Prompt: WARNING: Disturbing images are contained in this story Last week, the Ontario SPCA (OSPCA) announced charges against the owner of Hidden Meadow Farm, the kennel that provides dog sledding and trail rides at Deerhurst Resort. In the release, they said, “On June 8, 2016, the Ontario SPCA received calls concerning care of animals in a kennel. Ontario SPCA officers attended and found 42 Alaskan Husky and Malamute-type sled dogs at the location. A veterinarian examination revealed large, open wounds that had been left untreated for days; numerous older, healed, partially healed and infected wounds; limping with an obviously swollen, painful

leg; fever; and broken, infected teeth.” The subsequent charges were: Permitting an animal to be in distress Failing to provide adequate and appropriate medical attention Failing to provide the care necessary for an animal’s general welfare Failing to confine an animal to a pen or other enclosed structure or area that must not contain one or more other animals that may pose a danger to the animal Prior to the incident, there had allegedly been a fight between four dogs resulting in injuries to two and the death of a third. The kennel’s owner, Shani Ride, says the injured dogs “were in isolated kennels, they were on penicillin and they were getting their wounds cleaned twice a day. I have nothing against the SPCA. They were doing their job. When they come out to a call, they have to check everything. They walked around and looked at the rest of the dogs and found two more.” The OSPCA told Ride that the four dogs had to have veterinary care, but she refused. “I said, ‘I’m not going to do that, I’m already treating them and I feel my treatment was fine. I’ve dealt with these injuries before. Taking all four of those dogs to the vet was going to cost me in the thousands of dollars. Unfortunately, I love these animals but this is a business. I said if you feel my care isn’t proper for them, I will have them euthanized. Businesswise, it doesn’t make sense for me to put thousands of dollars into these dogs when the unfortunate reality is that a new sled dog would cost me $200.” OSPCA officers gave Ride the option of surrendering the dogs instead, which she did. Of the two injured dogs, one, Teddy, was taken immediately and had a four-hour surgery.


Prompt: Amazon To Hachette And Authors: Here, Let Us Explain Basic Price Elasticity To You from the lower-price,-make-more-money-dimwits dept A key objective is lower e-book prices. Many e-books are being released at $14.99 and even $19.99. That is unjustifiably high for an e-book. With an e-book, there's no printing, no over-printing, no need to forecast, no returns, no lost sales due to out-of-stock, no warehousing costs, no transportation costs, and there is no secondary market -- e-books cannot be resold as used books. E-books can be and should be less expensive. It's also important to understand that e-books are highly price-elastic.

This means that when the price goes up, customers buy much less. We've quantified the price elasticity of e-books from repeated measurements across many titles. For every copy an e-book would sell at $14.99, it would sell 1.74 copies if priced at $9.99. So, for example, if customers would buy 100,000 copies of a particular e-book at $14.99, then customers would buy 174,000 copies of that same e-book at $9.99. Total revenue at $14.99 would be $1,499,000. Total revenue at $9.99 is $1,738,000. The important thing to note here is that at the lower price, total revenue increases 16%. This is good for all the parties involved: The customer is paying 33% less. The author is getting a royalty check 16% larger and being read by an audience that's 74% larger. And that 74% increase in copies sold makes it much more likely that the title will make it onto the national bestseller lists. (Any author who's trying to get on one of the national bestseller lists should insist to their publisher that their e-book be priced at $9.99 or lower.) Likewise, the higher total revenue generated at $9.99 is also good for the publisher and the retailer. At $9.99, even though the customer is paying less, the total pie is bigger and there is more to share amongst the parties. Keep in mind that books don't just compete against books. Books compete against mobile games, television, movies, Facebook, blogs, free news sites and more. If we want a healthy reading culture, we have to work hard to be sure books actually are competitive against these other media types, and a big part of that is working hard to make books less expensive. So, at $9.99, the total pie is bigger - how does Amazon propose to share that revenue


Prompt: The rock icon was 66 Tom Petty‘s death has been confirmed. The US rock icon suffered a cardiac arrest. He was 66. Check out the star-studded tributes to the icon below. After suffering a cardiac arrest, rumours of the rock icon’s passing spread yesterday. Now, his death has been confirmed by Tony Dimitriades, longtime manager of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. Dimitriades confirmed Petty’s death on behalf of the performer’s family. Petty formed The Heartbreakers in 1976, and their self-titled debut album was released the same year. It featured Petty’s classic song ‘American Girl’. Petty’s breakthrough came with his band’s

third album ‘Damn the Torpedoes’ in 1979. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers last released an album in 2014 in the form of 13th LP ‘Hypnotic Eye’. As well as his career with the Heartbreakers, Petty also co-founded supergroup the Traveling Wilburys with Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Jeff Lynne and Roy Orbison. The news of Petty’s death comes following initial confusion and contradicting reports about Petty’s condition. TMZ were the first outlet to report that Petty was rushed to UCLA Santa Monica Hospital on Sunday night (October 1) after being found unconscious, “not breathing and in full cardiac arrest” at his home in Malibu, California. The report added that Petty had been put on life support and his condition was thought to be “critical”. Sharethrough (Mobile) However, the website later reported that “after Petty got to the hospital he had no brain activity and a decision was made to pull life support”. They later issued an update that described previous reports of Petty’s death as “inaccurate”, adding that the musician was “still clinging to life” but “not expected to live throughout the day“. CBS News had also reported confirmation of Petty’s death, citing a statement from the Los Angeles Police Department. The LAPD was later forced to release a statement saying that it had “no information about the passing of singer Tom Petty” and that “initial information was inadvertently provided to some media sources”. CBS then retracted their original story. Petty recently concluded a 40th anniversary tour with his band The Heartbreakers. The final date took place at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles on September 22. The music world pays tribute Tributes have been pouring in following the news of Petty’s death. Bob Dylan has issued a statement and you can see more tributes below. Nothing left to say A


Prompt: Gear Flashback: Our Flat Cat Gear Bobcat Titanium Stove System When we were preparing for our PCT thru hike in the spring of 2012, we were looking for an alcohol stove that would give us great performance and utility while still being packable and durable. We experimented with several homemade options including the well known Fancy Feast/tuna can stove that is popular with a lot of thru hikers because of its size and weight. We decided to go with a Bobcat titanium stove system purchased online from Flat Cat Gear. We initially purchased the stove because of the complete system

approach: We knew it would integrate perfectly with our 1.3 liter Evernew Pot and that the screen, stove, and all other accessories would nest neatly inside the pot. We also purchased and tested out a Trail Designs Caldera Cone stove, but really liked the packability of our Flat Cat and found it to be equally efficient. The Caldera we looked at had to be stowed in its separate plastic container/caddy which was a deal-breaker for us because we like our cooking system to be one unit including the pot. The Flat Cat pulls this off beautifully. After 5 months of daily use on the PCT (we typically only cooked dinners) and a week-long test hike in the Smoky Mountains, we’re still sold on the stove. One add-on piece that we did not initially see ourselves using that much was the simmer ring. We had some snap trouble with the windscreen and Jon, the Flat Cat gear guru, gave us a simmer ring to try while working out the windscreen issues. The ring really helped us with rice and pasta meals and made the titanium stove run about triple as long on the same amount of fuel. The minimal weight gain of the simmer ring paid off dividends as we could adjust from “full boil” mode and dial back the intensity of the stove for other dishes. Overall, the Bobcat system did an admirable job coping with the rigors of an extended trip (156 consecutive days). The stove itself is really a work of art and this lends to its durability as it is one solid piece of metal. Although the stove and screen could have easily held up inside a small storage sack or loose in our packs, we liked how it nested in our pot and it shared the


Prompt: Hey everybody! Welcome to Clix O’Clock, a new weekly feature here on We the Nerdy! Assistant Editor Henry has been playing Heroclix for a very long time and wants to spread his love of the game with everybody who’ll listen! This week he talks about the constant obsession people have over the War of Light Entities, and why he is perfectly okay if he never has one in his clutches again (Other than to trade it away for some sweet Clix swag!) So this weekend my school ran a small convention where we hosted a Heroclix event. We were very

fortunate that we were able to play with some War of Light boosters and play a miniature Month 4 event. A friend of mine, newer to Heroclix, was able to buy his first War of Light boosters and pulled Proselyte. I was really happy for him and tried to hold back my secret envy, since Proselyte has a great value on the secondary market. But I got over this quickly and realized something. I really don’t care about the Entities anymore. I’ll admit that there is a part of me that does want the entities, but for a much simpler purpose than most. I just like the idea of adding people to certain theme teams. How fun would it be to make Superman a Blue Lantern with Adara, or for the Joker to be inducted via the Butcher into the Red Lantern Corps? But apparently, most people seem excited by them because they have the potential to be so deadly via the possession trait. For a mere 25 points, you can make any piece objectively more awesome, something that anybody can get behind. People quickly gravitated towards this incredible mechanic, and the prices of the already rare pieces (1 per case) skyrocketed. Here’s the thing. Paying upwards of $100.00 for a Heroclix is kind of insane for me. I’ll admit that I’ve bought expensive pieces in the $70.00 range, but those are few and far between. Entities have been heralded as game-breaking pieces that can ruin the spirit of Heroclix. They’re not.I was lucky during my Month 3 Event and I pulled Ion, the Green Lantern Entity. I used him, equipping him to my Black Lantern John Stewart (Which I later realized wasn’t necessary), and went to town on opponents. But when the event was over, and I had won


