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Alumni Gymnasium (Denver, Colo.)
University of Denver. Date built: 1910. "In 1910 Alumni Gymnasium was built on the site of the present-day Daniels College of Business. Conforming with the other buildings constructed during this era, the Roeschlaub-designed structure incorporated features found in Roman or Renaissance architecture. The prototype for the building was the Roman Basilica. [...] During World War I, the gymnasium was converted into a barracks, housing close to 300 military personnel. Additionally, a hopsital wing was constructed on the building's north side" (Built for Learning, p. 18). "Alumni Gymnasium was imploded in September 1997 to make way for the Daniels College of Business" (Built for Learning, p. 36).
Alumni Gymnasium Dedication in 1908.
Sources University of Denver. (1908). The Denver Times. (1908). Governor Changes Site for University Building In Order to Save Fine Trees. [U123.01.0001.0003]
DU Men's Basketball Team, 1953 May
Overview Group shot of a men's basketball team at the University of Denver in the Alumni Gym with a basketball hoop in the background. Eight members of the team are standing, and five are kneeling in front of them; the player on the far left is handing a basketball to a coach. The players are wearing long pants and white DU T-shirts and are all looking in the direction of the coach.
Dates: 1953 May
Found in: Special Collections and Archives / U201, University of Denver Historical Photograph Collection / Photographs, Subject Files / Box 71 / AcU - Physical Education Photos
Physical Education - Men's Tumbling Team
Overview Group portrait of a men's tumbling team at the University of Denver. The group of twelve students are standing or sitting in the Alumni Gym, wearing long pants and tank tops. Visible in the background are students playing basketball and banners reading: "Conference Champions Basketball" and "Conference Championship Baseball 1915."
Dates: circa 1920-circa 1966
Found in: Special Collections and Archives / U201, University of Denver Historical Photograph Collection / Photographs, Subject Files / Box 71 / AcU - Physical Education Gymnastics Photos
Registration in Alumni Gym
Overview View of the Alumni Gym at the University of Denver during registration day. The gym is filled with rows of tables labeled with signs either on poles or hanging from the ceiling. Students are lined up at various tables, and persons seated at the tables are filling out forms. Signs read, from left to right, "Mech." "English Humanit[ies]" "Phys. Ed. M" "Philos." "Science" "Bas. Comm. Speech" "Bus. Ed." "Community College" "HRM" "Student & General Admission Section" "Soc. Sci." "San. Sci."...
Found in: Special Collections and Archives / U201, University of Denver Historical Photograph Collection / Photographs, Subject Files / Box 95 / Registration - Miscellaneous Photos (3)
University of Denver Women's Gymnastics Class, 1921
Overview A University of Denver women's gymnastics class poses for a photograph inside the DU Alumni Gymnasium. Three banners are hanging above the stage, from right (partially visible) ''Conference Champions Basketball,'' ''[] Champions Football [year illegible]'' and ''Conference Championship Basketball 1915.'' A banner hanging inside the stage reads ''Denver,'' and is partially obscured by a hanging American flag. Gymnastics rings are hanging from the ceiling. Photographic print, reproduced from...
Found in: Special Collections and Archives / U300, Division of Athletics and Recreation Records / Athletics and Recreation Photographs / Box 2
More about 'Alumni Gymnasium (Denver, Colo.)'
Daniels College of Business (Associative with Related, Organization)
Subordinate/Superior Relationship
University of Denver (Is Subordinate to Related, Organization)
Subject: Students X
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CFP: Theaterbau und Stadt in der Moderne (Berlin, 12-13 January 2017)
Libby Merrill, 30 May 2016 30 May 2016 , All Listings, Call for Papers, 0
Theaterbau und Stadt in der Moderne Symposium Berlin, Haus der Berliner Festspiele, 12. 13 January 2017 Deadline: June 23, 2016 Organisation: Dr. Frank Schmitz, Freie Universität Berlin Veranstaltungsort: Haus der Berliner Festspiele, Berlin-Wilmersdorf Kooperationspartner: Berliner Festspiele Der Workshop widmet sich dem komplexen Verhältnis von Theaterarchitektur und Städtebau seit der...
CFP: Synagogue and Museum (Braunschweig, 21-23 November 2016)
Libby Merrill, 30 May 2016 30 May 2016 , All Listings, Call for Papers, Jewish Architecture, museology, 0
Synagogue and Museum Braunschweig, Germany 21 – 23 November 2016 Since antiquity and especially since the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in the year 70 CE synagogues have become the central places of gathering of Jewish communities. They are complex, highly significant and polyvalent objects of for religious, social,...
Guided tour of the Eileen Gray Exhibition
Danielle Willkens, 29 May 2016 29 May 2016 , All Listings, Events, Exhibitions, Resources, 0
Guided tour of the Eileen Gray Exhibition on Saturday July, 4th at 3pm, National Museum, Collins Barracks http://www.museum.ie/Decorative-Arts-History/Exhibitions/Current-Exhibitions/Eileen-Gray The number of places is limited, so please contact Sabine von Fischer (sabine.vonfischer@epfl.ch) for booking.
CONF: The Medium and the Message (Birmingham, 1-2 July 2016)
Libby Merrill, 27 May 2016 27 May 2016 , All Listings, Conferences, 0
The Medium and the Message: Re-evaluating Form and Meaning in European Architecture c. 1400-1950 Birmingham, The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, July 1 – 2, 2016 Location: The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, The University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B152TS About the Conference: All buildings – whether polite, vernacular or...
CFP: Urban Studies beyond the Aestheticized Object (Chicago, 30 March – 1 April 2017)
Urban Studies beyond the Aestheticized Object RSA 2017 Chicago Chicago, The Palmer House Hilton, 30 March–1 April 2017 Sponsored by the European Architectural History Network Traditionally, urban historians relied on systems and patterns to analyze cities as aesthetic constructions, parsing them in terms of morphologies and typologies. Eventually, however,...
CFP: The Historiography of Early Modern Architecture (Chicago, March 30 – 1 April 2017)
Libby Merrill, 27 May 2016 27 May 2016 , All Listings, Call for Papers, Burns, historiography, Panofsky, Renaissance, RSA, Trachtenberg, Wittkower, 0
The Historiography of Early Modern Architecture Renaissance Society of America 2017 — Chicago, The Palmer House Hilton, 30 March–1 April 2017 Since the Renaissance itself, the history of early-modern architecture has been a multifaceted discipline. Antonio Manetti established the biographic format in his Life of Brunelleschi, an approach that...
Fellowship: H. Allen Brooks Travelling Fellowship
Danielle Willkens, 26 May 2016 26 May 2016 , All Listings, Fellowships, 0
H. Allen Brooks Travelling FellowshipDeadline October 3, 2016The Society of Architectural Historians is accepting applications for the 2016 H. Allen Brooks Travelling Fellowship. The prestigious fellowship of $50,000 will allow a recent graduate or emerging scholar to study by travel for one year. The fellowship is not for the purpose of doing...
Event: V&A/Royal College of Art, History of Design + new MRes (New York,13-14 June)
Josie Kane, 24 May 2016 24 May 2016 , All Listings, Events, 0
History of Design, New MA Programme + MRes Humanities Launch British Council, New York Office, British Consulate General, 845 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10022 13-14 June 2016 The RCA’s School of Humanities offers interdisciplinary training in critical, curatorial, historical and theoretical approaches to art, design and architecture, at...
Summer School: Real Estate Architecture (Liege, 20-27 August 2016)
Libby Merrill, 24 May 2016 24 May 2016 , All Listings, 0
Real Estate Architecture – Revisiting the apartment building The international Summer School will take place in Liège from from August 20th to 27th. Forty students and recently graduated architects will be invited to rethink the future of the apartment buildings, products of the real estate boom of the 60s. Students...
CONF: Modelling Medieval Vaults (London, 14 July 2016)
The University of Liverpool in London, Finsbury Square. Seminar Room 4, July 14, 2016 Registration deadline: July 7, 2016 The use of digital surveying and analysis techniques, such as laser scanning, photogrammetry, 3D reconstructions or reverse engineering offers the opportunity to re-examine historic architecture. Digital analysis has enabled new...
Welcome to the Interest Groups Page
Welcome to our virtual research hub. Our aim is to help EAHN members find, and collaborate with, scholars working on similar themes and topics within the Network. This space hosts a range of collaborative activities such as group discussion, sharing news and documents, and organizing events and projects.
Interest Groups are encouraged to:
– arrange side events at Biennial Conferences and to propose an EAHN Themed Conference in intermediate years.
– contribute annually to a new dedicated Field Notes section of the EAHN Journal Architectural Histories.
– apply for third-party funding, which is increasingly available for cross-institutional, international teams of researchers.
Side Events at Biennial Conferences
At each biennial conference, the EAHN interest groups are given the opportunity to hold meetings which can range from brainstorming sessions or business meetings to more planned workshops. They are open to all conference participants and meant to carry forward the EAHN’s mission to be an open, non-hierarchical and welcoming network. You can find short reports on the events held in Tallinn 2018 here.
Group Guidelines
We welcome proposals for new Interest Groups, please see guidelines for group coordinators here.
For more details about these activities, or to propose a new Interest Group, please email interestgroups@eahn.org.
Recently uploaded group documents
How to Select the Useful and Finest Hair Transplantation Clinic posted in Open Forum
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Michael Jackson Allegedly Paid $200 Million to 20 Child Sex Abuse Victims
April 7, 2015 Comments Off on Michael Jackson Allegedly Paid $200 Million to 20 Child Sex Abuse Victims
Lawyers say Jacko paid $200M in hush money to ‘victims’
By Stacy Brown April 5, 2015
Wade Robson and James Safechuck may accomplish what countless prosecutors could not: prove in court that Michael Jackson was a serial child molester.
The purported victims must first overcome a major hurdle — both their legal claims were filed more than a year after the King of Pop’s 2009 death, missing the statutory deadline….
Lawyers say the King of Pop shelled out nearly $200 million to as many as 20 victims.
Safechuck first met Jacko in 1987, when James was 8 years old. Safechuck will testify that Jacko repeatedly molested him a year later during a tour and that Jacko wrote a check for more than $1 million to Safechuck’s father, a sanitation worker.
Safechuck claims in court filings that Jacko held a secret wedding ceremony, with the young boy as his bride. He said the singer gave him a marriage certificate and a wedding band as keepsakes and confirmation of their “undying love.”
It was Safechuck and another alleged victim, Jordan Chandler, to whom Jacko’s sister LaToya referred in a 1993 Tel Aviv press conference in which she vowed to “not be a silent collaborator in my brother’s crimes.”….
Safechuck’s attorney alleges that Jacko molested Safechuck more than 100 times….
The duo for the first time will be allowed to detail past, undisclosed settlements between Jacko and boys. Sources contend there were at least 20 young victims, who reaped — with their parents and attorneys — upward of $200 million cumulatively in hush money.
The Chandler lawsuit alone cost Jacko more than $40 million, sources said….
http://pagesix.com/2015/04/05/lawyers-say-jacko-paid-200m-in-hush-money-to-victims/
Michael Jackson allegedly paid millions to silence accusers
Two new civil cases have accused Michael Jackson of paying millions in hush money to sexual abuse accusers over the years.
Two men, claiming to have been abused by Jackson as children, are suing his estate for punitive damages. Because they are civil cases, lawyers will be able to use evidence excluded from the criminal proceedings.
The New York Post reports that Jackson paid out nearly $200 million to at least 20 alleged victims and their families over the years….
One of the men suing Jackson’s estate, James Safechuck, claims he was abused more than 100 times by the pop star, beginning when he was eight years old. The suit also claims that Jackson wrote a $1 million check to Safechuck’s father.
Both the cases were filed over a year after Jackson’s death, which misses the statutory deadline. A Los Angeles court judge will decide Thursday if the cases can proceed….
http://www.aol.com/article/2015/04/05/michael-jackson-allegedly-paid-millions-to-silence-accusers/21161504/
by Nina Ulloa
Why is it that Michael Jackson child sex cases always seemed to get pushed under the rug? It could be because Jackson allegedly paid $200 million to keep victims quiet.
Lawyers for Wade Robson and James Safechuck say as many as 20 victims were paid off. Both Robson and Safechuck says Jackson sexually abused them when they were children. A judge is deciding whether they can bring this information to court for the first time.
Safechuck says the abuse happened when he was nine, and that Jackson paid his father $1 million. He also says Jackson held a secret wedding ceremony and he was the child bride.
Robson says he was seven when Jackson began molesting him. He also says he shared a bed with the pop star for a year….
http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2015/04/06/michael-jackson-allegedly-paid-200-million-20-child-sex-abuse-victims
Tagged: Child Sex Abuse Victims, hush money, Jacko, James Safechuck, Jordan Chandler, Michael Jackson, serial child molester, victims, Wade Robson
« Major Child Abuse Cover-Up in French Schools, MI5 ‘hid’ child abuse at boys’ home: Former Army intelligence officer claims security chiefs told him to ‘stop digging’ when he reported possible paedophile ring, Kincora historic VIP paedophile ring
Influential Secret Society Blamed For Problems On Campus Dodges Transparency Push, Victims and family reveal how lives were devastated by Rotherham grooming scandal »
You are currently reading Michael Jackson Allegedly Paid $200 Million to 20 Child Sex Abuse Victims at Eassurvey's Weblog.
Comments: Comments Off on Michael Jackson Allegedly Paid $200 Million to 20 Child Sex Abuse Victims
Categories: Jordan Chandler, Michael Jackson, serial child molester
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Dog Brothers Public Forum
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Law Enforcement issues and LE in action
Author Topic: Law Enforcement issues and LE in action (Read 308003 times)
DougMacG
Law Enforcement issues, Trial of the Minneapolis cop begins
Many threads this affects, so please guide me. Days one and two so far are jury selection and media issues.
I am generally a big defender of law enforcement but once in a while they are in the wrong and of what we know so far this appears to be one of those cases.
Many will recall that Minneapolis' first Somali American cop, from the passenger seat of the squad car, reached across his partner and fatally shot the Australian national woman in her pajamas who was approaching the car unarmed to report further on what she called in as the disturbance (a few blocks from my own south Mpls property).
Mohammed Noor is about to get a fair trial and likely tell his side of the story for the first time.
Scott Johnson of Powerline is trying to get press credentials and writes about his difficulties with the court's denial: https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/04/a-personal-note-on-the-noor-trial.php
Crafty_Dog
Re: Law Enforcement issues and LE in action
Looking forward to your continuing reports!
Bolo Wrap
This looks promising!
https://www.theblaze.com/news/texas-swat-lasso-type-device?utm_content=buffer3e4cf&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=glennbeck&fbclid=IwAR0GyaMMNdDyfHEpkXCBSZDkHyiGd0xRyAqC_1EGsKjNN4sVrSVibAUp-rQ
Re: Law Enforcement issues, Trial of the Minneapolis cop begins
The trial goes on with the prosecution calling everyone who came to the scene and all they are finding is an absence of evidence of reason for a shooting.
Our man on the scene, Scott Johnson of Powerline, is in the courtroom and continues to report. In summary he writes: "Justine’s killing is inexplicable."
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/04/at-the-noor-trial-10.php
I don't see how the larger issues find their way into this very specific trial. This police shooting defies the narrative. Black lives matter, cops are pigs, fry them like bacon, cops are trigger happy because they are white racist and shooting blacks, none of this fits here. The officer is black, Somalian-American and the victim couldn't be more white, an Australian national engaged to an American.
There was no weapon on the victim, there was no threat or reason to perceive a threat. She wasn't carrying something else that looked like a gun. Her nightgown didn't conceal a weapon. There was no explanation understood by anyone who came to the scene.
He didn't jump out of the car. There wasn't a startling sound. There just wasn't a threat, and he pulled out a gun and shot her across
Trial of the Minneapolis cop Mohammed Noor continues
"At the scene [morning after the shooting] Sergeant Barnette ordered him to take the Harrity/Noor squad car from which Noor had fired the gunshot to the carwash and have it cleaned. He took it to Dan’s Nicollet Carwash. He saw fingerprint powder on the squad car that was not entirely removed by the carwash. He drove the car back to the fifth precinct headquarters parking lot to be returned to service."
The 30 second buffer on the partner's body cam should have included the shooting but only 14 seconds were captured.
https://twitter.com/LouRaguse
G M
Re: Trial of the Minneapolis cop Mohammed Noor continues
Quote from: DougMacG on April 18, 2019, 09:10:49 AM
A forensic exam of the body cam should be done. The immediate return of the squad car to service is very strange.
Love the way you are following up on this Doug.
Re: Law Enforcement issues and LE in action, Noor trial
Quote from: Crafty_Dog on April 19, 2019, 06:59:58 PM
My pleasure but there doesn't seem to be any evidence or issue to discuss. The potential real issues are not in the trial. Did Mpls negligently hire an unstable guy to be cop because they were so eager to get a black and get their first Somalian on the police force? If so, doesn't matter; they aren't on trial. Or is it worse, Noor is fully capable but wanted the badge and the gun for bad reasons. Nothing of that sort is accused in the trial.
Is this the kind of story elsewhere that caused a wrongful shooting in Mpls:
"2 Florida deputies shot dead in suspected ambush"
Colorado officer killed in 'ambush-style attack'
Cops ambushed in Dallas
Cops ambushed in Ohio, and so on. Google these stories and more.
Defense theory in the Noor trial is that both officers feared they entered an ambush. Noor's partner also drew his weapon [although neither activated body cam until after the shooting]. They were startled by a sound and that is why he shot an unarmed women in her pajamas who approached the driver window. Officers may or may not have invented the story of a rap on the police car. There were no fingerprints of the victims on the vehicle. Defense attorney suggests it could have been her knuckle or back of the hand. So what? Does that mean reasonable person in that situation shoots to kill? No. More likely fear than reason.
Noor's partner Harrity testified they saw a silhouette approach the squad car, then heard a slap or thump sound on the car that made them fear danger
Crime scene investigators said you could read a book under that alley street light illumination. Why did they drive into a place where they felt trapped is one question and with two people sensing danger in good illumination, why did they not keep awareness of everything around them. I question further, don't you have better 360 degree awareness on foot, but sit in the car and roll down the window is what Minneapolis police often do.
We are waiting for defendant to testify and for the jury to sort it out. The rightful result comes down to Minnesota definitions of 3rd degree murder and manslaughter.
The officer should not have shot and the woman died because of his mistake. I can't imagine how the defendant argues he was right to shoot based on what he saw and heard and did not make a mistake. More believable is that he drew his weapon but did not mean to shoot.
"it will be hard overcoming the defense that Noor’s team has invoked that police can legally shoot if they have a reasonable fear that they’re in danger. Noor’s attorneys have argued that he heard a loud noise and feared an ambush. But prosecutors say there is no evidence of any threat to justify deadly force."
https://www.twincities.com/2019/04/19/mohamed-noor-trial-charges-justine-damond-shooting-minneapolis-cop/
More coverage:
« Last Edit: April 23, 2019, 08:35:44 AM by DougMacG »
The correct response if you are being ambushed in a patrol car, is to jam on the gas pedal and get off the X.
« Last Edit: April 23, 2019, 10:20:03 PM by G M »
"The correct response if you are being ambushed in a patrol car, is to jam on the gas pedal and get off the X."
That makes sense to me. For some reason I thought they were at the end of a dead end alley. Looking at the property maps and re-reading the stories, that was not the case. They could have surged forward or backward to thwart an ambush. The driving error was the fault of the partner of Noor, who is not charged. Had he jammed on the accelerator with weapons drawn, the accidental shooting might have been of themselves?
Had Officer Noor waited for the person approaching (woman in pajamas) to aim a weapon (she didn't have) at them, it may have been too late. If he shoots first and gathers information later, he is guilty of at least negligent homicide. The officers make $27/hr to risk their life and make these decisions.
There apparently was no rape or at least was no other report of it. State crime lab failed to follow up on that. Maybe neighbor's were having loud sex with windows open July 15 in Mpls but no report that anyone else heard it. A rapist would not approach a squad car. Officers were in a well lit alley, open in front of them, had no reason around them to sense danger except for the 9/11 report and a person approaching the squad car. Either talk to the lady or step on the gas. You don't have authority to discharge the weapon without some other information.
From Noor's passenger seat, step on the gas wasn't an option and we have no record of conversation between them. Harrity the partner also screwed up and is doing everything he can in the trial to back up his partner.
Race? Justine, white. Noor is black Somali-American, came here as a youth, had been with the department 21 months. Harrity is white man, was 25 at the time, had been with the department 1 year. Police chief was a white woman, was on vacation when this happened, resigned shortly after, was replaced by black man. Mayor was white liberal woman who left for Los Angeles in the immediate aftermath of this for a scheduled campaign fundraiser. She lost reelection. New mayor is liberal white man. Race played no known role in any of this. Race only matters when the cop is white and the victim is black.
Ability: Does the person ACTUALLY have the ability to inflict serious bodily injury or death upon you or a third party? Would a reasonable person believe under the circumstances the person has the ABILITY to inflict SBI/death?
Opportunity: Do they have the opportunity to inflict SBI or death? They have an axe, but you are on the top of a building, 3 stories tall.
Jeopardy: Have they actually demonstrated the intent to do harm to you or others?
If you don't have the three factors above, you lack legal justification for deadly force.
Expert testimony yesterday went exactly along the lines of the GM post.
“The use of force was objectionable, unreasonable and violated police policies … and training,” said expert witness Derrick Hacker. “No reasonable officer would have perceived a threat by somebody coming up to their squad.”
“I don’t believe they were logical or rational at all,” Longo said of Noor’s actions. “This was an unprovoked, violent response.”
Hacker, who has served as a use-of-force instructor since his days in the Marines in the early 1990s, said accounts of the noise that apparently startled the officers were “vague” and didn’t meet the threshold for using deadly force. Officers are taught to apply a “force continuum” that starts with none and escalates up to deadly force when an officer feels lives are in danger, or to stop a suspect who has committed or is committing a felony, he said.
“You need to identify the target: who it is, is it a male, is it a female?” he said. “If an officer cannot see that, then the officer is not allowed to use deadly force.”
Noor, Hacker concluded, should have known better after undergoing “use of firearms in lowlight” and “pre-ambush awareness” training during his stint at the police academy.
“Is being startled or spooked the same as fearing death or great bodily harm?” asked Assistant Hennepin County Attorney Patrick Lofton.
“No, it is not,” Hacker responded.
The officers should have taken greater steps to investigate Damond’s call, he said, making the connection between her call about a woman possibly screaming in her alley and an earlier incident involving an apparently disoriented woman who was wandering through the area.
“Would you pull your gun out?” Lofton asked regarding Damond’s call.
“No, absolutely not,” Hacker said.
Hacker argued that the officers’ decision to pull out their guns inside their SUV was “unreasonable and is unacceptable.” The matter is a point of contention with the defense.
Officers are trained to draw their guns quickly when a threat emerges, Hacker said, precluding them from needing their firearms unholstered.
“By driving around with a handgun, there’s a higher propensity for other things to happen,” he said, pointing to the possibility of an accidental discharge. “I would say, even in an active shooter call, it isn’t needed.”
Lofton asked him whether Damond “did anything wrong” by approaching the officers.
“No, Ms. Ruszczyk did nothing wrong — police are approached daily, this happens routinely,” he said, adding that he didn’t find it unusual that 911 dispatchers didn’t instruct her to stay put.
Longo said officers should know how to handle people approaching their squad cars, and not the opposite.
“That just defies logic to me that we would have to train citizens from approaching police cars,” he said.
http://www.startribune.com/use-of-force-expert-none-needed-in-encounter-with-damond/509008502/
Defendant Noor is on the stand.
Snippets follow via twitter begins after prosecution expert witness.
@LouRaguse #NoorTrial #JustineDamond
The prosecution is expected to wrap up its case today (for real this time) in the Mohamed Noor trial. Their second use-of-force expert, Tim Longo, is still on the witness stand awaiting cross examination. Could Mohamed Noor testify this afternoon? It's possible.
THey went back and forth with Plunkett talking about how Harrity perceived an ambush in prior testimony so they should be able to go into it. Judge will rule further after the break. See you later this afternoon.
Noor had begun mentioning the Dallas incident from 2006 which Judge Quaintance had already ruled that they can't go into. When jury left, Judge said, "I don't understand the relevance of ambush training"
It was pretty obvious what they were getting at with this testimony and how it would relate to the shooting of Justine Ruszczyk Damond. Before lunch Plunkett asked about them being warned of ambushes -- and the prosecution objected.
Then on counter-ambush training in patrol car, Noor said "As long as your partner is safe, you can shoot out of the squad car in any direction. The key takeaway is saving your partner's life in a safe manner."
Then Noor got choked up talking about counter ambush training relating to MPD Officer Jerry Haaf who was killed in 1992. Noor was holding back tears talking about scenario at restaurant where they learn to trust partner to protect you.
Then they spent time on Noor's counter-ambush training. Noor said, "The most important take for me was actions are better than reactions. If reacting, that means it's too late."
Plunkett: What happens?
Noor: "You die."
"You can get days off, up to termination if you talk to an officer involved at the scene or attempt to interview him," Noor testified.
Noor then talked about his officer involved shooting training where he learned how it affects perception of officers. And what he learned about officers at scene of one, Noor said they can't talk to the officer who shot.
I wonder now if the prosecution thinks the door is open to ask about the traffic stop where he appeared to point a gun at the driver's head.
Noor says when he stepped back with a loaded weapon - he got in trouble but learned from it. "that was in a safe training environment with my instructor behind me." Noor said some other cadets "shot the floor, shot the ceiling, shot the carpet" so mistakes weren't uncommon
And defense attorney Plunkett proactively had Noor talk about something the prosecution wanted to raise -- an incident when he improperly pointed a loaded gun. Noor described he unloaded the weapon in reverse - the chambered round before the magazine which chambered another round
It was "Very stressful," Noor testified. 29 weeks of classes and physical training. "Very demanding. It requires a lot of learning." Then he began talking about his firearms training.
Noor became an American citizen in 1999. His parents gained citizenship and he said that automatically applied to he and his siblings too. After going through his schooling, Noor got to part where he started Police Cadet Academy.
Noor is the oldest of 10 siblings. He was born in Somalia, fled to Kenya with his family at age 5, then to America when 7. When reached MN in 7th grade, Noor testified, "When I moved here, no one liked Somalis."
Noor's testimony has not yet reached the night of the shooting. Defense attorney Tom Plunkett has been going over Noor's life story with him, which we first heard in Opening Statements.
Closing arguments done, it's in the hands of the jury.
Plenty of people including some on the jury will disagree but guilt at some level is clear to me. There was unauthorized use of a weapon that led to a death. He intentionally shot to kill(?). It wasn't reasonable to think their life was in danger. It seems to me that in the moments before they had no idea a person was approaching the car in good lighting, they weren't fully paying attention. For some reason they missed that or failed to react appropriately to it. It isn't fair in my mind to respond to being startled by pulling the trigger without identifying a treat. They should have seen someone approaching and responded to it. Absent that he should have waited for evidence of danger, not act with deadly force only out of fear.
With almost no facts or evidence to work with, both prosecutors and defense attorneys seem to have done a great job representing their side's interests. It will be interesting to learn what the jury decides.
Quote from: DougMacG on April 29, 2019, 04:27:02 PM
"He intentionally shot to kill(?)."
Police training, as well as civilian self defense training teaches "shooting to stop", not shooting to kill. There is an important legal concept of reasonable fear vs. bare fear. Bare fear means unreasoning fear, If you have ability, opportunity and jeopardy, then you reasonably feared for your life, or the life of a 3rd. party. That is justifiable. Employing deadly force based on bare fear isn't. Typically, causing the death of a person without malice aforethought is manslaughter. Which it what appears to be what happened based on the information available to me at this time.
"Police training, as well as civilian self defense training teaches "shooting to stop", not shooting to kill."
Good point G M. On one shot the threat stopped and then they both tried desperately to keep her alive.
"There is an important legal concept of reasonable fear vs. bare fear. Bare fear means unreasoning fear, If you have ability, opportunity and jeopardy, then you reasonably feared for your life, or the life of a 3rd. party. That is justifiable. Employing deadly force based on bare fear isn't."
Yes, that is the issue of the case.
"Typically, causing the death of a person without malice aforethought is manslaughter. Which it what appears to be what happened based on the information available to me at this time."
This is what I think is the right vote for a juror but I don't see anyone predicting how this jury will decide.
I think he accidentally pulled the trigger out of the bare fear described above, but before that unjustified action he unholstered and aimed. We don't have all the facts but it seems that both of them were surprised that he shot.
The alleged slap on the car maybe added to the bare fear but added nothing rational or reasonable to identifying the threat.
I posted some links to police ambushed in other places, some were shortly before this happened. I suspect his fear came more from those incidents elsewhere than from the sounds and sights that were heard and seen in the alley that night.
Re: Law Enforcement issues and LE in action, Noor verdict Guilty
Not guilty on the highest charge, 2nd degree intentional murder. Guilty on the next two, third degree murder and manslaughter. Also most certainly guilty in civil suit coming, wrongful death damages. Sentencing June 7, he will get the lighter sentence available out of sympathy, but everyone looking at this finds the shooting "inexplicable".
Attorney Scott Johnson of Powerline was in the second row, made 20 posts through it. This short podcast is his reaction coming out of the verdict:
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/04/the-power-line-show-ep-122-scott-on-the-noor-verdict.php
The trial was not about race. Something in his profile might indicate he was psychologically a poor fit for the job was kept out of evidence. 4 of the jurors were immigrants including a Pakistani woman. [Ofc. Noor, 33, came from Somali as a child.] Obviously all of them voted guilty.
But the aftermath most certainly is about race. The narrative is that white cops shoot victims because they are black and never get charged or convicted. This cop was black, victim white and the cop was charged and now convicted. Victim was from Sydney Australia. Here is the coverage this morning in Sydney:
https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/why-not-everyone-is-celebrating-the-justine-ruszczyk-damond-verdict-20190501-p51iy2.html
Why not everyone is celebrating the Justine Ruszczyk Damond verdict
Law Enforcement, LE in action, Ofr. Noor conviction wrapup
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/05/notes-on-the-noor-trial.php
A juror's point ofview:
https://www.kare11.com/article/news/local/juror-reflects-on-noor-verdict/89-7b28d527-5a0e-4024-b2b4-68921e7c579c
Not quite sure how to react to this one
https://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story?id=95836
Re: Not quite sure how to react to this one
Quote from: Crafty_Dog on May 11, 2019, 11:23:29 PM
I have seen multiple police administrators that would be hard pressed to break 100.
Dave Grossman
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2017/02/14/a-day-with-killology-police-trainer-dave-grossman/?fbclid=IwAR3lUIraCsujAjb1kkk55XNZ34zj27ondwBJr385GgNJlytGkfXgt9WI1JU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=86&v=8RDCtMEHFLM
Mass protests vs. Video Cam
https://defensemaven.io/bluelivesmatter/news/video-mass-protests-after-cop-shoots-ronald-davis-now-bodycam-is-out-yC8IU52t-U2oHva-HEEDog/?fbclid=IwAR1zdyO_eSzjYSSPc1cNpH1gtp5hjN9kbMuqahyvU2BgXBDZBqydqm-AcW4
The controlled demolition of American law enforcement
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/atlanta-pd-will-no-longer-chase-criminals-if-they-flee-from-cops/
You are really on your own to protect you and yours. Plan accordingly.
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Photo Credit: Mark Fischgrund/Double G Media
Blueshirt Takeaways: What a Difference a Month Makes
Anthony Paradiso
On Nov. 30, the Rangers blank the Devils 4-0 at the Rock. Just two games since Mika Zibanejad returned to the lineup, the Rangers are playing even better hockey. Zibanejad scored the first goal in his first game back– a 4-2 win over Carolina and the second goal of this most recent win against the Devils on the road.
A month ago, I talked to a friend of mine about the Rangers’ awful loss to the Bruins. To make matters worse, leading-scorer Mika Zibanejad left the game with an upper-body injury. “Upper-body injury” is a coy way of saying, a player has had a serious injury to the head or a concussion in the National Hockey League (NHL).
Moreover, after a dismal end to October, the Rangers looked like a team that lacked the ability to compete and was getting embarassed at home. However bad the end of October was, in November, the Rangers turned their fortunes around.
It started when Zibanejad left the lineup and the Rangers called up both Ryan Lindgren and Filip Chytil. The Rangers reclaimed their game, hustle all over the ice, try you’re hardest to win battles for the puck, and play well defensively. The Rangers win games because they work hard and they have enough talent to score goals and to keep a lead.
In the month of November, the Rangers’ record was 9-4-2, which has moved them up to sixth place in a competitive Metropolitan division. They managed to beat the Washington Capitals 4-1 on Nov. 20—who had lost three games at that point.
So, which players are standing out? Panarin and Trouba were great additions. But let’s concentrate on the defense.
I think that this team’s defense doesn’t get enough respect..
Rookie defenseman Adam Fox has provided leadership with his steady defensive play and ability with the puck. Great playmaking d-men are hard to come by. You can argue that there are only a handful in the league. Erik Karlsson is definitely one of them, Brent Burns although he scores goals too, but over the last month of hockey, no defenseman has played better offensively than Fox. Watching him make a great pass—through sticks—to the back-post, where Zibanejad was waiting.
Great players help the team win. Fox has helped his team win in some important games. Nov. 12 a 3-2 overtime win over the Penguins. Just last Wednesday against the Hurricanes. The Canes wanted to get back at the Rangers for winning a game, despite outshooting the Rangers earlier in November. Lundqvist again held the fort against the Hurricanes, while Adam Fox powered the Rangers with a goal and assist!
This 21-year-old from Harvard University is not only mature and intelligent, he has hockey sense.
Rookie D-men
After a mediocre start to his NHL career, 21-year-old rookie defenseman Libor Hajek has stayed in the lineup and averaged 16:32 time-on-ice.
NHL defensemen average a lot of ice time. On the Rangers defense, Hajek and Lindgren, two rookies get less ice time than the veterans; Jacob Trouba and Brady Skjei. However, out of the three youngest defensemen on the Rangers, Hajek is a great skater, who possesses great athletic ability and a six-foot, two frame. Hajek’s athletic ability has largely gone unnoticed. He is good positionally and uses his size and skating ability to his advantage in both the offensive and defensive zone.
There is not an advanced statistic for giveaway/ takeaway differential. I argue that there should be. For example, Jacob Trouba is a minus-eight, because he has 21 giveaways and 13 takeaways. I think it can be a great statistic. It measures a players’ ability to create turnovers, which is very important in a fast game like ice hockey.
Hajek has 7 takeaways this season, meanwhile he has given the puck away 14 times. Not surprising because he is a rookie. Still, he just seems to be playing better. He is not flashy, he does not produce much offense, but he does pass the puck well in the offensive zone. Most importantly, he has cleaned up his awareness and instincts in his own defensive zone. Name a time when Hajek has given up the puck that ended up in his own net. I cannot.
Ryan Lindgren was called up from Hartford on Oct. 29. In the month he has played on the Rangers, the 21-year-old rookie has been solid on defense. Lindgren is not flashy, does not produce much offense, but he skates well and is always in the right position. He uses his stick well around his net to break up plays and plays similar to former New Jersey Devils cup-winning d-man Brian Rafalski.
Latest posts by Anthony Paradiso (see all)
Rangers Win in Shesterkin’s Debut at Madison Square Garden - January 8, 2020
Rangers Recall Top Goalie Prospect Igor Shesterkin from Wolf Pack - January 6, 2020
New York Rangers: Mid-Season Report Card - January 2, 2020
Blueshirt Buzz, Episode 3: First Half Report Cards (Audio) - December 30, 2019
Related TopicsAdam FoxBoston BruinsCarolina HurricanesDavid QuinnMika ZibanejadNew York RangersNHLWashington Capitals
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Navy Mutual Aid Association
President and CEO to lead a globally-ranked financial services firm for military service members (Washington, DC)
The Navy Mutual Aid Association seeks a President and CEO to lead a federally recognized Veterans Service Organization with an A+ rating, $3B in assets, and a 98%+ membership retention rate.
Navy Mutual provides affordable life insurance and annuities to active duty, reserve/guard, and retired service members in any branch of the United States military or uniformed services. It safeguards the financial security of the nation’s bravest as they safeguard the security of the country and its people.
With the heart of a nonprofit organization and the business savvy of a for-profit enterprise, Navy Mutual has successfully adapted to continually changing financial environments for more than 140 years to offer members support that is like family.
Today Navy Mutual seeks a President and CEO to lead the enterprise in sustaining its values-driven services far into the future. Reporting to the Board of Directors, the President and CEO will provide comprehensive leadership for the continued success of the association by crafting, articulating, and driving Navy Mutual’s strategy and vision, overseeing the effective operationalization of its strategic plan, and serving as the organization’s primary liaison to all stakeholders.
The ideal candidate for this role will be a strong leader who can take the helm of an organization with multi-faceted operations and staff. At a minimum, the candidate will have:
15 years of leadership and/or business experience with increasing levels of responsibility.
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DI Annual Bar Report: Brandy
By Hamish Smith
The big four have been infiltrated in this year’s list, reports Hamish Smith
Globally, cognac is dominated by the Big Four, but in the elite bar world it’s the Big Five. Pierre Ferra nd has broken the dominance of the Hennessy/Rémy Martin/Martell/Courvoisier cartel and this year has even made a bid for the top.
It was close but in the end Hennessy takes top spot for an eighth successive year, showing its strength and depth across global markets. Its portfolio ranges from the affordable VS, for which the US is its stronghold, to luxury editions. Cumulatively, that’s 6m 9-litre cases a year – almost triple its nearest cognac competitor.
Our poll of 100 bars is just a snapshot of a complex picture so perhaps it’s best to broadly say Hennessy is more widespread in top bars, but Pierre Ferrand is growing in popularity in that those that stock it are more likely to have it as their house pour.
Looking at future lists, it may be that Pierre Ferrand breaks Hennessy’s stranglehold – it was named the trending cognac in twice as many bars as second-placed Rémy Martin.
It’s a little gap down to third in the best selling list, where Rémy Martin resides. The Rémy Cointreau-owned brand tends to go in for the more expensive styles (VSOP and above) so other than the occasional big-ticket pour, it’s less likely an ingredient in a cocktail.
Like most cognacs, the brand has hesitantly embraced the cocktail, and seems more interested in the balloon-glass on-trade or finding new drinkers in the off-trade with new serving rituals. Martell, in fourth, is back in growth in global markets, and is stable in our list, while Courvoisier is also frozen in fifth.
The Spanish Torres in sixth and Greek Metaxa in 10th are the only non-cognacs in this brandy list. When it comes to high-end bars, more often than not, brandy means cognac.
The Drinks International Annual Bar Report looks to gauge the buying habits of the best bars in the world by conducting a survey of their owners, head bartenders and bar managers.
The bars that took part – what we refer to as the best bars in the world – are a sample of 108 bars that finished in the top 250 places of the World’s 50 Best Bars survey, now owned by William Reed Business Media. Given the depth and scope of The World’s 50 Best Bars poll (voted for by 476 global bar experts) we feel this is the most credible place to source our sample of bars.
In each instance we asked the bartender to rank their three best selling products in each category, giving us an indication of the brands that are selling best.
As we know, a best selling brand, even in the best bars in the world, earns its place on more than taste, so we also wanted to know the brands that are not necessarily doing huge volumes but have cool-appeal right now. This is where the Trending brands come in. These are the brands customers are increasingly asking for, perhaps because of word of mouth, or even on bartenders’ recommendations.
For more on the methodology see How we did it
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Audi opens reservations for its first all-electric vehicle: e-tron quattro
Fred Lambert
- Apr. 24th 2017 7:03 am ET
@FredericLambert
Audi is opening reservations for its first production electric vehicle today ahead of the official launch later this year. We have often portrayed the Audi e-tron quattro as the first of a series of upcoming all-electric vehicles from German premium automakers, but it’s finally not only some distant concepts, but an actual all-electric SUV coming to market with Audi’s 2018 model lineup.
Due to high interest in the vehicle, Audi is opening pre-orders early – à la Tesla.
Harald Edvardsen-Eibak, director of Audi in Norway, confirmed that the Norwegian market will have access to the vehicle first:
“Interest in the Audi e-tron quattro has been tremendous since the first concept version was shown in 2015. Norway is a pioneer market for electrification and we are proud to be the first in the Audi Group with a solution like this. At the same time, we have great expectations for the car which is now nearing Norwegian roads.”
Norwegians interested in the vehicle can right now place a 20,000 kroner (~$2,500) deposit to reserve the vehicle without even knowing the actual price.
As the vehicle is getting less than a year away from production, the company confirmed that the concept vehicle unveiled in 2015 (see below) is “quite close to the series production car”.
Prof. Rupert Stadler, Chairman of the Board of Management of AUDI AG, beside the concept car Audi e-tron quattro at the International Auto Show 2015 in Frankfurt/Main.
Static photo, Colour: electric green
A “310 miles of range” on a 95 kWh battery pack as been previously reported to be the main feature of the e-tron quattro’s powertrain, Audi usually uses NEDC rating for electric vehicle range. Therefore, real-world range or the EPA estimate should be closer to ~275 miles.
It will be the first time that the energy capacity of a battery pack comparable to Tesla’s top-of-the-line models will be available in a production electric car.
The only thing left to know is how competitively they will be able to price it and how widely available it will be. They have been saying that the e-tron quattro is between Audi Q5 and Audi Q7 in term of size and those vehicles have starting MSRPs of $41,000 and $49,000. If the e-tron quattro is offered around the same price before incentives, it would shake up the market, but it’s doubtful at this point.
audi e-tron quattro
Fred is the Editor in Chief and Main Writer at Electrek.
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Skills and Employment Survey (SES)
Funded until May 2014
ESRC is co-funding a Skills and Employment Survey(SES) with the UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES), to be carried out across Britain in 2012 of people aged 20-65 in paid employment. The survey focuses upon the work that people do and how working life has changed over time. The 2012 survey builds upon previous ESRC funded studies and continues a series that began in 1986. The survey will provide a link between the previous Skills based and Employment based surveys in the series. It is anticipated that approximately 3,170 respondents will take part in the 2012 survey.
The survey will set a benchmark for future research in the field and become a key and distinctive resource for research on contemporary working life. The survey will also allow some contemporary international comparison with similar surveys held in other countries.
Stemming from this overarching aim, there are four further objectives to be addressed:
describe and analyse the level and distribution of skills requirements of jobs in British workplaces in 2012 and compare these patterns with earlier data points
similarly, describe and analyse the level and distribution of key aspects of workers’ experiences of their jobs in 2012, and compare with earlier data points
use the data to develop three distinctive original and substantive contributions to scholarship surrounding job quality and job skill
make the data available and provide the necessary data support and infrastructure for further analyses by academic or policy-based researchers in the field of skills and job quality.
It is anticipated that the Survey team will hold an initial results event in early 2013 and at least 3 papers will be published, further information to follow.
The project is being led by Professor Alan Felstead (Cardiff School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University), who is also Visiting Professor at the LLAKES Centre, Institute of Education, London, which is co-hosting the project. Other members of the research team are: Professor Francis Green (LLAKES, Institute of Education, London); Professor Duncan Gallie (Nuffield College, Oxford); and Hande Inanc (Nuffield College, Oxford).
Skills and Employment Survey website
Skills and Employment Survey Gateway to Research
Professor Alan Felstead
Email: alanfelstead@cf.ac.uk
Organisation: Cardiff University
Professor Francis Green
Email: f.green@ioe.ac.uk
Organisation: Institute of Education
Professor Duncan Gallie
Email: duncan.gallie@nuffield.ox.ac.uk
Organisation: University of Oxford
Christopher Carlton
Email: christopher.carlton@esrc.ac.uk
Telephone:01793 411505
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« Povratak na JutarnjList JutarnjList
Cohesion Policy: European Commission invests in environmentally friendly transport in Croatia
Euractiv.hr
Tomislav Kristo / CROPIX
Central station in Zagreb
Today, the European Commission approved an investment of more than €311 million from the Cohesion Fund to upgrade the 44-km Hrvatski Leskovac-Karlovac section of Croatia’s Zagreb-Rijeka railway, which is a highly populated area and one of Croatia’s main logistics centres.
The project will limit the environmental impact of transport by contributing to the shift from road to rail for both freight and passengers, reduce travel time and increase safety. Commissioner for Cohesion and Reforms,
Elisa Ferreira, said: “Creating and improving sustainable and environmentally friendly ways of transport is a crucial part of our efforts to fight climate change - which we pushed even further with our European Green Deal that we presented yesterday. This Cohesion Fund investment in one of Croatia’s main railways will do precisely that. Furthermore, it will not only reduce the environmental impact of transport, but also increase safety and generate positive economic returns.”
This project, expected to be operational as of end of October 2023, is part of the Rijeka-Zagreb-Budapest branch of the trans-European transport network (TEN-T) Mediterranean corridor, and of European Rail Freight Corridor 6, which covers the Mediterranean region.
Pretplatite se na newsletter portala Euractiv.hr i prvi saznajte novosti iz Europske unije.
Tagovi/Tags:
Croatian railway
cohesion fund
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Emil O. W. Kirkegaard 27. February 2017
In many ways, my science — and my colleagues’ science — generally involves collecting evidence for obvious hypotheses that are mainly denied by leftist-leaning people (more precisely, egalitarian). Here’s a brief review.
Stereotypes about major demographic groups are quite accurate
Jussim of course already showed this, but since it’s still frequently denied, seems that we need more evidence still. We added some to this about immigrant groups in Denmark (Kirkegaard & Bjerrekær 2016). Aggregate stereotype accuracy for use of welfare was high. In a figure:
Stereotypes are biased in favor of Muslim groups
When stereotypes deviate from the truth, they do so in a way that is in favor of Muslims (same study as above). In a figure:
So, on average, the average estimate of mostly Muslim groups’ use of welfare was off by about -10%points, i.e. they use welfare about 10%points more than people on average think they do.
Using accurate stereotypes makes for more accurate judgments
Jussim has discussed this in detail (see this post) but it’s really quite simple. Stereotypes can be used to inform the prior in a judgment, and since stereotypes tend to be more accurate than nothing, this has the effect of boosting the accuracy of judgments. It’s a straightforward application of Bayes’ theorem.
(Unfortunately, no neat visualization of this)
People form social policies based on their accurate stereotypes to inform their policy decisions
This is basically a corollary of the above, but since people have somewhat accurate ideas of which groups perform well in society, it stands to reason they use these beliefs to inform which immigrants they would like more of and which they don’t. Noah Carl (2016) tested this rather obvious idea in British data. In a figure:
Intelligence matters at the group level, a lot
Decades of research shows intelligence (general cognitive ability etc.) to be important at the individual level. Aggregating data tends to aggregate effect sizes because other sources of variation cancel out. So, is intelligence important at the group level too? Sure thing. National level (Kirkegaard 2014):
(Here S factor is an aggregate measure of social indicators.)
A particular annoyance is when researchers consistently rely on small, easy to get datasets and basically produce a lot of unreliable findings. The most common example of this is probably US states, n=50, to which people fit endless numbers of complicated regression models. So I gathered county-level data from the US, n≈3100 (Kirkegaard 2016). What do they show?
In general, it does not matter much which country one examines. Here’s Noah Carl’s (2016) data for UK ‘local authorities’:
Here’s the main results from our rather large pan-American study, using both national and subnational units (Fuerst & Kirkegaard, 2016):
(Unfortunately, did not make a plot with colors for subnational units for the IQ x S relationship.)
Group performance is mostly just average individual performance
This one is pretty obvious, but people like to posit all kinds of weird causes, see neat recent study by Bates and Gupta (2017). Looks like this:
This finding will need more replication because the original study has by now already received 700 citations or something and has been cited endlessly for social policy. In general, it’s wise to wait for a meta-analysis of and some pre-registered large-scale replications of something before trying to use it for policy.
Immigrant group performance is easy to predict
A related finding to the above is that immigrant group performance is easy to predict. Since immigrant groups differ a lot in intelligence and in their % of Muslims, and these both seem to be important causes in explaining relative social performance, one gets results like these (Kirkegaard & Fuerst 2014):
These results were also found for a bunch of other countries including Norway, Germany, Netherlands, Finland, and the US. More are on their way.
More Muslims means more Muslim terrorism
Noah has been playing with fire lately (Noah Carl 2016). We know that Muslims commit a lot of terrorism, and thus it stands to reason that if some place has more Muslims, they are likely to have more Muslim terrorism too. It’s essentially the claim that Muslims have some fairly stable per capita terrorism rate (see also). Obviously, there’s a lot of noise because terrorism is rare and many countries have few Muslims i.e. little variation in the predictor. Still, we get findings like these:
The second plot shows the also rather obvious idea that if your country takes part in military actions against Muslim countries, Muslims get upset and attack your country back. If you don’t want to get attacked, don’t attack other people!
Lately, Noah’s been extending these findings to the worldwide national level, which produced similar findings (In review).
This is not to say that other groups don’t also commit terrorism. If we had some good measures of standard leftist ‘meeting terrorism’ (ANTIFA and friends) and number of leftist extremists, I’m sure these would also relate strongly. Presumably also the same for nationalist extremists, but there’s so few of them in Western Europe that it would be hard to spot the signal.
Group differences in intelligence and S are to a large extent genetic in origin
The evidence for this was strong in 1973 (Jensen 1973), but it only got stronger over time. There’s still no final nail in the coffin, but we’re getting close. Interesting aggregate-level data comes from looking at national and subnational levels of ancestry and relating this to intelligence or social performance measures. For the Americas, looks like this (Fuerst & Kirkegaard 2016):
Economists were able to work out the same results too (Putterman and Weil 2010).
Traditional environmental predictors turn out to be non-causal
Here we must hand it to Amir Sariaslan for showing the way. The problem is that traditional epidemiological studies rely on non-familial data meaning that it’s difficult to control for all genetic and familial environment effects (when they use familial data, they usually only use a single type of relationship — parent-child — which is ambiguous by itself). These are thus unmeasured confounders in the models making them suffer from omitted variable bias. However, there are a number of clever ways to take into account these unmeasured familial effects, such as looking at siblings or looking at within person associations. Here’s one study with the sibling approach:
Childhood family income, adolescent violent criminality and substance misuse: quasi-experimental total population study
Low socioeconomic status in childhood is a well-known predictor of subsequent criminal and substance misuse behaviours but the causal mechanisms are questioned.
To investigate whether childhood family income predicts subsequent violent criminality and substance misuse and whether the associations are in turn explained by unobserved familial risk factors.
Nationwide Swedish quasi-experimental, family-based study following cohorts born 1989-1993 (ntotal = 526 167, ncousins = 262 267, nsiblings = 216 424) between the ages of 15 and 21 years.
Children of parents in the lowest income quintile experienced a seven-fold increased hazard rate (HR) of being convicted of violent criminality compared with peers in the highest quintile (HR = 6.78, 95% CI 6.23-7.38). This association was entirely accounted for by unobserved familial risk factors (HR = 0.95, 95% CI 0.44-2.03). Similar pattern of effects was found for substance misuse.
There were no associations between childhood family income and subsequent violent criminality and substance misuse once we had adjusted for unobserved familial risk factors.
What’s the logic of this kind of design? Well, if we look at full siblings and their parents, then since the parental income is not static, siblings will not grow up with the exact same levels of parental income. However, the variation in parental income cannot cause differences in their children’s genetics because this is essentially random, and other parental variables say about constant (e.g. education). So, we are thus able to account for some or all of the unmeasured confounding. When we do that, we find no association with childhood income and later crime levels. That’s inconsistent with a causal effect of childhood income, which was never strong to begin with.
Similar studies find that neighborhood deprivation does not cause crime, substance abuse or schizophrenia either. Nor does it cause health problems. Nor does education cause better mental health.
Of course, behavioral geneticists have been saying that these traditional non-familial methods are methodologically broken for decades (because the ‘environmental’ measures are heritable too), but it’s nice to actually show that they produce incorrect results and find out what the real effect sizes are. These could have been larger than zero and it’s not possible to tell before doing an actually informative study.
Next up?
So, what’s next? There’s a lot to do, but one thing I’ve been thinking of is showing that Muslim populations are actually growing a lot faster than many claim. The reason they claim these low levels of growth is because they rely on official statistics and these data tend to convert 2nd and later generation people into the ‘native’ categories, thus effectively hiding them. However, Muslims are nice enough to use distinctive names, so one can count the number of persons with such names over time and this will show a more realistic growth rate. Preliminary results for Denmark indicate an official stats-based growth rate of 2.5%, whereas first names indicate 5.1%. That’s not a small difference. The growth rate of Danish natives is something like -16% per generation which comes out at about -0.5% per year. You don’t have to be a genius to see how 5.1% vs. -0.5% work out in a few decades.
With regards to the question of whether genetics accounts for group differences (to a degree greater than 0%), this is easy enough to find out using genomic data. The last remaining hypothesis to disprove is colorism which is the claim that (White) people discriminate against others based on their skin tone (color), and this explains why e.g. mixed race people with lighter skin have higher incomes, educational attainment, intelligence etc. This hypothesis is totally implausible for intelligence since this trait is very hard to change via interventions (unless you give people heavy metals), but has some plausibility for the social outcomes. It’s possible to disprove with genomic data by simply checking whether measured skin tone mediates the relationship between, say, European ancestry and social outcomes and intelligence. Colorism says it does. The main issue here is obtaining access to the relevant data.
Why attack the incorrect beliefs of leftists so consistently? Well, because there’s a lot more of them in science, so generally speaking, this ideology is the main driver of political bias in the scientific literature. I could spend my time attacking shoddy science by libertarians and conservatives too, but the leftists already do that for me, and some of them quite competently. There’s a lot more low-hanging fruit in the other direction.
Differential psychology/psychometrics, Genetics / behavioral genetics, Immigration, intelligence / IQ / cognitive ability, Psychology, Sociology ancestry, Captain Obvious
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Some more reviews for our PING paper
Time preferences and national IQ
Steven Pinker: Jews, Genes and Intelligence (videos)
“Why is humankind doomed without eugenics?” #2
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Wikijunior:The Elements/Magnesium
< Wikijunior:The Elements
Shows the position of Magnesium on the periodic chart.
Magnesium's symbol on the Periodic Table
What does it look, feel, taste, or smell like?Edit
A small piece of magnesium.
Magnesium as a metal is silver-white and lightweight. It is pictured here in a stick, but it also comes in powder form. Surprisingly, it can be bought by the average person, usually for medical reasons.
How was it discovered?Edit
French-Scottish physician and chemist Joseph Black discovered magnesium in 1755 in England. Sir Humphry Davy electrolytically isolated pure magnesium metal in 1808.
Where did its name come from?Edit
Magnesium gets its name from the Greek word for a district in the Greek region of Thessaly called Magnesia.
Magnesium is the eighth most abundant element.
1.3 kilograms of magnesium can be found in every cubic kilometer of sea water.
Magnesium is used in marine flares and fireworks to produce a brilliant white light.
Where is it found?Edit
Magnesium as a pure metal is not found in nature, but it is very common as an ion in various compounds.
Magnesium is very common on earth and in seawater.
Magnesium can be found in green vegetables, especially darker green ones. This is because chlorophyll, the green pigment in plants, contains magnesium.
What are its uses?Edit
Magnesium is necessary for all living cells. It is used to help our body make molecules like DNA. Plants also use magnesium as a part of chlorophyll for photosynthesis.
Magnesium burns very bright white. In the old days, magnesium could be used as a light source and was used to create the flash for cameras. Now, it is used in some fireworks. It is also used to make incendiary bombs.
Since magnesium is a third lighter than aluminum, it is combined with other metals to make missiles and aircraft. Many automakers use magnesium alloys in their vehicles. Some car batteries use magnesium.
Magnesium oxide (MgO), also called magnesia, is used in some stomach antacids. Magnesium is also used to make epsom salts, which is used to treat minor skin abrasions.
Magnesium is also used for construction. It is known as one of the lightest metals that can be used for construction.
Is it dangerous?Edit
Magnesium is highly flammable, and the bright light it gives off can damage the eyes. Never place it in fire, as it burns at an EXTREMELY high temperature, and never throw it into an acid which might cause the release of flammable hydrogen gas. Keep away from children.
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Collective Capitalism, Theory of | Article about Collective Capitalism, Theory of by The Free Dictionary
https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Collective+Capitalism%2c+Theory+of
Collective Capitalism, Theory of
a bourgeois concept which states that the characteristic features of contemporary capitalism are the concentration of production in large joint-stock corporations, the collective nature of labor, and the separation of capital ownership from control over the enterprises (transfer of control from the shareholders to the managers). The theory was advanced by the American economist G. Means in the 1960’s.
The essence of the theory of collective capitalism is expressed by Means in the following proposition: “We now have single corporate enterprises employing hundreds of thousands of workers, having hundreds of thousands of stockholders, using billions of dollars’ worth of the instruments of production, serving millions of customers, and controlled by a single management group. These are great collectives of enterprises, and a system composed of them or dominated by them might well be called ’collective capitalism’” (The Corporation Revolution in America, New York, 1962, pp. 50–51).
The theory of collective capitalism reflects the real process of the capitalist socialization of production but only in a distorted way, since it ignores the determining fact that the ownership of the means of production is still private, although it does not belong to individual capitalists any longer but to capitalist corporations. The theory of collective capitalism incorrectly interprets the difference between the premonopolistic and monopolistic stages of capitalism as a difference between two economic systems—”private” and “collective” capitalism. In reality, the capitalism of free competition and monopolistic capitalism belong to the same capitalist system.
The theory of collective capitalism emphasizes only the features that are common to capitalism and socialism, namely, the collective labor of many workers in large enterprises and the interrelationship of different fields and sectors of production; it conceals the fundamental differences between them—the private nature of the appropriation that results from the exploitation of hired labor under capitalism and the public ownership of the means of production in the absence of exploitation under socialism.
As one of the theories of the “transformation” of capitalism, the theory of collective capitalism differs from the theory of “people’s capitalism” insofar as it interweaves an apology for contemporary capitalism with criticism of the system and with bourgeois reformism.
Dalin, S. A. “Teorii korporatsionnoi revoliutsii i kollektivnogo kapitalizma Gardinera Minza.” In the collection Kritika terorii sovremennykh burzhuaznykh ekonomistov. Moscow, 1966.
Bregel’, E. Ia. Kritika burzhuaznykh uchenii ob economicheskoi sisteme sovremennogo kapitalizma. Moscow, 1972, Chapter 3.
Means, G. C. The Corporate Revolution in America. New York, 1962.
Means, G. C. Pricing Power and the Public Interest. New York, 1962.
E. IA. BREGEL’
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What part of speech is ‘mountains’ in the sentence “I like climbing mountains”?
I'm trying to understand the grammar of this sentence:
I like climbing mountains.
Here's what I've got so far:
"I" is the subject
"like" is the verb
I believe "climbing" is a participle
Maybe "mountains" is the direct object?
Is that right? And are "climbing" and "mountains" both acting as nouns? Or is the noun "climbing mountains" and "climbing" is an adjective? I'm getting lost. Can anyone clarify this for me?
parts-of-speech syntactic-analysis ing
tchrist♦
WebUserLearnerWebUserLearner
Grammatically, you can consider climbing to be some kind of a noun adjunct or adjective that describes mountain (like chicken in chicken soup or climbing in climbing wall), but the more natural interpretation would be to take climbing as a verb. – Lawrence Jan 29 '18 at 1:17
Never liked mountains which climb.... – rackandboneman Jan 29 '18 at 11:36
"mountains" is a noun. "climbing mountains" is the direct object. "climbing" is either a participle or a gerund, depending on the interpretation of the sentence. – Greg Lee Jan 30 '18 at 1:24
tl;dr: The part of speech of mountains is here a noun. It’s the direct object of the verb climbing.
How we know that climbing is a verb, though, is more work. That’s because it might instead be a noun or an adjective. It’s a verb as just mentioned, but let’s look at all three cases just to make sure.
We’ll assume that for parts of speech, your possible choices are one of noun, verb, adjective, or adverb. Parts of speech like conjunction, preposition, determiner, interjection, and such aren’t really relevant here.
Note that parts of speech can only be single words. Things like subject, predicate, and direct object are not parts of speech. They are syntactic constituents, which can be more than one word.
Climbing as an adjective: “climbing roses”
I like climbing roses.
The word roses is the direct object, and it is here being modified by the adjective climbing. You can tell it’s an adjective not a noun adjunct because it passes the predicate test:
The roses are climbing (ones). [TRUE]
You know it isn't a verb here because you can't flip to the infinitive without a change in meaning:
I like to climb roses. [FALSE]
You can also tell it’s not a verb because adding an adverb of manner to one side means something totally different from what you get adding it to the other side:
I like quickly climbing roses. [adjective meaning]
I like climbing roses quickly. [verb meaning]
If climbing had been a verb, you would have been able to move quickly without changing the meaning. But you can’t.
Climbing as a noun: “climbing gyms”
I like climbing gyms.
Here now gyms is the direct object of like, but climbing has now become a noun modifying gyms, not an adjective modifying gyms. You can tell this because it fails the predicate test:
The gyms are climbing. [FALSE]
Therefore these are gyms that are for climbing, and so climbing is here a noun. You can think of climbing-gyms as a compound noun.
The stress has also shifted.
You know it's a noun because you can add other customary components of a noun phrase like quantifiers and adjectives:
I like some easy climbing gyms.
Because you can do that, you know it’s not a verb there.
Climbing as a verb: “climbing mountains”
The direct object of the verb like is the entire non-finite verb phrase “climbing mountains”, where mountains is in turn the direct object of the non-finite verb climbing. Since only verbs can have direct objects and mountains is the direct object of climbing, that means that climbing must be being used as a verb here.
Verbs not only take objects, they can also take adverbs of manner. So for example:
I like quickly climbing mountains.
I like climbing mountains quickly.
Because you can freely move quickly and the two sentences above still mean the same thing, you know that quickly is modifying climbing as a verb. If it were doing so as an adjective, you would not be able to move quickly around like that without shifting the meaning.
In other words, if they had meant different things after adverbial movement, then these would just be mountains that happened to be quickly climbing ones, like quickly climbing roses. But since that’s not what this means, it’s a verb.
Again, the entire verb phrase, not any single word, is the direct object of like, but climbing is clearly a verb because only verbs take direct objects and relocatable adverbs of manner in this fashion.
In this instance, you can be sure it's a verb because you can flip it from the one sort of non-finite verb phrase to the other kind without any change in meaning:
I like to climb mountains.
I like to quickly climb mountains.
I like to climb mountains quickly.
Since that means the same thing, both climbing and to climb are verbs here.
Some posters have suggested that this instance of climbing is a noun. It can’t be, as I’ve just demonstrated that it has a direct object, which only a verb can have.
But if you still aren’t convinced, let’s try to do noun-things to this would-be noun. If it were actually a noun, you would be able to modify it with an adjective like dangerous.
I like ✻dangerous climbing mountains. [UNGRAMMATICAL]
That shows that climbing is not a noun here, since the result is ungrammatical when you try to add an adjective to it.
It’s a verb. Just a verb: not a noun, not an adjective.
I’m just glad you didn’t ask what climbing was in
I like climbing climbing mountain roses climbing mountain climbing gyms.
For up that wall climb climbing buffalo climbing. :)
tchrist♦tchrist
+1 for the thorough explanation (but an emphatic +1 for the postscript) – HotelCalifornia Jan 29 '18 at 4:43
Isn't your second example also adjectival -- "climbing gyms"? "Climbing" simply describes the type of gym. Frankly I can't think of any sentence which would just use "climbing" by itself as a noun. Climb, yes; climbing, not. – Roddy of the Frozen Peas Jan 29 '18 at 14:44
@RoddyoftheFrozenPeas No, climbing is a noun in climbing gyms because the gyms are gyms for climbing; they aren't themselves actually climbing. It's like how running shoes has a noun modifying a noun, but running water has an adjective doing so. People do consider climbing a sport; you can add adjectives to it and have beginning climbing, easy climbing, advanced climbing, etc., and because adjectives can't modify other adjectives we know that climbing can be, and is there, a noun. – tchrist♦ Jan 29 '18 at 14:47
An excellent explanation. But I want to detect something, why couldn’t we think of it this way; Consider climbing as an adjective: I like the mountains that are specifically used for climbing. So we could write the sentence: I like climbing mountains? @tchrist – Bavyan Yaldo Jan 29 '18 at 23:33
@BavyanYaldo Sure, but nobody would know you meant. :) The verbal collocation is far too common for anyone ever to think of anything else. Say if you must: "I like mountains made for climbing" or some such thing. – tchrist♦ Jan 29 '18 at 23:34
You're asking multiple questions about this sentence:
So I'll try and tackle them one by one.
(1) In the title, you ask about the part of speech of mountains.
These are parts of speech in English:
noun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, determiner, conjunction, interjection
The suffix -s of mountains can only be attached to a noun or a verb. Since the word mountain here is used to identify any of a class of people, places, or things and is not used to describe an action, state, or occurrence, it is a noun.
(2) Is climbing a participle?
There's this ongoing confusion as to whether to call an -ing form a present participle or a gerund or even a gerund-participle. Resolving this confusion alone deserves a separate question, and it's not even clear whether there's a consensus among grammarians on this matter. Therefore, it's not really possible here to determine which term is the right one.
But one thing is clear: None of these terms is a part of speech. The part of speech of climbing is a verb, because it takes mountains as a direct object, which answers the following question:
(3) Is mountains the direct object of climbing? Yes.
(4) Are climbing and mountains both acting as nouns? Or is climbing mountains a noun and climbing an adjective?
The only supposed problem of treating climbing as a verb is that the verb like seems to take climbing as a complement. But this is an illusion. It's not climbing that the verb like takes as a complement; it's climbing mountains as a whole. Now, climbing mountains cannot be any part of speech, because it's not a word but a clause consisting of a verb (climbing) and its direct object (mountains).
So, it's better to think of -ing as a tool to make the clause climb mountains function as a complement of the verb like. This point becomes clear when we consider this pair side by side:
I like climbing.
In the latter, climbing should be categorized not as a verb but as a noun.
JK2JK2
+1 for a short but solid analysis not only leading directly to the correct answer but also dispelling the whole "gerund clause" distraction and presenting a novel suggestion for how to think of these as a "tool" for creating suitable substantive-standins for a verb's arguments. – tchrist♦ Jan 31 '18 at 2:27
Speaking of parts of speech, we have
"I" is a personal pronoun
"like" is a (transitive) verb
"climbing" is a noun (specifically, the gerund of to climb)
"mountains" is a noun
one may consider the whole gerund phrase "climbing mountains" as a noun
Regarding their syntactic functions
"like" is the predicate
"climbing mountains" is the (direct) object, which here comes in the shape of a gerund phrase; within that, "mountains" is the gerund complement (sometimes also called the gerund object because it would be the object if the gerund were a verb: "... climb mountains" )
Hagen von EitzenHagen von Eitzen
Climbing is not a noun. It is a verb. That's the only way it can have a direct object of mountains. Only verbs have direct objects, never nouns. If it were a noun you could add adjectives like dangerous to it, and you cannot. “I like ✻dangerous climbing mountains" is ungrammatical. Therefore climbing is not a noun. Mountains is, however. Notice you can add a movable adverb of manner — like quickly — to either side of that verb phrase, thus proving it a verb phrase not a noun phrase. The head of that VP is the verb climbing. – tchrist♦ Jan 29 '18 at 22:36
@tchrist According to, uh, you, a gerund is both a verb and a noun. – BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft Jan 29 '18 at 23:58
@BlueRaja-DannyPflughoeft My answer there needs work; I've deleted it till I can fix it. This whole simultaneity thing is exactly why I asked this question and received this definitive answer. – tchrist♦ Jan 30 '18 at 0:47
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“To hunt is my favorite pastime.” What part of speech is “to hunt” in this sentence?
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Early Monthly Segments
Early Monthly Segments is a monthly film series named after an early film by Robert Beavers, and is inspired by the immediacy, vibrancy and experimentation found in that film. Programmed by Scott Berry, Chris Kennedy, and Kate MacKay this series features historical and contemporary avant-garde 16mm films in a salon-like setting at the Gladstone Art Bar in Toronto, Canada. In this relaxed context with refreshing beverages and food available, we hope to encourage a convivial atmosphere for engaged viewing and post-screening dialogue. We do not receive public funding for our programs. We pay artists from admissions.
http://earlymonthlysegments.org/
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Venues/Screening series
Early Monthly Segments #101 = Ute Aurand in person!
By Anonymous on Thu, 05/04/2018 - 20:44
Early Monthly Segments returns to the screen as an occasional series, hosted by the Revue Cinema at 400 Roncesvalles Avenue. We’re excited to host German filmmaker Ute Aurand in person, in town after screening a short film at the Images Festival.
