was not “trying to shift blame” to the victim. On Thursday’s edition of Outnumbered, Fox News host Jedediah Bila asked

guest host Lou Dobbs if there was anything controversial about what Trachtenberg had said. “I don’t think so,” Dobbs said. “As a father of two sons, two daughters, I will tell you, the last thing you want is any child — a boy, a girl, it doesn’t matter — to be defenseless. And if you don’t teach your kids and pray that they learn to never, ever take on additional vulnerability to everyday life in this society, why should there be anything controversial about it?” “Losing control of oneself, exposing oneself and creating tremendous vulnerability is, to me, a disastrous choice for anyone to make,” he added. Co-host Harris Faulkner agreed that “personal responsibility” was “very important in all of this.” “No one is blaming the woman,” she explained. “It’s not like back in the day when they would blame us for what we had on. I don’t really see it that way. But I think if you’re going to watch out for a predator, you want to be able to do it in a sober eyes-wide-open manner. And you can’t do that if you’ve been drinking.” “To put yourself in a vulnerable position, and to be drinking on top of that, it’s the opposite of good sense.” At that point, co-host Liz Claman reminded the panel that the discussion had left out the man’s role in preventing rape. “This professor left out two words: also guys,” she noted. “Guys shouldn’t be drinking so much that they lose control or their ability to focus… You don’t manage your message through gender, that’s the stupidest thing in the world. Guys lose control too.” Co-host Andrea Tantaros recalled that her college “put all the guys in some kind of box, already guilty.” “You see a lot of girls getting assaulted and raped


Prompt: Crews are working to clear fallen trees and downed power lines in the city and suburbs after heavy storms swept through the area. The National Weather Service confirmed a tornado touched down in Lake County. funnel cloud was spotted around 9 p.m. Sunday in Grayslake. NWS said a preliminary survey finds that the EF-1 tornado was on the ground for 7.5 miles. The tornado's track began in Round Lake, continued through Hainesville and Grayslake, and ended in Wildwood. Winds of between 90 to 100 mph were recorded. The maximum width of the tornado's track was around 300 yards.This was the

first tornado to hit Lake County since 2002."All of a sudden whish, whish. Then everybody hit the floor," Johnny Scott said.Several roofs were damaged, including that of Grayslake Central High School, where the dugout was blown across the street and field equipment was tossed around. Part of the school's roof landed in the choir teacher's front yard."As you can see, our wonderful tree caught it," Jenny White said. "So I want to keep this tree. I love this tree. I hope we can save it. It saved us."No one was injured in Grayslake, but there was property damage."Everybody was concerned that the tree would fall into the house. But God was merciful, and you saw all the branches that did break," Loretha Scott said. Next door, Jeffrey Goldsmith's vehicles were damaged."Three or four vehicles were dented and wiped out a bunch of trees torn off, thrown over here," Goldsmith said. "It's just terrible."Stuff was flying in the air. A car was very shaken, very badly, trying to hold on to that thing. Barricades from construction were flying in the air. And no sooner had it started than it stopped," Sgt. Scott Heimus, Grayslake Police Department, said."By the time everything was over, I came out, and the tree that was two feet from the sunroom was totally uprooted," Theresa Talbert, resident, said.The storms cut a four to five mile path of destruction and damaged about half a dozen buildings from Round Lake to Wildwood."We've had sirens go off many times before. And you never think it's going to be as bad as it is. This is terrible," Alison Dalton said.A new skate park was also tossed around, landing near the swimming pool across the street."I thought these were really planted in the ground, but apparently they're not. It must have been


Prompt: Mattel Hover Board prepped for 2012 holiday release Before you have a heart attack over the undeniable excellence that would be a real live hovering Hover Board from Back to the Future: Part II, note that this one doesn’t QUITE float yet. Instead we get an assurance that this Hover Board does not work on water and that the price for this 1:1 replica will indeed be produced by Mattel and will be released in a “minimum orders required” fashion. This means that because the creation of this item is so costly to Mattel, they’re requiring that a minimum number