Prompt: I bought a Christmas CD yesterday. It was the first CD I’ve purchased in legit 3 years. Of course it is filled with Christmas tunes from one of my favourite guilty pleasure TV shows, Nashville. With only a few weeks left until the holidays, I figured I should get into the spirit. Also, the most recent Christmas CD I had was Justin Bieber’s, so it was definitely time for an update. As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, I love when we receive recipe requests. Especially for Ukrainian dishes. A few months ago, we posted Ukrainian Cabbage Buns and they

were a huge hit. Ever since that post, we have received a ton of emails and comments asking for a meat-filled version. Well friends, here it is. The ultimate recipe for Ukrainian beef-filled buns, or ‘Pyrizhky’. I would also like to note that because there are so many different crossovers in food and culture between Ukraine, Poland and Russia, that these may be called by a different name depending on where you are from/grew up. In Russia and other places, these are sometimes referred to as ‘Pirozhki‘ or ‘Piroshki’. Regardless, they are beef-filled baked buns that are beyond amazing. The dough is flaky, buttery and soft. Perfect little bite-sized pieces of heaven if you ask me. You can definitely make your own fillings as well to go with this dough recipe. You can incorporate mushrooms, ground pork, mashed potato…the options are endless. Not to mention, this recipe is super easy to make. You will need: 1 cup full fat sour cream 2 egg yolks 2 cup all purpose flour 1/2 cup butter, melted 1/2 tsp. white sugar 1 lb. extra lean ground beef 1 white onion, finely diced 1-2 tbsp vegetable oil Salt and pepper to taste 2 egg whites In a medium bowl, mix together your egg yolks and sour cream. Add in your melted butter. Then add your flour. Finally, add your sugar. Mix together until all ingredients are incorporated. Place dough onto counter and knead into a ball. Knead with hands until the dough is soft and elastic, about 3-5 minutes. Place dough in an airtight container and refrigerate for 8 hours or overnight. Heat vegetable oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add your ground beef , chopped onion, salt and pepper. Cook meat until browned and onions are soft and translucent. Set aside to


Prompt: Hundreds of students crowd Sanders Theatre for the first meeting of CS 50: “Introduction to Computer Science I.” UPDATED: September 11, 2014, at 9:45 p.m. Nearly 12 percent of Harvard College is enrolled in a single course, according to data released by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Registrar’s Office on Wednesday. The course, Computer Science 50: “Introduction to Computer Science I,” attracted a record-breaking 818 undergraduates this semester, marking the largest number in the course’s 30-year history and the largest class offered at the College in the last five years, according to the Registrar’s website. Including non-College students, the

enrollment number totals 875. Last fall, about 700 students enrolled in the course, placing it second only to Economics 10a: “Principles of Economics,” which drew 764 students. This fall, Economics 10a is the second largest course, enrolling 711 total students. Advertisement CS50 instructor, David J. Malan ’99, and other computer science professors said that the boost in enrollment stems from increasing Harvard-wide and nation-wide interest in computer science. “Harvard students are smart people,” said Harry R. Lewis ’68, former dean of the College and current director of undergraduate studies for Computer Science. “They have figured out that in pretty much every area of study, computational methods and computational thinking are going to be important to the future.” Lewis postulated that his course this semester, Computer Science 121: “Introduction to the Theory of Computation,” enrolled more students than it ever had before: 153. The number of Computer Science concentrators at the College has increased each year for the past five years, from 86 in 2008 to 153 in 2013. Malan also said that “it is possible” that the decision to exempt CS50 from the new restrictions on enrollment in courses occurring at the same time helped bolster its enrollment numbers. Last month, Dean of Undergraduate Education Jay M. Harris sent an email to course instructors notifying them of tighter controls on simultaneous enrollment for all courses except CS50. Malan said that simultaneous enrollment data will not be available until he surveys his students later this week, but that the course typically attracts around 100 students who enroll in another course that meets at an overlapping time. Computer Science associate professor Eddie Kohler said CS50’s increasing popularity also speaks to the structure and accessibility of the course. “It’s an experience, it’s not even a course exactly,” Kohler said. “That’s part of what


Prompt: Common Weal director Robin McAlpine argues that universalism is intertwined with Scotland's political identity, and should be protected IF you want to understand what is different about political culture in Scotland as compared to England and Wales, I'd suggest that the best place to start looking is the question of universalism. It is also why I believe that Scotland gives up any ground on the issue of universalism at substantial risk to its very political identity. There are two broad ways to look at social provision, universalism or selectivity. Universalism means that you decide that something should exist, that it

is a core part of your society and that you should therefore ensure it is provided to all. It is so dispiriting that this debate has been opened up by comments by the Scottish Government's new 'poverty tsar' Naomi Eisenstadt. The NHS and universal school education are the defining examples of universalism. The alternative - selectivity - instead emphasises that there are things that it is probably important that people have access to but that our collective responsibility is limited only to those in dire need who can't get access to those things by other means. The prime example of a selectivity approach is the kind of benefit eligibility tests run by the likes of Atos. These are not variations of each other - these are fundamentally different political philosophies. The case for universalism is rock solid and is supported by almost any detailed look at the data. You can look across many countries at many times over many policy areas and you will find the same thing. When you provide a service that includes everyone, that service becomes a good service, is widely supported and becomes relied on by everyone. But because everyone starts from a different position, the impact of universal services is different for different people with the positive impact on the poor being particularly high. So for example, if you make childcare free for all, yes this may partially subsidise the childcare needs of the affluent middle classes, but the impact on them (a bit more disposable income) is limited. Universalism means that you decide that something should exist, that it is a core part of your society and that you should therefore ensure it is provided to all. The same policy applied to a family with only one adult working in a low income job


Prompt: At least 730 young children among people shot, burned or beaten to death in Rakhine state between August and September More than 6,700 Rohingya Muslims, including at least 730 children under the age of five, were killed in the first month of a crackdown that started in August in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine state, according to Médecins Sans Frontières. The figures released on Thursday by the humanitarian agency are believed to be a conservative estimate and far exceed Myanmar’s official death toll of 400. “The numbers of deaths are likely to be an underestimation, as we have not surveyed all refugee

settlements in Bangladesh and because the surveys don’t account for the families who never made it out of Myanmar,” said Dr Sidney Wong, MSF’s medical director. The majority of the people killed (69%) were shot, while others were burned and beaten to death. “We heard reports of entire families who perished after they were locked inside their homes, while they were set alight,” said Wong. Q&A Who are the Rohingya? Show Hide The Rohingya are Muslims who live in majority-Buddhist Myanmar. They are often described as "the world's most persecuted minority". Nearly all of Myanmar's 1.1 million Rohingya live in the western coastal state of Rakhine. The government does not recognise them as citizens, effectively rendering them stateless. Extremist nationalist movements insist the group are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, although the Rohingya say they are native to Rakhine state. Rights groups accuse Burmese authorities of ethnic cleansing, systematically forcing Rohingya from the country through violence and persecution, a charge the government has denied. Photograph: Tracey Nearmy/AAP More than 640,000 Rohingya people have fled Rakhine since August. Soldiers, police and local militias burned hundreds of Rohingya villages to the ground, and they are also accused of gang-raping women and children, as well as slaughtering civilians indiscriminately. Western countries have condemned the violence as ethnic cleansing, an allegation Myanmar strongly denies. Officials in the country have laid the blame on “extremist terrorists” belonging to a new Rohingya militant group. A Myanmar government spokesperson could not be immediately reached for comment. Massacre at Tula Toli: Rohingya recall horror of Myanmar army attack Read more Some of the worst violence is believed to have occurred in Tula Toli, in a village in Maungdaw township, where survivors say residents were rounded up on riverbanks and shot as they tried to flee. The Guardian has seen


Prompt: When England line up at Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane for the first Test against Australia on 11 June, the home team will recognise many of the faces from the side who crashed out of the World Cup against them on 3 October last year. Eddie Jones’s great achievement of the Six Nations was to take a group of players who had performed so poorly at their home World Cup and to turn them, with one or two judicious tweaks, into grand slam winners at the first time of asking. And thanks to the timing of this summer’s tour and the

Premiership final, Jones will have only a week to prepare the team before that first Test, so I think there is little chance of significant changes to that side. Bath captain Stuart Hooper retires after suffering back injury Read more This is the first three-Test tour of Australia England have ever undertaken and it should make for a really exciting spectacle, something two-Test series too often are not. This makes it a real shame England will not be able to prepare properly, thanks to the mess that is the end of the domestic season. The Premiership final is on Saturday 28 May, Wales are the opposition in a one-off at Twickenham the following day and the first Test is two weeks later on 11 June. This is clearly an improvement on the last time England toured at the end of the season, when Stuart Lancaster had to name pretty much two squads in 2014 because the Premiership final was a week before the first Test against New Zealand – but it is far from ideal. Having the Premiership final last – because the European Champions Cup final is on 14 May, rather than at the end of the season – guarantees two English clubs, and a good number of England players, playing until the final minute of the season, which puts England’s preparations under so much pressure. By the time the players involved in the final have flown out to Australia and recovered, they will have little more than a week to prepare for the first Test, compared to the fortnight they had before this season’s Six Nations games. With preparation time so short and with no midweek games in which to have a look at some dark horses, Jones is unlikely to tinker too much with the side that


