Prompt: OTTAWA – Former Republican presidential candidate and libertarian Ron Paul will be the marquee speaker at Canada’s premier gathering of Conservatives next month, a figure that even organizers bill as controversial. Paul will speak to the Manning Centre for Building Democracy’s networking conference, an event that in the past has drawn Prime Minister Stephen Harper and many of his key cabinet members and advisers. Paul, referred to by some pundits as the real inspiration behind the Tea Party movement in the United States, is one of the foremost voices for small government — including eliminating foreign aid, the education department,

key social programs and the war on drugs. He is staunchly anti-abortion, anti-gun control, and opposed to President Barack Obama’s health-care reform. The 77-year-old has advocated for an end to Medicare and Medicaid in the United States. A Texan, Paul is a former doctor turned congressman and currently the chairman of the Campaign for Liberty. He was able to assemble a loyal following over the course of two Republican races in 2008 and 2011, notably with the use of the Internet. “We oppose the dehumanizing assumption that all issues that divide us must be settled at the federal level and forced on every American community, whether by activist judges, a power-hungry executive, or a meddling Congress,” says the campaign’s website. “We believe in the humane alternative of local self-government, as called for in our Constitution.” Olivier Ballou, a spokesman for the Manning Centre, said centre president Preston Manning himself will engage in an on-stage discussion with Paul following the former presidential candidate’s speech. “He’s definitely our biggest attraction and source of controversy,” Ballou said. “He’s one of those guys that people either love him or hate him. It’s fascinating since we announced him seeing the debates online.” On the Manning Centre’s Facebook page, commenters were divided about the wisdom of having Paul speak at the conference. “Ron Paul is a fool who will only discredit this fine attempt at preparing conservative minds for the future,” read one post. “Ron Paul is the best politician in the U.S.A., the real deal. Very smart man, can’t believe he isn’t President he’s so smart,” said another. Conservative parliamentarians who are on the schedule for the conference were markedly terse in their reaction to Paul’s participation. “I actually have heard him speak in the past, and while I disagree with what he says on


Prompt: Hours after a crushing defeat to the Knicks, Sacramento Kings forward Matt Barnes choked a woman at a Manhattan night spot early Monday, law-enforcement sources said. Police were called to the club Avenue in Chelsea at around 3:20 a.m. following Barnes’ alleged 3:20 a.m. attack on the 26-year-old victim, the sources said. The woman, who was not identified, may be Barnes’ girlfriend — but his rep later suggested she was a stranger. The NBA player — who has not been arrested — also allegedly “physically assaulted” another woman, 27, and a man, 35, from a table next to Barnes’ crew

as they attempted to intervene. They were both hit with a bottle, but it was not chucked by Barnes, the sources said. Barnes’ initial beef was with people within his own crew of five to 10 pals at a club table before the fight escalated, the sources said. “So they get into a fight amongst each other and it spills over to another group in close proximity,” a source said, adding that it’s unclear what sparked the dispute. “Don’t know what sparked the dispute. This was a wild melee. This was a real good old fashioned barroom brawl.” By the time officers arrived at the 10th Avenue club, Barnes and his buddies, including teammate DeMarcus Cousins, had left, sources said. Barnes defend himself on Instagram Monday, posting, “There’s always two sides to a story.” “The side the media consistently tries to paint of me . . . And what actually happened! Don’t believe everything you read,” Barnes posted to his more than 430,000 followers. A rep for Barnes told TMZ that a woman, who was not identified as his girlfriend, had slapped him in the face after Barnes accidentally “butt bumped” her in the VIP section of the club and acted in self-defense when several men intervened. Barnes was knocked to the ground and choked by one of the men, the rep said, according to TMZ. Cousins even jumped in to defend Barnes, the rep said. Barnes’ lawyer, Alex Spiro, told The Post, “We believe no crime was committed and will continue to cooperate with the authorities.” A video obtained by TMZ appears to show Barnes and Cousins outside of the club talking about the brawl. Cousins can be heard saying that Barnes “hit the sh-t out of this n—a.” The fight came hours after Barnes stunk up Madison Square


Prompt: Rancher Cliven Bundy displays a bouquet of desert foliage that his cattle grazes on during a news conference at an event near his ranch in Bunkerville on Saturday, April 11, 2015. (David Becker/Las Vegas Review-Journal) Art Bundy, left, son of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, stands while his mother Carol Bundy talk to attorneys Joel Hansen and Larry Klaymam, right, in front of Lloyd George U.S. Courthouse on Tuesday, May 10, 2016. Jeff Scheid/Las Vegas Review-Journal Follow @jlscheid Conservative radio host Pete Santilli, right, follows Ammon Bundy, left, at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters near Burns, Ore. on Thursday, Jan.

7, 2016. Chase Stevens/Las Vegas Review-Journal Follow @csstevensphoto Ryan Bundy takes a phone call by the entrance of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters near Burns, Ore. on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2016. Chase Stevens/Las Vegas Review-Journal Follow @csstevensphoto Terry Noonkester, right, and Jane Doherty, second right, protest outside Lloyd George Federal Building on Thursday, March 10, 2016, in Las Vegas. Cliven Bundy appears in court this afternoon. Bizuayehu Tesfaye/Las Vegas Review-Journal Follow @bizutesfaye Cliven Bundy speaks at a protest camp near Bunkerville on Friday, April 18, 2014. John Locher/Las Vegas Review-Journal Ammon Bundy, right, motions to Arizona Rancher LaVoy Finicum, left, while speaking with reporters at a news conference by the entrance of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters near Burns, Ore. on Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. Chase Stevens/Las Vegas Review-Journal Follow @csstevensphoto A Bundy Ranch sign near Bunkerville, Nev. greets visitors on Thursday, May 19, 2016. (Jeff Scheid/Las Vegas Review-Journal) Follow @jlscheid A sign is posted on a fence line is seen near the Bundy Ranch near Bunkerville, Nev. on Thursday, May 19, 2016. Jeff Scheid/Las Vegas Review-Journal Follow @jlscheid Federal employees talked about the “crazies” from across the United States who were coming to Bunkerville to support rancher Cliven Bundy. After corralling Bundy’s free-roaming “trespass” cattle from the Gold Butte range in 2014, agents were bracing for a violent confrontation. Some employees feared for their lives as suggestive threats surfaced and were circulated among Interior Department and law enforcement officials, according to emails obtained by the Las Vegas Review-Journal through a Freedom of Information Act request. After more than two years of gathering, redacting and delaying release of the documents, the Bureau of Land Management this week provided the newspaper with more than 400 pages of blacked-out emails and reports. The newspaper contends so much requested information is missing that


Prompt: It has been said that the running back position has been dying in the NFL for the last several seasons and it appears that theory has come to fruition for the New York Giants as of late. The New York Giants 2016 running back depth chart has some question marks with four contributors last season. The G-men will be searching for some answers in 2016 as a result. Orleans Darkwa, Rashad Jennings, Shane Vereen, and Andre Williams each had their opportunities in 2015 to take full reins of the top spot, yet none of them were able to stand out,

hence the new additions. General manager Jerry Reese and first year head coach Ben McAdoo both thought it best to bring in some competition and weed out the weak. Veteran Bobby Rainey as well as rookies Marshaun Coprich and Paul Perkins were added to the roster via free agency and the 2016 NFL Draft, respectively. The hope is that more competition at the position will force someone to rise to the occasion. So who, if anyone, will emerge as the lead back in Big Blue? New York Giants 2016 Running Back Depth Chart Projection Rashad Jennings – Although missing some opportunities as a Giant these past two seasons, Rashad Jennings is still the guy… for now. After missing five games in 2014, Jennings got off to a poor start in 2015. Averaging only 11 carries per game in September, Jennings scored one rushing touchdown and only managed to pull in five receptions without a score. The majority of his season was a mixture of inconsistent play, partially due to inconsistent touches. Not having topped 63 rushing yards in a game until Week 14, Jennings was not cutting it for coaches Tom Coughlin and then offensive coordinator Ben McAdoo. As a result, he was sharing carries as one part of a four-way tandem in the Giants backfield. Luckily for Jennings, he finished the season extremely well by running hard, fast, making great cuts, and taking advantage of his opportunities. Amassing nearly half of his total yardage and scoring two of his three rushing touchdowns, the last four weeks showed the Giants’ coaching staff that Jennings can handle the load and deserves to get the bulk of the opportunities early on in 2016. Paul Perkins – By Week 7 you will agree with this decision… trust me (82 yard TD run). Perkins


Prompt: Obama Meets Privately With the Dead Musicians Phil Lesh and Bob Weir of the band The Dead perform in NYC, March 30, 2009. (Bryan Bedder/Getty Images ) The surviving (and formerly feuding) members of the Grateful Dead had a secret impromptu meeting Monday evening with the man they credit with reuniting them: President Obama. The president welcomed all the members of The Dead, who are performing tonight at the Verizon Center in Washington, to the Oval Office just before dinner last night. They didn't talk music as much as they did history - history about the Oval Office, and the

president's desk. Apparently the band was quite taken with how tidy the president keeps his desk. And how down-to-earth he seemed, according a source who was there. "The president was so gracious. Really, really nice and so welcoming. It hit you: you're in the Oval Office, but it was so normal," the source told us. The entourage included the four surviving members of the Grateful Dead - Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann - plus keyboardist Jeff Chimenti (from Weir's Ratdog) and Warren Haynes, who is joining the Dead on their 2009 spring tour as lead vocalist and guitarist. Some of them had their wives in tow. As if chatting with the president in the Oval Office weren't cool enough, something remarkable happened on their way out. Just outside the Oval Office, Phil and his wife, Jill Lesh, spotted a vase full of Scarlet Begonias sitting on a table. For the uninitiated, "Scarlet Begonias" is one of the late Grateful Dead band leader Jerry Garcia's most famous songs. (Check out a youthful looking Jerry Garcia singing "Scarlet Begonias" in this 1977 video, and be sure you have a tissue.) After admiring the Scarlet Begonias, the band went next door to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building to meet with the most prominent Deadheads in the Obama White House: senior advisors David Axelrod and Pete Rouse, and deputy chief of staff Jim Messina. All three are planning to go to tonight's one and only Dead show in Washington, we're told. After leaving the White House, the members of the Dead - none of whom, surprisingly, wore tie-dyed t-shirts to the Oval Office - walked over to their favorite Washington restaurant, the Old Ebbitt Grill, for dinner. Given that the Dead sparked the "Deadheads for Obama" movement when they reunited during