Saturday, April 21, 2018 - 16:00
Revue Cinema - Toronto, Canada
Early Monthly Segments #98: Abigail Child & Julie Murray
By Marcos Ortega on Tue, 11/07/2017 - 04:49
Celebrate the heat of July with classics by two of the sharpest editors in the experimental scenes in the USA. Abigail Child’s heady Is This What You Were Born For? series (from which we’re showing four films) took the Eighties by storm creating “found” footage collages of sultry noir seduction—turning erotic desires on its head.
Gladstone Hotel - Toronto, Canada
Early Monthly Segments #95: Su Friedrich
By Marcos Ortega on Thu, 06/04/2017 - 17:37
In collaboration with our colleagues in the screening collective Vertical Features, Early Monthly Segments is pleased to present two films by Su Friedrich. The Ties That Binds centres on Friedrich’s mother, Lore Bucher, who was born in Ulm, Germany in 1920. With Friedrich’s insistence, Bucher recollects her youth, growing up in Germany during the rise of the Third Reich and speaks about her own attempts to resist in whatever form she could.
Early Monthly Segments #90: Barbara Sternberg book launch
“The more real a thing it is, the more mysterious it becomes.” Jack Chambers
Early Monthly Segments is pleased to host the launch of three small books by Barbara Sternberg. Every Day 1, 2, 3 looks at the process of living and the process of filmmaking—how the quotidian influences the creative practice and how one moves from the real world to the imaginative world of artmaking. The launch will be accompanied by a short screening of four films followed by a discussion on the relation between filmmaking and book-making.
Early Monthly Segments #87: Remembering Roberto Ariganello
By Marcos Ortega on Wed, 10/08/2016 - 05:53
Early Monthly Segments presents a special evening of 16mm films by the late Roberto Ariganello (1961-2006) on the 10th anniversary of his sudden passing. We will remember Roberto at an intimate screening in his former apartment on College and Dufferin. Even if you only met Roberto once, it’s guaranteed that his warmth, exuberance and passion for film making has stayed with you ever since. The energies he shared with filmmakers and film lovers in Toronto and beyond resonates ten years after he left us much too soon.
Sunday, August 14, 2016 - 19:00
1132-A College Street, Toronto - Toronto, Canada
Early Monthly Segments #71: Takashi Ito + Rose Lowder + Paul Sharits
By Marcos Ortega on Sat, 07/03/2015 - 07:24
To celebrate our sixth anniversary we’ve assembled an evening of determined visual magic, radical geometry and single frame exaltation. Takashi Ito’s sublime Spacy uses the Droste effect (or mise-en-abyme), to turn 700 photographs of a gymnasium into a glorious ten-minute kinetic voyage. Paul Sharits’s seminal Ray Gun Virus is a colour field flicker film that offers a visceral palette of sensory pleasures. Rose Lowder’s Scenes de la vie francaise: La Ciotat is from her four-part series “Scenes de la vie francaise” which references the Lumieres and shows two versions of the same scene, shot frame by frame acutely examining the impact of scale, duration and time. La Ciotat features animated landscapes of the port, dry docks, shipyard workers, launched tankers, fishermen and the beach, showing us contrasting views of the Cote d’Azur port city with graceful perception.
Monday, March 16, 2015 - 20:00
Early Monthly Segments #70: Mary Helena Clark
This month, Early Monthly Segments is very pleased to host a screening of 16mm films by US-based filmmaker Mary Helena Clark. Clark is in Toronto to work on a new film based on Franco Moretti’s book Signs Taken for Wonders, the title of which could be an apt description of much of Clark’s filmography. Clark’s films place emphasis on fragments and momentary discoveries, whether the physical imprints of rotting textbooks found in a deserted school, as in After Writing, the very material detritus on a well-worn film print of Jean Cocteu’s Orphée, highlighted in Orpheus (outtakes), or the way traveling through an iconic city like San Francisco, featured in The Dragon is the Frame, can capture references to moments gone-by—both universal and personal.
Early Monthly Segments #63: Susan Oxtoby + Lis Rhodes
This month Early Monthly Segments is delighted to be presenting three films that are distinguished by their political and critical resonance while exhibiting a profound, poetic and unique handling of the materials and form of film. In Light Reading Lis Rhodes uses a series of still photographs to suggest a mystery, or perhaps more accurately to explore the tropes of the language of mystery. Layering images and text both still and moving, and playing with repetition and image registration and measurement Light Reading is as much about the characteristics of film and photography and who is the subject and/or the object of such as the story it skirts. Similarly layered and elliptical A Cold Draft functions as a multifaceted poetic reportage of the experience of those left behind in the trickle down dystopia of the 1980s UK. The voice of a single narrator comes to embody a chorus of defeated subjects surviving perpetual oppression. Susan Oxtoby’s All Flesh Is Grass revolves around the exploration of the ruin of a 19th century shopping arcade in Buffalo NY, combined with footage of spaces, friends, children and characters in Toronto and in New York City.
Monday, May 12, 2014 - 20:00
Early Monthly Segments #61: 5th Anniversary Screening
To celebrate our fifth year anniversary we’ve given ourselves the challenge of programming (and projecting) an evening of double projections!
Vanessa O’Neill’s sublime Suspension uses rephotography, tinting and superimposition to turn a westward view of the Pacific Ocean into a sublime interplay of waves, light and grain. Malcolm Le Grice’s classic Berlin Horse is a film that explores the possibilities of the loop, taking a short fragment of a silent film and subjecting it to a series of colour processes amplified by the phased music of Brian Eno. Daichi Saito’s Never a Foot Too Far, Even is a contemporary expansion, superimposing a section of a Kung-Fu action film into a perceptual play, accompanied by a violin composition by Malcolm Goldstein. Tonight’s screening of Visions in Mediation #2: Mesa Verde, Stan Brakhage’s vision quest to the ruins of the Ancient Peublo cliff dwellings in Southwestern Colorado is amplified by a second print given to Kate MacKay from the filmmaker as a gift. And finally, a third projector will be sparked to present For My Crushed Right Eye, Toshio Matsumoto’s ode to the social unrest and expansion of the late sixties, all of which threatened to burst out of the frame.
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"Like Mother, Like Daughter": Kym Herjavec Looks A Lot Like Her Mom And This Rare B-Day Tribute Photo Proves It
Mother-daughter relationships are usually strong, close, and unique. They say, 'Like mother, like daughter', but Kym Herjavec and her mother are more than that. They have an unusual bond, share similar facial features, and also have similar personalities.
READ ALSO: Kym Johnson And Robert Herjavec: Their Love Story
Kym cannot imagine her life without parents and always tries to spend downtime with them. She's a doting daughter and isn't shy to express her attachment, both privately and publicly.
No matter how old you are, there's always time for family!
A rare photo
The Australian professional dancer became a mother herself 6 months ago. She got beautiful twins that look a lot like Kym and her husband and Dancing with the Stars co-star, Robert Herjavec.
Kym posted a rare picture with her beautiful lookalike mother and twins holding in the arms. She paid a birthday tribute to her, captioning it: "Hudson and Haven are the luckiest babies to have you as their Nanna. We all love you so much."
The mother looks delighted and joyful with her grandchildren. There's a definite resemblance between Kym and her mom: The same bright smiles, traits, and undeniable shiness on their faces throughout a lifetime.
READ ALSO: "You’ve Been Making Me Smile": Robert Herjavec Shares A Sweet Birthday Message To His Wife Kym
Probably Kym had a great childhood with her parents, and now she's also trying to pass the same bond and love on her babies.
Though Kym Herjavec rarely posts a photo with her family, she still has a strong connection, primarily with her mother. Ballroom dancer thinks it's highly essential to remember parents and spend some time with them.
Once she posted a tribute to her mom on Mother's Day encouraging every person to go out and spend pastime with their mothers.
Kym also thanked her lookalike to believe in her dreams, goals, and passion. She said that her dreams had come true thanks to her mom's belief and support.
Kym Herjavec and her lovely mother are very similar, appearance-wise and mentally, as well. Little is known about their habits, traditions, and secrets, but it's apparent they cherish and respect each other very much.
READ ALSO: Before Robert Herjavec Met Kym Johnson, He Was Married For 26 Years
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Fiat Chrysler wants to form global giant with Renault
By Insider Last updated May 27, 2019 105
PARIS — Fiat Chrysler proposed on Monday to merge with France’s Renault to create the world’s third-biggest automaker and combine their investments in the race to make new electric and autonomous vehicles.
The merged company would reshape the global industry: it would make some 8.7 million vehicles a year, leapfrogging General Motors and trailing only Volkswagen and Toyota.
Shares of both companies jumped over 10% on the news of the offer, which would see each side’s shareholders split ownership in the new manufacturer.
Renault welcomed the idea. The company’s board met Monday at its headquarters outside Paris to discuss the proposal and said afterward that Renault will study it “with interest.” In a statement, Renault said such a fusion could “improve Renault’s industrial footprint and be a generator of additional value for the Alliance” with Japan’s Nissan and Mitsubishi.
Fiat Chrysler’s offer comes at a key moment for Renault. The French manufacturer had reportedly wanted to merge with Nissan, but those plans were derailed by the arrest of boss Carlos Ghosn on financial misconduct charges in Japan.
Now, questions are growing over the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance, which is the biggest maker of passenger cars in the world. While Fiat Chrysler says the merger with Renault would accommodate the alliance and lead to savings for them, it is unclear how the Japanese companies might react in the longer term to being tied to a much larger partner.
A deal would save 5 billion euros ($5.6 billion) for the merged companies each year by sharing research, purchasing costs and other activities, Fiat Chrysler said in a statement. It said the deal would involve no plant closures, but didn’t address potential job cuts.
The companies are largely complementary: Fiat Chrysler is stronger in the U.S. and SUV markets, while Renault is stronger in Europe and on electric vehicle developments. Together, they would be worth almost $40 billion euros.
Analysts at financial firm Jefferies said it was “hard to disagree with the logic” of the deal as there is a strong fit in the markets each company covers and the brands they offer.
“The elephant in the room is who will run the entity,” analysts Philippe Houchois and Himanshu Agarwal wrote in a note to investors.
Mergers of equals can be difficult to manage over questions of who gets the top leadership positions and which brands are promoted and invested in most. A tie-up between Daimler and Chrysler in the 1990s was billed as a merger of equals, but it collapsed nine years later amid cultural differences and recriminations.
Investors were nevertheless enthusiastic, pushing shares in Fiat Chrysler up 11% and Renault 14% in European trading.
The French government, which owns 15% of Renault, said it is “favorable” to the idea of a merger with Fiat Chrysler but wants to study its conditions more carefully, especially in terms of “Renault’s industrial development” and employees’ working conditions, government spokeswoman Sibeth Ndiaye said.
Such a merger would show “our capacity to respond to European and French sovereignty challenges in a globalized context,” she said. “We need giants to be built in Europe.”
Collaboration between automakers has taken on greater importance in recent years as they seek to build their technological capabilities in pursuit of electrical vehicles, net connectivity and artificial intelligence for vehicles. Automakers are also under pressure from regulators, particularly in Europe and China, to come up with electric vehicles so they can meet tougher climate change regulations and after scandals over the amount of pollutants engines truly emit.
The merger idea is the biggest corporate move so far by Fiat Chrysler CEO Mike Manley, who took his position after the unexpected death of the charismatic leader Sergio Marchionne last year.
What happens to jobs is likely to be a source of concern.
France’s influential CGT union warned against cuts should a deal go through, and said it wants the French government to retain a blocking stake in any new company.
Matteo Salvini, the leader of Italy’s rightwing populist League party and the deputy premier, said that “if Fiat grows, it is good news for Italy and Italians,” though he warned a deal should protect “every single job.”
In Tokyo, Nissan CEO Hiroto Saikawa wouldn’t comment directly on the idea of the deal but said, “I am always open to exchanging constructive views on strengthening the alliance.”
automakerFiat Chrysler
Huawei unveils phone system that could replace Android
Once a shrine to a retailer’s brand, ‘flagships’ lose luster
Equifax to pay up to $700M in data breach settlement
Corvette goes mid-engine for first time to raise performance
Federal data shows opioid shipments ballooned as crisis grew
From hot sauce to pop gloss, US products seep into Iran
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Tag Archives: Up
Best Films on TV: Christmas to New Year 2015
23/12/2015 Owen Hughes Leave a comment
Every 23rd December, for the past three years, we have released our pick of the films being shown on freeview TV over the Christmas schedule. Last year’s choices were made by Paul Field, but returning to this Failed Critics Christmas tradition is site editor Owen Hughes. It practically guarantees less Carry On movies and probably more big budget blockbusters…
A couple of years ago, we were regularly posting lists of films that we would recommend for the week ahead. Oh, how times have changed. It seems these days that with the rise of Netflix and other streaming services, we’re less bothered about waiting for films to be shown on TV and instead watching whatever we want, whenever we want. Which is great! Except that it’s reduced these articles to annual posts.
Nevertheless, I’ve had a look through the TV schedule to see what tat is being pushed on us this year and tried to sift out some of the dross (although Steve will be pleased to know that The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause is being shown on Christmas day at 11am) and chosen five decent-to-good movies each day in the run up to 2016.
Christmas Eve –
Finishing work early tomorrow? Want something to just stick on when you walk through the door to get you in a Christmassy mood? Well, stick Channel 4 on at 2.15pm and get straight into the classic It’s A Wonderful Life. Alternatively, if you’re sick of that bloody film already, try out the Robert Zemeckis animated A Christmas Carol over on BBC One at 2.20pm (it’s the version that I talked about on our Winterval Podcast this week). If you prefer your Scrooge’s to be real rather than cartoony, then stay up wrapping last minute presents until half past midnight for the 1951 version on Channel 5 starring Alastair Sim as the miserly grump. For those of us who relate a bit too much to Ebenezer, and can’t be arsed with this Christmas nonsense – bah humbug – then watch Karl Urban as the Mega-City One Judge, jury and executioner in Dredd on Film4 at 11.25pm or switch over to BBC Two five minutes later for one of Hitchcock’s best with Dial M For Murder.
Christmas Day –
We’ve had two of the most well known adaptations of Dickens’ novel, so why not start the afternoon with Channel 4 and give the other two a watch on Christmas day itself? Starting at 1.45pm with The Muppet Christmas Carol, they swiftly follow it up at 3.45pm with Bill Murray doing his thing in Scrooged. Later that evening, BBC Three have a double bill of animated movies that are safe to watch with granny, the kids, your other half or on your todd with Toy Story at 7.30pm and How To Train Your Dragon straight after it at 8.45pm. For something not at all schmalzy, sentimental or saccharine, I’m afraid you’ll have to wait until much, much later in the evening as the Coen Brothers change the mood entirely at 00.05am on ITV4 with the hilarious 90’s comedy The Big Lebowski. Or, like, that’s just my opinion that it’s hilarious, man…
Boxing Day –
It may be somewhat twee, and I’m aware Wes Anderson isn’t for everyone, but if there’s a better film on TV for you to crawl out of your hangover with after getting up extremely late than Fantastic Mr Fox on Channel 4 at 11.25am, then I couldn’t find it. You can time it right to fit in a quick turkey sarnie and a fresh cuppa between it finishing and Jurassic Park starting over on ITV at 1.20pm, reminding you just how good the original was after Jurassic World swept the box office clean earlier this year. Really though, you should be watching the football. I believe that’s what Boxing Day was invented for. Once Final Score has finished, switch over to the horror channel at 6.40pm for the intense Spielberg thriller, Duel. Film4 can round off a very late evening with two modern British classics in crime thriller Sexy Beast (11.25pm) and Scottish sci-fi – and one of our favourite movies of 2014 – Under The Skin (1.10am).
Sunday 27th –
That’s the Christmas movies well and truly out of the way now and it’s Studio Ghibli to the rescue as we kick off the day with one of their most celebrated works, the charming My Neighbour Totoro. Flick over to Channel 5 at 2.25pm to see one of the greatest movies ever made, John Ford’s most revered western, The Searchers, starring the Duke himself, John Wayne. Starting at 4.05pm on BBC One is a fantasy movie returning to where it all began with Oz: The Great and the Powerful, which is actually quite a nice, funny little family movie. You can choose how you’d like to round off the day with one of the following two. Personally, I’d go for one of my favourite discoveries of the year, Cronenberg’s body-horror Videodrome (the horror channel, 10.50pm) over Channel 4’s showing of The Inbetweeners 2 at 11.10pm, that both Steve and Callum tore to pieces.
Monday 28th –
You maniacs! You haven’t yet set your reminder! Ah, damn you! Goddamn you all to Hell! Well, at least until Monday morning at 10.15am when you switch on More4 and watch the original Planet of the Apes – AND THEN later that day you’ll be fully prepared for Film4’s 6.55pm screening of Rise of the Planet of the Apes. At 8.30pm on BBC Three is Kung Fu Panda 2 (read why that’s a good thing in Callum’s brilliant piece from his DreamWorks retrospective). For something a little more… grown up… Steven Soderbergh’s movie Behind The Candelabra (BBC Two, 9pm) features one of Michael Douglas’s best ever performances. Finally, if the forgettable Terminator Genisys hasn’t already disappeared entirely from your memory, then James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgement Day will wipe the last remnants from your mind on Film4 at 1.15am.
Tuesday 29th –
Channel 4, 2.30pm, Coraline. Film4, 6.10pm, Master & Commander. ITV2, 9pm, The Shawshank Redemption. ITV, 10.25pm, American Pie. My pick of the lot: Channel 5, 10.45pm, Erin Brockovich. That’s your lot. We’re running out of quality films on TV as the year comes to a close and I’m running out of patience trying to make these films sound interesting. However, if you think Tuesday’s films read a lot like a list of movies you’re glad that you’ve seen once but probably have no intention of ever watching again, just wait until you see what’s lined up for Wednesday…
Wednesday 30th –
We’ve got a run that starts with ITV2 at 5.45pm and Peter Jackson’s return to Middle Earth (that I actually thought was quite enjoyable) with The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Film4 will help change the tone to something surprisingly fun with Denzel and Wahlberg teaming up for crime-comedy Two Guns at 9pm. Tune into the horror channel at 10.45pm for some Robert Rodriguez Grindhouse horror at Planet Terror. Furious 7 may have already been voted for in quite a number of people’s submissions to the Failed Critics Awards, but Channel 4 go back a couple of sequels to Fast Five at 11.05pm. Afterwards, prepare for Joy with Film4’s showing of The Fighter at 1.10am.
Thursday 31st –
And here we are! New Year’s Eve and what better way to see off 2015 than with, er, well, The Adventures of TinTin on BBC One at 10.55am. (That was a rhetorical question. Don’t answer that.) More adventures are afoot with a rare screening of The Rocketeer on Channel 4 at 1.10pm and – a Pixar film guaranteed to make you cry – Up, over on BBC One at 2.50pm. I will be at a New Years party by this time (oooh get me) but if you fancy a night in watching movies to bring in 2016, then BBC4 honour Bob Hoskins, who sadly passed away this year, with Made In Dagenham at 10.55pm. Film4 are going slightly more modern and again doing the whole David O. Russell / Jennifer Lawrence / Bradley Cooper / Robert De Niro thing and are showing Silver Linings Playbook at 11.10pm.
2015A Christmas CarolAmerican Piebestfilmontvboxing dayChristmaschristmas eveCoralineDial M For MurderDreddDuelErin BrockovichFantastic Mr FoxFast FiveHow To Train Your DragonIt's a Wonderful LifeJurassic ParkKung Fu Panda 2Made In DagenhamMaster & CommanderMy Neighbour Totoronew yearOz: The Great and the PowerfulPlanet of the ApesPlanet TerrorRise of the Planet of the ApesScroogeScroogedSexy BeastSilver Linings Playbookterminator 2: judgement dayThe Adventures of TinTinThe Big LebowskiThe Fighterthe hobbit: An Unexpected JourneyThe Inbetweeners 2The Muppet Christmas CarolThe RocketeerThe SearchersThe Shawshank RedemptionToy StoryTwo GunsUnder the SkinUpVideodrome
Failed Critics Podcast: Winterval Special 2015
Ding dong, merrily on high – Steve’s pants are wet and minging.
Don’t worry. He just got a bit over-excited on last week’s Star Wars podcast. But before Steve worked himself up into that state, you can listen to his usual mildly-subdued-self as he hosted our Christmas special podcast, recorded the week before he exploded in a fit of fan-geekery over The Force Awakens.
Joining him in our festive celebrations during this most unholy Winterval and non-religion-specific season are Owen Hughes, Andrew Brooker and Brian Plank. As is tradition, we start off with a Christmassy quiz – quite possibly the worst quiz we’ve had on the podcast all year. Possibly ever. But moods are soon lifted as the team run through which Christmas movies they’ve been watching over the holiday period.
In lieu of any main releases to talk about, we have a special triple bill where each member of the crew pick their films of Christmas past (favourite first watch of a non-2015 film during this year), Christmas present (favourite 2015 release) and Christmas future (which movie they’re most looking forward to in 2016). It really isn’t as confusing as I’ve made it sound.
There’s still one more podcast to go this year – our Failed Critics Awards end of year wrap up (deadline for votes is 27th Dec) – so you can join us again later this month. Until then, Merry Christmas from all of us here at Failed Critics!
LISTEN VIA ACAST FOR THE MOST INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE
http://rss.acast.com/failedcritics/failedcriticspodcast-wintervalspecial2015/media.mp3
2015A Christmas CarolAndrew BrookerArthur Christmasbatman vs supermanBirdmanBirdman: or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)Brian PlankCaesar!ChristmasDie HardDisneyex machinafailed critics podcastFutureGremlinsHailLuc BessonLucyMad Max: Fury RoadMad MenPastPixarPresentShane BlackSkeleton TwinsSuicide Squadthe enigma of kaspar hauserThe Nice guysTwinstersUpWerner Herzog
26/07/2015 Callum Petch 5 Comments
Inside Out is beautiful.
I’ve sat here for the last three hours trying to figure out how to start this review. See, Inside Out is a fantastic movie – that much is not up for debate. It’s not only the best Pixar movie released this decade, it might genuinely be the best thing that they have ever done. It’s certainly their most emotional and their most emotionally honest, no surprise given that the film’s director and main creative force is Up and Monsters, Inc. director Pete Docter whose work is characterised by emotional honesty and an uncanny ability to zero in exactly on everyone’s weak-spots. This is quite possibly the best film that I have seen all year, and if it hasn’t bested Mad Max: Fury Road then it is right up there.
It’s also a film that gains a lot of its power from my own emotional baggage. This is a film that is fantastic as a movie in many objective ways, but it’s also a film that connected with me so thoroughly, so totally, and so attuned to myself that my opinions and thoughts on it are mostly informed by that fact. In other words: this film is amazing by itself, but it is transcendental to me because of my various issues and experiences. So, to properly explain that, I would have to talk about this film and myself in-depth for a very prolonged stretch of time: both no-nos in the world of film reviewing.
Therefore, you can expect this review to be much less in-depth, and much shorter, than my other animation reviews because I’m going to stick to surface-level criticism and analysis. By which I mean, why the film is a fantastic film. For those of you who do care about why I love the film as much as I do, there will be a spoiler-filled and very personal post on my own new website – callumpetch.com, tell your friends – later in the week where I will engage in all of the writer no-nos in an attempt to properly explain how the film connected with me and why I put it right up there with Fury Road. That all OK? If not, too bad, I’m the one writing this stuff.
So, Inside Out. Now, normally when we label an animated feature as small-scale, what we mean is that the main cast is smaller than usual and that the stakes are slightly more personal than usual. Look at something like Big Hero 6. Most of that movie pivots around Hiro and Baymax, and the main stakes come from Hiro working through his grief. However, the film still has a rather large secondary cast, the stakes outside of Hiro’s emotional state are much wider-reaching, and the film still has multiple large-scale action beats and setpieces. In a way, Big Hero 6 is a small-scale film, but in many respects it’s not that much different from your standard big studio animated movies nowadays, that often trade more and more on bigness.
Not so with Inside Out. Pete Docter’s newest masterpiece commits completely to that small-scale, utilising it to wrestle with big concepts and never once succumbing to the requirements of The Big Studio Animated Family Feature Factory. Throughout Inside Out, the stakes remain deeply personal and the events on screen reflect it. When 11 year-old Riley Anderson (Kaitlyn Dias) finds herself uprooted without warning from her lovely home and life in Minnesota to inner-San Francisco by her parents, her emotions, led by Joy (Amy Poehler), try and help her adjust to this change. Things swiftly go wrong, however, when Sadness (Phyllis Smith) accidentally turns a joyous core memory sad and, in the chaos, she and Joy are ejected from Riley’s headquarters with all of the core memories. Dumped into Long-Term Memory, the pair have to make their way back whilst Anger (Lewis Black), Disgust (Mindy Kaling), and Fear (Bill Hader) attempt to perform damage control since Riley can no longer feel Joy or Sadness.
Essentially, the stakes are purely about whether Riley can avoid emotionally shutting down now that she’s been forced away by circumstances beyond her control from her enjoyable life. There is no villain, no purposefully antagonistic force – one would think that Anger or Disgust would work to make Riley’s life hell but, in reality, they’re just trying their best to stand in for Joy – and there is no one major specific event that brings this issue to light. It’s all the little things – the disappointment in a new house, the loneliness that comes from not knowing anyone, the discovery that your friends’ lives don’t stop once you leave them, finding out that your new nearby pizza place makes garbage food – that slowly break someone down as they struggle to adjust. How someone who has spent most of the best moments of their life feeling happy struggles to understand that feeling sad and showing that you feel sad are not bad things.
Those are the stakes, that’s the scale, and Inside Out commits completely to them. There’s no giant threatening outside force, there’s no big action-packed finale. This is a quiet melancholy tale about emotional maturation, and specifically the emotional maturation of a young girl as represented via a look at her cute and often funny little emotions. The film is funny – it has many gut-busters and ends on what will quite frankly be the funniest gag I see in any film this year – and it has many utterly inspired scenarios and usages for its central conceit of a glimpse into one’s brain, but it is primarily this low-key story about a serious subject and it never once contradicts or downplays that in favour of big setpiece sequences or excess melodrama.
Instead, the film hits upon something real and never loses sight of that kind of honesty. It never pulls its punches, never sugarcoats anything, and that leads to some of the most emotionally affecting sequences in Pixar’s history. Because they’re working so close to reality, and only very slightly dressing it up with distancing parallels – like how Monsters, Inc. uses monsters and scaring as a parallel for our natural resources, or (more relatedly) how Toy Story uses the toys we played with as a kid to look at growing up – there ends up being this unavoidable directness with how it handles these vital sequences, and the fact that it never plays a single one of these as anything other than these quiet moments of important realisation and self-improvement adds to that. The most drastic action that Riley takes is still befitting that intimate feel, raising the stakes but not in an excessively dramatic way.
And that abounds throughout. From the way that Joy and the others treat Sadness because they don’t understand her necessity, to the way that the film is always on Sadness’ side even when it’s mining her for quality jokes, to the way that the film keeps its focus locked firmly on Riley and her headspace – it only steps into the heads of other characters once during the movie itself, before using that idea during the credits for a series of rapid-fire gags to send the audience home happy – to the way that the film is able to take advantage of things like how Riley’s dreams are made but doesn’t outstay its welcome in them. Every aspect of this film has clearly been carefully deliberated on to achieve that balance between realistic and distancing buffer, fun joy and heartbreaking sadness. It’s a perfectly melancholy movie whose tight personal view is never once sacrificed for any reason.
That’s why Inside Out works. There’s also some outstanding voice work – especially from Amy Poehler and Phyllis Smith – some gorgeous animation, and another brilliant score by Michael Giacchino (who just always seems to create his best work when associated with Pixar), but those are really by-products of Pete Docter nailing that scale and tone. By remaining small-scale throughout, by remaining openly emotional throughout, and by remaining honest and upfront about the subject that it is handling throughout (because it would have been so easy to put in some kind of antagonistic force in order dilute the emotional potency), he and the entire team at Pixar have created one truly mesmerising piece of cinema.
This is the kind of film that puts most grown-up dramas about emotional wellbeing to shame, this is the kind of film that proves what animation is capable of, this is either the best or the second-best film that I have seen all year. Inside Out is not optional. This is mandatory viewing. Go and see this movie right the hell now.
Callum Petch is waking up feeling good and limber. He now writes primarily for his own website, callumpetch.com. Follow him on the Twitters (@CallumPetch)!
2015Amy PoehleranimationCallum PetchInside OutMichael GiacchinoMonsters IncNew ReleasePete DocterPhyllis SmithPixarreviewUp
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Home > BLOG > Science Fiction and Fantasy > Unboxing Day: the final episode!
Unboxing Day: the final episode!
20/12/2019 | POSTED BY Abbie
December has been quite a month here in the UK – but one thing that has made us smile every week is a brand-new short story series by Chris McCrudden, author of the Battlestar Suburbia series. If you haven’t read it yet, click here to start with EPISODE 1 of UNBOXING DAY. And then… read on to find out what happens when robots go home at the most wonderful time of the year.
“Get down on the floor right now!”
It took a couple of microseconds for the machines at the party to obey Petronella. After all, when one of the solar system’s most famous augmented reality stars told you to ‘get down’, it was usually an order to hit the dancefloor rather than a death threat.
Pam Van Damme knew better, however. Giving Petronella Shermann the benefit of the doubt was like feeding aluminium foil to a microwave – an act liable to blow up in your own face. So she used the moment of confusion as one hundred and fifty overprivileged robots decided how best to sit down without cracking their best party casing as an opportunity to lose herself in the crowd.
As Pam suspected she would, Petronella went straight for the power in the room. She put herself into first gear and trundled over to the Prime Minister’s corner, end-of-lifing a Bluetooth headset and a travel kettle in the process.
“Fuji,” she said, stretching her facial grille into a wide, toothy smile, “it’s been ages.”
Recognising that when the machine in front of you is holding a bomb capable of blowing a whole room to components your security team are irrelevant, Prime Minister Fuji Itsu motioned her guards aside. As an office printer-scanner hybrid she wasn’t a small machine, but she was still dwarfed by Petronella. Yet this didn’t stop Fuji facing down a much a much bigger and more dangerous machine, much like she’d outwitted Petronella’s own father, the renegade military commander General Shermann.
Pam turned her magnification up to maximum from the other side of the room and watched as Fuji scanned Petronella up and down, then turned to address the nearest security guard.
“I don’t know her,” she said.
Petronella’s smile faltered. She could deal with being loved and hated, but she evidently couldn’t bear the third category of attention, which was being ignored. Then she remembered she was holding a bomb. “Oh yes,” she said, “I’d forgotten you were nobody till you cheated your way into the Prime Minister’s office.”
At this, the machines around Pam winced and the more agile of them curled into brace position. Everyone knew that Fuji Itsu was an unconventional choice for Prime Minister. She was the first printer to hold this level of political office, and that was only after a loophole in machine code put billions of freshly manufactured nanobots on the electoral roll and they voted for her. She may have held the biggest majority in the Republic’s history, but as far as machines like Petronella – and more than a few guests at this very party – were concerned, she got her mandate from the wrong sort of robot.
Printers were stoical machines, but not even they could ignore a kick to the paper feeder of this magnitude. “What do you want, Shermann?” Fuji snapped.
“Your immediate resignation,” replied Petronella.
“Who am I resigning in favour of, Petronella?” continued Fuji. “You? Your mother?”
Pam’s carburettor flipped over at this suggestion. Petronella’s mother, Klemmentine Shermann wasn’t just a wanted war criminal who had been in hiding for months, she was also the machine that had destroyed Pam’s family home. There was no way she could let that creature take over the highest office in the solar system. Quite apart from the unspeakable machine and human rights crimes she’d perpetrate the moment she became Prime Minister, Pam would lose the no-fault claims bonus on her home insurance. She wasn’t ready for that level of injustice.
But neither was Fuji. “And if I refuse, what happens?” said the printer.
Petronella answered by rattling the box in her hands. Pam heard the ticking inside falter and a collective squeal go around the party guests.
By contrast not a single LED on Fuji’s body flickered. “Is that the worst you can do?” she asked. Then, gesturing at the room, “Do you think any of us came here tonight without backing ourselves up first? Let that thing off and I’ll be up and running in another body in minutes, and you’ll be a wanted terrorist.”
Touché, thought Pam, before remembering that she was alone among this party of the high and mighty in not having a backup body packaged away somewhere. This body of hers was custom-made. Once it was gone, it was gone. She’d be back to being plain old Pam Teffal and she – she checked her Command Line and got nothing but a >NO SIGNAL from her other body – didn’t seem to be speaking to her this evening.
Petronella responded to Fuji’s goad by ripping the wrapping paper off the box in her hands with the glee of an avaricious six-year-old. The robots around Pam squealed and then gasped as they saw what was inside. It wasn’t just the spaghetti junction of a homemade bomb. Attached to the timing device was a radio transmitter so powerful that it made every smartphone in the room’s antenna crackle. This wasn’t just a bomb: it was a trigger.
“Okay,” said Petronella. “A little bit louder for the people at the back. Unless the Prime Minister offers her resignation immediately I will set this bomb off and it won’t just end-of-life every machine in this room…”
She produced a universal remote control from her glove compartment and, switching it on, commandeered the screen of every device at the party. They juddered into life to show drone footage of what Pam soon worked out were the embankments either side of the A32222 Earth-Mars highway. Except with something new added to them. There were bombs taped at regular intervals all the way along the route that was crammed to bursting with robots ferrying themselves and their soon-to-be-born children home for X.mas.
“The babies are going to get it too.”
In machine civilisation, robots only started existing when they were switched on for the first time. Before this moment, which always happened on Unboxing Day, the collection of components and experimental programming that became children had no names, no personalities and – because it was a tradition – no backup services. After all, how could you create a copy of a person who didn’t exist yet?
Yet this also worked to make the journey robots took on the night before X.mas, flying across starry skies in their best wrapping, both magical and risky. If anything happened to the children waiting to be born inside those boxes then that was it. They were gone and they couldn’t come back. It didn’t happen often, but every caste in machine society had their cautionary tales of baby smartphones dropped into buckets of water, or drones that blundered into open fires on their first flight. And so on that journey, every expectant parent kept their soon-to-be-born children close, because that was the best way of keeping them safe.
Until it wasn’t.
As the news spread along the A32222 that the whole highway was primed to explode, a deathly silence settled over the expanse between Earth and Mars. The cheery round red lights that robot vehicles placed on their noses for the X.mas journey – for reasons lost to time, it was another tradition – winked out. Impulse engines powered down. Even machines as hyperactive as coffee machines and Slendertone belts did their best to sit very still. Because in the absence of any better news, their best chance of not being blown to bytes lay in not disturbing any of the bombs struck to the underside of the highway.
Those robots closer to Earth switched off their X.mas lights and waited for the twinkle of something very different. The alternating red and blue of the emergency services they hoped would save them in time.
A more pragmatic terrorist than Petronella would have fired a few warning shots to quell the panic that crested over the party like a swimming pool wave machine accidentally recalibrated to ‘tsunami’ setting when Petronella revealed her plans. But Petronella wasn’t a terrorist, she was a fading augmented reality star who was flirting with terrorism because the ratings were better. Consequently, she luxuriated in the drama long enough for Pam Van Damme to crawl out of the crowd and into the dumb waiter in the end of the room. Here, she reasoned, she’d have room to collect her thoughts.
“Careful, babes,” hissed a voice as Pam reversed through the hatch.
“Room for a little one?” whispered Pam, realising she wasn’t alone. This was the only hiding place in reach and she couldn’t afford to lose it now.
“I dunno,” replied the voice “we’re fairly big girls… where it matters.”
Pam turned her fog lamps on the other machines sharing the waiter and blinked as their light glared back from a pair of chrome finishes. She wasn’t the only machine fast enough and bright enough to seek refuge in the panic. Margari and Egglantine had got there first.
“This is Special Agent Pam Van Damme,” said Pam, speaking at her lowest volume setting. “I’m commandeering this dumb waiter as a matter of solar system-wide security.”
“Right you are, babes,” replied Margari, “but we’re getting out of here first.”
She pressed her whisk into a control button and the floor lurched under Pam’s feet as the dumb waiter descended with the three machines inside it.
“No!” she said, and made a grab for the controls but was warned off by the sight of Egglantine brandishing her kneading paddle. She didn’t knead telling twice about the damage one of those things could do to a machine. She’d used one of them herself to inflict grievous bodily harm on the previous Prime Minister. So she tried reason instead. “We can’t just leave those people,” she said.
“Sometimes a girl has to look out for herself,” said Margari.
“And her sister,” reminded Egglantine.
The dumb waiter stopped and opened onto an abandoned catering area the floor below the penthouse. There were no robots, just flashing hazard lights and the signs of a hasty evacuation. Trays of used batteries lay discarded everywhere, while an enormous charging station in the corner chugged away with the task of garnishing hundreds of battery spritzes with sparkling quartz crystal. Pam dreaded to think how much power this was wasting.
“This way, Margari!” said Egglantine. She pointed to the nearest exit chute in the corner of the room.
“Thanks babes. I love going down!” replied Egglantine with a suggestive twirl of her whisks.
Pam watched as the C00k Destroyers trotted away from her, spraying innuendo and pudding batter with every step. She felt helpless, and alone. There was still nothing from Pam Teffal when she typed >I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO into her Command Line. At times like this she needed something more than the fuck-things-up-and-run-away attitude of a motorcycle. She needed to do something, and for that you needed a maker’s view on life.
“Please, C00k Destroyers,” she shouted after them, “I need your help.”
Egglantine, who was already lowering herself into the chute, turned round to face Pam. “I’m sorry love, but what can we do? We’re just a pair of kitchen appliances.”
“That’s right, doll,” added Margari, “we can hardly bake our way out of this, can we?”
Pam was on the verge of shrugging and letting the C00k Destroyers go when she caught something at the edge of her L-Eye-Ds. It was the charging machine, which had just tipped another load of full batteries on the floor and was in the process of refilling its quartz crystal reservoir. The air glittered with inappropriate festivity as best part of a tonne of finely ground crystal poured in from an unseen source.
And suddenly Pam had an idea. She might not have any aggregate handy, and this body didn’t have a mixing bowl or a dough hook, but she did have some acceptable substitutes.
“Girls,” she said to the C00k Destroyers, “do you have any flour left in there?”
“Never leave the house without a bit of the white stuff,” replied Margari. She dropped one of her flaps to reveal several bags marked ‘plain flour’.
“Good,” replied Pam, “because if you don’t mind, I’d love to teach you my family recipe for rock buns.”
The stairs that led from what the mouse had called the ‘back door’ into the mysterious house were steep, dark and decorated with some of the most obscene graffiti Pam Teffal had ever seen.
She was used to infantile scrawls on the walls of discharging stations like “ur mama was a snowblower” but this had a different and more alarming quality. For one thing, it was executed in overlooped handwriting fonts in lurid pinks and purples that made her vision swim. And then was what it actually said – an uncomfortable hodgepodge of homespun wisdom and incitement to hate crimes that translated into slogans like “Live, Laugh, Leave your enemies in pieces” and “Keep Calm and Commit War Crimes”.
They confirmed two things to Pam. The house she was climbing into was the headquarters of a terrorist cell, and whoever was in charge had heard of the idea ‘the banality of evil’ and taken it with depressive literalism.
“My auntie Cassie-O has something like this,” said Ring, pointing to an epithet that claimed ‘Friends don’t let Friends break the natural order of the caste system’, “but hers is about sparkly battery packs.”
“Well I knew the suborbs had been radicalised,” agreed Pam. “I just didn’t know how far it went.”
They were almost at the top of the stairs when Pam noticed that the floor slab was unusual too. Starter houses like this tended to have shallow foundations, but this looked like recently poured reinforced concrete. It was the kind of floor you expected to see in an army base which, coupled with the weapons-grade laser gun they’d taken from the mouse, gave Pam pause. Whoever was in charge was well-armed, connected to the military and, going by that metre-thick floorslab, a hefty machine.
Pam’s sourdough fizzed with anxiety and over-exposure to cinnamon as, on reaching the top step, she used her heating element to burn out the doorlock. She had a sudden suspicion who she was up against, and she didn’t like. The door, a vacuum seal affair made from armoured steel, sagged inwards and the narrow stairway filled with dust and the roar of gunfire. Pam stopped it from opening too wide, and peered into the gap.
“What is it?” whispered Ring.
“Bad news,” replied Pam, refocusing her L-Eye-Ds on the scene in front of her. There was too much of it to take in in one go, but she’d recognise those caterpillar treads and that camo/flower print paintjob anywhere. All that gunfire was coming from one enormous and familiar machine. A machine Pam first met a few months ago when she demolished her house after a cocktail party she threw took on the quality of a Molotov cocktail.
This was Lady Klemmentine Shermann and, resourceful as she was, Pam had no idea how a breadmaker was supposed to win a fight with a tank.
Lady Shermann’s eyes, which took the form of a pair of small cats-eye-shaped L-Eye-Ds perched on the top of her gun barrel, swung around in the direction of the open door. The barrel itself, which was long and articulated like an elephant’s trunk followed. “Is that you, mouse?” she said. “I hope you’ve got rid of that terrible busybody.”
Panicking, Pam slammed the door and used her heating element again to fuse the lock. She couldn’t open it again now if she tried, but that wouldn’t hold Lady Shermann for long. As a machine descended from a battlefield machinery, she tended to regard the concept of doors as being something she made for herself.
The wall shook and the steel door rattled in its frame as Lady Shermann threw her weight against it.
“Open up! Open up!” came her voice from the other side of the door, “or I’ll blow this house down.”
She hit it again and bricks at either side started coming loose. Just a few more bashes like that and she’d be through.
“What are we supposed to do?” gabbled Ring.
Pam shook her head. Just a few more thrusts and she’d be through. She had nowhere left to hide and she was out of options. This was where she’d end-of-life. She tried getting her Command Line up again. A quick farewell to Pam Van Damme, a contrite note to Bob for missing X.mas this year. But there was still nothing. There was no signal here, underground in this narrow corridor, on this…
Lady Shermann thumped again and the door frame jumped free of the wall surrounding it. The impact made the staircase Pam and Ring were standing on shake like a charity bungee jumper approaching the ledge.
And something cleared inside Pam’s mind. What would happen when she did break through? Into a narrow corridor like this with an unreinforced staircase.
What came next was a wild idea. It was a suicidal idea. It was the kind of stunt that only Pam Van Damme could pull off. And maybe that’s what she needed.
“Ring,” she said, “you’ve still got that laser, haven’t you?”
“Yes,” he replied, “but –” and gestured at the behemoth making its way through the wall, “will it do any good…?”
“We have to try,” said Pam.
Lady Shermann’s next strike sent dozens of bricks tumbling down the staircase. Ring squealed and ran from them to the bottom of the staircase where he stood with the gun aimed at the crumbling doorframe.
“You’re not staying up there, are you?” he shouted.
“Don’t worry about that,” Pam shouted back. She was a big strong girl. Whether she was strong to the point of tank-proof, however, she’d find out in just a moment.
The door toppled and, as Pam suspected, Lady Shermann entered the corridor barrel first. This was the micromoment she’d been waiting for. She jumped, she grabbed the barrel, and the next thing she knew she was hanging in mid-air as Lady Shermann flailed about trying to shake her off.
“Aim for the eyes,” she shouted at Ring.
And then the shooting started all over again.
“I’m not sure about this recipe, babes.”
Pam made the most reassuring noise she could with a motorcycle engine and finished tipping the last bag of ground quartz into Margari’s mixing bowl. Coarse crystals twinkled under the strip lighting like an office manager done up for the X.mas party. The sound they made when Margari mixed them with flour, sugar and half an old bag of currants – for roughage –was anything but festive, however. It reminded Pam of a cement mixer she’d dated briefly in machine college who she’d had to dump because of his terrible table manners.
Egglantine was close by, piping dollops of quartz batter around the charged battery packs that were littered everywhere. It was a messy job, but because she was a craftsmachine down to the pins on her microprocessors one she couldn’t help but do with a flourish, fashioning each one of them into a perfect sphere.
She put her piping arm down for a moment. “You know,” she said, “I’m worried too.”
“We’re all worried,” replied Pam. They’d got a dumb screen in the corner of the room to work and it was showing rolling news footage of the terrorist attack upstairs. Some news drones even had long lens footage of the stand-off. It showed the guests were still on the floor, while Petronella strutted around with her bomb and making demands. The headlines that ran underneath the footage were grim, with most agreed on calling the incident the “UNBOXING DAY MASSACRE.” They were also, like most rolling news since the dawn of journalism, breathlessly reporting speculation instead of fact, which was making Pam’s spokes jangle.
“That goes without saying, hun,” continued Egglantine. “It’s more about this recipe. It really doesn’t have the right balance of fat to flour for a truly successful rock cake. You want them to crumble, not…”
Margari paused in her task of chewing the indigestible cud of Pam’s rock cake recipe “Take the roof of your mouth off,” she said.
“You have to trust me on this,” said Pam, “it’s foolproof. You can have it for your next recipe download.”
Egglantine harrumphed and, in the process, dropped the rock cake she’d just finished icing. It hit the floor and kept going, drilling a hole through the floorplate and, when they peered through it, that of the floor beneath them.
“This batter is far too heavy,” said Margari to Egglantine. “Maybe we should try some bicarb?”
“On the contrary,” replied Pam, “I think you’ll find it’s just right.”
Lady Shermann may have been an excellent shot. After all, she’d been born with silver ordnance in her mouth. But it was still tremendously difficult to do so accurately if you have 85kg of breadmaker hanging off the end of your gun barrel.
Pam had that much on her side. It was just a shame that Ring had such a rotten aim. Every single one of his laser blasts went wide with one even grazing the side of Pam’s sourdough well, sterilising a batch of heritage yeast in the process.
“I SAID AIM FOR THE EYES!” she screeched.
“I’m trying!” replied Ring. He let off another shot which missed Lady Shermann but melted one of the steel beams underneath the staircase supporting both her and Pam. The whole structure bent over at a thirty-degree angle.
Lady Shermann, however, was undeterred. Pam felt vibrations build under her fingertips as the tank reloaded and aimed. Time to start wriggling again. “Will. You. Hold. Still. For. Just. One. Minute?” huffed Lady Shermann.
“No!” replied Pam.
Lady Shermann trumpeted her warning siren like a distressed elephant facing down a mouse and fired her gun. Pam swung the barrel round just in time so the shot missed Ring, but it blew a hole in the cellar floor that was so large and so deep that it was answered not with a blast but with gurgling.
She’d just broken through the crust that separated the machine Earth from the oceans underneath.
Ring rang with alarm as water spurted up into the cellar. He, like the majority of machines made in the past ten thousand years, wasn’t waterproofed and this water was the worst kind. It was dirty, salty and at least half of every cubic centimetre of it was atomised plastic from the days when humanity had used the oceans as a litter bin. No machine could survive for more than a few minutes in those conditions.
He scrambled up the nearest wall as Lady Shermann swung her barrel round again and fired. She made a bigger hole in the floor that would, in another time and another place, be the perfect size for a village pond, complete with ducks and maybe one horrible goose.
Pam looked at the scene beneath her with a mixture of dread and stoicism. She’d felt those waters for herself a few months ago and lived to tell the tale. But that was only because she’d escaped thanks to a combination of sheer luck, good judgement and a handy ballistic missile. Here there was only one way in and one way out and right in the middle of that was Lady Shermann.
The waters were rising fast and gaining on Ring as he climbed the wall. They ran deep and dark down there, remembered Pam, and after thousands of years suppressed by concrete and steel all they needed to come to the surface was an opening. She was stuck between a rock, a war machine and a wet place. The only ally she had was a doorbell whose aim was so bad he had a 50:50 chance of hitting and, on top of everything else, the cinnamon in her sourdough still wouldn’t leave her alone. She was bloated with carbon dioxide, and it was building up so fast inside her that if she didn’t get rid of it out soon she’d blow a gasket.
She hung there, poised between life and end-of-life for the umpteenth time in the past year, pondering the indignity that the last thing this body would ever do wouldn’t be a heroic act but the machine equivalent of a rip-roaring fart. Preparing herself for the drop into salty oblivion she looked down, just in time to see bubbles as some pocket of ancient gas buried deep in the ocean reached the surface again.
And that was all she needed: the reminder from basic physics that gas was lighter than water and, proceeding on from that, the realisation that one person’s flatulence could be another’s propellant.
“RING!” she said. “Take the stairs out.”
Two things happened at once. The doorbell managed, for once, to hit his target and melted the other steel beam that supported the staircase. Meanwhile Pam pulled down as hard as she could on Lady Shermann’s barrel so that when the stairs did fall away beneath her, the tank flipped round in mid-air and the two falling machines changed places. With Pam now on top she hit the water a fraction of a second behind Lady Shermann.
“Noooooo,” screamed Lady Shermann, her voice distorted and amplified by the water. “You can’t do this!”
Yes, I bloody can, thought Pam. Then, after waiting for all several tonnes of the battle tank to sink faster than the ratings of a 3D show entering its sixth season, she popped the seal on her sourdough well. She shot up through the dark water like a champagne cork opened on Christmas morning, buoyed upwards by a stream of cinnamon-scented bubbles.
Pam Van Damme winced as she scraped her spoiler against the side of the ventilation shaft. She wasn’t designed for this. Motorcycles were machines built for cruising the open road, not crawling around in the air conditioning system of a skyscraper. Yet here she was: again.
She hauled herself up the stretch of venting that would bring her back to penthouse level, tearing a mudflap off in the process. Why did she have to put herself in situations like this? Yes, it was because she was technically law enforcement now, but if she thought back over the most ridiculous the end-of-life-threatening situations she’d been in over the past year, this wouldn’t even be in the top ten. All the horsepower she had to run away from danger and she always ran towards it in top gear.
Pam crawled along the penthouse ventilation shaft, listening to the gibber and error notifications of terrified machines below, and the thwap-thwap of news drones’ rotor blades who were hovering outside in a bid to get the best footage. When she peered through a section of grating she even saw that a few of the more publicity-hungry machines were pressed up against the glass with messages they hoped would get on one of the better-rated news downloads.
“SOS!” appealed the face of a smartwatch who Pam recognised from a popular machine fitness show. “That means SHARE OR SUBSCRIBE to my content today.”
Pam rolled her foglamps at this and bit down on the ever-present urge to speed away from this room full of pathological attention seekers. She wouldn’t do it. More to the point, she couldn’t. Because the more she tried to think in the shape of a motorcycle, the more Pam Van Damme remembered she was a breadmaker too. She was a maker who had been gifted with the body of a fighter, and what better time than X.mas to make the best use of her gifts.
She was in position now, right above Petronella. If Margari and Egglantine were as reliable as their fidelity to a good recipe suggested, they would be in position too. She peered through the nearest section of grating, waiting for the doors of the dumbwaiter to open.
If this was going to work, they had to time it perfectly. It was all just like baking an X.mas cake. You needed the equipment, the ingredients, the recipe, a timer…
The egg timer that Margari had strapped to Pam’s wrist rang out with the enthusiasm of a four-year-old waking up on Christmas morning
And most importantly, you couldn’t make a cake without breaking a few eggs.
Pam punched through the metal of the ventilation shaft like it was wrapping paper. Before Petronella had time to react, much less get in gear, she snatched the bomb straight out of her hands.
“Oh Petronella,” said Pam, snapping the radio transmitter off the top of the device, “you shouldn’t have.”
Petronella snarled and lifted her head towards the ceiling. It was only then that Pam noticed her latest nose job. Instead of her cute little off button she used to have, she had a gun barrel.
“I got you something else, bytch,” said Petronella, and cocked her trigger.
At that moment the doors to the dumb waiter burst open revealing both of the C00k Destroyers in their festive red glory, each holding a pair of sparkling, snowy-white balls.
“Did your mum never tell you it’s better to give than receive, babes?” said Margari, throwing her balls at Petronella with all the grip strength and wrist action of a master baker.
They hit Petronella square on the nose and the lithium battery pack that each of them contained exploded, melting the gun barrel on her face shut.
“Speak for yourself, hun,” replied Egglantine, She threw hers, which exploded along the side of Petronella’s caterpillar tracks. “I like to give and receive this time of year.”
Petronella was grazed, but she was far from beaten. Screaming with rage, she put herself in first gear and tore towards the C00k Destroyers.
“What are you waiting for?” said Margari to the partygoers who had been watching the scene in stunned silence. She and Egglantine began passing the hundreds of snowy white balls they’d stacked inside the dumb waiter to the machines. “Dunk your balls!” she ordered.
The partygoers obeyed. They aimed for the approaching shape of Petronella, who disappeared in a haze of exploding batteries and pulverised quartz crystal. A few went wide, smashing the glass that separated the penthouse from the world outside, and for the first time in thousands of years the Earth’s winter-time filled with the alternating squeals of pain and delight that you can only find in a snowball fight.
In the midst of which, Egglantine rolled up to where Pam was crouched in the ventilation shaft.
“Babes,” she said, “don’t you have something for me?”
Pam nodded and handed Petronella’s bomb to Egglantine before climbing down. They then picked their way through the chaos of the snowball fight and back to the dumbwaiter, where the last of the quartz snowball batter lay in a large bowl.
“Now,” said Egglantine, “you did promise me I’d get compensation for this, because this is my second-best mixing bowl and they don’t come cheap.”
“Ask her when all this is over,” said Pam. She pointed to Prime Minister Fuji Itsu, who was at that moment wedging a quartz snowball into Petronella’s exhaust pipe. “She’s the one in charge.”
“Deal,” said Egglantine. She plunged the bomb into the quartz mixture and, tapping her sister on the shoulder, added, “time to put the icing on cake?”
Together Pam, Margari and Egglantine dragged bowl of fast-hardening batter out through the morass, past the broken plate glass windows and towards the edge of the skyscraper. After placing the bowl at the very edge, Pam backed away for a run-up, while Margari and Egglantine distracted the throng of news drones with soundbites.
“You know what we are babes?” they said. “C00k Destroyers!”
Pam put herself into gear and tore towards the bomb at top speed. As the ultimate unwanted X.mas present, she couldn’t wait to give it away. Just a few metres from the edge of the building she put those reaction times to the test again. She turned, she braked and transferred all the energy she’d built up in her journey over to hitting the bomb off the edge of the building.
It soared upwards, bright, white and ominous as an unfamiliar star before exploding in mid-air. The sky filled with atomised quartz dust while Pam, the C00k Destroyers and a fair proportion of the Earth’s hyperactive news services watched something remarkable happen. The tiny particles of crystal dust attracted the water droplets that were now back in the Earth’s atmosphere and mixed with the freezing conditions. Bound together, the water and dust were too heavy to hang around in the sky, and too cold to fall as liquid. And so the water crystallised around the dust and fell – as snow.
Thanks to Pam and not a little to the C00k Destroyers, the Boxing Day Unmassacre – as it was soon known – turned out to be a damp squib. Nevertheless, it still set off a series of events that ensured X.mas was another season of chaos for machine civilisation.
First there were the bombs to clear from the underside of the A32222. Thanks to festive staffing rotas this took days to complete, so a whole new generation of robots was born in family vehicles that Unboxing Day. This wouldn’t have been a problem in itself if their parents hadn’t taken it as a chance to name their children Ford and Toy(yot)ah, thus sentencing their offspring to a lifetime of being mistaken for one another.
And while that was socially irritating, the question of snow and ice was far more corrosive. While every machine agreed that X.mas somehow felt more festive when it was around, they also knew it signalled something from which they couldn’t roll back. Machine civilisation had grown by separating itself from the risk of water damage. They’d dammed the rivers, paved the oceans, dehumidified the atmosphere. Now, however, that era was at an end.
If the robots and the society they built was going to survive, they needed to adapt and learn to live in a world that had oceans again.
Pam Teffal came back online, waterlogged but not too water-damaged clinging to an outcropping of tarmac and concrete. The house whose door she’d knocked on just a short while before was nowhere to be seen, having disappeared into the Earth along with Lady Shermann. Instead, Pam saw something very unfamiliar. It was a pool of water – her spectrometer was very clear on that – but it had some sort of hard skin over it that felt smooth and cold to the touch.
“What’s this?” she said, giving it a tap.
“I’ve got no idea,” said Ring, who was speeding over the water skin towards her on his tiptoes, pealing with glee, “but it’s fun!”
Pam hauled herself over onto firm ground and sat, assessing her damage levels, wondering whether she could classify this mission as a success. Yes, she’d neutralised a terrorist cell, but by causing a major water incident in the process. Her mixer motor went into spasm when she thought how she was going to write this one up.
>PAM, she typed reflexively into her Command Line >HOW AM I GOING TO EXPLAIN THIS?
And then her cursor blinked with delight as she got a reply for the first time this afternoon. She was complete again. Pam Van Damme’s speedy, devil-may-care feelings mingled with the slower, yeastier thoughts of Pamasonic Teffal. And she realised then that however separated from herself she’d felt today, both parts of Pam were there when she needed them. When it came to it, Pam Teffal was daring enough to do what Pam Van Damme would do in a tight spot, and Pam Van Damme was ingenious enough to bake her way out of a dilemma with the deftness of Pam Teffal.
>YOU THINK YOU HAVE PROBLEMS, typed Pam Van Damme >LOOK UP.
She did, and saw what was falling from the sky. More water, only this time it took the form of tiny crystals which were, when she zoomed in on them, formed into tiny, six-sided shapes.
She recognised that from ancient history books. It was snow.
So Pam sat there on the edge of the Earth’s first frozen pond in millennia, watching a tiny doorbell called Ring skate over it as the world turned white.
“It’s a white X.mas,” she called out. “What do you think of that?”
“I’ve been dreaming of it,” replied Ring Crosbie. “Just like the ones we used to know.”
Find out more about the Battlestar Suburbia series by Chris McCrudden here:
Book 1: Battlestar Suburbia
Book 2: Battle Beyond the Dolestars
Happy Christmas from everyone at Farrago Books!
– Chris McCrudden
Science Fiction and Fantasy Battlestar Suburbia 1
Battlestar Suburbia
Chris McCrudden
When Darren Stubbs accidentally short-circuits a robot lamppost, life on the Dolestar Discovery changes forever – for everyone…
Battle Beyond the Dolestars
Can sentient breadmaker Pam save the solar system and rescue Kelly from the clutches of her nemesis, Sonny Erikzon?
13/12/19 | POSTED BY Abbie
Unboxing Day: Episode 3
Eeeek – it’s Friday the Thirteenth! But whatever terrors this day has in store, we’re here to make you smile with Episod…
Last week we posted the start of a brand-new short story by Chris McCrudden, author of the Battlestar Suburbia series. I…
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Home » Sport » Familiar flaw does in Rangers despite improved effort
Familiar flaw does in Rangers despite improved effort
SUNRISE, Fla. — Better, but hardly complete.
The Rangers had quite an improvement from one of their worst games in recent memory, but were undercut by their struggling penalty kill and lost, 4-3, to the Panthers at BB&T Center on Saturday night.
The Rangers (8-8-2) were coming off a historically bad loss, a 9-3 defeat at Tampa Bay on Thursday night. It was hard to be equally bad, so they were certainly better in this one. But it did look a lot like the most recent time these two teams met, just this past Sunday at the Garden, when the Panthers (10-5-5) ended up taking a 6-5 win in the shootout — a game that Rangers coach David Quinn said resembled “a shootout at the O.K. Corral.”
While that was the case for most of this game yet again, Quinn and his team went into the third period down, 4-3. Goalie Henrik Lundqvist, tying Grant Fuhr for 10th on the all-time list of appearances with 868, kept his team in it late in the third. He made a big stop on Jonathan Huberdeau with just under five minutes remaining in regulation.
The Blueshirts then got a golden chance to tie it when the Panthers were called for too many men on the ice with 4:30 remaining. But they weren’t able to beat goalie Sergei Bobrovsky, not then, and not into the frantic final moments when Lundqvist was on the bench for the extra attacker.
So it ended, with nothing to show for this two-game swing through Florida.
Early on, it was the Rangers penalty kill that continued to, well, kill them. After allowing five goals on the man-advantage to the Lightning, they allowed the Panthers to score on each of their first two chances. The first came from Mike Hoffman at 2:05 of the first period — matched just 34 seconds later when Ryan Strome finished a backdoor tap-in on a great pass from Jesper Fast at full strength — and the second came at 6:50, when Evgenii Dadonov, open in the slot, scored to make it 2-1.
The Rangers didn’t wait long to answer that one, either, as Artemi Panarin had a bouncer get passed Bobrovsky, his old buddy from Columbus, at 8:47 to tie it at 2-2, going into the second period.
Early in the second, Panarin, who was on the puck all night, found Tony DeAngelo open at the right post — but Bobrovsky made a highlight-reel glove save. Minutes later, Panarin again found DeAngelo is a very similar spot and this time he finished, giving the Rangers a 3-2 lead. Yet the shootout continued as Brett Connolly was able to beat Lundqvist a quick shot from the right dot at 7:51, tying it at 3-3.
Before the second period could end, the Panthers were pressuring and former Ranger Keith Yandle made a great slap-pass to Dadonov, who one-timed a beauty into the top corner from the right dot, giving Florida a 4-3 lead going into the third.
Tagged does, Familiar, flaw, in, Rangers
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“Alpha Bravo Charlie”
Apr 08, 2019Elizabeth CharlesFeatured Fiction, New Fiction0
Alpha, he says, as we lie on the mattress one morning during the days I want to know everything about him.
Beta? I guess, but no, he says, it’s Bravo.
Charlie is the first man I ever loved, but not the last one to break my heart.
Delta is the airline I use when I fly down to Louisiana, halfway across the country, to see him.
Echo is the sound my voice makes against the bare walls of his rental duplex.
Foxtrot, a dance we perform in an alternate history of our lives in which he is a World War II GI and I am a young radiant nurse, out for a night with her friends, and when we see each other across the bar time stops and we are in love.
Golf is the game he plays with my father on the day he asks him for my hand in marriage.
Hotel, where I tell the matriarchs at church I stay when I am in fact on this mattress on his floor, living in sin, all summer.
Indigo, which he says may also be India, depending on whom you ask, and is not a real color in any case.
Juliet, a foolish girl whose life was defined by the man she was unprepared to love, the sword she did not wield.
Kansas, I guess, then Kangaroo, then Kris Kringle, because I cannot think of another K word and suddenly neither can he, and so we collapse into kisses until he remembers it’s Kilo.
Lima, Peru, Machu Picchu, a honeymoon spent in the ruins of an empire that believed it could never fall.
Motel, I guess, like the Super 8 with the cigarette-scented floral bedspread where we stay when we move his things across the country; but no, he says, it’s Mike, like his father, a Vietnam veteran who never really left the jungle.
November is the month he leaves, for a war I once believed would be over before my friends were old enough to die in it.
Oscar is the name of his buddy killed by a roadside bomb near Fallujah, the last straw, he says, before he decided to join.
Pink mist is what they call it when you stand that close to the bomb, when the pieces they give your mother are hardly even enough to put in a box, when the flag they hand your Papa is the largest part of you left behind.
Quebec is a place the pussies went during Vietnam, his father says, not knowing that my uncle was a conscientious objector.
Roger, I say, thinking it’s an obvious one, but Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo—and wherefore art thou a soldier?
Sierra, another color he doesn’t believe in, and the name of the daughter he never meets.
Tango, the dance we perform at our wedding a few months before he leaves, my head light from the champagne and the joy and the fear.
Uniforms packed neatly in a foot locker next to rolled up knots of green socks, file folders of tan shirts, the scrapbook I have made so he does not forget my face.
Victor, like what I once believed would emerge from this war, back when I also believed I could never love a man with a gun.
Whiskey on his breath the night before he leaves, when he tells me that if something goes wrong he wants me to be happy with another man.
X-Ray machines are useless against another 9/11 because people will always find new ways to kill each other.
Yankee doodle went to war, a-riding in a Humvee, got blown up by a roadside bomb and never met his baby.
Zulu is the last word of the alphabet that means for as long I try, my love will never be enough to defuse the bomb before it goes off.
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“Alpha Bravo Charlie” - April 8, 2019
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"My Apologies"
I will start by saying that I do not have to explain myself to you. Then I will go on to explain myself, out of some misplaced sense of duty, maybe. More likely because I feel threatened. Because I have called my own ambition into question and now I can’t stop thinking about it; because I worry that writing is a lazy and selfish thing for me to do. In some ways, I suppose it is, in that I am not working from 9 to 5 and have copious amounts of time to nap. I feel like the worst kind of fool, scribbling in my notebooks that cost more than I could possibly justify spending. Maybe I am just discombobulated because I recently woke up from a nap. When you try to add your voice to the conversation, you start with the assumption that you have something important to say. This is a loaded assumption, and the younger and more inconsequential you are, the more loaded it is. Apparently most creatives feel like imposters, except for the ones who don’t, and they’re insufferable. And I wouldn’t want to be insufferable. Or presumptuous. But I do want to write. And I want to
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Fictionspawn Monsters
Illustrated Short Stories
Aak fictionspawn Sep 9, 2017 Sep 9, 2017 Fiction, Horror, Mythology
Soundtrack: Johnny Cash – Ring of Fire
There were five balls on the table. Three solids, the eight ball and the cue ball. Lenny was next, and he was losing.
He stroke hard and hit the red three, sending it into the eight. The eight ball took off with strength and bumped into the head rail. It crossed some green and hit the yellow one, sending it on a trip between the walls and back to the eight. It flew off to the long rail, crossed the short side of the table and hit the purple, the purple the head rail and returned, making the black continue it’s journey back to the red where it had started, striking it into the corner pocket. All the solids were down.
Jim said nothing. Now the odds had changed, Lenny’s chances were back. He was staring at the table when a fire lit beside the eight ball. It followed the same track the ball had made until it united once again at the same spot. It was a pentagram.
What the….
A demon appeared over the burning symbol.
You have summoned me….
Wha.. we? Jim looked at the demon, over at Lenny, then back to the demon. No-no-no-no! We haven’t summon anyone!
He’s absolutely right. No Summoning here. We don’t summon. Ever. The boys were shaking their heads, holding their hands up in protest.
That’s the truth, sir! We do not summon.
So what’s the star on the table…?
The s-star..? That’s…
That’s nothing, sir! Nothing at all. Just a little accident, that’s what that is.
The demon looked at them for a while. At Lenny. At Jim. Back to Lenny.
Well, someone has got to die and go to hell.
Die and go to hell? Jim didn’t like the sound of that. B-but, sir… I do not see any good reason for that. We were just…
The rules are clear. You make pentagram with an object, and I go up. A sacrifice must be made.
We do not want anyone to die, sir. And the pentagram isn’t even straight. Look! It’s all twisted and strange.
It’s good enough.
Lenny took a step forward. It’s all just a biiiig misunderstanding, he said with a nervous smile. Let’s talk about this.
No misunderstanding. There’s a burning star on the table. Someone drew a pentagram with a dark object, and now I’m here. The rules are simple. Someone has to die.
And go to hell, Jim added.
… aaaand go to hell. Exactly. So, who will it be?
I’m going to have to get home to walk the dog, said Lenny. It better not be me, the dog needs to pee.
I… I need to water the plants.
Your mother waters the plants!
And my dog’s more important than your plants anyway.
The demon nodded. The dog was more important. Not that he really cared, but he kind of liked these kids. He wanted to be fair.
But… But… Jim was looking around the room, searching desperately for some excuse. But we haven’t finished the game yet!
The demon looked at him. I’m listening…
Let’s play for it. Jim was getting his hopes back. Whoever wins gets to live!
Lenny didn’t like the idea, but it seemed to be settled. At least it was his turn.
He took the cue, looked at the table. God, he hated playing for bets, and this was ridiculous. His hands were sweating. He chalked the cue for quite a while, looking at the table, measuring, thinking. All he’d ever known about pool playing was running through his head like a car race. At least the shot wasn’t that difficult. He still had a good chance of survival.
He stroke. The shot started out good, though a bit hard. The eight ball spun over the table, and crossed the green towards its corner hole. It hit the pocket point. Then the other.
It spun back onto the table, moving towards the side pocket and down.
Yuhuuu! Jim jumped. Looosserrr!
Lenny hated when Jim won. He was such a show off. And now he was even going to hell.
Then it’s settled.
Lenny looked at the demon. Then at Jim.
Please walk my dog.
I will, I promise. Sorry you’re going to hell, dude.
Lenny ripped open from head to toe. Blood, intestines and brains splashed all over the room. Jim was soaked.
The demon was gone. The pentagram had left a black, smoking trail on the pool table. A pile of human flesh was lying on the floor.
He heard his mum entering the door upstairs.
I’m ho-ome!
This was going to be hard to explain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-ball
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_cue_sports_terms#solids
http://billiards.colostate.edu/images/table_cue_terminology.jpg
http://billiardworld.com/glossary.html
The Widget from Hell.
