Prompt: We’ve all heard about the gender gap in tech. Women simply aren’t thriving in one of the most promising fields in the United States — and not for lack of talent. And here’s the truth: It’s not solely a problem for women. It’s a problem for men, too. In just five years, there will be a million unfilled computer science–related jobs in the United States, which according to our calculations could amount to a $500 billion opportunity cost. Tech companies are producing jobs three times faster than the U.S. is producing computer scientists. There are incredible opportunities here. We need

women to help fill these jobs, and we need them now. The reasons why women and people of color are not pursuing computer science jobs are complicated. I’ve thought a lot about this over the past 16 months, as I’ve directed my documentary on the subject, Code: Debugging the Gender Gap, and I believe there are four main reasons women don’t thrive in tech. Here they are: 1. Culture First and foremost, this is a culture problem. The stereotype of a software engineer is a 25-year-old, hoodie-clad dude who wears glasses, is antisocial, and loves to hack strings of code in the basement of his parents’ home, eating stale pizza and drinking Red Bull until 3 or 4am. As with all stereotypes, there’s some truth here, and it’s not the most aspirational image for a young woman. Old movies like War Games contributed to the stereotype, while the image of the male geek genius is perpetuated in modern pop culture with television shows such as HBO’s Silicon Valley and The Big Bang Theory. 2. Few role models Which leads me to another huge reason we have a gender imbalance: Tech is basically devoid of female role models. The old adage “You cannot be what you cannot see” is true here. Young girls and people of color have very few modern-day role models in tech. Megan Smith is the Chief Technology Officer of the United States, but she’s hardly a household name. We need more modern-day female role models, many more. 3. Poor pipeline At most universities, few women make it past the 101, entry-level computer science class that should welcome all students, regardless of their prior knowledge of the subject. Instead, women entering this first-year class too often suffer from negative ambient belonging. From the first day there, they perceive


Prompt: John Tyndall FRS (; 2 August 1820 – 4 December 1893) was a prominent 19th-century Irish physicist. His initial scientific fame arose in the 1850s from his study of diamagnetism. Later he made discoveries in the realms of infrared radiation and the physical properties of air. Tyndall also published more than a dozen science books which brought state-of-the-art 19th century experimental physics to a wide audience. From 1853 to 1887 he was professor of physics at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in London. Early years and education [ edit ] Tyndall was born in Leighlinbridge, County Carlow, Ireland. His

father was a local police constable, descended from Gloucestershire emigrants who settled in southeast Ireland around 1670. Tyndall attended the local schools (Ballinabranna Primary School) in County Carlow until his late teens, and was probably an assistant teacher near the end of his time there. Subjects learned at school notably included technical drawing and mathematics with some applications of those subjects to land surveying. He was hired as a draftsman by the Ordnance Survey of Ireland in his late teens in 1839, and moved to work for the Ordnance Survey for Great Britain in 1842. In the decade of the 1840s, a railroad-building boom was in progress, and Tyndall's land surveying experience was valuable and in demand by the railway companies. Between 1844 and 1847, he was lucratively employed in railway construction planning.[1][2] John Tyndall circa 1850 In 1847 Tyndall opted to become a mathematics and surveying teacher at (Queenwood College), a boarding school in Hampshire. Recalling this decision later, he wrote: "the desire to grow intellectually did not forsake me; and, when railway work slackened, I accepted in 1847 a post as master in Queenwood College."[3] Another recently arrived young teacher at Queenwood was Edward Frankland, who had previously worked as a chemical laboratory assistant for the British Geological Survey. Frankland and Tyndall became good friends. On the strength of Frankland's prior knowledge, they decided to go to Germany to further their education in science. Among other things, Frankland knew that certain German universities were ahead of any in Britain in experimental chemistry and physics. (British universities were still focused on classics and mathematics and not laboratory science.) The pair moved to Germany in summer 1848 and enrolled at the University of Marburg, attracted by the reputation of Robert Bunsen as a teacher. Tyndall studied under Bunsen for two


Prompt: Director: Kazuhiko Yamaguchi Writer: Kazumasa Hirai, Fumio Konami Cast: Sonny Chiba, Rikiya Yasuoka, Saburo Date, Koji Fujiyama, Tooru Hanada, Ryuji Hayami, Jiro Ibuki, Harukui Jo, Kenji Kawai, Hiroshi Kondo, Koji Miemachi, Etsuko Nami, Yoshio Neshima Running Time: 86 min. By Kyle Warner There are two types of film fans in the world; those who learn of Sonny Chiba’s 1975 werewolf action movie Wolf Guy with a “Huh?” and those who almost immediately plunk down $20 so that they can watch the newly unearthed gem. I belong to the latter group. As a fan of Japanese cinema with something of a

soft spot for Sonny Chiba’s hissing karate master persona, the idea of him sorting out justice as a well-armed werewolf is basically irresistible. I went into the movie expecting something weird. And even so, I was unprepared for the level of weird that I got. Wolf Guy is that rare sort of movie that can make a sober man feel drunk. The plot operates with a devil-may-care sense of abandon, the camera sees the world at tilted angles, visions of superimposed murder cats come spiraling out of the gloom, ninja cops leap out of the walls… the viewer is left dazed and confused. In Wolf Guy, Sonny Chiba is a wolf man named Akira. He doesn’t look like a wolf man, never transforms or dons special makeup, and only occasionally shows animalistic traits (landing on all fours in a fight, for example), but trust me: he’s a wolf man. I know this only because the film’s characters keep reminding us of the fact. No one seems particularly surprised to be sharing the earth with a werewolf, though. Akira’s wolf man lineage is so easily accepted that I thought I’d missed something. Strengthened by a full moon but otherwise no different in appearance from any other Sonny Chiba hero, the titular Wolf Guy is more like a superhero vigilante than the typical werewolf from myth and lore. (The film’s full title is Wolf Guy: Enraged Lycanthrope. Simply knowing the term ‘lycanthrope’ is about as close as the film comes to embracing werewolf mythology.) More interesting than the wolf guy is the phantom tiger. At the start of the film, a rock star played by Rikiya Yasuoka (Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter) stumbles into traffic screaming about a tiger that means to kill him. “Miki turned into a tiger!” Sonny Chiba’s sleuth


Prompt: Ahh, Monday morning. The weekend is over, the bus to work is packed, and – if you’re like many people I know – you’re stoked on dreading the next 5 days ahead. I remember waking up Monday mornings with a pit in my stomach, always feeling anxious about the week to come. Truly, I had nothing to fear and there were never any situations during the week that I was unable to tackle, but for some reason, Monday mornings (actually, usually beginning Sunday afternoons) were a time a fear. One of the greatest things I’ve learned is how your morning

actions set the tone for the rest of your day. By putting the following steps into practice, I was able to change my daily mindset, feeling much more confident as I walked into the office Monday morning, and every day after that! The magical tip? Set your GPS daily! What does this mean? Peta Kelly, a woman I respect tremendously (check her out at at Life by my Own Design…she’s brilliant), explains it like this: you are all dressed up and ready for an amazing party. You have on your sexiest outfit, a bottle of the most delicious champagne, and are ready for the night ahead. You get in your car, set your GPS to the party location, and arrive there on time, excited for the night ahead. Now imagine the opposite situation: you are all ready to go, still in your drop-dead outfit, carrying that bottle of champagne, but you get in your car and don’t set your GPS. You’ve never been to the party before, and without knowing the location of the party (or being guided by your GPS), you end up spending your night driving around in circles, never making it to the party, and missing out on all the fun. Sounds like a waste of a night, right? Although this example is fairly basic, I love how simply it explains the following idea: without having an intention of where you want to go in your life, you’ll never make it there. It takes a daily practice of connecting to your goals in order to reach the destination you are aiming for! Using Peta’s techniques, I began setting my daily GPS. Every morning as I drink my big cup of tea, I spend 10 minutes outlining my GPS and reflecting on it. Even if I’m feeling lazy


Prompt: Next Chapter > In terms of car-related shops, I’ve yet to experience anything quite like Canepa. Then again, the word ‘shop’ doesn’t even begin to describe this enormous facility tucked away in scenic Scotts Valley, California. It’s part restoration garage, part race car maintenance facility, part showroom and part museum. In terms of privately owned temples of motoring, it’s surely one of the greatest in the world. I’m not sure if there’s any other single place with as much general ‘car guy’ appeal as Canepa. Touring the facility is an exercise in getting up and close with some of the

world’s absolute greatest (and rarest) cars. If you can’t find at least a few cars to lust over at this place, there just may be something wrong with you. But what’s just as important is that you don’t need some sort of exclusive access to see all of this stuff. While the shop houses some of the world’s most sought-after and historic cars, Canepa welcomes automobile lovers of all types to come out and be inspired. In fact, not long ago it started an event called Canepa Cars & Coffee – a monthly gathering where car enthusiasts gather on a Saturday morning for a relaxed car meet, just as you find in cities all across the USA. But what really sets Canepa’s version of Cars & Coffee apart is that in addition to the parking lot gathering, the entire facility is also opened up for viewing. Last month I was actually spending some time in nearby Santa Cruz, when I found out I’d be around for Canepa Cars & Coffee. It was no-brainer to take the short ride up Highway 17 to see what was going on. First off I was interested to see what sort of cars would show up to the meet, and second – well you don’t really need any reason to visit Canepa. The place is just that good. When I arrived I wasn’t surprised to find that the turnout was much smaller than what you find at Irvine’s ‘original’ Cars & Coffee event. After all, Canepa is located in a quieter, and much more isolated part of California. But that doesn’t mean there weren’t some great cars to check out in the parking lot. Just as you find at the larger C&C gatherings, there was a wide variety of machinery that turned out. From classic