Prompt: The San Jose City Council approved a measure by a one-vote margin Tuesday that requires gun owners to secure their firearms when they are not at home. The measure passed 6-5 and requires firearm owners to store their guns either in a locked container or disable them with a trigger lock before leaving their residence. Supporters contend that 286 firearms were reported stolen out of 9,270 residential burglaries reported in the city of one million in the past three years, making the ordinance a matter of public safety. “We want to reduce the opportunities and possibilities of those who should

not have access to guns and ensure that guns are properly stored at all times to prevent unnecessary and indefensible access and use,” said Councilmembers Raul Peralez and Chappie Jones in a memo to the Council. The move, proposed last year, sets up those who have an unsecured gun stolen for fines of $1,000 and as much as six months in jail. Going past homeowners and renters, the requirements also apply to those in condos, hotels, time shares, and recreational vehicles inside the city. In 51-pages of letters to the Council concerning the proposal, most who wrote in opposed the measure, contending it would have little impact on crime and would penalize victims of burglaries while putting residents at risk in a self-defense encounter. In contrast, local media described Tuesday’s meeting as emotional, with vocal advocates on both sides of the issue. City Councilmember Lan Diep voiced his concerns, saying the Council was micromanaging the actions of law-abiding citizens and cautioned against a one-size-fits-all mandate for a municipality with varied gun owners. “A person who lives in a single-family home is probably more susceptible to burglary than one who lives in a high-rise with onsite security,” said Diep, providing examples to place his argument in context. “Leaving a handgun in a bedside drawer may be acceptable in a house with an immobile newborn, but unacceptable in a house with teenagers. Yet if those teenagers are taught to respect and handle guns from a young age so that they view guns as a tool rather than a shiny toy, then perhaps less precaution is required in that specific household.” The ordinance was opposed by the National Rifle Association and its state affiliate, the California Rifle and Pistol Association, but the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence argued that safe storage ordinances


Prompt: Looking for news you can trust? Subscribe to our free newsletters. Update, August 1, 9:57 p.m. EST: Surprise! A day after House Republicans fell into dysfunctional mayhem, they rallied to pass a supplemental spending bill that devotes $694 million to border security measures. The House approved the bill 223-189, with one Democrat voting in favor and four Republicans voting nay. It was a face-saving measure after House Speaker John Boehner on Thursday pulled the original bill right before it was supposed to receive a vote. But this supposed GOP victory is mostly a meaningless gesture. The Senate has already left

town for the August recess, and the upper chamber likely wouldn’t have approved the House’s border bill anyway, with Democrats claiming it doesn’t offer enough additional funds and contains harsh provisions easing the deportation of children. Boehner managed to win back the tea party wing of his party by pairing the spending bill with a stricter measure rolling back President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, an executive order that granted two-year waivers to 580,000 so-called DREAMers, young undocumented immigrants who grew up in the US. The anti-DACA bill—which passed by a 216-192 vote later Friday night—would bar the Obama administration from offering new DACA waivers or renewing current DACA beneficiaries when their two years are up. This bill was a show vote, for the Senate and Obama would never go along with it. But this was the GOP message of the day: in order to win the support of tea party Republicans for a bill with spending to ease the humanitarian crisis underway at the border, Boehner had to give these conservatives a vote to toss out the DREAMers. The House GOP fell into chaos and bickering Thursday afternoon, when House Speaker John Boehner yanked a pair of bills from the floor at the last minute. The House was supposed to have an easy final day of work before members jetted home for their five-week summer recess. But Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), starring in a cameo role as Speaker of the Tea Party, sabotaged Boehner’s best-laid plans. The GOP leadership had originally intended to pass a limited spending measure to bolster border security and immediately scoot off, leaving the final tricky decision-making to the Senate. But the tea party wing of the House—inspired and encouraged by Cruz—revolted against Boehner and refused to go along with the


Prompt: Movies cannot be complete without visual effects. Just think about The Jungle Book or The Guardians of the Galaxy. Most of the movies these days are visual effects heavy and require a team of great seasoned VFX artists to collaborate together and work hard to create those stunning visuals. In order to become a great VFX artist and be a part of a team like that, you really need to be committed and passionate about your work as it takes years of practice to be able to achieve the quality you see on these movies. In case you already have

some experience or even if you're just starting out as a VFX artist, here are 5 great tips that will help you succeed in this field: #1: Observe The World Around You: The first step you need to take in order to become a great visual effects artist is actually to observe. Just look around you and pay attention to the closest details. The more attention you pay, the more real the effects will be. For example, just take a fire. Is the smoke always the same color? What makes it change? Is it always that dense? and how does it reacts when in front of a bright sky? Understanding how the lighting works is very significant in visual effects. You'll be able to create more correct shadows / highlights and reflections and learn how to create a more realistic contrast between different objects in the scene, Movement can also be tricky sometimes. You need to look at the leafs of the trees, for example. How do they act? And the branches? And the colors change in case if it’s a sunny day? What about the shadows? All these minute details add up and can sell the realism to the audience. #2: Recreate Photographs: One of the things that will help you be a great VFX artist is to recreate photographs. Just pick some that have different shadows and lights and try to reproduce them. This will help you to see the difference between real things and fake ones. Despite the fact that the first ones won't be that good, it's a matter of practicing and experimenting. It’s working on making CG look realistic and looking at real world references will teach you that what are those differences in the render you have in front of you compared to a


Prompt: Dear Reader, As you can imagine, more people are reading The Jerusalem Post than ever before. Nevertheless, traditional business models are no longer sustainable and high-quality publications, like ours, are being forced to look for new ways to keep going. Unlike many other news organizations, we have not put up a paywall. We want to keep our journalism open and accessible and be able to keep providing you with news and analysis from the frontlines of Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World. The army on Thursday announced it has filed an indictment against a soldier for illegally sharing

classified military information regarding IDF operations on the Golan border with another Israeli citizen who passed the information on to the Syrian government. The soldier, a corporal whose name is under gag order and was referred to as “H.H.” serves in a combat unit and was charged with exposing secrets and aiding the enemy. According to the indictment filed in the Central Military District Court, H.H. provided information around February 16-17 “that could harm state security.”The Israeli citizen middleman to whom H.H. allegedly provided the information, Sudi al-Makat, 48, from Majdal Shams on the Golan Heights, was indicted last week by the Nazareth District Court for a wide range of security offenses.H.H., Makat and associates were arrested by the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) and the police on and around February 25. According to investigators, Makat and other residents of Majdal Shams documented IDF movements along the border with Syria and transferred the information to officials in the Syrian government and intelligence community. Information was sent over the Internet, through a Syrian television station, and by a direct line that Makat had with Syrian officials.Makat admitted that he was in touch with Medhat Saleh, a Syrian government official well known for his links with officials in Syrian intelligence. Makat had served a full 27-year prison sentence up until 2012 for violent security crimes.The Central District Military Court ordered H.H. remanded to military police custody until the end of the trial and, until now, had imposed a gag order on the entire affair.On Thursday night, the High Court of Justice rejected a petition by Makat to appoint a defense lawyer for him who does not have approved credentials for representing defendants in cases dealing with classified information.Makat had argued that having a lawyer “approved” by the state, even if the state


Prompt: The National Association of Theater Owners made news on Wednesday with a series of 'requests' in regards to the ways in which studios advertise their product within the theater walls. The move was intended to give theater owners more flexibility in terms of how films are marketed inside the theaters. The two big suggestions are of course getting the most news. NATO is advising that studios refrain from marketing upcoming movies more than four months in advance of their domestic release, which would put the kibosh on teaser posters and glorified black screen teaser trailers that pop up a year

prior to release. Also of note, NATO is recommending a two-minute limit on the length of previews, responding to consumer complaints of new films featuring a solid 20 minutes of coming attractions prior to the feature. The above recommendations are a step in the right direction. Sure we all loved the July 2007 teaser for The Dark Knight and the Marlon Brando-narrated teaser for Superman Returns, there is no reason those clips wouldn't have been just as exciting as the first look at the respective films just a few months prior to release. And the length of trailers is indeed an issue, with marketers often randomly filling up the 2.5 trailers with arbitrary spoilers purely to meet the time limit. While it's likely that the studios will protest and all of this will come to naught, there are other sensible ways to make the modern film trailer a more pleasurable experience. In short, here are six ways to fix the modern movie trailer. 1. No more divulging the climactic 'money shot'. This is not a new problem. I remember being thrilled by the climactic shot in the Mission: Impossible trailers which all ended with Tom Cruise leaping from an exploding helicopter onto a speeding train. I was less thrilled when I realized during the movie that I already knew how the main villain was going to die and how the climax was going to end. Ditto the third trailer for Spider-Man which literally showed Spider-Man catching Mary Jane in mid-air following her being tossed off a bridge. I'm thinking of course of the shot of the Hulk catching Tony Stark in mid-air in The Avengers, the very last shot of Quarantine being used both in the trailer, and the poster to the current campaign for Furious 6 (which gives away