Prompt: What does "open source" mean? With open source software being so prevalent in our lives (Android, WordPress, Mozilla Firefox are almost fixtures), you would think that it would be simple enough to find somebody who can explain the term around here. A quick survey around the office turned out dismal results, however. A fellow intern told me "open source software" simply meant that the source code is open for view; another insisted that it means the software is free to use. I personally had the impression that it meant the code was crowd sourced and created by volunteer developers--the idea

was immediately shot down by the other two. So what, really, does "open source" mean? In an attempt to understand and clarify some of the misconceptions surrounding the term, I contacted the Open Source Initiative (OSI), a foundation that oversees the use of the term and approves open source licenses. I talked to Karl Fogel, the author of the book "Producing Open Source Software: How to Run a Successful Free Software Project" and a board member of OSI. I put to the test a few common beliefs about open source software: Open source only means that the source is open to view. False Under the OSI's Open Source Definition, software that is open source must also allow unrestricted redistribution and modifications. Certain licenses are also copyleft, which means that any derived work must also be distributed under the same license--So check your licenses carefully before proceeding. This misconception is due to a direct interpretation of the word "open source", says Fogel. Its actual meaning is supposed to invoke the idea of 'freedom'--the liberty to change and recreate--but finding the correct lexicon was difficult. "It is a problem inherent in the English Language. In Spanish and French you have the word 'Libre', but there is no such equivalent in English, " Fogel says. Open source software is free. True This point is tricky, because it depends on what your definition of "free" is, and who you talk to. As mentioned above, the OSI's definition of open source software is “free” in the sense of giving freedom to those who use it. So in the most common way of thinking, where "free" means no upfront cost to use, modify, or distribute, the answer is yes: the software is free. That said, if you lean towards economics and like to think about the


Prompt: Buzzfeed, January 14: A Mindset Revolution Sweeping Britain’s Classrooms May Be Built On Shaky Science. Somebody needed to write this article. It’s written very well. I’ve talked to the writer, Tom Chivers, and he was very careful and seems like a great person. The article even quotes me, although I think if I had gotten to choose a quote of mine for thousands of people to see, it wouldn’t have been the one speculating about Carol Dweck making a pact with the Devil. But I’m not entirely on board with it. Growth mindset has been really hyped and Carol Dweck

has said it can do implausibly exciting things, okay. A lot of smart people are very suspicious of growth mindset and think there has to be some trick, sure. There’s a high prior that something is up, definitely. But one thing that needs to be at the core of any article like this is that, if there’s a trick, we haven’t found it. I tried to be really clear about this in my own (mostly pessimistic) article on the subject: It is right smack in the middle of a bunch of fields that have all started seeming a little dubious recently. Most of the growth mindset experiments have used priming to get people in an effort-focused or an ability-focused state of mind, but recent priming experiments have famously failed to replicate and cast doubt on the entire field. And growth mindset has an obvious relationship to stereotype threat, which has also started seeming very shaky recently. So I have every reason to be both suspicious of and negatively disposed toward growth mindset. Which makes it appalling that the studies are so damn good. This is the context of my speculation that Carol Dweck has made a pact with the Devil. I haven’t accused (for example) the stereotype threat people of making a pact with the Devil. They did some crappy studies and exaggerated the results. That doesn’t require any diabolic help. Any social scientist can do that, and most of them do. What’s interesting about the growth mindset research is that it looks just like the sort of thing that should fall apart with a tiny gust of wind, but it actually hangs together pretty well. BuzzFeed doesn’t really challenge that. The article spends most of its time snarking about how overhyped growth mindset is – and no objections there,


Prompt: This offseason, Shutdown Corner will travel down memory lane with a series of stories presenting some interesting and sometimes forgotten stories from the NFL’s past. Join us as we relive some of the greatest and craziest moments in the sport’s history. On its own, it’s a pretty remarkable sight in the clip above: A kicker retrieving his own blocked field-goal attempt, scooping up the loose ball and running it in for a walk-off touchdown. Scroll to continue with content Ad That doesn’t happen every day in the NFL, after all. But it’s the back story that makes Chester Marcol’s 1980

touchdown against the rival Chicago Bears one of the most WTF moments in modern league history. [Yahoo Fantasy Football is open for the 2016 season. Sign up now] Marcol entered the league in 1972, a Polish-born kicker whose family left their home country after his father committed suicide. He arrived at high school in Imlay City, Michigan (30 miles east of Flint) not knowing a lick of English, but a gym teacher discovered that Marcol could kick the heck out of a soccer ball. Once Marcol was introduced to football and taught how to kick that oblique spheroid, a great talent was transformed. He went down the road to kick for then-NAIA Hillsdale College, where he went on to set several school kicking marks and become a four-time All-American. He made a 62-yarder in 1969 (a year before Tom Dempsey made a 63-yarder in the NFL) and attempted an unheard-of 77-yard try against St. Norbert (which just happened to be where the Packers held training camp at the time) that reportedly came up a few yards short. Story continues Packers head coach Dan Devine thought enough of Marcol to spend a second-round pick (34th overall) on him, and Marcol rewarded him by making Pro Bowls in two of his first three seasons and being named 1972 NFC Rookie of the Year after making 33 field goals in 14 games and leading the NFL in scoring that season. Green Bay Packers kicker Chester Marcol was the NFL’s leading scorer as a rookie in 1972 (Photo by Nate Fine/Getty Images) His efforts that season against the Chicago Bears endeared him to the locals. He beat them with late field goals in both games and frustrated Bears coach Abe Gibron so much that he handpicked special-teams ace Gary Kosins as a mercenary to


Prompt: Playing Favorites The sedan is the more attractive option to my eyes. Mazda says the interior was benchmarked against the latest BMW 3 Series There isn't another front-wheel-drive automobile with such an aggressive caster angle. While the two engines are both part of the Skyactiv-G family, they share practically no major components. The 2.0L, six-speed automatic sedan is rated at 30 mpg city, 41 highway and 34 combined. The hatch is a bit less aerodynamic ... and it's also a wee bit noisier while driving. We're not going to beat around the bush: for the kind of person who willfully

chooses to take longer, windier and more scenic routes to get to Point B, the 2014 Mazda3 is the new compact car measuring stick by which others will be judged. That doesn't, of course, make it the right choice for every buyer.We'll spend the next thousand words or so explaining the whys and hows that make our opening statement a fact, but for now, suffice it to say that Mazda has engineered its latest crop of vehicles – namely the CX-5 Mazda6 and its smaller sibling and subject of this test, the Mazda3 – from the ground up. Absolutely everything about the Mazda3 is refined for 2014, from its chassis to its engines and everything in between, and it was done in a completely new and holistic way. Every component, subcomponent and stamping required to bolt and weld together an automobile was rethought to ensure the Mazda3 has what it takes to compete with such established benchmarks as the Honda Civic and Ford Focus We spent a day in and around sunny San Diego clutching the keys to Mazda3 variants in both sedan and hatch forms, powered by both 2.0-liter and 2.5-liter four-cylinder engines, to see how the car stacks up in its hotly contested segment. Since we've already driven the hatchback version of the car, albeit in pre-production form, we focused our attention on the Mazda3 sedan, and we spent seat time in each of its competitors throughout the process to ensure our posteriors were accurately calibrated. Read on to see what we found.The 2014 Mazda3 looks awfully pretty in pictures, but its shapes are even better when viewed up close and personal. As the latest car to benefit from Mazda's Kodo design language, the 3 draws plenty of inspiration from the CX-5 and Mazda6 , both of which


Prompt: A group of outraged Florida voters has launched the Web site MyCongressmanIsNuts.com in a drive to oust Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson, the outspoken lawmaker who grabbed national headlines after it was revealed that, among other comments, he called an adviser to the Federal Reserve chairman a “K Street whore” in a radio interview in September. The site is raising money to defeat the Orlando-area congressman and the site’s organizers describe it as a “more appropriate alternative” to Mr. Grayson’s CongressmanWithGuts.com, which the Grayson campaign said helped to raise more than $250,000 in the first three weeks of October. The “Nuts”

site took in about $3,335 overnight after its Thursday evening launch, according to a donation ticker on the Web page. “Alan Grayson’s recent self-indulgent behavior has paralyzed his ability to serve as an advocate for the citizens of central Florida,” the Web site says in a plea for contributions. The site features YouTube videos of TV and cable news reports critical of Mr. Grayson’s exploits. “Every penny that we raise is going to go to exposing his policies and who he really is,” said Angie Langley, 34, chairwoman of the recently formed political action committee behind the Web site. “We are going to flood the district with bumper stickers, yard signs, and we are prepared to launch radio and television ads - whatever it takes to make sure this guy is not re-elected.” Ms. Langley, a business development consultant in the Lake County portion of Mr. Grayson’s district, said the PAC is not affiliated with a political party and is not backing any candidates. She is not new to politics, however, having previously served as chairman of the Lake County Republican Party. The PAC’s two other board members are a registered Republican and a registered libertarian. Mr. Grayson’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Several Republicans have lined up to challenge Mr. Grayson, including a trio of “tea party” activists hoping to capitalize on the anti-tax, anti-big government movement that flourished over the summer. But national Republicans reportedly are looking for a stronger candidate in what has historically been a GOP-leaning district. The Bronx, N.Y.-born Mr. Grayson, a wealthy businessman and lawyer, was a freshman House member virtually unknown on the national stage before his stinging rhetoric and take-no-prisoners style began to draw attention in September. That’s when he stood on the House floor and said