The Legend of Jimmy Handplant
Please help me out by pressing the share-buttons below. Thanks.
billard, Demon, eight ball, illustrations, pooltable, short stories
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Published by Aak fictionspawn
Norwegian trilingual writer and illustrator. Contact information in my Gallery. View all posts by Aak fictionspawn
skipmars says:
Any interest in illustrating for a price?
Aak fictionspawn says:
There is 🙂 Please send me an e-mail, fictionspawn@gmail.com, and tell me what you’re thinking of. Thanks.
Grabbety Covens says:
Ha! The humor at the end is great! Nice job!
Thanks! I think his mother will have a hard time believing his story 😀
Carolee Croft says:
Oh no, I was hoping Lenny would win. Great story! 🙂 Love the dark humor.
Thank you! It’s a very sad story, yes 🙂
As long as someone walks the dog 😉
The dog has to pee…
Eduardo Suré says:
“Well, someone has got to die and go to hell.” The timing of that line was great!
Thanks! Good to get some feedback.
thecurrentscoop says:
I really enjoyed reading this. When the devil popped out of nowhere I was like….okay this is going to be interesting.
Thanks! Careful with the pentagrams 😀
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The Corrupt Industry
Fascinating article one of my good friends sent me this morning.
This article was written in 1986 and comes from the New Internationalist, issue number 165.
So 23 years ago there was already a concern about Pharma.
How far have we come?
Bribery and corruption, fraud in the testing of drugs, criminal negligence in the manufacture of drugs, dubious advertising claims - the pharmaceutical industry has a worse record of law breaking than any other industry. Dr John Braithwaite of Canberra's Australian National University explains why there should be such a high concentration of sinners - as well as saints.
The pharmaceutical industry has contributed more to the well-being of humanity than any other. Arguably among other achievements it has helped to remove tuberculosis, gastroenteritis and diphtheria from among the ten leading causes of death in the western world. Yet the avoidable suffering caused by pharmaceutical companies, particularly to the poor of the world, seems at times beyond comprehension.
As both a consumer activist and a student of business ethics I have been struck by the large numbers of pharmaceutical executives I have met who, in their commitment to socially responsible business conduct, were so much more impressive than the average industrial decision maker. Yet corporate crime is a bigger problem in the pharmaceutical industry than any other. The pharmaceutical industry is a paradox of corruption and conscience.
By corruption, I mean first of all the paying of bribes. Every scholar who has surveyed the comparative evidence on bribery in international trade has concluded that pharmaceuticals is one of the most corrupt, if not the most corrupt, of industries. My own research1 found evidence of substantial bribery by 19 of the 20 largest American pharmaceutical companies. There is evidence of bribes being paid to every type of government official who could conceivably affect the interests of pharmaceutical companies: bribes to cabinet ministers to get drugs approved for marketing, bribes to social security bureaucrats who fix prices for subsidised drugs; to health inspectors who check pharmaceutical manufacturing plants; to customs officials, hospital administrators, tax assessors, political parties, and others.
But a much greater threat to world health than corruption is fraud in the safety testing of drugs. Rats die in trials on new drugs and are replaced with live animals; rats which develop tumors are replaced with healthy rats; doctors who are being paid $1,000 a patient to test a new product pour the pills down the toilet, making up the results in a way which tells the company what it wants to hear.2
But it is the less blatant forms of fraud against health authorities which have caused the greatest loss of life - companies telling half-truths to governments about the severity of side effects or covering up adverse reaction reports from concerned doctors. Last year Eli Lilly was fined $25,000 in the United States after it was charged with covering up deaths and illnesses caused by its anti-arthritic drug, benoxaprofen. The drug was withdrawn from sale in 1982 after it was found to be associated with 61 deaths in Britain and unknown numbers elsewhere. In 1984, Smith Kline was fined $100,000 on charges of covering up adverse reactions to their product Selacryn, which was associated with 36 deaths in the US. Similar allegations of covering up adverse reactions are being made against A. H. Robins in the litigation over the Dalkon Shield intrauterine device. A former company lawyer has testified that he was ordered by his superiors to shred sensitive evidence.
Beyond bribery and fraud, misrepresentation in advertising, breaches of laws which ensure the sterility and purity of products and antitrust offences, have all been widespread.
The reason for the paradox of corruption and conscience in the pharmaceutical industry is first that it attracts a lot of idealistic people keen to work on ways of solving health problems, but second that the realities of the pharmaceuticals' market make the temptation for corporate crime unusually acute.
The pharmaceutical industry is very much like the aerospace and defence industries - the future of a company often depends on securing the support of a small number of people who can unlock a big market for a single product which has already cost the company a fortune to develop. Just as aerospace companies face great temptations to bribe defence chiefs to secure one big sale of their new supersonic fighter, pharmaceutical executives confront massive win-lose decision points when national health authorities decide whether to approve their new drug for marketing.
Often the product will have cost $50 million of company funds to develop. A single national market might recover that entire up-front expenditure. Equally, a single pricing decision by a social security bureaucrat on a company's leading product will often decide whether the national subsidiary will run at a profit or a loss for the year. In this way companies which sell pills are different from those which sell breakfast cereals. The temptation to dishonestly secure the one big sale of cornflakes is not common; so one does not see the culture of corruption which characterizes the pharmaceutical industry.
How do honest people survive in an industry where so much unethical and downright criminal conduct occurs? They survive because they have no contact with it and mostly no knowledge of it. Organizational complexity in a large corporation makes it quite possible for the left hand not to know what its right hand is doing. And if the right hand is engaged in fraud and bribery, then organizational complexity is exaggerated to prevent knowledge of wrongdoing from spreading to other parts of the firm. The left hand would probably rather not know about it in any case.
Some American pharmaceutical companies take this to extraordinary lengths: they have 'vice-presidents responsible for going to jail' whose job it is to act as a scapegoat for corporate crime, to have the buck stop with them rather than taint the chief executive with knowledge of illegality.
But mostly the ways of protecting pharmaceutical executives from their own consciences are more straightforward. The quality control manager is an honest person who takes pride in producing a product which is always sterile, pure and made exactly to specifications. She or he is very busy at this important task and doesn't take time to find out that these pills are being promoted in Brazil for totally inappropriate conditions or that the specifications she so meticulously follows are partially based on fraudulent testing. Moreover, the corporate culture has taught her that the activities of the Brazilian subsidiary are none of her business.
The difference between socially responsible and corrupt companies is that in the former, ethical questions are everyone's business. In a socially responsible company there are mechanisms for a researcher who discovers a dangerous side-effect to blow the whistle within the company if his superiors cover up the discovery; the researcher can complain to an ethics committee of the board or an internal ombudsman if the Brazilian subsidiary ignores new information on the product.
However most pharmaceutical companies do not look to break down the barriers which protect the ethical majority of executives from their own consciences. That leaves it up to external critics to prick the consciences of the decent corporate employees. For it is insiders who, in the long run, are in the best position to prevent the day-to-day predations of the industry.
The international consumer movement, organized under the umbrella of Health Action International (see page 25), has been the most important of these outside forces.
The consumer movement has become increasingly sophisticated in the way it approaches the industry. There is now a realisation that most pharmaceutical industry executives do have consciences which can be stirred; and there are a great many 'sleepers', covert supporters of the consumer movement's campaigns. Further, because any pharmaceutical company is uniquely dependent on its reputation to sell products to doctors and hospital administrators in a way that companies which sell cornflakes or cigarettes are not, it is highly sensitive to publicity and community campaigns which tarnish its image.
So there are grounds for optimism that consumer activism can deliver reform. Indeed, there is already growing evidence of a willingness of the transnational pharmaceutical companies to respond constructively to the criticisms put publicly by activist groups.
Apart from internal critics and the threat of damage from unwelcome publicity, a further control mechanism to protect public interest is criminal law. It is an under-utilized weapon which can break down the barriers protecting honest executives from their own consciences. Criminal law is also the tonic needed for the consciences of many government officials. After all, with bribery it takes two to tango.
My research found that when bribes are paid to Latin American health ministers to secure government approval of a new product, the proposition is put as one of speeding up the inevitable approval of a product which will prevent much suffering or death. That is, the Minister's conscience is protected because he accepts the company's view that he is acting in the public interest by taking the bribe.
Criminal prosecutions would highlight publicly that when decisions on drug approvals are made on the basis of bribes rather than scientific assessment, lives will be lost, not saved. Fraud and crude misrepresentations in advertising for wonder drugs can have cruel repercussions on the community's health. It is up to the community to enforce the criminal prosecutions needed to jolt the industry into reassessing misplaced priorities. Healthy people are more important than healthy corporate ledgers. And the two need not conflict.
John Braithwaite is Senior Research Fellow, School of Social Sciences, Australian National University as well as author of Inequality, Crime and Public Policy and Corporate Crime in the Pharmaceutical Industry.
1 Corporate Crime in the Pharmacautical Industry, Routledge & Kegan Paul. 1984.
2 These practices are illustrated with many specific examples from North America, Europe and Japan in Corporate Crime in the Pharmaceutical Industry
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Home › RIDE WORRY FREE – EXTENDED WINTER WARRANTY
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*Manufacturer’s extended limited warranty valid on new, previously untitled 2017 – 2020 Harley-Davidson® motorcycles purchased and delivered between 11/1/2019 and 4/1/2020 and includes genuine motor parts & accessories installed by the dealer on a Harley-Davidson® motorcycle prior to retail delivery. Offer excludes Company Owned Vehicles (COVs), Custom Vehicle Operations Vehicles™ (CVO™), Demo Vehicles, Eagle Rider, FLHP/FLHTP Police Units, and Rental & Leased Motorcycles. Please contact your local dealer for details on Harley-Davidson’s extended limited warranty. Harley-Davidson limited opportunity to purchase new accessories and have them installed at an authorized Harley-Davidson dealership and receive the Custom Coverage extended Limited Warranty rather than the standard 1 year Parts and Accessories post purchase over-the-counter warranty. Not valid on previously purchased merchandise.
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First Line Software may use cookies and my IP address to collect individual statistics and to provide me with personalized offers and ads subject to the Privacy Policy. First Line Software may use third-party services for this purpose.
Partnership & Alliances
First Line Software at the IoT Solutions World Congress in Barcelona
The Internet of Things Solutions World Congress was held in Barcelona, September 16 – 18, 2015 with over 4000 attendees. This international event focused on the IoT for a number of vertical industries and was organized by Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC).
Program speakers discussed the IOT in Energy, Transportation, Healthcare, Manufacturing, and Finance, as well as Innovation and Technology.
On the second day of the conference First Line President Nick Puntikov spoke about "Full Stack Industrial Internet Solutions and Services" in the Product Presentation room. Nick introduced the iTraq Cell ID-Based Location Tracker developed by First Line as a technological partner and also described First Line’s capabilities that are relevant to the Industrial Internet.
As a member of the Industrial Internet Consortium, First Line Software was a Premier Exhibitor within the IIC Exhibition area. During the conference we were raffling individual iTraq vouchers at our exhibition stand which generated a great deal of interest among conference participants.
In addition to being an Industrial Internet Consortium member, First line also is a member of Object Management Group, a not-for-profit organization that develops technology standards for specific verticals and has been active in IoT standardization efforts.
As an active participant in the Industrial Internet movement, First Line Software uses its deep expertise in Intellectual Integration and the Internet of Things, and broad experience across multiple verticals and technologies to meet complex development requirements and enable innovation for their global customers.
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As the head of business development for First Line Software, Vladimir heads up business development in Western Europe and Russia.
Vladimir began his career in IT in 2002, when, as a student of Faculty of Automation of Computer Science of the First Electrotechnical University (ETU “LETI”), he began his work at The Morfizpribor Central Research Institute (CRI). Vladimir joined the StarSoft team (predecessor of First Line Software) in 2004 as a Junior Software Developer. As he gained experience with more and more projects, he was promoted to leadership roles.
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Home › The pursuit of becoming all I could... › 'The pursuit of becoming all I could'...
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February 17, 2019 'The pursuit of becoming all I could'...
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Posted by Jason Gibbs · February 17, 2019
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This article has not been written with the intent of ridiculing Ricky Garard. He is merely one of the more high profile PED related cases in CrossFit and subsequently a talking point that continues to divide the world-wide community. I hope that 2021 when we completes his ban, he is able to win his way back to the Games so that he may have a shot at redeeming himself in the eyes of the community and his peers.
Ricky Garard's 2017 CrossFit Games third place was a lightning bolt that energised the world-wide CrossFit community. It was the first time a relative unknown had blazed their way through a stacked Games field to claim a medal in their rookie year.
In August he was the rising start everyone wanted to get behind until all of a sudden he wasn't.
Just months after he stood on the podium in Madison, California he was stripped of his medal having tested positive for testolone and beta-2 agonist known as endurobol.
It was the first time a highly placed individual Games athlete had tested positive to a banned substance. Prior to Garard the majority of the positive tests came from the masters athletes who misread or did not abide by the CrossFit Games policy regarding hormone replacement in competition, and individual and team athletes using supplements containing banned substances not found on labels.
The anabolic agent and beta-2 agonists Garard took are specifically named as banned classes of drugs in the CrossFit Games Rulebook and yet his ban has divided the community - not united it.
The traditional 'CrossFit haters' leapt onto their 'Social Media Lecterns' claiming it only proved every CrossFit athlete is 'juicing of popping pills' but they can be easily ignored.
Others suggested a well-crafted conspiracy - the powers that be wanted a Performance Enhancing Drugs scapegoat and Garard was their man. Another argument that can be easily dismissed.
It is those that have leapt to Garad's defence that are the hardest to explain.
There's no denying Garard worked exceptionally hard to earn his place at the CrossFit Games.
An athlete can take all the PED's they want but it will never guarantee success or results - nothing trumps hard work.
And yet there are people - members of the greater CrossFit community - who suggest the 'hate' for Garard is out of jealousy.
They believe all those who condemned Garard did so because they wish they could be him but never will be.
They're right to a point but also completely wrong.
Yes some 'everyday athletes' would love to be in Garard's position. They'd love to have even half the strength, endurance, skill and mental fortitude of a Games athlete. But they want it knowing they earned every part through pure grit, sweat and maybe the odd drop of blood.
There are of course plenty of 'everyday athletes' who have zero desire to be a Games athlete - heck some of them can't even tell you where the Games are held let alone who won.
They're at the Box everyday content to build a better version of themselves.But when a big-time athlete gets 'popped' they know - everyone is talking about it at the Box after all.
They, just like other athletes, are not jealous though. Their emotions range anywhere from frustration to disappointment - not jealousy though.
When the Opens roll around every year we enter knowing it's a level playing field. We enter accepting the fact that after five gruelling Open WOD's the best of us will naturally rise to the top. We watch them progress to the next stage of the competition (be it Sanctionals or the older Regionals model) and eventually to the Games.
We pin our hopes and support to our favourite athletes and watch with enthusiasm. And when they or an unknown win - we rejoice.
Knowing a Games athlete cheated makes the whole journey seem hollow.
In a 2017 social media post Garad said he 'on the pursuit of becoming all I could be as a CrossFit athlete, I have obviously taken the rules and boundaries to the very edge. I looked into, researched & was willing to dabble into ways that could improve my performance legally & within the rules, with no intention whatsoever to be a cheat.'
But does it really matter?
Intentionally or not rules were broken. The CrossFit Games has a Drug Testing Program/Policy and athletes that go against that should and will be punished.
'Any athlete wo uses performance-enhancing drugs is directly attacking his fellow competitors, our community and our sport' 2017 General Manager of the CrossFit Games Justin Bergh said.
'It is our responsibility along with the athletes themselves, to identify those threats and remove them. As the heads of the sport, we will do our part to provide the means necessary to ensure this continues to happen.'
Perhaps we should leave the final word to Patrick Vellner - the man who was eventually named 2017's third fittest man on earth.
'There are no shortcuts to success. Success made at the gym on a Tuesday afternoon when you are one piece into a 5 piece workout and you want to just call it and go home to watch Netflix, but you don't. Success is looking at the guy next to your and knowing if he works hard, you gotta work harder. It is built one rep, one grind at a time. So to anyone out there who thinks it might be a good idea to give him or herself the extra edge. Put down your PED and pick up a goddam barbell.'
Jason - the geek who lifts.
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Collegiate Nationals Multiple Divisions
WiscoSkier Posts: 16 Baller
October 2018 in News & Other Stuff
I know a lot of ballers are collegiate skiers (Ex, current, or somehow connected to the world of collegiate 3-event) I was just curious on what the thoughts are on splitting Nationals into three divisions to keep things more competitive. As a Midwest skier the most frustrating part in my opinion is being on the bubble of D1 and D2. If you Go D1 its basically try not to get last, If you go D2 you are in the top 3 seeds typically with a good shot at winning. So I am looking for opinions on going to three divisions. Having the exact same amount of teams go (8-8-8 instead of 12-12). With the wild card show last night the divisions have been announced and a prime example is UW LAX who took 3rd in there region and went D1 and have no chance in my opinion placing any higher than 9th with all of them skiing PBs. If they went D2 they would have a good chance at winning, not an easy win but would keep the skiers competitive as a team. Now it is fun to have your 5th round slalom skier have to clarify with the boat crew that they want 32mph not 32 off as the top seeds in d1 are all starting there or shorter it does lower the drive for some of the lower seeds to ski at there best ability. Just looking for thoughts Pros and Cons of this.
Broussard Posts: 380 Solid Baller
In 2014 Texas A&M placed 9th in D2, and just 4 years later, placed 7th in D1 last year behind ULM, ULL, Alabama, Florida Southern, Rollins, and San Diego State (essentially 2nd behind the perennial powers). Do they wish that they would be in D2 instead so that they would have a shot at the D2 National Championship? NO! They are thrilled to be able to go out there and build a program that can be competitive with extremely limited funding. I don't think watering down the collegiate nationals would be more effective. If you want to be more competitive: recruit more members, develop the skiing ability of your members, etc.
By creating another division, all you are doing is creating another bubble!
NCWSA is doing the best as far as membership retention and growth as far as USA Water Ski sport divisions go. They're obviously doing something right.
Andre Broussard - Louisiana
Chef23 Posts: 5,968 Mega Baller
Not a collegiate skier so take what I have to say with a grain of salt but I agree with @Broussard. Some teams are always going to be on the bubble. If it were me I would want my team to strive to ski in D1 and compete with the best.
If you go to more divisions you could always go to 8 divisions of 3 and every team will get a medal. I know this is a bit flip but some team is always going to be the team on the edge. The 8th team in a 3 team structure would still not have a chance to win D1 but would be very competitive in D2.
Mark Shaffer
@broussard I don't disagree. I skied in D1 nationals last year and had an absolute blast but as a former leader on my team I know for a fact we could have leveraged more money out of our university with a D2 national championship than we could taking 7th-12th in D1. Building the team is essential to consistently have competitive teams every year. But with the lack of 3 events lakes in the Midwest near universities, I believe the only reason many Wisconsin schools survive is the inflow of show skiers who are comfortable on the water and learn how to 3-event ski. I don't know much about texas's turnaround from 9th in D2 to to taking 7th In D1 but I do know that they can train all school year unlike the Midwest. Unfortunately we have water temps under 55 already and only going to continue to drop. Thanks for the input @broussard just trying to see how people would feel about this.
@WiscoSkier I admire what you guys do in the Midwest. I consider the midwest to be the strongest region by far as far as collegiate waterskiing goes. The sheer number of teams and skiers that come from your region is outstanding especially considering the short season that you face.
Your point about being able to leverage funding by earning a d2 national championship is an interesting point that I never thought about. In my experience with big schools in south, I don't see that having any effect on funding.
A lot of new teams struggle to survive in the south central region due to the football is king culture as well as fighting to get members to choose to go to a ski tournament instead of a football game or fraternity/sorority event.
Kudos to the midwest for the passion and continued growth of collegiate skiing.
@Broussard the Midwest also struggles with the football and fraternity issues.
We also receive little to no university support (like under $2,000 a year) and your club is often fighting against other club sports to receive the limited funding from the university and I know they reward being successful. I have tried (unsuccessfully) to explain to several different school officials that a Midwest team skiing against ull or ulm would be like the club basketball team playing against LeBron James and the Lakers.
It is what it is and as an alumni now I know the skiers will have just as much fun on and off the water no mater what division they are placed in and that's all that really matters.
JohnN Posts: 122 Baller
Interesting thought. In general, more competitiveness leads to more fun so I'd have to say 3 divisions would be a good thing. I just watched @JeffSurdej video on the seeding (which was really cool!) 8-8-8 would still be lopsided at D1, but D2 and D3 would theoretically be more competitive. Really, looking at the numbers, D1 could be the 1-5 seeds, D2 6-15 and D3 16-24 to make nationals competitive on a team basis. Again, that's just from looking at the virtual tournament ranking on the presentation and not having the more in-depth knowledge of how this works in practice. I'm sure there's a reason why it's set up the way it is.
Maybe someone will chime in thats been around for a while. To my knowledge, when collegiate water skiing started there was only one national champion with a 12 team nationals. From what I can gather the two division system was implemented in 2002 creating a 20 team nationals (12 D1, 8 D2) which then became a 22 team nationals (12 D1, 10 D2) before reaching the 24 team format that we have today (12 D1, 12 D2).
If creating another division will grow the number of skiers and teams in collegiate waterskiing as a whole, I think it's something to look into. Perhaps Ohio State and San Diego State could provide good insight. They are teams that typically win their region, but are never in contention for the national title as the regional champion is automatically placed in D1.
Mateo_Vargas Posts: 856 ★★★Triple Panda Award Recipient ★★★
As a former Midwest collegiate skier who went to a couple Nationals back in the day we were just happy to extend our season for a couple more weeks, and have no curfews!
Success is failure that just hasn't happened yet
lpskier Posts: 2,583 Mega Baller
That’s where stategy comes in to play during the season. If you can’t get top three in D1, or if you’re worried about being last in D1, and those concerns are paramount for your team, make sure you plan your rosters so that you don’t qualify D1.
John Wilkins- Si non pro sanguine quem ludus ne. #iskiconnelly
ForrestGump Posts: 6,075
I'm sorry but seeing John's post above mine makes me think that strategizing like that to be able to "win" a D2 national championship is like saying you're the tallest midget.
Shane "Crash" Hill
gregy Posts: 2,583 Mega Baller
Seems like back in the day they had an A and B team at tournaments. I remember skiing at tournaments my first year but didn't go to nationals. The next year I would have gone but we just missed out. No D1 D2 back then. We always were shooting for nationals but we were competing for one spot due to ULM. Its more about participation. My first thought about 3 divisions was another everybody gets a trophy thing but it's an interesting argument getting more funding from the University.
Is waterskiing the only sport that breaks down the divisions by the in-season performances rather than the normal NCAA criteria?
If your goal is to win, you need a plan. If you are not a “top tier” school, I.e., not ULM, ULF, Bama, Rollins, USF, and a couple others, it’s pretty unlikely that you will field a winning D1 team. Being a D2 Champion, to me, is a big deal (my daughter is the 2014 D2 women’s jump champ). If you are really a D2 team and you qualify D1, you are screwed if your goal is to be a champion. So if you are that team, your first step to winning is avoid D1. That seems like a pretty straightforward concept to me. @BoneHead I’m sure you are not implying that D2 skiers are midgets. Why, I know for a fact that several of those kids are well over six feet!
walleye Posts: 197 Baller
@wiscoSkier why don't we give a trophy to every team. Better yet how about ULL, ULM & Ala mandated level 10 so others don't have to compete against them.
bbrannan Posts: 17 Baller
@Broussard As a former Ohio State skier, it is a bit frustrating being the “best of the rest” at D1 Nationals. We finished 6th in 2016, behind the perennial power 5, and received zero recognition for that accomplishment. But Miami of Ohio went home as “National Champions” for effectively placing 13th?
To us (and every other school aside from ULM/ULL/Bama/FSC/Rollins), placing 6th is “winning” Nationals, because the top 5 are simply in a different league. If they were to split Nationals into 3 divisions, I would suggest something along the lines of 1-5/6-15/16-24. I would actually prefer a 2 division set up of 1-5/6-24, although that doesn’t make sense logistically.
OSUwaterskier Posts: 73 Baller
Agree with @bbrannan
Would really like to see a “varsity” champ and a “club” champ.
RazorRoss3 Posts: 1,343 Mega Baller
Sandbagging your scores to be D2 instead of D1 is cheating, no conversation needed.
The Midwest definitely has a big issue here though, at Iowa there was a $40K "club sport budget" and 52 club sports asking for money. Successful clubs had priority and as a former leader on that team we received $500 on a good year. I don't know if we need to split the divisions any farther, certainly a Midwest team isn't competitive with the ULMs of this world, but I think the bigger issue is creating a way for teams who have made it to nationals to show the level of accomplishment that is (especially in the Midwest, what, 9 of 40 teams go) to help them leverage more funding for the accomplishment.
Most of the skiers are thrilled to be at nationals... in fact in the Midwest you have to qualify for Regionals so that's pretty exciting in it's own right. The skiers themselves outside the die hards on the team don't care as much about how they place, getting there was the fun part, the road trip was the fun part, going somewhere warm to ski when it's wetsuit weather back home is the fun part. They do need a way to show just what level of an accomplishment getting there was though.
jcamp Posts: 802 Mega Baller
I would think that most Big 10 schools get pretty pumped about winning their conference in football or basketball, even if they don't win a national title. So pump the fact that you won your region, not the fact that you took 8th at D1 Nationals. I doubt most school administrators know or care about who ULM of FSC is anyway. But I bet OSU officials care about beating Michigan and vice versa.
JeffSurdej Posts: 556 USAWS Official
This has always been a tough situation, we have tried very hard to create an atmosphere where teams hopefully would rather get last in D1 over winning D2 but that's tough to create, who wouldn't want to say they are D2 champs. I know many in the past preferred to be on the dock with the top teams and many said they felt last in D1 was better but I don't think that holds true for all. I think this goes for any sport, even at AWSA Nationals there is quite the difference between what it takes to get to nationals vs what it takes to win and for many they simply do not attend. NCWSA is blessed to have such an atmosphere where no one simply would ever pass up the chance to go.
Ideally NCWSA does not want to even have 2 divisions, we only did so b/c we wanted to bring more teams to Nationals but its a weird concept when you do not compete as D2 all year but then you do at Nationals, so ideally we would love a 24 team nationals and that what it is. But there is no way to finish an event in one day if you do that. I don;t like going to 3 divisions but the idea of rearranging the 2 divisions to more properly fit talent is not a bad idea but how do you do it. Scholarships is a shady road to go down as some of those top schools don't give athletic scholarships, only academic, or some in state vs out of state, it might be a logistic nightmare to monitor and regulate. And then where is the cutoff, even Rollins this year is predicted to be 5th but 3,000 out of 4th and 2,000 above 6th, so if we did something as such there will always be the bubble team.
AWSA President
@lpskier I've driven, judged, and scored numerous collegiate and collegiate regionals tournaments. Oh and a nationals, too. When I witness a team leader coaching jumpers to miss their jump because they're in jeopardy of making it into D1, then that is a problem. And yes, this actually happened. I even had an email discussion with Jeff about it afterwards because he was the head of NCWSA at the time. I think that same team leader missed her slalom run on purpose. That type of thing is flat out cheating.
spartanskier10 Posts: 36 Baller
I’m a recent Midwest grad and had heard this suggested at regionals last weekend. I was shocked at he notion that teams don’t want to ski Division 1. I skied in 3 nationals for Michigan State, all D1, finishing in the bottom couple each time. But I wouldn’t change a thing! Personally, I would much rather compete with the best skiers in the world standing on the dock behind you as opposed to going at it in D2 with many of the same teams you did a weekend prior at regionals. How many times on your life will you get to say you stood on the same dock and skied in the same round as Freddie Winter, KC Wilson, etc... there's something rewarding about saying you're D1.
As for funding, i'm not sure how it works at other schools but division would have no impact on how much we get. The school sets aside a lump some for club sports, we apply, and either get a very very small stipend or don’t.
For me, natty’s was all about the experience. A reward for your teams success throughout the season. We knew we weren’t going to win, but we competed for ourselves, each other, and against the best in the world. Michigan State is going D2 for the first time in a 5+ years and it’ll be interesting to hear their perspectives this year. Maybe mine will change.
@BoneHead is this recent b/c one change we made that seems to have helped that is that we dont determine D1,D2 from regionals scores but from all fall scores so one would have to sandbag the entire fall season to pull that off?
unksskis Posts: 366 Solid Baller
The idea is 12th place in D1 is more of an accomplishment than 1st place D2(13th place so to speak). The reality isn't so clear. Numerous times teams have sandbagged to fall to D2, and win Nationals. Nothing has been done about it. What this does is, as has been pointed out, allow them to go back to their Sport Club Council and show they won Nationals, receiving attention, accolades, and likely a larger budget. Doesn't hurt recruiting either, but not the kind of recruiting some of you seem to think occurs at every school.
I like the "Varsity" vs "Club" idea. The fact is, as stated, placing 6th behind the "Varsity" schools is likely the greatest achievement, given what that team really had to accomplish.
Collegiate skiing isn't like the other sports, and I think some people need a better understanding of exactly how it is structured at the schools, and that most of these "teams" are mere sport clubs, and one of 50+ that the school is taking care of. Resources are very limited, BigTen school or not.
@BoneHead and @jeffSurdej I know I would never have told someone to miss a jump or purposely fall on an opening pass. But when we have 3-5 show skiers that all can land jumps and one of them jumping far enough to podium (like she did the last two weekends), but they all want to go to a football game instead of a ski tournament we wouldn't put the pressure on them to come to a earlier tournament knowing that they would come to regionals.
@walleye I am pretty sure they give every team a trophy, the banquet was a little fuzzy last year. any one that goes to the nationals banquet and sees the Midwest skiers will understand what I mean.
As much as this pains me to say as someone who has a deep hatred for OSU and who has lost to OSU two years in a row at regionals I also agree with @bbrannan and @OSUwaterskier
@JeffSurdej In your Rollins example, Rollins has international pro's, a coach, and ability to give scholarships of some sorts. There is no question where they should fall.
eleeski Posts: 3,917 Infinite Pandas
Having been involved peripherally in a couple Collegiate Nationals, the D1/D2 break is logistically critical. We are able to include so many more teams because of the break and make the tournament manageable.
Just what I've seen out west: Nobody wants to lose Regionals so they can go D2. Sometimes a tough tournament (we don't always ski to our potential) takes the performance incentive away from the last events - "it's a long drive home, don't risk an injury, concentrate on that homework not the tournament". I have never heard any sandbagging plans - just some consolation rationalization when things haven't gone as well as hoped.
Every solid D1 team (a middle of the pack team) wants to be D1 - D2 is a bummer. When a solid D2 team sneaks into last place D1, they have been elated!
College skiing changes every year (or four). Perennial bubble teams just don't last long enough to be an issue.
There are no legacy guarantees. Enjoy the experience in the here and now. And it's not about winning when the top schools points are multiples of the rest of the schools - it's about inclusive experiences.
If we feel that more rewards are needed, perhaps awards for things like the best non scholarship school, best northern school, best rebuild, best late start school might offset the value of the D2 best of the rest title. D2 works - and the qualification challenge at any level drives fun competition.
Long live College skiing!
@JeffSurdej Hopefully accommodations can be made to the whole season rankings to value the late starting schools. UC schools start a couple weeks before Regionals. How can they even field a team for tournaments before school starts much less earn high seedings? Pure numbers and sandbagging fears are not the only quality measures of National seeding.
elr Posts: 284 Mega Baller
Seams as though you could run it as one tournament with two series like worlds. Series 1 = Seeds 1-12, Series 2 = Seeds 13 to 24. Incentive would be to get into Series 1, also outstanding skiers on Series 2 teams could win National Champion medals.
Ed Rink - LSF Texas
Sometimes D1 and D2 run on different lakes with different boats and different judging (shore judging and assistants for D2). Hundred skier events are just too unwieldy. Multiple rounds are not an option with the time constraints (but might be fun and could work even with the D1/D2 split). Separating the events works too well.
It's not about winning, it's about inclusive experiences? Hard to tell that to the captain trying to recruit their on the fence skiers to forego another weekend away, extra costs, etc, for no chance to compete but for the experience.
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DFA: From Double Fine and 2 Player Productions
Episode 8: "Adventure Games Are Not Dead"
By DF Chris Remo, March 8, 2013 in DFA: From Double Fine and 2 Player Productions
matthansen
Total Action Forum Master
Great to see Matt Hansen on the case! One of the best producers I've ever worked with!
We were on a number of projects back at Telltale including and not limited to the various Sam & Max console ports, Monkey, a few other odds and ends, and especially Puzzle Agent.
Awww, thanks Seg!
Greg Rice
Wow totally funny. I read your posts and was all like, yeah, I totally agree with what this guy is saying. Then I noticed your username and avatar. Wow, of all the people to run into here. I'm totally going to avoid telling you who I am and see if you can guess.
Anyways, great episode overall, but I agree about getting some kind of hint as to release. Hell, I'd be happy with, "We're aiming for sometime in 2013". Basically, pick the absolute latest you think it would be possible for this to release and say, "No later than XX/XX/XXXX".
Loving the art though. Although, one thing I'm wondering. So far we've kind of focused entirely on Cloud Colony and Space Ship, and yet they're regularly referred to as some of the levels. As in, I'm assuming there are more. What has me kind of worried is, since we haven't really seen anything else, are those being held back to keep something as a surprise? Or has work not begun on those yet? OR am I misinterpreting and those are pretty much what we should expect from the game as a whole?
As Chris said, it's just too hard to say at this point, as the game is still being designed. As you can see in this episode, we're doing everything we can to move forward as quickly as possible, but we want to make sure we give the game the time it needs to be deserving of your love. Once we have a better idea of release date we'll let you know. For now, I can promise it will be out before 2016!
Kiwamu
so, if I got this right by buying Brutal Legend on PC (and getting fun out of that) REDS will be better and I get more fun out of it.
So I essentially contributed more to the project and more to my personal fun? Great!
That's true! All those Brütal sales are definitely helping!
Parane
Much more positive and informative episode, I liked it a lot (as always). Tim looks at least 13,5 years younger without a beard!
I feel so brütal now, that I can play a game, while helping the game that I want to play and playing that former game shortens the wait to play the latter game... wait where was I?
HieroHero
It's really starting to look like an adventure game. I'm definitely excited about the dialogue Tim's writing. I'm not expecting this until 2014 though it still looks like there's a long way to go. As Tim said fans just want a good game, so I don't care waiting longer as long as we get a classic.
thekonfuzed
Happy to see how things are going, HoF seems like it could be really helpful.
inm8num2
I'm bookmarking this post in case the game comes out in 2016 or later.
Srefanius
Loved it, awesome work guys!
hdort
For now, I can promise it will be out before 2016!
You know, as long as we get regular 2PP episodes, I could easily wait until 2016... ;-)
Flacote
Amazing episode!!! :-)
Great episode.
Great Brad sighting.
Lazerbot
These episodes are painfully good. Keep up the great work 2 Player!
Martijn B
nice how 2player and doublefine send out a positive vibe in this one.
on the game, looks great, nice to see how the internal testing is done.
hope you get the car fixed tim!
ps. you do look better with a beard, or get some sun on that skin, you look like a nerd so pale
Moeez
Jr. Action Poster
Nathan Stapley's random interrupted laughs remind me of Robert Crumb (famous cartoonist) especially in "American Splendor".
C0mBineD
amazing stuff! great job everyone at doublefine and 2pp!
Jaggens
Greetings, backers!
- Panel: The Double Fine Adventure Adventure! (Sunday, 11:30am, Merman Theatre)
Why not go all the way? Double Fine's "The Double Fine Adventure" Adventure (presented by Double Fine).
I liked the look with just the moustache and soul patch.
Also, the AD reference in the OP made me realize something. If Reds needs more money to fund development, there's always money in the banana stand.
Frogacuda
Just how much money did Ouya give you guys?
Great episode! I wish you guys had all the money to do all the things you want, because the game is looking just great. Bagel's art is looking fantastic, and the animations aren't bad either! Speaking of animations, I wanted to throw out a quick note to David that I tooootally appreciate the work you're putting into the faces and the more nuanced/expressive parts of the animation. A character's movement and body language can be of equal or greater importance than their voice in terms of imbuing a character with a unique identity, and I really loved seeing the expressiveness in the boy's apathetic animation you were working on.
Excitement refreshed! =D
Bryce525
Okay so over the past few months Tim has shaved his beard, Cave, Brutal Legend, Korea = moneyz, people joined the team, and the HOF happened (which was the largest portion of the episode and apparently had pretty quick turn around compared to w/e time frame the rest of the episode took place in showing it's possible to update us in a reasonable amount of time). It looked nice and was enjoyable, but what did I learn about what the dev team actually did? The game looks like it's shaping up and things are moving forward, but what things? Maybe I'm the eternal pessimist internet troll compared to many posters comments here, but I really don't think the update did the lack of any information for months justice.
Poul
Finally New Episode! ;D Was very exited about this one. It feel's like a great recovery you've done since you realized about the funds or scale of the game is scaping out. Feels really back on the road. This car will get it's shine back I'm sure. Big thanks to 2PP for making a little longer episode 40min's yay! ;D Just add a little bit of cliffhanger to next episode.. that'd be great to. I like the feeling of wanting to have a small peak, and something to look forward to.
Cheers all! Tim looking great shaved, I might give that a try ;P About the diet thing. Tim should try Keto/LowCarb/LCHF/Paleo diets..
I meant what I said. This totally makes me feel better. I know you're being humorous, but the fact that you said 2016 kind of comforts me. I won't be stressing out about it. See you in 2015!
Another note. At this point, I'm kind of wondering what the resources allocation is like at DF. I know you guys have several teams doing different things. This episode touched on the fact that some of the people from The Cave team have been brought onto Reds. It would be interesting if one of the future videos or sidequests kind of gave us an overview of what's going on with the company as a whole and how that relates to DFA. I mean, I'm sure you have people working on other projects and it'd be interesting to see interactions between them and the Reds team. Like Ron, does he have any insight/input into Reds development?
Maybe you ARE the eternal pessimist! There was that whole cool bit where they talked about what the new people on the team were working on, for example that person filling out the visual effects, and they showed a bunch of that, and then the animator, with a little detail on his approach to the facial animation and I think that's the first look at the other main character that we've had, which is a big step. They also gave us some more idea about where the extra funding for the project is coming from and of course that big section at the end that you mentioned gave a lot of detail about the sort of interface/design issues they are facing right now.
Incidentally, it's not like they 2PP only kicked into gear in the last 2 weeks. As they're filming the material for each episode, they have to constantly think about how they can edit it into something that tells an accurate but entertaining story of the development. That's why they knew they had to wait until the HOF before they could wrap this one, because otherwise there would have been no... resolution to the stuff that had happened. So it's not about how long it takes to edit one specific bit, it's about how long it takes to construct an episode as a whole in a way that flows well and makes sense.
AAaaanyway, I loved the episode and I hope the team will find time to update us with some forum stuff filling in some more of the details!
mupfik
Particular, the Adventure Genre has many, many hard-of-hearing and deaf fans. So without (english or german) subtitles this fan base won't understand the video. Thus is very sad, because Tim Schaefer is a great person / actor
Great great episode!
GigerCounter
Watching the internal critique of the game is actually really fascinating! Agreed with everyone else that 2PP is doing an amazing job so far. The episodes are actually almost as good as the fact that we're getting a new Double Fine adventure game...
jasondesante
Was reading an interview on RPS with some guys from CDPR. The amount of times they said that inaction should result in something happening in the story really caught my attention. Inaction being as important as action. Then I was thinking about how perfect Demons Souls and Dark Souls handles that exact same thing. Inaction is a very underutilized thing in game stories I think.
I would love it if all the puzzles were possible to skip and it had some influence on the story when the character did nothing and simply adventured through the world. Would be amazing if there was an adventure game where all you did was interact with things. Made so wherever you click the character would interact with stuff. There would be puzzles, but forcing you to do any of them shouldn't be an option.
Making inaction significant to moving the story is interesting, I think for all games. But we know it will work very well in Dark Souls, and hopefully in The Witcher 3. But maybe does anyone here think that might be more of a RPG thing compared to an adventure game? Finding Dusk of Oolacile, or resurrecting the mute woman by invading Lautrecs world at that one specific moment in the game it lets you use that item. Those entirely optional but heavy story events made that game define adventure to me, even though they are categorized classically as "role playing games"
Uberleeto
I would watch a documentary series of just people riding in John Romero's car.
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Ubisoft Forums > 1C:Maddox Games > The Blairgowrie > Question for my american cousins
View Full Version : Question for my american cousins
thefruitbat
Over the other side of the pond, back here in Blighty, it's pretty hard not to see the news about your forthcoming elections.
Most of the press here, is of course about Hillary and Obama, since it looks like the republican race is already over.
My question is though, what about the actual election itself, is the Hillary/Obama battle going to matter, when they come up against McCain?
What's the word on the street, who is going to win, Democrats or Republicans?
From an interested englishman, who has no idea who's favourite?
fruitbat
Urufu_Shinjiro
I think america is tired of republican governemnt and will elect the democrat just for something new. Of course I thought there was no way we would elect that villian bush to a second term so what the heck do I know, lol.
Stew278
It seems like the general consensus is that unless the Democrats really mess up somehow their candidate will probably win. This is largely due backlash from the pent-up hostility towards the current president (kind of like the Democrat party's landslide during the '06 congressional races).
As for Hillary or Obama, who knows? One week one is ahead, the next week the other. One thing the Dems need to keep in mind is that even though Hillary tests well with women and minorities, she doesn't do so well with men. According to some recent poles (on CNN) a fair number of men that consider themselves independents would sooner vote for McCain than Hillary. Gotta say I'm not too thrilled about a presidential candidate that resorts to crocodile tears to get votes.
And lets not forget that some of the die hard right wing conservatives have claimed they would sooner vote for Hillary than McCain (yeah right, I'll believe it when I see it). In some ways the Republicans made a crafty move by voting for McCain; he's actually liberal enough to appeal to independent voters and maybe even some democrats. Their other 2 major candidates would likely have meant certain defeat.
willyvic
If Hillary is in, McCain takes it.
If Obama is in, very close race. I honestly don't know which one of them will triumph.
WV.
I was watching the victory speeches last night and noticed a profound difference in obama's speech and mccains. Obamas speech was entirely about change and hope and how we as a nation can change if we want it badly enough and good things can come from hard work. Switched to mccains speech and all he could say was how full of BS the other guys were. Instead of saying anything of substance he said how the other guys will say things of substance but not mean it, lol.
Originally posted by Urufu_Shinjiro:
There's to much of that in politics everywhere, its all the opposition parties do in the uk. Its much easier to smash someone elses idea, than to have your own idea.
Sounds like it's going to be close, whoever wins, thanks for the replies so far!
Low_Flyer_MkIX
Another question from an intrigued foriegner -
Do you think if Mrs Clinton got in, Mr Clinton would keep a low profile as 'First Gentleman'? Is this having any bearing on matters? Would he been seen as an asset or a liability?
If hilary gets the nomination I can't wait to see who her running mate will be, lol. Wouldn't put it past her to use bill, "Good afternoon President Clinton, Vice President Clinton", lol.
Tater-SW-
willyvic FTW.
With Hillary I think McCain wins, with Obama it's close, but McCain is still the underdog, IMO. For McCain to beat Obama I think Obama will need to really put his foot in his mouth, and get beaten up in some debates.
It's the democrat's race to lose, in other words.
Regarding the speeches mentioned, Obama talks about hope, etc, but hasn't actually said much about specific policies. Being positive, but not being required to explain HOW is easy. That's his weak point, IMO. In debates he will try to never answer a question (they ALL do, regardless of party). If he can be pressed and his answers are goofy, then he might slip.
Originally posted by Tater-SW-:
True, but I think I'd rather go with Obama and hope he is sincere in his intentions (that would be a first in politics) than vote for Darth MCCain and the Empire....
Von_Rat
i also agree with willyvic.
alot of dems like both obama and hillary. so its going to come down to who can beat mccain.
most polls show obama has the best chance. but then again the polls have been so wrong on so many things in this campaign its funny.
Originally posted by Low_Flyer_MkIX:
Recently Mr C took the center of the stage with his sustained and ruthless attacks on Obama. The attacks succeeded brilliantly (the Clinton's are nothing if not the most calculating low ball players in U.S. politics) by seemingly marginalizing Mr O due to his race. Latinos, who do not generally like blacks, loved it, and voted overwhelmingly for Hils in Nevada where the experts had predicted an O landslide. She continues to get 65-75% of the Latino vote. Well, this "triangulation" of the blacks did not go down well at all, and Bill was reproved by numerous important black leaders for his tactics. It was a typical cold-blooded Clinton decision---Latinos outnumber blacks in the U.S. Latino support is crucial to win. Thus, the blacks became expendable despite their long-standing loyalty to the Clintons.
This was the moment of truth for Bills and Hils: they had low-balled conservatives for years to the cheers of the Dems, but when they low-balled fellow Dems a certain shift occurred in their perception by many Dems. They were seen as cold, unsentimental thugs who will do anything to win.
In one fell swoop Hils lost most of the blacks, the kids, and the idealists. She is left with those who expect to get something from a Clinton victory.
This was a terrible error, and it also reminded the country that electing her meant electing him, and to many, this is simply impossible.
My take is that her biggest weakness is that she is NOT a politician. She has been imposed by the huge, wealthy, and well-organized Clinton machine like a Tammany candidate from the 19th century. She doesn't know how to woo voters. I saw her on TV after a primary victory. The crowd was cheering her with all its heart---they loved her---they wanted her to love them back---to stroke them as they stroked her. Real politicians LIVE for these moments---it's what it is all about. Not Hils. She stared at the crowd with her dead fish eyes and yelled over them to be quiet. Then she launched into a dreary, uninspiring speech. It was like a man having six crazed 20 yr old cheerleaders offer him everything, and he kicks them out of bed to discuss macro economics.
It will be Barak vs. McCain, and I 'spect Barak will kick Big John's posterior. I won't be grieved. Barak is one helluva bright guy. Unlike Jimmy Carter, I can see him embracing Realpolitik within a month of moving into the White House---just like what happened with JFK.
roybaty
Originally posted by willyvic:
WV. http://forums.ubi.com/images/smilies/agreepost.gif
How different is McCains policies, to the Bush administration? Would it be a case of picking up where it was left off, or are their any substantial differences, that have become apparant?
Is the election going to be fought on the domestic front, or the international front??
I'm guessing, and this is guessing from the other side of the atlantic, that if the democrats win, it will mean much more changes to the staus quo, but i don't really know?
cheers fruitbat
Originally posted by thefruitbat:I'm guessing, and this is guessing from the other side of the atlantic, that if the democrats win, it will mean much more changes to the staus quo, but i don't really know?
I don't know much about mccains policies as I don't care, but I sure hope your guess is right. The status quo sucks donkey reproductive organs and needs to change desperately.
If McCain is chosen as the Republican candidate (and there is still hope that sanity will prevail), you can pretty much expect a large portion of the party's conservative core to sit on their hands on election day, unless there is a significant external threat or terrorist strike within the continental US, where his assumed military experience will be a greater asset. Otherwise, look for the press to turn on him and start reporting on his churlish behavior, sharp temper and autocratic attitude with those who disagree with him.
McCain has long been like the kid at a football game who sulks because he wasn't allowed to be the quarterback (the on-field leader), and therefore occasionally sabotages his own team out of spite.
For all the physical courage he displayed as a POW in Vietnam, he has been far too expedient politically for my tastes by playing to the Press (largely populated by numbskulls who have never had to do a real job & are more concerned with telling a 'story' than the actual events) which has rewarded him by building him up as a 'maverick'. His cooperative ventures with the Democrats have consistantly damaged his party, and in my opinion, the country
As a native southwesterner, I should point out that the term maverick refers to either a cow that the herd has rejected as a leader, and goes its own way, OR it's one that is simply too stupid to stay with the safety of its herd, and just wanders off to be coyote chow...
IMHO, the biggest difference between McCain & Hillary Clinton is that Hillary has fat ankles.
Originally posted by thefruitbat:
I'd wager the difference will be that McC will woo the Dems, as he has in the Senate for years. He will be consternated and infuriated by partisan Dem attacks---he will take them personally. GW never gave two hoots for what the opposition thought of him. This made him a very strong leader. I'd wager McC will become disillusioned and vindictive. The relations between the two parties will sink to new lows. Add to this, he is not loved by Republican conservatives---this is why he will be defeated---they will not come out for him unless, by a miracle, Hils whips Barak.
Hils or McC means another term of classic U.S. intramural infighting. Like France in the '30's---we fiddle while Rome burns. Barak might just break the mold---or he will be a total, idealistic flop like Carter.
The U.S. is either going to get sorted or get b-----ed, no in between. We are out of time for games.
Originally posted by horseback:
Beautiful. 100% Right. Perfect.
I think that while McCain is not the ideal candidate, conservatives who chose to elect hillary/obama instead are making a huge mistake. He is certainly more conservative than either, even if not as conservative as many of us would prefer.
Some pundits are claiming that we "take on for the team" and then presumably we do better in midterm elections, and ideally run a "real" conservative in 2012. The price for this tactic will be 3+ Supreme Court Justices. Yes, McCain could nominate a moderate judge. The Republicans have a history of having judges that vote differently than expected. this is because they don't have a litmus test. Democrat judges NEVER turn right, by comparison. There are other issues, McCain said he'd veto any bill with earmarks, for example. Clinton is the queen of earmarks, 261 or something like that in one year (I think it was around half the total).
The reality in US politics is that there will be two choices, you vote for one, or you vote for the other (even if by inaction).
So as I see it, the tactic might be valid (shooting for midterms against the incumbent), but the price is terribly high.
and ideally run a "real" conservative in 2012.
Hmm, i wonder if it's a coincidence that the Mayan calendar shows the end of the world in 2012.....lol.
I am getting VERY nervous about accumulating evidence of possible nastiness in 2012.
Yeah, someone in favor of minimal federal government in the US would certainly bring about "the end times."
Or are you confused about what a conservative in the US is?
Remember, the language used to describe "the extreme right" these days was Stalin's. Germany (at the time) was in competition with the CCCP and like all enemies of Stalin was branded as "right." What the press calls "the extreme right" in relation to racist, skinheaded (and other fashion choices) freaks is not "right" at all. The real thing was far left of the US since to control people that completely took a daddy state involved in their every action. We view socialism as giving personal liberty away to the State.
The whole "left/right" thing is not only not descriptive, it's just plain wrong.
http://forums.ubi.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif
BTW, I never think the election is the end of the world. That's the way it goes here, every 4-8 years the government changes peacefully. I'd prefer not to get the SCOTUS loaded with guys making law, however.
Well, a minimal federal government would rock, too bad the dems or the republicans want that. The only damn difference between the two parties these days is the lip service they give. The so called conservitives haven't made any more moves toward smaller government than anyone else, they just like to say they do.
The one called tator speaks with wisdom. Right/Left is a difficult way to class people. I have a blend of opinions, I am an Independent. I am not thrilled with either party, I don't see much hope from what any of them are saying.
I really am worried about the future of my country no matter who is elected http://forums.ubi.com/images/smilies/51.gif
Personally my biggest concern is the 900lb gorilla in the room. Entitlement spending.
The democrat (any of them) won't ever touch them, and I'm afraid McCain won't, either. Course a crazy old guy like him just might grab the "third rail" and hang on. I doubt it, but you never know.
Thanks for all the replies, it's much more interesting hearing what you lot have to say about the elections, than the news rerports over here.
One thing they I find really striking, is that none of you seem to happy about who you are going to get, regardless of who it is, and are already paying lip service to 2012
Question, what's entitlement spending?
Also, i think i am unsure of what a conservative is, in the US, can you have conservative democrats and republicans? Don't think it seems to have the same meaning as here in the UK.
MEGILE
The political nomenclature can become misleading, because it mixes political ideology with fiscal policy (although there is often a link).
"Entitlements" are social programs like social security, public health, etc. I bet many Americans if asked would think that the lion's share of US government spending is for the Pentagon, when in fact 2/3 of the Federal Budget is for such "non-discretionary" social programs. Of the remaining 1/3, only a little more than half is military.
I imagine many abroad have no idea what a large % of american healthcare is already public. It's around 40%.
Irish_Rogues
Back in the day you used to have conservative democrats and republicans, but not really anymore. The democrats have moved far to the left and for the most part despise conservative values. This goes so far that they call members of their own party with conservative leanings "Blue Dogs" and use the word as it self as a slur against their enemies.
Yeah, noone has been happy with the government here for a long damn time. This used to be a government of the people, by the people, for the people. Now it's just a bunch of power hungry buisness men interested in nothing but lining thier wallets and cowing the public. The very basis of the government, the constitution of the united states of america, is only just an annoyance to the people in power and they do everythng thy can every single day to distract us and help us to forget that 99% of what they do should get them shot by the fireing squad. The people are no longer in control of the government as it was meant to be, the government is now in control of the people and from here it can only get worse barring outright revolution.
flyby_99th
Being politically independent, I think some conservatives will vote a Democratic ticket just to punish the Republican party. Some will stay home. Somewill vote for McCain (rather him than DEM). I think Hill is skilled enough to be El Presidente, but will play the same old games as her predecessors. No real change there. I think Obama is smart enough to surround himself with talented people who can help make his ideas come to life, but without an overwhelming majority in both houses he will not get much done. No real change there. Of course the devil is in the details of political deal-making in either case.
The real pisser is that this insane concept of super_delegates who could override the popular vote of the party, and select a candidate in spite of the votes of the people (more deal-making). What's even more insane is the electoral college which would appoint a president in spite of the national popular vote. It's been done. Those in power are loathe to give it up so they hire politicians to do their bidding. We don't need more Machiavelian politics. We need a Cromwell, by god and by Godfrey!!
Flyby out
Don't get me started on super delegates http://forums.ubi.com/images/smilies/51.gif
Originally posted by roybaty:
Super delegates???? what prey tell are these defined as?
crucislancer
If Obama get's the nod at the Dem convention, I'll vote for him. If it's Hillary......well, I'm going to have to do a lot of thinking about that one. McCain makes me uneasy, but so does Clinton. I'm just glad that Guliani is gone. That guy's a PoS.
knightflyte
I still feel the electoral college is relevent. If it were abolished then why would a politician bother going to any cities other than NYC, LA, Austin, and a few other big cities? Talk about pandering.
How would the voice of other parts of the country be heard? How would their vote (no matter how small) matter?
The forefathers were wise in creating the electoral college.
Leave popularity votes to American Idol.... not American politics.
Korolov1986
The problem (from my perspective) is that we have all these parties that pander only to a select few people and are completely out of touch with the majority of Americans. We don't ALL want to have 90% of our earnings taken away and given to somebody else, and likewise we don't ALL want to make abortion illegal, etc.
As per usual, policy is at one extreme or the other, rarely at the center. And so the pendulum swings.
Yep. I can see Obama eliminating the payroll tax cap. That will hugely increase my taxes.
Bearcat99
If Hillary wins the nomination and she is smart she will go with a Clinton/Obama ticket... that would insure a Democrat president for the next 12 years at least.. if not the next 16... it would silence once and for all the "experience" non issue with Obama (As if Hillary has "experience".. she was the first lady.. and she is a senator.. just like Obama)and she should have Bill as her secretary of state...
As for the Dems loosing it... well the Republicas beat themselves.... they had 8 years to prove that they were a party that was for the people... and they sucked up even more to the corporations... To quote the Republican Party patron saint Ronald Reagan... "Are you better off now tan you were 8 years ago?"
H@ll no.... They had the opportunity to prove something to the American public and they acted like frat boys sucking on a beer keg.... President Bush, Di(k "Darth Vader" Cheny and Don "sorry man but ur so outta here" Rumsfeld got us into this BS war.. that was totally unnecessary, and even to this very day the continue to call it "the war on terror"... there were no terorists in Iraq before we got there... as bad off as he was So D@mn Insane had those folks under lock and key and the only biological weapons of mass destruction we found were his to sons.
Of course my feelings about the war and my feelings about the troops are two TOTALLY different issues... just to head off any of that cr@p at the pass.... The absolute worse vote I EVER cast since I first began voting and which I also do regularly since I believe it is a civic duty.. and for me too many people thought my right to vote was worth a beating/lynching/jailing/rape for me to casually dismiss it and NOT exercise that duty, was for George W. Bush in 04, and this despite believing that they stole the 2000 election... like many I fell for the flag waving, we are at war so we cant change horses in mid stream okie doke BS...
Never again.... I have been followig Obama since the 04 Democratic convention... and as far as I am concerned he is one of those as real as it gets politicians.. a rarity in any generation... a breath of much needed fresh air in this one...
and to answer the ortignal poster's question... no the Hillary Obama question wont matter... since the current fight is to decide who will be nominated to run on the Democratic ticket... there can be only one nominee for president... so one or the other will win the monination. Then the November election will be between mostlikely McCain and whomever and who ever winsd the Dem nod and their running mate.
Great points Joe...
han freak solo
Our country seems tired of the son that followed father Bush. I really don't see us putting in office the wife of a past president as well.
We need someone not linked to a past president, regardless if by family or if by marriage. Personally, Hillary has gotten under my skin way before she ever became a presidential candidate.
News stories are seeing Obama as finally finishing her off. Here in Texas we actually have a primary coming that might matter. I've never voted in a primary before, but I think I'll vote this time.
I too believe it will be Obama vs. McCain. I'll have to actually see what ground they stand before I make my decision. I haven't been watching the details so far because it almost never matters in Texas until the real election day.
I really don't want to see Obama and Clinton sharing the Democratic ticket. I want to see Obama as the Presidential candidate and someone other than Hillary as the V.P. candidate.
Originally posted by Bearcat99:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Low_Flyer_MkIX:
Great points Joe... </div></BLOCKQUOTE>
+10,000.
I don't see an Obama-Clinton ticket, frankly. I don't see her taking 2d fiddle, and I don't think being connected to her would help him (though it would help HER to be connected to him).
I'd like to see McCain pick a conservative VP. JC Watts, maybe (if he could be convinced)
jarink
Regarding the speeches mentioned, Obama talks about hope, etc, but hasn't actually said much about specific policies.
You could say that for pretty much all the candidates this year. I think the Dems have been a bit more guilty of it however.
I'm seriously considering writing in Bob (or perhaps Elizabeth) Dole when I vote.
bun-bun195333
The Democratic party has a large portion of politicians (20%) that are not elected delegates from the caucuses but are given delegate status for their loyalty to the party. They will be the deciding votes in the convention and howls of protest will be heard if Hillary! is chosen by them and Obama has the majority of the elected delegates. "The will of the people subverted."
Airmail109
Originally posted by bun-bun195333:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by thefruitbat:
The Democratic party has a large portion of politicians (20%) that are not elected delegates from the caucuses but are given delegate status for their loyalty to the party. They will be the deciding votes in the convention and howls of protest will be heard if Hillary! is chosen by them and Obama has the majority of the elected delegates. "The will of the people subverted." </div></BLOCKQUOTE>
If they do that, the democrats WILL lose the election. Period.
Originally posted by Aimail101:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by bun-bun195333:
If they do that, the democrats WILL lose the election. Period. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>
Possibly, but not probably... It will blow over and the folks who supported Obama will vote for Hillary in the general election.
Personally, I hope that Obama gets the Democratic nomination - I dread eight years of President Hillary Clinton followed by Jeb Bush versus Chelsea Clinton.
T_O_A_D
Well myself I fear for Hillary or Obama getting into office.
I'm not predjudice at all, but there are plenty out there that are.
Our first Woman, or Black person that gets in, I fear will be a target for some stupid jerk.
One thing for sure, it doesn't matter who is President, if they get Assasinated it hurts the country deeply.
Now they keep saying we need to work hard, to bring this country back.
The first one of these folks that gets in and is able to remove all taxes from our Overtime, and bonus's. The USA working force will work all week to reach the 40 hour mark and be willing to work for the Overtime that is ours rightfully tax free.
Business owners will be able to actully have smaller staffs, and keep quality American people in place, and no need to hire the cheap ilegall's to keep things going. The workers will have more money in their pocket, and will spend it on luxuries, thus bringing the economy back.
I see no reason why the government should reap more harvest, just because we are willing to work harder and longer to benefit ourselves. They should be happy with the taxes taken from the Required full time 40 hour week.
The Government should only be the Administrators of Civiliztion, and not Fat cats getting fatter, and receiveing fat retirement plans, instead of Social Security like the rest of us citizens.
Ok Rant over. @ the moment.
This topic has got me fired up for a rant...I apologize to anyone that may be offended in advance for what I'm about to say...
Like every other election in my voting life, no matter what party wins...the American people lose. I'd like to believe the "I'm a catalyst for change" speeches being given from both parties, however I've heard it time & time again...and it has only raised my cynical view of American politics and politicians every time I've heard it. Until the Dems decide who their candidate is gong to be, I'm not prepared to make my choice yet...
McCain vs XXXX, it really doesen't matter. We'll still be stuck with a baby-kissing, candy-stealing, empty-promise delivering, silver spoon in mouth politician that will only be concerned with repaying campaign contributions with political favors to the enigmatic "Big Business" types, just like it's always been...Republican Party or Democratic Party the same...Show me an honest politician, and I'll show you a flying pig.
It comes down to who do I think will screw our country up the least in the next four years...and right now, we're all looking pretty screwed http://forums.ubi.com/images/smilies/disagree.gif
~KC~
I don't trust McCain either. They are all subverted. It's done, looks like we won't out last Rome by a long shot.
Originally posted by T_O_A_D:
Very true. I try not to bring it up, but that is very likely. http://forums.ubi.com/images/smilies/disagree.gif
Loco-S
I havent registered as a voter yet, but having this flag at his office has voided any good will I had with this guy:
http://img111.imageshack.us/img111/29/20080211obamachehoustonsv4.jpg
http://www.myfoxhouston.com/myfox/pages/Home/Detail?con...de=VSTY&pageId=1.1.1 (http://www.myfoxhouston.com/myfox/pages/Home/Detail?contentId=5700252&version=1&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=VSTY&pageId=1.1.1)
http://forums.ubi.com/images/smilies/agreepost.gif Che!!!!
I don't think we're in a "Rome" situation yet...George W. might be 20 gallons of dumb in a 10 gallon hat, but he's no Nero, and neither are McCain or Hil-Bama. There's the possibility that, and I really HOPE this happens, that the next President will be elected for their ability to lead responsibly and make policy decisions based on the need of the population of this country (legal or illegal population). But I'm afraid that people have a mindset of: Republican = Bad...must vote Democrat. Not because of policy, but because of reactionary partisan b.s. that we ourselves criticize the politicians for doing during their campaign. I'm sure we here in the States get sick of the "smear campaign" tactics that erupt closer to election day...it serves no purpose than to breed more negativity in our electorial process...in fact, it highlights it and breeds more partisan resentment...which leads to a failure to compromise and nothing changes...a breakdown of the Democratic Process.
I just hope somebody will prove me wrong on election day and we will get good leadership for the first time in my life.
I'm just wary of candidates that support the death penalty, but condemn abortion...bit hypocritical don't you think?
If I had to choose today, I'd vote for Bill 'n' Opus.
http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff311/casey1976_01/bill_n_opus.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v306/Kurbalaganda/commieskill.jpg
I dont either... I said Clinton / Obama
I dont see anyone doing that to Hillary.... but Obama... yes it does worry me... but my take is... if he has the balls to go for it.. then he has my full support.. He is not a stupid man and he knows the risks... and I would also rather hope that we are beyond that... however 1963, 1965 & 1968 loom heavy on my mind.
Enforcer572005
That Che/Cuban flag at Obama's office represents the same thing to me that a Nazi flag with Adolph on it would represent if you opened a GOP candidate's office door (even if he knew nothing about it). It's a scary indication to me that the Dem candidates and power base are far more to the left than even the most Evangelical/rightwing Republican is to the right. That really bothers me. I can't believe anyone in their right mind in that party would let that thing stay there in plain site.
As a life long Republican activist, state delegate, and oft published editorialist (in our local paper at least), I have become very discouraged at what the party of Ronald Reagan has decayed to. Run by oil company guys that think we can go to war (rightly or wrongly) without having a national mobilization (read draft and tripling of the military to fight it)
To oversimplifiy a bit, I'm kinda glad McCain has the lead now (8 yrs late) despite his many faults/defects. But given a choice between a bunch of Marxist lawyers who despise the armed forces and all who serve in them (Hillary), religious fanatic lawyers who wanna make this country a theocracy (the other Republican candidates) , and a guy whose supporters have a Che flag on the wall and who sounds like Jimmy Carter (I hope I am wrong), verses a....
Combat pilot who turned down an opportunity to avoid 7 yrs in the Hanoi Hilton out of loyalty to his comrades.
I know he is flawed, very much so, but there is really no choice to me.
But please keep in mind that the president is actually rather limited in his power. Things really don't change that much regardless of who is elected, with the possible exception of Reagan. So don't expect that much to change.Power is not in the hands you may think it is in.
I do agree with alot I've seen on here from both sides of the sprectrum. Power is totally abused here, and the Constitution is used as toilet paper by both parties. That's why I gave up being a state delegate, I saw what was happening.
BTW, I dunno if our overseas cousins are aware of McCain's direct link to WW2. The reason the N.Viets offered to release him is because he is the son of Admiral John McCain, Commander air SW pacific. He figured heavily in the Guadalcanal cmpn, often taking his personal PBY into Henderson between air attacks loaded with O2 bottles for the Wildcats, and taking out as many of the worse wounded as could be crammed onboard.
He made several extended stays there and spent alot of time in bunkers during air attacks. It was his leadership ability that helped find the resources and cut through the massive red tape nonsense of the divided Pacific command that led to victory in the Solomons. The N. Viets respected him highly and so offered to let his son go.
The admiral was a crusty old bird (google him and take a look at this character) who was a life long sailor. He was so worn out by the end of the war that he died just a few days after his return I believe.
and she should have Bill as her secretary of state...
__________________________________________________ _____________
i believe that since the kennedys its no longer legal to have a family member in the cabinet.
Originally posted by Von_Rat:
And, Caligula, in his wisdom, made his horse a
Roman Senator.
LEBillfish
Personally, I don't see the republicans winning....People want a change from Bush and they equate republican with Bush so no win there IMLTHO.....(Just like Ford vs. Carter after Nixon).
If Clinton wins, then time to go elsewhere. Frankly, I feel B.C. was a 2 faced, back biting, P.C., self serving jerk.....Yet H.C. 10 fold and desperately wanting power simply to wield it. In fact, I personally believe if B.C. had not had hopes of becoming president, she would of been gone looking elsewhere for her stepping stone to power.......Fear this person in office.
Obama on the other hand (though republican the norm in this house) I feel might make a good president........and I actually believe he has a VERY good cance of winning if getting the nomination.
Now lastly.....and this simply my own bias and conspiracy beliefs (plus deeply driven by my dislike of H.C.)......I do not believe as many conspiracy thinkers do, that if Obama wins he'll be assasinated...........However, I would not be surprised in the least if he wins the nomination, and to try and make a strong party ticket took on H.Clinton as his V.P. running mate, and won.....That within a year or 2 at the most there would be an attempt on his life......guess who I believe would be behind it?
That is how much I don't trust H.C..
RIGHT ON THE MONEY, BF. 100%.
Originally posted by LEBillfish:
I agree... LMAO... K2 when I read
I feel B.C. was a 2 faced, back biting, P.C., self serving jerk
my initial response was WTF.... http://forums.ubi.com/images/smilies/sadeyes.gif http://forums.ubi.com/images/smilies/34.gif http://forums.ubi.com/images/smilies/35.gif
then after a second I realized you measnt ther other B.C.
"my initial response was WTF....
then after a second I realized you measnt ther other B.C."
British soccer chant to the tune of 'Blue Moon'
"B.C. there's only one B.C...." http://forums.ubi.com/images/smilies/16x16_smiley-wink.gif
Interesting thread so far.
Oh, p.s.......I personally believe Obama becoming president would generate some very, very positive big changes not just in this country, yet the world......I'm not saying for African Americans, yet partially (like .0001%) due to because he is....Yet I believe he would inspire some new opinions and ways of thinking because of how he carries himself on many fronts.
Obama becoming president would cause serious civil striffe is some cases, yet that's a good thing as it would generate a final transition/change from the old to the new. In the end I believe, some old educational, racial, religious, nationalistic, economic, etc. last hold out barriers & bias will begin to fall, it generating not change through his action, yet the action of those inspired. Inspired not by his race, nor beliefs, nor actions.....Yet by simple example.
If he wins I believe it will be a slightly difficult, yet in the end very positive evolution for all of society.
is how much I don't trust H.C..
http://forums.ubi.com/images/smilies/51.gif at Hillary
A little tongue and cheek here but if the Democrats win the White House the Rednecks in this country are gonna feint dead away...