Prompt: I'm and American legally I can advocate anything I damn well please. I can even advocate the murder of an individual. Hell I can't even be charged with a conspiracy to commit homicide until I take actual action to kill the target or hire and assassin. Let me show you. SOMEBODY SHOULD PUMP TWENTY PUMKIN'BALLS INTO THAT HALF-BLOODED KENYAN NIGGER RAISED OUTSIDE OUR EMPIRE WHO CLAIMS TO BE THE PRESIDENT BECAUSE DINIDUS, WOMEN, AND SPICS VOTED FOR HIM. I can't wait until we slaughter ever non-white in America, mestizos included. It's also legal for me to make and store nerve

agents. I call it VV it’s about 1/3 as toxic as VX but it has a much higher vaporization pressure so it is more easily aerosoled and it is extremely persistent which makes it good for area denial. VX is O-Ethyl S-(2-diisopropylaminoethyl) methylphosphonothioate VV is O-Ethyl S-(2-dimethylaminoethyl) methylphosphonothioate. into a very dry 2000 ml round bottom flask, the following ingredients are added, quickly, one after the other with swirling to mix them a few boiling chips, 800 ml anhydrous ethyl ether, 284 grams of methyl ethoxyphosphoryl chloride, 212 grams of dimethylaminoethanethiol, and 212 grams of triethylamine. it is very important that the glassware be very dry, and that the ingredients espescially the methyl ethoxyphosphoryl chloride be protected from moisture, because the presence of water really lowers the yield in this this reaction. when the ingredients have been added and mixed, a good efficient condenser topped with a drying tube is attached to the flask and a flow of very cold water is put trought the condenser . the contents of the flask are heated to boiling with a hot water bath and the reflux is maintened for one hour. the byproduct of this reaction, hydrogen chloride, is absorbed by the tiethylamine as it is produced, forming triethylamine hydrochloride cristal cristal at the end of the eating period, the mixture is cooled and the cristal of triethylamine hydrochloride are filtred out in a Buchner funnel. the filtered reaction mixture is then returned to 2000 ml round bottom flask, a few boiling chips added, the glassware set up for simple distillation and the ether removed by distilling it of under a gentle vacuum.an aspirator is perfect for this job since it will flush the ether fumes down the drain. when most of the ether is gone, the mixture is poured into a


Prompt: MORE THAN A TV: Kiwi smart TV owners have been slow to connect their TVs to the internet. The average Kiwi household has three internet-connected devices - and perhaps even more after yesterday - but many other web-capable gadgets in homes are not online, new research suggests. A Colmar Brunton survey, commissioned by wholesale broadband provider Chorus, found laptops, desk-top computers and smartphones were the web-connected gadgets with the highest penetration, appearing in 82 per cent, 63 per cent and 60 per cent of Kiwi homes respectively. Those gadgets had a high level of internet connectedness - at least 92

per cent. But other smart devices are not being connected. Almost 40 per cent of New Zealand households have a smart or web-capable TV, so viewers can browse the web, stream programmes and movies and use applications such as Skype, but half of them are not hooked up to the internet. Similarly, 61 per cent of Blu-ray players, 57 per cent of security systems, 42 per cent of TV hard-drives and 41 per cent of hand-held gaming consoles are not used online. When asked why their devices were not online, 37 per cent of respondents said it was not necessary for them to be, 8 per cent said they did not know how to connect them, 8 per cent said they did not have the capability to connect them and 8 per cent said they did not want to use the devices online. Chorus spokesman Gerard Linstrom said many consumers were not aware their devices could be connected to the web or of the benefits of doing so. People thought Blu-ray players were just for playing high-definition disks, "but increasingly, a lot of Blu-ray disks come with interactive content. There are additional features and programming available". "There's a lot of untapped content that people have already got access to - they've already paid for it." Web-connected home security systems could be managed and monitored remotely, for example, through a smartphone, while TV hard-drives could also be controlled remotely. Telecommunications Users Association chief executive Paul Brislen said awareness was an issue but a lack of content was a big reason people with smart TVs weren't connected - himself included. Movie and streaming service Quickflix had only just become available for TVs through Freeview. "But Quickflix has a fairly limited library, they'd be the first to admit that. Sky doesn't do anything


Prompt: Dutch police have arrested a second suspect in relation to a threat in Rotterdam where a rock concert was canceled after a tip from Spanish authorities, NOS said on Thursday. The new arrest came around 2 am (0000 GMT) in the town of Nordbrabant, which lies near the Belgian border. A 22-year-old man was arrested in his home, which was searched, reported NOS. "He is in custody and will be questioned about the threat in Rotterdam," police said in a statement, adding that they conducted a thorough search of his home. Dutch police do not generally release identities or other

details of suspects in criminal investigations. Authorities closed off a venue where the US band Allah-Las was set to play in front of around 1,000 spectators. Rotterdam mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb said at a press conference that night that a van full of gas canisters was found near the concert venue. "He is in custody and will be questioned about the threat in Rotterdam," police said in a statement, adding that they conducted a thorough search of his home. Dutch police do not generally release identities or other details of suspects in criminal investigations. Meanwhile, police said the driver of a Spain-registered white van carrying a number of gas canisters that was stopped Wednesday night close to the Maassilo concert venue — where the band Allah-Las had been due to perform — is unlikely to be a suspect in the threat probe. In a statement, police said the man was possibly drunk and will be questioned later Thursday. Explosives experts checked his van and found nothing suspicious beyond the gas canisters, according to the police statement. A search of the man's home "uncovered no link with the terror threat ... at the Maassilo," police said. "The man, a repair man, had an explanation for the gas canisters that will be investigated today." The performance by the Los Angeles band in Rotterdam was called off Wednesday night after Spanish authorities tipped Dutch police about a possible threat to the concert. The van driver was detained for questioning two hours after the cancellation. A Spanish counterterrorism official said Spain's Civil Guard received "an alert indicating the possibility of an attack in a concert that was going to take place in Rotterdam." The Civil Guard shared the information with Dutch authorities Wednesday and was investigating the threat, said the source, who spoke anonymously because


Prompt: Sierra Nelson loves cephalopods. Squids, octopuses, cuttlefish—you name it, if it’s a bilateral mollusk with a big-ass head, Nelson is positively gaga over it. Nelson is a Seattle-area poet, and you can understand how a poet might fall in love with tentacled sea creatures: They’re romantic figures, skulking in the ocean—part of the great marine biosphere, but also remote from whales and fish. Those articulate limbs and big brains set them apart, leaving them to skulk and mope fabulously. And they even produce their own ink! How could a poet not land on Team Cephalopod? But Nelson is more science-minded

than your average poet. She’s a co-founder of the Vis-á-Vis Society, which applies scientific rigor to crowd-sourced poems, often employing large crowds at parties to write, Mad Libs-style, a series of poems about love and longing. No other poets in town, likely, have dissected a poem into pie charts on a whiteboard while wearing a lab coat. On her own, Nelson loves to tease out the poetry in science, finding resonance in the long and mysterious Latin words and phrases we’ve used to name the world. One of my favorites of her poems is “The First Photograph,” which explains the process that created a blurry heliograph by the father of photography, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce: “Through the pinprick it all came to us,/how close we were, upside down,/several hours on the windowsill./We were surfaces arranged to receive.” The poem concludes: “Yet I capture you. Close to the sun./I coated my longing in bitumen.” Much has been written about the way photographs capture a moment in time, but rarely is that desperate need so beautifully overt. So yes, there’s whimsy in Nelson’s celebration of all things squid and squidlike. But there’s also serious investigation and a questing mind, fusing science and art and seeing what happens. Every year since 2015, she’s been presenting Cephalopod Appreciation Societies—arts celebrations with music, film, visual art, poetry, and speeches. Past participants have included musician Lori Goldston, biologist Stephanie Crofts, marine cinematographer Laura James, and novelist Kevin Emerson, and presentations have included stickers, classes on incorporating marine biology into creative writing, octopus-themed animation, and sea-shanty singalongs. This Sunday’s Society is in a different setting: not the creative hub of Hugo House, as in past years, but at Waterfront Space, a gallery on Western Avenue. Nelson encourages participants of all ages to come dressed as their favorite cephalopod,


Prompt: NAIROBI (Reuters) - Rapidly spreading lawlessness as Somalia collapses in the worst fighting for two nearly decades is fuelling a wave of piracy that increasingly threatens one of the world’s most important waterways. South Korean ship Maputo 9 (L), which was hijacked by Somali pirates, is escorted by a Yemeni coast guard boat at Aden November 13, 2007. REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah Although shipping costs have not been affected so far, it is forcing Western navies to take action to protect shipping. Some suspect that ransom payments to pirates could be helping Islamist insurgents fight the weak interim government. The piracy is

also hampering aid shipments to Somalia and thereby worsening a humanitarian crisis that encourages the anarchy. Heavily-armed pirates from Somalia have hijacked at least 30 ships so far this year in the Gulf of Aden — last week seizing a record four vessels in 48 hours. “All the shipping companies are taking this very seriously and are very concerned. This is an unprecedented rise in attacks,” said Pottengal Mukundan, director of the International Maritime Bureau, a global piracy watchdog. The waters between Somalia and Yemen are a major artery used by nearly 20,000 vessels a year heading to and from the Suez Canal. The 700 million tons passing through the canal in 2007 was over 9 percent of an estimated 7.7 billion tons carried by global shipping. Merchant shipping carries more than 90 percent of the world’s traded goods by volume. In May, the advisory Joint War Committee of Lloyd’s Market Association designated the strategic channel at high risk of “war, strikes, terrorism and related perils”. “But it’s just a recommendation, and some underwriters may not follow it for their very important clients,” Mukundan told Reuters. “Costs have not gone up. Of course, if you are hijacked they go up quite significantly. But there is no contingent cost to piracy.” Somali pirates are currently holding about 130 crew members hostage on at least seven vessels, including huge chemical tankers and bulk-carriers. Gunmen are holding vessels from Japan, Malaysia, Thailand, Nigeria, Germany and Iran. REBELS BEHIND ATTACKS? Attacks at sea have boomed as lawlessness increased in Somalia, where there has not been a working government since warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. Since the start of last year, more than 8,000 civilians have been killed in fighting between allied Somali government and Ethiopian soldiers and Islamist rebels. Another 1