of pre-orders be placed before they go into production. This Hover Board, for those of you unaware, first appeared in the science fiction comedy action movie Back to the Future: Part II with Michael J Fox and Christopher Lloyd. In that movie it was a push-scooter-like toy which, once the character Marty McFly popped the bar off, became the greatest hovering skateboard in this history of future visions. This release will “glide” over most surfaces, and will be “movie accurate” but will not float over the ground like the film quite yet — Mattel has noted that it’s not quite 2015 yet, of course. Mattel’s press release reads like this: Back to the Future Hover Board: Finally! This totally awesome 1:1 replica of the hover board from the BTTF 2 and BTTF 3 films includes multiple whooshing sounds and will glide over most surfaces (does not actually “hover” – check back in 2015 for that feature). We’ll be taking orders for it March 1 – March 20, 2012, and the final product will be shipped around November/December 2012. Because this is such a high-cost item, there will be a minimum number of orders required to go into production. If we don’t receive the minimum orders, won’t go into production and customers will not be charged. The price will be announced later this month. (Note: Hover board does not work on water.) There are a couple of images released for this beast already, both showing off the spot where the front handle was ripped out by Marty in the movie – so we’re looking at quat might be the closest thing to the real deal thus far. You can see a poster from Toy Fair 2012 photographed by ToyArk in the gallery below with a small image of the bottom of


Prompt: Here are some Larry King statistics: • Larry King has had a talk show on CNN for 73 years now. • Larry King owns 4700 pairs of suspenders. • Larry King doesn’t look good in any of them. • Larry King has been married 56 times. • Larry King’s real name is Saul Rabinowitz. • Larry King is 206 years old. • Larry King has fielded thousands of phone calls from wackos over the years. I am one of those wackos. *** One night in the mid-80s, I was sitting on my ratty couch in my one-bedroom apartment in Peoria,

Illinois. I had smoked a lot of pot and drank a bunch of beer and Larry King was on the television with the sound muted. My stereo was blaring “Won’t Get Fooled Again” by the Who. I remember feeling great pity for poor Pete Townshend. Someone had fooled him and I wondered who would do such a mean thing to that big-beaked guitarist. While pondering this thought, I absent-mindedly glanced at my 14-inch Panasonic color television set with real plastic wood-grain on the sides, and I saw that Larry’s guest for the evening was Jay Leno. Now this was way before Leno became the host of The Tonight Show. This is back when he used to do bits on the David Letterman’s show when Letterman was on NBC. I thought he was pretty funny back then and so I turned the Who off and turned up the volume. Larry King was speaking. “Our guest tonight is funnyman Jay Leno. If you have a question for Jay call the number below,” Larry croaked out in that old-man, froggy voice of his. As I looked at the number at the bottom of the screen, all of the sudden I had a desperate urge to call the show, so I scribbled it on a well-worn one-dollar bill that I yanked from my pocket, as a tampon commercial came on the air. Brenda Vaccaro’s deep mannish voice extolled the wonders of Playtex tampons, and I tried to think of a good question for Jay Leno. Marijuana can cause unusual focus in obsessive moments, and this was one of those moments. I wanted to ask Jay Leno a question and I wanted it to be funny. I wanted to make Jay and Larry laugh. I had to make Jay and Larry laugh. This was more


Prompt: Most Haunted is a British paranormal reality television series. It was first shown on Living TV between May 2002 and July 2010. A new online edition aired on 31 October 2013 with Really taking over broadcast from August 2014. Presented by Yvette Fielding, the programme investigates purported paranormal activity in a range of locations, mainly within the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. The series is produced by Antix Productions. Most Haunted was first aired on Living TV from May 2002 until July 2010, when the network decided to axe the programme. After 4 years of being off-air, Fielding

and Karl Beattie, the producer of the programme, confirmed that following a successful online episode, Most Haunted would be returning to screens in August 2014, aired by Really. Over 250 episodes of the programme have been broadcast to date, with the 24th series airing in early 2019.[3] Cancellation and revival [ edit ] On 12 August 2011, it was announced that Sky Living had officially axed Most Haunted and had returned the rights to the show to Yvette Fielding and Karl Beattie. In 2012, it was revealed that Antix Productions partnered with Lionsgate to redevelop Most Haunted.[4] As of July 2013, Karl Beattie had recently begun scouting new locations for a new series of Most Haunted.[citation needed] In April 2014 Yvette Fielding confirmed in an interview with Channel 4's Sunday Brunch that Most Haunted would be returning to television in late 2014; this was later confirmed on 4 June 2014. It was later confirmed that Really would be the new home of Most Haunted. Production [ edit ] The Most Haunted team have travelled in the United Kingdom but also Ireland, the Netherlands, Romania, the United States, Italy, and Czech Republic, investigating paranormal activity for 24 hours at a time. Photography [ edit ] The photographic style of the series has changed considerably since series 1. In the first series many elaborate shots were set up with an almost "theatrical" style, with illuminated windows and dry ice. Locations were often illuminated outside at night time, with blue and green colours. There was a high emphasis on quality production. From series 1–3 there was extensive use of the steadicam, which provided gliding shots during Yvette's ghostly tales or for general views. In series 8 the team introduced a camera crane or 'jib' system for elaborate aerial shots of both Yvette and