Prompt: Analytics for the Business On July 5, Microsoft announced that Workplace Analytics is now available as an add-on for any Office 365 enterprise plan. The post says: “Workplace Analytics provides unprecedented behavioral insights that can be used to improve productivity, workforce effectiveness and employee engagement.” Sounds good, but let’s be clear. Workplace Analytics is not something like Teams or Groups that an organization can deploy reasonably simply. This is a full-blown organizational analytics package that companies usually need some consulting support to plan and deploy and then make sense of the data. Two Analytics in Office 365 Office 365 boasts

two analytics applications. The first, launched initially as “Delve Analytics” and now called MyAnalytics, delivers a personal dashboard to help users understand how they spend their working life (Figure 1). The intention is that people reflect on how much time they spent processing email, in meetings, or outside normal working hours and readjust what they do to become more effective, in whatever way you define that term. For some, being more effective means achieving a better work-life balance. For others, it means realizing just how much time corporate meetings soak from their schedule and then dropping some meetings or reducing the time assigned to others. And for people like me who are email junkies, it might mean a more sensible cadence to the working day with specific periods set aside to process new messages. I like MyAnalytics a lot, especially now that the development team has refocused their efforts to deliver more personal insights through the MyAnalytics Outlook add-in. Where this add-on used to focus on reporting how quickly recipients read email, now it looks for potential issues like conflicting meetings or unanswered email and flags them to the user. Of course, it is entirely up to you whether you take any note of this advice. MyAnalytics is available to anyone with an Office 365 E5 license or those who buy a monthly add-on. Not all organizations will welcome this kind of technology. But those who deploy and use it effectively can gain great benefit by taking simple steps like removing redundant meetings by forcing schedulers to consider whether they still need these gatherings. Or, even better, by reducing the default time assigned to meetings from 1 hour to 30 minutes. Data Drives Analytics You cannot analyze much without good data. Both MyAnalytics and Workplace Analytics draw from the same


Prompt: “If there’s an afterlife, is my place taken? Is heaven full of people who would call me an imposter?” — Simon Jarrett, upon realizing that he is a digitized copy. Ever since the turn of the century I’ve had a— well, not a love/hate relationship with video games so much as a love/indifference one. I’ve worked on several game projects that never made it to market, wrote a tie-in novel for a game that did. Occasionally my work has inspired games I’ve had nothing to do with; the creators of Bioshock 2 and Torment: Tides of Numanera cite me as

an influence, for example. There’s a vampire in The Witcher 3 named Sarasti. Eclipse Phase, the paper-based open-source role-playing game, names me in their references. And so on. For one reason or another, I’ve never got around to actually playing any of these games. But a fan recently gifted me with a download of Frictional Games’ SOMA, whose creators also cite me as inspirational (alongside Greg Egan, China Miéville, and Philip K. Dick). And in the course of the occasional egosurf I’ve stumbled across various blogs and forums in which people have commented on the peculiar Wattsiness of this particular title. So what the hell, I figured; I needed something to write about this week, and it was either gonna be SOMA or my first acid trip. Major Spoilers after the graphic, so stop reading if you’re still saving yourself for your own run at the game. (Although if you’re still doing that a solid year after its release, you’re even further behind the curve than I am.) In SOMA you play Simon: a regular dude from 2015 Toronto, who— following a brain scan at the notoriously-disreputable York University— suddenly finds himself a hundred years in the future, just after a cometary impact has wiped out all life on the surface of the earth. Simon doesn’t have to worry about that, though— not in the short term, at least— because he’s not on the surface of the Earth. He’s stuck in a complex of derelict undersea habitats near a geothermal vent, where (among other things) he is attacked by giant mutant viperfish and caught up in a story centering around the nature of consciousness. “I’d really like to know who thought sending a Canadian to the bottom of the sea was a good idea,” he blurts out at one point.


Prompt: The Surprising Story Of 'Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an' Enlarge this image toggle caption University of Texas at Austin/Courtesy of Knopf University of Texas at Austin/Courtesy of Knopf Thomas Jefferson had a vast personal library reflecting his enormous curiosity about the world. Among his volumes: a Quran purchased in 1765 that informed his ideas about plurality and religious freedom in the founding of America. In her book Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an: Islam and the Founders, author Denise Spellberg draws parallels between the beliefs of the founding father and religious tolerance in the United States today. "I think that there is anxiety about what

Muslims believe, largely because people don't understand Islam very well. I think that was also true in the 18th century," Spellberg says. "It strikes me that Jefferson was theorizing for a future that included Muslims — not in spite of their religion, but because of it and because of his notion of universal civil rights." She sat down with All Things Considered host Arun Rath to discuss Jefferson's Qur'an and the lasting impact of the third U.S. president's views on religious freedom. On how Jefferson came to have a Quran: "He actually was a bibliophile from the beginning. He ordered this Quran in 1765, eleven years before he wrote the Declaration of Independence. He was a law student at the time, and he had the book shipped from England to Williamsburg, Va. ... There's an entry in the local newspaper because they were the booksellers for the time. ... "Europeans, and Americans after them, in this period tended to be quite hostile toward Islam. And yet Jefferson was curious about the religion and law of Muslims, and that's probably why he bought the Quran." On his views of religious freedom: "Jefferson was unique in many ways. He criticized Islam as he did Christianity and Judaism. He talked about Islam as a religion that repressed scientific inquiry — a strange idea he got from Voltaire that wasn't right — but ... was able to separate his principles about Muslim religious liberty and civil rights from these inherited European prejudices about Islam. "He did the same thing when arguing for the inclusion of Catholics and Jews, actually. He had not very good things to say about either Catholicism or Judaism, but he insisted that these individual practitioners should have equal civil rights. ... [Jefferson] resisted the notion, for example, that Catholics were


Prompt: Jeremy Kyle today staged a dramatic ‘celebrity intervention’ on his chat show with Kenny Sansom, as it was revealed the troubled ex-footballer nearly died after his mother's funeral. The 57-year-old former England and Arsenal defender appeared on the programme following a long battle with alcoholism that has lasted more than three decades and left him homeless. Father-of-three Sansom - who won 86 caps for his country - turned up drunk at his mother's funeral last year, before later collapsing and having a fit, his emotional sister Mary revealed on the show. Jeremy Kyle appearance: Former England and Arsenal defender Kenny

Sansom appeared on the ITV chat show following a long battle with alcoholism that has lasted more than three decades and left him homeless Chat show: Father-of-three Sansom - who won 86 caps for his country - turned up drunk at his mother's funeral last year, before later collapsing and having a fit, his emotional sister Mary (centre) revealed on the show 'I didn't want to be around': Sansom wanted to 'fall asleep forever' but has now been sober for three months She said: 'Kenny was drunk. [Later at a] hall where we had a few drinks with the family, he collapsed and we had to get an ambulance. We were all grieving and again the focus was all on him.' And grandfather Sansom told the ITV show: 'I'm here to first of all tell people that I've let down to say sorry. I'm going to try and do something for them, but I'm sorry I've let a lot of people down.' The London-born footballer, who has also gambled away his fortune, added: 'All I wanted to do was lay down drink as much as I could and fall asleep forever. I didn't want to be around.' Sansom, who has spent time sleeping on a park bench after drinking seven bottles of wine a day, said: 'I enjoy getting drunk to forget about the problems because I'm a coward and I'm scared of life.' Later in the show, which also featured his friend Tom, he explained: 'If something in my life happens that hurts me, I get knocked back about 10ft, and to get back about 10ft I need the wine to get back.' The programme also featured a long discussion involving Kyle trying to persuade Sansom to attend a rehabilitation centre for 12 weeks - but the footballer insisted


Prompt: In the near future, ads will just be part of the conversation. Bots, and the AI technologies that drive them, are taking huge leaps forward in sophistication and reach. Facebook and Telegram recently added bot APIs to their platforms, and Apple Messages will soon allow third-parties to plug in, too. While bots had previously been limited to very specific requests, such as checking a balance or flight status, next-generation AI, like the recently unveiled Viv, will better understand context and integrate with a host of services — including programmatic advertising. Classic interface, new channel Conversational commerce represents a step forward

from both traditional websites and mobile apps, using one of the simplest interfaces possible: text. Bots currently allow users to carry out a host of tasks entirely via messaging: transfer money, ask questions, make purchases, book travel and check the weather. Of course, bots also send promotional messages, and soon they may serve third-party conversational ads through programmatic exchanges. As with any new technology, bots need to build trust first. The more AI seeks to impersonate humans, the more the technology will be judged by human standards of etiquette and emotional intelligence. Relevance will be critical. Overwhelming consumers with promotional messages before bots have proven their worth risks alienating them. No one likes to start a new relationship only to find they’ve been tricked into a sales pitch. Better than banners Conversational advertising stands to offer several potential advantages while solving many of the current problems with display ads. For example, programmatic RTB auctions can slow down web pages and hog precious mobile data, but this won’t be an issue with bots. Because bots aren’t expected to respond in milliseconds, short pauses are fine. And text conversations use only a trickle of bandwidth. No one likes to start a new relationship only to find they’ve been tricked into a sales pitch. Another key differentiator is that, like human contacts, bot relationships can persist across touch points and outside of the walled garden of messaging networks. The information a bot learns through interactions on Facebook can carry over seamlessly to WhatsApp or to a chat interface in a brand’s mobile app. Facebook specifically forbids what it classifies as promotional messaging, but any programmatic auction would likely occur outside of the messaging platform. And, as dialog becomes more natural, these mentions would simply appear organically as part of a larger conversation. Native


