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What Assumptions Marginalize Women in Ministry?
"A collection of smart devices may not make you smarter. There seems to be a gap between what technology has to offer and what we are naturally able to do"
Suranga Nanayakkara slips a black ring onto his finger and points. He’s showing it off, but not because it’s a fancy wedding band. This ring, he explains, helps visually impaired people read by converting text into speech.
Nanayakkara points at a poster on the wall more than a metre away, clicks a small button on the side of the ring, and almost instantaneously a female voice starts reading out the poster’s header through the headphones he’s wearing. Such optical character recognition technology, or OCR, already exists but is often locke...
Nanayakkara, 36, first began working on the Finger Reader five years ago while doing a post-doc at MIT. Back then, the device was chunky, roughly the size of two matchboxes stacked on top of one another. The technology improved over the years, but the aesthetics and functionality remained questionable — last year’s Fin...
“The blind people we tested it on brutally said they wouldn’t use it. They said, ‘I cannot wash my hands with this, I can’t eat my lunch with this, it’s so cumbersome,’” he recalls. The feedback was simple: it has to be a device people can wear and forget all about. To free up the user’s hands, Nanayakkara and his team...
The latest version of Finger Reader is now ready for testing. Thirty visually impaired people from Singapore and Sri Lanka, where Nanayakkara is originally from, began a six-month trial late last month. They will wear the device every day, and the researchers will track what kind of images they capture, how quickly the...
A lot of Nanayakkara’s projects, like the Finger Reader, are targeted at helping people with disabilities. There’s Swimsight, a lights-based starting system that changes colour to signal the start of a race to deaf swimmers. And Knoctify, a commercially available doorbell that translates knocking into lights and vibrat...
Nanayakkara inherited his love for tinkering with objects and creating new things from his mother Manel. An electronics engineer, Manel liked to keep her hands busy with various fix-it-up projects around the house. Summers in Sri Lanka often signalled sweltering heat and droughts, disrupting the hydroelectric-generated...
It’s this let’s-make-something-better mindset that has guided Nanayakkara from his Piliyandala days to where he is today – one of world’s leading experts in creating human-computer interfaces. Never one to shy away from embracing new opportunities, Nanayakkara turned down a full scholarship to Sri Lanka’s top universit...
Michael Phelps Lands Reality Show — What's It About?
VIDEO: "Less Gigantic" Charles Barkley Returns to Host SNL — Pay Up Scottie Pippen!
05:01 — Stephen and Jim Parsons try to get some puppies adopted by way of the most adorable alternative facts yet.
Who let the dogs into the Department of the Interior?
An entrepreneur hawks a secret formula; a stay-at-home mom builds furniture; and a personal trainer pitches a fitness device. Also: children share an idea with the sharks that they came up with while on a family road trip.
A jewelry line created by two women with military experience is pitched, along with a door-to-door luggage service. Also: a Colorado man who claims to have perfected the traditional English scone; a self-described "geek" with an idea for made-to-order furn (more…)A jewelry line created by two women with military experi...
Included: a 16-year-old environmentalist from Melbourne, Fla., has an eco-friendly way to dispose of plastic bottles; a former soap-opera villainess from Sherman Oaks, Cal., shows off her stylish and sun-safe one-piece swimsuit; business partners from Wash (more…)Included: a 16-year-old environmentalist from Melbourne,...
Seventy years ago, a BBC newsreader began the 9pm news bulletin by announcing that British and American scientists “have made the atomic bomb at last”. That was a surprise, but nothing compared with what came next: “The first one was dropped on a Japanese city this morning.” For the millions listening, this was a lot t...
More shocks were to come in the next few days. As reporters struggled to find out exactly what had happened in Hiroshima, it was announced that another bomb had been used on Nagasaki. These first uses of the most destructive explosives ever invented have had more impact on global politics than any other weapon. Nations...
Weapons like this had been foreseen for decades. One popular author wrote in 1924 of “a bomb no bigger than an orange’” able to blast away “a township at a stroke”. He worried what might happen if such devices got into the hands of “a base, degenerate, immoral race”. The writer of those words was Winston Churchill, who...
Churchill had no time for Wells’s socialist politics or his utopias, but he had a lot of time for the writer’s ability to foresee new technological trends. In the Thirties, Churchill wrote several articles pointing out that the nuclear age was on the way, and highlighting the challenges and opportunities that leaders w...
As Europe braced itself for another terrible war, scientists queued up to reassure the public that nuclear weapons were all but inconceivable in the foreseeable future. This helps to explain why the Hiroshima bombing came as such a shock. Churchill and Roosevelt strove to keep development of the bomb top secret. Hardly...