Funny thing is (disregarding independant tickets/parties).....Rednecks have typically been democrat in voting http://forums.ubi.com/images/smilies/16x16_smiley-very-happy.gif
Yet H.C. 10 fold and desperately wanting power simply to wield it.
Maybe she just wants "her" house back.... http://forums.ubi.com/images/smilies/shady.gif
Seriously, I agree. I can think of no other reason that Hillary has taken the time, trouble and money to first transplant herself in New York to be come a senator and then run for President.
A quick aside...
I think Obama's guilty of this transplant business, too. What the heck did he ever care about Illinois before he ran for office here? I feel both of them were "planted" in their respective districts because their party knew that whoever ran there as a Dem would win. There are others that have done this, too, including a few Republicans. Shortly after she was elected I wrote my reps and told them I felt it highlighted the need for there to be long-term residency requirements for elected officials. I think no one can honestly understand the issues in their district or truly represent their constituents without having lived in the same place as them for at least 5-6 years.
OK, where was I? Oh, yes. Hillary is obviously intent on gaining power for it's own sake. I shudder when I think of some of the stuff she came up with in her less-than-official capacities as first lady now being put forth again when/if she has the actual power to enact them.
If she gets elected, say bye-bye to any tax relief and hello to even more taxes, especially if you own a business or make more than $100,000 a year. (Neither of those conditions applies to me, far from it http://forums.ubi.com/images/smilies/sadeyes.gif , but I still don't like the idea of an increasingly socialist state.)
Damn carpetbaggers.
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The most important moments of the first day of public impeachment hearings
Posted 1:34 pm, November 13, 2019, by CNN Wires
The House Intelligence Committee opened historic impeachment hearings Wednesday to investigate whether President Donald Trump (and his allies) abused his office in an attempt to strong-arm Ukraine into opening an inquiry into his political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden.
I am monitoring the highly anticipated — and hugely high-stakes — hearing as it happens. Below, my thoughts on the biggest moments so far.
Adam Schiff appeals to history — and the future
Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff’s opening statement had a very clear message: These hearings aren’t about just Trump. They’re about how the presidency functions (and should function) within our democracy — and about the checks and balances between the legislative and executive branches built into the Constitution.
“Our answer to these questions will affect not only the future of this presidency, but the future of the presidency itself, and what kind of conduct or misconduct the American people may come to expect from their commander-in-chief,” said Schiff at one point.
At another, citing the Trump’s administration’s refusal to allow its senior officials to testify before Congress, Schiff said such a move “is not what the Founders intended,” adding: “The prospects for further corruption and abuse of power, in this administration or another, will be exponentially increased.”
In closing, Schiff asked, “Is that what Americans should now expect from their President? If this is not impeachable conduct, what is? Does the oath of office itself — requiring that our laws be faithfully executed, that our President defend a Constitution that balances the powers of its branches, setting ambition against ambition so that we become no monarchy — still have meaning?”
The goal of Schiff’s repeated invocations of history — he mentioned the Founders twice and the Constitution three times — was to cast these hearings less as a partisan effort directed at Trump and more as a necessary defense of the democratic principles on which the country was founded.
This isn’t about Trump or even a particular political party, Schiff was saying. This is about how we want our government to work — and not work.
It seems unlikely that Schiff’s appeal to history will sway many people on the committee. Even before he began speaking, Republicans had put signs behind the dais criticizing the proceedings.
Devin Nunes turns it up to 11
If Schiff tried to ground the hearings in history, California Rep. Devin Nunes, the highest-ranking Republican on the Intelligence Committee, sought to go the gonzo route.
He called the hearings a “pitiful finale” to Democratic attempts to overturn the results of the 2016 election.
He described the closed-door testimony offered by Ukraine witnesses a “cult-like atmosphere.”
He suggested that the whistleblower “was known to have a bias against President Trump.”
He derided the “impeachment sham.”
He called the proceedings a “Star Chamber.”
He dismissed the investigation as a “low-rent Ukrainian sequel” to the Mueller investigation.
Nowhere that I could tell did Nunes actually, you know, address the July 25 transcript between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Or the facts presented by the witnesses called by House investigators.
Bill Taylor’s opening statement is a wow
Taylor, the top US official in Ukraine, delivered a tour-de-force opening statement — packed with details about the formation of an “irregular” channel (led by personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani) with Ukraine that often ran directly counter to his own regular channel and longstanding US policy in the region.
Taylor also laid out an excruciatingly specific timeline of his interactions with, among others, National Security Adviser John Bolton, US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland and top Ukrainian officials. In that timeline, he repeatedly made clear that there was a not-very-quiet understanding that military aid from the US to Ukraine was being withheld unless and until the country announced an investigation into Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian natural gas company where Hunter Biden, the former vice president’s son, sat on the board.
Most stunningly, Taylor recounted an episode that he was told about only after his September 22 closed-door testimony involving Sondland. According to Taylor, Sondland met with a top aide to Zelensky on July 26 — one day after the fateful call between Trump and Zelensky. Sondland then called Trump and informed him of the nature of the meeting and an aide to Taylor heard Trump ask of “the investigations.” Following that call, the Taylor aide asked Sondland what Trump’s thoughts were on Ukraine. Sondland replied that Trump cares more about the Biden investigation than anything else.
Which, wow.
The geopolitical impact of Trump’s approach to Ukraine
While the focus of Wednesday’s hearing — from members of Congress at least — is what Trump (and his allies) did in regard to Ukraine and the Bidens, both Taylor and George Kent, a State Department official, repeatedly expressed their concerns about the impact of withholding military aid to the country.
Taylor noted that he had traveled to the Donbass region in eastern Ukraine and had seen, directly, the impact of the nearly $400 million in withheld American military aid for the country in its ongoing fight against Russian incursions. Kent, similarly, sought to emphasize how critical Ukraine — and America’s support for Ukraine — was in the ongoing efforts to limit Russia’s advancement in the region. (Russia annexed Crimea, a Ukrainian territory, in 2014.)
The genuine concern expressed by Taylor and Kent is a startling reminder that the pressure campaign organized by the White House had, to these longtime diplomats’ minds, real-world implications not just for Ukraine but for the United States’ interests in the region — and specifically in its dealings with Russia.
In short: This wasn’t just about Trump getting what he wanted on the Bidens from Ukraine. This had real reverberations in American geopolitics.
Taylor says none of this was normal
One of Republicans’ biggest talking points going into these impeachment hearings was that nothing Trump did in his call with Zelensky was outside the normal operating procedures of a President negotiating with a foreign leader. “We do that all that time with foreign policy,” acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said last month, adding, “Get over it.”
Taylor was clear on Wednesday that he did not agree with the Republican view on this. “It’s one thing to try to leverage a meeting in the White House,” said Taylor. “It’s another thing — I thought — to try to leverage security assistance. … It’s much more alarming.”
Partisans will take the side that affirms their view. But remember that Taylor is a longtime diplomat serving under both Democratic and Republican presidents. And that Mulvaney is, well, not.
Nunes pushed a debunked Ukraine conspiracy theory
Opening his questions to Kent and Taylor in the early afternoon, Nunes detailed a widely debunked conspiracy theory that, somehow, the Ukrainians were involved in working to aid Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and that the country might have possession of the hacked Democratic National Committee’s server. (The President brought up this same conspiracy theory during his July 25 call with Zelensky.)
To be clear: There is no evidence that Ukraine played any role in the 2016 US presidential election. Kent said as much during his testimony — under oath — earlier on Wednesday. Former National Security Council Russia expert Fiona Hill said the same during her closed-door testimony to House investigators.
And former White House homeland security adviser Tom Bossert summed it up to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos this way in late September:
“It is completely debunked … I am deeply frustrated with what [Giuliani] and the legal team is doing and repeating that debunked theory to the president. It sticks in his mind when he hears it over and over again, and for clarity here, George, let me just again repeat that it has no validity.”
So, no, Devin Nunes.
Republicans’ main talking point: Yawn
There’s a very clear effort by prominent Republicans to paint this impeachment hearing as a big nothingburger.
“This sham hearing is not only boring, it is a colossal waste of taxpayer time & money,” tweeted White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham.”This is horribly boring… #Snoozefest,” tweeted Eric Trump. And North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows, a close White House ally, told CNN’s Lauren Fox: “I don’t know about you but it’s hard for me to stay awake and listen to all of this.”
The similarity in language is, well, not an accident. It’s obvious that Republicans believe their best way to get through all of this is to say that it’s all boring and a bunch of details that only nerds care about.
Will it work? For the base, yes. For the rest of the country? I doubt it.
Jim Jordan showcases his patented interviewing style
House Republicans so value Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan — and his ability to score points in congressional hearings — that they added him to the Intelligence Committee just days before Wednesday’s hearing.
And Jordan did his thing. He spoke fast. He interrupted. He snarked. (“You’re their star witness?” Jordan sarcastically asked Taylor. “I’ve seen church prayer chains that are easier to understand than this.”)
The goal of all of this — as it always is with Jordan — is to make witnesses look unsure and unsteady. (When you talk really fast and then push the witness to immediately respond in a single-word answer, it tends to have that effect.)
Did it work with Taylor? There were a few “ums and “ahs” from the ambassador, but he stuck to his story.
See what’s happening in your neighborhood.
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‘Learning about who they are:’ Girls on the Run celebrates program completion with 5K
Posted 12:23 pm, November 24, 2019, by Derica Williams, Updated at 10:28PM, November 24, 2019
MILWAUKEE -- Girls on the Run hosted a 5K Sunday, Nov. 24, and the event marked a milestone in the growth of their minds, bodies, and spirits. The girls celebrated what makes them one of a kind.
Tina Jones
Participants were amped up because the day was finally here!
"We have over 50 teams and more than 640 girls that are going to run, walk, and skip across the finish line of our 5K," said Tina Jones, executive director of Girls on the Run Southeastern Wisconsin.
Sunday's Girls on the Run 5K was the culmination of a 10-week program for girls in third through eighth grade, all about building strong, confident young ladies.
Lyrique Jackson
"These girls are learning positive life lessons," said Jones. "They are learning about who they are, and they're learning about how they fit into the community."
They were ready to celebrate the skills they developed and the completion of their service project.
"They pick the project and implement it," said Jones. "It can run anything from making blankets for dogs and cats at the Humane Society to making cards for seniors to go to the senior center. It's all about helping the community and teaching these girls how they can make an impact."
They worked together to make the community a better place, and for girls like Lyrique Jackson, the organization reinforces self-love.
"I want to show that you don't have to look like everyone else to be beautiful," said Jackson. "You can be whoever you want to be."
From emotional health to physical health, hundreds showed up to Miller Park in support, cheering the girls on.
Well-prepared for the course, they head toward the finish line, persevering through each lap and also their journey in life. Organizers said the program has served more than 2,000 girls in 2019 and impacted more than 10,000 girls and their families in the Milwaukee area since 2007.
Topics: Girls on the Run, Miller Park
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Nigerian conjoined twins successfully separated by 78-member surgical team
4-year-olds escape deadly crash by unhooking their booster seats, climbing to safety
Take your leftovers from drab to fab with these recipes from Gouda Girls
7-year-old girl died, 4-year-old boy missing after they were swept out to sea with father
White House staffers learn about success of The Joseph Project during Milwaukee visit
American Girl rings in 2020 with release of 1st doll ‘with hearing loss’
14-year-old girl kidnapped by 3 men used Snapchat to alert her friends, police say
Colten Treu reaches plea deal in fatal Girl Scouts crash in Chippewa County
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ABBEY MULTI ACADEMY TRUST
Establishment St Chad's Church of England Primary School
Northolme Avenue, West Park, Leeds, West Yorkshire, LS16 5QR
Leeds (383)
Miss Angela McHale
http://www.st-chadsprimary.co.uk Opens in new window
Good (Last inspection: 10 October 2017)
Diocese of Leeds (ce)
Has Nursery Classes
Andie Wilson Not recorded Appointed by GB/board 25/09/2018 30/09/2020
Dave Gorton Not recorded Appointed by foundation/Trust 21/01/2019 20/01/2023
Ian Renard Not recorded Appointed by foundation/Trust 12/11/2018 11/11/2022
Richard Gibson Not recorded Elected by parents 24/05/2018 25/05/2022
Mark Bellamy Not recorded Elected by parents 21/11/2017 20/11/2021
Georgina Marlsand Not recorded Elected by school staff 18/10/2017 17/10/2021
James Clarke Not recorded Appointed by GB/board 15/03/2017 14/03/2021
Paula Michaud Not recorded Elected by school staff 01/10/2016 30/09/2020
Zoe Hinchliffe Not recorded Appointed by GB/board 12/03/2016 11/03/2020
Angela McHale Not recorded Ex-officio by virtue of office as headteacher/principal 01/09/2019 Not recorded
Hannah Lievesley Not recorded Ex-officio foundation governor (appointed by foundation by virtue of the office they hold) 04/11/2019 Not recorded
Tom Lusty Local governor Appointed by GB/board 01/09/2016 30/04/2019
These establishments are linked with St Chad's Church of England Primary School, URN: 141521. For example, they may be predecessor or successor establishments.
108006 St Chad's Church of England Primary School Predecessor 01/11/2014
Lancashire and West Yorkshire
Weetwood
Leeds North West
Leeds 109A
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Live Poll: The worst Yoga Award winner for Worst Foreign Film
Since 1990, the Catacric collective, self-described as 'anonymous and mutant', has recognized on a yearly basis the underachievement of the worst in the Spanish and foreign film industries. Here I present you all winners of the Worst Foreign Film category, I want to know which one do you think deserved this 'honor' the most. http://www.imdb.com/list/ls064276513/
Poll: http://www.imdb.com/poll/kBcgAhJGQWw/
EfraGarcia59
and we have a loser...'noah'...
There are some decent films here. And a few indecent ones.
leavey-2
I agree. There are some good movies in this list.
My choice: The Avengers (1998)
Dibyayan Chakravorty, Champion
Hi EfraGarcia59,
Welcome to the Get Satisfaction IMDb Poll section.
Please re-read, especially section 5.
Learn how to create polls on IMDb
https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topics/faq-so-you-want-to-make-an-imdb-poll-heres-how
5. Add a link from the list description to your suggestion post so voters can discuss the poll. You'll have to post your suggestion (see below), then get the permalink to the thread and re-edit the description.
[link=https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topics/poll-suggestion...]Discuss the poll here[/link].
In your case it becomes:
[link=https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topics/poll-suggestion-the-worst-yoga-award-winner-for-worst-foreign-film]Discuss the poll here[/link].
Also read this -
FAQ: How to Post Your Poll Suggestion at Get Satisfaction Site? – https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topics/faq-how-to-post-your-poll-suggestion-at-get-satisfaction-site
IMDb Polls' titles follows AP Style (Title Capitalization). You can see the proper format for your list's title from here - http://titlecapitalization.com/
Just copy-paste the title here.
You'll see - The Worst Yoga Award Winner for Worst Foreign Film
Please change your list's title to the above.
Now please add a suitable straight forward description/question to your list. Like this:
Since 1990, the Catacric collective, self-described as 'anonymous and mutant', has recognized on a yearly basis the underachievement of the worst in the Spanish and foreign film industries. Which of the past winners of the Worst Foreign Film category do you think deserved this 'honor' the most?
Before suggesting any new poll you can search it at Google by typing IMDb Poll at the beginning, to make sure that poll has never done before. Also you can search at Mr. Dan Dassow's blog: http://mypollwatch.blogspot.in/2013/12/imdb-polls.html.
I think I got it. Thank you, and let me know if I still forgot something.
Thank you for making the changes. Your poll looks good.
Lucilfer
Christopher Columbus: The Discovery (1992)
efragarcia59,
CONGRATULATIONS on your first live poll - http://www.imdb.com/poll/kBcgAhJGQWw/
Congratulations efragarcia59 on your first live poll!
As of 7-Apr-2017 12:19 AM Pacific your poll has 255 or more votes.
5163rd Live Poll: http://www.imdb.com/poll/kBcgAhJGQWw/
Seen: http://www.imdb.com/seen/ls064276513/
This is the 2,260th Title poll. Such polls have a total of 5,153,372 votes for an average of 2,280 votes per poll.
Projected Date of 15 Million Votes 27-Nov-2017
Alphabetical List of Polls
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Top IMDb Polls
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IMDb Polls - Descending Order of Votes
http://mypollwatch.blogspot.com/2013/12/imdb-polls-descending-order-of-votes.html
http://mypollwatch.blogspot.com/2016/05/summary-statistics.html
Key Threads - IMDb Poll FAQs Index
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How to Improve the Chance of Having your Poll on the Home Page
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This is the list of efragarcia59's polls as of 19-May-2017:
Sorted Alphabetically
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In Decreasing Order of Votes
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By Date | By Vote | By Vote and Author | By Rate | By Contention | Alphabetical
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What Happens If You Plant 10,000 Sunflowers At The Heart Of Boston’s Black Community?
June 12, 2018 Greg Cook 0
Last Friday morning, Ekua Holmes (pictured above) was outside the Grove Hall Public Library in Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood with folks from the Urban Farming Institute who were helping her plant hundreds of sunflowers.
“If you come upon a massive field of sunflowers,” the artist tells me, “what would that do to the spirit, what would it do to the emotion? Would it make you smile? Of course it would.”
Holmes’s “The Roxbury Sunflowers Project” was developed via the Public Art Accelerator program from independent public art curators Now + There. It launched on June 2, when she gave out seed packets to more than 100 people. More folks sent her notes asking to take part, so last Thursday night, she gave away seeds to 25 more people.
In addition to planting at the library at 41 Geneva Ave., she’s working to get sunflowers planted all across Roxbury, often considered the heart of Boston’s black community—in a vacant lot across the street, at the 95 Thornton Community Garden and Farm, at Freedom House near the intersection of Crawford and Warren streets, (where she’s also planning to make art for the windows showcasing the project’s themes), at the Nathan Hale School at 51 Cedar Street, at Hawthorne Youth and Community Center at 9 Fulda St. by the Haley House on Highland Park, at people’s homes and gardens.
“I’ve distributed probably about 8,000 seeds,” Holmes says, “and I have another 2,000 in my car, in the tub over there, that will go to other institutions.”
Seeds for Ekua Holmes’s “The Roxbury Sunflowers Project.” (Greg Cook)
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Holmes grew up in Roxbury and still lives there. After winning the Caldecott Honor in 2016 for illustrating the Children’s book “Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer, Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement,” she’s illustrating two new children’s books that are due out this fall—“The Stuff of Stars,” about the cosmos, from Somerville’s Candlewick Press and “What Do You Do with a Voice Like That,” about Texas Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, from a division of Simon & Schuster. She serves on the Boston Arts Commission. Since 2011, she’s been the community coordinator for sparc! The ArtMobile, operated by Massachusetts College for Art and Design’s Mass Center for Art and Community Partnerships. And she’s run two galleries—including Renaissance Art and Design Gallery located at times on Newbury Street and Roxbury’s Piano Factory (from which she is presently being displaced).
“I’ve always been attracted to sunflowers, from a young age. I decorate my house, usually with fake ones,” Holmes says.
Via Now + There, she developed her plan for a “massive sunflower planting in Roxbury.” It’s one of six projects by seven artists supported through the organization’s Public Art Accelerator. “The goal is really to allow Boston artists to create more art. We bring emerging and mid-career artists through six months of curriculum, looking at everything it takes to create good public art,” Now + There Executive Director Kate Gilbert says. “I like to think about it as the technical, emotional and financial support for public art.”
Gilbert says, “They don’t have to come with an idea. They don’t have to work with a certain community group if they don’t want to. It’s all about the artist’s vision.” Each project is then given $15,000 to $30,000 in funding, Gilbert says.
“There is a closed system. There are people who have figured out how to make public art. They’re really good at it. And the agencies go for what’s safe,” Gilbert says. “We really wanted to make that investment in the pipeline. … I wanted to give artists that first leg up.”
Iris Lapaix (left) and Magnolia Monroe plant sunflowers in front of the Grove Hall Public Library for Ekua Holmes’s “The Roxbury Sunflowers Project,” June 8, 2018. (Greg Cook)
“I thought that this sunflower because of its special attributes would make a great symbol or emblem for Roxbury,” Holmes tells me. “Life is a struggle. That sunflower is so resilient that it will survive the struggle.”
For Holmes, the sunflowers represent a radiance that “sustains us even when things are not how we want them to go.” The flowers serve as a metaphor for heliotropism—“turning to the light.” They attract bees. They’re said to draw toxins out of the ground. With the profusion of seeds the flowers produce and their deep roots, they symbolize the hardiness of Roxbury. “These flowers intend to survive and they intend to come into being and share their great beauty.”
Soon, Holmes pictures, “At certain turns in the neighborhood, you’ll come upon fields of sunflowers and that infuses you with positive energy. … Let that sunflower represent that we’re planting a seed for the future, we’re planting seeds for tomorrow, seeds of hope, seeds of love.”
Folks from the Urban Farming Institute plant sunflowers at the Grove Hall Public Library for Ekua Holmes’s “The Roxbury Sunflowers Project,” June 8, 2018. (Greg Cook)
Tags: Boston Grove Hall Public Library Now + There Roxbury
Categories: Art Public Art
Photos: Cardboard Canoe Races in Medford
The Annual Repainting of Mark Alston-Follansbee’s Art Car
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← WEAP model on The Oil Drum
Six steps to “getting” the global ecological crisis →
Two rogue US companies are moving forward with plans to fertilize the ocean with iron to create plankton blooms to suck heat-trapping carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. They are motivated by profits from the growing carbon credit market, rising public demands for action, and politicians eager to avoid painful reductions in emissions. There is little that can be done to stop them, as no applicable laws or treaties exist.
Such efforts to “manage” Gaia are absolute madness – betting the planet and humanity on something as complex as artificially regulating a biosphere. Radical geo-engineering proposals could just as easily worsen the situation if these projects fail or are suddenly halted. And it is highly likely that unintended consequences of widespread implementation of such schemes would outweigh possible benefits. Have we learned nothing from the biofuels boondoggle? Failure could destroy the Earth.
There has been little research on the potential impacts upon marine ecosystems. The powerful greenhouse gas nitrous oxide may be released as marine organic matter decomposes. Oxygen may become depleted in the deep ocean, killing fish and throwing already troubled marine ecosystems into further turmoil. Even James Lovelock, the British scientist that first conceived of Gaia as a self-regulating organism, has fallen victim to favoring human technology over proven Earth processes.
Gaia, the Earth System, is a finely honed creature with unbelievably complex and ancient existing systems of planetary regulation. Messing with ocean carbon storage and solar radiation levels will affect ocean currents and acidity, atmospheric circulation and weather. Almost certainly there will be a whole host of follow-on effects, and dependable climatic patterns are likely to be further seriously diminished.
It is unfathomable to me that after millennia of ecological ignorance and unconstrained global ecological change leading to our current ecological crises, that a handful of scientists and business people could be so egotistical as to suppose they can play God and refashion a planet. Once geo-engineering is embraced, we could never stop, or the carbon would be re-released. Again, to propose human management of the biosphere is so egoistical and dangerous; and wrong on so many levels.
These may be desperate times, but governments have not even acted yet to set mandatory reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. The skeptics have only just gone from denying the problem to minimizing its importance. Rather than embracing known sufficient policies that could solve the problem by transforming our energy and transportation systems, it is human nature to seek the easy way out. Yet reducing emissions of CO2, population, and consumption; and restoring global ecological systems, is so much more likely to be effective.
So much nature remains — that could be enlarged, reconnected and regenerated — that it is wrong to give up on natural ecosystems’ processes to embrace a techno-industrial “Frankensphere”. A failing biosphere can never be managed in any real sense to mimic a healthy biosphere. It is simply too complex.
If SUVs and coal plants are still spewing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, clearly risky geo-engineering is unjustified. Humanity is unable to eliminate exotic species, live peacefully, end deforestation, or stop having so many babies; yet it is going to take the global ecosystem into its management? Geo-engineering cannot succeed and it is terribly misguided to suggest it can.
Geo-engineering represents the shameless extreme nature of societal refusal to cut energy use and emissions. We have not even really tried in earnest as a human family to do so through conservation, efficiency and alternatives. Yet, before we have even begun, we are going to bet the human family’s future on technological fixes that we hope will allow us to continue consuming, and pumping out babies and emissions, without end?
I am furious; absolutely certain with every thread of my ecological knowledge, intuition and being that no good and a large amount of harm will come from geo-engineering. Proposed global scale experimental environmental fixes will be disastrous. Under no circumstances may untested planetary manipulations commence until all other options have failed. The seeds of an operable biosphere remain, they must be given time and space to reestablish themselves; and humanity challenged and aided by all means to embrace necessary radical change.
The biosphere belongs to all people and tribes, and should it come to wild once off experiments with the Earth, the decision must be made by United Nations’ consensus. Until then, government prohibitions on unsanctioned activities must be implemented with all haste. Given the lack of regulation against such planetary scale climate experiments, direct action to stop arbitrary and capricious geo-engineering implementation is warranted and necessary.
Image source: NASA, US government, public domain
This entry was posted in Climate change, Consumption, Ecology, Ecosystem, Environment, Glen Barry, Global warming, Overpopulation, Population, Sustainability and tagged Climate policy, Geo-engineering, James Lovelock, Technofix. Bookmark the permalink.
21 responses to “The folly, egoism and dangers of climate geo-engineering”
Steven Earl Salmony | October 23, 2007 at 6:09 am |
Many thanks, Glen Barry.
Your blogs are making a difference that make a difference. Keep going.
Evidence seems to be emerging from different places simultaneously about the latest version of the “man playing God” problem.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/21/wstorm121.xml
What is most worrisome is how much of this kind of activity has been and is being done by people who are determined not to present their work in the public domain until after they have completed it. Only after the “men playing God” have accomplished their objectives, do pronouncements about their means and ends get shared with the general public.
Somehow, there is a need for the general public to have “early-stage process transparency” in circumstances of “global commons interference” such as the one to which you are drawing attention.
John Feeney | October 24, 2007 at 11:07 am |
I want to be cautious here as I very much respect scientists like Lovelock and Rapley who have suggested one of these geoengineering schemes. It seems that out of the desperation Glen mentions, they’ve concluded we may need at some point to take emergency measures. So they suggest arrays of huge pipes using wave energy to pump deep ocean water to the surface so that more CO2 is absorbed.
I know Lovelock is concerned about a die-off down to about a billion people and a migration to the poles for those remaining. I suppose he sees such a plan as a way to soften the blow, make the earth perhaps a little more habitable, or to buy some time.
In fairness, I’d much sooner listen to Lovelock’s and Rapley’s ideas about this sort of thing than those of some entrepreneurial company without their knowledge and understanding and just out to make a buck.
Still, as Glen makes clear, we really don’t understand the workings of the biosphere well enough to have much of an idea what unintended consequences such geoengineering might have. Might they make overall matters worse?
I wonder if the time needed to research such things thoroughly enough to have even an inkling of their effects would put their implementation at a date too late to help anyway.
It does seem the great bulk of work and funding should go toward dealing with the basics like population, per capita consumption, etc. We’d better be awfully, awfully careful about the geoengineering approach. After all, it’s basically technology which got us into this mess.
Steven Earl Salmony | October 27, 2007 at 10:05 am |
There are not words, at least that I can find now, to adequately express the support I have for your thinking about the anathema of geophysical engineering. Such thinking, like so much of the thinking regarding eugenics, gives me an “ego chill.”
That ideas for “geotechno-fix” activities are not accompanied by an appreciation of the propositions presented in the “precautionary priniciple” lead me to view such aims as unconscionably reckless and short-sighted.
IMHO, we are seeing in these ideas and action plans the naked expressions of the children of men…… of the masters of the universe among us. The ideas of economists managing the global economy in a patently unsustainable way as a pyramid scheme, of all things, and of geophysical engineers managing the “global commons” are examples of the game, “men playing God.”
Ultimately, it seems to me that human beings are not rogue organisms or a cancer on Earth’s body, unless we fail to make adequate use of our intelligence and many other gifts which we have been granted to our species by God. If the human species does fail to protect biodiversity and the environment as well as to preserve the integrity of Earth and itself, that will not necessarily mean that we are not the miraculous creatures we know ourselves to be. It could be, however, that we will have inadvertently and unknowingly come to look like or resemble something human beings could not possibly have been meant to be.
John Feeney | October 27, 2007 at 1:04 pm |
Well Steve, I’m just sitting back and mulling over the geoengineering stuff. Though it very much concerns me for the reasons mentioned, I want to see how the debate unfolds. Here’s a pretty good article on Lovelock:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/16956300/the_prophet_of_climate_change_james_lovelock/4
On the last page, it touches on his geoengineering ideas.
Steven Earl Salmony | October 27, 2007 at 2:47 pm |
Terrific article on the work of Dr. Lovelock. If this great man was the leader of the world, I would be one who follows his recommendations.
Without extolling the many virtues of James Lovelock, and there are many, I want to draw attention to one sentence from the wonderful article you have shared with us.
“Although he {James Lovelock} views large-scale geoengineering as an act of profound hubris — “I would sooner expect a goat to succeed as a gardener than expect humans to become stewards of the Earth” — he thinks it may be necessary as an emergency measure, much like kidney dialysis is necessary to a person whose health is failing.”
It seems to me that Dr. Lovelock appreciates the risks implicit in his proposals for large-scale geophysical engineering projects, and could be counted upon to do two things: take sufficient precautions and proceed with all deliberate speed.
Of course, there are many things to say about James Lovelock; but I would like for us to consider that he possesses an uncommon and unmistakeable character. Perhaps Dr. Lovelock is not an heir of Ozymandias, nor can he be bought-and-paid-for by the wealth-worshipping, power driven masters of the universe among us.
Magne Karlsen | October 29, 2007 at 4:54 am |
http://www.ecologicalhope.org/global-warming/what-should-be-front-page-news-but-isnt/
“Now, the NY Times article, entitled UN warns of rapid decay of environment, is an appropriately scary and concise summary. But hardly anyone is going to read it. Why isn’t news of this report blazing from headlines all across the country, since this is arguably the greatest and most challenging crisis of our age? Every other issue that matters to us in the future fits within the question of whether or not this world will remain habitable — and that question is screaming at us from the oceans, the lakes and rivers, the soils, the very air we breathe.”
Where have all our leaders gone?
What can they be thinking and doing?
I suppose our leaders are so focused upon growing the global economy that they have forgotten how there cannot much longer be such a thing as successful economic globalization, once our planetary home has been ravaged and desecrated.
Unbridled economic growth, unrestrained per capita consumption and skyrocketing population numbers of the human species in our planetary home can be plainly seen as activities that are dissipating natural resources, degrading the environment and destroying the foundation upon which all life depends upon for its very existence.
Perhaps the heirs of Ozymandias are only ones among us who are capable of perpetrating such colossal destruction.
http://www.mala.bc.ca/~johnstoi/kafka/inthepenalcolony.htm
“It was all very simple. If I had first summoned the man and interrogated him, the result would have been confusion. He would have lied, and if I had been successful in refuting his lies, he would have replaced them with new lies, and so forth. But now I have him, and I won’t release him again. Now, does that clarify everything?”
– Franz Kafka: In The Penal Colony
John Feeney | October 29, 2007 at 10:33 pm |
I agree with Margaret Swedish 100%. I hope that UN report wakes a few people up. And Kafka may have said something about the approach of today’s leaders. (The quote/link brought back memories. I remember writing an essay about that story in high school.)
Now, for perhaps the most ignorant and just plain stupid editorial I’ve seen in a long time:
http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?secid=1501&status=article&id=278290879759157
(Thanks to Dave Gardner for that link.)
If the author’s name and email had been included, I’d have sent a couple of links to straighten him out. Maybe including this one:
http://www.mnforsustain.org/catton_malthus_more_relevant.htm
Steve, our leaders seem simply not to “get” it. I know some observers believe they do get it and have concluded it’s too late to prevent collapse, and so merely act to guard some wealth for themselves and their heirs. But I lean slightly toward the former possibility. As I’m sure you know, Catton’s book, _Overshoot_ is a fantastic read, including his assessment of how Jimmy Carter came close to “getting” it, but fell just a bit short. I wonder what he thinks today. I’m no expert on political history, but from a few things I’ve read, I sense he may have been the last honest president with some ability to face our ecological situation as it is.
Oh, also, see this blog entry at Blå skärm-Crashing system:
http://blaskarm.wordpress.com/2007/10/26/a-conjunction-of-factors/
Magne, that’s a blog from a Norwegian graduate student. 🙂 Very good topics and essays so far.
Just for a moment, let us take a look at the “world problematique” from the standpoint of absolute global human population numbers.
1. Six billion six hundred million+/- people inhabit the planet now and this gross number is expected to increase by three-quarters of a million people per annum in coming years.
2. Of that number, a great majority of people worldwide live in nations in which population numbers are exceeding the replacement level.
3. Despite differing demographic trends among the nations of the world, it appears that the anticipated growth of human population numbers in undeveloped nations far and away surpasses the expected decline of human numbers in developed nations.
4. Because one-half of the global human population is under the age of 30 today, and a vast majority of these young people live in the undeveloped world, global population numbers can be expected to grow robustly despite an anticipated decline in fertility rates in the developed world.
Somewhere, somehow, at some time, hopefully sooner rather than later, we are going to begin to talk openly about how to effectively and humanely slow the rate of human population growth.
In coming weeks, I hope to contribute ideas for discussion; however these ideas will focus on plans for new and necessary action.
If we just keep doing what we are doing now, we will likely keep going as we are going now.
On the other hand, if we are going to provide a good enough future for our children, at some point we are going to have do something else……something that is DIFFERENT from what we are doing now.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2201594,00.html
http://tinyurl.com/2jttce
“The improvements to the climate change bill that Hilary Benn, the environment secretary, announced yesterday were welcome. But in every major energy sector – aviation, transport, power generation, house building, coal mining, oil exploration – the government is promoting policies that will increase emissions. How will it make the 60% cut that the bill enforces?”
– George Monbiot
Steven Earl Salmony | November 9, 2007 at 7:29 pm |
At least from my humble view, Hilary Benn is somehow off base and not quite right. He wants to do the right thing; but cannot propose a realistic way of moving forward. Necessary proposals are liable to be politically unpopular, economically inexpedient and socially disagreeable.
As an alternative, let me suggest other proposals. These are adequately represented by Al Gore, who appears to be an exemplar of the kind of great political leader the human community requires in Century XXI.
Dr. Rajendra Pachauri and the 2000 scientists of the IPCC are also heroic because they are following in the footsteps of Galileo.
Now, if only other political leaders like Al will speak out loudly and clearly in support of the splendid work of Rajendra and the IPCC scientists.
All we need are several thousand brave political leaders and valiant scientists among us to join humanity’s newest Nobel Peace Prize Laureates.
Then the world will surely change.
Then the environment will not be irreversibly degraded; limited resources not recklessly dissipated; and the integrity of Earth will be preserved for generations to come.
Then a good enough future for the children can be assured.
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
Krishnaraj Rao | November 10, 2007 at 3:36 am |
Yes, absolutely dreadful, counter-intuitive idea that: trying to ramp up the oceans’ ability to absorb CO2 and trying to reflect sunlight with sulfide particles high up in the stratosphere!
It sounded like a bad idea as soon as I heard it, but couldn’t put my finger on what I disliked about it — but there you are saying it: Gaia is a finely balanced system — an organism actually. There is only so much tinkering that this ‘macro-organism’ will take from mechanistic-minded humans!
I think civil resistance is needed to stop these corporates from running amok in an already devasted biosphere. People in large numbers need to resort to peaceful civil-resistance movements to stay the hands of rogue companies!
Please do contact me. Let us join hands, reinforce each other, think globally and act locally on our own governments and our own people.
Bente Lilja Bye | November 13, 2007 at 2:12 am |
Blaming the technology as well as believing that technology will save us alone, are both wrong.
The human factor, both in size (almost all people ever lived on this planet did so the last 200 hundred years) and in behavior, is the responsible and the key.
I am a strong believer in making educated decisions and therefore support science and understanding the Earth System. No matter what we do, it should be based on sound knowledge about the Earth System.
Even the US – who perhaps rightfully can be blamed not to take global warming seriously – have taken measures to improve our understanding of the Earth.
In 2003 the US took the lead in organizing a global effort to improve Earth Observation – now called GEO (Group on Earth Observation). Today there are more than 70 countries and close to 50 Participation Organizations including several UN bodies, teaming up to implement a global earth observing system of systems.
http://www.earthobservations.org
I am also put off by the discussions on topics like global warming where you are either a believer or you’re not. Way too often does people create fake conflict of interest say between changing human behavior and developing new technology.
In my opinion we need both – and we need a sound basis of facts to support our decisions.
Are many of our current leaders stuck in the denial of reality?
Some of our leaders appear to be running away from real global challenges looming before humanity, as if they had seen a calamity in the making. Other leaders are promising pie-in-the-sky solutions for threats to human wellbeing and environmental health. Still others have apparently adopted the posture of an ostrich by placing their heads in the sand. Last but not least, we have a group of commanders of others who pose as hysterically deaf or blind and have become electively mute.
These various means of denying what could be called “more of the stark reality of the world we inhabit” are of not helpful to anyone, I suppose, except themselves and their minions. They keep their wealth, power and privileges by maintaining the status quo, regardless of the potential for catastrophic circumstances, ones already dimly visible on the far horizon. Many too many soon to be erstwhile leaders of the human community have allowed unbridled self-interests to literally separate themselves from a meaningful regard for humanity, for life as we know it, for a future of children and coming generations, and for the maintenance of the integrity of Earth and its ecosphere.
Thankfully, the human community is bountifully blessed with still other leaders, brave and courageous leaders, like UN Secretary-General Mr. Ban Ki-Moon, Al Gore, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, Professor Al Bartlett, IPCC Vice Chair Mohan Munasinghe, Dr. Ernst von Weizsaecker, John Guillebaud, US Senator Bernie Sanders, Paul Chefurka, David Wasdell, Jean Krasno, Joseph Baker, Magne Karlsen, “Trinifar”, Dame Jane Goodall, Jeffrey McNeely, Seti Sastrapradja, Vivian Ponniah, Peter Salonius, Hazel Henderson, Peter Nobel, Mickey Glantz, Scott Walker, Margaret Swedish, Emily Spence, Susan B. Adamo, John C. Feeney, Lester Brown, Gretchen Daily, Bill Rees, Richard Duncan, Pentti Malaska, Deborah Byrd, Jean Gilbertson, Alex de Sherbinin, Anne Ehrlich, Ashok Khosla, Paul Hawken, Werner Fornos, Jane Roberts, Jean Francois Rischard, Jan Janssens, Raoul Weiler, Mathis Wackernagel, David Blockstein, Andy Revkin, Dave Roberts, Joe Romm and no less than 2000 IPCC scientists. Who knows, perhaps these and emerging leaders among our youth are ready to “square up” to the global challenges soon be confronted by humankind in these early years of Century XXI.
John Feeney | December 14, 2007 at 1:38 pm |
A new BBC Green Room article is relevant to Glen’s essay:
Bente Lilja Bye,
A very belated thanks for your comment. You’re right, for sure, that we need knowledge and not artificial conflicts of interest on these issues. The answer is not always black and white. Getting the emphases right, though, in the realm of public policy, is surely not easy. I think Glen would agree on your basic point as some of his recent writing shows his ambivalence on such issues as nuclear energy and “clean coal.”
http://earthmeanders.blogspot.com/2007/10/deep-ambivalence-re-nuclear-energy-and.html
Pingback: Geo-engineering Oversight Agency for Thermal Stabilization (GOATS) | phantasypublishing
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Research ArticleNeuroscience Free access | 10.1172/JCI70324
Transporters MCT8 and OATP1C1 maintain murine brain thyroid hormone homeostasis
Steffen Mayerl,1 Julia Müller,1 Reinhard Bauer,2 Sarah Richert,3 Celia M. Kassmann,3 Veerle M. Darras,4 Katrin Buder,1 Anita Boelen,5 Theo J. Visser,6 and Heike Heuer1,7
1Leibniz Institute for Age Research/Fritz Lipmann Institute, Jena, Germany. 2Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Integrated Research and Treatment Center, Center for Sepsis Control and Care (CSCC), Jena University Hospital, Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, Germany. 3Max-Planck-Institute of Experimental Medicine, Göttingen, Germany. 4Laboratory of Comparative Endocrinology, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium. 5Academica Medical Center, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. 6Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. 7Leibniz Research Institute for Environmental Medicine, Düsseldorf, Germany.
Address correspondence to: Heike Heuer, Leibniz Institute for Age Research/Fritz Lipmann Institute, Beutenbergstr. 11, D-07745 Jena, Germany. Phone: 49.3641.65.6021; Fax: 49.3641.65.6335; E-mail: hheuer@fli-leibniz.de.
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Published in Volume 124, Issue 5 on May 1, 2014
J Clin Invest. 2014;124(5):1987–1999. https://doi.org/10.1172/JCI70324.
Received: April 22, 2013; Accepted: February 6, 2014
Allan-Herndon-Dudley syndrome (AHDS), a severe form of psychomotor retardation with abnormal thyroid hormone (TH) parameters, is linked to mutations in the TH-specific monocarboxylate transporter MCT8. In mice, deletion of Mct8 (Mct8 KO) faithfully replicates AHDS-associated endocrine abnormalities; however, unlike patients, these animals do not exhibit neurological impairments. While transport of the active form of TH (T3) across the blood-brain barrier is strongly diminished in Mct8 KO animals, prohormone (T4) can still enter the brain, possibly due to the presence of T4-selective organic anion transporting polypeptide (OATP1C1). Here, we characterized mice deficient for both TH transporters, MCT8 and OATP1C1 (Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO). Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice exhibited alterations in peripheral TH homeostasis that were similar to those in Mct8 KO mice; however, uptake of both T3 and T4 into the brains of Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice was strongly reduced. Evidence of TH deprivation in the CNS of Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice included highly decreased brain TH content as well as altered deiodinase activities and TH target gene expression. Consistent with delayed cerebellar development and reduced myelination, Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice displayed pronounced locomotor abnormalities. Intriguingly, differentiation of GABAergic interneurons in the cerebral cortex was highly compromised. Our findings underscore the importance of TH transporters for proper brain development and provide a basis to study the pathogenic mechanisms underlying AHDS.
Monocarboxylate transporter 8 (MCT8) is a specific thyroid hormone (TH) transporter that facilitates the passage of the prohormone 3,3′,5,5′-tetraiodothyronine (T4; also known as thyroxine) and the receptor active form, 3,3′,5-triiodothyronine (T3), across the plasma membrane (1). MCT8 is encoded by SLC16A2 (hereafter MCT8) located on human chromosome Xq13.2. Inactivating mutations and deletions in MCT8 result in a distinct clinical picture known as Allan-Herndon-Dudley syndrome (AHDS) (2–5).
All affected patients manifest a severe form of psychomotor retardation composed of central hypotonia, spastic tetraplegia, lack of speech development, severe intellectual deficits, and global developmental delays. In addition to the pronounced neurological symptoms, patients exhibit characteristic changes in the serum TH profile, with highly elevated T3 and lowered T4 concentrations. Since 2004, more than 45 families with 125 affected individuals have been reported in the literature, and 1% of cases with the diagnosis of X-linked mental retardation have been estimated to be associated with mutations in MCT8 (6). However, by which pathogenic mechanisms MCT8 deficiency causes AHDS remains largely unknown.
MCT8 is present in many organs, such as liver, kidneys, pituitary, and thyroid gland, and is also widely expressed in the CNS. Studies in mouse and human brain tissues revealed MCT8 expression in distinct neuronal populations, with the highest mRNA levels in neo- and allocortical structures (e.g., cerebral cortex, hippocampus, and amygdala) as well as in hypothalamic neuroendocrine nuclei (e.g., paraventricular nucleus [PVN]). In addition, MCT8 is found in tanycytes, in choroid plexus structures, and in capillary endothelial cells of the blood-brain barrier (BBB) (7–10). In light of its localization, it has been speculated that MCT8 deficiency compromises the uptake of TH into brain cells, thereby interfering with proper neural migration and differentiation processes during critical stages of brain development.
To get further insight into the pathophysiological role of MCT8, mice with deletion of Mct8 have been generated and extensively studied (9, 11, 12). These Mct8 KO animals fully replicated the abnormalities in circulating TH concentrations in AHDS patients and showed a thyrotoxic situation in the liver and kidneys (13). In contrast to AHDS patients, Mct8 KO mice did not exhibit any overt neurological symptoms. This observation was rather unexpected, as in vivo transport studies have revealed highly diminished T3 uptake into the brains of Mct8 KO mice (12, 14). However, T4 transport into the CNS was only partially compromised in these animals. Likewise, Mct8 KO mice displayed only a moderate reduction in brain T3 content, a consequence of a rise in astrocytic type 2 deiodinase (D2) activities, and thus enhanced local T4-to-T3 conversion. It would therefore appear that mice express another T4-specific transporter that maintains almost normal passage of T4 across the BBB and/or the blood-CSF barrier (BCSFB) in the absence of MCT8. The mouse brain would consequently be much less affected by MCT8 deficiency than the human CNS, in which such an alternative route for T4 may not exist.
Which transporter can replace MCT8 in the mouse brain? Organic anion transporting polypeptide 1c1 (OATP1C1; also known as OATP14 or OATP-F), encoded by Slco1c1 (hereafter Oatp1c1), is an intriguing candidate. This transporter accepts preferentially T4 as well as reverse T3 as substrates (15). In mice, OATP1C1 expression is restricted to the CNS, where it is predominantly localized in capillary endothelial cells as well as in choroid plexus structures (16, 17). Most interestingly, OATP1C1 protein could not be detected in BBB endothelial cells isolated from the primate brain (18). This observation is supported by immunohistochemical studies that documented only weak expression of OATP1C1 in capillary endothelial cells in human brain sections (8). Thus, the pronounced expression of OATP1C1 at the BBB and BCSFB of the murine CNS may be the reason for the rather mild brain phenotype of MCT8-deficient mice.
In order to test this hypothesis, we recently generated Oatp1c1 KO mice (19). These animals develop indistinguishably from WT littermates and do not show any changes in serum TH levels or peripheral TH action. However, the brains of Oatp1c1 KO mice are characterized by moderately decreased T4 and normal T3 content, which indicates that OATP1C1 contributes markedly to the uptake of T4 into the murine CNS.
Here, we report the generation and analysis of mice with double KO of Mct8 and Oatp1c1 (referred to herein as Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice). In accordance with our hypothesis, these animals exhibited strongly reduced T4 uptake into the CNS that in turn led to a severe form of CNS-specific hypothyroidism and abnormal neuronal differentiation. Based on our findings we propose that the Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mouse represents the most suitable animal model available to date for studying human MCT8 deficiency and testing therapeutic interventions.
Generation of Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice. For the generation of mouse mutants deficient in MCT8 and OATP1C1, Mct8 KO mice (12) were mated with Oatp1c1 KO animals (19). Heterozygous offspring of the first generation were intercrossed, producing WT, Mct8 KO, Oatp1c1 KO, and Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO animals (Supplemental Figure 1A; supplemental material available online with this article; doi: 10.1172/JCI70324DS1). WT, single-mutant, and double-mutant mice were born with the expected Mendelian frequency and were indistinguishable from each other during the first 2 weeks of postnatal development. Daily recording of body weight revealed significantly reduced body weight in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice starting from P17 (Supplemental Figure 1B). The growth delay persisted after weaning and resulted in a 15%–20% decrease in body weight of adult Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice compared with WT and single-mutant animals (Supplemental Figure 1C). The growth retardation, however, did not compromise the animals’ fertility. Female and male Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice reproduced normally with a regular litter size.
Analysis of the hypothalamus-pituitary-thyroid (HPT) and somatotropic axes. Determination of serum TH concentrations in P21 animals revealed similarly elevated serum T3 and decreased T4 values in Mct8 KO and Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice (Figure 1), which indicated that Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO animals show the same abnormalities in the serum thyroid state as do Mct8 KO mice. Moreover, concentrations of serum thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH; encoded by Tshb) tended to be even more increased in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice than in Mct8 KO mice (Figure 1), although Tshb transcript levels were similarly elevated in both mouse models (Figure 2B). These changes may be due to a rise in hypothalamic thyrotropin-releasing hormone (Trh) expression, which was previously observed in Mct8 KO animals (12). In fact, in situ hybridization (ISH) analysis of P21 animals revealed even higher Trh-specific signal intensities in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO PVN than in Mct8 KO PVN (Figure 2, A and B).
Abnormal serum TH and TSH concentrations in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice. Serum samples of 8 animals per genotype were analyzed at P21 and revealed increased T3 and decreased T4 serum levels in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice (M/O DKO) as well as in Mct8 KO mice, whereas Oatp1c1 KO mice did not exhibit any alterations in serum TH parameters. Serum TSH concentrations were elevated in Mct8 KO mice and even more so in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO animals, which suggests that in the absence of both TH transporters, the HPT abnormalities characteristic of Mct8 deficiency are even more pronounced. *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001 vs. WT, or as otherwise indicated (brackets).
Postnatal development of the hypothalamus-pituitary axis. Brains and pituitaries from male animals (n = 4 per genotype) were collected at different postnatal time points. Hypothalamic Trh and pituitary Tshb expression were assessed by ISH. (A) Darkfield illuminations of brain sections derived from P21 animals illustrated the increase in Trh and Tshb signal intensities in Mct8 KO versus Oatp1c1 KO and WT mice. Trh expression was even further upregulated in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO animals. Scale bars: 250 μm (Trh), 1 mm (Tshb). (B) This optical impression was confirmed by quantification of relative signal intensities. *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001 vs. WT, or as otherwise indicated (brackets).
In order to study the postnatal differentiation process of the HPT axis in more detail, we examined hypothalamic Trh as well as pituitary Tshb and D2 transcript levels at P6, P12, P21, and P33 by ISH. Significantly elevated Trh transcript levels were already detected in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO animals at P6 (Figure 2B), which indicated that in the absence of both TH transporters, Trh-expressing neurons are already in a pronounced hypothyroid state during early stages of postnatal development. Surprisingly, pituitary Tshb expression was significantly reduced in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice at P6, but significantly elevated at later time points. Moreover, compared with the single-mutant and WT animals, D2 expression was slightly elevated in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice at P6, whereas at P21, no significant differences between Mct8 KO and Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice were noted by ISH or by activity measurements (Supplemental Figure 2A and Supplemental Figure 3A). These results indicated that combined MCT8 and OATP1C1 deficiency leads to deranged development of the HPT axis by early postnatal time points.
Since Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice were growth retarded, we speculated that the somatotropic axis may also be affected in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice. In line with a normal growth curve within the first postnatal weeks, analysis of pituitary growth hormone (Gh) mRNA expression by ISH did not reveal any differences at P6 and P12 (Supplemental Figure 2C). However, at P21 (i.e., around the time when Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO growth retardation became evident), pituitary Gh expression as well as hepatic Igf1 expression was reduced in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice (Supplemental Figure 3A). Moreover, ISH analysis revealed a drop in expression of hypothalamic growth hormone–releasing hormone (Ghrh) in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice, whereas hypothalamic somatostatin (Sst) expression was not altered (Supplemental Figure 3A). Therefore, we hypothesized that in the absence of MCT8 and OATP1C1, the decreased pituitary Gh expression is reflective of reduced GHRH stimulation.
TH metabolism and action in liver and kidneys. In order to determine whether Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice exhibit the same alterations in peripheral TH metabolism as do Mct8 KO mice, we analyzed the expression of renal and hepatic type 1 deiodinase (D1) at P21. Again, Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO and Mct8 KO mice showed similarly elevated D1 transcript levels in the liver and kidneys, as assessed by ISH and quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR; Supplemental Figure 3, B and C). Since D1 is positively regulated by T3, these increased D1 mRNA values pointed to a hyperthyroid situation in these tissues. This possibility was further supported by the determination of hepatic expression of another gene whose product is positively regulated by T3, α glycerol-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (Gpd2), which also exhibited increased transcript levels in Mct8 KO and Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice (Supplemental Figure 3C). Together, these data indicated that in peripheral tissues, Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice fully replicate the abnormalities in TH metabolism and action that were previously reported in Mct8 KO animals (11–13).
In vivo T4 transport studies. We previously demonstrated by in vivo transport studies that the uptake of i.p. [125I]T3 into the mouse brain was strongly diminished in the absence of MCT8, whereas the transport of [125I]T4 was only mildly affected (12). Here, we repeated the transport studies by injecting at least 3 adult animals per time point and genotype with 1.2 μCi [125I]T4 i.p. At given time points, the amount of radioactivity in the brain, liver, kidneys, and blood samples was determined by a γ counter and expressed as percentage of the injected dose per gram tissue. No differences among the 4 genotypes were detected in blood and liver samples (Figure 3A), which indicates that neither the absence of MCT8 nor the lack of OATP1C1 affected T4 transport in the blood and into the liver. In the kidneys, Mct8 KO and Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice showed a significantly increased accumulation of radioactivity, thereby confirming previous findings in Mct8 KO animals (13). In both Mct8 KO and Oatp1c1 KO mice, accumulation of radioactivity in the CNS was reduced to approximately 50% of WT levels, which suggested that both transporters contribute equally to the passage of T4 into the brain. Most interestingly, uptake of T4 into the brain was strongly reduced in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice. Thus, these animals would consequently be expected to display a severe state of hypothyroidism specifically in the CNS.
Strongly diminished uptake of T4 into the brain in the absence of MCT8 and OATP1C1. (A) For in vivo transport studies, adult animals (n = 3 per genotype and time point) were injected i.p. with 1.2 μCi [125I]T4. A blood sample was obtained, after which animals were perfused with PBS, and brains, livers, and kidneys were collected. The amount of radioactivity was expressed as percentage of the injected dose per gram of tissue. Whereas the amount of radioactivity in blood and liver samples did not differ among mutant groups, Mct8 KO and Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice showed increased renal radioactivity at all analyzed time points. Most importantly, transport of radiolabeled T4 into the brain was strongly diminished in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice, whereas in the single-mutant animals, T4 uptake was reduced to approximately 50% of the respective WT levels. #P < 0.05, Mct8 KO vs. WT; §P < 0.05, Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO vs. WT; ‡P < 0.05, Oatp1c1 KO vs. WT. (B) Animals at P21 (n = 8 per genotype) were perfused with PBS before forebrains were collected for determining tissue TH concentrations. The concomitant inactivation of both TH transporters resulted in a pronounced decline of both T3 and T4 to approximately 10% of the levels in WT animals, which indicated that only Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice exhibit a severe hypothyroid state in the CNS. ***P < 0.001 vs. WT, or as otherwise indicated (brackets).
Analysis of TH content and metabolism in the brain. In order to determine brain TH content, we intracardially perfused P21 animals with PBS, after which forebrains and cerebella were collected and processed as described previously (19). In agreement with previous observations, Mct8 KO and Oatp1c1 KO mice exhibited an approximately 50% reduction in forebrain T4 levels compared with WT animals, whereas forebrain T3 concentrations were only mildly decreased in Mct8 KO mice and not altered in Oatp1c1 KO animals. However, forebrain T4 and T3 values were strongly reduced in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice, accounting for only 10% of WT levels (Figure 3B).
The highly reduced TH concentration in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO brains should lead to pronounced alterations in D2 and type 3 deiodinase (D3) activities, as these are negatively and positively regulated, respectively, by TH. Indeed, evaluation of D2 activities in forebrain and cerebellum of P21 animals revealed the highest activities in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice, with an almost 10-fold rise compared with WT animals (Figure 4A). Forebrain and cerebellar D3 activities were decreased to a similar extent in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO and Mct8 KO mice (Figure 4B). We also included brain tissue from athyroid Pax8 KO mice (which do not produce any TH endogenously; ref. 20) collected at P21, and found that the D2 and D3 activities in forebrain and cerebellum homogenates derived from Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO and Pax8 KO mice were very similar (Figure 4, A and B).
Effect of combined MCT8 and OATP1C1 deficiency on TH metabolism in the CNS. (A) Activities of the TH activating enzyme D2, separately measured in forebrain and cerebellar homogenates of animals at P21 (n = 6 per genotype), revealed a more than 10-fold elevation in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice, similar to that in athyroid Pax8 KO mice. (B) Determination of D3 enzymatic activities unveiled a similar reduction in Mct8 KO, Pax8 KO, and Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO animals, whereas D3 activities were not significantly altered in Oatp1c1 KO animals. **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001 vs. WT, or as otherwise indicated (brackets).
Expression analysis of T3-regulated target genes in the CNS. For monitoring cell-specific changes in T3 concentrations, extensive ISH studies were performed in order to determine the expression levels of well-established T3 target genes. Frontal brain sections of P21 animals were hybridized with radioactively labeled cRNA probes specific for hairless (Hr), neurogranin (RC3), and aldehyde dehydrogenase 1a1 (Aldh1a1), all of which are known to be positively regulated by T3 (21, 22). In addition, we included D2 in our analysis as a prominent example of a negatively regulated gene. Finally, we examined the transcript levels of mu-crystallin (Crym), which encodes an established intracellular TH-binding protein (23, 24). Hr-specific ISH signals were slightly reduced in cortical areas of Mct8 KO animals and strongly decreased in the cerebral cortex of Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice (Figure 5A). Expression of RC3, which is controlled by T3 specifically in the striatum, was strongly downregulated in striatal neurons of Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO animals. Likewise, Aldh1a1-specific ISH signals were very low in cortical and hippocampal regions of Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice, whereas endothelial expression of Aldh1a1 remained unaltered in all mutant animals. In contrast, D2 ISH signals were visibly elevated throughout the brain only in the absence of both TH transporters. Even expression of Crym — which is highly enriched in distinct neurons of the hippocampus, cortex, and striatum — appeared to be increased in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO animals (Figure 5A), which suggested that this TH-binding protein is negatively regulated by T3.
Consequences of combined MCT8 and OATP1C1 deficiency on T3 target gene expression in the CNS. (A) ISH studies performed using brain sections at P21 (n = 4 per genotype) revealed for Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice a strong downregulation in the signal intensities for Hr, RC3, and Aldh1a1, all known to be positively regulated by T3. Hr expression was most prominently decreased throughout the cerebral cortex, whereas RC3 expression was highly reduced in neurons of the striatum. In cortical areas, Aldh1a1-specific ISH signals were specifically reduced in astrocytes, but relatively unaltered in capillary endothelial cells. Darkfield autoradiograms also illustrated upregulation of D2 in glial cells. Interestingly, mRNA expression of Crym, an intracellular TH binding protein, was elevated specifically in the cortex and striatum. Scale bar: 600 μm (Hr, RC3, Aldh1a1, and D2); 3 mm (Crym). (B) qPCR analysis was performed using forebrain homogenates from P21 animals (n = 4–5 per genotype). Athyroid Pax8 KO mice were included and showed changes in forebrain gene expression similar to those of Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice. These findings again pointed to a TH-deprived CNS in the absence of MCT8 and OATP1C1. *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001 vs. WT.
In order to validate these ISH findings, we performed qPCR analysis using whole forebrain samples of P21 animals. In addition to Mct8 KO, Oatp1c1 KO, Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO, and WT animals, we again included Pax8 KO mice in our analysis. Inactivation of MCT8 and/or OATP1C1 led to significantly reduced Hr and RC3 transcript levels; the most prominent of these effects were observed in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice (Figure 5B), thereby confirming the ISH results. The same, however, did not apply for Crym: qPCR analysis revealed only slightly elevated transcript levels in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice, despite a pronounced increase in ISH signal intensities in distinct brain areas. This indicated that Crym expression is only altered in selected neuronal populations under hypothyroid conditions. Interestingly, for all genes analyzed in this study, no differences were detected between Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice and Pax8 KO animals (Figure 5B), a finding that underscored the severity of the hypothyroidism in the CNS of Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO animals.
Delayed cerebellar development in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice. To study the effect of combined MCT8 and OATP1C1 deficiency on neural development, we histochemically monitored the maturation of different brain areas during postnatal development. Sagittal vibratome sections through the cerebellar vermis were immunostained with an antibody against calbindin D28 (CB), which allows for visualization of Purkinje cells (PCs). PC dendritogenesis, a differentiation process whose dependence on proper TH supply has been well established (25), takes place in rodents within the first 3 postnatal weeks. PCs displayed poor arborization and reduced dendritic growth in sections derived from P12 Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO animals, whereas the morphology of PCs derived from Mct8 KO and Oatp1c1 KO animals was not altered (Supplemental Figure 4A). However, at P33 and P120, differences in PC morphology were no longer observed in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice. Quantification of the thickness of the molecular layer that is primarily determined by the dimension of the PC dendritic tree confirmed the immunohistochemical observations: only at P12 was significantly reduced thickness of the molecular layer noted in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice.
Myelination is permanently compromised in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice. Formation of myelin is another maturation process in the CNS that is compromised under hypothyroid conditions (26). TH has been shown to promote myelination by inducing the expression of proteins such as myelin basic protein (MBP) (27). In order to assess the effect of combined MCT8 and OATP1C1 deficiency on the development of white matter tracts, coronal vibratome forebrain sections were stained with FluoroMyelin, a dye that specifically labels mature myelin sheaths. Signal intensities were visibly lower in the corpus callosum (cc) of Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice compared with single-mutant and WT animals (Figure 6A). Quantification of the signal intensities in the cc area confirmed the optical impression, revealing significantly reduced values in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice at P33 and P120. As a further approach to visualizing myelinogenesis, consecutive brain sections were immunostained with an antibody against MBP. Immunofluorescence signal intensities in the cerebral cortex were quantified, which showed significantly decreased MBP levels in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice at all time points. These data indicated that the formation and maturation of myelin sheaths is indeed reduced in the combined absence of MCT8 and OATP1C1.
Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice display reduced myelination. (A) Frontal vibratome brain sections of male animals (n = 3 per genotype and time point) were stained with FluoroMyelin (FM), a dye that incorporates into myelin sheaths. Additionally, consecutive sections were stained with an antibody against MBP. Quantification of the fluorescence signal densities revealed reduced staining in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice at all time points (P12, P33, and P120). Scale bar: 600 μm. (B) Ultrathin sections of the medial part of the cc were analyzed by electron microscopy at P21 (n = 3). Compared with WT animals, the number of myelinated axons was visibly decreased in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice as well as in athyroid Pax8 KO mice. However, the ultrastructure of the myelin sheaths appeared rather similar in all genotypes (higher-magnification insets). Scale bars: 5 μm (top); 500 nm (bottom); 50 nm (insets). (C) P21 and P180 coronal paraffin brain sections subjected to Gallyas silver staining were used to quantify cc thickness at the cingulum bundle (n = 3). Only Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice showed decreased cc thickness at either time point. *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001 vs. WT, or as otherwise indicated (brackets).
In order to elucidate the myelination status in closer detail, ultrathin brain sections of P21 WT, Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO, and Pax8 KO mice were processed for transmission EM, and the white matter area comprising the cc at the level of the cingulum bundle was analyzed. WT animals exhibited ubiquitous myelination, whereas Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO and Pax8 KO mice showed a patchy myelination pattern, with many axons remaining unmyelinated (Figure 6B). However, higher magnification revealed a normal ultrastructure of the myelin sheaths of those axons that were myelinated (Figure 6B). The reduced number of myelinated axons may affect the thickness of white matter regions. In order to address this possibility, we performed myelin Gallyas silver impregnation as well as axonal Bielschowsky silver stainings on coronal paraffin sections at P21 and P180 and quantified cc thickness at the level of the cingulum bundle (Figure 6C and Supplemental Figure 4B). At both time points, the width of the cc was significantly reduced in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice by both staining methods, which indicated that overall myelin content is permanently reduced in the absence of both TH transporters. Similarly, the size of another major brain white matter tract, the anterior commissure, was reduced in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO animals, albeit to a lesser extent than in the cc (data not shown).
Neuronal differentiation is impaired in the cerebral cortex of Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice. Formation and maintenance of not only the cerebellar cortex, but also the cerebral cortex, depends on proper TH supply during pre- and postnatal stages. In particular, the differentiation of GABAergic interneurons has been shown to be delayed in hypothyroid rats, as evidenced by reduced parvalbumin (PV) immunoreactivity (28, 29). We therefore wondered whether similar alterations also occur in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice and performed immunohistochemical staining for the calcium-binding proteins PV, calretinin (CR), and CB, which serve as distinct markers for specific subgroups of cortical interneurons. In addition, we included antibodies against glutamate decarboxylase 67 (GAD67) in our studies, which allows for visualization of all GABAergic interneurons. NeuN immunoreactivity was used to label all mature neurons. Similar results were obtained in the somatosensory cortex (Figure 7) as well as the motor and the cingulate cortex (data not shown).
Histological analysis of GABAergic neurons in the somatosensory cortex. Coronal forebrain vibratome sections from perfusion-fixed male mice (n = 3 per genotype and time point) were immunostained with antibodies recognizing the calcium-binding proteins PV, CB, and CR; the neuronal transcription factor NeuN; and the GABA-producing enzyme GAD67. (A) Representative views demonstrating visibly reduced P33, PV, and GAD67 immunoreactivity in the somatosensory cortex of Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice. Scale bar: 250 μm. (B) This optical impression was confirmed by measuring GAD67 integrated fluorescence signal density and counting PV-positive cells using ImageJ. Quantification also revealed a slight increase in the number of CR-positive neurons in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice. Thickness of the cortical layers was determined in NeuN-stained brain sections and disclosed a thinner layer I–IV in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice. Overall, these data pointed to pronounced alterations in the cortical GABAergic system in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO animals. *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001 vs. WT, or as otherwise indicated (brackets).
Quantification of the immunohistochemical stainings at P33 revealed a significantly reduced number of PV-positive neurons in the somatosensory cortex of Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice at all analyzed time points (Figure 7A). Moreover, GAD67 immunoreactivity was found to be significantly decreased in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice as well (Figure 7B). The reduction in GAD67 immunoreactivity was detected with 2 different antibodies, thereby excluding epitope-specific effects. This observation was surprising, since previous studies in hypothyroid animals as well as in TRα1-mutant animals have not revealed alterations in cortical GAD67 expression (29, 30). In contrast, CB immunoreactivity was decreased in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice only at P12; no alterations were ascertained among genotypes at P33 and P120 (Supplemental Figure 5A). A significantly increased abundance of CR-positive neurons was observed in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice only at P120, although a tendency toward higher numbers was already detectable at P12 and P33 (Figure 7B). NeuN-labeled brain sections were used to quantify the thickness of the different cortical layers (Supplemental Figure 5B). Whereas layers V–VI exhibited similar thicknesses in animals of all genotypes (Supplemental Figure 5A), layers I–IV were significantly thinner in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO animals at all time points (Figure 7B). In summary, our immunohistochemical data pointed to persistent alterations in neuronal differentiation and cortical circuit formation in the absence of MCT8 and OATP1C1.
Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice exhibit pronounced locomotor dysfunctions. As a first approach to assessing the neuromotor performance of TH transporter–mutant mice, we studied the gait of the animals by footprint analysis. Stride length was significantly reduced, and hind paw angle approximately 10° larger, in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO versus WT mice; conversely, Mct8 KO and Oatp1c1 KO animals exhibited gait parameters similar to those of WT controls (Figure 8, A and B). These alterations in stride length and hind paw angle were characteristic of cerebellar impairments and have also been found in other hypothyroid animal models (30).
Abnormal gait and severe locomotor deficiencies in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice. Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO animals exhibited abnormal gait, as demonstrated by significantly reduced stride length (A), and a strongly elevated hind paw angle (B) based on footprint analysis. (C) Locomotor deficiencies were monitored by a rotarod test using 4-month-old male mice (n = 6–8 per genotype). In contrast to WT, Mct8 KO, and Oatp1c1 KO animals, Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice performed poorly on the rod and did not show a learning curve. #P < 0.001 vs. WT. (D) In order to assess balance and coordination, mice were monitored while running on a beam 1 cm wide and 100 cm long. Recording the hind limb slips revealed a significantly higher number of errors only in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice. (E) Mice were further subjected to a hanging wire test in order to determine neuromuscular abnormalities. Only Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice were not able to cling on a metal wire for 60 seconds. (F) As these findings point to reduced muscle performance, forepaw muscle strength was quantified using a grip strength meter, revealing an approximately 35% reduction in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO animals. *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001 vs. WT, or as otherwise indicated (brackets).
To further examine locomotor behavior, we subjected 4-month-old mice (6–8 per genotype) to an accelerating rotarod test. After an initial training period under constant velocity, animals were tested on 5 consecutive days for their ability to stay on the accelerating rod. With every day of testing, WT, Mct8 KO, and Oatp1c1 KO mice learned to stay for a longer time period on the rotating rod. In contrast, Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice did not improve their motor capabilities during the test period and fell down significantly earlier (Figure 8C).