Prompt: US whistleblower Edward Snowden. Julian Assange claimed to be assisting him from the Ecuador embassy in London Credit:Reuters/NBC News Assange said police gather intelligence on visitors and that the British government has spent almost $10 million on 24-hour surveillance of the embassy lest he ever dare to leave the small building, close to Harrods in Knightsbridge. If he does leave, he faces immediate extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning over alleged sexual misconduct involving two women – for which he is yet to be charged after four years. He dismisses it as a trumped-up, politically driven distraction

from the main game: the United States, where Vice-President Joe Biden has called him a “high-tech terrorist”. Michael Ratner, Assange’s US legal representative, told the news conference that his client, if extradited to the US, could face similar treatment to Chelsea Manning, the US soldier formerly called Bradley serving a 35-year sentence for leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks. Assange could be punished with solitary confinement and held in underground cells, Ratner said. But Assange said the second anniversary of his asylum at the embassy would be marked by a release of documents by WikiLeaks “in the field of international negotiations” – and extending to 50 countries. He would not elaborate. The message was to stay tuned. Julian Assange said former foreign affairs minister Bob Carr lied about the level of consular assistance offered to the WikiLeaks founder. Credit:Peter Rae In another plug he said: “You will see that WikiLeaks has turned into a security document search service, now with more than eight million documents instantly searchable if you go to search.wikileaks.org.” Assange remains hands-on while confined. “The situation does create certain difficulties. On the other hand, unlike other national security reporters, I am in an effective jurisdiction where I cannot be subpoenaed; there cannot be any police knocks in the night or in the day... “If you look at the situation of getting Edward Snowden out of Hong Kong and trying to manage that from an embassy under extensive surveillance in the largest intelligence manhunt the world has ever seen, you can understand that securing communications between here and Hong Kong in such circumstances is on the very edge of what state-of-the-art is. And we are proud that our techniques were successful in that instance and we are developing systems to allow others to use them more broadly.” Assange said


Prompt: click to enlarge Young Kwak Scroll down for a link to this week's feature on the lifesize gingerbread house now on display at Hotel RL in downtown Spokane. click to enlarge Uptic Studios Indaba's third location, opening in Kendall Yards sometime next year, will feature a walk-up outdoor counter. The progress in the region’s culinary community never stops, with new and exciting developments in the form of innovative events, new restaurants and other food-related projects always popping up. Let’s round up the latest in this week's installment of "Foodie Grab Bag."Fans of Mac Daddy’s Gourmet Grub food truck — known

for offering many tasty variations on the American classic of mac ’n’ cheese — can now get their fix of cheesey goodness year-round at a permanent location. The new Mac Daddy’s Gourmet Pub and Grill opened in Mead’s Fairwood Shopping Center, at 415 W. Hastings Rd., in late November. With a sports bar vibe, the new restaurant is open for lunch and through to the late night (also for breakfast on the weekends), and offers an expanded pub fare menu of burgers, sausages, appetizers and salads in addition to all that tasty mac. We’ve written about the breadmaking mastery of local baker Shaun Thompson Duffy in the pages of thebefore ( here and here ). Now, Duffy is getting ready to open a retail bakery location in the South Perry District (in a long-vacant commercial building at 1026 E. Newark), and is asking the community for a little bit of help on Kickstarter campaign for $20,000 has less than two weeks left, and currently stands at just over $7,200 pledged.“I have been trying to open this place for some time, and we finally got the zoning changed after a year and a half,” Duffy recently told theCalled, the spot is planning a soft opening in February, and will be home to a wood-fired oven and stone grain mill, the latter of which will be used to mill all the bakery's flour from grains grown on farms in the Palouse. The hyper-local operation will also share the space with a brewery called. Duffy’s partners on the project are LINC Foods and Palouse Pint co-owner Joel Williamson, brewer Teddy Benson and Palouse Heritage Farms’ Don Scheuerman. In addition to a traditional bakery and brewery, the space is also set to feature a café.“I have contracted local farmers around the area to grow


Prompt: PoliZette DNC Leak Exposes Contempt for Heartland WikiLeaks emails show bias toward Clinton over Sanders -- and patronize ordinary Americans The leaked Clinton emails show that Democratic National Committee staffers think voters from Kentucky and West Virginia are “southern Baptist peeps” who “would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist” when it comes time to cast their ballots. The patronizing nicknames and language contained in the nearly 20,000 emails from January 2015 through May 2016 that were released through WikiLeaks last week implicated several DNC staffers in showing disdain for heartland voters. This bias severely discredited the

DNC, which is supposed to remain neutral concerning Democratic candidates during the presidential primaries. But as the emails show, several officials heavily favored former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders while showing contempt for constituents. “This could make several points difference with my peeps. My southern baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist.” Advertisement “It might may [sic] no difference, but for KY and WVA can we get someone to ask his belief,” Brad Marshall, chief financial officer of the DNC, wrote in an email dated May 5, 2016, that was titled “no sh*t.” The email apparently refers to Sanders, who is Jewish. “Does he believe in God. He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage. I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My southern baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist.” Clinton did not performed well in America’s heartland during the Democratic primaries, mainly because her agenda is much more liberal than voters there. She has insulted southerners throughout her campaign, and once promised “We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business,” which prompted protests in West Virginia when she campaigned there. In a twist, rather than denying the he wrote it and blaming others — as Clinton always does — Marshall said he regretted his words. In a Facebook post, he wrote: “I deeply regret that my insensitive, emotional emails would cause embarrassment to the DNC, the Chairwoman, and all of the staffers who worked hard to make the primary a fair and open process. The comments expressed do not reflect my beliefs nor do they reflect the beliefs of the DNC and its employees.


Prompt: Lunch, my leftover meal from the night before…usually. Not this time. I went with a classic soup and salad for lunch. Gumbo soup (which is really where I put the work) and the spring salad (I just bought a bag) to be exact. I decided to make the gumbo from scratch, so that means peeling some raw shrimp and making a stock first. Then carefully making a roux and putting it all together. I think the stock really gives it the extra flavor, if you have the time and patience to peel lots of shrimp, I suggest doing it this

way. Bonus I added scallops cause they were on sale, but really, I’m sure you can add whatever seafood you feel like, or the usual chicken and/or andouille sausage. INGREDIENTS For Stock shells from 1 1/2 pound shrimp 5 quarts water 4 carrots, sliced 4 onions, quartered 1/2 bunch celery, sliced 2 bay leaves 8 cloves garlic 1 teaspoon ground black pepper 1 tablespoon dried basil 2 teaspoons dried thyme For Gumbo 4 ounces vegetable oil 4 ounces all-purpose flour 2 tablespoons minced garlic 2 cups yellow onions, chopped 1 cup green bell peppers, chopped 1 cup celery, chopped 1 tablespoon kosher salt 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper 3 bay leaves 1.5 quart stock 1 1/2 pounds raw, whole, head-on medium-sized (31-50 count) shrimp 1 pound lump crabmeat INSTRUCTIONS For Stock 1. In an 8-quart pot, combine water, carrots, onions, celery, bay leaves, garlic, parsley, cloves, pepper, basil, thyme and shrimp shells. Bring slowly to a boil. 2. Reduce heat, and cook 5 to 7 hours. Replace water as needed, 2 or 3 times, by pouring more water down the inside of the pot. 3. Remove stock from heat, and strain. Press all liquid from the shells and vegetables, then discard them. Return liquid to heat, and reduce to 2 to 3 quarts, or to taste. For Gumbo 1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. 2. Place the vegetable oil and flour into a 5 to 6-quart cast iron Dutch oven and whisk together to combine. Place on the middle shelf of the oven, uncovered, and bake for 1 1/2 hours, whisking 2 to 3 times throughout the cooking process. 3. Once the roux is done, carefully remove it from the oven and set over medium-high heat. Gently add the onions, celery, green peppers


Prompt: Image caption New rules should make it cheaper to book cinema tickets Consumers booking a range of items from cinema tickets to hotel rooms now have new protection from card surcharges. A ban on "excessive" debit and credit card charges begins on Saturday 6 April. The government said it should put an end to unscrupulous practices by some businesses. Until now, many people have been asked to pay large surcharges for using cards, especially when booking online. Typically, people trying to book concert tickets, theatre seats, hire cars or train seats discover at the end of the payments process that

they have to pay many pounds extra to use a debit or credit card. "The practice of excessive payment surcharges has been ripping off consumers for far too long," said Jo Swinson, the consumer affairs minister. "They are fed up of thinking they will be paying a certain price for goods, only to find out towards the end of the process that the final price is much higher," she said. Airline industry Under the new rules, payment surcharges will have to reflect the actual cost to the retailer of processing the card transaction. That includes fees they have to pay to Visa or Mastercard, for instance, or the cost of installing a chip-and-pin device. How much should your credit card surcharge be? transaction of £50: £1.16 transaction of £100: £2.10 transaction of £250: £4.94 source: OFT, 2011 But in many cases, this should be minimal. For example, according to the Office of Fair Trading (OFT), someone spending £100 on a travel ticket could expect to be charged 53 pence extra if using a debit card, or £2.10 if using a credit card. The figures, produced in 2011, suggest the cost of using a debit card remains at just over 50 pence, however large the transaction. But the government stresses that charges will differ according to individual businesses. In the past, the airline industry was the worst offender. The government says that in 2010, airlines charged passengers up to £350m in card surcharges. But following an investigation by the OFT, airlines including Ryanair, Easyjet and Aer Lingus agreed to include debit card charges at least in their headline prices. The ferry industry was the next biggest user of surcharges, according to the government, charging its customers up to £145m. Enforcement The new rules are being brought in earlier than the rest


Prompt: To compete in the Best Animated Feature category at the Academy Awards, a film must meet certain requirements. Its running time must exceed 40 minutes. Seventy-five percent of that running time must consist of frame-by-frame animation. And like all Oscar-eligible movies, it must screen theatrically in Los Angeles for at least a seven-day period. The contenders in this category aren’t, however, obligated to cater to audiences under a certain age. But since the Animated Feature race was born in 2001, its nominees and winners have largely been family-friendly releases, the kinds of movies that generate critical acclaim alongside opportunities for