Prompt: In Laissez-Faire in Tokyo Land Use I pointed to Japan’s constitutional protection of property rights and it’s relatively laissez-faire approach to land use to explain why housing prices in Japan have not risen in past decades, as they have elsewhere in the developed world. A very useful post at Urban kchoze offers more detail on Japan’s zoning system. Here are some of the key points. Japan has 12 basic zones, far fewer than is typical in an American city. The zones can be ordered in terms of nuisance or potential externality from low-rise residential to high-rise residential to commercial zone

on through to light industrial and industrial. But, and this is key, in the US zones tend to be exclusive but in Japan the zones limit the maximum nuisance in a zone. So, for example, a factory can’t be built in a residential neighborhood but housing can be built in a light industrial zone. …[the] Japanese do not impose one or two exclusive uses for every zone. They tend to view things more as the maximum nuisance level to tolerate in each zone, but every use that is considered to be less of a nuisance is still allowed. So low-nuisance uses are allowed essentially everywhere. That means that almost all Japanese zones allow mixed use developments, which is far from true in North American zoning. …[The] great rigidity in allowed uses per zone in North American zoning means that urban planing departments must really micromanage to the smallest detail everything to have a decent city. Because if they forget to zone for enough commercial zones or schools, people can’t simply build what is lacking, they’d need to change the zoning, and therefore confront the NIMBYs. And since urban planning departments, especially in small cities, are largely awful, a lot of needed uses are forgotten in neighborhoods, leading to them being built on the outskirts of the city, requiring car travel to get to them from residential areas. Meanwhile, Japanese zoning gives much more flexibility to builders, private promoters but also school boards and the cities themselves. So the need for hyper-competent planning is much reduced, as Japanese planning departments can simply zone large higher-use zones in the center of neighborhoods, since the lower-uses are still allowed. If there is more land than needed for commercial uses in a commercial zone, for example, then you can still build residential uses there,


Prompt: Pro-Iraq ad buyers turn to lobbying Nick Juliano Published: Friday November 16, 2007 del.icio.us Print This Email This Group tells Raw it will reach out to both parties Freedom's Watch, a pro-Iraq war interest group populated by prominent Republicans and former Bush administration officials, swept into the debate over the war this summer with a series of slickly produced, emotional TV ads. Now the group wants to take its arguments straight to the Capitol Hill lawmakers who are debating how and whether to continue funding America's nearly five-year occupation of Iraq. Freedom's Watch filed papers on Sept. 17 to lobby

lawmakers, as noted this week by CQ Moneyline, a campaign fundraising and political advocacy tracking service. The group says it plans to reach out to members of both parties on a variety of issues, including troop funding and "winning the war on terror." "We won't narrow our scope in terms of who we're going to be talking to," Matt David, a spokesman for the group, tells RAW STORY . The lobbying disclosure form lists three Freedom's Watch officials, who are joining the pro-war lobbying effort, including Bradley Blakeman, a former deputy assistant to President Bush, and David, a former Bush-Cheney campaign aide. Former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer is a founding board member of Freedom's Watch, although he is not listed as a registered lobbyist. David says Fleischer won't be involved in the lobbying effort, and the group will not be coordinating its actions with the Bush administration. "By law we're not allowed to coordinate with the White House, so we are following the law," he said in an interview Friday. "We are not coordinating with the White House." As RAW STORY reported last month, Freedom's Watch appears to be part of a revolving door between the White House and outside public relations groups trying to bolster support for the unpopular occupation of Iraq. David said Freedom's Watch plans to announce an expansion of its advocacy efforts to include issues beyond the war and hopes to become a force in Washington. "This is an organization with the goal to be a perpetual operation for years and years to come," he said. In August, Freedom's Watch began a $15 million ad campaign in 20 states urging members of Congress to stay the course in Iraq. Those ads, which aired just before Gen. David Petraeus's progress report on the "surge" in


Prompt: * EU-Mexico trade agreement from 2000 seen as limited, outdated * Mexico part of deals shaping the landscape of global trade By Robin Emmott BRUSSELS, May 11 (Reuters) - The European Union and Mexico will launch negotiations towards a new free-trade agreement later this year, as Europe seeks to tie its economy closer to North America following a deal with Canada and efforts to sign an accord with the United States. Building on a pact with Mexico from 2000, the European Union hopes to create a transatlantic free-trade zone and help set the global rules of commerce before China does.

Mexico is jumping ahead of Brazil, whose talks towards a similar deal with the European Union have stalled. “We are ready to commit to a highly ambitious deal,” EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom told a forum in Brussels alongside Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo. “I will ask for a mandate to launch negotiations this fall,” she said. EU officials are expected to discuss the timing of talks in more detail at an EU-Latin American summit in Brussels on June 12, where Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto is expected. A deal, which would take several years, would upgrade the EU-Mexican accord that was signed when the global economy was far less integrated and online commerce was in its infancy. It is part of a new generation of deals that go beyond tariffs. As with the EU’s pact with Canada and its plans for a deal with the United States, a new accord with Mexico would further open up markets in services and allow businesses to bid for public tenders in each others’ countries. The European Union is Mexico’s second-largest trading partner after the United States, while Mexico is a top destination for EU exports after the United States and China. A more comprehensive deal with the European Union would allow Mexico to join Latin America’s Pacific economies of Chile, Colombia and Peru that now have modern trade pacts with both the European Union and the United States. It also deepens a divide between those nations and Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela on the Atlantic coast, which have been more reluctant to drop barriers to trade. “With Colombia, Chile and Peru, we are sending a signal of fresh air that we are the countries of free traders. We are responsible for more than half of Latin America’s exports to the world,” Economy Minister


Prompt: Differences between martian meteorites and rocks examined by a NASA rover can be explained if Mars had an oxygen-rich atmosphere 4000 million years ago – well before the rise of atmospheric oxygen on Earth 2500m years ago. Scientists from Oxford University investigated the compositions of Martian meteorites found on Earth and data from NASA’s ‘Spirit’ rover that examined surface rocks in the Gusev crater on Mars. The fact that the surface rocks are five times richer in nickel than the meteorites was puzzling and had cast doubt on whether the meteorites are typical volcanic products of the red planet. ‘What

we have shown is that both meteorites and surface volcanic rocks are consistent with similar origins in the deep interior of Mars but that the surface rocks come from a more oxygen-rich environment, probably caused by recycling of oxygen-rich materials into the interior,’ said Professor Bernard Wood, of Oxford University’s Department of Earth Sciences, who led the research reported in this week’s Nature. ‘This result is surprising because while the meteorites are geologically ‘young’, around 180 million to 1400 million years old, the Spirit rover was analysing a very old part of Mars, more than 3700 million years old.’ Whilst it is possible that the geological composition of Mars varies immensely from region to region the researchers believe that it is more likely that the differences arise through a process known as subduction – in which material is recycled into the interior. They suggest that the Martian surface was oxidised very early in the history of the planet and that, through subduction, this oxygen-rich material was drawn into the shallow interior and recycled back to the surface during eruptions 4000 million years ago. The meteorites, by contrast, are much younger volcanic rocks that emerged from deeper within the planet and so were less influenced by this process. Professor Wood said: ‘The implication is that Mars had an oxygen-rich atmosphere at a time, about 4000 million years ago, well before the rise of atmospheric oxygen on earth around 2500 million years ago. As oxidation is what gives Mars its distinctive colour it is likely that the ‘red planet’ was wet, warm and rusty billions of years before Earth’s atmosphere became oxygen rich.’ A report of the research, entitled ‘Volcanism on Mars controlled by early oxidation of the upper mantle’, is published in the journal Nature. The research was carried out by


Prompt: Image copyright Getty Images A new study suggests there is a growing market in the illegal trade of guns and weapons in Libya via social media sites, in particular Facebook. The report covered 18 months and found sales of a wide range of items - from handguns to rocket-propelled grenades. Most were offered for sale on "closed" or "secret" Facebook groups. The illicit sale of guns is a violation of Facebook's terms of service, and a spokesperson said they encourage people to report any such postings. The report was commissioned by the Small Arms Survey, and used data collected by

Armament Research Services (ARES) on a total of 1,346 sales. Researchers believe this is just a fraction of the full trade taking place on social media. The study will be released on Thursday, but BBC Newsnight has seen an advance copy. Col Gaddafi was an obsessive buyer of weapons and tightly controlled the market. During his 40 years in power, it is estimated he spent more than $30bn (£20bn) on arms. Image copyright Facebook Image caption A recent example of a weapon for sale in Libya on Facebook When rebel forces toppled his regime in 2011, the stockpiles were thrown open and a large black market emerged. Researchers believe the trade on social media began to take off in 2013, and is still growing. They looked at the trade of small arms and light weapons across sites, including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Telegram, and found the largest volume of sales on Facebook. The majority of weapons being traded were handguns or rifles. The most popular rifle was the Kalashnikov, which sells - they found - on average for 1,800 Libyan dinars ($1,300; £930). "While the bulk of the traded [items] were traditional small arms - handguns through to self-loading rifles and machine guns - there were also the more significant systems that could have battlefield impacts or terrorist use," says one of the report authors Nic Jenzen-Jones from ARES. "Manpads are shoulder-launched anti-aircraft systems. We found a number of complete systems listed, but also individual components... They're not really functional against modern fighter aircraft, but the great threat is to civilian aviation." Researchers found anti-aircraft systems cost up to 85,000 Libyan dinars ($62,000; £44,000). One offer was of an anti-aircraft gun which came complete with a truck. Find out more: Tripoli 'U-turn' on unity government Why is Libya so lawless?