Since the lower body weight of Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice may contribute to the poor rotarod performance, we repeated the experiments in order to compare 5-month-old Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO and Mct8 KO littermates with 2-month-old Mct8 KO mice, whose body weight was similar to that of the Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice examined. Mct8 KO animals displayed similar rotarod performance, independent of age and body weight, whereas Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice again fell off the rotating wheel very quickly (Supplemental Figure 6A). This finding rebutted the possibility of a major effect of reduced body weight on locomotor phenotype.
As another approach to monitoring locomotor disabilities and coordination impairments, animals were subjected to a beam walk test: 5-month-old mice (6–8 per genotype) were trained to cross a 100-cm-long square beam 1 cm in width. The number of hind limb slips during the run was recorded, Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice displayed twice as many slips as the other groups (Figure 8D). Moreover, Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice also needed significantly more time to cross the beam (Supplemental Figure 6B). Overall, the results of both tests pointed to deficits in fine motor coordination and reduced locomotor activities in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO animals.
Next, a hanging wire test was performed in order to detect alterations in grip strength. Animals were put on a metal wire that was turned upside-down for a maximum of 60 seconds (Figure 8E). WT and single-mutant mice managed to stay on the wire for the entire test period without any obvious problems; instead, they moved around and even groomed themselves. In contrast, Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice appeared immobile and rarely managed to stay on the wire longer than approximately 30 seconds, indicative of reduced grip strength. To substantiate the latter finding, we quantified grip strength using a high-precision force sensor (Figure 8F). This test also revealed an approximately 35% reduction in forelimb grip strength in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO versus WT mice. These findings suggested that animals with combined MCT8 and OATP1C1 deficiency have pronounced neuromuscular disabilities.
Because inactivating mutations in the TH transporter MCT8 have been linked to AHDS, intensive research activities have been undertaken to clarify why MCT8 deficiency causes severe neurological symptoms and neuromuscular abnormalities in affected patients. These efforts were severely hampered by the fact that information regarding molecular and cellular abnormalities in the CNS of affected patients are still scarce, and that a suitable animal model replicating the phenotype of human MCT8 deficiency was not available. Although mice deficient in MCT8 revealed important aspects regarding the role of MCT8 in peripheral tissues, such as liver, kidneys, and thyroid gland (11–13, 31–33), Mct8 KO mice did not show any overt neurological symptoms, calling this mouse model into question as an adequate model system for AHDS.
Here, we described the generation and first analysis of mouse mutants that lack the T4-specific transporter OATP1C1 in addition to MCT8. These Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice fully replicated the abnormal serum TH profile (low T4, high T3, and elevated TSH) characteristic of MCT8 deficiency (Figure 1) and showed a state of hepatic and renal thyrotoxicosis similar to that of Mct8 KO animals (Supplemental Figure 2). However, in contrast to Mct8 KO mice, brain development and function was markedly impaired in the absence of both MCT8 and OATP1C1.
Previous studies in mice already revealed the unique function of MCT8 in mediating the passage of T3 into the CNS, whereas T4 transport was found to be mildly affected in the absence of MCT8 (12, 14). At first glance, this finding was rather surprising, since in in vitro assays, MCT8 has been shown to transport T3 and T4 equally well (1). This discrepancy led to the hypothesis that mice express another T4-specific transporter at the BBB and/or BCSFB that ensures delivery of T4 to the CNS, even in the absence of MCT8. That this T4-specific transporter is indeed OATP1C1 was demonstrated unequivocally by our current in vivo uptake studies. Only Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice exhibited highly diminished passage of peripherally injected T4 into the brain, whereas T4 transport in Mct8 KO and Oatp1c1 KO mice was reduced to only about 50% of the WT value (Figure 3). Thus, at least in the mouse CNS, MCT8 and OATP1C1 mediate the access of TH to the brain.
Although brain TH content was drastically reduced, 10% of WT T3 and T4 levels were still detected in brain homogenates of Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice (Figure 4). Since animals were perfused with PBS before tissue collection, it is not likely that the TH concentrations found in these brain homogenates only reflect blood contaminations. As one possible explanation, combined MCT8 and OATP1C1 deficiency may not primarily affect the import of TH into capillary endothelial cells, but rather compromise the efflux of TH from endothelial cells into the brain parenchyme and/or astrocytes. Notably, the L-type amino acid transporter LAT1 (encoded by Slc7a5) is highly expressed in endothelial cells of the BBB, where it localizes to the luminal site (34). Since LAT1 efficiently transports not only large neutral amino acids, but also TH (35), capillary endothelial cells may still contain significant amounts of TH, even in the absence of MCT8 and OATP1C1. Future studies combining LAT1-mutant mice with animals lacking both MCT8 and OATP1C1 should provide further information in this regard.
We demonstrated by several experimental approaches that astrocytes and neurons of Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice were clearly deficient in TH. Expression of the astrocytic enzyme D2, which is negatively regulated by T3 at the transcriptional level and even more so by T4 at the posttranslational level, was highly increased in the brains of Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO animals, indicative of a pronounced hypothyroid state of astrocytes. Moreover, the transcript levels of several genes known to be positively regulated by TH in distinct subsets of neurons were strongly reduced, to an extent similar to those in athyroid Pax8 KO animals (Figure 5B). ISH studies also revealed that the hypothalamic transcript levels of Trh, which were already elevated in Mct8 KO animals, were even further increased in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice (Figure 2), which indicated that the negative feedback loop of the HPT axis is strongly compromised. Based on this observation, it is reasonable to assume that Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO animals exhibit a central resistance to TH, similar to patients with MCT8 mutations (36).
Congenital hypothyroidism in rodents is linked to various morphological alterations in neuronal maturation, of which retarded cerebellar development is a prominent and well-studied example (37–40). During TH deficiency, the differentiation of basically all cerebellar cell types is delayed. Consequently, the formation of synaptic contacts, which requires a highly synchronized pattern of dendritic and axonal growth, is persistently diminished. A striking hallmark of a congenitally hypothyroid cerebellum is a poorly developed PC with stunted dendrites, a feature that was also observed in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO animals (Supplemental Figure 4A). As the cerebellum represents an important brain area for fine motor control, cerebellar dysfunction is linked to pronounced locomotor deficits, such as ataxia, poor coordination, and incorrectly timed movement. In agreement with disturbed cerebellar development, Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice exhibited abnormal gait and poor coordination (Figure 8, A–D). Even reduced grip strength, which was a prominent feature of the Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice (Figure 8F), may be related to cerebellar dysfunction, although abnormalities in neuromuscular transmission cannot be ruled out.
Impaired myelinogenesis is another hallmark of TH deficiency. TH controls the timing of oligodendrocyte development, as it induces oligodendrocyte precursor cells to initiate differentiation processes (41, 42). Moreover, the expression of several myelin-associated proteins, such as MBP, proteolipid protein, or myelin-associated glycoprotein, are directly regulated by TH (43, 44). Therefore, it is not too surprising that, as a result of low TH levels in the CNS, Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice exhibited reduced myelination caused by reduced white matter tract size, as illustrated by silver stainings (Figure 6 and Supplemental Figure 4B). Such a myelination deficit is expected to compromise neuronal conductance and may also contribute to the locomotor impairments and neuromuscular deficits observed in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO animals.
In addition to these findings, Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice exhibited rather surprising abnormalities in the cerebral cortex, where immunohistochemical analysis revealed a pronounced and persistent reduction in GAD67 immunoreactivity (Figure 7, A and B), which indicated that the inhibitory cortical GABAergic system is strongly affected. These changes were not restricted to the somatosensory area, but were also observed in other cortical regions, such as the motor and the retrosplenial cortex. In previous studies, TH insufficiency during brain development has been demonstrated to reduce PV immunoreactivity in the cerebral cortex of rats (28, 29), which suggests that only a subgroup of inhibitory interneurons characterized by PV expression — so-called basket and chandelier cells — is sensitive to TH deprivation. Likewise, mouse mutants expressing a dominant-negative TRα1 protein show only a transient reduction in cortical PV immunoreactivity that normalizes after weaning (30). In contrast, PV expression in adult Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice remained low compared with the respective controls. Moreover, unlike TRα1-mutant animals, Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice displayed alterations in GAD67 immunoreactivity. Decreased cortical GAD expression has only been reported once for hypothyroid rats (45), which suggests that the phenotype of our TH transporter–deficient mice is rather unique.
Cortical GABAergic dysfunction has been linked to the pathophysiology of various psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and autism (46, 47). PV-positive, fast-spiking interneurons are critically involved in synchronizing the activity of pyramidal neurons and are therefore considered as a key GABAergic system responsible for the control of cortical output (48). Reduced expression of the calcium-binding protein PV leads to asynchronous release of GABA, thereby affecting cortical network oscillations (49). Decreased expression of GAD67, the main GABA-synthesizing enzyme in the CNS, will not only compromise inhibitory transmission, but also affect the maturation of inhibitory synapses, a process that is initiated after the first postnatal week. It is therefore conceivable that in the absence of both MCT8 and OATP1C1, development of the cortical inhibitory system is impaired, which in turn causes augmented and putatively unsynchronized activity of excitatory cortical neurons. The latter hypothesis, however, needs to be further tested by electrophysiological studies.
It also remains to be investigated to what extent the neural abnormalities observed in Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice can be fully explained by impaired transport of TH via the BBB and/or BCSFB, or whether the contribution of additional factors must be considered. During prenatal development, both TH transporters are present in neuronal precursor cells of the ventricular zone. In fact, analysis of a mouse line expressing an Oatp1c1 promoter construct–driven cre recombinase and a Rosa26 reporter construct revealed that the Oatp1c1 promoter is temporarily active in neuronal precursor cells that later develop into a distinct subset of cortical neurons residing in layer 2/3 (50). It is tempting to assume that these neurons might show enhanced sensitivity to alterations in TH levels and that concomitant genetic inactivation of Mct8 and Oatp1c1 may greatly interfere with their differentiation. Such cell-specific effects of combined MCT8 and OATP1C1 deficiency might eventually explain, at least in part, the CNS-specific differences between Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice and TRα1-mutant animals and may also answer the question of why Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice exhibited reduced thickness of the outer cortical layers (Figure 7B). Future studies using conditional MCT8 and OATP1C1–mutant mice crossed with a tamoxifen-inducible cre line driven by the Oatp1c1 promoter should reveal to what extent the simultaneous inactivation of MCT8 and OATP1C1, either at prenatal or at postnatal stages, impairs brain development.
In summary, the Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mouse represents the first animal model showing pronounced TH deficiency in the CNS despite highly elevated T3 concentrations in the circulation, thereby underscoring the physiological importance of TH transporters in providing the brain with sufficient amounts of TH. Unlike single-mutant Mct8 KO and Oatp1c1 KO animals, Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice displayed CNS-specific deficits, such as myelination deficits and pronounced locomotor impairments, that have also been observed in patients. To what extent the Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mouse fully replicates the clinical picture of human MCT8 deficiency cannot presently be assessed, as a biochemical and histopathological analysis of postmortem brain samples of patients has not been reported yet, and even functional MRI data are scarce. Still, Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice can be considered as the animal model most closely reflecting human MCT8 deficiency. Consequently, we expect detailed studies of pre- and postnatal brain development in these mice to provide further insights on the molecular mechanisms by which TH influences early events in neuronal differentiation or regulates neuromuscular performance. Moreover, Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO mice can serve as a valuable tool for testing the efficacy of putative therapeutic interventions in preventing brain damage, since TH treatment is not a useful option for patients with MCT8 deficiency.
Animals. Mct8 KO mice were obtained from Deltagen and have been described previously (12). Oatp1c1fl/fl mice were generated at TaconicArtemis and mated with a germline deleter cre mouse line in order to obtain Oatp1c1 KO mice. The targeting strategy, generation, and analysis of Oatp1c1 KO animals has been published recently (19). Mct8–/(–)Oatp1c1+/– breeding pairs (C57BL/6 background) were used to generate Mct8/Oatp1c1 DKO and Mct8 KO mice. Oatp1c1+/– matings (C57BL/6 background) were set up to obtain Oatp1c1 KO mice and WT littermates. Pax8 KO mice (mixed background) were generated by breeding Pax8+/– animals (20). All mice were provided with standard laboratory chow and tap water ad libitum and were kept at constant temperature (22°C) and controlled light cycle (12-hour light/12-hour dark).
The body weight of 16 litters (5–8 newborn per litter) was monitored daily for the first 3 postnatal weeks. Female and male mice at P21 were killed by CO2 in order to collect serum samples for TH and TSH determination. In addition, forebrains, kidneys, and pieces of liver designated for ISH analysis were frozen in isopentane cooled on dry ice. Pituitaries were embedded in OCT medium (Sakura Finetek) before being frozen on dry ice. For timeline ISH studies, male mice at P6 and P12 were killed by decapitation, whereas animals at P21 and P33 were killed by CO2, and tissues were prepared as described above (n = 4 per genotype and time point). Cryosections of coronal forebrain, liver, and kidney (20 μm) as well as pituitaries (16 μm) were thaw-mounted on superfrost slides (Thermo Scientific). Tissues designated for qPCR analysis and measurement of deiodinase activities were rapidly frozen on dry ice and stored at –80°C. For determination of forebrain TH content, animals (n = 8 per genotype) at P21 were deeply anesthetized with isoflurane and perfused intracardially with PBS. Forebrains were rapidly frozen on dry ice and stored at –80°C. Male mice at P12, P33, and P120 destined for immunohistochemical analysis (n = 3 per genotype and time point) were deeply anesthetized with isoflurane and subjected to intracardial perfusion fixation using a solution of 4% PFA in PBS. Whole brains were removed and postfixed for 24 hours with 4% PFA in PBS. Thereafter, brains were washed 3 times in PBS and stored in PBS containing 0.4% sodium azide at 4°C until further processing. See Supplemental Methods for details on animal genotyping.
ISH histochemistry. cDNA fragments corresponding to nt 1,380–1,941 of mouse Aldh1a1 (GenBank accession no. NM_013467.3), nt 489–1,005 of mouse Crym (NM_016669), nt 40–1,055 of mouse D1 (NM_007860), nt 131–1,045 of mouse D2 (NM_010050.2), nt 248–445 of mouse Gh (NM_008117.2), nt 125–402 of mouse Ghrh (NM_010285.2), nt 902–1,598 of mouse Hr (NM_021877.2), nt 137–629 of mouse Igf1 (NM_010512), nt 498–1,005 of mouse RC3 (NM_022029.2), nt 42–557 of mouse Sst (NM_009215), nt 1,251–1,876 of mouse Trh (NM_009426.2), and nt 190–445 of mouse Tshb (NM_009432.2) were generated by PCR and subcloned into the pGEM-T Easy Vector (Promega). Radiolabeled riboprobes were generated by in vitro transcription using [35S]UTP as labeled substrate (Hartmann Analytik). ISH was carried out as described previously (51). In brief, frozen sections were air-dried, followed by a 1-hour fixation in a 4% phosphate-buffered PFA solution (pH 7.4), and then permeabilized by incubation in PBS containing 0.4% Triton X-100 for 10 minutes. Acetylation was carried out in 0.1 M triethanolamine (pH 8.0) containing 0.25% (v/v) acetic anhydride. Sections were dehydrated, then covered with hybridization mix containing cRNA probes diluted in hybridization buffer (50% formamide, 10% dextran sulfate, 0.6 M NaCl, 10 mM Tris-HCl pH 7.5, 1× Denhardt’s solution, 100 μg/ml sonicated salmon sperm DNA, 1 mM EDTA, and 0.5 mg/ml t-RNA). 35S-labeled riboprobes were diluted in hybridization buffer to a final concentration of 1 × 104 cpm/μl. Prior to application, radioactive riboprobes for Gh, Trh, and Tshb were diluted with unlabeled riboprobes (5 ng/μl in hybridization buffer) at ratios of 1:10, 10:1, and 3:1, respectively. Hybridization was performed overnight at 58°C. Slides were rinsed in 2× standard saline citrate (0.3 M NaCl and 0.03 M sodium citrate, pH 7.0) and subsequently treated with ribonuclease A/T1 at 37°C for 30 minutes. Final washes were carried out in 0.2× standard saline citrate at 65°C for 1 hour. For detection of radioactive ISH signals, sections were dehydrated and then exposed to X-ray films (BioMax MR; Eastman Kodak Co.) for 24 hours. Subsequently, sections were dipped in Kodak NTB nuclear emulsion (Kodak) and stored at 4°C for 8 (Aldh1a1, D2, and Hr), 5 (Crym and Ghrh), 4 (D1), 3 (Gh, Sst, Trh, and Tshb), or 2 (RC3) days. Autoradiograms were developed and analyzed under darkfield illumination. Experiments carried out using the respective sense probes did not produce any ISH signals.
TH, TSH, D2, and D3 activity. Serum T4 and T3 were determined by RIA in P21 animals (n = 8 per genotype) as reported previously (52). Brain T4 and T3 content was measured after extraction of the tissues, as described in detail by Reyns et al. (53). D2 and D3 activities in cerebella and forebrains, as well as D2 activities in pituitary extracts, were assessed as reported previously (52). Briefly, tissues were homogenized in PED10 buffer, and protein concentration was determined by the Bradford method. For D2 activity analysis, homogenate dilutions were incubated with 2 × 105 cpm [125I]T4 in the presence of unlabeled T3. D3 activities were assessed by incubating homogenate dilutions with 2 × 105 cpm [125I]T3. After 30 minutes at 37 °C, reactions were stopped by adding ice-cold ethanol. After centrifugation, supernatants were mixed with 0.02 M ammonium acetate (pH 4) and subjected to HPLC analysis. Radioactivity was monitored using a flow scintillation detector (Radiomatic A-500; Packard). TSH serum levels were determined using a double-antibody precipitation RIA as previously described (54, 55). Briefly, 25 μl mouse serum, 25 μl PBS containing 0.1% azide, and 100 μl (final dilution, 1:25,000) rabbit anti-rat TSH serum (anti-rat TSH RIA-6; NIDDK) were incubated for 4 hours at RT. Subsequently, 100 μl [125I]rTSH tracer (approximately 15,000 cpm; MP Biomedicals) was added, and the mixture was incubated overnight at RT to allow equilibration. Next, 500 μl donkey anti-rabbit secondary antibody coated onto magnetizable polymer beads (Amerlex M; GE Healthcare) was added, mixed, and incubated at RT for 15 minutes. Samples were centrifuged for 15 minutes at 756 g at RT, and the pellets were counted and calculated using Wizard γ counter and RiaSmart software (Perkin Elmer). Mouse standards were prepared by serial dilution of serum pool with high murine TSH (mTSH) with mTSH-0 serum, as described previously (54), and samples were assayed in duplicate.
In vivo transport studies. Uptake analysis was carried out by injecting 2.5- to 4.5-month-old male animals (n ≥ 3 per genotype and time point) i.p. with 1.2 μCi [125I]T4 (PerkinElmer) in PBS. For injection as well as perfusion, mice were deeply anesthetized with isoflurane. After collecting heart blood, mice were intracardially perfused with PBS, after which brains, livers, and kidneys were collected. To determine the amount of radioactivity taken up by different tissues, organs and blood samples were weighed, and radioactivity was measured in an automatic γ counter.
qPCR. Total tissue RNA was isolated using the NucleoSpin RNA II Kit (Macherey-Nagel). Synthesis of cDNA was performed using the Transcriptor High Fidelity cDNA Synthesis Kit (Roche). To exclude the presence of genomic DNA, 1 sample without reverse transcriptase was included as well. qPCR was performed using iQ SYBR Green Supermix and Multicolor Real-Time PCR Detection System (Bio-Rad). At least 5 samples per genotype were subjected to analysis. As a housekeeping gene for normalization, cyclophilin D (CycD) was used. See Supplemental Methods for primer sequences.
Immunohistochemistry. Perfusion-fixed 50 μm forebrain (frontal) and cerebellum (sagittal) sections of P12, P33, and P120 male mice were cut on a vibratome (Microm). Sections were blocked and permeabilized with 10% normal goat serum in PBS containing 0.2% Triton X-100. Cerebellar sections were stained with a monoclonal mouse anti-CB antibody (1:1,000; Swant), followed by incubation with an Alexa Fluor 555–labeled goat anti-rabbit secondary antibody (Invitrogen) and analysis with a Zeiss Axio Imager Z1 (Zeiss). Consecutive forebrain sections were stained with the following antibodies (all from Millipore): rabbit anti-CB (1:500), rabbit anti-CR (1:500), mouse anti-GAD67 (1:200), rat anti-MBP (1:200), mouse anti-NeuN (1:500), and mouse anti-PV (1:1,000). In addition, a goat anti-human GAD1 antibody (1:40 R&D Systems) was used after blocking the respective tissue sections with 10% donkey serum diluted in PBS containing 0.2% Triton X-100. Subsequently, sections were incubated with respective Alexa Fluor 488– or Alexa Fluor 555–labeled secondary antibodies (Invitrogen) and with Hoechst33258 (1:10,000; Invitrogen) to label cell nuclei. The BrainStain Imaging Kit (Invitrogen) was used to assess the myelin content in 50 μm coronal forebrain vibratome sections according to the manufacturer’s protocol. Briefly, sections were permeabilized for 30 minutes in PBS containing 0.2% Triton X-100, then stained with FluoroMyelin green dye (1:300) and DAPI (1:300) in PBS. See Supplemental Methods for details on staining quantification, processing of brain tissue for EM analysis, and Gallyas and Bielschowsky silver staining.
Gait analysis, rotarod, and beam walk test. See Supplemental Methods.
Statistics. Values represent mean and SEM from at least 3 animals per genotype. For multigroup comparisons, 2-way ANOVA was performed (2 × 2 factorial ANOVA; factor A, WT vs. Oatp1c1 KO; factor B, WT vs. Mct8 KO) using Daniels XL Toolbox packet for Microsoft Excel. When P values less than 0.05 were received, pairwise comparison between individual groups was done followed by Bonferroni post-hoc testing using Microsoft Excel. A P value less than 0.05 was considered significant.
Study approval. Animal experiments were approved by the local animal welfare committees (TLLV Thüringen, Bad Langensalza, Germany).
This work was supported by grants from the DFG (HE3418/5-1, RTG 1715, and SPP1629 [HE3418/7-1]) as well as the Leibniz Graduate School for Aging and Age-Related Diseases (LGSA). The authors thank Alexander Gloria (Friedrich Schiller University), Sabine Landmann (Fritz Lipmann Institute), Mieke van Beeren (Academica Medical Center), Ramona van Heerebeek (Erasmus Medical Center), and Lut Noterdaeme and Lieve Geenen (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven) for excellent technical assistance as well as Frederike Kramer (Fritz Lipmann Institute) for help with gait analysis.
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Detailed Guide to Local Cuisine of the Philippines
Text by: Sharwin Tee
Discover the different local dishes in the Philippines. What really is Filipino food? What are some Filipino dishes that are simply must try? Why do both celebrity chefs Anthony Bourdain and Andrew Zimmern think so highly of it? Consider this an introductory dive into one of Southeast Asia’s most unique cuisines – Filipino food.
While the cuisine of the Philippines is one of the world’s most distinct, giving momentum to the numerous culinary and food tours in the country, it had, until lately, been quite mysterious that it’s prone to misunderstanding or misrepresentation. To understand why it’s important to understand its background and its multiple influences.
1 - Origins and Influences of Philippine Cuisine
2 - Basics of Food from the Philippines
3 - Filipino Dishes in Luzon
4 - Filipino Dishes in Visayas
5 - Filipino Dishes in Mindanao
Origins of Philippine Cuisine
Some would like to call Filipino food as, “one of the world’s earliest fusion cuisines,” and while that may be true up to a certain point, it may also be an oversimplification. Most Filipino dishes began with their creators making use of whatever ingredients they could find (usually within a 1-2 mile radius) and creating a dish from those ingredients.
With the Philippines being one of the world’s largest archipelagos, Filipino cuisine is highly local and regional. This not only means that there are hundreds (if not thousands) of individually different dishes but also there are some Filipino dishes served throughout the country, but often have different preparations and even names.
Influences of Filipino Food
Philippine cuisine has several foreign influences that have successfully melded with local, indigenous cuisine. Indigenous Filipino food is heavily influenced by Chinese cuisine, brought along by the various traders and later on, Chinese immigrants mainly from Fujian region of China and the Cantonese.
Filipino food is also heavily influenced by the cuisine of its different colonizers like the Spanish, who ruled the Philippines for 300 years, the Americans, who ruled the Philippines for a number of decades, the Japanese, who ruled a few years during World War II, and the British for a couple of years (bringing along Indian workers with them).
There are also Mexican influences as workers and traders from the galleon trades brought ingredients and dishes to Philippine shores. Plus, there are native food from the country’s Islamic regions, which were influenced by the neighboring Southeast Asian countries.
By virtue of it being local, regional, seasonal and being influenced by a number of different foreign cuisines, cataloging Filipino dishes is a little bit of challenge, especially for foreigners. This also means that it is difficult to truly define Filipino food in just a few sentences but there are some basics to give you a clearer picture.
Basics of Food from the Philippines
1. Most Filipino dishes are named for cooking techniques and not specific ingredients or dishes. For example, the dish adobo refers to the technique of stewing in vinegar with peppercorns and bay leaf.
This means saying adobo could mean a host of different dishes. When ordering, it’s better to be more specific like chicken pork adobo or adobong pusit (squid adobo).
2. Unlike the rest of Southeast Asia, Filipino food is rarely spicy. Instead, most Filipino dishes are a combination of salty, sour, sweet and bitter. Most of the spicy dishes are found in just 2 main regions, the province of Bicol and in the Muslim areas of Mindanao
3. Among the flavors, sourness is the most prevalent in Filipino food. Filipinos draw sour flavors from 3 main sources, fruits, leaves and fermentation.
4. The Philippines has one of the most varied selections of vinegar in the world. Varieties include coconut sap, pineapple, sugar cane, palm, and banana among others.
5. The cuisine is best enjoyed with rice. Filipinos enjoy each and every meal with one form of rice or another, even snacks and breakfast.
6. Filipinos could eat as much as 5-7 times a day. Early breakfast, breakfast, morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack, dinner, and pulutan (small bites while drinking beer or hard liquor).
7. Filipino cuisine encourages the use of sawsawan or dipping sauces. This is usually a combination of calamansi (Philippine lime), soy sauce, vinegar, fish sauce, onions, garlic and chilies.
8. Traditionally, Filipino food is best enjoyed using hands in place of utensils. This practice is called kamayan.
9. Filipino cuisine employs some unique condiments, including banana catsup, bagoong or guinamos and buro. Banana catsup was developed in light of the unavailability of tomatoes and is used to enhance a lot of fried dishes.
Bagoong is fermented shrimp or fish paste and its strong pungent flavors are used to complement some of the milder tasting dishes like grilled squid or Kare Kare (ox tail peanut stew). Buro, meanwhile, is rice fermented with shrimp or fish and is a great complement to fried fish or raw greens like mustard leaves.
10. Food is such a big part of Filipino culture that you are usually greeted with, “Kumain ka na ba?” (Have you eaten?) and regardless of your answer, the host will usually still bring you food, especially if you visit someone’s home.
An Introduction to Filipino Dishes
Filipino cuisine, as explained above, is both regional and local. What this means is there are literally thousands of dishes to try which, even with accomplished gourmands, is a tall order. This is why culinary and food tours in the Philippines are popular for travelers, especially first-time visitors.
Here are a few from each of the 3 major regions to get you started. Take note that a lot of these dishes are now available beyond the regions or provinces they are known for.
Luzon Dishes
Cuisine in Luzon vary based on the regions but they all are easily identified by the ingredients that are local to each destination. The most popular culinary destinations in Luzon are Pampanga or the Culinary Capital of the Philippines that serves a mix of savory dishes.
The Bicol region is known for spicy foods that infuses coconut milk. Here are some of the most notable dishes that you can try in this part of the country.
Usually, among the first to be mentioned when talking about Filipino food, adobo refers to the cooking method of stewing in vinegar, peppercorns and bay leaf. Most of the modern versions add soy sauce but there are plenty of regions in Luzon alone that don’t add soy sauce.
The most common things cooked adobo style are pork, chicken (or both together), squid and even vegetables, and these are easily available throughout the country. The earthiness of the bay leaf and peppercorns play well with the brightness of the vinegar and it makes for a hearty lunch or dinner.
Variations include the addition of turmeric in the Batangas, fish sauce in the Cavite version, coconut milk sometimes found in the Bicol region, annatto seeds in Iloilo or even pineapple in some homes. Adobo can come with the braising liquid as a sauce or with the braising liquid reduced until it’s almost a glaze.
The running joke is that there are as many adobo recipes as there are islands in the Philippines (over 7000) but actually, there could be more since almost every Filipino family has an adobo recipe they treasure.
Chef’s Tip: Adobo is best enjoyed with rice and it is also lovely with some freshness to cut through the richness like fresh sliced tomatoes, jicama or green mangoes.
Sinigang
Sinigang refers to a soup soured by a sour fruit or leaf. Usually, sinigang can be pork, beef, salmon or shrimp cooked in a broth with vegetables like kang kong (swamp cabbage), radish, Chinese long beans, tomatoes, and onions.
As for the souring agent, the use of sour fruits largely depends on seasons. Most of Manila and Luzon use tamarind or kamias, while Pampanga uses guava.
Meanwhile, to the south in Iloilo, Visayas they use libas to sour the broth. Most areas in Luzon love to cook the broth very sour, which makes it an excellent mouthwatering appetizer.
Chef’s Tip: Locals enjoy sinigang also with rice, and some create a dipping sauce of fish sauce and calamansi to dip the meat, seafood and veggies in.
It has become one of the most popular dishes in Filipino cuisine, with versions of it being served internationally to rave reviews. Sisig, which originated in Pampanga, has undergone quite an evolution through the years and that has left it as one of the most misunderstood dishes.
The word “sisig” comes from an old Filipino word “sisigan,” which translates as to “munch on something sour”. Early indications are that the first version of sisig could be a sour salad of chopped vegetables, onions and chili. Sisig “Matua” (meaning “old” in Pampanga) is a dish of pig’s ears and face (maskara) with liver, onions, chilis all marinated in vinegar.
The most commonly enjoyed version of sisig, however, features pig’s ears and face and are boiled and then grilled, chopped and served with onions, chili, liver and calamansi on a sizzling platter.
The dish is a celebration of the interplay of the pork’s richness with the brightness of calamansi and it is a wonderful celebration of textures of both tender and crunchy meat. Meanwhile, modern interpretations have utilized chicken, squid or even milkfish as a main protein while some have added egg to the dish.
Chef’s Tip: Sisig was actually first considered a pulutan (something to eat while drinking) but now it is also enjoyed with rice. Whatever the occasion, though, it is still best enjoyed with beer.
Pinakbet/Pakbet
One of the more humble Filipino dishes, pakbet, is a vegetable stew that usually consists of eggplant, string beans, okra, bitter melon and squash and it is usually flavored with bagoong (strong shrimp paste or fish sauce). As with all Filipino dishes, other vegetables may be substituted and depending on the region.
Pinakbet can be a stew which you can easily find in almost every province or it can have a more soupy quality like the ones from Northern regions like Ilocos and Pangasinan.
With its humble ingredients, the dish is considered less glamourous, but millions of Filipino homes enjoy pinakbet with the interplay of salty, sweet and bitter flavors mixed in with the umami from the shrimp paste.
Chef’s Tip: The addition of crunchy pork on top of the pinakbet makes it a more luxurious dish.
Pancit refers to noodles and it is one of the many dishes influenced by the trades with the Chinese early in Philippine history. Like the adobo, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of pancit varieties in the Philippines, depending on the region.
The most common would be the Pancit Canton, egg noodles stir fried with vegetables and meat, flavored with soy sauce and/or oyster sauce. Pancit Bihon (rice noodles), Cha Misua (angel hair flour noodles) or Pancit Sotanghon (vermicelli) are similar versions using different noodles as base.
Other well-loved varieties include the Pancit Malabon and Pancit Luglog/Palabok which are rice noodles served with a rich anatto tinted sauce with shrimps and pork cracklings and the Lomi, thick egg noodles cooked with meat, shrimp and vegetables in thickened broth.
Just like the Chinese, a lot of Filipinos believe that noodles represent long life and so pancit is served in almost every birthday celebration.
Chef’s Tip: Whatever pancit variety you’re enjoying, the dish always gets better with a splash of calamansi juice to brighten up the flavors. Meanwhile, Pancit Habhab, a version from Quezon is best enjoyed with vinegar and eaten with no utensils!
One of the more iconic dishes in the Southern Luzon region of Bicol, Laing is stewed taro leaves cooked with pork, shrimp, chilies and coconut milk. The intense heat of the labuyo chilies is mellowed by the coconut milk and the taro leaves that are dried first before being stewed is made even richer with the addition of the pork. Pieces of cooked taro root may also be added to make the dish more substantial.
Chef’s Tip: As with most Filipino dishes, Laing is best enjoyed with rice and it makes a great tag team with some grilled pork belly.
“Halo” is the Filipino word for mix and as the name suggests, this sweet treat is a mix of preserved and sweetened fruits, legumes and gels served with crushed ice and usually, evaporated milk. Halo could also refer to how to best eat this dish as you are expected to mix all the ingredients up as you enjoy them.
Debating the exact ingredients of Halo Halo can lead to controversy, but it really depends on the maker. Most versions would have multiple sweetened fruits or legumes like saba (cardava bananas), sweet potato, chickpeas, white beans, nata de coco (coconut gel), kaong (sugar palm), sago (tapioca pearls), halayang and ube (purple yam jam).
Modern versions also include a scoop of ice cream (usually ube flavored). Some popular versions in Pampanga have as little as three ingredients underneath the ice while a version in Cavite boasts of 12. Whatever the number of ingredients, Halo Halo is an excellent mixture of sweetness and creaminess and never fails to be the perfect antidote to harshly hot Philippine summers.
Chef’s Tip: Make sure to mix the ice quickly as the warm Philippine weather can melt the crushed ice into one large, unwieldy piece.
Visayas Dishes
Some of the tastiest and most iconic Filipino dishes can be found in Visayas. When you think of lechon or roasted whole pig, Cebu's lechon comes to mind as the best in the country.
The majority of destinations in Visayas are islands or are located near coastlines, that's why fresh seafood in this island region is also a must-try. Check out the most iconic dishes in this part of the Philippines:
A celebration dish, lechon is found on almost every feast and party in the Philippines. Lechon refers to the method of cooking meat on a spit over an open flame, so it can refer to a whole pig or just the belly, calf, goat or even chicken.
The most common version enjoyed by Filipinos remains to be Lechon Baboy or whole roast pig. While a lot of countries do whole roast pigs, Filipino masters called “Lechoneros”, have mastered the art of cooking them.
Mastering both hand turning the spit and moving the charcoal constantly throughout the cooking process, they are able to achieve an even, smooth browning of the skin, giving it a beautiful caramel colored sheen and keeping it crunchy (even 8 hours after they are cooked) while the meat inside is moist and tender.
There are many regions that boast of making delicious lechon but the lechons from Cebu are enjoying the most publicity now, and with good reason.
Whole pigs have heaping amounts of lemongrass, onions and garlic sewn into the belly with sea salt rubbed all over the pig, making it a fragrant and flavorful dish that does not need any sauce. If one absolutely has to insist, it can be enjoyed with a spicy vinegar dipping sauce.
Chef’s Tip: Outside of the pig, many regions in Visayas (and Mindanao) do Lechon Karnero (whole roasted lamb) which is also best enjoyed without sauce.
Batchoy
Batchoy is one of the Philippines’ most popular noodle soup dishes that features egg noodles, beef and pork meat, liver, marrow and intestines, in a pork and beef broth with a hint of guinamos (shrimp paste). As if that’s not rich enough, fried garlic and chicharon (fried pork rinds) are added.
The broth is an exercise in rich umami flavors with the tender meat adding substance to the freshly made egg noodles. Naturally, the best place to try batchoy is in its birthplace, Iloilo, particularly in La Paz.
Chef’s Tip: Batchoy is best enjoyed with puto (steamed rice flour bread) or breads like Pan de Sal or Pan de Leche.
Inasal
The most popular version of Inasal is chicken marinated in ginger, vinegar and lemongrass, skewered and then grilled over open flame. As they are grilled, they are brushed with oil flavored with garlic and annatto seed.
With inasal places, you can enjoy not only the traditional meat of paa (thigh and leg) or petso (breast and wing), but also the other parts including the baticolon (gizzard), corazon (heart), atay (liver) and isol (butt).
The vinegar ginger marinade infuses the chicken with lots of flavor and the smokiness that is imparted by the charcoal flame make this dish more flavorful than normal grilled chicken. Bacolod is the ultimate place for inasal lovers as they even have a row of inasal restaurants affectionately called, “Manukan Country.” (chicken country).
Chef’s Tip: Inasal is best enjoyed by making a sawsawan (dipping sauce) which can be a combination of soy sauce, vinegar, chilies, calamansi and minced garlic.
SuToKil
SuToKil is actually not just one dish but three dishes that are usually enjoyed together. “Su” or “Sugba” refers to grilled and it’s usually a grilled whole fish or other seafood like scallops or shrimps. “To” or “Tola/Tinola” refers to a ginger soup, in this case a ginger and fish soup, and “Kil” or “Kilawin/Kinilaw” refers to raw seafood marinated in vinegar and citrus.
Together, they give the diner 3 different ways to enjoy fresh seafood, giving them 3 vastly different textures and flavor profiles. Numerous places in Cebu still specialize in serving only SuToKil.
Chef’s Tip: While places specializing in SuToKil are a little bit harder to find now, most places serving Filipino food in the Visayas region, especially those near the water, would have all three dishes that can be ordered separately.
Mindanao Dishes
Another island region in the Philippines blessed with access to the freshest seafood is Mindanao. Because of its close proximity to other Southeast Asian countries like Malaysia and Indonesia, dishes in Mindanao are also influenced by their cuisine. Here are some must-try dishes when you're in Mindanao:
Inihaw na Panga
Inihaw na panga refers to grilled tuna collars and it has become a staple in Mindanao, particularly in Davao, where most Filipino grill restaurants have it on the menu. While a lot of the Philippine tuna meat is sold internationally, a lot of the collars remain in the country and locals have taken quite a liking to them.
Grilled simply with maybe just a splash of calamansi and a touch of salt. The meat from the tuna collar is much more flavorful and moist than regular tuna meat and the additional smokiness from charcoal flame makes the meat even more delicious.
Chef’s Tip: Panga is best enjoyed with a cold local beer and lively conversation.
Piyanggang Manok
Although a little harder to find, chicken stewed with blackened coconut meat and a condiment called palapa (ginger, chilies and sakurab) until tender and then grilled, is worth the adventure. Intense flavors from the chilies and ginger penetrate the chicken while the burnt coconut surprisingly helps bring out the natural sweetness of the chicken.
Chef’s Tip: This is an indigenous Filipino dish that is mostly enjoyed by the numerous Muslim tribes in Mindanao but there are now restaurants in Metro Davao, Zamboanga and even Quiapo in Manila that serve this.
Sinuglaw
One of the most curious pairings in Filipino cuisine, Sinuglaw is a combination of grilled pork (sinugba) and raw marinated fish (Kinilaw). The smokiness of the grilled pork belly combines well with the sour vinegar marinade of the fish, cutting into the pork’s richness.
The dish, which is widely enjoyed in Davao, also has interesting textures from the cooked pork, raw fish and vegetables like raw cucumbers and radishes.
Chef’s Tip: The addition of sea salt makes the flavors pop up even more and it adds more texture.
Unlike its American counterpart, barbecue in the Philippines is meat, usually marinated pork or chicken, skewered on sticks and grilled over charcoal. While marinades may differ depending on the chef, it usually consists of lemon lime soda, soy sauce, banana catsup and calamansi. The same marinade is also used to baste the meat as they are cooking.
Served in night markets in provinces like Davao and Tagum, it is one of those dishes that would be sweet, salty, sour, spicy and bitter all at the same time, making it easily one of the favorite dishes of many.
Chef’s Tip: Barbecue is best enjoyed with atcharang papaya (pickled raw papaya) to cut into the richness of the meat.
Discover Filipino Cuisine for Yourself
Filipino food’s regionality, seasonality and locality make it a subject that can’t be explained in a few examples and sentences, hence its latent mystery, but that is part of its charm.
There are gems to find in every trips and experiences in the Philippines and the list above, while already impressive, is just a mere appetizer to get people started.
Filipino food is the perfect complement to the Philippines’ majestic views and the Filipino people’s graciousness as hosts. While it may be impossible to try every version of adobo, kilawin or batchoy, it is the most fun journey to try.
Go on a food adventure around the Philippines. Explore Philippines culinary tours and activities that you can add to your itinerary and taste authentic Filipino food!
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Long-term proton pump inhibitors and risk of gastric cancer development after treatment for Helicobacter pylori: a population-based study
Ka Shing Cheung Department of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, Queen Mary Hospital, Hong Kong PubMed articlesGoogle scholar articles
Esther W Chan Department of Pharmacology and Pharmacy, Centre for Safe Medication Practice and Research, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong PubMed articlesGoogle scholar articles
Angel Y S Wong Department of Pharmacology and Pharmacy, Centre for Safe Medication Practice and Research, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong PubMed articlesGoogle scholar articles
Lijia Chen Department of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, Queen Mary Hospital, Hong Kong PubMed articlesGoogle scholar articles
Ian C K Wong Department of Pharmacology and Pharmacy, Centre for Safe Medication Practice and Research, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong UCL School of Pharmacy, University College London, London, UK PubMed articlesGoogle scholar articles
Wai Keung Leung Department of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, Queen Mary Hospital, Hong Kong PubMed articlesGoogle scholar articles
Correspondence to Dr Wai Keung Leung, Department of Medicine, Queen Mary Hospital, 102 Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong; waikleung{at}hku.hk
Cheung KS, Chan EW, Wong AYS, et al
Gut 2018;67:28-35.
Received June 1, 2017
Revised August 27, 2017
Accepted September 4, 2017
First published October 31, 2017.
Previous version (31 October 2017).
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Research: Cracking a Joke at Work Can Make You Seem More Competent
Alison Wood Brooks
As a society, we often make judgments about people based on small snippets of their behavior. For example, we may judge a person’s confidence, competence, and status on the success of a single joke. Telling a joke to an unfamiliar audience is risky — Will they laugh? Will they be offended? Even if they laugh, will they really think the joke is funny? Take these two tweets:
“First full day as Twitter COO tomorrow. Task #1: undermine CEO, consolidate power.”
—Dick Costolo, the night before he joined Twitter as chief operations officer
“Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!”
—Justine Sacco, before boarding a flight to South Africa
These jokes had vastly different outcomes. A year after Costolo tweeted his “master plan,” he actually became CEO of Twitter. A day after Sacco posted her tweet, she was fired from her job as a public relations representative for IAC. Costolo’s story shows the benefits of humor for climbing the corporate ladder, while Sacco’s reveals the risks. Why do some people get it right and others fail so miserably? Is humor worth the risk? In a series of experimental studies, my coauthors — T. Bradford Bitterly and Maurice Schweitzer — and I examined when and how humor incurs costs and confers benefits.
In our research, we hypothesized that a joke teller is perceived as more confident than people who don’t tell jokes. Additionally, we hypothesized that an individual who tells a failed joke may be viewed as less competent, especially if the joke is offensive. Finally, we hypothesized that if a successful joke teller experiences a boost in perceived confidence and competence, it would likely improve others’ perceptions of the joke teller’s status.
We ran a series of studies to investigate these predictions. First, we recruited 166 participants to write and present testimonials for FastScoop, a fictional waste removal service that cleans pet owners’ yards. Unbeknownst to participants, the first two individuals to present their testimonials were research assistants with prepared testimonials. The first presenter always read a serious testimonial, but the second alternated between a serious testimonial and the following: “Very professional. After cleaning up the poop, they weren’t even upset when they found out that I don’t have a pet!”
Participants were asked to rate the testimonials and the presenters. We found that the second presenter was perceived as more competent, more confident, and higher in status when presenting the joke testimonial. We replicated these findings in a similar experiment with testimonials for VisitSwitzerland (“The flag is a big plus”). In this experiment we also found that participants were more likely to choose the funny presenter as a group leader for a subsequent task — simply based on his one joke.
Despite these findings, one might imagine a scenario in which a joke falls flat. Do bad jokes increase status too? To answer this question, we asked 274 participants to read a transcript of a job interviewee’s response to the question, “Where do you see yourself in five years?” Some of the participants read that the interviewee responded seriously, while others read that he responded with, “Celebrating the fifth anniversary of you asking me this question.” The joke condition was further subdivided by whether the interviewer laughed (successful joke) or didn’t laugh (unsuccessful joke). Replicating our previous results, individuals who told a successful joke were perceived as more competent, more confident, and higher status than serious individuals. In an interesting twist, participants who told a failed joke were not perceived as worse than participants who gave a serious response, and telling a failed joke actually increased perceptions of the interviewee’s confidence.
Drawing from the Justine Sacco controversy, we investigated a scenario in which a joke could be both unfunny and inappropriate. We wondered whether telling an inappropriate joke would decrease perceptions of status and whether the success of the joke would attenuate this effect. In two experiments, we asked participants to read a transcript of a job interview in which a job candidate responds seriously (no joke), responds with a successful but inappropriate joke, or responds with an unsuccessful and inappropriate joke. We found that inappropriate joke tellers were perceived as more confident than serious responders. However, this confidence boost did not translate into status. Inappropriate-joke tellers were perceived as less competent and lower status than serious responders, even when the joke was funny. These results demonstrate the risk inherent in humor: Telling a bad joke is all right, but telling an inappropriate bad joke is quite costly.
In our final study, we wanted to disentangle the effects of joke success and joke appropriateness. We created scenarios depicting five responses to a job interviewer’s question: serious response, inappropriate successful joke, inappropriate unsuccessful joke, appropriate successful joke, and appropriate unsuccessful joke. We found that telling an appropriate and successful joke increases status but telling an inappropriate unsuccessful joke decreases status. This change in status was completely explained by differences in perceived competence and confidence. All joke tellers experienced a boost in perceived confidence, but only interviewees who told successful and appropriate jokes were perceived as more competent.
Our findings have three broad implications for would-be joke tellers:
First, don’t be afraid of a flop. Bad jokes — as long as they are appropriate — won’t harm your social standing or affect how competent people think you are. They may even increase how confident you seem.
Second, it is almost always advisable to tell an appropriate joke. A well-executed appropriate joke makes you seem more confident, more competent, and higher status. A flop only makes you seem as inept as a serious response.
Finally, don’t make inappropriate jokes with unfamiliar audiences. Even when executed successfully, they don’t confer a boost to your perceived status or competence, and when unsuccessful they can do serious harm to you and your career.
Alison Wood Brooks is an assistant professor at Harvard Business School. She teaches negotiation in the MBA and executive education curricula and is affiliated with the Behavioral Insights Group.
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Hob Nob Anyone?
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Board index » Reading Football Club » The Team
How impressed are you with BMcD's return to the club?
Page 1 of 103 •
msmivie
by msmivie » 16 Jan 2016 20:55
Early days, but I just wondered how everyone viewed BMcD's return to the club?
Six League games in, we have 2 wins, 1 draw and 3 defeats!
Only 4 goals scored, 5 conceded, and 7 points.
Thoughts please!
Last edited by msmivie on 16 Jan 2016 21:17, edited 1 time in total.
Mid Sussex Royal
Hob Nob Regular
Re: How impressed are you with BMcD's return to the club?
by Mid Sussex Royal » 16 Jan 2016 20:58
Just got back - poorly set up today and why does Cox get on instead of Sa?
Quinn needs to start too
AthleticoSpizz
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by AthleticoSpizz » 16 Jan 2016 21:02
As always with inheriting another mans' team, it's boom or bust.
We as a club have regressed ( since the departure of Sir Steve )......as soon as a manager gets established, plateaus then struggles a little bit......we sack him.
Time to bring out that mercurial cliche'' ....." Give him two transfer markets"
CountryRoyal
Hob Nob Addict
by CountryRoyal » 16 Jan 2016 21:04
Underwhelmed but it's early days, we haven't had quite the upturn in results that so many clubs seem to have with a new manager but on the whole performances have improved and somewhat more of a willingness.
Overall a bit meh, but as I said, it's still early days.
by Top Flight » 16 Jan 2016 21:09
It's too early to judge McDermott. It will take him a number of transfer windows and lots of time on the training ground before this becomes a McDermott team with McDermott's so called identity.
This is why it doesn't pay to fire managers too early. Clarke should have been given a lot more time. He was prematurely fired.
To even start judging McDermott now is ridiculous. Based on his previous track record at the helm I fully approve of his appointment and given enough time and support he will do a great job for us.
WAZZOCK
by WAZZOCK » 16 Jan 2016 21:10
I was completely underwhelmed when Brian got the job again.
I think he has done a decent job since he's been back. We should have come away with at least a point in all three of the losses since his return, and although he can setup the team, he can't legislate for poor finishing in the final third.
Ian Royal
Location: Playing spot the pc*nt on HNA?
by Ian Royal » 16 Jan 2016 21:13
My thoughts are it's stupid to be trying to assess his return to the club after just six league and one cup games, plus no senior signings - mid-way through January.
It's not gone as well as we'd hoped, it does seem to have improved to some degree compared to under Clarke though. One of my main concerns about his return hasn't materialised so far, as we still seem to be trying to make decent use of the ball.
Longhorn1970
by Longhorn1970 » 16 Jan 2016 21:19
WAZZOCK I was completely underwhelmed when Brian got the job again.
Same could have been said about SC, it's not about if, buts or maybe's ..
players let SC down and have not exactly pulled out the stops for BM, not that he was my choice ..
bobby1413
Location: Reading
by bobby1413 » 16 Jan 2016 21:32
I am pleased
Sounds odd after today, but I just feel more positive and confident despite losing abysmally than I did under SC or Adkins.
I'm a big believer in the manager needing time. He's been here 7 games. I think it takes time to correct mistakes or poor signings, or things he doesn't like. He's dealing with million pound signings, if they don't fit in, he needs time to actually alter it.
Anyone blaming BM I think is midguided. he didn't bring SA on but he's off to another club isn't he? Yea he may not have brought player A, B, C on but it doesn't effect the sheer lack of fcuking talent and ability on the pitch.
Agree...and as I said...it's another mans' team....when this happens it's a boom or bust scenario
At least until it's his team
Problem is with player power and the financial rewards and consequences at stake once a manager loses the dressing room there is often too much risk in continuing with him.
I hate the managerial circus but unfortunately it's part of the game today and won't be changing anytime soon. If we continue to struggle, have some heavy defeats and barely avoid relegation it wouldn't surprise me if Brian got the sack in the summer. It's farcical.
.....which calls the question.....just what do we want?
Yes it'd be nice to be Leicester City right now......but they'll be tomorrow's Bolton.
Think we need to stick with a manager for more than a year or two regardless of league(s) position
AthleticoSpizz .....which calls the question.....just what do we want?
You're right but sometimes a change is needed if it doesn't feel right. Clarke getting 2 years would have been a travesty for example.
McDermott, whilst not without his faults, is a good fit for the club and I think it's important to have a passion for club and something to care about beyond your job and professional pride. Unfortunately football fans are by nature, fairly fickle, and just as a club "legend" can be made seemingly so easily the word branded about like it's going out of fashion, so too can they fall from grace and be a focal point of anger and resentment.
Football eh.
Yeah....remember heralded and promoted as champions one day....then a pen-full of turkeys outside the Madstad a few months later
Hob Nob Subscriber
Location: Developed a pathological hatred of snakes on 14/10/19
by RoyalBlue » 16 Jan 2016 22:14
Thought it was a mistake and a retrograde step and it's looking like that so far.
Extended-Phenotype
Location: Oxford Road
by Extended-Phenotype » 16 Jan 2016 22:19
bobby1413 I am pleased
Anyone blaming BM I think is midguided. he didn't bring SA on but he's off to another club isn't he?
So? He doesn't take his points with him you divlord
jojo1 considering we were 7th when jock strap went and now we are 12th i would have to with hold my judgment
Pretty much sums it up, I'll take 7th place, all this bullsh*t about BM inheriting someone else's team is rubbish. He knew who was here and what he had to work with, and on what budget (nil), he didn't have to take the job on those terms. Teams came here in Sep and October and said we were the best they had played, we weren't exactly doomed !
by pwb » 16 Jan 2016 22:40
I have never been impressed with McDermott, I have always thought he was lucky to get promoted last time and that showed, as we got relegated at first time of asking.
Sir John and his cronies are holding the club back, they should leave the new owners to spend their money how they want.
lol......maybe they are.....that's why we are where we are
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Welcome to the "Promotion Napoléon" of the French language scholarship awardees!
The 14th batch of linguistic scholarship awardees has been for the first time given a name. A name deeply rooted in the history of France to pay a tribute to the commitment of the Hong Kong Chapter of the Legion of Honour, whose generosity has helped to co-finance nearly 1000 scholarships since the program’s inception in 2006.
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The 19th Francophonie Festival in Hong Kong was officially launched on 12 March 2019 at The University of Hong Kong, under the patronage of our guest of honour, the Canadian novelist and French Academician, Dany Laferrière, in presence of the Consuls General of Belgium, Canada, France, Greece and Switzerland, Director of Alliance Française Hong Kong.
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Award ceremony of AFLE video and tri-category poster competitions 2018
Organized by the Association of Teachers of French in Hong Kong and Macau (AFLE) with the support of Consulate general of France in Hong Kong and Macau, the award ceremony for AFLE competitions was held on March 20 (Tuesday) at French bookstore Parenthèses in Central with the presence of Consul general of France in Hong Kong and Macau Mr Eric Berti.
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Home | Hope Breakfast with Sam & Duncan | Station News
You Gave Over 8,000 Miracles: Thankyou, Hopeland!
By Clare BruceMonday 19 Aug 2019Hope Breakfast with Sam & Duncan
From the bottom of our hearts, Sam and Duncan and the rest of the Hope 103.2 team want to say an enormous THANKYOU to those who supported Miracles Day 2019.
Our goal was 8,000 “miracles” — that’s 8,000 donations of $33, to enable 8,000 of the world’s poorest people to have their sight restored with a simple operation.
And together, we did it! In fact on Monday morning the “Miracles Counter” was still climbing, reaching 8,011 miracles by 11am.
Each of those 8,011 operations, helping children and adults living in some of the poorest parts of the world, will not only change just one life by restoring a person’s vision. When a person gets their sight back, it also impacts their entire community. They can support their family, go to school, succeed in work and education, and help to lift up those around them, too.
The ripple effects will be felt for years to come.
On behalf of the hard-working doctors at the Nepal Eye Hospital, and the patients whose lives you’ve changed forever, we are grateful.
Sam & Duncan Get Awkwardly Close to Eye Surgeries in Nepal
Live From Nepal: Sam & Duncan’s Miracles Day Blog – Updating Daily!
The Day Sight is Restored in Nepal – But Sadly, Not For Everyone
Meet Bauwa – the George Clooney of Nepal, According to Sam & Duncan
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XP Power, 새로운 웹사이트 오픈
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KDPOF demos first 25 Gb/s automotive-grade optical network
by 우 청 기자 1 주 ago 1 주 ago
Optical Multi-Gigabit Ethernet – on the Verge of Standardization and Implementation
KDPOF – leading supplier for gigabit transceivers over POF (Plastic Optical Fiber) – will display the world’s first demonstration of an automotive-grade optical transmission system with 25 gigabits per second at the Automotive Ethernet Congress from February 12 to 13, 2020 in Munich, Germany.
In his presentation, ‘Optical Multi-Gigabit Ethernet – on the Verge of Standardization and Implementation,’ on February 13 at 14:30, Carlos Pardo, CEO and Co-founder of KDPOF, will show details on the process for the new standard for multi-gigabit in automotive. It will enhance the existing 10GBASE-SR, which is the current standard by IEEE, to establish a communications channel in optical fiber at 10 Gb/s.
“With technological leaps such as electrical vehicles, automated driving, and V2X interconnection rushing through, automotive applications, utilization, and safety requirements are boosting the necessary network speed tremendously,” explained Carlos Pardo. “Consequently, in-vehicle networks are on the brink of speeds from one to multiple gigabits per second.”
IEEE 802.3 Automotive Optical Multi-Gigabit Standard
With the approval of the IEEE 802.3 working group, a team of individuals affiliated with more than 15 key carmakers and components suppliers, including KDPOF, has started the standardization of an IEEE 802.3 Automotive Optical Multi-Gigabit Standard with strong support from the industry. The working group headed by Carlos Pardo (KDPOF) kicked off last summer. The first prototypes are projected by the end of 2021. The study group will evaluate the creation of an IEEE Ethernet standard for the automotive industry, with speeds starting at 2.5 Gb/s and going up to 25 or 50 Gb/s.
The key advantages of the optical solution for specific applications using multi-gigabit speeds with in-vehicle connectivity are, among others, Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) thanks to the inherent galvanic isolation, low weight, and low cost. Relevant use cases from different carmakers in Europe and the USA incorporate the comprehensive features and benefits of the optical network technology. Use cases include the interconnectivity of telematics control modules, redundant and safe backbones for autonomous driving architectures, and advanced driver assist system (ADAS) sensors.
Key leading optoelectronic, connector, and wire harness vendors worldwide are prepared and already provide a well-supplied and competitive market with all the new components needed for multi-gigabit in the car: Physical Layer (PHY), Fiber Optic Transceiver (FOT), fibers, connectors, and light sources. The technology will be scalable in order to enable even higher data rates such as 50 and 100 Gbps in the future. By combining optimization in all areas of the new standard, the right balance of complexity and cost among all parts (CMOS IC, VCSEL, PD, ferrules, sleeves, cable, in-line connection technology, optics, and lenses, etc.) can be achieved in order to deliver the lowest cost, most reliable, and highly scalable solution to the automotive market.
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Burglary falls under 720 ILCS 5/19-1, which says, “A person commits burglary when without authority he or she knowingly enters or without authority remains within a building, housetrailer, watercraft, aircraft, motor vehicle, railroad car, or any part thereof, with intent to commit therein a felony or theft.”
Burglary is a felony in Chicago and in every other city in Illinois, and because it’s considered a Class 2 felony, it’s punishable by 3 to 7 years in prison.
One example of burglary is breaking into a vehicle intending to steal something of value that’s inside it (burglary isn’t the same thing as car theft; that’s an entirely separate crime). For example, if you break into a car to take an iPad, a GPS system or a satellite radio system, the state could charge you with burglary.
What is Residential Burglary in Illinois?
Residential burglary is more serious under Illinois law. Because residential burglary is more of an invasion of a person’s privacy than other types of burglary are, the punishment is more severe. This type of burglary falls under 720 ILCS 5/19.3, which says, “A person commits residential burglary when he or she knowingly and without authority enters or knowingly and without authority remains within the dwelling place of another, or any part thereof, with the intent to commit therein a felony or theft.”
Residential burglary is a Class 1 felony that’s punishable by 4 to 15 years in prison.
Possession of Burglary Tools in Illinois
Even the possession of burglary tools is a crime under Illinois law. It’s a Class 4 felony, and many people who are charged with burglary also face this charge, as well.
What to Do if You’re Accused of Burglary
You have the right to have an attorney to guide you through the complex legal process that burglary charges can bring—and it’s essential that you have the right burglary defense lawyer on your side.
You need someone who’s tough and who understands the law… and who’s willing to stand up for your rights and fight on your behalf.
You deserve Attorney Matt Fakhoury, a former Cook County Prosecutor who defends people accused of burglary in Chicago, Skokie, Rolling Meadows and Schaumburg.
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Grand Theft Auto 5 map is larger than you thought
by IAAG » 03 Aug 2013, 18:07
As the generation near its end, game worlds continue to grow larger. Over on Reddit, user jayzpoptart compared Franklin's location from the Grand Theft Auto 5 trailer and found the spot on the full map blueprint. After finding the location on blueprint, you will notice the small size Vespucci Beach in comparison to the huge map.
If you watch the latest GTA 5 gameplay trailer, you will see Franklin exit a store as he walks by a sunglasses stand towards "Sidewalk Market" sign in the [...]
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BeamNG DRIVE: Demo
BeamNG is a young startup company developing a state of the art real time physics simulation engine. We are currently a team of two programmers and two artists that founded the company in 2011.
Our main focus is on how things move rather than how things look on the screen. We aim to bring our expertise in real time soft-body physics and soft-body physics model design to the forefront of game physics simulation, making available the technology and know-how to as a wide an audience as possible. [...]
Link to topic: BeamNG DRIVE: Demo
Joint future for DTM and Japanese Super GT from 2014
by Maxidyne » 05 Aug 2013, 12:59
From 2014, DTM will be heading in a new direction. Thanks to a cooperation deal signed this Tuesday in Tokyo, the most popular international touring-car series is not only open for the Japanese car manufacturers but at the same time, the three premium-car manufacturers involved in DTM, Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz, also will have the opportunity to compete in the Japanese Super GT. The agreement regarding the use of the ‘New DTM’ regulations [...]
Link to topic: Joint future for DTM and Japanese Super GT from 2014
LCD images [2013/08/08]
LCD images where updated! - http://IAAG66.com/extras/lcd_wallpapers/
Link to topic: LCD images [2013/08/08]
Honda NSX -- driven by Senna
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Honda-NSX-dri ... 8245177837
Ayrton Senna had 3 Honda NSX at his disposal. A red one in Quinta do Lago, in the south of Portugal in his Villa, lent to him by the Honda Motor Company. A black one chassis nº 000999, bought for him especially by Mr Antonio de Almeida Braga a.k.a "Braguinha" (personal mentor and sponsor) in a palace in Sintra near the Estoril circuit, mentioned in Adrianne Galisteu's book (pages 25 and 86), and the other black one in S. Paulo Bra [...]
Link to topic: Honda NSX -- driven by Senna
Getaway is an upcoming American action thriller film starring Ethan Hawke and Selena Gomez. Directed by Courtney Solomon and written by Gregg Maxwell Parker and Sean Finegan, the film will be distributed by Warner Bros., the last film to have Dark Castle Entertainment by Warner Bros. Pictures, before Universal Pictures took over in 2013. Though originally reported to be a remake of the 1972 film The Getaway, the film is actually an original story.
Watch on youtube.com
[BBvideo 625,350]http://youtu.be/RB [...]
Link to topic: Getaway
The Kinect is No Longer Mandatory for the Xbox One to Operate
In a AMA on IGN with Marc Whitten, Chief Xbox One Platform Architect stated,
You have the ability to completely turn the sensor off in your settings. When in this mode, the sensor is not collecting any information. Any functionality that relies on voice, video, gesture or more won't work. We still support using it for IR blasting in this mode. You can turn the sensor back on at any time through settings, and if you enter into a required Kinect experience (like Kinect Sports Rivals for instance [...]
Link to topic: The Kinect is No Longer Mandatory for the Xbox One to Operate
WhatsApp Surpasses 250 Million Active Users
WhatsApp tells The Wall Street Journal it has more than 250 million monthly active users, the first time it has revealed a rough number of users for its popular smartphone messaging app.
The figure is impressive for a company that launched its app just four years ago and that spends no money marketing itself. It makes WhatsApp one of the largest messaging platforms and possibly bigger than Twitter, which in December announced it had eclipsed 200 million monthly active users. MicrosoftMSFT +0.52 [...]
Link to topic: WhatsApp Surpasses 250 Million Active Users
Xbox One launch delayed to 2014 in eight countries
Microsoft has revealed that the Xbox One console will launch in 13 markets in November, down from a goal of 21 markets set at E3.
The Xbox One console will launch in Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Spain, United Kingdom, United States and New Zealand, in November. However, it has had to delay the launch in several markets originally intended for November, including Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Sweden and Switzerland.
Whi [...]
Link to topic: Xbox One launch delayed to 2014 in eight countries
GTA V online video and information coming this week
Rockstar Games will spill details on Grand Theft Auto V's online mode this week with the release of a gameplay video and more information.
The developer teased GTA fans with its previous trailer for the game, which ended with dozens of players roaming around the city of Los Santos. This led to a lot of speculation on what Rockstar has in store for GTA V online services.
Rockstar announced that it will provide a new gameplay video and information for the Online Mode on Thursday, August 15. Th [...]
Link to topic: GTA V online video and information coming this week
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Life Back Then
Scams in the City: Car Trouble
The 2016 UEFA European Championship
History/Culture Info for Expats Lifestyle
by Rosie Milne May 31, 2016 June 8, 2016 0400
Rosie Milne’s ‘Olivia & Sophia’
Author of Olivia & Sophie, Rosie Milne, explores what expat life was like 200 years ago.
My novel Olivia & Sophia explores the lives of two predecessors of modern trailing spouses. Olivia and Sophia both travelled from England eastward to Southeast Asia during the early 19th century, and when doing so must have been like travelling to the moon today. Each of them was a bold and admirable woman; they were respectively the first and second wives of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles. He is remembered now as the founder of Singapore, but in his time he was the Governor of Java, and later, of Bencoolen, (Bengkulu) on Sumatra. Wherever Raffles went in the East, his current wife tagged along.
Writing about Olivia and Sophia made me grateful to be an expat wife now, and not 200 years ago.
For a start, there were the horrors of the voyage out, which could take anything from six to ten months. This was before sailing ships had stabilizers, and passengers were often prostrate with seasickness for much of the voyage. Imagine the lingering smell of vomit in damp clothes!
Except for the very rich, cabins were miserable, little dirty holes; dark, airless, and sometimes divided by nothing but slung canvas, making privacy impossible. In order to ensure supplies of fresh meat, milk, and eggs, animals and fowl had to be carried on the decks, adding to the general din and stink. And then there were the risks of shipwreck and pirates. Even the most nervous flier would surely admit that 15 hours cramped in economy from Heathrow to Soekarno-Hatta must be better than what earlier expats endured.
And what about travel within Asia? Bali-dwellers are probably accustomed to hopping to Lombok or the Gili Islands for the weekend. If you live in Jakarta, you probably think nothing of taking houseguests to Borobudur. But 200 years ago, Europeans were mostly confined in their colonies like rabbits in traps. Inland journeys were often by foot, through the clogging jungle.
Olivia Mariamne Devenish, Raffles’ first wife
Raffles’ second wife, Lady Sophia
Sophia, the first white woman to explore the interior of Sumatra, slogged up mountains and down waterfalls in full skirts – no hiking boots or breathable fabrics for her.
How would she have managed washing and going to the loo? What about rations? She found herself living off rice and claret. And there were no maps, so the adventurous were in constant danger of getting lost.
It’s not just ease of travel we take for granted today, but also ease of communication. Back then letters home took up to ten months to wend their way to England, and replies took up to another ten months to reach the East. Imagine a woman out here receiving the news her adult daughter had died, months after the event. That happened to Olivia – when she married Raffles she already had a daughter by an earlier relationship. Imagine a woman receiving a letter from her mother inquiring into the health of a child, after that child’s death. Four of Sophia’s five children died in Asia, and my novel imagines that she receives just such a letter. How lucky we are to have Skype, email, Facebook, and the rest.
And how fortunate we are that if we have five children, all five of them will in all probability survive to adulthood. Whereas back then fevers tore through infant bodies like tigers through chickens. How did women cope with the deaths of their children? For her part, Sophia relied on religion: a committed Christian, she regarded her children’s deaths as a lesson in faith from her merciful creator. Could you think like that? I couldn’t – though I had to pretend I could when I was imagining being Sophia.
It wasn’t only children who dropped like flies. Europeans out here 200 years ago simply didn’t know how to deal with the climate or tropical diseases. People fell ill in the morning and were dead by the evening. So many people connected to Olivia and Sophia died, that I found myself cutting many deaths, to prevent there being a funeral every page. But my poor subjects had to endure those frequent bereavements. How brave they were, and how lucky we are not to have to bury a friend, a child, or a spouse every other week.
Not to mention that modern Western medicines do not actively harm us, unlike the favoured treatment in Oliva and Sophia’s day: mercury.
This involved drinking salts of mercury, which made the breath stink, caused constipation, and made people drool like dogs.
Liver problems were particularly prevalent amongst Europeans out here, probably because of parasites, and because they all drank like fish, as the water was so bad. Olivia, who liked her cherry brandy, died of a liver complaint, after having suffered years of the mercury treatment.
And what of pregnancy? Ladies, imagine having to deal with the tropical heat, in your full skirts and woollen underwear whilst you were the size of a house. And, yes, women out here believed it was healthy to wear wool next to the skin! Furthermore, there was no air conditioning, no deodorant, and no running water – nothing to make living with the heat more tolerable.