How far, then, have those prayers been answered? The day after the Hiroshima bombing, Churchill told his friend Lord Camrose, the proprietor of The Daily Telegraph, that it was vital for the United States to exploit its monopoly. But that monopoly did not last long. Stalin’s scientists tested their first nuclear weapon...
By the mid-Fifties, however, this equality of arms had already settled into a form of deterrence, albeit a precarious one. In his final great parliamentary speech, on March 1 1955, Churchill noted that “by a process of sublime irony, [we] have reached a stage in this story where safety will be the sturdy child of terro...
More needs to be done to prevent proliferation and to minimise the chance of nuclear accidents. But lunatics have not, so far, destroyed us. Indeed, in recent years, enough uranium to make thousands of warheads has been rendered useless for bombs by Washington and Moscow.
Meanwhile, Churchill’s optimism about generating electrical power from nuclear sources has been justified. And there is more to come. Wells’s utopian vision of limitless cheap nuclear energy may yet be realised. As we remember those who died when the age of nuclear technology began so destructively, we must not forget ...
Anyone paying attention to the Internal Revenue Service scandal has been waiting for the next smidgen to drop. Well, two more hit pretty hard this week. At the president’s next encounter with the media, I will scream collusion if no one asks him for his exact definition of a “smidgen,” and if he thinks he has seen a sm...
The two items in question are ones which we’ve already discussed here. One – perhaps the most damning in recent months – was the shocking (meaning, not shocking) revelation that Lerner had previously told her co-workers that, “we need to be cautious about what we say in emails” and wanted to know if instant messaging t...
The second was the oh-so-understandable “misunderstanding” about whether or not she had printed out any of her e-mails. And let’s face it… who can be sure what was meant when somebody asks you if you printed something? Did they mean “print” the documents, or print print the documents? It’s all terribly confusing.
We’ll close with another observation from Rogers, who sees that while there may not be one smoking gun out there yet, there certainly seem to be a lot of hot casings on the ground around the crime scene.
Anyway, as long as Lerner stays cool and the Obama Department of Justice has her back, the administration obviously thinks it can run out the clock on this scandal. But these revelations are definitely meaningful smidgens. At what point does a flock of smidgens become irrefutable evidence that deserves an independent e...
Ever since I saw Craig Zobel’s film Compliance, about employees at a fast-food restaurant who were talked into an abusing a co-worker, at Sundance, I’ve been eager to see it reach a wider audience. The movie follows a day in the life of Sandra (Ann Dowd), a manager at the restaurant for whom nothing seems to be going r...
Compliance is a powerful movie about our desire to gain police approval and our willingness, or lack thereof, to intervene when things are going terribly wrong around us. And it seemed to me to be misunderstood at the festival, where audiences complained that its depiction of what happened to Becky, which is based on a...
I wanted to start by asking how you came to the source material. I’ve seen the Law & Order episode that’s based on these real events, so it’s floating around in the pop culture ether, but I was curious how you became interested in it.
It’s funny, I’m from Georgia, and one of the events took place in Georgia, so I kind of knew about it from that, but I hadn’t remembered exactly what the deal was. And I was reading about Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiments when I stumbled upon it, so it was after the pop culture moment had happened.
I know Dreama Walker from her more comedic work, but she has been bubbling along in Gran Torino and everything else, so how did you come to work with her?
That was one of the things I wanted to ask you about, because in one of the Q&As; you did at Sundance, one of the members of the audience said “Well, I just couldn’t identify with these people because they were too dumb.” And it seemed like people, who normally wouldn’t fall back on class prejudice or gender prejudice ...
Or putting it back on me that it’s painted that way. I would feel like I fucked up if that’s what you really think, that these people are dumb. I would feel like I failed. I tried hard. I tried hard to avoid that. That was the one thing to avoid in my opinion. It’s condescending. Especially when it’s multiple people ov...
It’s a contract we’ve made. They’re going to protect and serve us, and they aren’t going to do the wrong thing, because what would that mean? That would mean we couldn’t trust them. We’ve made that as a rule. They’re our teammates….I feel like, when people have difficulty with that they’re ignoring any time they’ve eve...
I also think there’s some kind of reflected valor in cooperating with the police. And I wonder if that’s what happened with Sandra [Ann Dowd’s character, a manager at the restaurant, who is the initial target of the call]. On a day when everything else is going wrong for her, she can help solve the crime.
It’s a way for her to achieve success on a day where nothing else was working. Ann would tell you this is a person, she saw Sandra as a person who was told she didn’t have, she wasn’t good for a lot. That even complicates the issue. I think that’s a funny thing that, in the same way the people don’t want to look at the...