Prompt: German authorities receive foreign intelligence tipoff warning that up to seven suicide bombers would attack two of the city’s train stations Police in Munich are hunting Islamic State suspects after a foreign intelligence agency warned of a “concrete” plan to send suicide bombers to the city’s train stations during New Year’s Eve celebrations. Five to seven people were reportedly planning suicide bomb attacks on the main Hauptbahnhof station and Pasing station at the western end of the city centre, in what German authorities said was a “serious, imminent threat”, prompting them to evacuate the sites and warn people to stay

away. Munich police president Hubertus Andrä told a news conference on Friday that German officials had received a “very concrete” tip that suicide attacks were planned at train stations in the southern city at midnight. “We received names. We can’t say if they are in Munich or in fact in Germany,” Andrä said. About 550 officers have been deployed to secure the city and no arrests had yet been made, he said. The Bavarian interior minister, Joachim Herrmann, told a media conference on Thursday night: “The threat was very concretely centred on midnight and at these two places.” He added that all necessary security measures were being taken. Citing anonymous security sources, Bavarian state broadcaster BR reported that Germany had received warnings from both US and French intelligence agencies earlier in the day. According to the intelligence, seven Iraqis living in Munich were named as the potential attackers, and they were planning to enter the stations in pairs and blow themselves up simultaneously. Munich police spokeswoman Elizabeth Matzinger could not confirm the nationalities or the suspected residence of the suspects, or whether a manhunt for identified individuals was underway. “Investigations are happening, but I cannot give out any details, that is a tactical information,” she told the Guardian. “I can’t confirm whether they are Iraqis, but it was apparently a group of five to seven people affiliated to IS [Isis].” The two stations were shut down and evacuated around midnight, while special unit police officers armed with automatic weapons were stationed at entrances. UK new year events go ahead amid heightened security around the world Read more Munich police issued a statement saying that an attack was expected in the city during the night, and warned people to avoid the two stations and large crowds in general. But by 4


Prompt: BERKELEY, Calif.—Days after a group of concerned professors raised alarm bells over a new network monitoring system installed at the University of California, Berkeley and the other nine campuses of the University of California system, a separate committee of system-wide faculty has now given its blessing. Some Berkeley faculty remain concerned that their academic freedom has been threatened by the new full packet capture system that sits on each campus network’s edge, however. They say that retaining such information could be used as a way to constrain legitimate discussion or research on controversial topics. Last summer, the University of California

Office of the President (UCOP) ordered that a Fidelis XPS system be installed at all 10 campuses at a total estimated cost of at least a few million dollars. The Fidelis hardware and software is designed to "detect attacks" and analyze "every single packet that traverses the network." The move came in response to a July 2015 attack against the University of California Los Angeles Health System, which resulted in 4.5 million records being stolen. Following that attack, University of California President Janet Napolitano, the former Secretary of Homeland Security, moved quickly to bring more digital monitoring onto the campuses, which stretch from Berkeley to San Diego. The UC Regents, the governing board of the entire UC system, now face 17 separate lawsuits as a result of the breach at UCLA. Similar network monitoring hardware has also been installed at other universities nationwide. "We recognize that the essential openness of the University represents a cybersecurity challenge," David G. Kay, a University of California Irvine computer science professor and head of the UC-wide committee, wrote in the Monday letter to the UC Academic Senate. "We have been informed that the monitoring of communications looked only for ‘malware signatures’ and Internet traffic patterns. As neither message content nor browsing activity were monitored, we believe this level of monitoring can be appropriate." But exactly how the Fidelis XPS operates and what data is being retained and scanned is unknown. Kate Moser, a UCOP spokeswoman, refused to answer Ars’ specific questions, referring us simply to prepared statements from both Napolitano and Executive Vice President Rachael Nava. She also pointed us to a new website, security.ucop.edu, which states, "UC is taking appropriate steps to prevent cyber attacks by advanced persistent threat actors." That site also touts the new Cyber-Risk Governance Committee, which acts as an


Prompt: In the wake of the near panic over the launch of Sputnik in 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed James Killian, the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to become the first special assistant to the president for science and technology. Ever since, the relationship between the nation’s chief executive and the White House’s resident authority on nuclear fission, the workings of DNA and the greenhouse effect, among an array of topics, has had its highs and lows. To be sure, advice has flowed freely at times. Eisenhower consulted frequently with Killian and other scientists, and in the Kennedy

years Jerome Wiesner, another M.I.T. president, helped to coordinate the government’s response to the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, a book that spurred a national grassroots environmental movement by pointing out the dangers of pesticides. Just as often the adviser’s position has tilted toward irrelevance. Richard M. Nixon went so far as to abolish the job altogether, along with the President’s Science Advisory Committee, which had recommended against going ahead with a supersonic transport program, advice that the ill-fated 37th president did not want to hear. (The U.S. Congress restored the position in 1976.) The tenure of George W. Bush marks a new nadir. On the few science-related issues the administration has cared about—stem cells and climate change were on the short list—it had largely set its course before the arrival of its new science adviser John H. Marburger III some nine months after Bush first took office. The administration, moreover, stripped the job of the title “special assistant to the president,” a reminder that the adviser would never be part of the inner circle. Nevertheless, hopes rose with the appointment of the well-regarded physicist and former head of Stony Brook University and Brookhaven National Laboratory. “As both scientist and administrator, John H. Marburger III tries to bring needed perspective into a White House not thought to be particularly interested in science,” read a headline for a profile published in Scientific American in June 2002. In the ensuing years, Marburger has disappointed. Much of his public persona has been as an apologist for the Bush team, trying to rebut charges from scientists, Congress and the media that the administration has engaged in a “war on science” by systematically distorting or suppressing science-related reports and politicizing federal advisory committees. Bush’s first appointed EPA administrator, former New Jersey Republican governor Christine


Prompt: Porter Airlines confirmed today it plans to buy up to 30 CS100 jets from Montreal-based Bombardier, which would expand the regional carrier's reach from coast to coast, and take direct aim at Air Canada and WestJet. "We believe it is time to spread our wings," president and CEO Bob Deluce said at a news conference at Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, where Porter is based. "And so I present to you our vision for the future of Porter Airlines — a vision with service to destinations across North America, from Calgary and Vancouver, to Los Angeles, Miami and Orlando." The

move pushes Porter into direct competition with Air Canada and WestJet as a national carrier, while setting up a potential political standoff over expansion of the island airport in downtown Toronto. The conditional deal is to buy 12 Bombardier CS100s, with options on 18 more. The deal also includes purchase rights for six of Bombardier's Q400 turboprop aircraft, currently the mainstay of the Porter fleet. The total purchase could reach $2.29 billion US if all the options and purchase rights are exercised. Delivery of the first jet, which has seating for 107 passengers, is expected in 2016. The conditional purchase agreement signed on Tuesday is a coup for Bombardier, and ushers in a change in Canadian aviation. That's because the CSeries jets can fly 5,400 km without refuelling, much farther than the current fleet of Q400 turboprop planes that Porter flies to connect 19 cities across Eastern Canada and the U.S. The airline said the expansion could mean 1,000 new employees, which would bring the total to 2,400. Potential price war Joseph D'Cruz, a University of Toronto business professor and aviation expert, said the move could be good news for consumers. The announcement could lead to a political dispute over the airport, which is near residents on the island and the city's heavily populated downtown. (Marivel Taruc/CBC) "It's going to be interesting to watch how WestJet and Air Canada react once Porter starts biting into their business," he told CBC News. "They're going to retaliate, and the only way they can retaliate is lower prices." "This may trigger a vicious price war," D'Cruz said. Air Canada said that before it takes a position on further investment at the island airport, it wants assurance that takeoff and landing slots will become available for other airlines that have been seeking increased access.


Prompt: Wells Fargo Home Mortgage has fired a Des Moines worker over a 1963 incident at a Laundromat involving a fake dime in the wake of new employment guidelines. Richard Eggers, 68, was fired in July from his job as a customer service representative for putting a cardboard cutout of a dime in a washing machine nearly 50 years ago in Carlisle, the Des Moines Register reported Monday. Warren County court records show Eggers was convicted of operating a coin-changing machine by false means. Eggers called it a "stupid stunt," but questions his firing. Big banks have been firing low-level employees

like Eggers since new federal banking employment guidelines were enacted in May 2011 and new mortgage employment guidelines took hold in February, the newspaper said. The tougher standards are meant to clear out executives and mid-level bank employees guilty of transactional crimes — such as identity theft and money laundering — but are being applied across the board because of possible fines for noncompliance. Banks have fired thousands of workers nationally, said Natasha Buchanan, an attorney in Santa Ana, Calif., who has helped some of the workers regain their eligibility to be employed. "Banks are afraid of the FDIC and the penalties they could face," Buchanan said. The regulatory rules forbid the employment of anyone convicted of a crime involving dishonesty, breach of trust or money laundering. Before the guidelines were changed, banks widely interpreted the rules to exclude minor traffic offenses and misdemeanors. Wells Fargo confirmed Eggers' termination. "The expectations that have been placed on us and all financial institutions have never been higher," said Wells Fargo spokeswoman Angela Kaipust. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. provides a waiver process employees can follow to show they're still fit to work at a bank despite a past criminal conviction, but it usually takes six months to a year to be approved. There is also a process for automatic waiver that works more quickly but is limited to people who were sentenced to less than year of jail time and never spent a day locked up. Eggers, who was jailed two days, doesn't qualify. American Bankers Association spokeswoman Carol Kaplan said the public clamor for tighter regulation also is responsible for the stricter interpretation of the rules. The safest route is to fire the employee and let them pursue an FDIC waiver. "There's no question that there was an appetite for tighter


Prompt: Johnson did what he clearly had to do after perhaps the most epic collapse in the Jets’ collapse-filled history. But the uninspiring news conference by Johnson and General Manager Mike Tannenbaum, who seemed to lack detail or conviction about why they fired Mangini and what they wanted in the next coach, certainly did not instill confidence that the Jets were now headed in the right direction. If nothing else, it suggested that Bill Belichick, mocked when he bolted the Jets just as he was about to become their coach, might be even smarter than previously thought. Still, at least Johnson

took some action. Jones, incredibly, is sticking to his guns. After his team failed to show up with so much on the line Sunday, he reiterated that Phillips would be back, saying that continuity was the best way to fulfill the team’s potential. That point will be debated from now until the Cowboys go to training camp — they want continuity from this season? — but Phillips was one of the lucky ones on the darkest day of every season for coaches. He learned his fate quickly, as did Mangini and Lions Coach Rod Marinelli, who was dismissed early Monday. (Mike Singletary, the coach of the San Francisco 49ers, was given a contract extension Sunday.) Consider Cleveland Coach Romeo Crennel. General Manager Phil Savage was fired right after the Browns lost to the Steelers on Sunday afternoon. Crennel did not get word of his dismissal until Monday morning, spending one final sleepless night with the Browns. Worse, it appears Bill Cowher, Cleveland’s prime target, is not interested in the job. Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content , updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters. In Kansas City, Herm Edwards’s wait for a resolution must feel interminable. Carl Peterson is already gone and the search is on for a new general manager, who will almost certainly want input on who should be the coach. But