Prompt: The Quran-Burning Coverage Conundrum Enlarge this image toggle caption Joe Raedle/Getty Images Joe Raedle/Getty Images Brooke Gladstone is the host of On The Media from WNYC. Pastor Terry Jones was clearly on another planet when he told ABC’s Terry Moran that his plan to burn Qurans was divinely inspired. Jesus “was very nice,” he said, “so I think Jesus would not run around burning books, but I think he would burn this one.” But the pastor had feet solidly planted on terra firma when it came to working the media. You can read NPR's coverage of the latest developments in

this story by clicking here. We love crazies -- they pull in audiences like a tractor beam. Even the mildly aberrant -- say, a runaway bride -- can dominate news cycles for days. But there was much more to the story of Pastor Jones. He is the fun-house mirror reflection of a certain segment of Americans. To politicians accused of racism or intolerance, he provided cover -- “we would never do that.” To the world outside, he offered confirmation of what they believed they already knew. The problem for journalists was that in this political season, the story grew like a snowball rolling down a hill, and we have to take some responsibility for pushing it. The media, awash in controversy over the so-called ground zero mosque, smelled a pungent parable in the pastor’s tale. So how should we have covered it? “This is a desperate man seeking the attention of the better part of the world,” said Press Secretary Robert Gibb. “I think we would all be served, for the safety of ourselves and for those that protect us each day, to cover something besides him every hour on the hour.” As the week wore on, many mainstream news outlets made public avowals of their intention to approach the story with an emphasis on context, and a minimum of visuals. Fox News said it wouldn’t cover the story at all. The AP declared that its policy is not to cover events “that are gratuitously manufactured to provoke and offend,” which obviously this was. As Jones said: “A radical message is necessary. … We expect the Muslims that are here in America to respect, honor, obey, submit to our Constitution.” Under the Constitution, people have the right to brazenly misconstrue the Constitution. Small wonder that America’s freedoms of speech and


Prompt: Several months after I arrived at Mount Koya, the center of Shingon Buddhism in Japan, eventually, I was assigned to teach some of the young monks English. Needless to say, it was very difficult to maintain the taste of samadhi during the complex activity of teaching, but I would still attempt to do so. During the break periods between the monks’ English lessons, I would go off by myself for ten or fifteen minutes and attempt to reconnect to the concentrated state by doing a short sit. Then I would come back and see if I could maintain the taste

of the concentrated state during the class. Usually I was unsuccessful, but just making the effort seemed meaningful. One day before break time, a monk handed me an envelope, saying, “This letter came to the temple for you.” The letter was from one of my fellow graduate students in the Buddhist studies program at the University of Wisconsin. I went off by myself, opened the letter, and read it. Its contents shook me to the core. My friend informed me that our mutual idol and my personal role model, Dr. Robinson, had suffered a horrific accident in his home. A fuse had burnt out in his basement, and when he went down to change it, he had struck a match for illumination. He didn’t know that a pipe was leaking and the basement was filled with gas. When he lit the match, the gas ignited, turning him into a fireball. He suffered severe burns over most of his body, including his eyes, which were destroyed. He was hovering between life and death; they didn’t know which way it would go. Even if he lived, he would be horribly disfigured and blind. In the end, he lived for about a month in agonizing pain and then died. Even if you know a dozen languages and possess an intellect the size of Wisconsin, it won’t help a bit when you’re facing such intensities of pain, terror, and grief. This turned my life upside down. Up to this point, I had devoted myself to the acquisition of information and the honing of my intellect. But so what if you know a dozen languages and possess an intellect the size of Wisconsin? It won’t help a bit when you’re facing such intensities of pain, terror, and grief. Dukkha, “suffering” — the first noble truth


Prompt: Matt Sullivan/Getty Images Every season, at least one NFL team makes an improbable leap from the NFL's basement to its penthouse. Maybe it's a top-five draft pick or a new coach who makes a huge impact. Maybe an underachieving team finally finds a catalyst, like a new formation or alignment. Maybe Lady Luck just smiles on a team that's been on long odds for too long. This year, that team will be the Cleveland Browns. Not a Typo Wait, what? The Browns? The team with a second-year quarterback who posted a 72.6 NFL passer rating in his rookie season and

turns 30 in October? The team built around the running of a second-year tailback who averaged 3.6 yards per carry in his debut campaign? The Browns, whose new head coach's claim to fame is mentoring one of the most talented quarterback prospects ever to two maddeningly inconsistent seasons? The Browns, whose new owner's company is under federal investigation for defrauding customers out of millions of dollars? Yes, those Browns. What the Browns Were in 2012 The Cleveland Browns finished last season at 5-11, last in the AFC North. They scored an average of 18.9 points per game, which ranked 24th in the NFL, per Pro Football Reference. They allowed 23 points per game, 19th best in the NFL. The Browns had an unremarkable plus-three turnover ratio, so they weren't helped or hurt by turnover margin. Overall in 2012, the Browns performed on the low end of the NFL's giant "mediocre" tier—or maybe the high end of the "subpar" tier. Let's look a little deeper. One of the strongest predictive stats in football is the Simple Ranking System. Pro Football Reference explained SRS in depth, but the upshot is SRS adjusts margin of victory by strength of schedule. It's not a great way of explaining what happened, but it's fantastic at projecting what's about to happen. Here's how the AFC stacked up, per SRS, at the end of the 2012 regular season. Think of this table as a statistical "power ranking" going into imaginary Week 18: We see Cleveland's SRS number is minus-5.3. That sounds poor—and in terms of the rest of the NFL, it is. With that minus-4.1 average margin of victory, the Pythagorean Wins formula says the Browns "should have" won 6.2 games in 2012. This means their win-loss results could be primed for a bounce back in 2013,


Prompt: Technology firms have turned several industries on their head. The way people buy books, hail a ride home from the bar or find a room for the night while on vacation have all changed. And now financial technology or fintech firms are turning their sights on the banking industry, but Canada's big banks aren't going to give up their dominant position without a fight. Joanna Rotenberg, head of personal wealth management at BMO Financial Group, says the needs of customers are shifting and clients are seeking out digital tools to access and manage their money. In response, earlier this year

the Bank of Montreal launched its SmartFolio investment service, which offers a professionally managed portfolio online for a low fee. "It's for clients who want support from human professionals," Rotenberg said. "It's not a robot behind the scenes, but people who want to be able to access that digitally versus needing the hand-holding and face-to-face support." The BMO offering comes as companies like Wealthsimple, Nest Wealth and ModernAdvisor look to take a bite out of the big players by making easy-to-open accounts online and cheaper by using exchange-traded funds. Rotenberg says it has been more than just digital-savvy millennials opening accounts with the new BMO service, adding that it has attracted the attention of a wide range of clients in both age and amount of savings they have to invest. "You can't stereotype people in terms of who is interested. It really is about people who are looking for something that they can use on their smartphone, but they are going to get the money management support that they need," she said. And it isn't just investing where the big banks are fighting off new competitors. Retail banking, long the bedrock of the big banks, is seeing new challengers offering basic banking services to Canadians who have long complained about the fees they pay. Online banks like EQ Bank, which is backed by Equitable Bank, and Zag Bank, which is supported by Desjardins Group, have launched with promises of lower fees and high interest rates on deposits as well as apps to help people manage their money. Among the big banks, Scotiabank and its Tangerine brand is the largest player in the online banking business. The former ING Bank of Canada operations, which Scotiabank acquired in 2012, was one of the first online banks in the country. But the other


Prompt: Center-Right Dispute Merkel to Delay Announcement of Chancellery Candidacy Chancellor Merkel has decided to push back her announcement as to whether she intends to run for a fourth term as chancellor, DER SPIEGEL has learned. The delay is the product of an unresolved dispute with her Bavarian sister party, the CSU. more... The Deal Makers Coalition Deal Shows Rising Clout of Lobbyists As the dust settled in Berlin, one group came out of last week's coalition deal an unequivocal winner: Germany's lobbyists. When it comes to shaping policy, corporate interests are wielding ever more influence on national politics. more... Pushover

Party Social Democrats Must Not Give Up on Europe In coalition negotiations, the center-left Social Democrats appear to have backed off on their demands to control the Finance Ministry. Relinquishing the post would mean letting Angela Merkel trample over them -- and abandoning their push to move Germany's Europe policy to the left. more... Affirmative Action SPD Women Want Gender Quota from Merkel Female members of Germany's Social Democrats want a coalition government with Merkel's conservatives to be contingent on a gender quota for company boards. Battered in the election, the SPD's men may now take these calls seriously. more... Wiped Out Free Democrats Reel from Election Fiasco The biggest losers of the German election are the pro-business Free Democrats, who failed to make it into parliament. After decades of playing kingmaker, its spectacular defeat marks a seismic shift in Germany's political landscape. more... Merkel Country Trouble Ahead for Triumphant Queen Angela It hardly gets any more exciting, more enthralling or more spectacular. This 2013 German election represents a watershed. The chancellor has triumphed, and her coalition partners the pro-business Free Democrats are shattered. Germany is well and truly Angela Merkel country. more... Mini-Drone Incident Shows Security Failings Last week, the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), which is responsible for Chancellor Angela Merkel's security during the run-up to the election on Sept. 22, cemented its already muddied reputation by failing to take action at a campaign event in Dresden when a miniature drone circled above the audience. more... Why Many Former East Germans Don't Vote Nearly a quarter of a century after German reunification, Chancellor Angela Merkel still favors dishes that were common in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). "Solyanka," a sour soup with meat and pickled vegetables originating in Russia, still appears regularly on her dinner table, and


Prompt: MILWAUKIE, Ore. — Two weeks ago, Mykayla Comstock was an ordinary 7-year-old girl living through an extraordinary ordeal. She’s been battling leukemia since June, when a basketball-size tumor was discovered in her chest. Now Mykayla is in the middle of another battle—and in the national spotlight—over whether children should be able to use marijuana to mitigate the crippling effects of chemotherapy. A newly registered member of the state’s Medical Marijuana Program, she has consumed a daily gram of cannabis oil, encapsulated in a pill, since shortly after her diagnosis. The leukemia quickly went into remission, say Mykayla’s unapologetic parents, and

in the months that followed she has been able to cope with the debilitating symptoms associated with her traditional cancer treatments. She also likes the way cannabis makes her laugh. “It’s like everything’s funny to me,” she tells The Daily Beast. Mykayla’s controversial but perfectly legal cannabis use rose to national attention late last month when an Oregonian reporter wrote a piece on her after discovering her Facebook page. The story quickly went viral, and Mykayla’s mother, Erin Purchase, says she’s since fielded phone calls from producers from Dr. Phil and Anderson Cooper. Local television reporters also bang incessantly on the family’s door in Gladstone, Ore., she says. Purchase says she never sought or anticipated this kind of attention. She and her boyfriend, Brandon Krenzler, whom Mykayla calls “daddy,” always knew they would obtain a medical marijuana card if their daughter needed one, she says. When oncologists diagnosed the 7-year-old with an aggressive form of cancer known as T-cell leukemia earlier this summer, Purchase and Krenzler drove Mykayla to The Hemp and Cannabis Foundation clinic in Southeast Portland and got her enrolled in the state program. Purchase and Krenzler tell The Daily Beast they aren’t the least bit embarrassed or ashamed of their actions. They’re convinced the cannabis oil their daughter now ingests in two pills each day not only has mitigated the effects of her chemotherapy but also perhaps knocked her leukemia into remission. But they made sure those early visits to the clinic where Mykayla gets her medicine were “discreet,” through a side entrance, they say. They did not tell the girl’s biological father, who they say has been out of touch for most of the child’s life. They kept it quiet, to themselves. Now they’re famous. And they’re being attacked, they say, by people who don’t understand