As a movie about sexism, I thought it was fascinating that you have these male characters who behave along a spectrum, from “I’m not going to collaborate but I’m not going to blow the whistle either,” to “I’m going to collaborate because it’s what I’m told to do,” to “I’m going to intervene.” Was that a dynamic that wa...
Truly a little of both, because it is the same as some of the real events. I wills ay that I gave it enough thought that I switched the genders of a bunch of those people in my end, and was like “What does it do to the movie if we have this person as a female?” I never really thought that Becky should be a male because...
At the same time, I feel like you walk a fine line. It’s easy to fall over into the idea that men need to rescue women. But it’s also important for men to be allies and recognize the abuse of women when they see it.
I hope that maybe that comes across in some way, shape or form. When the misogyny discussion started at Sundance with a bang, I didn’t quite know how to verbalize it immediately, but I was like “I swear I thought about it.” I know that it’s about exploiting women. I know that…At one of the Q&As; really recently, up in ...
Officials said early reports indicate the shooting was an accident. The wounded man was taken to a hospital in critical condition.
An 18-year-old man was shot and wounded Tuesday evening near 3000 N. 21st Ave., in Phoenix.
According to Phoenix Police Department, officers responded to a reported shooting around 7:35 p.m.
Officials said early reports indicate the shooting was an accident.
The wounded man was taken to a hospital in critical condition.
Anyone with information about the shooting can contact Phoenix Police Department or Silent Witness at 480-WITNESS (480-948-6377).
Marvel is once again encouraging comic book stores to exchange unsold books from their competition in their latest retailer promotion. They're reviving their "Comics for Comics" program, and asking retailers to send in stripped covers of DC's Flashpoint tie-ins in order to receive an Ed McGuinness-illustrated variant c...
For every 50 covers sent to Marvel (Diamond is not involved with this program) of the Flashpoint tie-in books listed below, the publisher will provide retailers with the Fear Itself #6 variant, the cover of which appears to be identical to promotional art released last year for Jeph Loeb and McGuinness's yet-to-surface...
Marvel offered retailers a very similar deal in January 2010, with a Siege #3 variant offered for Blackest Night tie-in books. Last July, they offered their own unsold comics as part of the program.
"After the overwhelmingly positive response to our Comics For Comics programs, through which we received tens of thousands of covers, we’re excited to provide retailers with the chance to help their stores through selling an ultra-rate variant," said Marvel's Senior Vice President of Publishing, Sales and Circulation D...
The due date for the promotion is Friday, August 12.
A sign at the AMT platform at Vendome station advising passengers how to access the new MUHC superhospital site on March 15, 2015.
Laurent Gignan from the AMT explaining how the underground access between the Vendome station and the MUHC superhospital will work on March 15, 2015.
A glimpse of where the third set of AMT tracks will be laid at Vendome station on March 15, 2015.
Pierre Major from the MUHC has been working on the superhospital project for several years.
The entrance to the connecting underground tunnel between Vendome station and the MUHC superhospital on March 13, 2015.
Workers enter the entrance to the connecting underground tunnel between Vendome station and the MUHC superhospital on March 13, 2015.
Exit and entry space needs to be carefully checked with firefighters at the Vendome station-MUHC superhospital underground access tunnel on March 15, 2015.
Inside the Vendome station-MUHC superhospital underground access tunnel on March 15, 2015.
The entrance to the MUHC side of the connecting underground tunnel between Vendome station and the MUHC superhospital on March 13, 2015.
Access to the tunnel from the MUHC superhospital from the parkade and Vendome station includes an elevator.
MONTREAL — Access to the McGill University Health Centre superhospital from its closest transport hub, the Vendome station, will be via a connecting underground tunnel.
Vendome station, which is home to a metro, commuter trains and city buses, is cut off from the hospital by train tracks, making it virtually inaccessible from the station.
The exterior of Vendome metro and train station in Montreal on March 15, 2015.
The station welcomes 19,000 metro riders per day and 8,700 AMT commuter train passengers — and numbers are expected to rise when the superhospital opens its doors on April 26, 2015.
Instead of walking outside along de Maisonneuve Boulevard to Decarie Boulevard to the MUHC superhospital, as of June, Montrealers will be able to get to the hospital from the station via a 34-metre-long underground tunnel.
The underground tunnel project faced many challenges: how to make it as accessible as possible for as many users as possible, how to ensure it was safe for passengers in case of emergency, not to mention how to complete the work in one of the city’s busiest metro stations.