Prompt: Chair's comments Stephen Metcalfe MP, Chair of the Science and Technology Committee, said: "We agreed our committee report on the same day that the Prime Minister triggered Article 50. Brexit will present opportunities and risks for our economy and for the science and innovation that supports it. A regulatory regime that is well-crafted and tuned to our post-Brexit international research and trading relationships—both with Europe and globally—will be essential. The Government has an opportunity to do more to strengthen the links between the industrial strategy and Brexit as the Exit negotiations now get under way. That will be vitally important

for keeping the Government's industrial strategy relevant and hooked-up to the opportunities presented by the evolving Brexit negotiations." EU researchers working and studying in the UK The Committee also repeat their call for the Government to give a firm commitment to EU researchers working and studying in the UK that they will continue to have a secure position here post-Brexit. The Government told the Committee previously that it could not give such a unilateral commitment but that a reciprocal deal on this was a high priority, and the Prime Minister repeated that position in her Article 50 statement on 29 March. Government's Autumn Statement pledge The Committee welcomes the Government's Autumn Statement pledge of an additional £2 billion a year of science and research funding which, the Committee says, will be a valuable contribution to maintaining the country's world-leading science status and help maintain the UK as an attractive location for research. Stephen Metcalfe MP, Chair of the Science and Technology Committee, said: "The Government has significantly increased science funding, which will put us in a better position post-Brexit to attract skilled researchers and collaborative science projects. I want the Government to see that as an initial investment towards meeting a target—for the UK to be spending 3% of GDP on R&D—that our Committee has repeatedly pushed for." "While it is too soon to know whether Brexit will end up bringing less or more inward science investment to the UK in the long-term, the Government should be ready to make good any net shortfall in the short-term with further funding for science." STEM skills The Committee also calls for the Government to complement its raft of initiatives to increase STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) skills, including the new further education T' level, by scaling-up existing local STEM-promoting initiatives. Further


Prompt: A clown urges passersby to sign a petition calling for the retirement of Ronald McDonald as a mascot for the fast-food chain. The demonstrators, organized by Corporate Accountability International, claim McDonald's uses the corporate mascot to market unhealthy, fatty foods to children. UPI/Brian Kersey | License Photo HYATTSVILLE, Md., July 23 (UPI) -- Nearly a third of American children and adolescents aged 8 to 15 years misperceive their weight, according to a new CDC study. The majority of that 30 percent chunk are obese and overweight children who don't see their weight as an issue. The study, conducted and published

by researchers at CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, found that 76 percent of overweight boys and girls believe they are "about the right weight," while about 42 percent of obese kids consider themselves about right. Although new evidence suggests obesity rates among kids has leveled off in recent years, the problem is still prevalent and the health risks more and more apparent. "I am seeing people younger and younger coming into my office with osteoarthritis from weight," explained Dr. Daniel Neides, director of medicine at the Wellness Institute at the Cleveland Clinic. "We weren't learning about kids with these problems when I was in medical school." RELATED Somali member of Parliament and folk singer assassinated The CDC study found minority children and those from poorer backgrounds -- demographic groups with higher rates of adult obesity -- were more likely to misjudge their weight. The evidence suggests kids with obese parents may be more likely to misperceive their own weight issues. "As our country gets heavier, children don't necessarily see it as abnormal," Neides, who was not involved with the CDC study, told TIME. Neda Sarafrazi, a nutritional epidemiologist with NCHS and the report's lead author, told NPR that a child's proper perception of his or her weight is important for inspiring behavioral changes -- like eating healthier and getting more exercise. "Children who don't have a correct perception of their weight don't take steps to lose weight," she said. But Marlene Schwartz, a psychologist and director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity at Yale University, warns against the dangers of labeling. "Shame is a terrible motivator," she said. Schwartz thinks education and encouragement are more effective at inspiring healthy change than ensuring kids' weight issues are properly categorized and labeled. RELATED New Harris tactical radios for