Prompt: Obama did not mention any specific law or measure but said he would work with both parties in Congress to try to achieve a "consensus around violence reduction" in the wake of last Friday's massacre at a cinema in Colorado. "I, like most Americans, believe that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual the right to bear arms," he told the National Urban League Convention in New Orleans, referring to part of the US Constitution. "I think we recognise the traditions of gun ownership that passed on from generation to generation – that hunting and shooting are part of a cherished

national heritage. "But I also believe that a lot of gun owners would agree that AK-47s belong in the hands of soldiers, not in the hands of criminals – that they belong on the battlefield of war, not on the streets of our cities," he said. Calls for a re-examination of America's gun laws mounted in the aftermath of the tragedy in Aurora as it emerged that suspect James Holmes bought four weapons legally. Over eight weeks, Holmes stocked up on the internet on 6,300 rounds of ammunition: 3,000 for his .233 semi-automatic AR-15 rifle, another 3,000 for his two Glock pistols, and 300 cartridges for his pump-action shotgun. Holmes, a 24-year-old graduate student, also bought a special magazine for his AR-15 military-style assault rifle that enabled him to fire up to 50 to 60 rounds per minute. Obama said he had already stepped up background checks on those who buy weapons in the wake of last year's shooting in Tucson, Arizona that left six people dead and Democratic congresswoman Gabby Giffords fighting for her life. "But even though we have taken these actions, they're not enough. Other steps to reduce violence have been met with opposition in Congress. This has been true for some time, particularly when it touches on the issue of guns," he said. "I believe the majority of gun owners would agree we should do everything possible to prevent criminals and fugitives from purchasing weapons. And we should check someone's criminal record before they can check out a gun seller. "A mentally unbalanced individual should not be able to get his hands on a gun so easily. These steps shouldn't be controversial. They should be common-sense." A group of Democratic lawmakers pushed to ban assault weapons and high-capacity gun magazines Tuesday in the wake of the


Prompt: The low-profile but vital signing of Lodeiro changed Seattle’s season. (The Canadian Press via AP) Major League Soccer will look very different in 2017. Because it will be joined by the respective Uniteds from Atlanta and Minnesota, to be sure. But mostly because it will likely sport less star power than it has in several years. That is to say, it will employ far fewer aging European household names, tempted stateside for a last hurrah, payday and curtain call. This is a good thing. Scroll to continue with content Ad And this is the legacy of the league’s 2016 season.

Because this past season, the Designated Player Rule came full circle. The sorts of players the rule was designed to attract – David Beckham and all the rest, whose magnetism and fame would bring new attention to a league going nowhere fast – now no longer represent the best use of the three dispensation players each team is allowed without counting towards their salary cap. In 2016, Steven Gerrard quietly piled up 11 assists for the Los Angeles Galaxy but missed almost half the regular season with injuries and was never the most important player on his team. Frank Lampard scored 12 goals for New York City FC but was hardly the primary reason the club was so much improved. Robbie Keane no longer carried the Galaxy on his shoulders after being its linchpin for four years. Didier Drogba was actually benched by the Montreal Impact in favor of journeyman nobody Matteo Mancosu. Andrea Pirlo remained a very expensive piece of bling for NYCFC. Next year, all but Pirlo will be gone, as their expiring contracts were not renewed. Had Pirlo’s deal been up, he may have suffered the same fate. Because in the grand scheme of this sort of signing, he’s now more a relic of a flashier and less practical time than a value-for-money asset. Story continues The DPs that made the difference this season were of the 2.0 incarnation, the more recent interpretation of the rule by teams favoring lesser-knowns who will help them win trophies, rather than jersey-sale standings. They were Toronto FC’s Sebastian Giovinco, Michael Bradley and Jozy Altidore. Mauro Diaz of FC Dallas. The New York Red Bulls’ Sacha Kljestan and Bradley Wright-Phillips – both MVP finalists. They were the Galaxy’s Giovani Dos Santos. Nicolas Lodeiro of the title-winning Seattle Sounders. Ignacio Piatto of


Prompt: by We live in strange Orwellian, Islamophobic, and eco-cidal times. A comrade from the great burning Northwest tells me the following story: “I had a Sunday dinner a few weeks ago at the house of my dad’s and stepmom’s neighbors. The man and woman of the house are in their 60’s and both proud liberals. The man said he was a ‘Berkley liberal.’ He supports Hillary, she supports Bernie Sanders. Towards the end of the dinner he expressed the opinion that a few nuke bombs on some of the major cities in Iraq would be a good idea. Previous to

that, he defended the dropping of nuke bombs on Japan. The guy’s wife, the Bernie supporter, added something about the barbarous tribal nature of Iraqi society. She quoted Deepak Chopra on the [evil] nature of Mohamed. Their son is a fighter pilot who is thinking about joining the top gun program. He is gay but is too scared to come out to his work colleagues.” “Sometimes,” my correspondent writes, “it’s easy to feel like Winston Smith in this world.” Indeed. The climate change-driven fires of Washington continued their record-setting ravages not so far from the dinner party while the gathering’s Sixties Age “Berkeley liberal” host called for the nuclear incineration of Baghdad and Fallujah and his Bernie-fan spouse explained that Iraq’s dire straits reflect its primitive and savage nature – not the criminal racist and petro-imperialist destruction of that nation by the America Empire over more than three decades. The destruction has always been driven by Washington’s longstanding compulsion to secure and sustain global dominance by controlling the supply of global oil – the very substance whose over-extraction and burning has most particularly driven the world to the edge of full environmental catastrophe. No doubt the liberal and progressive couple is more than okay with Sanders’ recent announcement on ABC News last Sunday that if elected president he will not discontinue Barack Obama’s controversial and mass-murderous drone program in the Middle East. Since Obama took office in January of 2009, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism reports, at least 2,464 people and 314 innocent civilians have been killed in drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Afghanistan and Somalia. Nine times more strikes have occurred under Obama than under George W. Bush. Obama’s strikes have killed nearly six times more people and twice as many civilians as Bush’s. At least seven American citizens


Prompt: A horizontal section of a rat brain. Image: ZEISS Microscopy/Flickr In the heady, optimistic days of 2004, it seemed all but certain that airline pilots were soon to be replaced by none other than lab-grown rat brains. Okay, not exactly. But it's hard not to laugh over a decade later at a University of Florida press release announcing the dawn of "living computers." A team at the university had cultured some rat neurons, and the culture had managed to fly a virtual plane. A lab-grown rat brain flew a simulated plane! "They may someday be used to fly small unmanned

airplanes or handle tasks that are dangerous for humans, such as search-and-rescue missions or bomb damage assessments," the release continued, and our rat-brain filled future seemed nigh. The 2000s saw a bevy of this sort of research into so-called animats—electronic systems that were controlled, not by traditional silicon chips, but organic, lab-grown neuronal networks, or rudimentary brains. The University of Reading, University of Florida, and Georgia Tech all had (and still have) animat teams. But then, and even now, real-world applications for this sort of research remain a very basic, and a long ways off. Thomas DeMarse, a professor at the University of Florida, did indeed succeed at growing a culture of rat-neurons that could fly a simulated plane in 2004 (and by fly, I mean travel straight and level), building on earlier research at Georgia Tech. And in 2008, the University of Reading grew a similar culture that prevented a wheeled robot from running into walls. But to think of these cultures as "brains" is the way that you or I might think of brains is disingenuous at best. "These are not sentient beings. I wouldn't want to equate it even to an ant," said Slawomir Nasuto, a professor of cybernetics at the University of Reading. Nasuto was part of a team at the university that worked on an animat project from 2006 to 2009. Like other universities, they employed a process in which cells were seeded onto a dish lined with electrodes. As the cells grew and formed connections with one another, neural activity began to take place. The electrodes can read this activity, as well as deliver stimulus back to the cells—effectively creating an input and output mechanism for the lab-grown brain to process information about its environment when connected to something like, say, a rudimentary robot.