Happy Meal tie-ins. If the Academy Awards are a Thanksgiving banquet for the cinematic elite, the Best Animated Feature contenders are perpetually seated at the kids’ table. This isn’t surprising, since most animated films in America are developed and distributed with wide-eyed children in mind. Adults can appreciate many of those releases, which aren’t necessarily unworthy of Academy recognition. Indeed, it’s hard to argue that many past winners of the Best Animated Feature prize—Spirited Away, Finding Nemo, WALL-E—are anything other than sophisticated, carefully rendered, heartbreaking works of staggering genius. Still, the track record in this category does raise the question of whether an animated film with more adult themes will ever trump the blockbuster eye-poppers that transfix the LeapPad-and-Lego crowd. That’s a question that’s especially relevant given the way this year’s Best Animated Feature race appears to be taking shape. Earlier this month, the Academy announced that 19 films had submitted for consideration in the Animated Feature category. From that pack, one—Disney’s Frozen, the studio’s forthcoming update of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen—has been dubbed the likely winner in various Oscar-prognosticating corners of the Internet. Hitfix called it the frontrunner in the category. As of this writing, the Gold Derby expert rankings place Frozen in first place. Rope Of Silicon’s Brad Brevet even called the race for Frozen in his Oscar predictions way back in March. It’s easy to see why this is happening. There are compelling reasons, even at this premature stage, to argue in favor of a Frozen win. Early critical response to the film has been overwhelmingly positive. It contains a lot of the ingredients traditionally expected from a quality Disney animated work: Broadway-esque songs, a sense of adventure, and an endearingly quirky supporting character (in this case, Olaf the summer-loving snowman). Most importantly, if Frozen


Prompt: (CNN) The story about a small-town police officer in Illinois becomes more convoluted by the day. Investigators interviewed a woman who said the officer asked for help finding a gang member to kill the administrator, Lake County Major Task Force member Christopher Covelli said. When authorities talked to the gang member, he denied having a conversation with Gliniewicz about a hit, Covelli said. No other evidence was found about a hit. At a press conference, Fox Lake Village Administrator Anne Marrin was asked how it felt to know a police officer apparently wanted her dead. "Unsettling," she said of the

inquiry. "It's quite unbelievable and almost surreal." Marrin said she was asking questions about the youth group that police say Gliniewicz was stealing from. She said she didn't know about Gliniewicz' plans until after his death and doesn't feel in danger now. "Even though these threats were made months ago, I take these threats very seriously," she said. The hit man revelation is the latest turn in a story that has shaken Fox Lake, a community northwest of Chicago. Gliniewicz, a veteran officer with 30 years experience, was found shot to death on September 1 after he radioed that he was chasing suspects into a wooded area while on patrol. No arrests were made. The community mourned the shaved-head military veteran known as G.I. Joe. Authorities didn't truly suspect Gliniewicz had killed himself until about two weeks ago, when bank statements and text messages revealed the extent of his stealing, said George Filenko, Lake County Major Crimes Task Force commander. Money taken from Explorers Post Gliniewicz stole "tens of thousands" of dollars from the Explorers Post, an organization for youths interested in law enforcement careers, Marrin said. The police department sponsored the group and Gliniewicz was the leader. Investigators said he used the money to pay his mortgage and other expenses. Marrin said her relations with Gliniewicz were always cordial. "We never fought," she said. "There were no harsh words." But he was reluctant to provide information about the Explorers. She asked for but didn't receive schedules of activities, a list of members or parental consent forms, she said. "They didn't have a budget," Marrin said. "That was part of the problem." A day or two before Gliniewicz' death, she asked for an inventory of equipment owned by the Explorers, she said. He didn't provide it by the deadline and


Prompt: By Marilyn Frye From The Politics Of Reality: Essays In Feminist Theory (The Crossing Press 1983) I White feminists come to renewed and earnest thought about racism not entirely spontaneously. We are pressed by women of color. Women of color have been at feminist conferences, meetings and festivals and speaking up, pointing out that their needs and interests are not being taken into account nor answered and that much that white feminists do and say is racist. Some white feminists have been aware of and acting against racism all along, and spontaneously, but the topic of racism has arrived per

force in the feminist newspapers and journals, at the National Women’s Studies Association, in women’s centers and women’s bookstores in the last couple of years, not so much because some white feminists urged this but because women of color have demanded it. Nonetheless, many white feminists have to a fair extent responded to the demand; by which I mean, white feminists have to a fair extent chosen to hear what it was usually in their power not to hear. The hearing is, as anyone who has been on the scene knows, sometimes very defensive, sometimes dulled by fear, sometimes alarmingly partial or distorted. But it has interested me that I and other white feminists have heard the objections and demands, for I think it is an aspect of race privilege to have a choice–a choice between the options of hearing and not hearing. That is part of what being white gets you. This matter of the powers white feminists have because of being white came up for me very concretely in a real-life situation a while back. Conscientiously, and with the encouragement of various women of color–both friends and women speaking in the feminist press–a group of white women formed a white women’s consciousness-raising group to identify and explore the racism in our lives with a view to dismantling the barriers that blocked our understanding and action in this matter. As is obvious from this description, we certainly thought of ourselves as doing the right thing. Some women of color talked with us about their view that it was racist to make it a group for white women only; we discussed our reasons and invited women of color who wanted to participate to come to the meeting for further discussion. In a later community meeting, one Black woman criticized us


Prompt: There are many similarities to what happened when the iron curtain was removed in the late eighties and this current effective (self-proclaimed) lift of the ban on startup investments for the general public. Poor Product Quality Compensated by Abnormal Demand In the Communist bloc territories in 1989–1992, after decades of the severe shortage of basic goods, consumers were happy to buy and drink technical-purpose alcohol produced in the West. In the ICO environment, many investment products are consumable, but most are inferior. And the abnormal demand we see is the cause of most discussions including this one. Irresponsible Business and

Deliberate Exploitation of Regulation Vacuum Back then, many roguish businessmen from prosperous parts of the world were selling trains of expired food, low-quality electronics, and counterfeit “branded” clothes to miserable ex-communists. They were not breaking the word of law, but they certainly realized the wrongdoing by the standards of their home countries. The same is true for many active multi-project supporters and ICO entrepreneurs now. Let me note here that the history of the nineties should have taught those ready to compromise themselves that the backfire is quite probable and painful. It should be expected from the side of wild consumers in the first place. When properly applied, the law stands in between the two parties and protects both buyers and sellers from each other, not one way only. No Professional Elite at Play In the early years of post-communist transformation, global trade was represented in Eastern Europe and Russia by sleek rascals with a questionable reputation at home in the West. Now, the ICO landscape lacks prominent and reputable people from the incumbent professional investment community as well. Moreover, the more third-rate, ex-Wall-Streeters you see on a project’s team page, the more red flags you notice elsewhere on that ICO due diligence list. Blatant scams targeted to low-end idiots have someone (or a ghost of someone) with a London City past as a must. Maintenance of Morality — A Job for a Few Selfless Heroes Now and then, exactly the opposite can be said about people standing on nonprofit, scientific and humanitarian grounds. Swarms of various religion and meditation “gurus” aside, it was people who arranged scientific collaboration who allowed many good citizens living in post-communist ruins to not totally lose faith in humankind. Now in crypto-space, only figures like Andreas Antonopoulos inspire unconditional respect. Of course, ICOs are


Prompt: I didn't think I would be writing about this, but, then again, I seem to say that fairly frequently. Be that as it may, on Friday I wrote about a letter sent to Lee Goldman, MD, the Dean of the Faculties of Health Sciences and Medicine at Columbia University complaining about Dr. Mehmet Oz's promotion of pseudoscience on his television show, which reaches millions. When I wrote my post, my first reaction was somewhat supportive, but with reservations. However, as I read your comments and thought about it some more, I started having second thoughts. Then, over the weekend, I

had a rather prolonged exchange on Twitter during breaks in the action at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Meeting in Philadelphia, which I'm attending now. The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that this letter, written by Dr. Henry I. Miller of the Hoover Institution, and signed by several doctors with ties to the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), was an incredibly bad idea. This evolution in my thinking was helped along by other developments over the weekend. I'll explain. I also might regret having continued my commentary, but, then, when did that ever stop me before? (Actually, you'll never know when, if, or how many times that's ever happened.) In my post, I also described my discomfort with Dr. Miller and the signatories of his letter. For instance, the Hoover Institution isn't exactly known for its promotion of good science, given its history of denialism with respect to human-caused global climate change. Then, of course, I'm not exactly a big fan of ACSH, either. It's frequently on the right side of science, but seemingly only when that position aligns with industry positions. It's the reason why I didn't accept an offer to be on the board of scientific advisors of ACSH a few years ago. Before I go on further, in the interests of full disclosure, I must confess my own issues with the approach Dr. Miller and his cosignatories took. As many of you know, there have been several attempts by quacks and antivaccinationists over the years to make trouble for me at my place of work. Not too long ago, a patient of Stanislaw Burzynski complained to my dean about my posts deconstructing her testimonial that she has been telling as "evidence" that Burzynski cured her of advanced breast


Prompt: BJP’s election office in Ramnagar, Coimbatore is buzzing with activity. Numerous volunteers, full of enthusiasm, are going about doing their assigned work in a methodical manner. It appears that every volunteer is clearly aware of his role, for nobody seems to be shooting any instructions to anyone. I am told that the candidate, Smt. Vanathi Srinivasan, was at a television studio for a recording. A volunteer quickly came forward to take me to the said studio. He introduced himself as Rajan. An advocate who practices at Tirupur, Rajan said he is volunteering from the last one month in Vanathi’s campaign.