Prompt: “I depart, but the State shall always remain” - King Louis XIV on his deathbed King Louis XIV de Bourbon,following in the political footsteps of Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin, is strengthening the power of the monarchy to the detriment of the feudal aristocracy. The Thirty Years’ War’s end – won over an exhausted Holy Roman Empire – has not brought a stable peace. Spain is still acting aggressively against France’s interests and many German and Dutch princedoms are starting to fear France’s unmatched military power. But despite all the enemies he is facing, internal and external, Louis XIV is strongly

inclined to make the Kingdom of France the Arbiter of Europe. Like a Sun determining the orbits of the other minor celestial bodies around it. Le Grand Siècle- the "Great Century” – has begun! Pike and Shot: Campaigns has been updated! This new version is dedicated to the great military modernization of the French Army - with which the Roi Soleil desired to sustain his absolutism – the matching military advances of the other European powers, as well as several other great improvements! More specifically : Added “Le Roi Soleil” skirmish module, covering European armies from 1649 to 1698. This adds 37 new army lists and many new unit types to the game. Added these new army lists to the Pike and Shot Campaign to allow it to cover any European conflict from 1494 to 1698. Added new Late Pike and Shot models for Austrian units in Great Turkish War campaign. Used new models for Royalist Edgehill mostly-pike and mostly-musket units. Descriptions added to MP scenarios. Campaigns: Significantly increased chance of defending army fighting either open battle or defending field fortifications rather than retreating when province is invaded. If they fight an open battle against a superior invading force there is a chance they will engage the invader before all his troops have arrived. Campaigns: Improved auto resolution algorithm for defensive (field fortification) battles. Campaigns: Corrected bug in reporting of supply limits for provinces with enemy armies in them. Now correctly reports supply limit that will apply for player armies when the enemy field army has been driven from the province. Corrected sound effect for Szeklers and Lancer Banners shooting. Corrected troop description of Veteran Late Pike & Shot and LG. You can download the update from here Get more information about Pike and Shot: Campaigns from its official Product


Prompt: Flooding from Hurricane Joaquin will impact areas from South Carolina to Massachusetts regardless of whether it makes landfall or if the center stays out to sea. People should not let their guard down due to a shifting track of the hurricane as the risk to lives and property in this complex situation remains high. A copious amount of moisture will unload very heavy rainfall along parts of the Atlantic Seaboard and the Appalachians into early next week. Strong winds, coastal flooding and beach erosion will occur and could be very damaging even in the absence of a landfall. Hurricane Joaquin

strengthened rapidly Wednesday into Thursday. Joaquin reached Category 3 status late Wednesday evening and Category 4 status on Thursday afternoon. JUMP TO: Joaquin Track Scenarios | Inland Flooding | Coastal Flooding, Strong Winds The storm will bring pounding surf, dangerous seas, strong winds, drenching squalls and flash flooding to the central Bahamas. Wind gusts could reach between 75 and 100 mph on some of the islands. As a result, Joaquin will threaten lives and property in the Bahamas into Friday. Bahamasair has canceled flights for Thursday in parts of the islands. Joaquin will turn to the north this weekend. Governors in Virginia, New Jersey and North Carolina have issued a State of Emergency. Other states may follow suit. Joaquin Track Scenarios Joaquin has strengthened significantly and continues to hover near the Bahamas on Thursday. This delay has altered the forecast track. Other weather systems impacting Joaquin will be in slightly different positions as a result. Joaquin will move northward much of this weekend, roughly paralleling the East coast. There is nearly equal possibility the storm will make landfall along the mid-Atlantic coast, the New England coast or veer out to sea. Due to the potential close proximity of the hurricane to the coast, people from the Carolinas to Massachusetts will need to closely monitor the track and strength of Joaquin for high wind and coastal flooding concerns. Should Joaquin make landfall, areas near and north of the center would face the worst coastal flooding and strong winds. If the storm were to make landfall in North Carolina, then it would be on Sunday. If the storm were to turn into Virginia, then it would be on Sunday night. From the Delmarva Peninsula to New Jersey, a landfall would not occur until Monday. If Joaquin fails to make landfall in the


Prompt: Change is rarely easy, even when it is necessary. As creatures of habit, it takes real dedication and perseverance in order to affect real, lasting change in your life. At first, it’s often a pleasant experience, the change wakes you up out of your stagnation, and it feels like you’re actually living. When commitment wanes, or enthusiasm shrinks, however, it can be easy to fall right back into the habits which needed changing in the first place. One of the best techniques that I’ve found for strengthening resolve is to turn to the wisdom of others. There’s no easier way

to start this habit than through these iconic quotes about change and the process of changing, from some of the great thinkers, authors, actors, and politicians or our time. 1. If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude. – Maya Angelou 2. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. – Reinhold Niebuhr 3. Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. – Martin Luther King, Jr. 4. For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘No’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. – Steve Jobs 5. It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad. - C. S. Lewis 6. When we are no longer able to change a situation – we are challenged to change ourselves. – Viktor E. Frankl 7. All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another. – Anatole France 8. If you do not change direction, you may


Prompt: Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party sure knows how to remain in news. Always. Decibel levels in the already chaotic capital have risen manifold since the advent of AAP into power. Not a day passes without its Supremo hurling foul invective and abuse at the Prime Minister or other central leaders. Playing victim, Kejriwal pretends as if the world is out to get him, a good man fallen among crooks. The truth, however, is quite contrary to his pretensions. He is as adept in playing the politics of deceit and hoodwinking as the best among the traditional politicians. Promises of new

politics, a new beginning, were completely bogus. AAP is in the single-minded pursuit of power for its own sake. And to attain power it is willing to do whatever older practitioners of party politics have been doing for decades. In sum, it is a mistake to trust AAP to play normative politics. Whether it is the use of black money, or the abuse of government funds for self-promotion, in a short span of time AAP has proved that it can outsmart the older players by most brazenly cutting moral and legal corners. AAP is no different from, say, the Congress or the BJP. Period. Take the latest controversy in which it has embroiled itself but, typically, holds everyone else and not itself responsible. Appointment of 21 MLAs as parliamentary secretaries in a House of mere 70 members was in itself a constitutional atrocity. Full-fledged States with the strength of the bicameral legislature running in several multiples of the total strength of the Delhi Assembly have not had as many parliamentary secretaries. Besides, there is a specific constitutional bar on the Delhi Government, a B-category State, having more than ten percent of its MLAs as ministers. In other words, Delhi can have seven ministers, including chief minister. And the same law also stipulates that Delhi can have only one parliamentary secretary and no more. Now, why did Kejriwal appoint 21 when there was a specific prohibition against more than one parliamentary secretary? The truthful answer is that he feared that a number of AAP MLAs would join hands with the Prashant Bhushan-Yogendra Yadav duo whom he had expelled from the party last year for no particular reason than the fact that the two did not endorse his opportunistic, power-hungry politics. In order to prevent a split in the AAP legislature party,


Prompt: William Barret "Buck" Travis (August 1, 1809 – March 6, 1836) was a 19th-century American lawyer, soldier and freemason. At the age of 26, he was a lieutenant colonel in the Texas Army. He died at the Battle of the Alamo during the Texas Revolution. Travis County and Travis Park were named after him for being the commander of the Republic of Texas at the Battle of the Alamo. Early life Ancestry, early years, and education Travis's grandfather, Berwick (also known as Barrett) Travis, came to the British Colonies of North America at the age of 12, where he was

placed in indentured servitude for more than a decade. Berwick's ancestors came to North America in the late 1600s, and Berwick's (Barrett's) grandfather was born in Perquimans, North Carolina but went back to the United Kingdom for his medical training. A descendant of the Travers of Tulketh Castle in Preston, England, Berwick had a life that hardly resembled his ancestor's glory and wealth. After working his period of servitude, he traveled south to the colony of South Carolina, where he received a grant of over 100 acres of land in what is now Saluda County, South Carolina.[3] A year later, he married Anne Smallwood, and they lived out their lives there. They had four daughters and three sons, including Mark Travis and the Baptist missionary Alexander Travis. Mark Travis married Jemima Stallworth on June 1, 1808.[4] She gave birth to William Barret Travis on August 1, 1809. Records differ as to whether his date of birth was the first or ninth of August, but his youngest brother James C. Travis, who was in possession of the Travis family Bible at the time of his statement, indicated that William was born on the first. Mark and Jemima had nine other children over the next twenty years. Travis's uncle Alexander migrated to the new territory of Alabama following the War of 1812, settling in modern-day Conecuh County. He urged his brother and family to come join him, where he said that the land was cheap and easy to acquire, so Mark took his family, including young William, then age 9, to Alabama. They settled in the newly forming town of Sparta, where Mark Travis purchased the very first certificate from the Sparta Land company.[5] Young Travis grew up in Sparta, and while his father tended to the farming, his uncle Alexander became