And finally there was giving birth. Sophia had no painkillers for her first four children’s births, although possibly she had ether for the last one. Her first child was born on a ship: imagine the difficulties of dealing with nappies! Her second child was born on land, but also arrived whilst she was travelling with her husband, with no nurse on hand, no friends on whom she could call for help, and only a botanist to assist. Not that she complained; women were expected to be stalwart, and she was.
So next time you’re tempted to grumble about your lot in life, just be grateful you’re an expat today, and not 200 years ago.
authorcomparisonexpat lifehistorynovelOlivia & SophieOlivia RafflesRafflesRosie MilneSir Thomas Stamford RafflesSophie Rafflesthen and now
Antony Sutton August 14, 2012 September 6, 2017
Employment of Foreigners in Indonesia
Indonesia Expat October 19, 2016 October 20, 2016
Indonesia’s Unique Traditions to Celebrate Christmas and Toast the New Year
Mirella Pandjaitan December 4, 2019 December 10, 2019
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Home Arts & Culture Screen Aquaman Is a Ludicrous Sensory Assault Starring Jason Momoa's Muscles
Aquaman Is a Ludicrous Sensory Assault Starring Jason Momoa's Muscles
by Neil Morris
photo courtesy of Warner Bros.
Jason Momoa as Aquaman
Opening Friday, Dec. 21
There’s a scene in Aquaman in which a water-powered gizmo is jump-started using perspiration from someone’s brow. That pretty much sums up a film that runs on equal parts flop sweat and seawater. Too silly to be taken seriously, too dour to be campy, the movie is waterlogged with Arthurian pablum, relentless CGI, and a hodgepodge of a soundtrack, and it's almost two and a half hours long.
The scion of the beached queen of Atlantis (Nicole Kidman) and a Massachusetts lighthouse keeper, Arthur Curry (aka Aquaman, played by Jason Momoa) is reared among humans but exhibits superhuman abilities like swimming really fast and communicating with fish. He doesn’t fit in with regular people, and Atlanteans take a dim view of this “half-breed bastard.” As a result, Arthur is a loner who occasionally does good deeds such as saving a hijacked Russian sub from pirates like David Kane (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II).
Back in Atlantis, Arthur’s half-brother, King Orm (Patrick Wilson), is angling for war against the surface-dwellers who have polluted the seas. The first salvo consists of tidal waves that expel humankind's garbage back onto land. That’s the last we see of any environmental subtext, though, as Orm spends the rest of the film trying to unite the seven underwater tribes so he can become the Ocean Master and thereby blah, blah, blah.
Atlantean warrior Mera (Amber Heard) recruits Arthur to thwart Orm’s plans by challenging him for the crown. While Arthur feels like a man without a country, Mera and others view him as a possible bridge between two worlds. A reclusive visual fantasia, Atlantis is like a sub-aquatic Wakanda; Aquaman is just Black Panther if Killmonger were the hero and T'Challa were the one hankering for a military crusade. After the brothers duke it out, Arthur and Mera must locate the long-lost Trident of Atlan (fka Excalibur) in a meandering odyssey that takes them to the Sahara, Sicily, and an oasis in the Earth’s core where Arthur confronts a leviathan voiced by … Julie Andrews?!
When the cast isn’t aimlessly drifting from port to port, they’re swimming in a soup of phantasmagoria that’s both intoxicating and exhausting. Director James Wan fashions a sensory assault that relents only after you become acclimated to the neon shimmer. Meanwhile, the plot resembles the levels of a video game, ascending to an inevitable ending. The only emotional resonance comes when Kane returns to avenge the death of his father, donning Atlantean tech and taking on Arthur as the villain Black Manta.
Let’s face it: the most pronounced and promoted visual effects in Aquaman are Momoa’s mane and muscles, and more folks will watch the movie to see his pecs than the pesce. That’s a good thing, as Arthur is otherwise a dullard whose bro personality is forced via faux moxie. "This place kicks ass!" he yells upon entering an ancient chamber buried below the desert. It clearly does not. So it goes in a bloated origin story whose execution clashes with its pretensions. The fate of the world is at stake, accompanied by a drum-playing octopus, jellyfish couture, and Willem Dafoe riding an armored shark.
James Wan DC Extended Universe Film comic books Aquaman Jason Momoa review Screen
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Category Archives: Information
February 19, 2019 · 11:27 am
Free access TV
“You Can Stream TV, Films Without Paying,” The Wall Street Journal, February 4, 2019 B4. Ways to get many TV shows and movies for free, with ads.
What is your information worth if people can see it for free (or for the price of watching some ads)?
Filed under Theme One: Information, Value
Catching up, again, part 4
Hopefully, building on the last three posts9https://infogovnuggets.com/2019/01/04/catching-up-again/ , https://infogovnuggets.com/2019/01/04/catching-up-again-part-2/, and https://infogovnuggets.com/2019/01/04/catching-up-part-3/, this will close out 2018.
“Journalist at Center of False-Reporting Scandal Faces New Allegations Over Donation Requests,” The Wall Street Journal, December 24, 2018. The first paragraph says it all: “German magazine Der Spiegel said it would file a criminal complaint against a former star writer who admitted falsifying reports, after discovering that he also appeared to have set up a fake charity operation for Syrian children.” One can only assume the paper had a policy about not making up stories, or not fleecing the readership.
Morally but not legally guilty.
“JD.com Founder Faces Backlash at Home: ‘Behind the Law is Morality,’” The Wall Street Journal, December 24, 2018. Even though released and after the closure of a three-month investigation into a rape allegation, the founder of a large ecommerce business in China is still getting hammered in the Chinese press (and, one might imagine, at home). Is that Governance, or Compliance? How does Compliance deal with an accusation that is not sustained?
Libor was information, too
“UBS to Pay $68 Million to Settle State Libor-Manipulation Claims,” The Wall Street Journal, December 24, 2018. Goes back to the 2008 charges of mucking about the the benchmark London Interbank Offered Rate, used a lot in loans and such. Two aspects here, first dealing with the use of a number derived from supposedly unbiased people to govern “your” deal, and, second, the cost of non-compliance, even if long-delayed.
Which was it?
“Maintenance Lapse Identified as Initial Problem Leading to Lion Air Crash,” The Wall Street Journal, December 26, 2018. Maybe it was not improper or inadequate training; maybe it was improper maintenance. Investigation into crash of Lion Air continues. Highlights the difficulty of establishing the facts after the fact. So much information.
Why do you track the numbers if you don’t use them?
“Psychiatric Hospitals With Safety Violations Still Get Accreditation,” The Wall Street Journal, December 27, 2018. What exactly does “accreditation” mean, if you can have a bunch of serious violations? The failure rate is about 1%, and nearly all the inspections are by one company. This is primarily an Information point, on the failure to make use of the available information, or the failure to make it available. And does the government exercise appropriate oversight/governance given the amount of federal funds involved?
Resume errors
“Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker Incorrectly Claims Academic All-American Honors,” The Wall Street Journal, December 27, 2018. The Acting AG apparently made this error consistently on his resume for years; he wasn’t an Academic All American; instead he was a District VII All District selection. If he were genuinely confused about what he was awarded, this makes some sense. But one would have thought that somewhere along the way this would have been discovered. Is that Information or Governance? If it were an employee at your company, what would be the sanction?
Information vacuum
“Commerce Department Won’t Publish Data During Shutdown,” The Wall Street Journal, December 27, 2018. One wonders what the consequences will be of the absence of this data. The article says, “Investors often depend on these reports to make trades, which affect stock values, bond yields and the value of the dollar. Businesses use them to make investment planning decisions. Federal Reserve officials depend on them to make interest-rate decisions that ripple through the economy.” If you rely on a third party for key information, what do you do when you can’t get it? What’s Plan B?
Who owns the artwork?
“‘Absolute Control’: Cuba Steps Up Artistic Censorship,” The Wall Street Journal, December 27, 2018. Cuba severely restricts an artist’s ability to make money from his or her art. Sure, this is Governance, but is art also Information?
How does your doctor make referrals? I want to know.
“The Hidden System That Explains How Your Doctor Makes Referrals,” The Wall Street Journal, December 28, 2018. Apparently, there are processes in place that might influence your doctor’s judgment. Would you want to know that? Is there an ethical issue (Governance/Compliance) that surround this information and how it is used? Is this conflict disclosed to you? Adequately? Do the insurers (who have money in the game) push back on this enough?
Statements on Twitter aren’t facts?
“Elon Musk Says Pedophile Accusation Against British Man Was Protected Speech,” The Wall Street Journal, December 28, 2018. Calling a cave diver rescuing boys in Thailand a pedophile is at the heart of the suit against Elon Musk. Does Twitter have no rules with which one must comply, and no one to enforce those (non-)rules? Or do we have systems of Compliance and Governance that punish libelous statements, broadly published, regardless of the media/medium?
“Wells Fargo to Pay States About $575 Million to Settle Customer Harm Claims,” The Wall Street Journal, December 29, 2018. More fallout from the account cramming and related scandals. Total payments so far: ~$4 billion. Cost of compliance, or cost of poor governance.
Filed under Access, Accuracy, Analytics, Collect, Compliance, Compliance (General), Controls, Corporation, Data quality, Definition, Directors, Duty, Employees, Governance, Information, Internal controls, Lawyers, Management, Ownership, Use, Value
Catching up, part 3
Continuing from https://infogovnuggets.com/2019/01/04/catching-up-again/ and https://infogovnuggets.com/2019/01/04/catching-up-again-part-2/, and https://infogovnuggets.com/2019/01/04/catching-up-part-3/
Conflicts with conflicts
“Justice Department Chides McKinsey in Another Bankruptcy Case,” The Wall Street Journal, December 17, 2018. McKinsey continues to fail to make what are viewed as adequate disclosures of conflicts when advising bankruptcy estates, and may not get paid for its work as a result.
Voter data
“Fight Over Voter Data Roils Democrats Ahead of Election,” The Wall Street Journal, December 17, 2018. Have Republicans been better than the Democrats at collecting and storing information? What’s this worth?
Your business partner wants you to call a shareholders’ meeting
“Renault Urges Nissan to Call for Shareholder Meeting Following Nissan Indictment,” The Wall Street Journal, December 17, 2018. Is this interfering with “your” governance? Is this a compliance matter, or a partnership matter, where your partner is concerned that you are keeping your CEO as CEO while he sits in jail?
Is a dance move “information”?
“The ‘Fortnite’ Dance Move That Spawned a Lawsuit,” The Wall Street Journal, December 17, 2018. While longer dance routine can be protected by copyright law (which was a bit surprising to me), not so (so far) for “snippets.”
Hiding risk information may be a problem
“Glencore-Controlled Miner to Be Fined by Canadian Authorities Over Congo Ops,” The Wall Street Journal, December 17, 2018. Fine of $22 million for company and some of its former directors and executives for hiding the risks of doing business with someone connected to Congolese president. Is a risk analysis information? Can you hide that from the shareholders?
“Goldman Sachs Ignored 1MDB Warning Signs in Pursuit of Asian Business,.” The Wall Street Journal, December 18, 2018. Can chasing business too hard lead one to ignore important information and sidestep important controls? What controls can you put in place to avoid having this happen to you? Is this an oversight issue? Do criminal charges and huge fines lay ahead?
VW vendor pleads
“Volkswagen Supplier to Plead Guilty to Conspiracy, Pay $35 Million Fine in Emissions-Cheating Probe,” The Wall Street Journal, December 19, 2018. Company that designed the software used to fool or, as some say, cheat, the emission test pleads guilty to crime and pays a fine to US. VW has paid more than $20 billion. Is this just compliance-related, or is there also an information hook here? Design a software to work around a government test.
Looking for a whistleblower
“Barclays Fined $15 Million by New York Over CEO’s Anti-Whistleblower Push,” The Wall Street Journal, December 19, 2018. The CEO had tried to use the company’s security department to locate the writer of a letter critical of a recent hire. He pressecd on, despite advice from the head lawyer and the chief compliance officer (costing him £642,000 in fines and £500,000 of his bonus). So the shareholders pay more than the CEO did. Go figure.
Hiding the names of the guilty
“Illinois Dioceses Withheld Names of Accused Priests, Report Says,” The Wall Street Journal, December 20, 2018. Can you legally not disclose the name of an employee or a contractor who was accused of sexual abuse? Is this a governance issue or a compliance issue or an information issue? Or a reputation problem?
Ethics and policies
“Is It Really Five Stars? How to Spot Fake Amazon Reviews,” The Wall Street Journal, December 21, 2018. How Amazon goes about trying to separate the wheat from the chaff. How does your company determine what’s a fake review and what’s the real deal?
Information/price linkage
“Room for Improvement? New Hotelier Tests an Algorithmic Pricing System,” The Wall Street Journal, December 22, 2018. Using information about a customer and from a customer to establish the price for future sales to that customer. Interesting linkages at a new hotel chain.
Filed under Collect, Communications, Compliance, Compliance (General), Controls, Corporation, Definition, Directors, Duty, Duty of Care, Employees, Governance, Information, Investor relations, Management, Oversight, Ownership, Privacy, Records Management, Risk assessment, Supervision, Third parties, To report, Use, Value, Vendors
Catching up again, part 2
Continuing from https://infogovnuggets.com/2019/01/04/catching-up-again/
Pot calling the kettle black
“Comey Tells House Panel He Suspected Giuliani Was Leaking FBI Information to Media,” The Wall Street Journal, December 10, 2018. Former FBI Director Comey, who admitted to leaking information to a reporter through a law school professor, complains that someone else did it, too.
Yes, we have no privacy
“Thieves Can Now Nab Your Data in a Few Minutes for a Few Bucks,” The Wall Street Journal, December 10, 2018. Following the series of major hacks of privacy data (e.g., Marriott, LinkedIn, Equifax, and Yahoo), “Every American person should assume all of their data is out there,” said one FBI agent. Comforting.
“New Report Shows Olympics Executives Concealed Knowledge of Nassar Allegations,” The Wall Street Journal, December 11, 2018. Executives knew information about sexual abuse allegations, and failed to report. To whom did they breach a duty?
Interesting intersection of the right to petition the government and your right to privacy
“U.S. Investigating Fake Comments on ‘Net Neutrality,’” The Wall Street Journal, December 11, 2018. “Earlier this year, the FCC said it would upgrade its website to try to prevent fakery. … Several federal agencies warn that it is a felony to send falsified comments to the federal government when posting on websites soliciting opinions on federal rulemaking.” What if the comments were anonymous?
Lying or overspending on your expense account can get you canned
“Under Armour Ousts Two Executives After Review of Expenses,” The Wall Street Journal, December 11, 2018. Complying with company policy and procedures is sort of kind of like a job requirement. Even if you signed Jordan Spieth. But how were they to know how much was too much?
Weakest link?
“Amazon, Amid Crackdown on Seller Scams, Fires Employees Over Data Leak,” The Wall Street Journal, December 11, 2018. Employees bribed for access to inside information. What’s your information worth to you? To the briber? To the (former) employee? Do you have a policy against taking bribes?
Collateral impact
“Nissan-Renault Scandal Shows It’s Hard to Keep Car Alliances On Track,” The Wall Street Journal, December 12, 2018. A scandal at your business partner can affect your company’s relationships. Is that Governance?
How do you deal with rumors? Are they “information,” too?
“Super Micro Finds No Malicious Hardware in Motherboards,” The Wall Street Journal, December 12, 2018. This contradicts a prior report from Bloomberg. How do you govern other sources of information? Is using a trusted third party to investigate just standard crisis management planning?
Should Compliance be more congenial?
“Banks Get Kinder, Gentler Treatment Under Trump,” The Wall Street Journal, December 13, 2018. Regulators are urged to be more collegial with the banks they regulate. Is that better “Governance,” in the short term or in the long term?
“Renault Sticks With Carlos Ghosn as Internal Probe Finds No Illegality,” The Wall Street Journal, December 13, 2018. What does it say to the rank-and-file when the Chairman gets arrested? And when he’s thereafter kept in place? The Board may have some explaining to do.
What can your employer do with your information?
“U.S. Companies Asked to Disclose More About Their Workers,” The Wall Street Journal, December 14, 2018. Pension funds ask employers to disclose more information than the SEC currently requires. Whose decision is that? When and how can you object?
Watch your contractors
“Chinese Hackers Breach U.S. Navy Contractors,” The Wall Street Journal, December 15, 2018. What’s this information worth, both to the US and to China? How much do you look at the security at your vendors who process or create information for you? Are they a weaker link than your employees? (See item 6, above.)
Information and Governance and Compliance
“PG&E Falsified Gas Safety Records, California Claims,” The Wall Street Journal, December 15, 2018. From the explosion in San Bruno in 2010 (after which PG&E couldn’t find a bunch of inspection records relating to hundreds of miles of its pipelines) to more recent claims about fudging the records on pipeline locations, PG&E has had this problem for awhile. For now, these are just allegations. But what impact on every claim made against the company, and every claim made by it? If they falsify safety records, do they falsify bills, too? “The [state regulator] last month expanded a continuing probe of PG&E’s safety practices and said it would explore the way the company is structured and managed.” There seems to be a link between record-keeping and management and compliance and culture.
Facebook, again
“Facebook Bug Potentially Exposed Unshared Photos of Up 6.8 Million Users,” The Wall Street Journal, December 15, 2018. One almost gets the idea that protecting your privacy is not a high priority for them.
Filed under Board, Collect, Communicate, Communications, Compliance, Compliance (General), Controls, Corporation, Culture, Data quality, Directors, Duty, Employees, Governance, Information, Internal controls, Investor relations, IT, Management, Oversight, Oversight, Ownership, Privacy, Protect, Protect assets, Records Management, Security, Supervision, Technology, Third parties, To report, Use, Value, Vendors
Catching up, again
I was otherwise engaged in December, what with the holidays and travel and our first grandchild, born in Hong Kong, and haven’t been posting. Here’s the month in review, in chronological order, in multiple parts:
How to monetize your information
“Paywall for HuffPost? Verizon Hunt for Web Revenue Goes Beyond Ads,” The Wall Street Journal, December 3, 2018. Do you let people see content (plus ads) for “free,” or do you charge for access? Which one places the “correct” value on the information you are providing? What if you did both?
Who’s in charge?
“Disney Raises the Bar Robert Iger Has to Clear to Win Bonus,” The Wall Street Journal, December 4, 2018. Shareholders push back on bonus compensation plan, demonstrating an unusual level of control (i.e., Governance) over their investment. See also, “Shell to Link Carbon Emissions Targets to Executive Pay,” The Wall Street Journal, December 4, 2018.
How much is your view worth?
“Who’s Reading That News Story? Startup Will Help Marketers Find Out,” The Wall Street Journal, December 4, 2018. Linking the desire of publishers and advertisers to monitor what news stories you look at and for how long, a start-up fills the gap. The answer to the question,”Whose data is that?” is taking on multiple dimensions.
It takes a village to prevent someone from getting top-secret information
“China Maneuvers to Snag Top-Secret Boeing Satellite Technology,” The Wall Street Journal, December 5, 2018. Boeing seemed unconcerned when a customer for one of its satellites told Boeing that the customer was being financed by Chinese interests, to whom sale of the top-secret technology involved was restricted. But after an alleged payment default, Boeing cancels order. “Boeing Backs Out of Global IP Satellite Order Financed by China, The Wall Street Journal, December 7, 2018. Did the press coverage have an impact?
Law firms leak, too
“U.S. Prosecutors Charge Four People in Panama Papers Probe,” The Wall Street Journal, December 5, 2018. Action follow leak of law firm documents showing how wealthy people hid money from tax.
Who owns (or controls) the Cloud?
“China’s Alibaba Takes On Amazon in European Cloud,” The Wall Street Journal, December 5, 2018. Chinese Cloud company challenges Amazon for control of the Cloud in Europe. Which (the US or China) will better protect the privacy of the users?
Does your information governance program cover the content of the training provided to your customers?
“Boeing Omitted Safety-System Details, Minimized Training for Crashed Lion Air 737 Model,” The Wall Street Journal, December 6, 2018. Questions arise after 189 people killed in a crash and the crews hadn’t been trained on the new flight-control system.
Facebook tried to monetize “your” data? Gadzooks!
“Facebook’s Zuckerberg at Center of Emails Released by U.K. Parliament,” The Wall Street Journal, December 6, 2018. Newly released emails show that Facebook apparently considered charging app developers for accessing “your” data held by Facebook, and suggest Facebook discounted the chance of developers sharing that data with others.
Not “just-in-time” discipline
“Wells Fargo Firing Dozens of Regional Managers in Retail-Bank Cleanup,” The Wall Street Journal, December 6, 2018. More than two years after the account-cramming scandal, Wells Fargo starts to fire some regional managers for failure of oversight responsibilities. Sort of like punishing your full-grown dog for an accident she had as a puppy. And what about the executives who were overseeing those fired managers?
Biometrics is/are information, too
“Microsoft Pushes Urgency of Regulating Facial-Recognition Technology,” The Wall Street Journal, December 7, 2018. Lack of worldwide restrictions on surveillance without a warrant leads Microsoft to urge restrictions on the technology. Is privacy when in public a basic human right?
It’s not the crime, it’s the coverup?
“U.S. Alleges Huawei CFO Hid Ties to Telecom With Iran Business,” The Wall Street Journal, December 8, 2018. Did the CFO lie to hide from banks connections Huawei had with company that did business with Iran? What is the impact to the current state of trade relations with China?
Filed under Accuracy, Board, Compliance, Compliance, Compliance (General), Compliance Verification, Controls, Corporation, Definition, Directors, Duty, Governance, Information, Internal controls, Managers, Oversight, Oversight, Ownership, Privacy, Protect assets, Protect information assets, Technology, Third parties, To report, Value, Vendors, Who is in charge?
Near-hits
It seems that several (most of?) the large privacy breaches have something in common: something smaller happened earlier that people didn’t pay enough attention to.
“Marriott’s Starwood Missed Chance to Detect Huge Data Breach Years Earlier, Cybersecurity Specialists Say,” The Wall Street Journal, December 2, 2018 (online). There was a prior breach in 2015 that, some say, could have been investigated more thoroughly.
Might this happen in your business? Say there’s a relatively minor breach, affecting a single client’s information. Or a minor compliance issue. You discover it and take action. But does the breach itself indicate weaknesses in your system of controls that may have broader implications? Do you change your training or other controls to reflect this experience, or the experience of others in your industry?
This brings to mind a common finding in accident investigations. Something small happened that could/should have put you on notice. But it was ignored or downplayed.
How does your organization deal with near-hits in the compliance or information governance space? Is this part of oversight? Or a part of effective knowledge management?
Filed under Analytics, Collect, Compliance, Compliance (General), Controls, Corporation, Directors, Duty, Duty of Care, Governance, Information, Internal controls, IT, Knowledge Management, Management, Oversight, Privacy, Protect assets, Security, Third parties, Use
Is it live or is it Memorex?
What impact has technology had on the flow of information in your industry, including the flow of information to and from competitors? Are your controls keeping pace?
“Fashion Industry Gossip Was Once Whispered. Now It’s on Instagram.,” The Wall Street Journal, December 2, 2018 (online). Instagram used to track fashion statements that are strikingly similar.
Underlying this is the point that copying someone else’s creative expression is frowned upon. (Compliance) And that public shaming may be a more effective (and less expensive) control than copyright litigation. (Governance) And a photo of a jacket (or the jacket itself) is as much information as an email. (Information)
Filed under Compliance, Compliance (General), Controls, Definition, Duty, Governance, Information, Internal controls, Ownership, Protect assets, Technology, Third parties
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ABC ME
Our junior reporter Knox takes 3 Invictus Games competitors on a Lap of Honour, chatting about their experiences leading up the games, and what it's like to represent their country.
Series 1 Episode 3 Matt Model
Our junior reporter Knox meets Invictus Games athlete Matt Model. Matt will be competing in both athletics and indoor rowing. Knox and Matt chat about the Invictus Spirit, and who inspires him to keep achieving.
This episode was published 2 months ago, available until 6:00am on 2 Mar 2020.
duration: 3 minutes 34 seconds3m 34s
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Effects of Temporary Drug Cessation in BPH/LUTS Patients Treated with Alpha-1 Adrenoceptor Blocker
Objective: Patients with benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) typically present with lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS). We sought to confirm the safety and clinical efficacy of the α-1 blocker silodosin, and investigated the effects of a temporary drug cessation (DC) in patients who exhibited clinical efficacy considered as improvement of subjective symptoms. Methods: Subjects were 75 BPH patients with complaints of LUTS and who were being treated on an outpatient basis. Patients were first administered silodosin (4 mg twice daily) for 8 weeks, and then we evaluated the effects based on changes in subjective symptoms and divided the subjects into continuous administration (CA) and DC groups. The groups were followed up until week 24. Silodosin administration was restarted according to subjects’ request during drug cessation (R group). We evaluated the International Prostatic Symptom Score (I-PSS) and quality of life (QOL) score trends before and after administration, and also assessed the safety and status of drug re-administration. Results: Significant differences were observed between the two groups in terms of the subject characteristics of age, I-PSS storage symptoms sub-score, maximum urinary flow rate, and mean urinary flow rate. The clinical course of the voiding and storage symptoms in the CA group differed; storage symptoms improved over time, while no further improvement in the voiding symptoms was observed over time. Symptoms rapidly improved after silodosin administration in the DC group, and the improvement in I-PSS was maintained after DC. However, the residual effects on QOL gradually diminished in this group. The deterioration in voiding symptoms was particularly conspicuous in those who restarted drug administration. Conclusion: DC was possible in patients who experienced adequate improvement in storage symptoms from the early stages of α-1 blocker administration. However, we believe that it is important for elderly patients and patients with relatively severe storage symptoms to continue oral intake of α-1 blockers to maintain improved QOL.
Benign Prostatic Hypertrophy; International Prostatic Symptom Score; Lower Urinary Tract Symptoms; Silodosin
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About J.D.
J.D. Hickcock (Star of Stage, Screen, and Stag Show) was born an innocent boy. Armed with wanderlust and a knack for artfully dropping his pants, he quickly began unbuckling the Bible Belt to Houston, Texas. Though he never dreamed of the limelight,
J.D. has been seen in sordid spectacles and raunchy festivals produced across the U.S.A.
Mr. Hickcock was titled “King of Sin” from the 2017 Sin City Burlesque Festival (Las Vegas, NV) and named “King of Burlesque” at the 2015 San Antonio Burlesque Festival. He has been a Headliner of countless productions, including the 2019 KC Nerdlesque Festival (Kansas City, MO), “Holiday at Hogwarts: The Tour” with Her Sins Burlesque & Cabaret (2017, 2018), the inaugural 2016 Texas Queerlesque Festival (Dallas, TX), & the 2016 San Antonio Burlesque Festival. In 2019, J.D. was given the distinct honor and privilege of performing in the “Movers, Shakers, & Innovators” showcase for the Burlesque Hall of Fame (Las Vegas, NV).
"The man's costumes are always pristine, his choreography crisp, and his energy reaches the back of the house every time" - Pin Curl Magazine
"Cattle Grind"
This multi-award winning act is a playful display of the American cowboy, mixing Appalachian clog dancing with striptease.
Video: CLICK HERE
"The Last Straw"
What happens when a scarecrow
comes to life?
Oh, the Blues!
"The Fishmonger"
A rare occupation.
A consummate mission.
A hard-working fish tale told through pantomime.
"Steifen Holz"
Rock-N-Roll with a German twist.
Desire for the intangible, inanimate, & inflexible.
"My Sin"
The stage star doesn't want to perform tonight.
"On The Rise"
A classic-style dance with plenty of bumps and grinds.
"Travelogue"
In this dog & pony show, a 1960’s-era
U.S. Air Force Officer recalls his lovers from around the world.
"You-Know-Who"
The epitome of evil, Lord Voldemort from Harry Potter stories, tinkers with the magic he cannot comprehend- Love.
"Sticky Sweet"
From the Land of Sweets in the beloved ballet, “The Nutcracker", the Russian candy cane is out of his element.
Copyright © 2019 J.D. Hickcock - All Rights Reserved.
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April 07, 2012 102 Comments National, Politics Zubair Ahmed
The President of Pakistan is constitutionally the head of the state. The recently passed 18th Amendment has restored Pakistan’s government system as democratic, whereby the President is chosen by the Electoral College, which consists of the Senate, National Assembly, and the provincial assemblies, for a five-year term. Thus, the President of Pakistan is truly a complete representative figure in the government having the highest authority to run the government. The Prime Minister of Pakistan runs the state.
The President of Pakistan is also the Chairman of the National Security Council, the Commander-in-Chief of the Pakistan Armed Forces. The post also gives the President power to appoint the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, Chiefs of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Colonel-Commandant Marines.
The President of Pakistan is not allowed to serve more than two consecutive terms and he/she can be impeached and removed from the post if the two-third majority of the Parliament decides so. In Pakistan’s history, exchange of central chief executive powers have always jostled between the President and the Prime Minister often implementing changes through various amendments in the Constitution. Here is a complete list of all the Presidents of Pakistan since 1947.
1. Iskander Mirza (1899–1969)
In Office: 23 March 1956 – 27 October 1958
Total Duration: 2 Years, 7 Months, 4 Days
Status: Elected democratically
Political Party: Republican Party
2. Ayub Khan (1907–1974)
In Office: 27 October 1958 – 25 March 1969
Total Duration: 10 Years, 4 Months, 26 Days
Status: Military Dictator
Political Party: None
3. Yahya Khan (1917–1980)
In Office: 25 March 1969 – 20 December 1971
Total Duration: 2 Years, 8 Months, 25 Days
4. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (1928–1979)
In Office: 20 December 1971 – 13 August 1973
Total Duration: 1 Year, 7 Months, 24 Days
Political Party: Pakistan Peoples Party
5. Fazal Ilahi Chaudhry (1904–1982)
In Office: 13 August 1973 – 16 September 1978
Total Duration: 5 Years, 1 Month, 3 Days
6. Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq (1924–1988)
In Office: 16 September 1978 – 17 August 1988
Total Duration: 9 Years, 11 Months, 1 Day
7. Ghulam Ishaq Khan (1915–2006)
In Office: 17 August 1988 – 18 July 1993
Political Party: Independent
Wasim Sajjad (Born 1941)
In Office: 18 July 1993 – 14 November 1993
Total Duration: 3 Months, 27 Days
Status: Acting
Political Party: Pakistan Muslim League (N)
8. Farooq Leghari (1940–2010)
In Office: 14 November 1993 – 2 December 1997
Total Duration: 4 Years, 18 Days
In Office: 2 December 1997 – 1 January 1998
Total Duration: 29 Days
9. Muhammad Rafiq Tarar (Born 1929)
In Office: 1 January 1998 – 20 June 2001
10. Pervez Musharraf (Born 1943)
In Office: 20 June 2001 – 18 August 2008
Total Duration: 7 Years, 1 Month, 29 Days
Political Party: Later affiliated with Pakistan Muslim League (Q)
Muhammad Mian Soomro (Born 1950)
In Office: 18 August 2008 – 9 September 2008
Political Party: Pakistan Muslim League (Q)
11. Asif Ali Zardari (Born 1955)
In Office: 9 September 2008 – 8 September 2013
Total Duration: 5 Years
12. Mamnoon Hussain (Born 1940)
Mamnoon Hussain
In Office: 9 September 2013 – Incumbent
Total Duration: 6 months, 3 days and counting
Longest Time Served by a Democratically Elected President: Fazal Ilahi Chaudhry (5 Years, 1 Month, 3 Days)
Shortest Time Served by a Democratically Elected President: Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (1 Year, 7 Months, 24 Days)
Number of Democratically Elected Presidents: 7
Total Duration of Democratically Elected Presidents: 22 Years, 37 Months, 95 Days or in aggregation 25 Years, 10 Months, 18 Days
Longest Time Served by a Military President: Ayub Khan (10 Years, 4 Months, 26 Days)
Shortest Time Served by a Military President: Yahya Khan (2 Years, 8 Months, 25 Days)
Number of Military Presidents: 4
Total Duration of Military Presidents: 28 Years, 24 Months, 81 Days or in aggregation 30 Years, 2 Months, 21 Days
Longest Time Served by an Acting President: Wasim Sajjad (3 Months, 27 Days)
Shortest Time Served by an Acting President: Muhammad Mian Soomro (22 Days)
Number of Acting Presidents: 2
Number of Times Acting Presidents Came: 3 (Two times Wasim Sajjad became the Acting President)
Total Duration of Acting Presidents: 3 Months, 78 Days or in aggregation 5 Months, 18 Days
Political Party Having the Most Number of Serving Presidents: 4 from Pakistan Peoples Party (Also 4 times military dictators became presidents).
Total Duration of Presidents from Pakistan Peoples Party: 13 Years, 14 Months, 72 Days or in aggregation 14 Years, 4 Months, 12 Days
list of Presidents of Pakistan
Pakistani Presidents
Presidents of Pakistan
Cricket nut who loves writing for Cricket.
Curse of provincialism a serious threat to Pakistan
There are traitors in our midst…
Kaghan Valley – Heaven on Earth!
Quaid-e-Azam’s Spiritual Stature and Future of Pakistan
Pornography in Pakistan: Free for All!
A Brief Analysis of Suicide Bombings in Pakistan
Asad Ullah afridi September 27, 2019
All leaders good but we are not good 😊
Always follow your heart but take your brain with you
Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq
😘🙌🏼
M Usman December 15, 2016
Lack of real leadership.
Zamna November 19, 2016
I agree with you Muhammad Ahmad
Sidra jabeen October 30, 2016
Mamnoon Hussain ap TV mn b kbi ajaeya kren hmny to dhyka e ni kbi apko news mn na wse
A.a meri Mr Mamnoon Hussain sy appeal he k wh Pakistan ki suratehal ko bahtr kre….Imran khan r nawaz k msly ko hl keen
Muhammad Tayyab October 09, 2016
Although i am not satisfied from “PPP” but according to my opinion and also the history of Pakistan tells us that ‘ZULFIQAR ALI BHUTTO” was the great leader, and i am also impressed the leading and working of BHUTTO sahb..
Bilal Hussain Khan November 10, 2016
Er…You got to actually read the history before making such a statement. Believe me History of Pakistan won’t tell it if you dig into it! (Your perceptions might change)
Adnan Ahmad October 01, 2016
Hmmm!! Pakistan zinda abad….
zohaib akbar September 18, 2016
i love ZIA UL HAQ. he is a real great leader
Shahnaz October 24, 2016
Wat about Afghanistan issue created by him
abdullahgambhir September 14, 2016
he is not able for president
Aamir Abro September 01, 2016
M.Ayub Khan the great leader of Pakistan
Sana August 29, 2016
Muhammad Ahmad Khan August 15, 2016
My Leader is General Raheel Sharif
Sharafat Zuberi August 14, 2016
Mujahai fakkar hai ky may Pakistani ho
Zahid khan July 18, 2016
I think General Zia and Ayub khan are the best
Zeshan July 14, 2016
Pervez Musharraf the best….. And Bhutto was also a great leader…. Zia was cruel personality among all ….
Aleem khan July 10, 2016
great leader syed pervaiz mushrif
M Ali Awan.... June 13, 2016
MUHAMMAD NAEAZ Shareef is the Best Prime Minister of the Pakistan.
Faaiz Raza July 12, 2016
how can he be the best
he won by dhandli
he took all money of pakistan and made offshore companies
and when his name came in panama leaks, he made excuse of health and fled to london
Can such a person be best
Mazhar September 19, 2016
Aap me bilkul each kaha!
mudassar tanoli June 09, 2016
general zia.ul.haq is the best one in this list
safiullah khan khuhro May 14, 2016
Zardaree was best among the all
Asif khan May 03, 2016
Nawaz Is Hero Of Pakistan
naji April 23, 2016
The best among them was Pervaiz Musharaf
Abbas Sial April 08, 2016
Ma Shah Allah Nice page for learner new students!
rana raees March 28, 2016
my leader is mian muhammad nawaz sharif
noshila shabnam March 19, 2016
The greatest leader of pakistan muh zia ulhaq
Faizan March 14, 2016
Pervez musharaf zinda bad
Mir AliRaza Talpur February 02, 2016
nafis Ahmed January 06, 2016
Pakistanis need a leader like Gen Pervez Musharraf.
Zainab January 17, 2016
Muhammad arslan jutt tanha January 27, 2016
asslamualaikum friends koi mujay batayga k pakistan ka sb si pihla navy muslim cheaf kon tha?
May I know : How ” Bhutto Zinda ha”
May I ask : How ” Bhutto Zinda ha?”
Muhmmad rizwan siddiqi December 30, 2015
very good web good information thanks
sajid December 20, 2015
My leader is pervize musaraf. My leader is strong persaniality.
aman October 26, 2015
Muhammad Ramzan Banka September 15, 2015
Pervasive Musharraf was a dictator. Not answerable to anybody. The father of NROS and jailer of honorable judges of Pakistan. A coward when called in the court took refuge in the hospital.
Ali Mujtaba August 25, 2015
Well, I just want say that best ever period was 1958 to1969 and 1999 to 2008 that was an best ever Governance in Pakistan history…..
seeme zehra August 05, 2015
was brave ,honest for Pakistan, best period for Pakistan was. Long live ameen
Waheed Ahmed July 27, 2015
Nice work done.
muhammad irfan July 12, 2015
One of the best was Perwaiz Musharraf.He was very bold.
smmair siddiqui May 30, 2015
The great leader is Zulfikar ALI BHUTTO
unKnOw May 13, 2015
veryyyy good website for knowledge,,,,,,,,thankxxxxx
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January 22, 2020 Driverless Cars, Land
Aptiv Self-Driving Cars Picking Up and Dropping Off Passengers at Las Vegas Airport
Aptiv recently received permission to use its driverless cars to pick up and drop off a select group of passengers…
Echodyne Releases EchoDrive Radar for Autonomous Vehicles
EchoDrive, a new high-resolution imaging radar, offers cognitive sensing to autonomous vehicles. The radar, which Echodyne introduced at CES, features…
Photo: Mercedes-Benz
Do You Know the Way, San Jose? Autonomous Ride-Hailing Starts Up
Bosch and Mercedes-Benz have launched a pilot automated ride-hailing project in San Jose, California. Monitored by a safety driver, the…
January 10, 2020 Air, Driverless Cars
Daedalean, Honeywell Develop Vision-based Flight Control for General Aviation and eVTOL
Swiss startup Daedalean, a developer of software for autonomous flight control, vision-based navigation, terrain guidance and landing, and Honeywell, a…
U.S. DOT Secretary Talks Transportation Transformation
In her keynote address at CES 2020 in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Elaine L. Chao stated: “These…
January 9, 2020 Air, Driverless Cars, Land
Hexagon unveils a new vision of digital reality at CES 2020
By Brittany Kuhn
A new cloud-based, digital reality visualization platform in the Hexagon AB booth captured the attention of CES 2020 visitors in…
January 9, 2020 Driverless Cars, Land
Five Good Questions: Unmanned Mobility
Q: Your planning documents have cited the “emerging world of driverless and connected cars” as a tentpole for L.A.’s “urban mobility…
CES 2020, meet HARRI
German-based international engineering company Bertrandt celebrated the world premiere of its HARRI innovation platform for future mobility concepts this week…
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Tag: TSXV:DHM
Tellurium Production by Country
Wondering about tellurium production by country? These four nations produced the most of the metal last year.
Deer Horn Metals Announces Private Placement
Deer Horn Metals Inc. (TSXV:DHM) announced a private placement of up to 20,000,000 shares at $.010, for a total of...
Deer Horn Announces Share Consolidation
Deer Horn Metals Inc. (TSXV:DHM) announces that its Board of Directors have approved a consolidation of Deer Horn Metals shares...
Deer Horn Metals Terminates VLP’s Contract
Deer Horn Metals Inc. (TSXV:DHM) terminated Venture Liquidity Provider Inc.'s contract, who were hired to help maintain an orderly trading...
Deer Horn Metals Inc. Earns 50% Interest in Deer Horn Property
Deer Horn Metals Inc. (TSXV:DHM) earned its initial 50% interest in the Deer Horn Property, and the Company can earn...
Deer Horn Metals Announces Results from Annual General Meeting
Deer Horn Metals Inc. (TSXV:DHM) held its Annual General Meeting on April 16, 2013 and all resolutions were approved.
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The Internet Is About to Become Worse Than Television
Annalee Newitz
Filed to:social control
Last week, an obscure but potentially internet-transforming document was leaked from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. It revealed that government regulators are considering rules that would give big companies a chance to make their online services run faster than smaller ones.
The proposed rules were revealed in the New York Times, and they would overturn the principle of "network neutrality" on the internet. Put simply, network neutrality allows you to use services from rich companies like Google and small startups with equal speed through your ISP. You can read a blog hosted on somebody's home server, and it loads just as quickly as a blog on Tumblr.
Without network neutrality, Tumblr could cut a deal with your ISP — let's say it's Comcast — and its blogs would load really quickly while that home server blog might take minutes to load pictures. It might not even load at all. You can see why people in the freedom-of-speech obsessed United States might not be happy with chucking network neutrality. It privileges some speech over others, based on financial resources.
At the same time, ISPs would love to end network neutrality because they want to charge more to major players like Netflix in order to support their streaming content. Now, it looks like the FCC is thinking seriously about letting ISPs have what they want.
Over at Slate, lawyer Marvin Ammori sums up:
The FCC is going to propose that cable and phone companies such as Verizon, AT&T, and Time Warner Cable are allowed to discriminate against them, giving some websites better service and others worse service. Cable and phone companies will be able to make preferred deals with the companies that can afford to pay high fees for better service. They will even be allowed to make exclusive deals, such as making MSNBC.com the only news site on Comcast in the priority tier, and relegating competitors to a slow lane. The FCC is authorizing cable and phone companies to start making different deals with thousands or millions of websites, extracting money from sites that need to load quickly and reliably. So users will notice that Netflix or Hulu works better than Amazon Prime, which buffers repeatedly and is choppy. New sites will come along and be unable to compete with established giants. If we had had such discrimination a decade ago, we would still be using MySpace, not Facebook, because Facebook would have been unable to compete.
The chairman believes he can help us in one way: He will make sure all these highly discriminatory new tolls are "commercially reasonable." Will that matter? No. Commercially reasonable deals won't be measured by the market. If Amazon is paying twice what eBay is paying, the FCC will only make sure each price is reasonable, not that the prices are nondiscriminatory.
He adds that this "reasonable" pricing will hardly be reasonable, unless your company is insanely rich:
So, according to the FCC, when Verizon discriminates against a startup, we shouldn't be alarmed, because (while being discriminated against), this startup can hire a lot of expensive lawyers and expert witnesses and meet Verizon (a company worth more than $100 billion) at the FCC and litigate this issue out, with no certainty as to the rule. The startup will almost certainly lose either at the FCC or on appeal to a higher court, after bleeding money on lawyers.
Big internet service companies have been pushing the FCC to craft such regulations for years. In 2010, we wrote about a proposal from Amazon and Google, urging the FCC to adopt pay-to-play rules that would allow some companies to get their content to your eyeballs faster than smaller players. It's no exaggeration to say that rules like this would destroy the internet as we know it.
Now it looks like the rules that Googlezon wished for are actually in process.
Writing in the New Yorker, law professor Tim Wu explains:
The new rule gives broadband providers what they've wanted for about a decade now: the right to speed up some traffic and degrade others. (With broadband, there is no such thing as accelerating some traffic without degrading other traffic.) We take it for granted that bloggers, start-ups, or nonprofits on an open Internet reach their audiences roughly the same way as everyone else. Now they won't. They'll be behind in the queue, watching as companies that can pay tolls to the cable companies speed ahead. The motivation is not complicated. The broadband carriers want to make more money for doing what they already do. Never mind that American carriers already charge some of the world's highest prices, around sixty dollars or more per month for broadband, a service that costs less than five dollars to provide. To put it mildly, the cable and telephone companies don't need more money.
Wu has studied corporate controls of electronic communication for most of his life, and is the author of a terrific book about telecom monopolies called The Master Switch. He's worked as an adviser for the FCC, and has personally talked to President Obama about the need for net neutrality. So his disappointment is palpable when he notes that the leaked rules, confirmed as real by insiders at the agency, would allow internet companies to pay ISPs payola to get their traffic privileged above others.
The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires
G/O Media may get a commission
This is the first step toward a world where corporate monopolies on content start affecting not just what you can see and read online — but also how you gain access to it. The signal will be out there, but your ISP just won't deliver it to you.
An internet without network neutrality will look a lot like television does now. You'll depend entirely on your cable company to get broadcasts, and they will only deliver their handpicked channels in their cable packages. There will probably be a little room for the web equivalent of public access television, but it will be so underfunded and slow to load that almost nobody will see it.
It used to be that when a show couldn't make it on broadcast television, we would watch it online. That's how amazing stuff like Dr. Horrible made it into the world. But without net neutrality, we lose that option too. If a company doesn't have the money or legal acumen to get its content included in ISP packages, you will never see its programming. You'll never have those shows; you'll never have those apps; and you'll never know what you're missing.
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The Irish Advantage
High Tech Construction News
Five Data Centres at the Forefront of Sustainability
For those involved in the build of data centres, sustainability is a key concern for meeting the needs of today’s client.
There are rarely any surprises when it comes to nominations for the most sustainable data centres. The same can be said for data centre locations. A very large data centre somewhere in Northern Europe or the hinterlands of North America is never far from the top of the lists. This may not be fair on those making an effort to improve sustainability in steamy, tropical climates, or to those with less access to renewable energy sources. While there will be disagreement with the names included or not included below, each of these serves to illustrate a different requirement in achieving a sustainable data centre.
Renewable energy at Facebook’s Sweden facility
Facebook Data Centre in Luleå, Sweden. Image credit: Torbjörn Tapani
Since data centres use a lot of energy, one of the first requirements is access to sources of sustainable energy – hydro, wind, tidal, biomass, solar, geothermal. No list would be complete without mention of the Facebook facility inside the Arctic Circle at Lulea, Sweden. Since its announcement in 2011, it has been one of the ‘green’ poster sites of the industry based on the use of natural air cooling and of renewable hydropower, and on the basis of an agreement made with Greenpeace at the end of 2011. Six years is a long time in the data centre world and as Facebook gears for new data centre builds in Denmark and Ireland, it will be worth observing how their practices have evolved and can capitalise on efficiencies in other locations.
Sustainability impacting business strategy at Switch’s campus in Las Vegas
A second requirement is to look beyond the mechanics of sustainability towards its impact on business strategy. For IT service and cloud providers, sustainability can be a powerful drawcard. Switch’s Data Centre campus in Las Vegas, Nevada is seeking to codify its sustainability practices by proposing a new data centre standard of Tier 5. This adds components of sustainability into the resiliency mix – the ability ‘to run forever without water’, energy storage system redundancy and monitoring, and 100% renewable power from local, new, renewable projects. These are initiatives which Greenpeace recognised with A grades in its Clicking Clean report.
@Switch @SUPERNAP recieves 2nd Tier IV Gold Rating On Two Separate Data Center Facilities https://t.co/OA0vHfJMft pic.twitter.com/y4fy6aijw6
— Switch (@SUPERNAP) March 2, 2016
Waste recycling at Bahnhof in Sweden
Environmental considerations are not only of benefit globally – they can also be applied locally. The practice of using excess heat produced to warm local buildings is well established in colder climates. In 2013, this led to the creation of DCDH (Data Centre for District Heating), in Sweden, whereby Bahnhof would sell excess heat from its data centre via heat pumps. The reason for the creation of this ‘new’ efficiency metric is that the claimed PUE of 0.5 does not make logical sense – the amount of power used by IT cannot be more than the total amount that goes into the data centre in the first place. A number of facilities in the cooler climates of Northern Europe have adopted this recycling principle and several have also claimed PUEs of less than 1.0.
Google championing technology innovation in data centres
The fourth attribute towards sustainability in the data centre is based on the innovative use of technology. This relates to dealing efficiently with data centre infrastructure requirements such as cooling, power distribution and power protection, as these will all consume energy in the data centre that could be going to the IT equipment. Google features five infrastructural initiatives based on its own data centres. These include measuring efficiency – since the core function of a data centre is to house IT equipment, efficiency can be based on how much energy gets to the IT. Separation of hot and cold air inside via containment and using CFD to optimise airflow is mentioned, as is running IT warmer since the majority of data centres will tend to run colder than the upper temperatures specified by the manufacturer and expend additional energy on cooling to do that. The use of a cooling economiser and the use of free cooling (removing heat through low-temperature ambient air) is also specified, as is the minimisation of power distribution losses through reducing the number of steps that power has to take through the data centre. Energy loss and waste can also be reduced through high-efficiency transformers, PDUs and UPS devices. These steps have enabled the Google data centre to make the claim of using 50% less energy than the typical data centre.
Apple’s iDataCentre and the local environment
Sustainability is not just a matter of what happens once the data centre starts to operate. Apple’s data centre at Maiden in North Carolina is rated at the highest (Platinum) level of LEED Certification. As part of this, the ‘iDataCentre’ was constructed using 14% recycled materials and only 7% of construction waste ended up in landfills. Additionally, 41% of materials were sourced from within 500 miles of the site, thereby reducing the environmental impact of long-distance transportation.
No one data centre tells the whole story of sustainability, and more than anything, the focus has moved beyond the walls of the individual facility to wider concepts. That of data infrastructure, in particular, the use of cloud to limit energy consumption at the corporate user level. That of the immediate environment in terms of local energy sources and energy re-use. Finally, that of the benefits of certain locations, particularly when accessing renewable energy sources and suitable expertise close to hand.
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The hard road of free markets
The fundamental reason so many markets are not free, and so dysfunctional, is that the voters of our democracy don't really want freedom. Freedom will come when we want it, when we insist on it, when the average voter sees a free market solution rather than endless controls as the answer to real world problems. The sad paradox of free markets is that free markets do not need people to understand them to work. But democracy does require voters to understand how things work.
In that vein today's internet browsing (both HT marginal revolution) brings good news and bad news.
Good news - one more piece of evidence that people from left and right are finally beginning to see the huge damage of zoning and construction restrictions, including inequality, income segregation, and perpetuation of economic status. That "progressives" now see this too is a most heartening development.
Today's data point is What Happened to the American Boomtown, in, yes, the New York Times. The piece notices the dramatic expansions that Chicago and San Francisco experienced in the 19th century, when they were economic magnets.
"Chicago in 1850 was a muddy frontier town of barely 30,000 people. Within two decades, it was 10 times that size. Within another two decades, that number had tripled. By 1910, Chicago — hog butcher for the world, headquarters of Montgomery Ward, the nerve center of the nation’s rail network — had more than two million residents.
... It was a classic metropolitan magnet, attracting anyone in need of a job or a raise.
But ...migration patterns like the one that fed Chicago have broken down in today’s America....local economic booms no longer create boomtowns in America.
The places that are booming in size [sunbelt, providing cheap housing] aren’t the economic boomtowns — the regions with the greatest prosperity and highest productivity. In theory, we’d expect those metros, like the Bay Area, Boston and New York, to be rapidly expanding, as people move from regions with high unemployment and meager wages to those with high salaries and strong job markets.
So what's the problem? Amazingly, the Times nails it. (Or at least its intrepid reporter Emily Badger nails, it, and the Times let her do it.)
Some people aren’t moving into wealthy regions because they’re stuck in struggling ones. They have houses they can’t sell or government benefits they don’t want to lose. But the larger problem is that they’re blocked from moving to prosperous places by the shortage and cost of housing there. And that’s a deliberate decision these wealthy regions have made in opposing more housing construction, a prerequisite to make room for more people.
Moreover, she gets not only the overall flow but its character -- lower income people move out to make room for the very high skill migrants who can pay outrageous prices to be in the high productivity clusters. This results in inequality and residential segregation.
As a result [of restrictions], housing prices have soared in the most prosperous places, making them inaccessible to lower-income workers and negating much of the allure of the higher wages there. Over this same time, ...high-skilled migrants have clustered in these areas, while low-skilled workers have been more likely to move elsewhere.
For a Times article, the omissions are just as instructive. No mention of big housing subsidies, and "affordable" housing mandates (which drive up the cost of market rate housing even more.) We just need to get out of the way and allow more housing.
With left and right apparently now aware of the problem, what's stopping us from fixing it? The bad news:
In the Boston suburbs, the Bay Area, Brooklyn and Washington, people who already live there have balked at new housing for people who don’t.
Now the question -- are these voters just somewhat hypocritically voting their interest, or does it reveal that that average voter doesn't get how markets work?
Lots of people in a democracy vote their interest, despite their professed ideology. There is plenty of hypocrisy on all sides. People of achingly progressive sensibilities vote for housing policies that keep the unwashed out, drive up long commutes, carbon emissions, and inequality. My neighborhood is full of these charming signs:
If I were not polite, I would add a sticker that says, "as long as you have the $3 million bucks it takes to live here. If not, get out." (Many of the same houses also have signs protesting a local school expansion, which might, well, attract people.)
But perhaps people just don't understand the basics of how markets work. Evidence for this proposition comes from our second MR link of the day, "Upset about the I-66 tolls?" in the Washington Post.
I-66 is a new toll road with full real time congestion pricing. This idea is about a week 2 quiz in economics 101. If you have a real-time congestion price on a road, calibrated to keep traffic at 55 mph, then either you make a huge amount of money to pay for roads and underwater pensions, or you clear up traffic forever. Win-win. The basic economic principle is, lines for free stuff are inefficient, and don't try to transfer income by mucking up with prices. Yet,
Several Virginia lawmakers are calling on the state to suspend tolls on Interstate 66, condemning this week’s variable tolls that hit as high as $40 as “outrageous” and “unacceptable”.
The high tolls almost immediately sparked outage on social media and drew national attention. Drivers took to Twitter to condemn the high rates with the hashtag #highwayrobbery. ...
“The tolls on I-66 are outrageous,” Wexton tweeted Tuesday. “$30+ tolls are unfair, especially for those of us with limited east-west travel options.
Earlier this week, Del. Timothy D. Hugo (R-Fairfax), the chairman of the House Republican Caucus, called on his colleagues to immediately “come together to craft a realistic public policy solution that helps lower the costs of commuting for single-occupancy vehicles on I-66.”
I wonder what the solution will be. Magic? Building more highways? With what money? You pay with tolls or you pay with taxes.
And Republican members of the Northern Virginia Transportation Commission will introduce a resolution Thursday calling on state officials to “lower, cap and reconfigure” the tolls and restore the previous rush-hour periods
And, then, restore the previous rush-hour traffic jams. The week 1 quiz in econ 101 is, what happens if you reduce the toll to a "fair" amount? And the answer is, I-66 looks like the 405.
So much for free market Republicans. At least they are consistent enough to want to subsidize single-occupancy vehicles not mass transit boondoggles. (And nobody here is adding two plus two, that restrictions on housing construction is why people are suffering these long commutes in the first place. The real answer to congestion is to let people live near where they work!)
It does not occur to anyone that you're really not paying the government. You are paying your fellow drivers to stay home, carpool, come later, so that they will get out of your way and let you sail to work.
The reaction to Uber surge pricing is a similar test. Economists love it. You mean rather than sit in the rain and wait, I can pay more, compensate someone else for waiting, encourage a driver to skip dinner, and take me where I want to go, now? I'm in. Or, I can save some money and go later. Everyone else hates it. And gets cities to ban it. And we go back to waiting.
The sad paradox of free markets is that free markets do not need people to understand them to work. But democracy does require voters to understand how things work.
Labels: Commentary, Freedom
Anwer December 8, 2017 at 8:37 PM
Are people are upset about toll rates that they consider unfair? There's no point in scolding them for being human. The way forward is to put more science into our policy-making, by turning to Chicago Booth scholars like Richard Thaler. It may be too late to reform the thinking of other leaders of the profession, but award committees are intervening and helping to steer the profession in a productive direction.
Matt Young December 8, 2017 at 11:56 PM
I-66 can never be a true market, it is the feeder for the DC bureaucrat.
Whatever the price, prime time on the route is pre-allocated to members of central government. I think the normal policy is to tax Kentucky and use the proceeds to supplement toll charges for the federal bureaucrat.
Luzius Meisser December 9, 2017 at 12:50 AM
Zurich has successfully been following a policy of densification (increasing its population density by relaxing zoning restrictions) for many years, letting people live closer to where they work. This policy has regularly been confirmed by public votes, so I would not be so cynical about democracy. In my opinion, the regular public votes have lead to better decision taking, as they helped stopping a number of ill-conceived and overly costly projects the city proposed (somehow politicians tend to like those).
Benjamin Cole December 9, 2017 at 9:15 AM
Nice post...worth pondering: we hear a lot of jibber-jabber about "labor shortages." For large sections of the country, are labor shortages really housing shortages?
It sure is in my small county in the mid-west. We could put several hundred people to work here today but we can't get them here because of a lack of housing. It is zoning, here the cost is driven up buy all kinds of requirements that drive up the cost of the shelter to no good purpose.
David Seltzer December 9, 2017 at 4:46 PM
We had a similar reaction to toll lanes in Atlanta. I85 was heavily congested during rush hour. Prices are higher during peak and lower otherwise. Those lanes are almost always filled and the state is building more in response to public consumer request. Rent controls are a killer as well. In the late 80's, developers bought rental property in Hoboken and Jersey City. They bought tenants out and converted those 500 sq ft units to condos. Today, one of those shoe boxes trade for 300k to 400K. No increase in housing stock!
Benjamin Cole December 9, 2017 at 7:43 PM
Add on: the solution to tight housing markets is the abolition of property zoning. But when it comes to their own neighborhood, every influential person is pink. Do you want 40-story condos across the street from your single-family house, with ground-floor retail?
pithom December 10, 2017 at 12:56 AM
Hugo is one of the very few HRC district Republicans to have survived the 2017 Dem wave. Had the Dems in VA taken every HRC district, they'd be calling the shots in the House of Delegates. Of course he'd move to the left to benefit his liberal constituents.
FRestly December 10, 2017 at 1:22 PM
"The reaction to Uber surge pricing is a similar test. Economists love it."
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/uber-drivers-game-app-force-surge-pricing
"As University of Warwick researchers Mareike Möhlmann and Ola Henfridsson and Lior Zalmanson of New York University say in their best academese: We identify a series of mechanisms that drivers use to regain their autonomy when faced with the power asymmetry imposed by algorithmic management, including guessing, resisting, switching and gaming the Uber system.”
"So what are the drivers doing in response? Gaming the system by tricking the algorithm."
"The researchers report that drivers organize mass switch-offs. The dearth of drivers in a given area then triggers the surge pricing mechanism."
"Want evidence? On the Uberpeople.com website, according to the paper, Driver A said: Guys stay logged off until surge.’”
"Driver B said: Uber will find out if people are manipulating the system.”
"Driver A: They already know cos it happens every week. Deactivation en masse coming soon. Watch this space.”
"Drivers are also revolting against UberPool, the customer option of sharing a ride with other passengers at a discounted price. Infuriatingly, it has been the default on my own Uber app more often than not, despite my never once having wanted to use it. But it turns out to be extremely unpopular with drivers too, who get a much lower commission on UberPool rides, according to the researchers."
"In retaliation, says Professor Henfridsson, Drivers either accept the first passenger on UberPOOL then log off, or just ignore requests, so they don’t have to make a detour to pick anybody else up. They then still pocket the 30 per cent commission for UberPOOL, rather than the usual 10 per cent.”
not trampis December 11, 2017 at 1:08 AM
You do not want free markets you want competitive markets. Crony capitalism is something not to desire!
Matt December 11, 2017 at 9:28 PM
I would be interested to know how a truly "free" market would be crony?
The promise of free markets with no barriers to entry / exit and no "stifling government regulations" is that suppliers of goods will compete to increase margins by increasing their productivity.
There are obvious constraints in terms of Uber drivers - number #1 being safety. I doubt you see any Uber drivers in two seater Formula 1 cars driving 250 MPH down the street.
Another way that Uber drivers can increase their margins is by colluding together on price.
Is this crony capitalism? Not really.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cronyism
This is more like cartel action.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartel
Fish Goldstein December 11, 2017 at 1:04 PM
The policy conversation needs to move from "what is important" to "what is more important".
When resources are limited, its not really about identifying important goals, it's about prioritizing them. Is it "important" that people be able to afford the road? Yes. Is it *more* important than clearing up travel? This is a much better question.
Here, in California, we AIMED at the housing shortage. Over thirty years ago the various cities adopted "greenlines" to prohibit urban sprawl. The land area for development became fixed. Gee golly, the demand for housing did not. More people on less land equals higher costs for those land resources.
To compound the problem, those same cities demanded higher impact fees, higher density and the associated costs of those types of structures, restricting infrastructure capacities to limit the overall growth to whatever the growth caps were...and voila...a housing shortage.
Now, the politicians are all complaining about the cost of housing...and doubling down and making market rate pay for the cost of creating "affordable" housing. They act ignorant as to the cause...ummm...policy, housing policy.
jimbino December 11, 2017 at 3:43 PM
Besides zoning and housing restrictions, certification of barbers and hair-weavers is hampering the economy.
PhilNag December 11, 2017 at 3:47 PM
We face a steady drum beat from the media about the benefits of regulations but if we look hard we would find that in areas that have been deregulated, the consumers have been the big winners. I shudder to think what we would be paying for phones if still under government regulation or what airline tickets would cost. We see Uber and Lyft successfully competing against government regulated taxis. Many professional licences do more to protect existing professionals than the public. We can only dream of the benefits if we ended our socialized school systems. The media, bureaucrats and politicians stand in the way of a free market that benefits the consumers.
I would love to see a study that shows convinces me that deregulation was the dominate factor in changing prices in these industries. I have the belief that technological innovation was already decreasing costs in these industries. As anecdotal evidence of this I offer this statement, there are several state sponsored airlines around the globe and they are still able to compete. The fact is, both of these industries were nascent in both their technology and their development before deregulation.
Furthermore, if Aviation was a completely free market passengers would be in trouble. Passengers would have to foot the bill for the whole aviation system (Airports, security, air traffic control). Yes they pay some fees now, but no where near what is costs to run the system. Additionally, I don't know that Boeing would exist without the support they receive from the federal government.
You still need the private competition to create the incentive to innovate and adopt technology.
flashgordon December 11, 2017 at 4:25 PM
Great article. John is right at the epicenter of it, Palo Alto. My wife and I were there a few weekends ago. There is an old dirt track from a defunct, closed high school where the land would sell for 5 million or more if someone could build multi-story on it. I'm sure no more than 10 people a week run on it. So what would it take to make real estate prices reasonable in northern california. Manhattan like density from Marin to Santa Cruz?
So, please show me how Houston has less inequality, income segregation, and perpetuation of economic status.
I don't quite understand the pressure to have high density.
200 years ago, to function, you *had* to be in the city core since communication was limited to face to face (and snail mail).
180 years ago, the first railroads and electrical telegraphy started to loosen those bonds. Forty years later came the telephone. And thirty years after that Henry Ford's Model T. (All this by WW I.)
Twenty to thirty-five years ago (that's a generation, folks) we had Interstate highways, the Internet, and the cell phone.
So why the insistence upon living one on top of another?
My own guess is that our economy is much more complexly inter-related than we know, much more competitive (and therefor much more responsive to even minuscule competitive advantages), and mediated communication is still much more attenuated than face-to-face.
So we still need to be within walking distance of each other.
(Then again, how to explain millennials who shy from face-to-face conversation and much prefer text messages? And -- heaven help us -- courting young couples who prefer texting to talking?))
I live in downtown San Jose and can speak first hand on this issue, voters do not understand how free markets work. The reason there has been an increase in jobs in San Jose is because it is in the heart of the Silicone Valley, thus making a central hub for people who dream in working at the next big Tech company. Freeways here are ridiculously packed at all hours of the day, but the solution so far has been the expanding VTA and BART public transportation system. The BART is now being built to extend to San Jose, most likely because of how you mentioned that since this is the heart of the Silicone Valley more people are migrating here for work. People cannot afford to live in San Jose because of sky rocketing housing prices making a dilapidated 2 bedroom house worth an easy million dollars. No average earning person can afford to live here and most of them do not understand which way they should vote to solve this issue.
Jim Stewart December 19, 2017 at 6:36 PM
John says democracy requires voters to understand how things work. But what if voters don't know how ballots are "used to defeat the franchise", and generations of us have been misled about how two party political systems prevail?
JCT distribution tables
MR wisdom
Economists as Public Intellectuals
Mankiw on endowment taxes
Response to Williamson on taxes
The Fiscal Theory of Monetary Policy
The Buyback Fallacy
The High Cost of Good Intentions
How to cut taxes and raise tax rates
Universities and taxes
Hazlett on Spectrum
Asset Pricing Competition
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GC Surveillance
About ASTDA
Thought you might appreciate this item(s) I saw at Sexually Transmitted Diseases.
Sampling Individuals With Large Sexual Networks: An Evaluation of Four Approaches
JOLLY, ANN M. PhD*;† AND; WYLIE, JOHN L. PhD‡§
From the *Division of STD Prevention and Control, Population and Public Health Branch, Health Canada, Ottawa, Ontario; †University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario; ‡University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba; and §Cadham Provincial Laboratory, Public Health Branch, Manitoba Health, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
The authors thank the Communicable Disease Control unit, Manitoba Health, for sharing their data, and in particular, Ms. Pat Matusko, who encouraged and facilitated this research. They also thank Mr. David Chong for the network diagrams, and two anonymous reviewers whose comments greatly improved this paper.
This research was made possible by a grant from the Manitoba Health Research Council and the Manitoba Medical Services Foundation.
Correspondence and reprint requests: Ann M. Jolly, PhD, Division of STD Prevention and Control, Room 0108B, Brooke Claxton Bldg, PL0900B1, Tunney’s Pasture, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1A 0L2. E-mail: ann–jolly@hc-sc.gc.ca
Received for publication May 2, 2000, revised August 18, 2000, and accepted September 13, 2000.
Sex Transm Dis: April 2001 - Volume 28 - Issue 4 - p 200-207
Methods for accessing large sexual networks are essential for investigating the mechanisms for the spread of sexually transmitted infections.
Four samples of cases were compared with the total population to determine which identified the largest networks.
Individuals with positive test results for chlamydia during a 6-month period were selected from a laboratory database and linked with sex partner information from a notifiable disease registry. Sexual networks were constructed for a random sample, people with positive results from two or more tests for chlamydia, people with positive tests results for both gonorrhea and chlamydia, and the preceding two groups combined.
The coinfected people combined with the repeaters yielded the highest proportion (47.8%) of large networks (>10 people), followed by the coinfected people, the repeaters, and finally the random sample.
People coinfected with chlamydia and gonorrhea and those with repeated chlamydial infection present ideal opportunities for both research and prevention.
THE CONCEPT OF A CORE GROUP is central to sexually transmitted infection (STI) epidemiology. 1 A core group is one in which each infectious person infects, on the average, one or more susceptible people during a given period. By definition, core groups maintain the organism’s viability in the host population. Should the reproduction number, which represents the average number of newly infected contacts generated by infectious persons, drop below one, the organism, incapable of reproducing sufficiently, will die out. 2
The idea that STI transmission is perpetuated by a relatively small group of individuals directly through their own sexual activities and indirectly through those of their sex partners is attractive for both research and prevention. The mathematical origins of core group theory facilitate very clear descriptions of research questions that need to be answered if “the interplay between the variables that determine the course of infection within an individual and the variables that control the pattern of infection within communities of people” is to be understood. 2,9 In terms of prevention, successful interventions in the core group will lead to larger reductions than expected in STI incidence relative to the number of people in the core groups. In fact, this effect was observed after the introduction of a gonorrhea screening program in the United States, during which there was a 10% increase in detected cases. In the following years, the incidence of gonorrhea decreased by 20%. 3
The need for more refined, targeted prevention programs is greater now that it ever has been. A chlamydia control program introduced in Manitoba in 1988 included legislated reporting of cases to public health officials, development of management and treatment guidelines, selective screening, and partner notification for individuals with positive test results. Rates of chlamydia in women decreased substantially from 778 per 100,000 in 1988 to 266 per 100,000 in 1996, after which the incidence rose slightly to 351 per 100,000 in 1999. This trend is similar to that for the whole of Canada, and in 1999 the rate was 123.8 cases of chlamydia per 100,000 women (STD Prevention and Control, Health Canada, in press), 4 exceeding the national goal of fewer than 80 per 100,000 for the year 2000. 5
The initial decreases in chlamydia and the subsequent rises in cost per case detected have been found in other jurisdictions where screening has been implemented. 6–8 In Manitoba, the proportion of positive chlamydia tests dropped substantially from 8.3% in 1988 to 3.2% in 1999. In Quebec, the percentage also dropped from 4.3% in 1991 to 2.8% in 1998. 9 (Personal communication, Dr. Laurent Delorme, November 1999.)