His reasons for supporting Vanathi is clear: in addition to being a candidate of ‘Modi’s party’, Vanathi is also a fellow lawyer. As we sit in his car, the FM Radio starts playing in full volume. A Tamil movie song comes to an end and an election advertisement starts playing. Vanathi is heard making a fervent appeal to the voters to give a chance to Modi’s party, immediately followed by a long message by ‘Amma’ asking people to re-elect her party. Advertisement Rajan tells me that in Coimbatore South, the fight is only between the BJP and the AIADMK. “It is a straight fight between Akka and Amma”, he quips. Like many other Coimbatoreans I spoke to, he is confident that this may be a bright spot in the BJP’s scheme of things in Tamil Nadu for 2016. As we reach the studio, I see Vanathi Srinivasan talking to a small group of volunteers outside the studio. On seeing me, she welcomes me with her characteristic smile. We sit chatting inside the studio with a glass of Kammangkul, a traditional Tamil summer drink in hand. Excerpts from the conversation: Tejasvi Surya (TS): I have been in Coimbatore for the last few days. You seem to be everywhere—radio, Facebook, posters, local TV channels. Many are talking about a possible BJP victory in Coimbatore South. I also spoke to the correspondents of some of the major dailies like The Times of India and The Hindu. All of them are saying that this is a bright spot for the BJP. How do you see the turnaround that is happening on the ground? Vanathi Srinivasan (VS): First of all, this constituency already has a good BJP support base. We stood first in the last Parliamentary election. People are already aware of Modiji as a


Prompt: Ahead of her meeting with Trump tomorrow, British Prime Minister Theresa May joked that "opposites attract" and called on the US President to renew the "special relationship" between Britain and the United States and lead in a new, changed world. In the United States for what will be Trump's first meeting with a foreign leader since he took office last week, May signaled a shift in foreign policy, bringing her position more in line with that of Trump. Following a disparaging statement from the French Finance Minister earlier in the day, in which Michel Sapin said that “Madame May can

go see whoever she wants. I understand she goes to see the new U.S. president given the history between the U.S. and the U.K" and added that "she is not going there to negotiate," because allegedly "neither she nor Mister Trump are in a position to negotiate", May decided to prove him wrong, and urged the US and UK and their leaders to stand united and confront new challenges, including the rise of economies in Asia that people fear could "eclipse the West," the threat of Islamic extremism and a resurgent Russia. "So we - our two countries together - have a responsibility to lead. Because when others step up as we step back, it is bad for America, for Britain and the world," May told members of Republican Party at their retreat in a speech often punctuated by applause from an enthusiastic crowd. "This cannot mean a return to the failed policies of the past. The days of Britain and America intervening in sovereign countries in an attempt to remake the world in our own image are over. But nor can we afford to stand idly by." Following her speech, UKIP's Nigel Farage tweeted that "I can hardly believe Mrs May's words about our place in the world and with America. I've wanted all of these things for years" and added that the PM said "things that I could only ever have dreamt that a British Prime Minister would say." I can hardly believe Mrs May's words about our place in the world and with America. I've wanted all of these things for years. — Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) January 26, 2017 Some of the key points touched upon by May in her speech as summarized by Axios: The U.S. and U.K. are at the start of crafting a great


Prompt: By Henri Mamarbachi RABAT — Some 200 Moroccan women staged an angry protest Saturday outside parliament a week after the suicide of a 16-year-old girl who was forced to marry the man who raped her. Brandishing signs reading “Martyr Amina,” “The Law Killed Me,” and “We Are All Aminas,” they called for changes to a penal code that allows a rapist to stay out of jail if he marries his victim with the consent of her parents. The suicide last Saturday of Amina al-Filali, who drank a lethal amount of rat poison, sent shockwaves through Morocco and sparked widespread calls

for reform of a law that ostensibly defends family values. [np-related] Families of rape victims who are under 18 often agree to such a union because the loss of a woman’s virginity outside of marriage is considered a dishonour to her family. Amina’s father Lahcen al-Filali said at a protest on Thursday that he opposed the union but his wife insisted. “She said we had to do it so people would stop deriding us, to remove the shame,” he told AFP. “Can you imagine that a man who has forced a girl to follow him with a knife, and who rapes her, could then want to marry her?” A giant banner written in Arabic, Amazigh (a Berber language) and French read: “Women’s Dignity. End Sexual Harassment.” Houda Bouzil of the Democratic Association of the Women of Morocco told AFP: “In 2008, the government introduced a bill, which has since been shelved, to demand an overhaul of the penal code in order to end discrimination and violence.” Similar legislation is in effect in neighbouring Tunisia and Algeria. The affair provoked an explosion of outrage in the news media and on the Internet, where an online petition calling for the law to be changed attracted hundreds of signatures within hours. “I did not know Amina, but I imagine the colossal number of these ’Aminas’ who live, or lived, among us,” the independent newspaper Al Sabah wrote in a lengthy editorial. “It’s the law, an absurd, grotesque social rule, that tries to remedy an evil — rape — with another even more repugnant one, marrying the rapist. … Whom are we punishing in the end, the victim or her tormentor?” it asked. The government has pledged to re-examine the law, while police summoned and released the rapist after Amina’s suicide. Under Moroccan law,


Prompt: Story highlights Ugandan police arrest David Cecil and free him after four days They accuse the Briton of staging a play about gay challenges without permission He faces charges of "disobedience of lawful orders" Ugandan authorities jailed a British producer for staging without permission a play about the challenges facing homosexuals in the African nation. Homosexual acts are illegal in Uganda, where most gays and lesbians face physical attacks and are treated as social outcasts. The east African nation has made headlines after a parliamentarian introduced an anti-gay bill that called for death for certain homosexual acts. David Cecil, the

producer, spent four days in detention before he was released on bail, his lawyer said Thursday. He faces charges of "disobedience of lawful orders" after the nation's media council ordered him not to stage his play in public without authorization. If convicted, he can be imprisoned for two years. "As I understand, the communique from the media council was he should not stage the play in any public theater in Uganda -- meaning he could do in private," said John Onyango, his lawyer. "That was the interpretation." Cecil staged the play at two small bars in the capital of Kampala by private invitation, according to the lawyer. CNN attempts to reach the Ugandan department of public prosecutions were unsuccessful. The play, "The River and the Mountain," features an all-Ugandan cast, and tells the story of a gay businessman killed by his employees. It uses the life of its main character -- a young businessman whose friends desert him after his revelation that he's a homosexual -- to highlight the challenges of gays in Uganda. The character's mother unsuccessfully intervenes to "cure" him of his homosexuality, and his colleagues later kill him. "The play is about the interaction of politics, religion, sexuality and identity," Cecil said by phone from the capital. "The plot hinges on the betrayal of the hero by his best friend." Cecil is free on $200 bail. He surrendered his passport and is scheduled to appear in court October 18. Though he faces imprisonment if found guilty, the producer said the incident does not change his love for the nation. "I love Uganda, I think it's a fantastic country," he said. He described the jail he was held as "a clean and sociable" place, saying he was treated well. "I was very well fed ... It was like


Prompt: When Mark Baker looks up at the moon at night, he does not see magic or mystery. He ponders megawatts. Twice a day, like clockwork, the moon’s gravity makes the seas ebb and flow. For Baker, a marine renewables business manager at GE Power Conversion, the tides are the perfect source of energy, more predictable and reliable than wind or solar power. “Some U.K. locations have significant tidal head ranges,” he says. “They offer a tantalizing energy generation potential.“ The moon could join the sun as a source of renewable energy. GE Power Conversion is testing tidal turbine generators and

other underwater technology in turbines standing on the sea floor near the Orkneys in Scotland and at Ramsey Sound in Pembrokeshire, Wales. Baker says that GE is ready to scale up the power system to a large array of tidal turbines planned for the bottom of the Pentland Firth, a narrow channel that separates the Orkneys from the northern tip of Scotland. The channel has some of the fastest moving currents in the U.K. (see video). People tried to capture tidal and wave energy since the Middle Ages when they used “tide mills” to grind grain. Ideas Lab reported that the first tidal power station was the Rance tidal power plant built between 1960 and 1966 in La Rance, France. But the technology did not catch on because of its high capital cost and the limited availability of sites with sufficient tidal flows. Although innovations in turbine technology and design have begun to lower those costs and make deployment possible in more areas, the technology is “decades behind other forms of renewables and will likely need significant government support and research to become a true clean energy player,” according Ideas Lab. The Orkneys’ rugged coast has some of the strongest tides. The U.S. is currently underwriting development of 17 tidal and wave energy demonstration projects. The U.S. Department of Energy’s latest assessment identified up to 1,400 terawatt hours of potential tidal energy generation per year—one terawatt-hour of electricity is enough to power about 85,000 homes. Developing just a small fraction of the wave and tidal energy available in the U.S. could power millions of American homes. “Wave and tidal energy represent a large, untapped resource for the United States and responsible development of this clean, renewable energy source is an important part of our all-of-the-above energy strategy,” said Assistant Secretary


Prompt: [This essay by Karlo Mikhail Mongaya was originally posted at the author’s blog, Hello Lenin! It is a follow up to a previous essay which was also posted at Anti-Imperialism.org.] A “radical” who chooses to close his eyes to prevailing social conditions is only delusional. A “radical” who proves incapable of arriving at the roots of the fundamental problem is a charlatan. But a “radical” who markets utopian fantasies and reactionary fallacies as revolutionary is a dangerous demagogue.[1] In the US-based online forumKasama Project I was criticized for writing a supposedly “wooden critique” of Slavoj Žižek.[2]Singled out as an example

of a captive of “theories of orthodoxy,” I was chastised for being blind to the “contribution of theory produced by people like Žižek.”[3] Apparently, some fellows in the Kasama Project took offense to my calling “comrade” Žižek an apologist of the ruling order.[4] But is there anything wrong with criticizing this so-called “Academic Rock Star” for his whimsical pronouncements on the nature of the world capitalist system? Are assertions of the supposed “total failure” of 20th Century revolutionary experiments now beyond reproach? Is this not the same kind of “unwritten Denkverbot (prohibition against thinking)” that Žižek himself complained about in reference to the liberal dread of the so-called “totalitarian threat”?[5] In some of his works, Žižek – following Alain Badiou – has insisted on the “eternal” Idea of Communism, namely “strict egalitarian justice, disciplinary terror, political voluntarism, and trust in the people.”[6] Following his very own injunction for such a politics, should we not take Žižek to task for statements that promote wrong readings of the present conjuncture and misleading assessments of the great revolutionary upheavals of the past? While it may indeed be more fruitful to read Žižek as a philosopher that can provide an unorthodox account of consciousness via a reworking of the notion of ideology through Lacanian psychoanalysis,[7] would it do to simply leave him to present himself as a worthy “radical” even as he rehashes some of the vilest anti-communist propaganda and propagate pessimism and defeatism? One of the charges levelled against me in the Kasama Project is my clinging to Lenin’s theory of imperialism as opposed to Žižek’s own formulations. Changes in the way the globalized capitalist order is organized, particularly “the increasing integration and penentration [sic] of capitalism,”[8] has supposedly made Lenin’s prognosis of imperialism as the highest and last stage of capitalism obsolete.