Prompt: By DeciBio • April 11, 2014 Los Angeles, CA April 11th 2014 – Several exciting themes were presented at this year’s American Association of Cancer Researchers (AACR) meeting. Large pharmaceutical companies including Pfizer, Eli Lilly and Merck presented some exciting data on their oncology pipeline (CDK 4/6 inhibitior, palbociclib and PD-1 agents). The dominant undercurrents focused on cancer heterogeneity, identifying and treating sub-clonal populations of cancer cells which lead to therapy resistance, and immunotherapy / immuno-oncology. Major technological advancement in these areas is expected in the next few years as these approaches make their way into patient care. Noteworthy emerging

technologies in this space are high throughput massively parallel cell characterization approaches. Garry Nolan presented very interesting work using antibodies labeled with heavy metals followed by mass spectroscopy (mass cytometry) to study the expression of several hundred proteins simultaneously across thousands of cancer cells. This technology identified subclonal populations and internal signaling networks within the subclones that may have treatment ramifications. This technology is being commercialized and is currently in use in several pharmaceutical companies. With that said, NGS remains front and center. Researchers have appreciated for many decades that tumors contain subpopulations of genetically distinct clones, some of which are resistant to treatment. Only recently with the advent of next generation sequencing (NGS) technologies have researchers been able to study these populations in great depth. It was clear at the conference that the push towards NGS continues for oncology researchers. This is demonstrated by the large number of grants offered by the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network (PCAN) and AACR this week, as part of a ~$5M “funding round”. There remains a divide in the platform world between the whole exome / genome camp (dominated by Illumina) and the targeted panel camp (apparently much more competitive, with Ion giving Illumina a run for its money). Several researchers commented in talks that their targeted panels were so small and they were doing only one patient at a time so “Ion just makes sense for us”. Illumina seems to be reinforcing this notion. Illumina representatives consistently emphasize the need for more whole genomes. Purchasers of the X10 systems will find themselves contractually obligated to use them only for whole genome analysis. Illumina reps believe that whole genomes is the direction the market needs to go. When asked about targeted panels Illumina acknowledged that they face stiff competition in this space. For example,


Prompt: One version of the new Celtics logo the team will begin using this season. A couple of years ago, the Celtics turned their office on Causeway Street, near TD Garden, into a pseudo museum detailing the franchise’s history, with pictures and memorabilia covering nearly every square inch of space. And down one hallway, all the Celtics logos dating to the team’s founding in 1946 were splashed on the wall, each carrying the story behind its origin. Those stories sparked an idea for something new with a touch of the past, and after 18 months of work, that idea will debut

this week: a new alternate logo. Advertisement Created in-house, the logo, which is known as the “Lucky Alternate,” pays homage to the early 1960s illustration created by Celtics patriarch Red Auerbach’s brother, Zang, a former editorial and sports artist for newspapers in Washington. Get Sports Headlines in your inbox: The most recent sports headlines delivered to your inbox every morning. Sign Up Thank you for signing up! Sign up for more newsletters here It features the classic image of Lucky the leprechaun spinning the ball on his finger, only in white silhouette against a green backdrop, encircled by the words “BOSTON” and “CELTICS” in white. “It’s such an iconic silhouette that people, when they see it, they’ll know exactly what it is,” said Shawn Sullivan, the team’s chief marketing officer. The logo will first be used on adidas team apparel and merchandise on sale through the team’s online store beginning this month. Celtics season ticket-holders and corporate partners can also buy apparel featuring the new alternate logo two days before products are released to the general public. Advertisement Keith Sliney, the Celtics’ creative director and the logo’s designer, stressed that it won’t be replacing their main logo, nor are there immediate plans to place it on game jerseys. “We think of it more as extending the Celtics brand,” Sliney said. “Our existing logos are not changing. This alternate is an additional emblem for us to use on everything from print to web to fabric. It’s very flexible.” One of the reasons the Celtics decided to create a new logo was, Sliney said, it had been 16 years since the team had debuted its last new logo, a secondary shamrock. “We thought it was a good time to create a mark, something new, something fresh, yet with a lot of history


Prompt: In my next blog I will continue with how I applied the practical steps of walking through anxiety, and how I was able to successfully avoid an anxiety reaction in one of the circumstances . This experience has changed my entire self-experience, opened up a new understanding of how things can be different, and showed me that it IS possible to learn how to become the master of one’s emotions, and no longer remain the slave." I , sporadic, chaotic and intense. This detail is important to remark because we can use this information to see, realize and understand the

best way to approach ourselves when we are in these situations (beginning an anxiety reaction). If, for example, we are too hard on ourselves, the anxiety energy can and will use this approach to further intensify itself. If we panic, it can also serve to fuel the anxiety. If we become mad or frustrated, it can perpetuate the anxiety. f you can recall and bring up the experience of anxiety within self, you can probably relate to that fact that the energy experience is, as the interview describes, sporadic, chaotic and intense. This detail is important to remark because we can use this information to see, realize and understand the best way to approach ourselves when we are in these situations (beginning an anxiety reaction). If, for example, we are too hard on ourselves, the anxiety energy can and will use this approach to further intensify itself. If we panic, it can also serve to fuel the anxiety. If we become mad or frustrated, it can perpetuate the anxiety. It’s as if a child is throwing a tantrum and the parent screams at the child in an attempt to subdue or control him to make it stop. This can further upset the child and fuel/perpetuate the tantrum. Now compare this to speaking in a calm and stable manner to the child, this may not be an instant blanket solution, but it will not further aggravate the situation, and the child can be talked down slowly, and the tantrum can not last forever. Anxiety within self functions in the same way. This example demonstrates how our self-approach can either assist and support ourselves to walk through and out of the anxiety in a calm and stable manner, or conversely, how it can further perpetuate the experience if we do not take


Prompt: For two weeks, DC Comics fans have nervously awaited some official word to debunk the swirling rumors that Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was causing worry at Warner Bros. and the possibility Justice League: Part 1 would wind up cancelled. This weekend, I ran a story explaining why fans can relax because Batman v Superman is likely to be a big hit, and that the rumors are exaggerations mixed with speculation and errors. Today, director Zack Snyder himself drove the final nail in those rumors' coffin, when he gave Entertainment Weekly the exclusive confirmation that he will begin shooting

Justice League soon. The official start date for filming is April 11. With Batman v Superman a mere four and a half weeks from release, Suicide Squad hitting theaters in August of this year, and Wonder Woman already filming, the notion Warner was somehow on the verge of pulling the plug on their plans to rethink it all was more than a little ridiculous. Especially so when, by all accounts, most of Batman v Superman is earning not just approval but rave reactions. Batman and Lex Luthor in particular are said to be home runs, with some even suggesting this could be the best live-action Batman yet. Wonder Woman likewise met with enough approval to get her own movie put right into production (we might see a teaser trailer with Batman v Superman in a few weeks). Superman appears to be a return of Henry Cavill's well-received portrayal from Man of Steel but with even more of the familiar elements and comic-faithful daily life, costume, and even the curl. EW also confirmed something many of us have already known for a while -- Batman v Superman features cameos by the Flash, Aquaman, and Cyborg. Snyder is already in Europe getting ready for the start of filming on Justice League, which by the way kicks off only 15 short days after Batman v Superman's opening weekend. Today's announcement makes clear the overall confidence Warner has in Batman v Superman, the DCU plans in general, and Zack Snyder. After this, it'll be hard for anyone to be taken seriously when asserting there's any lingering case of significant nervousness about how Batman v Superman will perform or be received by audiences. It's confidence well-earned, of course, in light of the fact this is just one of two movies featuring Batman in 2016, followed


Prompt: • Scaffolds • Cord Blood & Regenerative Medicine • Bone and Cartilage Tissue Engineering • Stem Cells-Tools to Battle Cancer • Novel Approaches in Guided Tissue Regeneration • Clinical Medicine • Clinical Trials with Stem Cells • Biomaterials and Bioengineering • Tissue Biomarkers • Regeneration and Therapeutics • Rejuvenation • Immunotherapy • Stem Cell Treatment for Diabetes • Applications of Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine • Bioreactors in Tissue Engineering • Biochips and Tissue Chips • Cancer Stem Cells • Tissue Regeneration • Advances in Stem Cell • Materials and Designs for Tissue Engineering • Tissue Engineering and 3D Printing

• Whole Organ Engineering and Approaches • Stem Cell Engineering (SCE) Conference Series llc LTD is a World’s leading Event Organizer that organizes 1000+ Global Events inclusive of 300+ Conferences, 500+ Upcoming and Previous Symposiums and Workshops in USA, Europe & Asia with support from 1000 more scientific societies and publishes 700+ Open access journals which contains over 30000 eminent personalities, apparent scientists as editorial board members. Conference Series llc LTD invites all claimants to attend “ 12 th International Conference on Tissue Engineering & Regenerative Medicine ” which is going to be held during November 11-12, 2019 at Madrid, Spain mainly focuses on two key topics viz. Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine with basic theme “ Regenerative Medicine: Power to Repair, Rejuvenate, Renew ”. Sessions & Tracks Scaffolds Scaffolds are one of the three most important essentials constituting the basic concept of Regenerative Medicine, and are included in the core technology of Regenerative Medicine. Every day thousands of surgical procedures are done to replace or repair tissue that has been damaged through disease or trauma. The developing field of tissue engineering (TE) aims to regenerate damaged tissues by combining cells from the body with highly porous scaffold biomaterials, which act as templates for tissue regeneration, to guide the growth of new tissue. Scaffolds has a prominent role in tissue regeneration the designs, fabrication, 3D models, surface ligands and molecular architecture, nanoparticle-cell interactions and porous of the scaffolds are been used in the field in attempts to regenerate different tissues and organs in the body. The world stem cell market was approximately 2.715 billion dollars in 2010, and with a growth rate of 16.8% annually, a market of 6.877 billion dollars will be formed in 2016. From 2017, the expected annual growth rate is 10.6%, which would expand the market