Prompt: Your web browser knows a lot about you, and tells the sites you visit a lot about you as well—if you let it. We've talked about which browsers are best for privacy before, and the best tools to lock your browser down, but there are also entire browsers designed to keep your data as secure and private as possible. Let's take a look at some of them. Advertisement Whether your preferred browser is Chrome or Firefox, you have a few options to help you browse more securely—assuming that is, you're ready to give up on the version everyone else uses

and try something new. Here are some options worth trying out. Advertisement Tor is going through a rough period right now, but overall, the service is still excellent if you're looking to preserve your anonymity and privacy from the sites you visit, and from malicious tracking cookies and ads. For those unfamiliar, Tor routes your traffic across a series of relays designed to keep your real identity and computer as anomymous as possible. It's not perfect and it certainly has its drawbacks (which we don't have room to get into here), but if anonymity is your end goal, the Tor Browser (more specifically, the Tor Browser Bundle) is a great way to go. The Tor Browser is based on Firefox, open source, and comes preconfigured to access the Tor network. The vast majority of built-in plugins and services have been disabled or stripped out, and it's important that you leave them that way, or else data you mean to keep private can leak to the sites you're visiting. Available for Windows, OS X, Linux, and in portable forms for all of those, it's a great way to surf when you're using an untrusted system, want to keep your identity close to pocket, get around content filtering or site-specific blocks, or keep your physical location a secret from the sites downstream (or anyone who may be watching along the way.) Remember though, Tor is designed for physical and digital anonymity, not security and encryption. What you do while you're using it may give away that anonymity (sending emails, logging on to web services, etc), and while communications inside the Tor network are encrypted, as soon as you leave the network, your data is in the clear (if it's not encrypted another way.) Advertisement Epic Privacy Browser is based on Chromium, is


Prompt: In recent years, we have seen many wonders done with Raspberry Pi and Arduino in different DIY computing projects. Because of their size and their price, these single-board computers have been used in the creation of everything from home media centers to a space-ready X-Wing. And now Now, one creative user has just turned Motorola Lapdock into an actual laptop with Raspberry Pi Zero. Also Read : Software Bug Put Several MediaTek Powered Android Smartphones Vulnerable to Attack LogBook : Turn Motorola Lapdock Into A Laptop With Raspberry Pi Zero One creative Raspberry Pi owner, just changed Motorola Lapdock 100

into a a fully fledged laptop with Raspberry Pi Zero and a couple of cables. Motorola Lapdock 100 is a CPU-less laptop designed for plugging in your smartphone that enabled you to use your phone as a computer. Motorola launched the product in 2011, but it wasn’t a big seller and the company discontinued its Lapdock products about a year later. Now about the Raspberry Pi Zero, it is a surprisingly powerful machine, with 512MB of RAM and a CPU faster than the original Pi. Pi Zero is the heart of a Raspberry Pi on a tiny 65mm x 30mm board with mini-HDMI, micro-B OTG USB, and the same 40-pin GPIO it still has great connectivity and cost only $5. Hence turning Lapdock to actual laptop won’t cost you much money if you follow the plans laid out by blogger Ax0n over at H-I-R.net. Also Read : Now Nintendo 3DS XL can Run Windows 95 All it takes is a Raspberry Pi Zero and a couple of cables. Heck, even if you have to go out and buy a Lapdock this still isn’t an expensive build. Because the Raspberry Pi Zero sells for just $5. You can pick up the two cables you need — micro USB to USB OTG and female micro HDMI to HDMI — from Amazon for around $8. You should be able to find a working Lapdock on eBay for $60 or $70. That brings the total bill to roughly $80. Previous iterations of the Raspberry Pi and similar computers from other manufacturers worked well with the Lapdock, but the wiring used to connect the two devices could make things messy. But the Raspberry Pi Zero is so tiny that everything fits in the case with some minor modifications. One of the modifications made by Axon


Prompt: Share. Death comes in a variety of flavors. Death comes in a variety of flavors. Imagine watching a horror film. Its atmosphere and violence tug at your gut, inciting unease over the brutal suffering of characters you've grown to love. As you sit, perched on the edge of your chair, the hero stumbles down a hallway running from certain death that claws at his feet. At the last moment, just when he hopes to escape, he dies. A grisly death. But he wasn't supposed to die at that particular point in the film. So you rewind the movie and re-watch

the last 20 minutes leading into his untimely demise hoping that something changes along the way. This is the Corpse Party experience. For all its unique, gory, unsettling moments of horror, sudden "Game Overs" undo some of the tension that this PSP download works so hard to build. And yet even in fits of frustration, the atmosphere of Corpse Party still haunts the mind and demonstrates the power of simple visuals paired with effective text and sound. Exit Theatre Mode Corpse Party came into existence in 1996 when a team of independent Japanese developers used the RPG Maker suite to craft a 16-bit horror game. In the many years following, Corpse Party would return in different forms -- notably an upgraded PSP remake that added new visuals, music, and characters to the original. The version of Corpse Party released on the PlayStation Network represents this complete version, localized for the first time for a western audience. The story of Corpse Party starts late at night in Kisaragi Academy, a normal Japanese high school. While telling ghost stories together, a group of students decide to perform a ritual to ensure their friendship endures over time. Immediately after performing the incantations, an earthquake devastates the school and the friends find themselves in the dilapidated Heavenly Host Elementary School -- a building demolished decades earlier. Over the next 10 hours (give or take), your job is to keep these friends alive while navigating the cursed halls of Heavenly Host. Blood, hunger, and betrayal threaten the sanity of each character and any action you take could lead right into death's waiting arms. In keeping with Corpse Party's 16-bit roots, the visuals you'll find here stay with simple 2D sprites and backgrounds, which might seem odd compared to modern horror games. But shortly after its


Prompt: CLOSE The once quiet city of Flint, Michigan is facing a drinking water crisis that is drawing concern from around the nation. Here's what you need to know about how the public health crisis has evolved. VPC "We are tired and frustrated," says Angela Hickmon of Flint, right during a rally where about 100 people demanded not to have to pay for water that is not fit for human consumption downtown Flint on Monday, January 25, 2016. "The water is breaking me out. We are paying for something we can't use," says Margie Scott, 71 of Flint, center. (Photo11: Romain

Blanquart/ Detroit Free Press) DETROIT — Flint residents paid the highest water rates in America even as their water was tainted with lead, according to a national study released Tuesday by the public interest group Food and Water Watch. A survey of the 500 largest water systems in the country, conducted last year, found that on average, Flint residents paid about $864 a year for water service, nearly double the national average and about three-and-a-half times as much as Detroiters pay. The figure is based on an annual household consumption of 60,000 gallons. "It far exceeds what the United Nations designates as affordable for water and sewer service," said Mary Grant, one of the study's authors. The United Nations recommends that water and sewer service shouldn't exceed 3% of a household income. In Flint, the charges totaled about 7%, Grant said. A Flint lawyer who sued to reduce the rates says they are high in part because city officials and state-appointed emergency managers have tapped water and sewer money for other needs. "They've been using that money improperly for years to fund the general operations of the city," said Valdemar L. Washington, who has been battling the rate increases in court since 2012. The city's sewer fund had a balance of $36 million in 2006 but was running a $23 million deficit by 2012, Washington said. The city didn't respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit claims. The high rates were a reason Flint joined the new Karegnondi Water Authority, which was pitched as a means to control rate increases. The 2013 decision to leave the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department for Karegnondi prompted the temporary switch to the Flint River as a water source in 2014. The city, which was under a series of emergency managers appointed by


Prompt: By Laura Woods, Contributor On Sunday, March 20, President Obama made history when he became the first American leader to visit Cuba in the post-Cold War era. Prior to his trip, the last American president to set foot in the country was Calvin Coolidge in 1928 -- more than 88 years ago. The First Family was warmly welcomed to Old Havana, Cuba. Obama hopes the first official meeting of the two governments in more than 50 years will ignite positive changes in Cuba and boost tourism. Learn about the United States' history with Cuba, how you can travel the island

country and for how much. President Obama to Spur Travel to Cuba When Fidel Castro took office on Jan. 1, 1959, he swiftly imposed a number of sanctions -- placing substantial taxes on imports from the U.S. and publicizing private land and companies-- that caused the U.S. to sever ties with Cuba. President Dwight D. Eisenhower initiated the first Cuba embargo on Oct. 19, 1960, including all U.S. exports to Cuba, with the exception of medicine and select food items. Just over one year later, on Feb. 7, 1962, President John F. Kennedy made the embargo a permanent arrangement and expanded it to incorporate U.S. imports from Cuba. Consequently, the Cuban government estimates the rigorous trade restrictions have cost the country approximately $1.126 trillion over the more than 50-year period since the embargo was put in place. During a Monday, March 21 press conference with Cuban President Raul Castro, President Obama declared the Cuba embargo will end, but he didn't say when. The ruling must come from Congress, but so far, lawmakers haven't budged. Can Americans Travel to Cuba? If you're wondering whether Americans can travel to Cuba, the answer is yes but not without a host of restrictions. Since the relationship between the U.S. and Cuba was restored in December 2014, Americans have been able to travel to Cuba under 12 categories of authorized trips. The Obama administration recently loosened sanctions, allowing Americans to travel to the country independently, as long as they complete a form declaring the visit an educational journey. Cuba tourism is still technically outlawed, so if you want to book solo travel opting for an educational visit, you'll need to plan a people-to-people trip, where you meet Cuban citizens in normal daily life settings, such as schools and community centers. Previously, Americans visiting for educational


Prompt: In a photo from Week 12 of the 2015 NFL season, an overjoyed Brock Osweiler is standing in the snow at Sports Authority Field, arms lifted high above his head, his helmet in his hand, firework smoke above him. He is victorious, and at last, he is front and center. That night, in just the second start of his career, the 25-year-old dramatically led the Broncos back from a 21–7 fourth-quarter deficit to beat their hated conference rival Patriots 30–24 in overtime—New England’s first loss of the season. Osweiler was the David to Brady’s Goliath in that moment, the underdog

who finally had his chance to show he was ready to be a successful starter after sitting on the sidelines for three and a half seasons. Headlines proclaimed that a star was born. He was the future of the Denver Broncos and the future started now. The future was short-lived. By Jan. 3 he was back on the bench. And by March, he was a Houston Texan—a very, very rich Houston Texan. • QBs with the most to prove in 2016: Palmer | Tannehill | Taylor | Luck In his four-year NFL career, Osweiler has seven starts, five wins and 11 touchdowns. And for that, the QB-desperate Houston Texans offered him $37 million in guaranteed money to be their starter. It is going to take a lot more than five wins and one particularly memorable comeback on a snowy night to justify that kind of payday. If there’s one lesson we’ve learned from the NFL, it’s that a quarterback’s brief success is not indicative of his long-term performance. Remember Matt Cassel’s 11–5 season? Matt Flynn’s six-touchdown day? Small sample sizes have too often doomed teams into trusting quarterbacks who weren’t able to live up to the over-inflated expectations. Is Brock Osweiler any different? He needs to answer that question in 2016, and with the amount of trust and funds the Texans have invested in him, it needs to be a resounding yes. No doubt about it, Osweiler was productive in Denver, and he helped secure the No. 1 seed that proved crucial to the Super Bowl run. He was a good fit for Gary Kubiak’s system—much more so than Peyton Manning—and he showed flashes of skill and poise at times. He threw a touchdown in every game he started except for one, and quickly earned the trust and support of