Prompt: The term ‘citizen soldier’ evokes a particularly powerful image in Britain. The poignant histories of the ‘Pals’ Battalions’, raised utilizing the attraction of geographical and occupational connections, have contributed greatly to the lasting public impression of the conflict. Names such as the ‘Accrington Pals’, ‘Glasgow Tramways’ and the two ‘Football Battalions’ have been documented in many forms – both fact and fiction – since the end of the conflict, and the frequently tragic stories of their involvement in the trenches on the Western Front are now relatively familiar. There was, however, another citizen army raised during the First World War.

Not based on location and not destined for the front line, these soldiers were enlisted with the specific intention of applying their technical skills to the industrial challenges thrown up by the Western Front. In few areas was this process more pronounced than in the sphere of transportation, critical to the maintenance and sustenance of the armies in the trenches. This post looks at just one of the directorates formed during the war to supervise, organize and manage the logistics network on the Western Front, the Directorate of Inland Water Transport [IWT]. At the outbreak of the war, the British Army had no organization to take advantage of the canal networks of France and Belgium. This changed in December 1914 when Commander Gerald Edward Holland was authorized by the War Office to investigate the potential use of IWT as a supplement to the road and railway networks. As the rank suggests, Holland’s background was not army, but navy, having joined the Royal Indian Marine in 1880. Having seen service in Burma and South Africa, Holland retired from service in 1905 and took up the post of Marine Superintendent of the London and North Western Railway at Holyhead. It was in this capacity that Holland was employed until 1914. Holland’s diary of the first few months of the IWT directorate’s existence remains, and demonstrates both the duties of a ‘chateau general’ on the supply chain, and the type of men Holland required to populate the new service. Unfortunately, as with so many unofficial diaries, the detailed, enthusiastic entries of the initial months eventually diminish into perfunctory statements before the diary abruptly ends in May 1915. So the diary does not give a full account of the development of a transportation service, however it does offer an insight into the course of


Prompt: Stack traces in GHCJS June 20, 2014 - Tagged as: haskell, ghcjs, ghc, gsoc, en. I’m about to finish the first part of my GSoC project and as a part of my project I have implemented stack traces for GHCJS. Currently GHC.Stack functions should work in GHCJS, except for some cases I explain below. As a demo, I set up this page, it runs the Haskell program rendered on the page (some part of the code is copied from Simon Marlow’s “Why can’t I get stack traces?” presentation). Output is printed to the console. You should be seeing something like

this: My main goal is to implement profiling features of GHC (cost-centres, SCC annotations, reporting allocations/ticks etc.) for GHCJS. It turns out that cost-centre stacks and call stacks are same thing. GHC.Stack.currentCallStack returns the current cost-centre stack, and cost attribution is done to current call-stack(or current cost-centre stack, since they’re exactly the same thing). Similarly, GHC.Stack.whoCreated returns the cost centre stack that was active when the heap object was created. 20 changed files with 810 additions and 527 deletions later, I had GHC.Stack working. You won’t need to do anything different once it’s merged into GHCJS, but for now it requires some effort to install. It also still has some bugs and differences from GHC version. Rest of the post explains how to test it, bugs, and differences from GHC. How to use Because of a horrible bug(see bugs section), you need a 32bit system to use profiling features of GHCJS. You should clone my fork of GHCJS and shims. For GHCJS, switch to work3 branch(that 3 represents how many times I started from scratch :) and for shims switch to work2 branch. You need to install modified Cabal for GHCJS. After installing Cabal, install GHCJS and run ghcjs-boot --init -q --prof . This takes about 20 minutes on my system and compiles base and some other libraries. --prof is used to generate profiled versions of libraries. After GHCJS has been booted, replace ~/.ghcjs/<your platform>/shims folder with my fork of shims(make sure you switched to work2 branch). Now you should be able to compile and run programs with profiling options of GHC. For example, to compile and run the example program given above, run ghcjs stacktrace.hs -prof -fprof-auto and then run generated stacktrace.jsexe/all.js using nodejs. Enabling profiling gives you a debug executable, with more metadata (object names) and longer (non-renamed)


Prompt: Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption What made Canada's Slims River disappear? A team of scientists say a melting glacier in Canada's Yukon has caused a river to completely change course. Their findings, published in Nature Geoscience, show how climate change can cause surprising geological events. The Slims River once flowed out to the Bering Sea, but now it flows into the Kaskawulsh River instead. This phenomenon, known as "river piracy", typically takes centuries but the study documented it over the course of one spring. "Nobody's ever seen a river piracy occur in modern times, at least

to my knowledge," lead author Dan Shugar told the BBC. The geoscientist at the University of Washington Tacoma says he and six researchers from Canadian and American universities had planned to study the Slims River last summer. Image copyright Dan Shugar/University of Washington Tacoma Image caption An aerial photo shows the meltwater stream along the toe of Kaskawulsh Glacier, seen on the left, that is diverting fresh water from one river to the other But when they arrived in the Yukon it was barely flowing. They discovered that a small channel had eroded in a large glacier that fed a number of small lakes. The glacial lakes used to feed two river systems - the Slims River and the Kaskawulsh River - but when water from one lake poured through the channel into another, it cut the Slims off from its water source. The event is known as river piracy or stream capture, and can take thousands of years. But the researchers documented the piracy of the Slims River in just one spring. Prof Shugar said his colleague, John Clague, at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, had predicted this event just a decade before because of the area's unique geological formation. But no one knew when or how quickly the stream capture would occur. River gauges show an abrupt four-day drop in late May 2016, which then continued over the summer, the study found. By the time Prof Shugar and his associates got there, the Slims was basically "a long, skinny lake". "The Slims River was essentially cut off from how it was flowing before," he said. The change in the river's flow affected the whole landscape. Sheep are now grazing on the exposed river bank, while other rivers in the area are running high. Fish population, wildlife and


Prompt: The US attack on a Syrian air base came after years of heated debate and deliberation in Washington over intervention in the bloody civil war. Chemical weapons have killed hundreds of people since the start of the conflict, with the U.N. blaming three attacks on the Syrian government and a fourth on ISIS. One of the worst yet came Tuesday in rebel-held northern Idlib and killed dozens, including women and children. That attack prompted President Donald Trump, on day 77 of his presidency, to dramatically shift U.S. policy, with the first direct U.S. attack on the Syrian government. Trump blamed

Syrian President Bashar Assad for the attack and called on the international community to join him in trying to end the bloodshed. A timeline of events in Syria leading up to Tuesday's attack: March 2011: Protests erupt in the city of Daraa over security forces' detention of a group of boys accused of painting anti-government graffiti on the walls of their school. On March 15, a protest is held in Damascus' Old City. On March 18, security forces open fire on a protest in Daraa, killing four people in what activists regard as the first deaths of the uprising. Demonstrations spread, as does the crackdown by President Bashar Assad's forces. April 2011: Security forces raid a sit-in in Syria's third-largest city, Homs, where thousands of people tried to create the mood of Cairo's Tahrir Square, the epicenter of protests against Egypt's autocrat Hosni Mubarak. Aug. 18, 2011: President Barack Obama calls on Assad to resign and orders Syrian government assets frozen. Summer 2012: Fighting spreads to Aleppo, Syria's largest city and its former commercial capital. August 20, 2012: Obama says the use of chemical weapons would be a 'red line' that would change his calculus on intervening in the civil war and have 'enormous consequences.' March 19, 2013: The Syrian government and opposition trade accusations over a gas attack that killed some 26 people, including more than a dozen government soldiers, in the town of Khan al-Assal in northern Syria. A U.N. investigation later finds that sarin nerve gas was used, but does not identify a culprit. August 21, 2013: Hundreds of people suffocate in rebel-held suburbs of the Syrian capital, with many suffering from convulsions, pinpoint pupils, and foaming at the mouth. U.N. investigators visit the sites and determine that ground-to-ground missiles loaded with sarin were fired on civilian