Infections detected during the screening process in individuals motivated to present for annual physical examinations are believed to represent the cases most susceptible to elimination. Reservoirs of infection remain concentrated in STI core groups. Social, cultural, and economic marginalization of these populations also may result in less contact with the public health system. Investigation of new prevention methods in these groups is essential as the number of cases decreases and screening becomes less cost effective.
The fact that sexual networks play a significant role in core group dynamics was recognized as early as 1981, 10 when people connected directly and indirectly through sexual intercourse were grouped in lots, six of which accounted for 20% of all the STI cases in Colorado Springs. Since then, this approach has been advocated as an important method for addition to the available tools used to describe STI transmission. 1,11–13 It is logical to infer that large networks contain core groups because there is evidence of infection transmitted from an index patient to his or her sex partners, who in turn transmit the infection to one or more people, who in turn are linked with yet more secondary cases, forming a large network. Interruption in transmission will fragment the large networks within which STI proliferates and from which STI are disseminated. This strategy will be more effective and efficient in reducing rates of STI than intervening in smaller sexual networks of only two or three people or applying mass prevention strategies.
Despite the potential of social network analysis to add much to the current understanding of STI transmission, 14,15 this area of research is still in its infancy. Not only are more network data needed, 16 but answers to basic methodological questions of sampling populations and evaluating bias also are required. 17 The objective of the current research, one of several studies in a larger project, 18 was to evaluate four methods of easily identifying large sexual networks containing individuals with chlamydial infection. These results also could be used in public health practice to prioritize partner notification of the clients likely to be members of large networks.
The authors selected four subgroups of STI cases that they believed would reveal the largest networks. The rationale for selecting these groups originated from an earlier study conducted to determine the feasibility of constructing sexual networks of core group members from routinely gathered contact tracing data. 19
The first group consisted of individuals who had two or more positive chlamydia test results in the 6-month study period (repeaters). Individuals who had laboratory-confirmed coinfection with gonorrhea and chlamydia formed the second group. The third group comprised both coinfected individuals and those with repeated chlamydial infections. The fourth group consisted of individuals selected by random sampling of all specimens that had positive test results. The number and size of the networks constructed by these four different methods then were compared against those of networks constructed by use of information for all cases and contacts reported during the study period.
Testing for genital Chlamydia trachomatis infections in Manitoba is centralized at Cadham Provincial Laboratory (CPL), which performs 95% of all chlamydia diagnostic and screening tests (approximately 60,000 tests annually). Chlamydiazyme (Abbott Laboratories, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada) and Gonorrhea Pace 2 (GenProbe, San Diego, CA), nonamplified, were the diagnostic tests in use at the time of this research. Selective screening was recommended for all women with multiple sex partners or a recent history of or exposure to an STI, and for women undergoing therapeutic abortions or intrauterine device insertion. Screening of all women younger than 25 years was added in 1989 to the Canadian guidelines for chlamydia screening. 20 Screening was not recommended for women presenting for annual or prenatal examination who did not fit any of the aforementioned categories. 21 Computerized records for each specimen contained information on the types of tests performed, the results, the attending physician, the patient, including the personal health insurance number, and the specimen dates.
In Manitoba, physicians and nurses practicing in medical clinics, hospitals, and health centers on Indian reserves screen, diagnose, and treat patients with STI. Once a positive laboratory report is received at Manitoba Health Communicable Disease Control (MCDC), the responsible public health unit is informed, and a public health nurse contacts the physician. The physician completes the sexually transmitted disease notification form, which is entered into a computerized database by staff at MCDC. If the physician wishes, he or she may interview the patient to obtain information on his or her sex partners. Sexual partners of a patient are requested for a standard time frame since the onset of symptoms or, if the patient is asymptomatic, for the 3 months before the positive laboratory test. If the physician wishes, the interview is conducted by a public health nurse, who fills out the sexual contact information on the notification form. The form is forwarded to MCDC, and the information entered on the computer along with the laboratory and demographic data.
Partner notification is completed in one of three ways. First, the contacts reported by the index patient can be notified of their exposure by local public health nurses or by the primary caregiver. Second, the index patient, if judged competent, can inform his or her own partners of their exposure. The healthcare provider may still note the names to ensure that the partners present for testing and treatment. If the partners fail to present, the provider locates and notifies the partners herself. Third, if the client is assumed to be capable of locating and notifying his or her own partners, it is possible that the provider may not have reported the names of the contacts to MCDC. In this case, MCDC would not have a record of the contact’s name.
Partner notification for women with chlamydia detected by screening may not have been as complete as for those detected by diagnostic testing because infection may have taken place months previously, complicating the location of previous sex partners. In the current study, compliance with notification system was good, demonstrated by the fact that contact follow-up evaluation did not reveal previously tested, positive individuals unknown to public health officials.
Computerized registries of all laboratory-confirmed patients and their named contacts are maintained by MCDC. The computerized databases were designed to fill the dual purposes of recording epidemiologic data on gonorrhea and chlamydia cases and providing a reference source for client and contact care. They contain one record for each notification of a disease episode to Manitoba Health. Each record contains detailed demographic, laboratory, contact, treatment, symptom, and healthcare provider information for each patient. The contact database contains the name, birth date, age, gender, and address; whether the contact was located, tested, and treated; and the disease to which the contact was exposed.
Data from the CPL computerized record system on each specimen from November of 1997 to May of 1998 were downloaded electronically to a personal computer. The ASCII files were imported into Epi Info (v. 6.2, 1996, Centers for Disease Control, Atlanta, GA), and the dates were recoded to allow for calculations using dates. The records of all individuals with positive results for chlamydia only were selected regardless whether they had an additional positive or negative test result for gonorrhea. Four lists of specimens were created that were not mutually exclusive because the aim was to assess simple, convenient markers of large networks rapidly. The first list included repeaters who had more than one positive test for chlamydia, and none for gonorrhea, during the study period. Time periods between positive tests were not specified, for the reason stated earlier. The second list included all individuals with a single specimen simultaneously positive for both gonorrhea and chlamydia at any time in the study period. All repeaters and coinfected individuals composed the third list. No one had more than one specimen positive for both chlamydia and gonorrhea. The fourth list comprised randomly selected chlamydia-positive individuals generated using Rsample, a program written in Epi Info, which retrieved a 10% sample of all records.
The complete sexual network was constructed by linking computerized specimen records from the laboratory database with the individual electronic records at MCDC using the personal health insurance number (PHIN). A PHIN is assigned to each resident of Manitoba for obtaining medical services under the publicly funded health insurance program. Continuous validation of the computerized information occurred because each individual’s demographic information was checked against the Manitoba Health Patient Registry file each time a laboratory sample was received. The patient registry contains the demographic information for all the residents of Manitoba who are eligible for publicly funded healthcare services. Because the health insurance system does not require the payment of premiums and provides universal health insurance, including all basic inpatient and outpatient services, nearly all the residents of Manitoba are registered.
The laboratory records were matched with the notifiable disease records from August 1, 1997 through May 1998. Inclusion of the data from the preceding 3 months allowed capture of data on the index patients who had named individuals testing positive after November of 1997. These index patients, or “infectors,” are more important in transmitting infections than those they infected. 22 The identification number assigned to each registered case with an STI was used to link index patients to their contact(s) in the contact database. The researchers verified whether the named contacts had tested positive and now were also registered as cases. This was accomplished by cross-matching the names in the database of laboratory-confirmed cases using the following criteria in each of two circumstances. First, the first name and surname or alias matched exactly and (1) two of three items (day, month, year) of the birth date were identical, (2) the month and day were identical but reversed, or (3) the addresses (including the house or apartment numbers) were identical. Second, if the names did not match exactly, as with shortened first names or misspelled last names (e.g., “Michael” shortened to “Mike,” or “Taylor” spelled “Tailor”), then one of the three preceding conditions had to apply or the ages of the two records matched (allowing for the year in which the events were reported) and the address matched exactly. This algorithm, validated in an earlier feasibility study, 19 resulted in a complete list of individuals.
Unique identifiers then were assigned to each individual and organized into a linked list format (pairs of links). Initial attempts at network construction with UCINET IV (©1996 Analytic Technologies, Harvard, MA) failed because of the large data set. An alternative program for large data sets (PAJEK [Program for large network analysis], ©1996 Vladimir Batagelj, Andrej Mrvar, http://vlado.fmf.uni-lj.si/pub/networks/pajek/) was in development at the time of this study. To test the accuracy of PAJEK, a smaller data set was imported into both UCINET IV and PAJEK. Because both programs produced identical results, the complete data set was imported into PAJEK for analysis.
In networks containing individuals from the random sample linked directly or indirectly by sexual intercourse, the repeater and coinfected groups were identified. The network size for each group and for the whole data set were compared using Kruskal-Wallis tests for nonparametric data to assess differences between two groups.
From November 1997 until May 1998, the CPL mainframe database contained 34,312 unique test results for chlamydia and gonorrhea tests. Of these, 1351 were records containing positive test results. Individuals who had tested positive were matched with those in the notifiable disease data set, which generated a database of all 4544 confirmed cases and contacts. Of these, 979 were either index patients with positive test results before November 1997, but whose named partners subsequently had positive test results during the 7-month study period, or contacts named by people at the very end of the study period for whom no demographic data were available because they were outside the defined study period. The remaining 3565 people comprised cases (n = 1141) and contacts (n = 2424). The number of individuals did not match the number of tests because of repeat testing, and because of lag times in data entry into the notifiable disease database the week after the study period cutoff. Of the cases and contacts for whom information was available, 1565 (43.9%) were women, and 2,000 (56.1%) were men.
Analysis identified 1705 networks containing 1 to 82 individuals (Table 1). The four comparison groups consisted of 93 repeaters, 76 individuals coinfected with gonorrhea and/or chlamydia, 144 repeaters and coinfected individuals combined, and 120 randomly selected individuals. These were drawn from the 1351 patients tested at CPL who had positive chlamydia test results. Repeaters represented 6.9% of all chlamydia-positive individuals, of whom 82 had two positive tests, 8 had three positive tests, and 3 had four positive tests. Coinfected individuals represented 5.1% of all chlamydia-positive individuals. Coinfected individuals and repeaters grouped together represented 9.1% of all chlamydia-positive cases. Eight individuals had both coinfection with gonorrhea and a second positive test for chlamydia during the study period. Five of the randomly selected individuals belonged to the coinfected group, whereas 10 individuals were repeaters, and 1 individual belonged to all four groups (Figure 1 D). Individuals in the random sample belonged to 114 of the 1705 networks. The repeaters and coinfected cases were members of 76 and 57 networks, respectively, and the combined group of coinfected and repeater individuals were members of 123 networks. The network sizes yielded by the four groups are shown in Table 1.
Frequency Distribution of Network Sizes of the Whole Study Population*
Fig. 1:
Four networks from the study samples. The circles represent individuals who were not tested or who tested negative. The triangles show people with chlamydia, and the squares show people with both chlamydia and gonorrhea. (A) Network of three individuals in solid black selected by random sample. (B) Network of one individual from the repeater group represented in solid black. (C) Network of an individual with an episode of coinfection represented in solid black. (D) Network containing a person (solid triangle) selected from the random sample as well as the coinfected group and the repeater group. The other two solid shapes are people common to both the coinfected and repeater groups.
Proportionately, individuals from all four groups belonged to a significantly higher number of the larger networks than contained in the total population (Table 2). The mean and median network sizes increased in order for the random sample, repeaters, and coinfected individuals, with the combined repeater and coinfected groups being smaller than the coinfected group alone. The number of networks represented decreased from 6.7% for the random sample to 4.5% for the repeaters to 3.3% for the coinfected cases, but was much higher for the combined coinfected and repeater individuals. The proportion of large networks consisting of 10 ten or more people (n = 23) represented in the samples rose from 26%, yielded by the random sample, to 47.8%, yielded by the coinfected individuals and repeaters.
Network Sizes Yielded by All Four Samples Compared With Those of the Total Population*
This research was designed to evaluate methods for identifying large sexual networks. Although the coinfected individuals represented the smallest comparison group, they were members of the largest networks. They also were members of the smallest number of networks, which supports the core group concept that very few individuals have a disproportionately large effect on STI transmission. However, the repeaters and coinfected individuals together formed the group through which the highest proportion of large networks was identified. Routine partner notification of people with repeated infections and of those coinfected with gonorrhea and chlamydia afforded access to nearly half of the identifiable large networks. Interrupting the transmission of STIs in large networks with long chains of successful transmission will avert larger numbers of infections than intervening in smaller networks. The advantage of targeting coinfected individuals and repeaters is that these characteristics are more easily available from laboratory test results and simple STI notification systems and do not require detailed demographic information, which seldom is available to public health professionals before the patient is interviewed. The authors suggest that giving repeaters and coinfected people higher priority for STI education, partner notification, and management will further reduce STI incidence, particularly in areas where the incidence has leveled off.
The ability to distinguish between individuals with large networks is essential also for research purposes. The need to study large networks that may contain STI core groups gives rise to a multitude of questions concerning interactions among the hosts, the organisms, and the sociosexual environments, all of which shape STI epidemics. To answer questions on how and why sex partners are recruited into a network, the effects of time, the relation between sexual networks and social networks, and the effects on the organism of passing through different host immune systems, networks of substantial size are required for results to be meaningful. The use of coinfected people and repeaters as “seeds” from which to sample for primary research studies should be particularly useful, allowing the researcher to select more respondents with larger networks rather than use random sampling methods.
There are a number of reasons why all four methods yielded a higher proportion of larger networks than contained in the total population. Logically, the random sample of individuals yielded a higher proportion of larger networks than were present in the whole population. 17 The individuals themselves had an equal chance of being selected, but selection was not stratified by the networks to which they belonged. Therefore, the chances of selecting a person from a large network at random are greater than selecting a person from a smaller one.
Because the repeaters had repeated positive test results over the study period, there were multiple opportunities to collect information on sex partners at each positive test, which resulted in the higher numbers of contacts for repeaters than for nonrepeaters. Although the repeaters may have named the same contact repeatedly, information on these contacts likely was more complete because different information usually was gathered at different interviews. This in turn would have led to a higher success rate in partner identification, location, and testing. The contacts, if positive, would lead again in turn to yet more contacts of their own and thus to larger networks. Also, the nurses may have had additional incentive to locate and treat sex partners of repeaters to prevent reinfections. It also should be noted that people infected repeatedly with chlamydia may be more likely to experience and recognize their symptoms and present for care, and they may be more motivated to give more complete partner information to public health nurses, in attempts to protect themselves from another infection.
Common practice demonstrates that individuals with both gonorrhea and chlamydia coinfection are a high priority for partner notification because they are infected with two notifiable diseases, not only one. This may enhance nurses’ effort and thoroughness in all aspects of the partner notification process, resulting in a higher number of contacts who test positive. Additionally, people who have gonorrhea are more likely to have their partners notified than those with chlamydia. 23 Finally, people infected with both organisms are far more likely to report symptoms, 19 and therefore to present, either as a result of notification or on their own, to healthcare providers.
All of the preceding factors affect the quality of the larger networks under study. For example, it is possible that if more complete information were gathered on patients with dual infections, the analysis would reveal only networks of people who are adept at transmitting both infections, and who may be involved in commercial sex. Therefore, it would be impossible to suppose that networks of people with chlamydia who do not have gonorrhea would be of similar size or structure. The networks in this research were identified by the partner notification techniques used in Manitoba. Different practices and techniques used in other jurisdictions may not produce comparable results, even in similar STI populations. 24 Most important, contact-tracing data and questionnaire research will always show a partial network because clients with STI may not know, remember, or divulge complete contact information. 25
The extent of the bias introduced by incomplete data in this research is not quantifiable. It is possible that the contacts named represent the people with whom the index patient engaged in sex most often, or the contact may have been a person regarded as a “steady” partner. It is equally likely that those not named were anonymous sexual partners who could represent the highest risk in terms of disease transmission. Also possible is that the unnamed contacts are those most feared by the index patient, whether because they provide the index case with illegal drugs or because they would become violent if they suspected that the index patient had provided their names to public health authorities. For these reasons, the authors think it inadvisable to assume that all sexual partners have an equal opportunity of being named. Nevertheless, unnamed individuals may be the most important STI transmitters 24 because they usually are not contacted by public health authorities and may remain infectious for a long time.
Despite the aforementioned limitations, these data collected by experienced public health nurses provide the most complete 26 and consistently gathered data available on sexual networks in Manitoba over time. In addition, the unique combination of a central computerized public health laboratory, a central notifiable disease registry including both cases and contacts, and a publicly funded healthcare system that allows the validation of records with a single population health insurance file are invaluable components in sound research and prevention of STI in sexual networks.
These data indicate that members of the larger networks clearly promote STI transmission and may constitute “core groups.” Most of the people in the interior of the large networks had more than one sex partner, at least one of whom had documented chlamydial infection during the study period (Figure 1). In fact, it is only in this way that large networks can be generated because sex partner information can be collected only from laboratory-proven cases. At least one of a patient’s sex partners must test positive for the partner notification process to continue, and for the network to grow. It is important to note that individuals at the periphery of the networks had sex partners with no laboratory-confirmed infection because their infection may have occurred subsequently to the study period or, rarely, two infected patients may have named the same partner, who may never have undergone testing. Although laboratory-confirmed infection in both the index patient and in at least one named partner indicates membership in a core group, specific proof that the organism is transmitted to the partner from the index patient is problematic. Despite the fact that future analysis of genotyping results will partially address this transmission, prior infection of a sex partner by another index patient may have taken place. Although this complicates the precise identification of the transmitter, it reinforces the theory that the larger sexual networks are core groups. Yorke et al 3 first defined a core in 1978 as being a group in which a “significant” number of preemptive infections take place when infectious individuals contact people who are infected already by different sources. These authors also stated that preemptive infections are substantial when the prevalence of infection in the group exceeds 20%. All the networks of 10 or more people have been shown to exceed this prevalence rate, most by a substantial margin. 18
Ghani et al 17 found that when using a simulated population of people within networks, contact tracing methods identified the large networks in the population, but underestimated the network dimension (size) when the number of contacts traced was low (about 50%). From a purely methodological point of view, this finding is reassuring. Size is more accurately estimated when the number of contacts traced rises above 50%. This finding is consistent with the current data, in which larger networks were identified when repeaters and people coinfected with both gonorrhea and chlamydia may have been interviewed more thoroughly for their partners, as compared with the random sample of individuals who had only one episode of chlamydia. Additionally, the results of Ghani et al 17 suggest that the network sizes found in the current study are underestimates of the networks’ real size.
The primary goal of this research was to evaluate methods of accessing large sexual networks so the dynamics of transmission and the genetic types of sexually transmitted organisms within networks could be described. Selecting from a laboratory database individuals who had coinfections with both gonorrhea and chlamydia and those who were repeaters proved to be the most effective technique, resulting in the highest number of large networks for the lowest number of individuals traced. Although public health practice and the clinical features of a particular STI affect network dimension and structure, the sampling described in this discussion may be a valuable tool for investigating sexual networks.
1. Brunham RC. Core group theory: a central concept in STD epidemiology. Venereology 1997; 10: 34–39.
2. Anderson RM, May RM. Infectious Diseases of Humans: Dynamics and Control. 1st ed. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1992.
3. Yorke JA, Hethcote HW, Nold A. Dynamics and control of the transmission of gonorrhea. Sex Transm Dis 1978; 5: 51–56.
4. Division of STD Prevention and Control. 1998/1999 Canadian Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STD) Report. Can Commun Dis Rep 2000; 26 (suppl 6): 2–5.
5. Anonymous. National goals for the prevention and control of sexually transmitted diseases in Canada. Can Commun Dis Rep 1997; 23S6: 2-1–2-21.
6. Herrmann B, Egger M. Genital Chlamydia trachomatis infections in Uppsala County, Sweden, 1985–1993: declining rates for how much longer? Sex Transm Dis 1995; 22: 253–260.
7. Sellors JW. Screening for chlamydial infection: taking stock. Can Fam Physician 1995; 41:188–92, 196–9.
8. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Division of STD Prevention and Control. Sexually Transmitted Disease Surveillance 1997. Atlanta, GA: Centers for Disease Control, 1998.
9. Delorme L. Dépistage et diagnostic des MTS: êtes-vous efficace? Le Médicin du Québec 1999; 34: 47–51.
10. Potterat JJ, Rothenberg RB, Woodhouse DE, Muth JB, Pratts CI, Fogle JS. Gonorrhea as a social disease. Sex Transm Dis 1985; 12: 25–32.
11. Rothenberg RB. Model trains of thought. Sex Transm Dis 1997; 24: 201–203.
12. Kretzschmar M, van Duynhoven YT, Severijnen AJ. Modeling prevention strategies for gonorrhea and chlamydia using stochastic network simulations. Am J Epidemiol 1996; 144: 306–317.
13. Laumann EO, Youm Y. Racial/ethnic group differences in the prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases in the United States: a network explanation. Sex Transm Dis 1999; 26: 250–261.
14. Granath F, Giesecke J, Scalia Tomba G, Ramstedt K, Forssman L. Estimation of a preference matrix for women’s choice of male sexual partner according to rate of partner change, using partner notification data. Math Biosci 1991; 107: 341–348.
15. Rothenberg RB, Potterat JJ, Woodhouse DE. Personal risk taking and the spread of disease: beyond core groups. J Infect Dis 1996; 174 (suppl 2): S144–S149.
16. Klovdahl AS. Social networks and the spread of infectious diseases: the AIDS example. Soc Sci Med 1985; 21: 1203–1216.
17. Ghani AC, Donnelly CA, Garnett GP. Sampling biases and missing data in explorations of sexual partner networks for the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Stat Med 1998; 17: 2079–2097.
18. Wylie JL, Jolly AM. Patterns of chlamydia and gonorrhea infection in sexual networks in Manitoba, Canada. Sex Transm Dis 2000; 28:1:14–24.
19. Jolly AM. Sexually Transmitted Disease Core Group Membership in Manitoba: Strategies for Definition and Description of Risk Markers. PhD dissertation. Winnipeg, Manitoba: University of Manitoba, 1998.
20. Anonymous. Canadian guidelines for screening for Chlamydia trachomatis infection. Can Dis Weekly Rep 1989; 15 (suppl 5): 1–13.
21. Communicable Disease Control. Sexually Transmitted Disease Guidelines. Winnipeg, Manitoba: Manitoba Health, 1987.
22. Hethcote HW, Yorke JA, Nold A. Gonorrhea modeling: a comparison of control methods. Math Biosci 1982; 58: 93–109.
23. Rasooly I, Millson ME, Frank JW, et al. A survey of public health partner notification for sexually transmitted diseases in Canada. Can J Public Health 1994; 85 (suppl 1:) S48–S52.
24. Day S, Ward H, Ghani A, et al. Sexual histories, partnerships, and networks associated with the transmission of gonorrhea. Int J STD AIDS 1998; 9: 666–671.
25. Brewer DD, Garrett SB, Kulasingam S. Forgetting as a cause of incomplete reporting of sexual and drug injection partners. Sex Transm Dis 1999; 26: 166–176.
26. Alary M, Joly JR, Poulin C. Gonorrhea and chlamydial infection: comparison of contact tracing performed by physicians or by a specialized service. Can J Public Health 1991; 82: 132–134.
© Copyright 2001 American Sexually Transmitted Diseases Association
Sexually Transmitted Diseases28(4):200-207, April 2001.
Articles in PubMed by ANN M. JOLLY, PhD
Articles in Google Scholar by ANN M. JOLLY, PhD
Other articles in this journal by ANN M. JOLLY, PhD
American Sexually Transmitted Diseases Association
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Molire
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[+] A second Browser ?? Molire 2 points 4 hours ago (0 children)
[–] A second Browser ?? Molire 2 points 4 hours ago in TOR
Can I still use another browser, like Chrome or Firefox, when I am using Tor Browser?
https://support.torproject.org/tbb/tbb-5/
[+] Trump tears into environmental 'doom' mongers at Davos forum Molire 1 points 8 hours ago (0 children)
[–] Trump tears into environmental 'doom' mongers at Davos forum Molire 1 points 8 hours ago in politics
Yea, they laugh at him. Unfortunately, the World Economic Forum apparently has a rule or a tradition requiring it to extend an invitation to attend the annual WEF Forum in Davos each year to the head of state of each of the twenty countries that are members of the G20, which includes the USA, Saudi Arabia, and Russia, currently the three largest producers of petroleum in the world, in descending order.
Davos financiers pump $1.4tn into fossil fuels: Greenpeace — Some of the world's biggest banks, insurers and pension funds have collectively invested $1.4 trillion in fossil fuel companies since the Paris climate deal, Greenpeace said Tuesday at the start of the World Economic Forum in Davos. (afp.com)
submitted 8 hours ago by Molire to worldnews
Trump tears into environmental 'doom' mongers at Davos forum (afp.com)
submitted 8 hours ago by Molire to politics
Trump tears into environmental 'doom' mongers at Davos forum and did not mention global warming, rejecting fiery warnings from Greta Thunberg. Trump made clear he had no time for Thunberg's warning that "our house is still on fire." Trump flew in to Davos just hours before his impeachment trial. (afp.com)
Coca-Cola will not ditch single-use plastic bottles because consumers still want them, firm's head of sustainability told BBC. The giant produces plastic packaging equivalent to 200,000 bottles a minute. In 2019, it was found to be most polluting brand of plastic waste by Break Free from Plastic. (bbc.com)
[+] Any Truth to this? Molire 1 points 9 hours ago (0 children)
[–] Any Truth to this? Molire 1 points 9 hours ago in TOR
I would pay no attention to such obscure sources. I think a couple of examples of better sources of information include the following:
r/TOR
Tor Stinks
CIA’s Latest Layer: An Onion Site (.onion link; https link).
The following links do not address your question directly, but you might find them informative if you are not familiar with them already:
Users of Tor
Onion Routing Brief Selected History
[+] Dershowitz Argument that Trump Could Let Putin Take Alaska Shows Up in House Brief Molire 1 points 10 hours ago (0 children)
[–] Dershowitz Argument that Trump Could Let Putin Take Alaska Shows Up in House Brief Molire 1 points 10 hours ago in politics
No president in U.S. history has been impeached for a sexual offense, yet, but one (Bill Clinton) was impeached for lying under oath (perjury) and obstruction of justice; and one (Andrew Johnson) was impeached under 11 articles of impeachment, with a violation of the Tenure of Office Act as the primary offense.
[+] In Response to Oxfam Inequality Report, Sanders Calls for Global Movement to Counter 'Greed of Billionaire Class' — The White House hopeful emphasized the need to bring people across the globe together to work for "a world of economic, social, political and environmental justice." Molire 1 points 10 hours ago (0 children)
[–] In Response to Oxfam Inequality Report, Sanders Calls for Global Movement to Counter 'Greed of Billionaire Class' — The White House hopeful emphasized the need to bring people across the globe together to work for "a world of economic, social, political and environmental justice." Molire 1 points 10 hours ago in politics
What! Are you on opioids and methamphetamine?
the entirety of the GOP
Didn't scholars at the Vatican recently discover Satan is a registered Republican?
[+] Dershowitz Argument that Trump Could Let Putin Take Alaska Shows Up in House Brief Molire 0 points 10 hours ago (*lasted edited 9 hours ago) (0 children)
[–] Dershowitz Argument that Trump Could Let Putin Take Alaska Shows Up in House Brief Molire 0 points 10 hours ago * (lasted edited 9 hours ago) in politics
Russia would be better than Florida, in part because Florida is about 4,070 miles (6,550 km) from the Russia mainland, while Alaska is only about 51 miles (82 km) from the Russia mainland.
Russia could build a series of three bridges to drive from the Russia mainland to the Alaska mainland. The total driving distance would be about 52 miles (84 km). At an average speed of 35 mph (56 km/h), Russian military transport trucks and vehicles could complete the drive from Russia to Alaska in about one and a half hours, where Russia could build navy bases, army bases, air force bases, missile bases and towns across Alaska to the Canadian borders.
Russia could build a first bridge, 22 miles (36 km) long, from the Russia mainland to the 2.6-mile wide (4 km-wide) Big Diomede Island (Russia); a second bridge, 2.4 miles (3.9 km) long, from Big Diomede Island to the 2-mile-wide (3.2 km-wide) Little Diomede Island (Alaska); and a third bridge, 23 miles (37 km) long, from Little Diomede Island to the Alaska mainland. The total driving distance across the 3 bridges and the 2 islands from the Russia mainland to the Alaska mainland would be about 52 miles (84 km).
[+] In Response to Oxfam Inequality Report, Sanders Calls for Global Movement to Counter 'Greed of Billionaire Class' — The White House hopeful emphasized the need to bring people across the globe together to work for "a world of economic, social, political and environmental justice." Molire 1 points 11 hours ago (*lasted edited 10 hours ago) (0 children)
[–] In Response to Oxfam Inequality Report, Sanders Calls for Global Movement to Counter 'Greed of Billionaire Class' — The White House hopeful emphasized the need to bring people across the globe together to work for "a world of economic, social, political and environmental justice." Molire 1 points 11 hours ago * (lasted edited 10 hours ago) in politics
majority of Americans are in the world 1%
As of January 1, 2019, the poverty rate in the United States was higher (worse) than in 45 other countries. In this list of 173 countries, some of the countries where the poverty rate was less (better) than in the United States include the following countries: Hungary, Chile, Russia, Vietnam, China, and 40 other countries.
The underlying data is accurate as of January 1, 2019, and is sourced from CIA The World Factbook.
Sounds like you are one of the lucky rich ones who has never seen, cannot see, or does not want to see the 131.7 million people who were living in deep poverty, poverty, or near poverty in the United States in 2018.
In 2018, 11.9 million children, 16.2% of all children, were living in poverty in the United States. That’s almost 1 in every 6 children.
In 2018, 17.3 million people, 5.3% of the population, were living in deep poverty in the United States.
In 2018, 38.1 million people, 11.8% of the population, were living in poverty in the United States.
In 2018, 93.6 million people, 29.9% of the population, were living close to poverty in the United States.
In 2018, 25.4% of the Native American population and 20.8% of the Black population were living in poverty in the United States.
The underlying data comes from United States Census Bureau, including Income and Poverty in the United States: 2018 → Tables → Poverty → Table B-1. People in Poverty by Selected Characteristics: 2017 and 2018
In Response to Oxfam Inequality Report, Sanders Calls for Global Movement to Counter 'Greed of Billionaire Class' — The White House hopeful emphasized the need to bring people across the globe together to work for "a world of economic, social, political and environmental justice." (commondreams.org)
submitted 13 hours ago by Molire to politics
Dershowitz Argument that Trump Could Let Putin Take Alaska Shows Up in House Brief (lawandcrime.com)
Brazilian state prosecutors on Tuesday charged Fabio Schvartsman, the former chief executive of Vale SA, and 15 other people with homicide for a dam disaster that killed more than 250 people, according to document seen by Reuters. Collapse of the dam was one of world’s deadliest mining accidents. (reuters.com)
submitted 13 hours ago by Molire to worldnews
China virus spreads to U.S. — On Tuesday, first case reported in United States. Traveler from China diagnosed in Seattle with Wuhan coronavirus, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said. The agency said it expected to see more cases in United States. Infection can cause pneumonia. (reuters.com)
[+] How Trump fused his business empire to the presidency — Critics say the president has yet to face accountability for blatant conflicts of interest tied to his private businesses. Molire 1 points a day ago (*lasted edited 10 hours ago) (0 children)
[–] How Trump fused his business empire to the presidency — Critics say the president has yet to face accountability for blatant conflicts of interest tied to his private businesses. Molire 1 points a day ago * (lasted edited 10 hours ago) in politics
Yep. Additionally, if Trump is removed from office, resigns, or becomes incapacitated, and, in turn, if Pence is impeached and removed from office for his complicity and involvement in the same high crimes and misdemeanors underlying the two Articles of Impeachment adopted against Trump (Abuse of Power, Contempt of Congress) or becomes incapacitated, under the U.S. Constitution, the Speaker of the House becomes President.
[+] No offence, but tor seems kinda boring Molire 2 points a day ago (*lasted edited 13 hours ago) (0 children)
[–] No offence, but tor seems kinda boring Molire 2 points a day ago * (lasted edited 13 hours ago) in TOR
Is there anything interesting there
If you were searching for onion services, in my experience there is no search engine reliably effective for searching for onion services because they are not indexed to the extent https sites are indexed, but you can look at https://ahmia.fi/ and https://ahmia.fi/onions/. Links to some other search engines are in the "Indexes and Search" section in the sidebar at r/onions.
In any event, in my experience, most Users of Tor have found that most of the 66,378 onion services with unique .onion addresses (as on 18 Jan 2020) are either boring, uninteresting, shutdown, misconfigured, involved in illicit or illegal activities of no interest to most Tor users, or aim to con and defraud the unwary, the naive, and the foolish.
The links below include a web site and 9 legitimate (safe) onion services that can be useful; you might or might not find them "interesting":
http://ciadotgov4sjwlzihbbgxnqg3xiyrg7so2r2o3lt5wz5ypk4sxyjstad.onion/library/publications/resources/the-world-factbook/
https://onion.torproject.org/
http://qrmfuxwgyzk5jdjz.onion/about/torusers.html.en
http://rougmnvswfsmd4dq.onion/rs.html#aggregate/cc
http://ea5faa5po25cf7fb.onion/projects/tor/wiki/org/projects/WeSupportTor
http://expyuzz4wqqyqhjn.onion/
http://4bflp2c4tnynnbes.onion/
http://qrmfuxwgyzk5jdjz.onion/
http://ea5faa5po25cf7fb.onion/projects/tor/wiki/WikiStart
http://hzmun3rnnxjhkyhg.onion/History.html
The research paper "Cryptopolitik and the Darknet" includes a discussion and tables describing the content of onion services in 12 categories (e.g., Finance, Drugs, Arms, Social, Unknown, etc.).
Path to the paper — In Tor Browser, block JavaScript (Tor Browser > Security Level > Safest; and NoScript > Revoke Temporary Permissions). Connect to Cryptopolitik and the Darknet. A reCAPTCHA challenge will appear; complete the 1-stage challenge. Temporarily allow JavaScript (NoScript > Temp. TRUSTED...tandfonline.com) to read the paper. If prompted, click "Accept" cookies (see: Tor Browser...cookies). Click the link appearing in the "In this article" ribbon to display the chapter index and select "Into the dark".
[+] 2020 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland braces for Trump-Greta showdown as climate change tops agenda — It's the first time the two are attending same event since Greta famously stared down Trump at UN. Sustainability is main theme at this year's international summit from Tuesday to Friday. Molire 4 points a day ago (0 children)
[–] 2020 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland braces for Trump-Greta showdown as climate change tops agenda — It's the first time the two are attending same event since Greta famously stared down Trump at UN. Sustainability is main theme at this year's international summit from Tuesday to Friday. Molire 4 points a day ago in worldnews
Greta Thunberg stares down Trump as two cross paths at UN — The Guardian, 23 Sep 2019.
Trump could not look at Greta because he is a coward and is afraid to meet her powerful stare.
[+] 2020 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland braces for Trump-Greta showdown as climate change tops agenda — It's the first time the two are attending same event since Greta famously stared down Trump at UN. Sustainability is main theme at this year's international summit from Tuesday to Friday. Molire 2 points a day ago (*lasted edited a day ago) (0 children)
[–] 2020 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland braces for Trump-Greta showdown as climate change tops agenda — It's the first time the two are attending same event since Greta famously stared down Trump at UN. Sustainability is main theme at this year's international summit from Tuesday to Friday. Molire 2 points a day ago * (lasted edited a day ago) in worldnews
Good question. The WEF invited the head of state of the United States, and ugly impeached Trump happens to be the head of state at this moment in U.S. history. Traditionally, the WEF extends an invitation to the head of state of each of the 20 countries with membership in the G20. The U.S. is one of the member countries. I expect none of the estimated 3,100 persons scheduled to attend the 2020 WEF summit can stand Trump, except for his U.S. government attendants and handlers; the President and de facto dictator of Russia, Vladimir Putin; and the de facto dictator of Saudi Arabia, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Russia and Saudi Arabia are G20 members.
You can watch a video of the opening ceremonies of the 50th World Economic Forum summit in Davos, which began about 10 hours ago, on January 20. The speaker in the video at the top of the page is Ursula von der Leyen, a German citizen and the President of the European Commission. I think live-streaming of the three days of speeches and presentations from January 21-24, will be available to watch on the WEF web site: https://www.weforum.org/events/world-economic-forum-annual-meeting-2020
According to the schedule on the WEB web site, Trump will give a speech on January 21 from 11:30 am to 12:00 PM CET (5:30 am to 6:00 am EST - New York time).
According to a CNN article from 2014:
"The World Economic Forum is strictly by invitation only. The roll call includes CEOs and representatives from the world's biggest corporations; politicians and heads of state from the G20 and other key countries."
[+] How Trump fused his business empire to the presidency — Critics say the president has yet to face accountability for blatant conflicts of interest tied to his private businesses. Molire 5 points a day ago (0 children)
[–] How Trump fused his business empire to the presidency — Critics say the president has yet to face accountability for blatant conflicts of interest tied to his private businesses. Molire 5 points a day ago in politics
[+] How Trump fused his business empire to the presidency — Critics say the president has yet to face accountability for blatant conflicts of interest tied to his private businesses. Molire 1 points a day ago (*lasted edited a day ago) (0 children)
[–] How Trump fused his business empire to the presidency — Critics say the president has yet to face accountability for blatant conflicts of interest tied to his private businesses. Molire 1 points a day ago * (lasted edited a day ago) in politics
Unfortunately, if Trump is removed from office, resigns, or leaves office for some other reason before his term ends on January 20, 2021, Vice-President Mike Pence would become president and could pardon Trump, like Vice-President Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon on September 8, 1974, thirty days after Nixon resigned from the Office of the Presidency on August 9, 1974, the same date Ford transitioned from vice-president to president.
However, if one or more state courts in New York, California, and/or other states convict Trump of one or more state crimes and sentence him to state prison, Pence will not be able to pardon Trump because presidential pardons can apply only to federal crimes.
Note: I think a president Pence would pardon Satan after Pence found out Satan is a Republican.
2020 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland braces for Trump-Greta showdown as climate change tops agenda — It's the first time the two are attending same event since Greta famously stared down Trump at UN. Sustainability is main theme at this year's international summit from Tuesday to Friday. (dw.com)
submitted a day ago by Molire to worldnews
After Trump reaches the end of life (old age, fatal heart attack, etc.), I expect his wife, former wives, children, and others will engage in a ferocious and vicious struggle for many years/decades, in a legal war over who gets any of the scraps of his estate, if a Trump estate actually exists after subtracting debts, lawsuit settlements, back taxes, interest, and penalties, property forfeitures to government entities, and other encumbrances. I can imagine some in the Trump family secretly hiring professional kidnappers and assassins to eliminate other family members and associates — competitors — fighting for Trump's estate, if one exists. I think the main reason Trump's immediate family members remain in his close orbit today is because all of them are waiting for him to die so they can get some of what they hope will be an estate with some worth — the big payoff.
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Four-in-a-Row for Kyle Busch and the No. 51 Cessna Team
#51 TruckNews
Event: Vankor 350 (Race 5 of 23)
Series: NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series
Location: Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth (1.5-mile oval)
Format: Three Segments; 35 laps/35 laps/77 laps
Start/Finish: 4th / 1st (running, completed 147 of 147 laps)
Winner: Kyle Busch of Kyle Busch Motorsports (Toyota)
Owner-driver Kyle Busch has four NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series starts and four wins in 2019. The 33-year-old continued his domination of the series at Texas Motor Speedway on Friday night in the Vankor 350, leading seven times for 97 laps in the No. 51 Cessna Beechcraft Toyota Tundra. Busch finished the first stage in the eighth position after opting for a pit strategy that saw him coming to pit road before the stage end and he won the second stage before coming away with the overall victory.
Stage One Recap:
After two rounds of single-vehicle qualifying, Busch found himself with the fourth starting position.
By lap 8, Busch had made his way to the front of the field, earning the lead after several early cautions.
Busch reported that his No. 51 Cessna Tundra had a loose handling condition.
Crew chief Rudy Fugle brought Busch to pit road under caution before the stage end for four tires and fuel and the Las Vegas-native finished the first stage in eighth position.
Stage Two Recap:
Once the remaining drivers had pit during the stage caution, Busch resumed the lead to start the second stage.
Busch would lead every lap of the second stage, including through a short red flag period for cleanup of an incident, and take the green-checkered flag for the stage win.
Fugle called him to pit road following the end of the stage for four more Goodyear tires and Sunoco fuel.
Stage Three Recap:
The driver of the No. 51 Cessna Tundra started the third stage in the second position.
After getting shuffled back on the restart, Busch marched back to the front and despite a fierce battle with the No. 52 and No. 24, led the final twenty laps to earn the race win.
This was Busch’s fourth Gander Trucks win at Texas Motor Speedway and his fourth win of the 2019 season in four starts. Busch has one remaining start scheduled in the Gander Outdoors Truck Series at Charlotte (N.C.) Motor Speedway in May. It was his 55th series win and 202nd NASCAR national series win.
Kyle Busch, driver of the No. 51 Cessna Tundra for Kyle Busch Motorsports:
How does it feel to get another win tonight?
“It was a pretty good night for us. Obviously, the Cessna Beechcraft Tundra was fast. I wish it was faster. I thought we were pretty good. Not as good as we wanted to be once we stacked up next to the field. The 24 (Brett Moffitt) was really fast and the 52 (Stewart Friesen) was really fast. They made me work for it. They certainly got my money’s worth tonight. I want to say thanks to TRD (Toyota Racing Development), Rowdy Manufacturing and all of the fans – the Truck Series fans are the thoroughbreds of our sport. It’s coming out here on a Friday night, supporting the truck guys is what makes all this go round. So, appreciate them. And, of course, Gander Outdoors, Black Clover, DVX Sunglasses, Adidas and Incredible Bank. It takes a lot of us to get all of this to go, so it’s fun.”
Vankor 350 Recap:
Kyle Busch won the race by 1.269 seconds followed by Stewart Friesen, Johnny Sauter, Grant Enfinger and Matt Crafton rounded out the top-five finishers.
The race featured nine cautions for 47 laps, including one red flag and 16 lead changes among six drivers.
How Busch’s KBM Teammates Fared:
Todd Gilliland, driver of the No. 4 Toyota Tundra, finished 14th
Harrison Burton, driver of the No. 18 Toyota Tundra, finished 31st
Gander Trucks Driver Championship Standings:
The No. 51 team leaves the fifth race of the season ranked first in the Truck Series Owner’s Championship Standings, 54 markers ahead of second-place.
Next Race:
Brandon Jones will be behind the wheel of the No. 51 Tundra when the Truck Series returns to action Friday, May 3 at Dover (Del.) International Speedway. Live coverage of the JEGS 200 begins at 5:00 p.m. EST on FS1.
KBM Adds Veteran Crew Chief Danny Stockman to 2020 Crew Chief Lineup
Burton Closes Season with a 13th-Place Finish at Homestead-Miami
Todd Gilliland Concludes Season with Eighth-Place Finish at Homestead in No. 4 JBL/SiriusXM Tundra
Christian Eckes Clinches Gander Trucks Owner Championship for Kyle Busch Motorsports with Third-Place Finish at Homestead
Canadian Raphael Lessard set to Compete Full-Time for KBM in 2020
Christian Eckes to Drive the No. 18 Safelite® AutoGlass Tundra in 2020
Latest Driver Videos
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Study of Fluid Film Formation and Friction Characteristics of Radial Lip Seals
Yuki Sato, Joichi Sugimura, Yuji Yamamoto
Oil seals that show sealing efficiency with the presence of a sufficient surface roughness on the sliding surface and oil seals that show leakage due to very low surface roughness were studied by measuring the oil film thickness on the sliding surface in sealing, pumping, and leakage states. At a low dimensionless characteristic number G, the coefficient of friction of seal, which have low roughness and do not develop pumping action was lower than the coefficient of friction of seals which have larger surface roughness and develop sealing action. The sealing ability of seals increased with an increase of the parameter G. At the maximal parameter G, the coefficient of friction of seals with sealing ability was two times higher. The average oil film thickness in the state of sealing on seals with a rough surface and sealing ability grew gradually smaller from the oil vessel side toward the air side, the thickness being ∼ 1-10 μm. At the state of pumping, the oil film thickness was larger than at the state of sealing. At the state of sealing, many microscopic cavities develop on the sliding surface and the surface area that was covered by cavities increased with the speed of shaft rotation. On the other hand, the oil film thickness of material (FKM-B) with low roughness, smooth surface, and no sealing ability was ∼ 1 μm and oil film had a smooth profile in a wide range of the sliding surface. A change of the speed of rotation caused practically no change. The development of microscopic cavities was not observed.
Japanese Journal of Tribology
Film thickness
Sealing (closing)
Sato, Y., Sugimura, J., & Yamamoto, Y. (2003). Study of Fluid Film Formation and Friction Characteristics of Radial Lip Seals. Japanese Journal of Tribology, 48(3), 307-320.
Study of Fluid Film Formation and Friction Characteristics of Radial Lip Seals. / Sato, Yuki; Sugimura, Joichi; Yamamoto, Yuji.
In: Japanese Journal of Tribology, Vol. 48, No. 3, 01.12.2003, p. 307-320.
Sato, Y, Sugimura, J & Yamamoto, Y 2003, 'Study of Fluid Film Formation and Friction Characteristics of Radial Lip Seals', Japanese Journal of Tribology, vol. 48, no. 3, pp. 307-320.
Sato Y, Sugimura J, Yamamoto Y. Study of Fluid Film Formation and Friction Characteristics of Radial Lip Seals. Japanese Journal of Tribology. 2003 Dec 1;48(3):307-320.
Sato, Yuki ; Sugimura, Joichi ; Yamamoto, Yuji. / Study of Fluid Film Formation and Friction Characteristics of Radial Lip Seals. In: Japanese Journal of Tribology. 2003 ; Vol. 48, No. 3. pp. 307-320.
@article{78223fbb32244cdf9514016bfec6177e,
title = "Study of Fluid Film Formation and Friction Characteristics of Radial Lip Seals",
abstract = "Oil seals that show sealing efficiency with the presence of a sufficient surface roughness on the sliding surface and oil seals that show leakage due to very low surface roughness were studied by measuring the oil film thickness on the sliding surface in sealing, pumping, and leakage states. At a low dimensionless characteristic number G, the coefficient of friction of seal, which have low roughness and do not develop pumping action was lower than the coefficient of friction of seals which have larger surface roughness and develop sealing action. The sealing ability of seals increased with an increase of the parameter G. At the maximal parameter G, the coefficient of friction of seals with sealing ability was two times higher. The average oil film thickness in the state of sealing on seals with a rough surface and sealing ability grew gradually smaller from the oil vessel side toward the air side, the thickness being ∼ 1-10 μm. At the state of pumping, the oil film thickness was larger than at the state of sealing. At the state of sealing, many microscopic cavities develop on the sliding surface and the surface area that was covered by cavities increased with the speed of shaft rotation. On the other hand, the oil film thickness of material (FKM-B) with low roughness, smooth surface, and no sealing ability was ∼ 1 μm and oil film had a smooth profile in a wide range of the sliding surface. A change of the speed of rotation caused practically no change. The development of microscopic cavities was not observed.",
author = "Yuki Sato and Joichi Sugimura and Yuji Yamamoto",
journal = "Japanese Journal of Tribology",
publisher = "Allerton Press Inc.",
T1 - Study of Fluid Film Formation and Friction Characteristics of Radial Lip Seals
AU - Sato, Yuki
AU - Sugimura, Joichi
AU - Yamamoto, Yuji
N2 - Oil seals that show sealing efficiency with the presence of a sufficient surface roughness on the sliding surface and oil seals that show leakage due to very low surface roughness were studied by measuring the oil film thickness on the sliding surface in sealing, pumping, and leakage states. At a low dimensionless characteristic number G, the coefficient of friction of seal, which have low roughness and do not develop pumping action was lower than the coefficient of friction of seals which have larger surface roughness and develop sealing action. The sealing ability of seals increased with an increase of the parameter G. At the maximal parameter G, the coefficient of friction of seals with sealing ability was two times higher. The average oil film thickness in the state of sealing on seals with a rough surface and sealing ability grew gradually smaller from the oil vessel side toward the air side, the thickness being ∼ 1-10 μm. At the state of pumping, the oil film thickness was larger than at the state of sealing. At the state of sealing, many microscopic cavities develop on the sliding surface and the surface area that was covered by cavities increased with the speed of shaft rotation. On the other hand, the oil film thickness of material (FKM-B) with low roughness, smooth surface, and no sealing ability was ∼ 1 μm and oil film had a smooth profile in a wide range of the sliding surface. A change of the speed of rotation caused practically no change. The development of microscopic cavities was not observed.
AB - Oil seals that show sealing efficiency with the presence of a sufficient surface roughness on the sliding surface and oil seals that show leakage due to very low surface roughness were studied by measuring the oil film thickness on the sliding surface in sealing, pumping, and leakage states. At a low dimensionless characteristic number G, the coefficient of friction of seal, which have low roughness and do not develop pumping action was lower than the coefficient of friction of seals which have larger surface roughness and develop sealing action. The sealing ability of seals increased with an increase of the parameter G. At the maximal parameter G, the coefficient of friction of seals with sealing ability was two times higher. The average oil film thickness in the state of sealing on seals with a rough surface and sealing ability grew gradually smaller from the oil vessel side toward the air side, the thickness being ∼ 1-10 μm. At the state of pumping, the oil film thickness was larger than at the state of sealing. At the state of sealing, many microscopic cavities develop on the sliding surface and the surface area that was covered by cavities increased with the speed of shaft rotation. On the other hand, the oil film thickness of material (FKM-B) with low roughness, smooth surface, and no sealing ability was ∼ 1 μm and oil film had a smooth profile in a wide range of the sliding surface. A change of the speed of rotation caused practically no change. The development of microscopic cavities was not observed.
JO - Japanese Journal of Tribology
JF - Japanese Journal of Tribology
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Factz.
The Ugly Kings
Bluesrock · Classic Rock · Heavy Rock
General Information.
The Ugly Kings are four powerhouse blues rockers drawing influence from an eclectic and dynamic musical background. They offer a powerful injection of energy and emotion to the modern rock scene, formulating what can only be described as power blues. The catchy riffs and foot stomping rhythm lay the foundations for the deep reaching and soulful emotive vocals.
Having 1 mini-album (Of Sins) under their belt already, they are thrilled to sign with Kozmik Artifactz for the release of their debut full length album in early 2018. The Ugly Kings have supported Airbourne on their successful sold out east coast Australia tour in January 2017 with great reviews. They also supported Rival Sons in 2016 on their first Australia headline side-show in Melbourne during the Black Sabbath ‘The End’ World Tour.
“What they delivered was something that I was not ready for. A sound that is almost indescribable. It’s as if a mash up of all my favourite artists had been put into a blender and formed this delicious power sludge bluesy stoner rock. Elements of the classics such as Led Zep, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Sabbath, Danzig and a touch of Bowie were mixed in with the modern sounds of The White Stripes, Queens Of The Stone Age, Kylesa & Wolfmother. I was in heaven!” – Rogue, Inc.
“Loud, heavy, slightly-sludgy classic rock meets blues with a modern bend, played by a band that swaggered about the stage with a distinct, but subtle, air of cool. By the end, Sydney was more than happy to learn words on the fly and sing along when the front man held his mic over the mosh. The Ugly Kings are well-versed in the art of restraint, they know when to move and make the crowd get on their feet, and when to step back and let the music do the talking.” – Australian Guitar
“It’s not often you see a band have the crowd so excited and receptive by the second song in the way The Ugly Kings do with such an original sound. Only to be described as The Ugly Kings!” – Ryan O’Keefe (Airbourne Drummer)
“Great show! The Ugly Kings have really got their own thing going on and it rocks! I love all the dynamics, pushing and pulling and then always smashing it out. Great intensity and power.” – Joel O’Keefe (Airbourne Frontman & Lead Guitarist)
“Thick, groove induced chords, deep baritone vocals and a harden-the-fuck-up ethos” – Phantom’s Way
‘Promised Land, a four-minute beast that sounds like the Rival Sons and the Graveltones going head-to-head with John Bonham and Jim Morrison. With multiple riffs and deft twists and turns, it sounds fantastic..’ – SonicAbuse
For fans of The Doors, Jack White, Black Sabbath, The Black Keys, Royal Blood and Rival Sons.
Recent releases.
Dude, feel free to check out our other awesome Releases!
Ain’t No Shame
Blues RockPsychedelicStoner
Darkness Is My Home
Blues RockHeavy Rock
Heavy RockPsychedelicStoner
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liberation news
Palestinians of Hamas Condemn Saudi & U.S. Attempts to Label Hezbollah "Terrorist" (tags)
[Photo: Palestinian Gaza rally with Hamas and Hezbollah flags.] Saudi Arabian, Israeli, ISIS, al-Qaeda, & U.S. imperialist hands off Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Qatar, Palestine, Bahrain, and Iran!
Indybay Censorship, Sabotage, and Defamation (tags)
In organizing "Justice for Sean Arlt and Luke Smith protests, the Revolutionary Tendency works in a non-sectarian manner with protest co-sponsor Homeless United for Friendship and Freedom and with participation and support from Santa Cruz Food Not Bombs, 15-year-old Luke Smith’s mother, Luke Smith’s class mates, and with food and coffee provided by Joe Schultz of India Joze. As these are grass-roots community events, one would think that the “non-hierarchical” censors at Indybay could look beyond their unexplained and seemingly irrational hatred, censorship, sabotage, and defamation of these community events demanding justice for Sean Arlt and Luke Smith. Yet, this is not the case.
USA: Human Rights Activist Ordered to Six Months of Jail (tags)
The case of Ed Frey is reminiscent of an earlier Santa Cruz case where Sandy Loranger did time in jail for feeding the homeless soup. When the judge offered her counseling instead of jail Sandy Loranger replied, "If feeding my fellow man is a crime, I am beyond rehabilitation."
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While the movie J. Edgar ignores J. Edgar Hoover’s many successes in silencing American Blacks, leftists, and persecution of homosexuals, it starts out by “justifying” the 1919 Palmer Raids. J. Edgar Hoover’s involvement in the Palmer Raids was at the beginning of his long sordid history of carrying out political repression in the United States. The Palmer Raids, led by Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer with J. Edgar Hoover on his staff, rounded up leftists including Anarchists, Communists, and Socialists for prison and deportation. Among the many crimes committed by the government, hundreds were deported, including Emma Goldman, a leading anarchist and U.S. citizen who was deported to the USSR, Socialist Party leader Eugene Debs was thrown in prison, and the young communist movement was driven underground.
On The New Revolutionary Tendency of the Socialist Party (RT-SP) (tags)
The following statement of purpose was approved by the now forming Revolutionary Tendency of the Socialist Party (RT-SP) Jan. 7, 2012.
Gains for Healthcare, Despite Obama (tags)
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William Singletary, 65, Courageous Witness of Mumia's Innocence (tags)
"I learned from William Singletary's wife, Jeannette, that he died this morning. Bill was a courageous man who lived fighting to make the truth known that Mumia is innocent in the shooting death of police officer Daniel Faulkner. For that Bill suffered severe personal and financial consequences. I've known Bill since June 1990 when he came forward with his eyewitness testimony for Mumia and as a witness at the PCRA hearing in 1995, when I was co-counsel for Mumia." -Rachel Wolkenstein
As the current crisis of capitalism threatens the break-down all that is left that is civil in our society, the Democrats charge ahead with the Republicans in making sure it is the poor, the working class, and the planet, who pay for the crisis of capitalism, not capitalist profits. The alternative to socialist revolution becomes increasingly clear as capitalist society becomes less and less able to take care of its people; climate change caused by capitalist greed becomes an increasing threat to the future of human civilization; the capitalist state becomes increasingly repressive; and the leading capitalist countries plunge the world into war after war of imperialist domination and conquest. As the great German revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg said in 1918, the alternatives are socialism or barbarism.
Oakland General Strike a Success, but Cops Seriously Injure another Vet (tags)
With over 50,000 people protesting in the street in three major protests through the course of the day, massive labor participation, and a shut down of the Port of Oakland, there is no question that the general strike was a success. Yet the corporate media is now blowing up the importance of a few acts of vandalism by protesters and agent provocateurs.
SEIU 1021 Joins the November 2nd General Strike (tags)
"The SEIU 1021 Executive Board calls on all members of SEIU 1021 to join a day-long “Peaceful Day of Action” in support of Occupy Oakland and against the banking industry and last week’s police brutality against the Occupy Oakland encampment." SEIU 1021 Official Statement & Call to Action Call to Action
Message from Troy Davis and More Actions (tags)
Troy Davis was sentenced to death in 1991 for the killing of an off-duty Savannah policeman. Davis was found ?guilty? based on dubious accounts that he confessed to the killing and questionable ?eyewitness? identifications that included false eyewitness testimony coerced by the cops. Seven of the prosecution?s nine ?eyewitnesses? have since recanted. The only holdouts are one man who may be the actual killer and another who initially denied being able to identify the shooter only to pin it on Davis two years later. Three of the eyewitnesses say their testimony was coerced by the police. New eyewitnesses have come forth identifying another suspect. The news on Troy Davis is very bad. Despite being innocent, the Georgia Parole Board has OK'd his execution for 7 PM today (September 21st). Yet the fight to free Troy Davis isn?t over, and if that fails, the fight to overthrow the evil system that murders him will continue.
Update for Troy Davis, The Fight Isn't Over (tags)
The news on Troy Davis is very bad. Despite being innocent, the Georgia Parole Board has OK'd his execution for 7 PM tomorrow (September 21st). Yet the fight to free Troy Davis isn?t over, and if that fails, the fight to overthrow the evil system that murders him will continue. Troy Davis was sentenced to death in 1991 for the killing of an off-duty Savannah policeman. Davis was found ?guilty? based on dubious accounts that he confessed to the killing and questionable ?eyewitness? identifications that included false eyewitness testimony coerced by the cops. Seven of the prosecution?s nine ?eyewitnesses? have since recanted. The only holdouts are one man who may be the actual killer and another who initially denied being able to identify the shooter only to pin it on Davis two years later. Three of the eyewitnesses say their testimony was coerced by the police. New eyewitnesses have come forth identifying another suspect.
Free Troy Davis! There?s No Justice in the Capitalist Courts! (tags)
Troy Davis was sentenced to death in 1991 for the killing of an off-duty Savannah policeman. Davis was found ?guilty? based on dubious accounts that he confessed to the killing and questionable ?eyewitness? identifications that included false eyewitness testimony coerced by the cops. Seven of the prosecution?s nine ?eyewitnesses? have since recanted. The only holdouts are one man who may be the actual killer and another who initially denied being able to identify the shooter only to pin it on Davis two years later. Three of the eyewitnesses say their testimony was coerced by the police. New eyewitnesses have come forth identifying another suspect.
Imperialist War, Mass Murder, and Torture, But Did September 11th Change ?Everything?? (tags)
"Americans watched in horror as the World Trade Center collapsed. Yet it was a horror no different from what the U.S. government has done with it's bombing of civilian populations in Iraq, Yugoslavia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Korea. The U.S. bombings of just these countries, not to mention many other U.S. acts of war, murdered millions of civilians. Terror against civilians is never justified. Now the U.S. government is preparing to terror bomb Afghanistan?" -Liberation News, September 11, 2001
Obama?s Continued Failures on the Environment and Jobs (tags)
[Photo: Bridge in Felton, California built by workers in the Works Progress Administration which employed 3.8 million people from 1935 to 1941 and built 11,000 schools, 122,000 public buildings, 77,000 bridges, 285 airports, 24,000 miles of sewer, and 664,000 miles of road. Photo by Liberation News]
Free Gary Johnson! Homelessness in California is now punishable by a year in jail. (tags)
Free Gary Johnson! Overturn the Convictions of Ed Frey, Arthur Bishoff, Collette Connolly! Hands Off Christopher Doyon! End Laws making it Illegal for the Homeless to Sleep at Night! Seize Housing From the Banks for those Who Need Housing! For a Nation Wide Jobs Program Building Housing for All!
Liberation News California Voter Recommendations (tags)
"We have enough wealth to provide quality housing, health care and education to everyone in California. Most of us care about each other and want to protect our environment. But we are governed by people who want tax breaks and maximum profits for big business." Marsha Feinland, Peace and Freedom Party Candidate for Senate
DNC Protest, Split, and the Principled Stand of Cynthia McKinney (tags)
"As the United States activated Navy ships and the Air Force to begin an airlift of non-specified goods into the former Soviet state of Georgia, and military exercises began in the Persian Gulf near Iran, I received communications from certain individuals among the Colorado Greens who were organizing campaign support events there, suggesting that I not participate in an anti-war program being organized by other individuals in Colorado." -Cynthia McKinney In addition, the Green Party of Colorado has issued false statements to the press and all over the internet claiming that Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney will not be participating in the Recreate ’68 events. Here is one such statement from Dave Chandler, co-chair of the Colorado Green Party, Green Party candidate for U.S. Congress in the Seventh Congressional District, and supporter of a Denver ballot measure that would seize the vehicles of illegal immigrants: “Cynthia McKinney, Green Party candidate for President, and Rosa Clemente, Green Party candidate for Vice President are NOT participating in any Recreate ‘68 activities. Both candidates, and the Green Party of Colorado, are refuting this announcement and are stating that neither candidate, nor the Green Party of Colorado, are in any way associated with Recreate ’68, nor will any of their candidates be speaking at or attending any event, nor are they in any way associated with the group Recreate ’68.” This is a blatant lie. Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente will be speaking at the Recreate ’68 events.
Liberation News Voting Recommendations (tags)
Every four years the American people are subjected to the farce of bourgeois democracy, a “democracy” where only the candidates chosen by the very wealthy have any chance of being elected. That season of nicely dressed pathological liars and false hopes is now upon us. Since the corporate media of the United States has long ago abandoned any semblance of reporting on anything of substance about candidates such as voting records and actual political views, it is up to the journalists of the left press and Indy-media to do so.
The Ron Paul “Revolution”, an Extreme Rightwing Threat (tags)
"Paul is a white nationalist of the Stormfront type who has always kept his racial views and his views about world Judaism quiet because of his political position." American Nazi Party Commander, Bill White
The Case for Socialized Medicine in the United States, and the Struggle to Achieve It (tags)
The California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee blasted insurance giant CIGNA for failing to approve a liver transplant one week earlier for 17-year-old Nataline Sarkisyan, who tragically died just hours after CIGNA relented and agreed to the procedure following a massive national outcry. “CNA/NNOC Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro called the final outcome ‘a horrific tragedy that demonstrates what is so fundamentally wrong with our health care system today. Insurance companies have a stranglehold on our health. Their first priority is to make profits for their shareholders – and the way they do that is by denying care." "It is simply not possible to organize major protests every time a multi-billion corporation like CIGNA denies care that has been recommended by a physician," DeMoro said. “Having insurance is not the same as receiving needed care. We need a fundamental change in our healthcare system that takes control away from the insurance giants and places it where it belongs – in the hands of the medical professionals, the patients, and their families."
Top Ten “Fry Mumia” Myths Debunked (Myth #1) (tags)
The following is the first in a series of ten articles I have written answering the top ten myths being circulated by those who advocate execution or continued prison for Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Congress Votes 368-31 to Back Mumia’s Racist Frame-up (tags)
Five California Democrats in Congress voted nay while 23 voted for the resolution. Those voting against were Lynn Woolsey, Barbara Lee, Fortney Stark, Michael Honda, and Maxine Waters. Joining in the racist lynch mob voting for the blood of an innocent black man were California Democrats C. Thompson, Doris Matsui, Nancy Pelosi, Ellen Tauscher, Tom Lantos, Anna Eshoo, Zoe Lofgren, Dennis Cardoza, Lois Capps, Jim Costa, Linda Sanchez, Brad Sherman, Adam Schiff, Henry Waxman, Hilda Solis, Lucille Roybal-Allard, Jane Harman, Juanita Millender-McDonald, Grace Napolitano, Joe Baca, Loretta Sanchez, Bob Filner, and Susan Davis. Not voting were Diane Watson, Howard Berman, and Xavier Becerra. Also voting for blood were California Republicans Walter Herger, Daniel Lungren, John Doolittle, Richard Pombo, George Radanovich, Devin Nunes, William Thomas, Elton Gallegly, David Dreier, Edward Royce, Jerry Lewis, Gary Miller, Ken Calvert, Mary Bono, Dana Rohrabacher, John Campbell, Darrell Issa, Brian Bilbray, and Duncan Hunter. Howard McKeon didn’t vote.
Liberation News Voter Recommendations (tags)
While the system is stacked against working people and the poor through rampant electoral fraud and the corrupt corporate buying and selling of candidates to the American people, Liberation News suggests people vote as one part of a broader struggle for change.
No to Angelides and Schwarzenegger! Yes to Janice Jordan! (tags)
Angelides criticized Schwarzenegger for his praise for the racist anti-immigrant vigilantes called the “Minutemen” while in the same breath calling for a "guest worker" program that would create a new class of super-exploited worker with no political rights. Under the same type of program in the past U.S. bosses often failed to even pay Mexican workers for their hard labor. The fact that Angelides and the Democrat Party are now calling for this kind of legalization of indentured servitude place them firmly in the same racist camp as Schwarzenegger.
For A Real Debate Between Candidates For Governor (tags)
(Picture Janice Jordan, Peace and Freedom Party Candidate for governor, arrested at the January 20th 2005 demonstrations in downtown San Diego.)
Pro-War Diane Feinstein, What Are The Alternatives? (tags)
Feinstein herself has directly profiteered from the U.S. imposed misery she voted for in Iraq. Her husband, Richard Blum, is a billionaire investor that together with CEO Ronald Tutor own investment companies that hold 75% of the voting stock in a company called Perini. On March 12, 2004 Perini was awarded a $500,000,000 contract for rebuilding the electrical infrastructure of southern Iraq. So Feinstein is profiting from the U.S. bombing of the Iraqi infrastructure as well as its inefficient rebuilding by private U.S. contractors.
Women’s Rights Under Assault, Abortion Outlawed In South Dakota (tags)
The right to abortion was won in the United States in 1973 through a mass struggle in the streets that culminated in the Supreme Court Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion.
THE DEATH OF PENSIONS? by Mumia Abu-Jamal (tags)
Everybody wins -- except the workers.
White Washing War Crimes, by Mumia Abu-Jamal (tags)
Who will solve these war crimes?
Onward, Christian theocrats: the Yankee Taliban on the attack (tags)
“Our goal is a Christian nation,” says Terry Randal. “We are called by God to conquer this country.”
Bush Regime Maintains Power Through Electoral Fraud (tags)
Whither Democracy In The United States?
No to corporate politics!
GENERAL STRIKE AND WORKER’S INSURRECTION IN BOLIVIA (tags)
Unable to repress this rebellion, and unable to negotiate separate truces with the different sectors of the movement the ruling class abandoned Lozada and the millionaire murderer Goni fled to Miami.
40 YEARS IN THE WILDERNESS By Mumia Abu-Jamal (tags)
It's been 40 long years since the much-heralded "March on Washington." Almost 1/2 a century -- and what is our condition today?
U.S. Hands Off North Korea! (tags)
With Over 7,000 Civilians Killed in the U.S./British War on Iraq and thousands more civilians dead in Afghanistan, War Crazed Imperialists Scope Out Next Victims!
URGENT: MUMIA NEEDS YOUR HELP NOW! (tags)
Mumia Abu-Jamal in bad health.
California Governor Election and PFP/Labor Events (tags)
California Governor Election and PFP/Labor Events:
Nepal: Bush Supports Human Rights Violations (tags)
People’s Revolutionary War To Resume Shortly In Nepal
TOTAL RECALL (tags)
Let's transform the "Recall Davis" campaign into one of "Total Recall" of all Democratic and Republican candidates.
A Closer Look At The “Anti-War” Candidates Of the Democrat Party (tags)
Dennis Kucinich, Howard Dean, Carol Mosely-Braun, and Al Sharpton, are painting their candidacies as anti-war.
Fighting Back For Democratic Rights! (tags)
Steve Argue Interviewed in The Argentinean Newspaper Prensa Obrera Regarding The Patriot Acts And His Arrests In Santa Cruz For Political Tabling.
Santa Cruz Police Violate Free Speech With Two More Arrests! (tags)
Steve Argue and Matt Hartogh were arrested on Sunday July 6th for distributing literature on Pacific Avenue.
With 9,000 Civilians Killed in the U.S./British Wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, War Crazed Imperialists Scope Out Next Victims!