Prompt: The Ajax defender has talked up a switch to White Hart Lane and revealed that Belgium team-mates including Vincent Kompany & Thomas Vermaelen are telling him to move to England By Greg Stobart Ajax star Jan Vertonghen has described Tottenham as an “amazing club” and spoken of his desire to play in the Premier League next season.understands Spurs are leading a host of English clubs in the race to sign Vertonghen and held talks with Ajax over a move for the £10 million-rated defender in January.Spurs boss Harry Redknapp was in the stands to watch Vertonghen during Ajax’s Europa League

clash against Manchester United on Thursday night - and the 24-year-old made it clear after the game that he would welcome a move to White Hart Lane.“I think Tottenham are an amazing club and you see how well they are doing this season,”Vertonghen told Goal.com. “They are in the top three in England and that’s where I want to play.“I can’t say anything about whether there has been contact about a transfer but I think my game can be suited to English football.“I love the atmosphere and it has the best players in the world, it breathes football. It’s one of my goals to play in the best leagues and against the best players.“It’s the only competition I watch apart from Barcelona.”Vertonghen, the Ajax captain, is also a target for Newcastle United and Arsenal while Manchester City manager Roberto Mancini is a long-term admirer.The versatile defender admits his international team-mates - including City captain Vincent Kompany and Arsenal defender Thomas Vermaelen - are constantly in his ear trying to influence his decision on his future.“A lot of my colleagues from the national team play here and some are calling me to come,” Vertonghen added.“It’s a beautiful competition, the best in my opinion. I hope one day I can play in the Premier League with this atmosphere.“To play for a team in the Premier League would be amazing and that’s what I am going for.“It’s flattering to be linked with clubs, the rumours give me confidence but I just try to do my best every game.”One player who is unlikely to sway Vertonghen’s thoughts is Belgium team-mate Eden Hazard, the £30m-rated Lille star who is also a target for Tottenham.Vertonghen admits it would be “nice” to play with Hazard but the two are not close friends as the Ajax man speaks


Prompt: This page is of questionable balance. Reason: Uses round counting, you can grapple anything, Broken Life, Necessary Form, Intangible, and Unseen are all overpowered and the race as a whole is breaks the bounds of what should be allowed for a race. You can help D&D Wiki by better balancing the mechanics of this page. When the mechanics have been changed so that this template is no longer applicable please remove this template. If you do not understand balance please leave comments on this page's talk page before making any edits. Edit this Page | All pages needing balance This

page needs grammatical help. Reason: This race has numerous instances of improper grammar. See Help:When to Italicize and Capitalize. You can help D&D Wiki by improving the grammar on this page. When the grammar has been changed so that this template is no longer applicable please remove this template. If you do not understand the English language please leave comments on this page's talk page before making any edits. Edit this Page | All pages needing grammatical help Unmade [ edit ] It is a dark day when something comes into shape, without the gods willing it to happen. An unmade is a creature that is created when a god spills blood, usually in combat, and the blood is then filled to the brim with dark energies. Unmade are beings that are condemned by the gods themselves, and are all across the world, looking for a purpose when they were created without one. Physical Description [ edit ] A being of no exact shape, with a cloak of shadow surrounding them at all times. All unmade are vaguely humanoid, and can take on human forms if they so wish. However all have defining traits that distinguish them from other unmade, such as having their two legs merge into a snake's tail, or having their bodies covered with thousands of white, glowing, eyes. They are gender less, but can develop to be either. History [ edit ] The unmade appear in the earliest recorded history, in the 60th year. Few in number, they did not cause many problems for the civilized races, and thus faded into the annals of history, even though their kind did not go extinct. Society [ edit ] Due to the fact that gods rarely spill blood, and even rarer that it is corrupted completely enough that


Prompt: “More than 1000 asylum seekers have perished at sea since Labor relaxed its policies in 2008 - a move it now concedes was a mistake.” - The Australian, 18 July. Asylum seekers drowning on their way to Australia was cited as one reason why the Rudd government announced its policy to send all those who arrive by boat to Papua New Guinea for assessment and resettlement if they are found to be refugees. There were two more tragedies recently. A suspected asylum seeker boat capsized off Christmas Island last week, killing at least four people. It came a few days

after nine people, including a baby boy, died on their way to Australia. No official records are kept by any government agency as to how many people trying to reach our shores to seek asylum are dying en route. The most reliable open source data is kept by the Monash Australian Border Deaths Database which “maintains a record of all known deaths associated with Australia’s borders since 1 January 2000”. Deaths include those who perish at sea attempting to reach Australian shores, those who have committed suicide within Australian detention centres and those who have died of natural causes within detention. The database is assembled from “official sources, media reports and lists of deaths collated by non-governmental organizations”. It is one of the most comprehensive, independent databases. Between 2000 and 2007 (the period which includes the introduction of the “Pacific Solution” for asylum seekers travelling by boat under the Coalition government), the database documents 746 reported deaths of asylum seekers. Of those, 363 asylum seekers died at sea while on their way to Australia. As well, 350 were presumed dead (their status is missing at sea with status unknown); 22 died in detention (the majority of those cases were suicide, but there were some deaths of natural causes); and 11 people were returned to Afghanistan and reportedly murdered for being “Australian spies”. Between 2008 and July 2013 (under Labor), 877 asylum seekers have reportedly died. Of those, 15 committed suicide or died of natural causes in detention centres. So during this period, approximately 862 individuals died trying to reach Australia’s mainland to seek asylum. During the 2000-2007 period of Coalition government, 363 died, with the status of additional 350 individuals unknown. This is a tragedy that has occurred under both political parties, especially so since 90% of asylum seekers who


Prompt: 45% of video gamers, and 46% of game purchasers, are women. More complex storylines, more personalized characters, more acceptance of ‘geekiness’ as something to be proud of and a wider variety of games available are just a few of the reasons why gaming is no longer being seen as a boys-only club. Women are finding their place in the gaming world. , a YouTuber and gamer with 60,000 subscribers, is excited about the change. “More and more I feel like it is normal for a woman to play video games too. It's no longer "a guy thing". Growing up I

often heard "What, you play video games?! That's so awesome, girls never play video games!", but now when you tell someone you play video games you'd sooner get the question what kind of games you're into, which is really nice.” GirlGamerGaB , a YouTuber and gamer with 60,000 subscribers, is excited about the change. “More and more I feel like it is normal for a woman to play video games too. It's no longer "a guy thing". Growing up I often heard "What, you play video games?! That's so awesome, girls never play video games!", but now when you tell someone you play video games you'd sooner get the question what kind of games you're into, which is really nice.” And yet, even the fantasy world still isn’t equal. But from gamers, to game developers, to women in games, we still have a long way to go before gaming becomes an gender-equal world. ...for women who play games: On paper, a female gamer’s customer experience should be no different to that of a man’s. In practice, the communal nature of gaming means that male gamers can make life pretty unpleasant for a female gamer… a ‘side effect’ of the product she didn’t sign up for. Women face roughly three times more harassment than men when playing online. Gamer and YouTuber Yasmin Uddin (known as Yammy xox) said she experienced sexism first hand, “mostly during games like Call of Duty and Gears of War. I was ashamed to speak in online game chat as I felt as if I’d be ridiculed for my voice.... I’d be told to ‘get back into the kitchen.” It’s not always that aggressive – but unwanted attention is still a distraction to women just looking to play the game. “A lot of people try to make


Prompt: İzmir presents mosaic city of western region İZMİR - Anatolia News Agency Precious mosaics with animal and plant figures were found in six of the villa complex’s rooms, unearthed in İzmir’s Kemalpaşa neighborhood. An archaeological city dating back 1,700 years has been unearthed during excavations in İzmir’s Kemalpaşa neighborhood, raising officials’ hopes the area will draw tourists’ attention.The Cultural Beings and Museums’ General Director Osman Murat Süslü held a press conference Oct. 21 regarding the discovery of the archaeological city, which Culture and Tourism Minister Ertuğrul Günay has defined as “good news that will draw the world’s attention.”Drilling work had

started in the area, which is now categorized as a third degree archaeological site, before the construction of a warehouse company was scheduled to begin. Excavations were begun due to an abundance of signs the area may be a hotspot for archaeological treasures, Süslü said. “Scientific excavations started Oct. 1 and a layer from the 4th Century B.C. has been unearthed,” he said.The newly-unearthed city is believed to date back to around the late Roman or Byzantium period, Süslü said. It was home to a 550-square-meter villa complex with 105-centimeter-thick walls, water channels and 11 rooms.Precious mosaics were found in six of the villa complex’s rooms. “The mosaics are decorated with animal and plant figures that you cannot see anywhere today. They created the Anatolian panther, the Anatolian tiger as well as a partridge and a rabbit [in mosaics]. They are decorated with completely natural stones. You can see various shades of red, blue and green. There is a rich archaeological structuring in the region,” he said.According to Süslü, the historic structure in the city could be defined as the “Zeugma of the West,” but the most sorrowful thing was the illegal excavations. Zeugma is the ancient city known for its rich mosaics in the southeastern province of Gaziantep.Artifacts unearthed during illegal excavations from Zeugma were sold abroad at trifling prices and later major efforts were put underway to bring those artifacts back, Süslü said.Süslü warned those involved in illegal excavations that there would be repercussions to their actions. “These people should know that we pay for artifacts when they inform us [of their discovery]. Citizens should prevent illegal excavations when they see [them happening].”Further, more detailed information about the name and estimated size of the newly-discovered city in İzmir would be given as a result of detailed excavation works,


Prompt: Recoveries have been getting weaker and weaker because that's how the Fed wants them (Reuters) With GDP unexpectedly is different. In other words, has the economy settled into a, well, new normal of slower growth? It's time to talk about everybody's least favorite Davos buzzword -- New Normal.With GDP unexpectedly contracting 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012 (though the private sector mostly kept up , despite the obstacles we've thrown in its way), it's enough to make you wonder if this time reallydifferent. In other words, has the economy settled into a, well, new normal of slower growth?