Prompt: Using React components in non-React websites Seven leaps Blocked Unblock Follow Following May 5, 2016 This is something that I needed to do recently and I was surprised by how hard I found it to find information on it. A few hours of doubting my ability as a developer and 20+ browser tabs later I discovered that it actually is relatively straight forward using webpack and babel. TL;DR — use this github project as a template to bundle the component The aim: Friends of mine had created a really cool React component, Chat-Template, a configurable component that simulates instant message

conversations. I wanted to make this component easily consumable for non-react websites as well. Chat-Template in action on http://mrwgame.com The approach: One thing that was clear from the start is that in order to make the component consumable, I was going to need to package it up webpack. Webpack takes modules with dependencies and generates static assets representing those modules A lot of the examples I seen involved the consumer of the webpacked component including react.js on their webpage, this is something I wanted to avoid. I wanted the consumers of the component to not even need to know what React is! (Maybe they’re living under a rock?) I wrote a node script to wrap the component. It included the component, React and ReactDom and exported a method to display it on a given dom element Node script to wrap the component As this code was to be consumed by browsers, I use babel to ensure the best compatibly. Babel is basically a javascript code compiler that converts EC6 javascript code to the much more widely compatible EC5 I now needed to configure webpack. One thing that was needed was to make the method a global variable, so the showChatTemplate function was available, this was done using the libraryTarget and library configurations. The webpack config looked like this I now had a single javascript file that included everything the consumer needed and could be easily added to a web page. Perfect! Except at 1.08MB, the generated file was a little on the large side! After running webpack with the -p flag and adding some configuration to make sure the production version of react was being used, the file size shrunk down to a much more manageable 0.283MB Conclusion: That’s how I was able to consume a React component in a


Prompt: The notion of continuations as first-class values has been a tricky subject for me to understand to a comfortable level of certainty. I think this is probably true for many PLT-laymen like myself. This article represents my attempt at collecting and presenting my thoughts in a coherant manner! I'd be happy to receive corrections and comments. I will start by defining a few key terms in my own style. Continuation We can observe that every expression, regardless of complexity, has the ultimate goal of returning a value to some surrounding execution context. That context is known as a continuation -

it represents everything that is left to compute. Therefore, every computation has an associated continuation, which specifies the place from which execution should continue once control has been returned. As a simple example, consider the following Scheme form: ( lambda ( n ) ( + n 1 )) The continuation associated with the sub-expression "1" is an anonymous function, whose body consists of a call to the + primitive procedure whose first argument is the local variable n and whose second argument is being sought. With this understanding we can say expressions deliver values and continuations receive values. Current continuation By "current", we are referring to the continuation that would be derived from the current point in a programs execution. In other words, the current point of execution, lexical environment and state of the call stack (You should be familiar with the stack and the heap). First-class object For an object to be a "first-class citizen" in a programming language, it needs a few properties. Specifically, it must support being: passed as a parameter to a function; returned from a function; stored in a variable or within a data structure; constructed at runtime. Things like numbers and strings are first-class in most programming languages. Functions are first-class in all functional programming languages. And in Scheme, my language of choice for this article, nearly everything can be considered first-class - including continuations as we'll see shortly. OK, now continuations in Scheme In order to render the abstract notion of the current execution context (the current continuation) to the programmer, Scheme needs some way to represent it. It would have been possible to implement specific objects and syntax into the language to handle this, but it's much easier to simply represent the current continuation as a first-class function. This process of transforming


Prompt: It’s a frequent refrain from young condo-dwellers looking to upsize or start a family without fleeing to the suburbs: Why aren’t there more large units downtown? A recent report by the City Building Institute (CBI) at Ryerson University and a survey by Environics Research both highlighted the need for three-bedroom units in Toronto, arguing that developers and builders are ignoring the demand for larger units by young professionals and baby boomers. The axioms of urban economics, however, explain why large condominiums are ill-suited for very dense urban cores. Like other vibrant downtowns in Manhattan and London, Toronto has a tightly

clustered financial district that is also home for some young professionals who are mostly unmarried, without children and rent smaller-sized condominiums. A key to the development puzzle lies in the gap between the stated preferences of these young renter professionals (“Wouldn’t it be nice to start a family downtown?”) with the revealed preferences of young households with children (“The suburbs it is”). On a per-square-foot basis, a three-bedroom condominium downtown will always be significantly more expensive than a similar-sized townhouse in a suburb. Why? Land prices. Downtown land is in huge demand because it is scarce, which leads to high prices and high-rise buildings. Condo sizes are smallest in places with the highest land prices. Contrarily, places with less expensive land attract larger units, as per the first axiom of urban economics: Prices adjust to achieve locational equilibrium. For economic efficiency, scarce and high-priced land must be used for high-density office and residential land uses. Smaller sized units, and not three-bedroom condos, are a more efficient residential use of scarce land that permits more workers to be near their jobs in the financial core. So, what to do with the unmet demand for large condos? Well, if there really were an unmet economic demand, builders would have responded to it. Evidence of actual pent-up demand for owner-occupied three-bedroom condos, it turns out, is rather elusive. Recent Environics surveys found young professionals complained of a lack of three-bedroom condos (a stated preference), but did not necessarily show an interest in owning large condos themselves. In fact, 81 per cent of respondents said that they did not want a condo at all, with most desiring a detached home. Environics found that young professionals were predominantly renters and that 83 per cent did not have children. Builders respond to revealed preferences and not


Prompt: Mexican Marine officers guard the scene of a July shootout in which eight alleged drug traffickers were shot dead by Mexican Marine officers in Tlahuac, Mexico City. (AFP/Getty Images) Just a week into his presidency, Donald Trump raised the specter of using U.S. military might to crush “tough hombres”: the Mexican drug cartels bedeviling the country in a historic year of gangland murders. “We are willing to help you with that big-league. But they have to be knocked out and you have not done a good job of knocking them out,” Trump told Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto on Jan.

27, according to a transcript published Thursday by The Washington Post. [Trump urged Mexican president to end his public defiance on border wall, transcript reveals] “Listen, I know how tough these guys are — our military will knock them out like you never thought of, we will work to help you knock them out because your country does not want that,” Trump said. But can Trump actually do that? Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump discussed border security at the third and final presidential debate, Oct. 19, in Las Vegas. (The Washington Post) Can Trump send forces to Mexico? It is unlikely the Mexican government would allow small elite units, like Green Berets or Navy SEALs, to battle drug cartels in Mexico, or play an active role in advising and assisting Mexican units, said Peter DeShazo, a visiting professor in the Latin American, Latino and Caribbean Studies program at Dartmouth College. While Colombian units have long trained alongside the U.S. Army’s 7th Special Forces Group, for instance, internal Mexican politics would likely prohibit that kind of decision. “This is a not a unilateral issue. Organized crime is an international matter and not a Mexican domestic matter,” he told The Post. Dispatching U.S. forces in Mexico would require host nation approval, and any military strike must fall within the broad, far-reaching authorization of use of military force powers wielded by the president, though Trump has sought to expand that power to undeclared battlefields like Yemen. Northern Command did not respond to a question asking whether any U.S. forces are in Mexico beyond embassy duty. DeShazo said Peña Nieto would be better served focusing on the Merida Initiative, the $2.8 billion State Department program launched in 2008 that aims to overhaul the Mexican justice system and improve Mexico’s troubling human rights record, a


Prompt: Under the agreement, the United States can still penalize Iran for behavior such as its development of ballistic missiles or support for terrorism, but it cannot simply reapply the same sanctions that were lifted under a different guise. Iran has the right to appeal to a joint committee and make the argument that the United States is in violation. European officials have long argued that the agreement was intended only to restrict Iran’s nuclear program, not the panoply of other issues. If the international community were to do more to confront Tehran over its efforts to destabilize neighbors in the

Middle East, European officials have said, it would be better to face an Iran without nuclear weapons. They have shown little enthusiasm for revisiting the deal, much less undercutting it. That Mr. Trump’s actions will satisfy conservatives who have been urging him to rip up the Iran deal seemed unlikely. In a column in The Hill, a Capitol Hill newspaper, John R. Bolton, a former ambassador to the United Nations who has interviewed with the president for several jobs in the administration, argued that the nuclear agreement “remains palpably harmful to American national interests.” Withdrawing from it, he said, “should be the highest priority.” Israel and its supporters in Washington have also bristled at a new cease-fire in southwest Syria that was brokered by Mr. Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, fearing it will leave Iran as a major player on the ground in the six-year civil war. Mr. Spicer said the administration would address that with Israel. “There’s a shared interest that we have with Israel, making sure that Iran does not gain a foothold, military base-wise, in southern Syria,” Mr. Spicer said. Tehran’s clerical government argues that Mr. Trump has already violated the nuclear agreement by pressuring businesses not to engage with Iran even though the nuclear sanctions have been lifted. “That is violation of not the spirit but of the letter of the J.C.P.O.A. of the nuclear deal,” Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, said on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS” on Sunday, using the initials for the agreement. Mr. Zarif, visiting New York, told a gathering of the Council on Foreign Relations on Monday that he has yet to talk with Mr. Tillerson, unlike his frequent conversations with former Secretary of State John Kerry, with whom he negotiated the nuclear accord. In an interview on


Prompt: When Sergeant Clay Hunt left the U.S. Marine Corps in 2010 after serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, he was lonely, depressed and battling Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD). He was working as an advocate for other soldiers struck by this debilitating condition, lobbying Congress on their behalf, cycling with wounded warriors, and even appearing in PSAs discussing the issues surrounding veteran reintegration. But just months after separating from the Corps, he committed suicide, unable to handle the isolation that came with adjusting to civilian life. At his memorial service, Jake Wood, a soldier who he’d served alongside on both tours, discovered

that three other Marines from their unit lived within 15 miles of Hunt’s Houston, Texas, apartment, but no one knew he had moved there. Wood couldn’t help but think that if they had connected, their presence might have saved Hunt’s life. So he joined forces with fellow vets Anthony Allman (Chief Executive Officer) and William McNulty (Chief Expeditionary Officer) to create POS REP, a proximity-based app that uses GPS to connect veterans to each other and to resources that can help them adjust to–and thrive in–life after service. It couldn’t have come a moment too soon; the VA estimates that 22 veterans take their lives every single day. This screenshot shows an AMVETS Career Center where veterans can find employment assistance “We’re now in our 13th year of combat operations in the global war on terrorism that has been executed with an All-Volunteer Force–there hasn’t been a draft–and the burden of war has fallen on a small segment of American society. This makes transitioning out of the military and returning to civilian life particularly challenging,” Allman, 31, explains. “POS REP allows veterans to discover and communicate with a network of peers who can relate to those unique situations. Think of it as a sacred digital space where veterans can discuss issues pertaining to reintegration without judgment.” The app, which went live at the end of 2012, takes its name straight from the frontlines. “POS REP” is military slang for “Position Report,” which means to provide your location. The fact that it’s an app goes beyond the mobile-only trend. “Mobile is ideal for the type of user behavior we’d like to encourage. We don’t want veterans sitting behind their computers posting cat GIFs all day. We want veterans engaging with each other online, but more importantly offline,” says Allman, who previously