Prompt: Tim Hudak is promising to get the government "out of business's hair" by abolishing the College of Trades and shaving away regulations on workers. Standing in a salon east of Toronto, the Progressive Conservative Leader said he would immediately get rid of the body, which regulates over 100 different occupations from hairdressers to bakers. "We don't need an expensive government bureaucracy to tell people where to get their hair cut," he said Tuesday. "Government's job is not to keep bureaucrats busy. It's to focus on what's important like health care and education." Story continues below advertisement The College of Trades'

defenders say the organization is necessary to enforce standards in the skilled trades and protect consumers from subpar tradespeople. But Mr. Hudak contends it is simply a useless layer of red tape that is unfairly limiting the number of people who can get into the trades. He pointed to a written exam hairdressers must take to get a licence, as well as a fee salons must pay, as unnecessary measures. "It's getting in the way of people here in this room with a new tax that will toss them out of work," he said. Hairstylist Kailan Ambrose, 30, who attended Mr. Hudak's event, said she has been working as a hairdresser for seven years but could now lose her licence after failing the written test six times. "It's breathtaking, it's very hard, it's a struggle," said Ms. Ambrose, the married mother of a three-year-old. "This is what I want to do for the rest of my life." Mr. Hudak is running on a platform of cutting the size of government, which includes eliminating 100,000 public sector jobs and doing away with one-third of all regulations on business. Story continues below advertisement Story continues below advertisement The Liberals, for their part, unveiled a new promise in their platform Sunday to appoint a special advisor to review the College of Trades' application process and how the new regulations are enforced. They will hold off on certification of new trades while the review is happening. Campaigning in Sault Ste. Marie at a Catholic school on Tuesday, Ms. Wynne attacked Mr. Hudak for being too much like former PC premier Mike Harris. Mr. Harris appeared on television Monday to say he had a "pretty good" record as the province's leader and that the Liberals are only dredging up his history to avoid talking about


Prompt: University professors in New Brunswick are asking St. Thomas University to withdraw its offer to host CTV's leaders' debate on Thursday unless the leaders of all five political parties in the New Brunswick election campaign are allowed to participate. St. Thomas University professor Jean Sauvageau is the president of the Federation of New Brunswick Faculty Associations. He says STU should withdraw from hosting a leaders' debate on CTV unless all five provincial parties are invited to attend. (CBC) The debate format will see only the leaders of the Progressive Conservative, Liberal and New Democratic parties take part. Jean Sauvageau, the

president of the Federation of New Brunswick Faculty Associations, has asked CTV to also invite Green Party Leader David Coon and People's Alliance Leader Kris Austin to take part in the debate. If CTV doesn't open the debate to all the party leaders, Sauvageau asks that "STU refuses to partake in this undemocratic undertaking and withdraws its offer to host the debate." "STU's decision to accept the request of CTV to host a debate which limits the number of leaders to three, as opposed to all five, flies in the face of the true spirit of democracy," states Sauvageau in a letter to St. Thomas University president Dawn Russell. "In light of the extremely varied electoral platforms advocated by the parties, each one having crucial implications for the future of New Brunswick, there are no valid reasons that justify CTV's arbitrary decision to exclude two leaders nor are there any reason that justify STU's decision to host such an undemocratic debate," says Sauvageau, who is also a professor at STU. Universities are places where debates are allowed to flourish and where all voices can express their point of view - Jean Sauvageau, president of Federation of Faculty Associations of New Brunswick "It is most egregious to see STU, an institution of higher learning, accept to host this debate on its campus. Universities are places where debates are allowed to flourish and where all voices can express their point of view," states Sauvageau. "CTV’s arbitrary exclusion of two legitimately recognized party leaders sends an unsavoury message to everyone about the value and desirability of democracy in New Brunswick. "More to the point about hosting the debate on a university campus, what message does it send to students about democratic participation, critical thinking and inclusiveness? Those are values that cannot be parsimoniously


Prompt: Gregor Terjung is 87 and has been coming to his West Seattle junction store nearly every day since he bought the business in 1968. Patrick Robinson No website, no Facebook page, not even an email account. No advertising, no special sales, no marketing. Yet ever since 1968 Gregor Terjung has made his Terjung's Studio of Gifts in the West Seattle Junction a success. Now 87, he says he's thinking about retirement noting that he has a son in law that retired at 65. But that day is a ways off, since for he and his daughter Gail, the shop is

a labor of love. Competing in a world seemingly dominated by digital sales would seem next to impossible, but the store relies on the power of immediacy (no waiting for delivery), sentiment (most of the items in the store are meant to be given from one person to another, not sent via truck), and relationships. Not just between his customers and their families and friends but with the community at large. Terjung has such a long history, that the vast majority of his customers are people who have shopped with him for decades. He's been in business for 48 years. At Terjung's you will find a huge assortment of greeting cards from eight different vendors, small toys, items for baby showers, wedding showers, ribbon, candies, a good sized selection of small stuffed animals, an assortment of marmalades and tea accessories, and surprisingly, a selection of magic tricks and magic DVD's to train the budding magician. The store also has some hand made aprons and tiny gift boxes that are unique to Terjung's because they are things he made himself. It's a store primarily based on the heart to heart communication between family, friends and loved ones. Somehow, clicking on a website to buy something and have it shipped lacks that personal touch. It's likely why Terjung's has not just survived but thrived. He was in the Army, serving at Fort Lewis, joining in 1948 when he graduated High School and "missed everything" meaning the gap between the end of World War II and the Korean conflict was his service window. He met his wife of 67 years, Gloria in Seattle through a friend who had moved here. She does the bookwork for the store at home. His secret to a good marriage is to "just try to get along, She


Prompt: Jennifer Tress begins a presentation at George Mason University with a photograph of her 13-year-old self. She has written a book titled "You're Not Pretty Enough: You Can’t Make Up Real Life." (Katherine Frey/THE WASHINGTON POST) Jennifer Tress can’t change who is on the cover of Cosmo. She can’t stop college guys from sharing links from BroBible and Hot or Not. But she can sit in your university’s common room and tell you how her husband cheated on her because, he said, she wasn’t “pretty enough.” And she will tell you how years after their divorce his painful words led

her to become what she calls “an accidental body-image activist.” Tress, a consultant for the federal government by day, is bringing her multimedia salons on self-esteem to 100 colleges over the next few months. You’re not pretty enough. It’s not a nice thing to say, or hear, as Tress knows. It’s almost the reverse message of the soundtrack to soothe low self-esteem that college students are used to: One Direction crooning “You’re insecure / Don’t know what for / You’re turning heads when you walk through the door,” or Bruno Mars promising “You’re amazing / Just the way you are.” To Tress, these fluffy anthems of self-acceptance are useful but not as powerful as confronting your shortcomings with honesty. That’s what she offers in her meetings with college students — a chance to talk about societal expectations of beauty, why they’re hurtful and also tough to ignore, and what to focus on instead. Tress’s college tour coincides with the publication of her book of comic stories,“You’re Not Pretty Enough: You Can’t Make Up Real Life.” The book has a retro-looking photograph of her 13-year-old self on the cover, sporting alarmingly bushy eyebrows and a frizzy mullet. Now 42, Tress regularly has her eyebrows waxed. She has thick, frizz-free brown hair that flows over her shoulders, clear skin and a pleasant smile. She’s, well, pretty. “I have been 20, even 40 pounds heavier than this. I like to eat. I like to drink,” she offers while setting up for one of her salons last month at George Mason University in Arlington. “When people hear what I’m doing, they say, ‘I don’t know, Jen, you are pretty, so should you do this?’ ” She relates this anecdote with the breezy confidence of a woman who once had a bad spell, has come


Prompt: There is mounting evidence that oil prices are poised to rebound from a historic bust. Rig counts hit new lows each week. For the week ending on April 17, Baker Hughes says the U.S. lost an additional 34 oil and gas rigs, bringing the total down to 954. Domestic crude oil production appears to have plateaued and the EIA expects a contraction in May. Nearly every driller is dramatically scaling back spending, which should increasingly cut into new output. And oil consumption is finally picking up, as drivers far and wide take advantage of cheap fuel. But what if the

bust is not over yet? Despite the signs of a rebound, ExxonMobil’s CEO Rex Tillerson has a much more bearish take on oil prices. Speaking at the IHS CeraWeek conference in Houston, Tillerson predicted that oil prices would remain subdued for the next several years. While the longer-term is harder to predict, there is quite a bit of evidence to suggest that oil prices may not rise much higher than where they are right now in the short-term. For one, crude oil inventories continue to build. Although the stock build has slowed in recent weeks, it is still dramatically higher than the five-year average. Until production slows to the point that consumers are drawing down inventories faster than they can be replaced, oil prices have little room to rise. The Brief Newsletter Sign up to receive the top stories you need to know right now. View Sample Sign Up Now Another significant factor that could limit any further increases in oil prices is the enormous backlog of wells awaiting completion. Since most of the value of oil and gas coming out of shale occurs in the first few months of production, drillers are avoiding completing hundreds of wells because selling into the current low-price environment would earn them a lot less cash than if they wait until prices rise again. As a result, there is a vast collection of shale wells that will be completed once oil prices increase (an estimated 900 in North Dakota alone), which could bring a flood of new production online. The effect on prices is debatable, but the CEO of ConocoPhillips thinks it could send oil prices down once again. “If you get a price signal, you’ll see more supply come on,” ConocoPhillips Ryan Lance said at CeraWeek. “That certainly has the opportunity to exacerbate