The STM and AMT worked with firefighters to ensure safe access to and exit from the Vendome station – MUHC superhospital access tunnel is safe for those entering and exiting.
Advocates for those with reduced mobility have been frustrated because there is no elevator access to the tunnel from the STM metro station or the AMT commuter train platforms.
Access from the AMT commuter train platforms to the connecting tunnel is via stairs.
There is an elevator where the tunnel connects to the MUHC superhospital, and officials have confirmed that a second tunnel is in the works that will include elevator access from both the metro and the commuter train platforms.
On Wednesday, the amount that a jury ordered Johnson & Johnson and its supplier must pay two plaintiffs increased by $80 million.
New Brunswick - On Wednesday, the amount that a jury ordered Johnson & Johnson and its supplier, Imerys Talc America, must pay two plaintiffs increased by $80 million in the nation’s second trial over asbestos-containing talcum powder — a hit to the iconic Johnson’s Baby Powder brand. J&J won the first asbestos-related...
The $80 million was awarded in addition to the same family that previously was awarded $37 million.
The same panel of six deliberated and rendered the original multi-million dollar verdict in compensatory damages earlier in April in the first phase of the trial when it awarded New Jersey residents, Stephen Lanzo and his wife the settlement of $37 million. Lanzo contracted mesothelioma because he was exposed to J&J pr...
The additional $80 million brings Lanzo's settlement to $117 million.
Maimon said documents the law firm entered into evidence showed that as far back as the 1960s, J&J knew they had a problem with asbestos in their talc and were worried about the prospects of litigation — taking steps to ensure regulators dealing with the subject never saw the documents.
J&J said it would continue to defend the safety of Johnson’s Baby Powder and immediately begin appealing, adding that it had been prevented from presenting evidence it believes would have been important to the deliberations.
“After suffering multiple losses through court rulings and at trial, plaintiff’s attorneys have shifted their strategy and are now alleging that talcum powder is contaminated with asbestos, despite multiple independent, non-litigation-driven scientific evaluations which have found that our baby powder does not contain ...
The companies have a period of time to formally appeal. And while Maimon anticipates them doing so, he is extremely confident the verdict will be upheld, he said.
Why was Dr. Zurek skeptical about mosquito swarms in Hutchinson?
This is to all of you who have been offended by my skepticism about large numbers of mosquitoes in Hutchinson. First of all, what I said was: "It's impossible for me to tell you what it is without seeing it" and yes, I was skeptical about mosquito swarms because of two major reasons/assumptions.
2. It's early in the season, and we have not seen any mosquitoes in our CDC traps in Riley County (around Manhattan) so far. I did not expect such a big difference between Riley and Reno County.
Officials said the tax bill is a civil matter that isn't part of the criminal case. The legislature in 1998 said taxing someone for an illegal substance doesn't amount to punishing the person twice, said George Valsame, assistant director of the revenue department's unauthorized substance tax division.
The state law says more than 42.5 grams of marijuana can be taxed at $3.50 per gram.
Bisping and McCart each were taxed on 18,053 grams of marijuana and also were charged $25,274 in penalties and $406 in interest.
Bisping said he uses the drug to calm nerve problems and to help him swallow food after esophagus surgery. He also disputes the weight of the marijuana that was seized.
“This ain't about justice, this is about money,” he said.
Valsame said the tax is the state's way of getting revenue, but admits it is hard to keep up with the fluctuating price of drugs. He said 75 percent of the tax goes to the agency that seized the drug and the rest goes into the state's general fund. The penalties support schools.
Valsame said a drug dealer can pay the fees anonymously and not be penalized if arrested on criminal charges. The division has stamps showing the amount paid that are supposed to be attached to the drugs.
Kumasi, Dec 24, GNA - Many taxi and tro-tro drivers in the Kumasi metropolis and its environs have for the past three weeks taken advantage of Christmas to increase transport fare arbitrarily. The situation has caused problems for commuters who spend a lot of time looking desperately for transport.
Mr Rexford Ntim-Darko, a trader at Kejetia, speaking in an interview with the GNA described the action of the drivers as "uncalled for an unpatriotic".
He said in the era of positive change as is being preached by the government, drivers cannot take the law into their own hands and asked them to comply with the motor traffic rules and regulations and stick to the approved transport fares.
Mr Badu Nkansah, a 64-year-old man resident at Tafo, said it was unrealistic for drivers to increase transport fares and described their action as inhuman.
He appealed to the police and other law enforcement agencies as well as the Ghana Private Road Transport Union (GPRTU), the Progressive Transport Owners Association (PROTOA) and others to assist in checking the drivers.

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