Prompt: The Nature of Lisp When I first stumbled into Lisp advocacy on various corners of the web I was already an experienced programmer. At that point I had grokked what seemed at the time a wide range of programming languages. I was proud to have the usual suspects (C++, Java, C#, etc.) on my service record and was under impression that I knew everything there is to know about programming languages. I couldn't have possibly been more wrong. My initial attempt to learn Lisp came to a crashing halt as soon as I saw some sample code. I suppose the

same thought ran through my mind that ran through thousands of other minds who were ever in my shoes: "Why on Earth would anyone want to use a language with such horrific syntax?!" I couldn't be bothered to learn a language if its creators couldn't be bothered to give it a pleasant syntax. After all, I was almost blinded by the infamous Lisp parentheses! The moment I regained my sight I communicated my frustrations to some members of the Lisp sect. Almost immediately I was bombarded by a standard set of responses: Lisp's parentheses are only a superficial matter, Lisp has a huge benefit of code and data being expressed in the same manner (which, obviously, is a huge improvement over XML), Lisp has tremendously powerful metaprogramming facilities that allow programs to write code and modify themselves, Lisp allows for creation of mini-languages specific to the problem at hand, Lisp blurs the distinction between run time and compile time, Lisp, Lisp, Lisp... The list was very impressive. Needless to say none of it made sense. Nobody could illustrate the usefulness of these features with specific examples because these techniques are supposedly only useful in large software systems. After many hours of debating that conventional programming languages do the job just fine, I gave up. I wasn't about to invest months into learning a language with a terrible syntax in order to understand obscure features that had no useful examples. My time has not yet come. For many months the Lisp advocates pressed on. I was baffled. Many extremely intelligent people I knew and had much respect for were praising Lisp with almost religious dedication. There had to be something there, something I couldn't afford not to get my hands on! Eventually my thirst for knowledge won me over. I took


Prompt: The second half, devoted to the guerrilla campaign in Bolivia in 1967 that ended in Guevara’s death, is equally rigorous in its depiction of a failed revolt. Though Guevara tried, in a new context, to apply the strategic lessons of the Cuban revolution — concentrate on the countryside; cultivate popular support; maintain discipline and cohesion in the ranks — everything went wrong. And it turned out that Guevara’s adversaries, the Bolivian army and its American advisers, had learned a thing or two about how to wage an effective counterinsurgency. There is a lot, however, that the audience will not learn

from this big movie, which has some big problems as well as major virtues. In between the two periods covered in “Che,” Guevara was an important player in the Castro government, but his brutal role in turning a revolutionary movement into a dictatorship goes virtually unmentioned. This, along with Benicio Del Toro’s soulful and charismatic performance, allows Mr. Soderbergh to preserve the romantic notion of Guevara as a martyr and an iconic figure, an idealistic champion of the poor and oppressed. By now, though, this image seems at best naïve and incomplete, at worst sentimental and dishonest. More to the point, perhaps, it is not very interesting. But “Che” itself is interesting, partly because it has the power to provoke some serious argument — about its own tactics and methods, as well as those of its subject. Whether American audiences will have a chance to participate in that argument is, for the moment, an open question. The mood here among buyers has been extremely cautious, and as of this writing, distributors have balked at spending $8 million to $10 million (the reported asking price for “Che”) on a 258-minute movie to be released in two parts, with subtitles. Photo This is one of the frustrations of Cannes, for American critics at least. We see lots of fascinating movies — not all good, but very few completely worthless — and then wonder if we, or our readers, will ever see them again. I’m not in the movie business (a mutually beneficial arrangement, believe me), and not inclined to speculate with someone else’s money. I do hope, however, that sometime in the near future I can take part in the long and contentious conversation that “Che” deserves, and also see how my own initial ambivalence about the film resolves itself. I have


Prompt: BEREA, Ohio — The dominant feeling around the Cleveland Browns the day after the 2016 season ended? Overwhelming optimism. To a man, players, coaches and front-office types believe this long and miserable season has laid a foundation. Hue Jackson said that this 1-15 finish is different because it set up the future. The Browns are proud that they did not quit, that they fought to the end in overtime in Pittsburgh. They also believe strength is forged from struggle. "Nobody likes the record, by any stretch of the imagination," Jackson said. "But I truly believe the foundation is set for

some of the things that we want to do as we move forward." Director of strategy Paul DePodesta called the season painful, like a toothache, but also said he felt positive vibes on Monday. "I was struck by the tenor of the conversations throughout the building today, especially our players, how optimistic they are, how bright they feel the future is here," DePodesta said. "I share their enthusiasm." Vice president of football operations Sashi Brown said the positives included the players' "buy-in" of Jackson's programs, and the change in culture brought about by the hiring of Jackson. The words thrown around pushed the limits of the thesaurus. DePodesta said he's more optimistic than he was a year ago when he joined the Browns. He added that the Browns made "tremendous progress" in 2016. "There is a belief around the building that we're heading in the right direction," Brown said. "That is extremely important and a cornerstone of the foundation that we needed to lay this year.” If it sounds counterintuitive, well, it might be. It's tough to look at any 1-15 season and find positives, but the Browns tore the team down to the nails. They endured a far worse season than they anticipated, but now plan to build it back up. The leadership structure remains in place. DePodesta worked in baseball until a year ago. Brown was hired by the Browns as general counsel and eventually became the salary-cap guy. Jackson is the traditional football guy. Scouts will work with analytics folks, who will crunch the numbers to find the best options. "Nobody likes the record, by any stretch of the imagination," Browns coach Hue Jackson said. "But I truly believe the foundation is set for some of the things that we want to do." AP Photo/Gail Burton DePodesta


Prompt: If antioxidant supplement labels are to be believed, you should stop reading this article and gobble down some pills: Spurred by the rising sales of antioxidant supplements, Pom Wonderful, makers of pomegranate juice, now makes an antioxidant supplement that they claim has "extraordinary health benefits." This proclamation is echoed by numerous health supplement ads in health food stores and on the Internet. For instance, Source Naturals Resveratrol advises on the General Nutrition Centers Web site that taking antioxidants "…may help prevent free-radical damage throughout the body and provide protective support to the cardiovascular system.*" Problem solved. Except a bit of

a buzz-kill is delivered by the asterisked footnote: "These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease." So, do the purported health benefits of antioxidants actually exist? Here's the theory: Just as the name suggests, antioxidants slow down oxidation, a process that is part of normal bodily functions but can also damage cells. Oxidation can even increase the stickiness of cholesterol, upping the risk that it will block circulation and cause heart attacks or strokes. So it at least theoretically makes sense that antioxidants such as vitamin C, vitamin E and other antioxidant compounds found in carrots and other vegetables, are good for you. Ditto antioxidants found in pomegranates, red wine and licorice root. And early studies in the 1990s showed that people who ate more antioxidants had a lower risk of heart disease and stroke. But those findings didn't hold up for antioxidant supplements. In later studies, such supplements did not affect risk of—and in some studies actually increased—heart attacks and strokes. Nancy Cook, an epidemiologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and a co-author of one of these studies, suggests two possible explanations for these results: It could be that studies of supplements are using the wrong doses and combinations of antioxidants. Or, people who eat lots of antioxidants—in foods, not supplements—are already doing the kinds of things that lower heart disease risk, namely exercise and, well, eating plenty of fruits and vegetables. Biochemist Michael Aviram of the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Israel, suggests another alternative. His research focuses on pomegranates. In a recent study, he found that mice bred to have blockages in their arteries and developed fewer blockages in their arteries after they were fed parts of pomegranates.


Prompt: What Your Band Needs To Know Before Going Pro Every band dreams of making it to the big time. However, few musicians know what it really takes to move your passion of music to a career. These tips listed below will put you ahead of the curve. Get ready, it ain’t pretty. Practice- You must have band practice everyday for 8 to 10 hours. The first 6 hours should be spent in total silence, sitting in a circle and picturing what you will be playing. It is called simulation exercise. At no point should you talk. Picture yourself playing a

sheading solo, smashing your guitar, spilling a beer all over your bass players pedal board, and dropping your pick. Imagining things before they happen will get you ready for when they happen in real life. The total silence will also prepare you for the hours of silence you will spend in the band van while on tour. Fighting- At some point, your band will fight while on tour. It might be about the last show when the bass player missed a cue or about the hot chick at the bar that you totally could have scored if your drummer didn’t come over and yell at you for not helping load the gear. You should know this is going to happen. Fights are inevitable, just ask my wife. When fights do occur, make sure to blow the littlest thing out of proportion and hold on to it for days. I still hate my drummer for once sneezing without covering his mouth; freaking hippies. Money- no matter what the bar says, expect to be paid slightly less than the agreed upon price. Did they say, $400 bucks, free drinks and 10 guest passes? What they really mean is, $400 minus the beer you drink and you don’t even have any guests. So, you will walk out with $300, a bar napkin with an ugly chick’s digits, and a pint glass your guitar player stashed in his guitar case. Always send two people to collect the money. There are two good reasons for this: First, two people will scare the owner to paying you correctly and 2nd; you can’t trust your bandmates to not pinch a little cash from the top. I mean, seriously, your bandmates are sketchy dudes!!! What kinda trust worthy human plays in a touring band? The answer, none. Gear-