If it has, it's not quite new, at least when it comes to recoveries. As you can see in this Minneapolis Fed chart of job gains following recessions, something changed after 1981. Recoveries went from being V-shaped affairs characterized by rapid bouncebacks in employment to U-shaped ones better described as nasty, brutish, and long. (Note: I excluded the recovery from the 1980 recession, because the double-dip in 1981 cut it short). The story of the jobless recovery is one of what the Fed isn't doing. As Paul Krugman points out, recessions have become post -(or perhaps pre -) modern. Through the 1980s, postwar recessions happened when the Fed decided to raise rates to head off inflation, and recoveries happened when the Fed decided things had tamed down enough to lower rates. But now recessions happen when bubbles burst, with financial deregulation and the global savings glut making these more of a recurring feature of our economy, and the Fed hasn't been able to cut interest rates enough to generate strong post-crash recoveries. Or maybe it hasn't wanted to. Here's a stupid question. Why have interest rates and inflation mostly been falling for the past 30 years? In other words if the Fed has been de facto, and later de jure, targeting inflation for most of this period (and it has), why has inflation been on a down trend (and it has)? As you can see in the chart below, core PCE inflation, which excludes food and energy costs, fell substantially from the Reagan recovery through the bursting tech bubble, and has more or less held steady since, though a bit more on the less side recently. Say hello to "opportunistic disinflation." Okay, let's translate this from Fed-ese. Remember, the Fed is supposed to target 2 percent inflation, meaning it raises


Prompt: The nuclear energy industry in Japan relies on unskilled and uneducated daily workers, and even now the country will not invite foreign experts to help with the Fukushima cleanup due to national pride, Alex Kerr, an expert on Japan, told RT. RT:There have already been countless reports of toxic leaks and here's a fresh one in a new reactor. Why can’t they get control here? Alex Kerr: It’s an ongoing story. The real problem is that the government has put so much energy into hiding the information that at this point I can say that nobody knows what’s really going

on. RT:Japan won the right to host the Summer Olympic Games in 2020, but activists worldwide have been raising concerns that it is not the best place to hold them, due to health concerns. Are these worries justified? AK: I don’t think they are justified in a sense that it is going to impact Tokyo. I think people could really come to the Games and not worry about it. But Fukushima Prefecture and the areas around it are going to be seriously affected for decades, maybe a century. Parts of it will be pretty much unlivable. Not to mention the fears that we have of the radioactivity flowing into the ocean. No one can imagine what the long-term effects are going to be for sea life and many other things. RT:There were media reports that the containment tanks that have been leaking were built in part by illegal employees, who lacked experience and were forced to rush. Does this suggest there are lots more secrets we don't know about? AK: Of course. Because the entire system of management of TEPCO, in fact the entire nuclear energy in Japan, has been to rely on unskilled, uneducated, non-specialist daily workers, guys that are picked up from the streets and are paid a daily wage, some of them didn’t even realize they were going to a radioactive area. It’s not professional, it’s a comedy of errors and [there] are just many tanks, many structures that were built hurriedly, without expertise, without consulting international specialists. It’s fair to say that it is a big mess and it will get worse. RT:Experts say Japan is obviously failing to safely clean up the plant and needs help from outside. Do you agree? AK: I do agree. I think it’s very difficult for Japan to do that


Prompt: March 5 Cripple 2:10PM Burmeister leads to Cripple—Could Lindner go Yukon? Our Insider crew has just arrived Cripple. Noted cooler temperatures under very blue bright sun skies. Temperatures last night bottomed at -30F. Sonny Lindner and Aaron Burmeister have been hopscotching across the tundra from Ophir and now it appears the Aaron will be first into Cripple. Pundits here in Cripple wonder if Sonny actually intends to stop in Cripple as it seems his rest schedule might suggest a push onto the Yukon, an idea that I think has merit after I walked the outgoing trail. The trail is perfect,

hard, and set. It is not usual to have such a solid fast trail as we are now in the Interior, where temperatures are cold—typical of the Yukon basin—and dry. Disturbed by snow machines, we often find the trail to have a fluffy layer of four inches of snow. At its worst, the trail in and out of Cripple is often unstable and breaks up into a sugar bowl of dry crystals. Therefore, it may be that great opportunity to keep mushing deep into the middle of the race where a 24 hour rest makes more sense. Cripple is just a place on the map midway between Ophir and Ruby. The only reason Cripple exists is to break up the 150 mile trail to Ruby in an area many regard as one of the most remote in Alaska. The other reason is that a slough exists which can be used for landing Iditarod air craft on skis. On a practical basis, the collection of tents and elegant plywood shacks used for cooking, housing volunteers, and mushers would only be possible because of the vision of Jim Paulus. Jim has worked to design the quarters here at camp. He hustles building materials from sponsors in Anchorage, then cuts them into lengths and widths that can fit into small aircraft and can be assembled on site in winter conditions. Photos are included to show the camp, the outgoing trail, and the musher shack with a gravity oil burning stove. Note the black spruce typical of the area. North to the Yukon and east of this location are areas known particularly for marten trapping. I spent several winters east of here trapping in game rich territory off the Yukon. For some reason, however, the area near Cripple is almost barren of tracks—rarely a


Prompt: I remember when I first picked up a controller. It was back in the early 90s; I was around 6 years old and I was sitting in front of my friend’s Nintendo Entertainment System. “Wanna see something cool?” he asked me. How could I possibly refuse? He loaded up the cartridge for Super Mario Bros. and , to my dismay, all I saw was a blank screen. With a look of confusion, I silently stared at the console while my friend blew on the cartridge. After a few tries, I saw what I could only describe then as the most

fascinating thing I ever experienced on a screen. I pushed a button on my controller, and a little 8-bit sprite moved. This, dear reader, is the moment I was introduced to a new dimension of entertainment. For many of you, I could safely assume that your first experience in gaming was similar. For some of the gamers born after the mid-90s, however, the sentiment may be a little more difficult to relate to. In fact, one could postulate that a small subset of gamers browsing our little corner of the internet only ever played games by touching a screen on a mobile phone. It doesn’t matter. We’re all united. We are all gamers. It is for this very reason that I think that we should protect each other. We come from different backgrounds, have different political leanings, and prefer different types of games. Some of you may be irreconcilably different from me in such a way that in other areas of discussion we’d be at each other’s throats. This isn’t the time for fighting, though. We know better than that. The one thing that we find in common is games. If someone attacks them instead of discussing them in an intellectually honest matter, it’s a fair bet to say that this person will stir plenty of ire from people who actually play the games they are spewing nonsense about. It’s important that while we’re enduring the massive pile of whatever the hell this is, we also don’t lose sight of the younger gamers who are completely unacquainted with the culture that we’ve had for decades. In the past, you bought a game and played it, period. End of story. You waited until the next game came out and played that, too. Then, multiplayer came along and we were finally able


Prompt: There are many short track drivers out there who dominated their local tracks and touring divisions but never got a chance to make it to the big time. There's also some out there who did make it to NASCAR's top levels, only to be phased out by younger, more funded drivers. While they may have had to hang up their helmets for one reason or another, many of those drivers are still around the racetrack. They're not behind the wheel anymore. Instead, they're up on the spotter's stand. Spotting wasn't something that guys like Freddie Kraft, Mike Herman, Jr., Tim

Fedewa and Eddie D'Hondt started out doing. It was something that they did on the side when they had free time. "Towards the end of my career when things weren't going the way I wanted them to... through some mutual friends I heard that Bill Elliott needed a spotter for a few races here and there so I said I'd do it," said Tim Fedewa who now spots for Stewart-Haas Racing in the Sprint Cup Series. "I'd race Saturday in the Busch car and Sunday I'd stay over and help Bill occasionally. "When I couldn't drive anymore I needed to make a living," said Fedewa. "I just kept spotting and it's come to this." The 47-year-old Fedewa from Holt, Michigan scored four wins in what was then known as the NASCAR Busch Series. He said that his favorite moment behind the wheel was the day he won his first Busch race at Nazareth Speedway (PA) in 1995. "They had a memorial service in Michigan that day for my grandmother so it was pretty surreal that they were burying her at the same time the race was going on and I couldn't be there," said Fedewa. "But I know she was there with me so it was pretty special." Mike Herman, Jr. was racing on the USAR Hooters Pro Cup circuit while at the same time spotting for Joe Gibbs Racing in the K&N Pro Series East. Herman is a two-time champion in Late Model Stock Cars at Concord Speedway (NC) and now spots for Ricky Stenhouse, Jr. in the Cup Series. "It just so happened that the East schedule and the Pro Cup schedule didn't overlap so it worked out well," said the Kannapolis, NC native who also raced Modifieds at Bowman Gray Stadium (NC). "I basically worked through East,


Prompt: EternaLEnVy Profile Joined February 2009 Canada 203 Posts Last Edited: 2011-12-10 22:10:43 #1 Due to parents, I've decided to delay this till mid April. Thanks a lot everyone, but now I'll have more time to do more indepth research. However, I would like to have more input. The neat thing about this thread is that I'm getting a lot of suggestions that an computer noob like me has yet to consider. END EDIT Hello, I am a shut in kid from Canada who doesn't know anything but Math, Science, random shit, anime, and video games. I made this thread in

order to get some help but first let me explain the situation: My IGN is EternaLEnVy in HoN and DotA and my SC2 name is YanagiNagi. I have not played SC2 since July, and HoN since August of 2010. I played DotA for a few weeks in August of this year but haven't really played seriously since probably mid 2008. I played mid solo for DWi (Deal With It) and was rank 2 on the ladder for a few months in HoN. I won one major tournament under this team and placed fairly high in every other. I believe this team is called Complexity now. I was rank 2 in DotA Cash Tier 2 (under Aisaka_Taiga) while I was messing around for a few weeks in august but I doubt that actually matters. OK SO ENOUGH OF THAT HERE IS THE SITUATION: I'm a 2nd year Engineering Science Student at the University of Toronto. It's basically this extremely fucking retarded course that destroys your soul: NEW EDIT:Due to parents, I've decided to delay this till mid April. Thanks a lot everyone, but now I'll have more time to do more indepth research. However, I would like to have more input. The neat thing about this thread is that I'm getting a lot of suggestions that an computer noob like me has yet to consider.END EDITHello, I am a shut in kid from Canada who doesn't know anything but Math, Science, random shit, anime, and video games. I made this thread in order to get some help but first let me explain the situation:My IGN is EternaLEnVy in HoN and DotA and my SC2 name is YanagiNagi. I have not played SC2 since July, and HoN since August of 2010. I played DotA for a few weeks in August of this