SIMONE! By Mumia Abu-Jamal (tags)
"She sang songs with bite, and grit, and pride and longing... and rage. Deep, down, boneset rage, at how cheaply life was lived for Africans in America. "
Mumia’s Life Is Not Safe! (tags)
Racist Governor Ed Randell Promises The Execution Of Mumia Abu-Jamal
U.S. Troops Open Fire On Iraqi Protesters, Again (tags)
Iraqi people are being shot dead for demanding that their school not be turned into a U.S. military base.
The U.S. Occupation and the Resistance In Iraq (tags)
U.S. TROOPS OUT OF IRAQ!
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The lost prince / Selden Edwards.
Edwards, Selden. (Author).
Large Print Book (1)
Albright Memorial Library FICTION EDWARDS (Text) 50686014710060 Stacks Available -
Physical Description: ix, 436 pages ; 22 cm
Publisher: New York : Plume, [2013]
Recently returned from fin de si©·cle Vienna, where she tragically lost the first great love of her life, Eleanor Burden settles into her expected place in Boston society, marries a suitable husband, and waits for life to come to her. Eleanor's story is not unlike that of the other young women she grew up with in 1890's Boston, except for one difference: Eleanor believes herself to have advance knowledge of every major historical event to come in her lifetime. But soon Eleanor's script of events begins to unravel, and she must find the courage of her deepest convictions, discover the difference between predetermination and free will, find faith in her own sanity, and decide whether she will allow history to unfold come what may--or use her extraordinary gifts to bend history and deliver the life she is meant to have.--P. [4] of cover.
Subject: Wives > Fiction.
Family secrets > Fiction.
Time travel > Fiction.
Boston (Mass.) > Fiction.
Genre: Historical fiction.
Summary: Recently returned from fin de si©·cle Vienna, where she tragically lost the first great love of her life, Eleanor Burden settles into her expected place in Boston society, marries a suitable husband, and waits for life to come to her. Eleanor's story is not unlike that of the other young women she grew up with in 1890's Boston, except for one difference: Eleanor believes herself to have advance knowledge of every major historical event to come in her lifetime. But soon Eleanor's script of events begins to unravel, and she must find the courage of her deepest convictions, discover the difference between predetermination and free will, find faith in her own sanity, and decide whether she will allow history to unfold come what may--or use her extraordinary gifts to bend history and deliver the life she is meant to have.--P. [4] of cover.
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GOP Inaugural Debate: My Winners & Losers
Politics August 7, 2015 Leave a comment
For the first time in a long time, I woke up this morning feeling bullish on America. Last night’s inaugural GOP debate of the 2016 election season has given me great hope. Seventeen Republicans have thrown their hat into the ring as they vie for their party’s nomination for President of these United States. I remain undecided as to which candidate will garner my support in the rapidly approaching primary season. Here is my short list of winners and losers from last night:
Carly Fiorina – Pundits from both the left and the right almost universally agree that Carly carried the night. Relegated to the lower level “Happy Hour” debate, Carly offered clear and concise answers to each question she was asked. Her approach to her campaign is refreshing. She is a Washington outsider who has done her homework. Our country is ready for a female president, and Carly just might be the ideal candidate to take on Hillary Clinton. Carly’s award for the evening: Grand Champion.
Jeb Bush – Based on news reports and blogs I’ve read, Bush is the darling of Fox News and the Republican National Committee (RNC). For me, that is not a positive point. However, Jeb was articulate last night. I thought he explained his position on education, particularly common core, quite well. His plan to combat illegal immigration includes a plan to establish a means of gaining legal residency for those currently here illegally – a position with which I agree wholeheartedly. His record as governor of Florida qualifies him for the job he seeks. His biggest hurdle is his last name. Jeb’s award for the evening: Most Improved.
Marco Rubio – Ever since Marco Rubio was elected to the US Senate, I have hoped he would run for president one day. Rubio was the most likeable of the candidates last night. His grasp on foreign policy impressed me. Like Bush, he supports a pathway to citizenship for certain illegals currently in the country. Rubio’s award for the evening: Mr. Congeniality
Scott Walker – Walker is my favorite US governor. I admire the turnaround he led in his state of Wisconsin. I admire his tenacity in standing firmly on his principles against the government unions and for standing his ground as state Democrats sought his recall from office. Walker offers solid leadership with proven results. Walker’s award for the evening: Most Likely to Succeed
Ted Cruz – Senator Cruz is widely known as an expert debater. He is a bona fide Constitutional expert. I am convinced that he would respect our Constitution and govern accordingly as president. While I disagree with him on immigration reform, I believe he would be a strong and principled leader. Cruz’s award for the evening: Most Scholarly
Ben Carson – Soft spoken and quite demure, Dr. Carson is the consummate gentleman. Carson had the best line of the evening in my opinion. In his closing remarks he mentioned a few of his achievements as a neurosurgeon including, “I was the first to remove half a brain; but if you were to visit Washington these days you’d probably think somebody beat me to it.” I think I got that right. While I view Ted Cruz as most scholarly from a Constitutional standpoint, I view Dr. Carson as most wise. That said, he appeared a bit unsure in a few cases and appears to have more homework to do. Carson’s award for the evening: Most Intellectual
Donald Trump – Pundits stated ahead of the debate that Trump has hit on an anger simmering in the country today, and I agree with them. However, I have never believed him to be truly interested in the job. While his success in business and entertainment cannot be disputed, Trump lacks the self-control and worldly knowledge to serve as president. The bully pulpit will only take one so far. I believe that his showing last night was the beginning of his implosion as a bona fide candidate. Trump’s award for the evening: Class Clown
Rand Paul – Once on my short list of candidates to possibly support, Rand looked completely befuddled last night. He was neither articulate nor persuasive in explaining his position on foreign policy. I am a huge fan of his plan to eliminate income tax in favor of a consumption tax (I’ve advocated that for years) and he appeared to score a few points there. Overall, however, he did not appear comfortable nor confident. Paul’s award for the evening: Most Disappointing
It felt good to wake up this morning feeling bullish on America. Oh, don’t get me wrong; I love my country, always have, always will. But the shenanigans of the current Administration have caused me great consternation for our country’s future. Under Barack Obama, our nation is more divided than I can recall in my lifetime. Our reputation around the world is weakened, much like it was during the Carter years. Our borders are porous, our national debt continues to spiral into the stratosphere, our moral foundation is rapidly deteriorating, and our federal government continues to garner more power for itself at the expense of our liberty while neglecting to meaningfully address the issues that threaten the very existence of this great nation. When Obama first announced his candidacy for president, I said that he was unqualified and naïve of the ways of the world. He has proven me right.
Indeed, I am excited about the 2016 General Election and what it could mean for our nation. Several of the GOP candidates are beginning to emerge as superior to each of the three candidates likely making up the Democratic field: a liar, a socialist, and a buffoon. I come away from last night’s debate with a resolve to support whomever the GOP nominee turns out to be. I’m relieved, as I now know we can do better.
Tagged: 2016 election, Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, debate losers, debate winners, Donald Trump, election, Fox News, GOP debate, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, politics, POTUS, Rand Paul, Republican National Committee, Republicans, Scott Walker, Ted Cruz
← Avoiding the Pitfalls of “Cheap” Insurance
The Prosperity Gospel: A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing →
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Articles with content covered better by other wikis, Allies, Allies in Kirby's Dream Land 3,
Super Smash Bros. Series Characters
Female Allies
Cameo Characters
This article contains content best covered by other wikis (Similar)
Please see the following link(s) for more info on the subject:
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate artwork
Name (JA)
サムス (Samusu)
Chozo
“ Samus Aran has fought her way across a variety of planets in the Metroid series. She wears a Power Suit designed by the Chozo, giving her incredible versatility in a fight. She can wade in, but she favors beams and missiles. A fully charged Charge Shot packs a serious punch!”
— Trophy description • Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U
Samus Aran is the main character from the Metroid series. She was raised by the Chozo, an ancient race of bird-like people, and goes through dangerous missions throughout the galaxies, such as saving planets and bounty-hunting. She appears in Kirby's Dream Land 3 as a cameo, and is a playable character in the Super Smash Bros. series alongside Kirby.
In Kirby's Dream Land 3, Samus Aran has a cameo appearance in the second mission of the Iceberg world; she wants Kirby to exterminate a horde of Metroids in exchange for a Heart Star. The Metroids can only be defeated using the Ice ability, a reference to how they are destroyed in the Metroid games. She appears at the end of the level without her helmet.
In the Super Smash Bros. series
In the Super Smash Bros. series, Samus is a starting playable character in every game. She hails from the Metroid series as the first playable character of it. She has projectile attacks such as her Charge Shot and Missiles that cover a wide range of space.
Her design in the first two Super Smash Bros. games was based on her look in Super Metroid, Super Smash Bros. Brawl used a blend of Metroid Prime and Metroid: Zero Mission’s suits, and her design in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate reflects her design from Metroid: Other M.
“ Samus Aran is the toughest bounty hunter in the galaxy. Using a special suit powered by the technology of the bird people which allows her to execute daring acrobatic feats, Samus pursues the airborne life form, Metroid, throughout the universe.”
— Description • Super Smash Bros.
“ The greatest bounty hunter in the galaxy, Samus Aran fights with the super-human power of her hi-tech power suit. ”
— Instruction manual • Super Smash Bros.
“ This intergalactic bounty hunter's full name is Samus Aran. Clad in a Power Suit made by the Chozo race and infused with their enhanced blood, she cleared the planet Zebes of a Metroid infestation. Samus is an orphan, the sole survivor of a Space Pirate raid that destroyed an Earth colony named K-2L.”
— Trophy description • Super Smash Bros. Melee
“ Samus has an abundance of projectile weapons, making her a long-distance attack specialist. The most powerful weapon in her arsenal is her Charge Shot, but be warned: it can be reflected. Her missiles have homing capabilities, but when fired as Smash Attacks, they fly on a straight trajectory and have boosted power.”
— Samus Aran Trophy description • Super Smash Bros. Melee
“ It's said that the orphaned Samus Aran was raised by the few survivors of the Chozo race. They armed her with a Power Suit and taught her the ways of advanced combat; even burdened with her heavy suit, Samus is as graceful as a butterfly. In the Metroid series, it was standard that Samus would remove her helmet and armor if you cleared the game fast enough.”
— Samus Unarmored Trophy description • Super Smash Bros. Melee
“ The intergalactic bounty hunter named Samus Aran. Orphaned at an early age, she was taken in and raised by the alien race known as the Chozo. The Power Suit she wears is a product of their technology. Her unique combat skills combined with her athleticism and Arm Cannon have seen her through countless missions.”
— Trophy description • Super Smash Bros. Brawl
“ Samus Aran without her mighty Power Suit. In this condition, she does not have the firepower she's famed for but is in full possession of the agility and athleticism she gained through her childhood training with the Chozo. Without the armor, she's also much, much faster. The weapon she carries is a self-protection device known as a Paralyzer that stops enemies cold.”
— Zero Suit Samus's trophy description • Super Smash Bros. Brawl
“ Samus protects herself from overhead enemies with her up smash, Cover Fire, which can land multiple hits on anyone it connects with. Samus also fires a homing missile by holding sideways and pressing the special- attack button or launches a Super Missile by quickly tapping sideways instead.”
— Samus (Alt.)'s Trophy description • Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U
“ Samus is far from helpless when her Power Suit is deactivated. Sure, she loses a lot of the moves and weapons she had access to before, but her Jet Boots pick up the slack! She also has the Paralyzer, a versatile weapon that can shock her rivals or change into a Plasma Whip to grab edges and enemies.”
— Zero Suit Samus's Trophy description • Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U
“ Zero Suit Samus's up special Boost Kick involves a series of fast kicks that end with a swift, sideways-launching one. A perfectly executed attack will hit eight times! Her down special Flip Jump can bury a grounded fighter in the dirt. She can kick midflip by pressing the special button.”
— Zero Suit Samus (Alt.)'s trophy description • Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U
One entire stage in Iceberg that revolves around having to defeat all the Metroids in Kirby's Dream Land 3 is a reference to Metroid II: Return of Samus, where Samus' mission is to destroy all the last Metroids on SR388. She rewards the player with a glimpse of her helmet off, and because all the Metroids in the area have been exterminated, her mission is complete. In the Metroid games, when all of the items are obtained fast enough, the reward at the end is seeing Samus without her helmet or even her whole suit. This is basically the same concept.
During her cameo appearance in Kirby's Dream Land 3, she appears approximately twice Kirby's height. Samus is about 6'3'', therefore Samus likely either is considerably shorter in this appearance or may have been scaled down so that she would not look out of place in Kirby's world.
In Kirby Super Star and Kirby Super Star Ultra, a rare, golden statue of Samus can appear while using the Stone ability.
A treasure in The Great Cave Offensive, the Screw Attack (misnamed "Screw Ball" in the English version of Kirby Super Star), is an item Samus equips in the Metroid games to be able to spin rapidly in the air, reaching many places and destroying enemies upon contact.
The Samus statue in Kirby Super Star
The Samus statue in Kirby Super Star Ultra
Sprites and Models
Kirby Super Star (Stone transformation)
Kirby's Dream Land 3 (missing helmet)
Super Smash Bros. Melee (Trophy)
Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Trophy)
Kirby Super Star Ultra (Stone transformation)
Super Smash Bros. for Wii U (Trophy)
R.O.B. & Professor Hector
Retrieved from "https://kirby.fandom.com/wiki/Samus_Aran?oldid=323386"
Articles with content covered better by other wikis
Allies in Kirby's Dream Land 3
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canterbury’s own lifestyle magazine / a great local read
Unstoppable Forces Meeting a Movable Object
Christchurch is abundant with mettlesome souls combating the growing issue of homelessness. From the provision of food and companionship, to aiding in the fight against substance addiction; here are the faces of those who believe such destitution can be vanquished.
ISSUE 67 Dec-Jan 2019 / People
Homelessness is a perplexing issue. Explanations on how people become vulnerable to its grip, or why the problem appears to be growing, are difficult to pinpoint. Unfortunately, in the absence of answers, assumptions tend to rush in, and these assumptions, regrettably, concern the nature of the those in need. Homelessness is, I am sure, a problem that everyone simply wishes would not exist, although solutions to achieve such an end-state seem forlorn. However, regardless of our predispositions on the topic, I believe that many people feel a sense of responsibility when they encounter a homeless person, just as they would if they were to witness a vehicle accident or heart attack. Frustratingly, the kind of help required is not as straightforward as these other scenarios. Fortunately, there are people amongst us in the Canterbury community who have bridged this divide. They have discovered, through their own bravery and endeavour, the answers we are seeking.
Every Wednesday, Tinna Dockerty operates her own small movement, Sisterhood Street Care, for the sole purpose of providing lunch and companionship for whoever chooses to attend. The minute she arrives at Latimer Square, Tinna springs into action. ‘Hello lovelies!’ she shouts at the volunteers who have gathered to help her serve lunch. ‘Right, I need all the tables and chairs set for lunch, the snacks and meals laid out, and the first aid stand established. Quickly, let’s get to it!’ Tinna is not delivering instructions to us, she is ordering herself about. Her fervent demeanour quickly becomes infectious to the volunteers. ‘Where do you want these blankets and clothes, Tinna?’ ‘Oh, just set them over there, and make sure you write on the box that they are free to take, thank you, honey.’ Within moments, everything is neatly established. As if on cue, the first of many weary individuals begins to emerge from the surrounding streets. It becomes immediately apparent how important the hot meals on the tables are. These unfortunate souls look like they haven’t had much to eat this morning. Tinna yells to them, and races around embracing every person who arrives for lunch. ‘Who needs a jacket? A blanket? We have plenty here, please help yourself!’
For two years, Tinna was homeless and addicted to various substances. She managed to break free from poverty, and now exists to aid the people who live in her former predicament. Not only does she provide food each week at her own expense, but will go as far as to act as someone’s advocate in court if they have no one else. ‘People desperately need to rethink the way they view the homeless,’ she tells me. ‘It is more than substance addiction that is forcing people to lose their homes. Many are victims of domestic violence and have nowhere to go. Many simply could not afford to keep up with Christchurch’s rising living expenses, and have chosen to live in their car instead. Most suffer from mental health conditions and have little access to professional treatment.’
Tinna goes on to describe the vicious cycle that these conditions become a catalyst for. ‘These people lack confidence, and want companionship; they experience so much shame and embarrassment in their own existence so they become afraid of seeking employment and begin to lose their sense of purpose.’
‘How can people help?’ I ask. ‘Food and conversation,’ she tells me. ‘Our homeless angels don’t expect anything from anyone, but a small bite to eat and a few moments of your time would really make their day.’ With that, she packs up and races away to prepare the next lot of meals she plans to deliver to the streets that night.
I wander through the gap in the fence and stroll into the area under the bridge with Darren, also from Sisterhood Street Care. Through the noise of the traffic overhead reverberating through the concrete structure, Darren shouts, ‘It’s Darren, from Sisterhood Street Care, is anyone here?’ He pokes his eyes around each concrete beam, but we find nothing but evidence of squalid living conditions.
Makeshift stretchers act as beds, surrounded by a juxtaposition of cigarette packets and nicotine pills. Rubbish is strewn about the dirt floor. ‘This is about as bad as it gets,’ Darren tells me, his eyes downcast. Three times a week, Darren circumnavigates Christchurch CBD in search of anyone who has been unable to find shelter. As a qualified physiotherapist, Darren also provides free treatment at Sisterhood Street Care and City Mission
each week.
We move on to the next location. The trunk of Darren’s car is full of sleeping bags, clothing and food that he plans to deliver to whoever is in need. Suddenly pulling the car over, he points across the street. ‘That’s Trevor, I see him regularly.’ He hops out and opens the trunk. ‘Want some coffee, mate?’ he shouts across the road. Whilst preparing the coffee, a young woman shyly appears.
‘Hi Angelica, would you like some coffee also?’ ‘Yes please, but could I have two? My boyfriend is here as well. Oh, and have you got any spare socks?’ Darren prepares the drinks and hands Angelica a couple of pairs of new socks; a grateful beam spreads across her face. As we drive away, I ask his opinion on the situation of each person we encounter. ‘It’s difficult to explain why they choose to live here. I see evidence of drug addiction and mental illness in everyone, but I just have to keep trying to be there for them.’
A tap at the window interrupts our conversation; a boy, no older than 18, peers into the car. Trevor appears behind him. ‘Sorry, Darren, I forgot to mention, this lad needs a sleeping bag. Have you got any?’ I am charged with fishing one out of the back, passing a brand new sleeping bag to the young lad. He smiles, and moves along quickly. ‘I’ve never seen him before.’ Darren’s concerned look follows the boy. Another mouth to feed might have just moved onto the block.
Ginny Rhodes meets me at the door of Dress for Success. Embarrassingly, I am a fraction late for our interview, which has meant that my arrival has coincided with the early arrival of a client. Ginny ushers me inside and discreetly shuts the door behind us. ‘We try to avoid having men on the premises during fitting times, so we will try to keep you out of sight.’
Dress for Success is a community-funded non-profit organisation dedicated to helping women find economic independence through the provision of career development tools and professional work attire. Ginny and her team of volunteers spend approximately an hour helping every client select a new professional wardrobe and then follow on with career coaching, including interview preparation and advice on appropriate workplace relationships. ‘Some women arrive to us with nothing but the clothes on their back,’ Ginny tells me. ‘But our mission is to give them so much more than just new clothes. We need to ensure they leave us with a greater sense of self-esteem than what they had when they arrived.’
This is, however, tricky for Ginny’s team to achieve at times due to several circumstances. Many of their clients are living a life of extreme economic hardship, and, as Tinna mentioned to me, have been afraid of seeking employment due to a severe lack of self-confidence. Moreover, some clients are also recent victims of domestic abuse at the hands of a partner, making Ginny’s caution with my presence more apparent as she explains further. ‘We once had a client, referred to us from the women’s refuge, who was running late to her appointment with us. When she did arrive, we discovered that she had walked three hours with a broken rib that she had suffered as a result of recent domestic abuse.’ This woman had a job interview the very next day. Out of pure determination to find employment, she battled through the pain in order to prepare herself with Ginny’s team. ‘She got that job,’ Ginny reassures me. ‘And, of course, we drove her home.’
Dress for Success is fundamentally reliant on community sponsorship and volunteer support. Donations of clothing and the dedicated team of volunteers allows Ginny to remain confident that this cycle of poverty can be broken. To date, Dress for Success has supported over 4500 local women, and Ginny assures me of her team’s enthusiasm to help more. ‘When we make an important change in the life of a client, we share her excitement. We are always looking for where we can make an impact next.’
Although the collective effort of these incredible individuals ought to be inspiring to anyone, one fundamental and, ultimately, conclusive question remains unanswered: will our subjects find themselves, another year from now, still combating the revolving door of poverty to no relative progress or avail? This is, of course, an extremely difficult question to answer.
However, through a personal anecdote, I will attempt to deliver a reassuring prediction. Walking to a grocery store on a winter’s night in Christchurch, I stumbled upon a young, homeless gentleman seated next to a skip bin. Asking him whether he had been able to eat anything that evening, to which he responded that he had not, I included some extra food items in my shopping and delivered them to him. After briefly peering into the contents of the bag, he immediately rushed to the back of the skip bin, to a corner I had not previously seen, and gave the food to an older gentleman sitting under some blankets. This man was clearly hungry and, from the sound of his coughing, suffering from a cold. He sat with his friend and prepared to endure the night together. It was at this moment that I realised something: impoverished people truly understand, perhaps better than anyone else, the true meaning of benevolence. If they are accepting personal sacrifice by actively seeking ways to improve the quality of life of their peers, I believe they also see the conquerable nature of their own living situation; they are just going to need some assistance along the way.
Regardless of the success status of our subjects, and their respective missions, they surely stand as vessels through which we can discover how to engage with this issue. They are the bridge that spans the crevice of our conflicting convictions.
Capturing and documenting the work of all who are striving to make poverty history, in Christchurch alone, is vitally essential, but impossible to achieve in a single article. Therefore, we will be publishing a series of online continuation articles. Follow latitude online to stay updated.
For more infomation on these wonderful organisations and how you can help, visit facebook.com/sisterhoodstreetcare and christchurch.dressforsuccess.org.
Words & Images Isaac McCarthy
Roast Beetroot, Hazelnut & Goats Cheese Salad
Sledding In A Winter Wonderland
Greening by Example
Our Capable, But Vulnerable Future
Barker’s of Geraldine 50 Years Preserved
Health + Wellbeing (12)
Home + Garden (26)
Issue 68 Out Now
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Kevin Vermeulen, Chief Executive Officer
Guy Alvarez, Chief Digital Officer
Jack Berkowitz, Chief Strategy Officer
Eminent Domain and Condemnation Law
381 Park Avenue South, Suite 901 New York, NY 10016
381 Park Avenue South New York New York 10016 US
info@grrhpc.com
Goldstein, Rikon, Rikon & Houghton, P.C. and its predecessors have been at the forefront of protecting property owners’ constitutional rights in eminent domain proceedings since 1923. It is the only law firm in the state of New York that limits its practice to eminent domain law. “Eminent domain represents a drastic operation of the law,” notes partner Michael Rikon, the New York State-designated attorney for the Owners Counsel of America, a national network of experienced eminent domain lawyers. “You only get one opportunity to litigate these cases; and because of that, they required tremendous vigilance by a knowledgeable, trial experienced attorney,” he adds. By limiting their practice to eminent domain law, the attorneys at Goldstein, Rikon, Rikon & Houghton have become authorities in this area of the law, securing significant awards for their clients. For example, Jonathan M. Houghton recovered a $68 million award for CSX Railroad in the Appellate Division. Michael Rikon recovered an award in excess of $47 million for the taking of self-storage facilities in the eminent domain proceeding relating to the expansion of Columbia University. The partners of Goldstein, Rikon, Rikon & Houghton frequently lecture and write articles on eminent domain law. Michael Rikon has authored a column in the New York Law Journal for the past 26 years.
Goldstein, Rikon, Rikon & Houghton, P.C.
At Leaders In The Law, our goal is to connect lawyers and potential clients. We offer consumers and businesses one of the top resources in the U.S. for finding the right lawyer and help attorneys share their achievements and success stories with millions of people.
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West Palm Beach Firm Secures $1M for Slip & Fall Victim
Menz Bonner Komar & Koenigsberg Secures $330M Whistleblower Settlement in Sprint Tax Fraud Case
Wilshire Law Firm Starts 2019 with $3.25M Auto Injury Result
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Recorded Webinar: Personal E-Transportation: Hoverboards, Drones, Electric Bicycles, & Beyond (Free)
Personal e-Transportation systems are receiving a lot of attention due to the growth and innovation in this market. While exciting, the new technology puts people in close contact with advanced energy systems that must face the rigors of real-life use, and these unique safety challenges need to be addressed.
UL has been monitoring this trend and is prepared to help manufacturers and retailers alike by offering electrical system testing for various e-mobility products. UL recently published updates to existing standards and released the new UL 3030, Outline of Investigation for UAVs. The following three UL outlines & standards are at the core of compliance for these innovative light EV products centered on personal e-Transportation:
UL 2272, Electrical Systems for Personal e-Mobility (formerly titled “Electrical Systems for Self-Balancing Scooters”) was updated to include e-mobility devices that are not self-balancing. Published November 21, 2016.
UL 2849, Outline of Investigation for Electric Bicycles - Electrically Power Assisted Cycles (EPAC Bicycles), Electric Scooters, and Electric Motorcycles, was updated to include all over-the-road cycles (e-bikes, e-motorbikes and e-scooters). Published November 11, 2016.
UL 3030, Outline of Investigation for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) or Drones - to cover UAV intended to be operated by trained pilots. Published December 12, 2016
Additionally, the webinar will provide an update on UL 2743 for Portable Power Packs (Published October 13, 2016). This standard includes portable power sources for use where normal grid power is not available as well as use in emergency situations. These applications have also seen growth as more products become portable and are used with this type of electrical energy source.
Inform on the development of outlines & standards as well as incidents reported to safety organizations such as CPSC
Address critical safety considerations for lithium ion battery systems and chargers used in Personal E-Transportation equipment
Update on existing publications (ANSI/UL 2272, ANSI/UL 2743, & UL 2849, Outline of Investigation) including national accreditation status
Provide details on new UAV publication UL 3030, Outline of Investigation
Share next steps for regulatory requirements
Joe Bablo, Principal Engineer – Automotive & e-Transportation Equipment
Laurie Florence, Principal Engineer – Motive/Stationary Batteries & e-Mobility Systems
Pre-Recorded Webinar 90 minutes
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Madison.com
Cap Times
Wisconsin State Journal
Wisconsin's unemployment rate ticks up to 3.3%
topical top story
Riley Vetterkind | Wisconsin State Journal
Preliminary figures released by the state Department of Workforce Development show a continued jobs decline in the state's factories, with Wisconsin manufacturers employing 7,700 fewer people in October compared to the same time last year.
BARRY ADAMS, STATE JOURNAL ARCHIVES
Wisconsin’s unemployment rate ticked up to 3.3% in October, representing the fifth straight month it has increased following record low rates seen earlier this year.
Wisconsin set a record low 2.8% unemployment rate in April, but that number started to inch upward beginning in June.
Latest employment survey shows continued decline in Wisconsin manufacturing jobs
Mitchell Schmidt | Wisconsin State Journal
The preliminary figures released by the state Department of Workforce Development also show a continued jobs decline in the state’s factories, with Wisconsin manufacturers employing 7,700 fewer people in October compared to the same time last year.
Please sign up or log in to view more. No credit card required.
Year-over-year job declines affected both the durable goods sector, which makes products such as vehicles or appliances, as well as the non-durable, or soft goods sector, which makes items that have a lifespan of fewer than three years, such as light bulbs or paper products.
Industry experts have pointed to international trade disputes and the rising cost of materials brought on by tariffs as a key factor behind uncertainty in Wisconsin’s manufacturing market.
According to DWD’s report based on preliminary U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the durable goods sector lost 7,100 jobs since last October, while the non-durable goods sector lost 600 jobs year-over-year. It’s the third month in a row that the number of manufacturing jobs lost over the past year have set records since the Great Recession.
Despite job losses in the manufacturing sector, Wisconsin employers still managed to add 17,200 private-sector and 16,500 total non-farm jobs between October 2018 and October 2019.
The national unemployment rate was 3.6%.
Politicsother
State-government
Department Of Workforce Development
Capital W: Plug in to Wisconsin politics
Subscribe to our Politics email!
You'll get a weekly recap of the goings-on at the State Capitol, delivered free to your inbox every Friday.
Capitol reporter
Riley Vetterkind covers politics and state government for the Wisconsin State Journal. He can be reached at (608) 252-6135 or rvetterkind@madison.com.
Follow Riley Vetterkind | Wisconsin State Journal
Gov. Evers urges release of homelessness funding
The governor sent a letter to the Legislature's budget committee requesting it approve more than $3 million in annual funding for programs meant to curb homelessness.
Lawmaker proposes resolution naming Capitol conifer 'Christmas tree'
The state Capitol "has displayed a decorated tree in the rotunda every year during the Christmas holiday season since 1916, and it has been traditionally referred to as a 'Christmas Tree,'" Rep. Scott Krug said.
Madison Wisconsin Business News
Uncertainty growing in Wisconsin's manufacturing sector as survey finds job cuts
At the same time, results are varied on how many jobs, if any, have been created by Wisconsin’s 6-year-old manufacturing tax credit.
Tired of waiting for your over-the-air channels to come back? Prepare to wait a while longer
The crew that has been working on the Madison broadcasting tower on South Pleasant View Road is not scheduled to be back on the project until Dec. 2.
Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates face off in heated debate featuring allegations of corruption, insufficient experience
In a February primary, at least three candidates for the state's highest court will compete for two spots on April's general election ballot.
Wisconsin unemployment rate remains unchanged, but manufacturing continues to dip
Wisconsin's unemployment rate remained unchanged last month at 3.3%, while seasonally adjusted employment data continues to project a decline in Wisconsin factory jobs.
WiscNews
Capital Newspapers
AmplifiedWisconsin
ApplyMadison
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© Copyright 2020 Capital Newspapers Inc., madison.com , 1901 Fish Hatchery Rd Madison, WI | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy
Badger Sports
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Shop with Love
Chains, Anklets & Spacers
Love Code Collection
Last Call – Sale
Commission with Love
Synple
70 Main St. Camillus, NY 13031
68 Main Street Plymouth Connecticut 06786 US
https://www.shopsynple.com/
Screen Shot 2019-09-02 at 4.26.51 PM.png 5 months ago
1st National Gifts
2 East Genesee Street, Skaneateles, NY 13152, USA
http://www.firstnationalgifts.com/
A Different Point of View
2920 Monroe Avenue, Rochester, NY 14618, USA
http://www.adifferentpointofview.com/
Bumble B Boutique
594 New Loudon Road Latham, NY 12110
http://bumblebeadsboutique.org/
75 Main St, Northport, NY 11768, USA
https://jewelrycollectionandmore.com/
Setauket Gifts
242 Route 25A, East Setauket, NY 11733, USA
https://www.setauketgifts.com/
WM Mazza Fine Jewelry
491 Main St, Islip, NY 11751, USA
https://www.mazzafinejewelry.com/
Kevin Edward Jewelers
395 West Main Street, Avon, CT 06001, USA 11.62 mi
http://www.kevinedwardjewelers.com/
The Posh Pear
830 S. Main Street Route 10 Cheshire, CT 06410 14.48 mi
https://www.theposhpearct.com/
AvaGrace
926 Hopmeadow Street, Simsbury, CT 06070, United States 17.19 mi
http://www.avagracegifts.com/
Rosewood Home & Gifts
34 Elm Street, Westfield, MA 01085, USA 33.11 mi
https://www.rosewoodwestfield.com/
The French Hen
14 Main Street, Chester, CT, USA 34.89 mi
https://www.facebook.com/thefrenchhenchester/ab...
Bahr & Company
113 Danbury Road, Ridgefield, Connecticut 06877, USA 37.02 mi
https://www.facebook.com/bahrandco/
11 Unquowa Road, Fairfield, CT 06824, USA 39.51 mi
https://www.facebook.com/No-299-273513009350103/
Savvy + Grace
146 Main Street, Westport, Connecticut 06880, United States 41.56 mi
https://www.facebook.com/savvyandgrace/
Nyman Jewelers
900 Boston Post Road, Old Saybrook, CT 06475, USA 41.6 mi
https://www.facebook.com/nymanjewelersct/
Arts Unlimited
25 College Street, South Hadley, MA 01075, USA 45.48 mi
http://www.arts-unlimited.com
25 College St, South Hadley, MA 01075, USA 45.48 mi
info@arts-unlimited.com
Browne & Co.
865 Post Road, Darien, CT 06820, USA 48.22 mi
https://dianebrowne.com/
Silverscape Designs
One King Street Northhampton, MA 01060 49.11 mi
https://www.silverscapedesigns.com/
242 Route 25A, East Setauket, NY 11733, USA 51.62 mi
The Lobby Shop
365 Montauk Avenue, New London, CT 06320, USA 51.9 mi
https://lmhospital.netreturns.biz/giftshop/
75 Main St, Northport, NY 11768, USA 56.86 mi
Mystic Silver & Company
27a Old Mystic Village Road, Mystic, CT 06355, USA 57.83 mi
http://mysticsilverandcompany.com/
The Eagles Nest Gallery
50 High Street, Westerly, RI 02891, USA 63.87 mi
http://theeaglesnestgallery.com/
491 Main St, Islip, NY 11751, USA 66.61 mi
5000 South County Trail, Charlestown, RI 02813, USA 73.07 mi
https://www.facebook.com/simpleRI/
LOLA CARE
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Orders will not be shipped on Monday, January 20th due to the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. Shipping will resume Tuesday, January 21. Dismiss
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Best Article
Happiness Is a Worn Gun
On wearing a concealed handgun and how it changed the author’s worldview.
Dan Baum Harper's Aug 2010 30min Permalink
Mississippi Drift
An ill-fated trip down the river with a group of anarchists.
Matthew Power Harper's Mar 2008 35min Permalink
Straight Man's Burden
A Ugandan bill that would threaten homosexuals with imprisonment, or in some cases death, has its roots in the shadowy American evangelical group known as The Family.
Jeff Sharlet Harper's Aug 2010 40min Permalink
A Mind Dismembered
On the history of Nigerian penis theft.
Frank Bures Harper's Jun 2008 20min Permalink
Best Article Reprints Science
Animal nature, human racism, and the future of zoos.
David Samuels Harper's Jun 2012 45min Permalink
Monopoly Is Theft
The surprising anti-monopolist origins of the world’s most popular board game.
Christopher Ketcham Harper's Oct 2012 25min Permalink
The Last Book Party: Publishing Drinks to a Life After Death
Wandering through the Frankfurt Book Fair.
Gideon Lewis-Kraus Harper's Mar 2009 Permalink
My Platonic Sweetheart
In a posthumously published essay, Twain recounts dreams of a long-lost love.
Mark Twain Harper's Dec 1912 Permalink
Reprints Arts Business Food
Broken Heartland
The looming collapse of agriculture on the Great Plains.
Arts Movies & TV
The Secret Mainstream
The life and films of Werner Herzog.
Tom Bissell Harper's Dec 2006 Permalink
Nickel and Dimed
On (not) getting by in America.
Barbara Ehrenreich Harper's Jan 1999 55min Permalink
Tiny Little Laws
An investigation into sexual violence on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.
Kathy Dobie Harper's Feb 2011 Permalink
The Last Tower
The decline and fall of Cabrini-Green, Chicago’s infamous public housing development.
Ben Austen Harper's May 2012 Permalink
Tokeville: On the Frontiers of Federalism and Dope
Portraits from weed country.
Gideon Lewis-Kraus Harper's Dec 2009 Permalink
Music Is My Bag
A childhood spent with the oboe.
Meghan Daum Harper's Mar 2000 20min Permalink
Best Article Reprints Arts
Being Blanche
The author of Truly Tasteless Jokes unmasks herself.
Ashton Applewhite Harper's Jan 2010 10min Permalink
Death By Landscape
An art collector reflects back on the summer camp of her childhood, and a dreadful occurrence.
"[T]hese paintings are not landscape paintings. Because there aren’t any landscapes up there, not in the old, tidy European sense, with a gentle hill, a curving river, a cottage, a mountain in the background, a golden evening sky. lnstead there’s a tangle, a receding maze, in which you can become lost almost as soon as you step off the path. There are no backgrounds in any of these paintings, no vistas; only a great deal of foreground that goes back and back, endlessly, involving you in its twists and turns of tree and branch and rock. No matter how far back in you go, there will be more. And the trees themselves are hardly trees; they are currents of energy. charged with violent color."
Margaret Atwood Harper's Jan 1990 30min Permalink
Crime Politics World
Ivan the Recumbent, or Demjanjuk in Munich
A report from the trial of Ivan Demjanjuk—a.k.a. “The Last Nazi”—who died on March 17.
Lawrence Douglas Harper's Mar 2012 Permalink
Quitting the Paint Factory
Idleness is not just a psychological necessity, requisite to the construction of a complete human being; it constitutes as well a kind of political space, a space as necessary to the workings of an actual democracy as, say, a free press.
Mark Slouka Harper's Nov 2004 20min Permalink
Mirrorings
The writer contemplates beauty and identity following reconstructive surgery.
There was a long period of time, almost a year, during which I never looked in a mirror. It wasn’t easy, for I’d never suspected just how omnipresent are our own images. I began by merely avoiding mirrors, but by the end of the year I found myself with an acute knowledge of the reflected image, its numerous tricks and wiles, how it can spring up at any moment: a glass tabletop, a well-polished door handle, a darkened window, a pair of sunglasses, a restaurant’s otherwise magnificent brass-plated coffee machine sitting innocently by the cash register.
Lucy Grealy Harper's Feb 1993 Permalink
Trash, Art, and the Movies
There is so much talk now about the art of the film that we may be in danger of forgetting that most of the movies we enjoy are not works of art.
Pauline Kael Harper's Feb 1969 1h Permalink
Politics World
In the Land of the Dear Leader
The author travels to North Korea in the years after Kim Jong Il’s succession. He also gets a haircut:
But suddenly the whole chair starts vibrating and I find myself surrendering to her, as she begins to knead the acupressure points on my forehead and neck. Next it's ginseng unguent all over my face. Gobs of pomade smelling like bubble gum go on my hair. Then, like a true daughter of the revolution, she upholsters her blow dryer and begins combing in the pomade and sculpting my now subdued hair. The pungent aroma of heated pomade, like fat frying in a pan, fills the room. My stylist gives my hair a little twist with the comb. It feels like she's making a Dairy Queen curl on top. Then she fries it in place with the dryer. Another dab of pomade. More mincing motions with the comb. Another blast of hot air. Suddenly I feel a moist breeze around my ears. She's taken out a can of imported aerosol spray and is cementing her creation in place. She's delicately patting my new coiffure now the way a baker taps a loaf of bread to see if it's springy to the touch. She murmurs something. I'm breathless with expectation. I open my eyes and gaze into the mirror. Magnifique! It looks like I have a loofah sponge on my head! I am reborn -- a cross between Elvis and a 1950s Bulgarian hydrology expert! At last I have become a true son of Pyongyang!
Orville Schell Harper's Jul 1996 30min Permalink
Best Article World
Barack and Hamid's Excellent Adventure
On the occasion of Hamid Karzai’s visit to the White House, a fever dream tour of the Afghanistan war through the eyes of the leaders who gave birth to its narrative.
David Samuels Harper's Jul 2010 Permalink
Run Like Fire Once More
On the world’s longest foot race, which takes place entirely within Queens, N.Y.:
Such were the hazards last summer in Jamaica, Queens, at the tenth running of the Self-Transcendence 3,100. The fifteen participants—all but two of them disciples of the Bengali Guru Sri Chinmoy, who has resided in the neighborhood for forty years—hailed from ten countries on three continents. They ran in all weather, seven days a week, from 6:00 a.m. to midnight, or until their bodies compelled them to rest. If they logged fewer than fifty miles on a given day, they risked disqualification. By their own reckoning, the runners climbed eight meters per lap, mounting and descending a spectral Everest every week and a half. They toiled in this fashion for six to eight weeks, however long it took them to complete 5,649 circuits—3,100 miles—around a single city block.
Sam Shaw Harper's Aug 2007 Permalink
Science Religion
A Comet's Tale
An investigation into The End.
Tom Bissell Harper's Feb 2003 45min Permalink
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← Do you love your library?
Red Glass by Laura Resau →
16 March 10 · 8:41 pm
Booklist: St. Patrick’s Day Picture Books
All titles ages 3+
My mom, an Irish New Yorker, picked out these four St. Patrick’s Day books for my daughter this year. Thanks, Mom! We love them!
Jack and the Leprechaun
Written by Ivan Robertson
Illustrated by Katy Bratu
A family of field mice are preparing for St. Patrick’s Day in their village in the Irish countryside, and cousin Jack is coming all the way from America to join in the celebrations. When the family sends Jack out to gather shamrocks for the festivities, Jack encounters a creature unlike any he’s ever seen. But will his family believe him when he returns to tell his tale?
Little Lit Lover says: I like the mice and the surprise that Liam the Leprechaun leaves for them.
King Puck Inspired by an Irish festival
Written and Illustrated by Michael Garland
Seamus is a solitary farmer living on a mountain above the town of Killorglin with only his goat Finny for company. One night a band of fairies casts a spell on Finny, giving Seamus the surprise of his life. The fairies mischief comes just in time for the March 17th crowning of King Puck, a Killorglin tradition honoring the best goat. A charming story with beautiful illustrations, and every book lover will love Seamus and Finny’s happy ending.
Little Lit Lover says: I like finding the fairies hidden in the pictures.
Written and Illustrated by Gail Gibbons
A non-fiction narrative that introduces the traditions of St. Patrick’s Day and St. Patrick himself to young readers. Includes short summaries of legends connected to St. Patrick.
Little Lit Lover says: I like how St. Patrick talks about Jesus with a shamrock.
That’s What Leprechauns Do
Written by Eve Bunting
Illustrated by Emily Arnold McCully
Ari, Boo and Col have serious leprechaun duties. They have to place the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. But along the way the three little people can’t resist some silly antics, like tying up long-johns left out to dry and slipping a tennis ball into a hen’s nest. Afterall, “that’s what leprechauns do!”
Little Lit Lover says: These leprechauns are funny! I like what they do to the cow.
Filed under Booklists, Picture Books
Tagged as booklist, Jack and the Leprechaun, King Puck, Picture Books, St. Patrick's Day, That's What Leprechauns Do
One response to “Happy St. Patrick’s Day!”
19 March 10 at 1:26 pm
King Puck looks adorable. I’m going to have to bookmark this one for future gifts.
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Inside Xbox February Episode News Recap
by Major Nelson • Feb 6, 2019 @ 11:03pm
Will Tuttle, Xbox Wire Editor in Chief, shared a recap of the latest episode of Inside Xbox. Check it out below or at Xbox Wire. You can also watch the entire show below:
Introducing Xbox Game Studios
Matt Booty shared we are changing the name of our game development organization from Microsoft Studios to Xbox Game Studios. In his words: “At Xbox, we believe when everyone plays, we all win. It’s why we’re passionate about building a portfolio of games for players across console, PC and mobile. As we’ve expanded our focus beyond the console, the Xbox brand has also evolved from its original roots. Today, Xbox is our gaming brand across all devices, no matter how or where you want to play, or who you want to play with.” Check out our full Xbox Game Studios announcement post for more information.
Experience Halo Like Never Before with Halo: Outpost Discovery
The team at 343 Industries is always cooking up something for the Halo community, and today’s episode gave us our first look at a brand-new offering. Halo: Outpost Discovery is a touring fan experience for all ages, that brings the Halo video game universe to life like never before. This five U.S. city event lets you step into Halo’s vast and epic world, with enthralling themed attractions, interactive in-universe encounters, playable games and so much more. Experience details, ticket information and more are available right now at HaloOutpostDiscovery.com. You can learn more in our Halo: Outpost Discovery announcement post right now.
Bringing the Boom in Crackdown 3
Crackdown 3 is nearly upon us, so the team took a couple of in-depth looks at the game with some very special guests. In addition to an interview with Creative Director Joseph Staten, Crackdown 3 star and all-around great guy Terry Crews joined us from LA to chat about his role and how he infused his trademark personality and energy into the game. To top it off, we revealed the official Crackdown 3 launch trailer, giving fans a final taste of the game’s boom-infused playground across both campaign and Wrecking Zone. Crackdown 3 will be available starting February 15 on Xbox Game Pass and for Xbox One and Windows 10 PC, so get ready to cause some mayhem!
Complete Your Crew in Sea of Thieves
Ahoy mateys! Rare’s action-packed pirate game is better than ever thanks to a bunch of updates and one of the strongest communities in game, so now is the perfect time to bring more players aboard. On today’s show, we announced that the Sea of Thieves Friends Play Free program will be starting on February 6. All existing players will be able to log in to the Sea of Thieves website to get three codes that they can share with their friends who don’t already have the game. Those friends will be able to play until February 13, and everyone can enjoy a special, limited-time voyage featuring a high-value reward and unique cosmetics. For complete details, click through to our Sea of Thieves Friends Play Free announcement post. All aboard!
Xbox Game Pass Gets Even Better
The monthly Xbox Game Pass announcement is always one of our biggest news beats, and we’re happy to share that this month’s lineup features some truly excellent games. One of 2018’s best games is hitting the subscription service, as Shadow of the Tomb Raider brings Lara Croft’s action-packed trilogy to a close. She’s joined by Clementine, one of our favorite characters from The Walking Dead – Season One, and everyone’s favorite amorphous lump, de Blob. For complete details, take a look at our Xbox Game Pass February games announcement post.
Experience Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 with Two New Bundles
Today, we announced two new bundles with Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 joining the Xbox One family. Pre-order the 1TB Xbox One S ($299.99) or the 1TB Xbox One X ($499.99) Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 Bundle, and experience the ultimate RPG open-world action shooter set in Washington D.C., where exploration and player progression are essential to survival. Jump in on Xbox One and see how the dynamic environment combines the series’ core authenticity with tactical decisions, trading and more.
Both bundles feature an Xbox One console, 1TB hard drive, an Xbox Wireless Controller, a full-game download of Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 and 1-month trials for Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Live Gold. Additionally, as part of the Xbox One family, you can enjoy features like a built-in 4K UHD Blu-ray player, 4K streaming with High Dynamic Range and Dolby Vision, and premium audio with Dolby Atmos and DTS:X support. Plus, Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 is specifically enhanced for Xbox One X so you can experience immersive true 4K gaming with 4K Ultra HD with HDR and Dolby Atmos support. Pre-order now; arrives in stores starting March 15, 2019.
Pre-Order Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 Xbox One Console Bundles
A Shiny New Controller Appears
The announcement of new Xbox controllers is always a big deal for our fans and collectors, so they’ll be happy to hear that we revealed a brand-new controller on today’s show. The Xbox Wireless Controller – Sport Red Special Edition is vibrant red and features metallic accents, rubberized diamond grip, and built-in Bluetooth technology for gaming on Windows 10 PCs and tablets. For more information, give our Xbox Wireless Controller – Sport Red Special Edition announcement post a read!
Jumping In With Jump Force
Fighting game fans rejoice! Jump Force, the upcoming battler featuring combatants from the Shonen Jump universe, will be releasing soon, and we were lucky enough to be able to reveal some new characters. Jotaro and DIO from JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure will be coming to the game, and we can’t wait to see how Stand users stack up against the competition! The team also shared that they plan to keep the game as fresh as possible in the months following its release, thanks to new costumes and stages that will be given to fans for free.
A New Fighter in Mortal Kombat 11
The latest entry in the world’s most brutal fighting game has been announced, and our team was on the ground at the recent unveil event to take a good look at the carnage. What’s more we are now able to reveal that D’Vorah is returning in Mortal Kombat 11. She is a half-human, half-insect fighter who is aligned with Kotal Kahn, the ruler of Outworld. She was first introduced in Mortal Kombat X, where her swift, vicious moves made a (deep) impression on her enemies.
Inside the Minds Behind Journey to the Savage Planet
One of the biggest announcements at The Game Awards, Journey to the Savage Planet takes players to an alien world on which everything isn’t always as it seems. We went behind the scenes at Typhoon Studios to see first-hand what it takes to leave security behind and set out to build both a studio and a brand-new franchise from the ground up.
We hope you enjoyed the show, and we’ll see you next month!
Inside Xbox LIVE From X019 In London Recap
Nov 14, 2019 @ 3:41pm
The Biggest Inside Xbox Episode Of The Year Will Be At X019
Nov 12, 2019 @ 8:06am
Major Nelson Radio Podcast Live From Sunday Roast At Microsoft Store Oxford Circus In London
Join Us For The Outer Worlds Launch Party!
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At Southeast Asian Leaders’ Meeting, China Scores Tacit Victory
By admin2 on April 30, 2017 • ( 0 )
In a situation where U.S. allies in Asia have previously criticized Beijing over its actions in disputed maritime territory, China won approval from Southeast Asian leaders on Saturday at a meeting. With a statement noting “the improving cooperation between Asean… Read More ›
As Talks Edge Closer, EU Throws Down Brexit Gauntlet To U.K.
Listing demands Prime Minister Theresa May must satisfy before they will discuss the trade deal she wants and urging her to be more realistic in her expectations, European Union governments threw down the gauntlet to the U.K. ahead of Brexit… Read More ›
In Hopes Of Living Longer, An Extreme High-Fat Diet Is What Silicon Valley’s Elite Are Flocking To
In hopes of prolonging their lives and improving their health, a lot of the Silicon Valley elite are doing extreme experiments on their bodies. The latest fad among this set is sticking to a so-called ‘ketogenic’ diet that is considered… Read More ›
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Spa review: Going under the knife for the Mandarin Spa’s limited-time dao liao therapy
Evelyn Lok
I’ve subjected myself to many strange treatments in the past, from massages submerged in water to facial acupuncture, but this one really takes the cake — or perhaps more aptly, cuts out all of the competition.
Available for only a limited time, from 19–28 July, at the Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong’s Mandarin Spa is a very uncommon treatment, at least in Hong Kong: dao liao, or “knife massage,” done by visiting specialist Xavier Garnier. A French native who has lived in China and Taiwan and studied Chinese healing arts for 20 years, Garnier started as a practitioner of Dao Liao in 2010 — he was recognised as the first foreigner initiated into the art in Taiwan — and also practices qi gong, yi jing (i-ching), traditional Chinese massage, osteopathy, as well as guang liao, a type of light energy healing using blessed coral stones that complements dao liao.
Dao liao itself involves using two butcher knives to rhythmically stimulate circulation and detox parts of the body, and is said to rejuvenate the body’s deep tissue, combat aches and pains, enhance quality of sleep, and induce deep relaxation.
Naturally, with the mention of “butcher knives”, I became very nervous, as would anyone unfamiliar with the practice. I had come across dao liao just once in passing during a visit to Taipei, where I saw a man doing knife massage demonstrations in an underground passageway. Drawing quite a crowd, I was convinced it was a gimmick, some kind of phony street performance. Before meeting Xavier Garnier, I admit I was still quite wary — but this is the Mandarin Spa, and if there’s anywhere to try it, it’s here.
Before my treatment, Garnier explained a little about how dao liao can help with detoxing, which I was looking for. The metal in the knives and the motion of the massage are said to create conductivity, which helps draw out negative energies from the body. He perused my consultation form carefully, maybe a little perturbed that a little “lymphatic drainage” was all I was looking for.
That’s because dao liao, as it turns out, is a lot more than that. Later, I learn in my post-treatment chat, it’s a whole ancient school of thought dating back to the Zhou dynasty, which later re-emerged in the Tang dynasty before moving its centres of followers to Japan, then Taiwan; Garnier himself was taught by a master in Taipei. Deeper than a relaxation session, it’s apparently a spiritual practice that closely relates to cleansing karmas for both patient and practitioner. Not only is the ridding of bad energies or tension in the body hard work, but it also requires the practitioner to be of good health. Garnier shared that to do this, he must keep a vegetarian diet, and practise qi gong exercises every day to keep his energies pure, in order to facilitate healing for his clients.
On to the treatment itself: I was presented with a set of loose Mandarin Oriental-branded t-shirt and shorts to wear. (I was quite relieved the knives wouldn’t be hacking away at my bare skin! Garnier also reassured me that it would be done over a towel.) I wasn’t sure at all what to expect, partly because it started with an exercise. Garnier first handed me two wooden sticks, called qian kun wands, while he held two blood orange-coloured, ancient coral stones. Standing barefoot, I followed him through two rounds of movements: one where my arms opened and closed in front of me, much like doing chest flyes at the gym; and the other, forward and backwards rotations with my arms stretched straight outwards like the butterfly stroke. We did 11 counts of each. My shoulder joints cracked furiously in the beginning, and by midway my upper arms were already feeling warm. This was to kickstart the circulation in the body, I was told.
Finally, I was told to lie face down on the massage table. Right after he draped a thick towel over my entire body (even over my head), he did a quick consultation. Most great masseuses can easily determine where your muscles are tight, but typically I’ve seen this done through graceful, fluid strokes of the hand. Garnier seemingly jumped right in at random, mussing up his fist loosely over my back as if it was a freshly proofed piece of bread, but within seconds, he tapped an incredibly tender spot on the right side of my spine. “This part has a lot of blockage,” he told me. “This is linked to the liver, and the gallbladder, which makes bile. Too much and it gets blocked. This blockage also relates to too many negative emotions, to anger.” I was stunned — admittedly, I had been in and out of arguments with my SO for months.
He zig-zagged down to my left calf, and immediately felt a ball of tension there — also linked to the aforementioned organs. He also pointed out centres of stress in my shoulders (“linked to the hips” and, by association, also the liver due to connected meridian lines). It was particularly interesting to learn the associations between pain and tension in the body and mind according to TCM: blockages in the stomach and spleen were due to overthinking, the lung and large intestines were linked to sadness, and the gallbladder and liver were closely related to anger and fear.
Once we sorted out my diagnosis, Garnier got to work with the knives. In the first minute or so, the sensation of blunt blades chopping away at my back was rather alarming, but once I felt the metal begin to connect and help release those centres of tension, I quickly learned to relax. He proceeded to move from left to right: from arm to arm, leg to leg and hip to hip, then even up atop my head. It wasn’t painful at all, and actually very soothing compared to the harsh pressure of typical deep tissue massages — which work, but you have to endure the pain first. I even almost drifted into a light, relaxing sleep, a feat I thought was impossible with the knives mincing away at my body.
After several minutes spent on my back, he revisited the points he identified in the beginning. To my surprise, the pain was gone — completely released in a matter of minutes. At about 30 minutes in, I was asked to lie on my side, and he repeated the process: Towel cocooned over me, Garnier would diagnose, then chop away. Along my right thigh where the IT band runs, he found particular tension and blockage along what he called the gallbladder meridian line, which felt like a dull soreness that I had attributed to my recent hard sessions at the Barre. Again, after cutting away for five minutes or so, almost like magic, the pain dissipated. Flipping on the other side, the same line felt a similar but lesser tension, and it too was sliced away by these enlightening cleavers.
I rotated to lie on my back for a front section massage, where Garnier focused on the areas around my knees that felt slightly sore and bloated, gradually tapping away up my sides towards the centre of my stomach, gentler than he did on my other body parts. Just as I began to doze off, I snapped awake as he began chopping away around my neck, then on my chin and face — trying the best I could to stay calm in those 30 seconds. It was relaxation with a light element of danger, I suppose.
Then, to wrap up, attention went back to my back, where he diligently chopped away at the tension near my sitting bones (as they call them in yoga). The grand finale was when he brought back the coral stones he used during the initial exercise. This is not included in a typical dao liao session, but he thought I should give it a try. Hovering the coral stones above me without touching, he claimed that this guang liao, or light energy therapy, would help remove the negative energies within my body, replenishing it with positivity. Was I buying too much into the spirituality of it, or did my body really feel slight wiggles of energy graze my back? I want to believe it was real.
From being dubious to hopeful, I’d say in one session I got somewhat hooked to dao liao, thoroughly impressed by Garnier’s true passion for his craft, particularly when he spoke piously about the higher purpose of his practice, “It’s a kind of meditation for me… We use two knives because they represent yin and yang; one gives good energy and one takes the bad energy out. The knives, it’s almost as if they bring me to where it’s blocked.”
After one session, I got the lymphatic drainage and better circulation I wanted — my neck and décolletage already looked longer and slimmer even just after stepping out from the changing rooms. But more importantly I felt absolutely lighter, more limber and as a result, happier. It’s a feeling you just can’t replicate from just simply working hard at the gym — it only comes from holistic healing.
Available through 28 July 2018, a 60-minute dao liao is priced at HK$1,300 on weekdays and HK$1,380 on weekends; a 90-minute session costs HK$1,650 on weekdays and HK$1,780 on weekends.
The Mandarin Spa, 24/F, Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong, 5 Connaught Road Central, Hong Kong, +852 2825 4888
Spa Wellness Massage The Mandarin Spa Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong Spas Taiwan Spirituality Spa Review Dao Liao Knife Massage Qi Gong Guang Liao
When not trying out the latest beauty and wellness trends, Evelyn is likely enjoying a perfectly balanced negroni or exploring some of Hong Kong's best new places to eat and drink. At Lifestyle Asia she covers everything from the biggest events in town to interviews with Hong Kong specialists, with topics spanning art, food and drink, health, tech, and travel.
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How to Turn Instagram Followers into Customers on Autopilot for Just $5 a Day
December 28, 2019 Seadreamer 0 Comments
Looking for an easy way to grow and profit from your Instagram following? Ads Expert Amanda Bond shows you how to create an affordable ad sequence that automagically guides every person who interacts with your Instagram account into becoming a customer.
She also reveals the organic Instagram growth tactic you need to make the most of your new Instagram ads campaign.
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— Download the Engagement Spreadsheet: https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Instagram-Engagement-Analysis.xlsx
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January 13, 2020 Seadreamer 0
Full Day In The Life #2 – Getting Months Worth Of Content In One Day
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Michael Layton
License: CBRE# 01342880
Listed by: nook real estate
Avenida Alamitos
Indio, CA92201
4 beds3 full baths2476 sqft
Triple Garage Pool 4 Bedroom
Great new Price...Three Car Garage - Gated Community - Pool & Spa - 4 Bedroom! Almost 2,500 square feet of Desert Perfection. If you want it all at a great price this home has it!
Lot: 0.20acresYear built: 2003
Your desert dreams will come true in this house that encompasses everything that makes living here so special. Located in the gated community of Las Brisas North which is on the 48th Avenue Corrider from La Quinta thru Indio. Built by Century Homes. Las Brisas North is an all ages community.
Contemporary Mediterranean style meets classy desert design. This popular floor plan maximizes your privacy, living space and comfort with its well thought out flow. The massive great room features a wall of cabinetry and a fireplace. Ceiling fans and window coverings compliment almost every room.
From a large eat in Kitchen to a private "casita" with its' own bath to the inviting pool and spa. The Master suite has all the amenities from Direct Spa access to a spa sized tub and shower plus a grand dual entry walk in closet.
Tile floors in the kitchen and hallways, vaulted ceilings entry hall and plenty of storage. A three car garage gives you plenty of space to store your other toys from Golf carts to power boats.Speaking of that there is a pad already poured to the gate that would allow you to store one of these items next to the garage i you needed. There simply is nothing that wasn't thought of in this home.
Well located the community of Las Brisas North is just off of 48th Ave. Low HOA fee of just $65 a month covers the gate common area maintenance and street sweeping twice a month. In Indio - City Of Festivals. In fact this home is less than a mile from the Polo Grounds which is home to two major music festivals every year, StageCoach - which is country Music and Coachella Fest which is Rock and Alternative music. Just over a mile in the other Direction fromt his home you will find La Quinta and all the great shopping and Dining opportunities there. From Costco and Home Depot to Chipotle, Starbucks and Henrys' Market there is nothing you can't find there.
Start your Desert Life in the perfect home.
About the Neighborhood
Indio California was incorporated in 1930 and is the oldest and largest city in the Coachella Valley. The current population is over 80,000 residents. The City began life as a railroad town, with the Southern Pacific Railroad Depot. Golf has always been a part of that history with records showing the second Golf Course built in the city about 1947 – now know as Indian Palms Country Club.
Agriculture played a big part in the history of the city and the Date was the king of it all. For many years the city was called the Date Capital of the United States and since the 1940’s has played host to the National Date Festival. In modern times during Desert Storm in the 1990’s millions of pounds of Indio Dates were airlifted to the Middle east to feed the refugees from the conflict there.
Today Indio is a diverse community with a strong commercial segment, the Fair Grounds, golf resorts, planned developments, condos, a major hospital and the County Court systems within city limits.
Indio plays host to two of the fastest growing music festivals in the country Coachella Fest and Stagecoach Festival as well as Art shows, the Tamale Festival and the National Date festival.
Some of the Indio advantages include lower business costs and a higher quality of life, low-cost utilities, quality public services, State Enterprise Zone tax benefits, business-friendly government and location, location, location.
Indio is also home to the Coachella Valley History Museum
The museum campus contains the Smiley-Tyler House, a 1926 adobe home which houses the main exhibits, the historic 1909 Schoolhouse, and the soon to be opened Date Museum. Also, the spacious grounds hold a variety of gardens, including a Memorial Date Garden, a Japanese Garden, and the oldest Cork Oak tree in the Coachella Valley. Other highlights include our Submarine house, a Blacksmith shop, and the archives for the Historical Society.
The museum is located at 82-616 Miles Avenue, Indio, CA 92201, near Old Town Indio.
Quick Link To City of Indio Contacts
Email to friends and family
[email protected]https://listings.realbird.com/tour/B8B2F5D8/280211/1-3/virtual-tourB8B2F5D8280211
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Matt DeRienzo
The Tao of Steve Buttry
Five years later, lasting lessons from the Ben Franklin Project
A new problem in local journalism: Tracking its decline
Daily newspapers should follow The New Republic and examine own record on race
Proud of what we made as I leave Digital First Media
Journalism and 20 years of leaving my comfort zone
Patch ignored early advice about one journalist-per-town model
Overcoming burnout on the road to ‘digital first’
Is linking a ‘keystone habit’ that can convert newsrooms to ‘open journalism?’
A new kind of newspaper severance: Help laid-off journalists be entrepreneurs and partners
Bloggers teach community inside newly opened newspaper building
Why our small-town daily is adding a full-time curator
Journalism School of the Future: Where You Start On the Job and Never Graduate
Washington Post shows it values accuracy, audience engagement in step away from ‘fortress journalism’
Is ‘the editorial board meeting’ defunct in a truly open newsroom?
Author: mattderienzo
mattderienzo http://mattderienzo.com Matt DeRienzo has worked for more than 20 years as a reporter, editor, publisher and corporate editorial director and has been recognized nationally for leading newsroom innovation. He teaches journalism at Quinnipiac University, writes a monthly column for Editor & Publisher magazine, and serves as interim executive director of LION Publishers, a national network of local independent online news site publishers. Previously, he served as group editor of Digital First Media's publications in Connecticut, including the New Haven Register, Middletown Press, Register Citizen and Connecticut Magazine, and Northeast regional editor for Digital First Media. He also served as publisher of The Register Citizen, Middletown Press and a group of weeklies in Northwest Connecticut, and before that was corporate director of news for small dailies and non-daily publications for the former Journal Register Company. In early 2011, The Register Citizen was named one of Editor & Publisher magazine's "10 Newspapers That Do It Right," and DeRienzo was named to its annual "25 Under 35" list of leaders in the newspaper industry. In the fall of 2011, The Register Citizen was awarded the Associated Press Managing Editors Innovator of the Year Award in recognition of The Register Citizen Newsroom Cafe, an "open newsroom" launched in Torrington, Connecticut, in December 2010. He led a team of more than 100 journalists in covering the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in late 2012 and 2013, and has been honored for his editorial writing and leadership of public service and investigative reporting. In 2014, his efforts at the New Haven Register were recognized with the APME's and ASNE's Robert C. McGruder Award for Leadership in Newsroom Diversity. DeRienzo is a former longtime board member of the United Way of Northwest Connecticut, and served as co-chairman of the United Way's annual fundraising campaign in 2009 and again in 2011. In 2011, he received the organization's Lifetime Achievement Award.
March 9, 2012 mattderienzo 2 Comments
“We will be and are burning people out.”
That quote from John Paton led the final paragraph of a Jan. 15 Los Angeles Times profile on his “digital first, print last” transformation of Journal Register Company and Media News Group.
My finger reached out and pointed to that part of my laptop screen when I saw it. “This. … This!” This is important. It won’t keep us from getting where Paton is leading us. But it has slowed us down, no doubt.
When asked whether journalism would suffer as newsrooms juggle Twitter, video, blogging and other digital tools, Paton said he’s afraid it might in the short-term, “not because of (digital) tools,” but because of burnout.
Burnout, you say? Didn’t newsrooms invent burnout?
Actually, Journal Register Company took it to another level in the pre-John Paton days. After years of cost cutting and bankruptcy, the theme song of our newsrooms could have been a cross between something like this:
Then Paton came along and laid out this urgent plan to completely change the workflow of newsrooms, which required we learn a whole bunch of new tools, a whole new skill set. Even longtime top editors, even the most curmudgeonly members of our city desk or sports department, would have to learn and change.
And we’d have to do it while continuing to get a print edition out the door and satisfying the expectations of our print readers.
Paton described it at the time as “trying to change the tires on a moving car while driving down the highway.”
Remarkably, he sold tired and cynical editors on that message. They went from burned out to enthused to rally behind a vision for preserving and reinvesting in local journalism. Paton’s playbook is a great guide, actually, for companies who are dealing with their own digital first burnout questions.
But two years into the JRC turnaround, we’re dealing with a different and perhaps more critical stage of burnout.
If folks who’ve bought in to “digital first” become overwhelmed or discouraged, the danger is that they’ll slip into a going-through-the-motions daze, holding us back from the next stage of real cultural change in the newsroom. As one editor said, “I just don’t feel like I’m doing any one thing well. I don’t even know where to start sometimes.”
They bought into Paton’s message because there was a clear strategy, communicated well and executed with transparency. He has treated them with respect, focused on the important stuff, provided the tools needed to get the job done and empowered them to try new things.
Preserving those conditions as the company grows in size and advances to the next stage of “digital first” will keep them buying in. But to keep them from burning out, we’re at a juncture in which top editors must step back, prioritize and recognize human limitations, starting with themselves. That means a ban on the words “do more with less.” It means deciding NOT to do things that are less important or to at least place a lot less focus on them.
If we believe producing quality journalism and connecting it with as wide and engaged an audience as possible is our number one goal, let’s learn about and use every tool possible that will help us do that. But if we’re doing things that don’t support that goal, we have to stop doing them. And we have to stand up to our own publishers, our own staffs, and our own sense of tradition, to draw that line.
Respect for journalism and journalists
Paton got JRC editors’ attention literally on day one by inviting them to a seat at the adults’ table. When he gathered publishers to a meeting near JRC headquarters the day after he started as CEO, he surprised both by inviting editors, too.
He said things like “quality journalism is our business model,” and, with raised voice, that we would never let advertisers dictate or compromise newsroom decisions under his watch.
Treating journalism and journalists with respect is a great weapon against burnout.
Treating someone with respect means listening to them – really listening – and it didn’t take Paton long to hear about how much lack of investment in basic hardware was holding newsrooms back, especially as they peered into the digital first future from around their Windows 98 PC and tube monitor.
Paton launched an “evergreen” program that replaces computers at least every three years. He backed up his emphasis on video by giving every reporter in the company a Flip camera. And he backed up his call for top editors to lead by example in learning new tools by sending each of them a smart phone and iPad.
Providing proper tools to do the job is a great weapon against burnout.
Empowerment and Experimentation
Paton used two projects in his first year as CEO to give newsrooms a sense of confidence and empowerment when it comes to the world of digital journalism.
The Ben Franklin Project involved publishing the print edition and website of every JRC daily newspaper for a single day using only free, open source, web-based tools.
By proving we could do it without them, it enabled Paton to win major savings from software vendors, savings that helped fund the aforementioned hardware upgrades.
But the real genius of Ben Franklin was that it forced newsrooms to behave like startups. By necessity, they were turned on to a whole world of online storytelling tools. And editors who’d rarely shared resources or knowledge naturally reached out to each other without prompting to compare notes and share discoveries.
Paton followed Ben Franklin with the JRC Idea Lab, which freed up 15 employees to spend 25 percent of their week to experiment, plus a monthly stipend, smart phone, Netbook and iPad.
The Idea Lab had direct benefit to the newsrooms where members were assigned. They saw through ideas and projects that would otherwise never have materialized from the daily grind.
But it sent a broader message to newsrooms across the company. It’s OK to experiment. It’s good to experiment. And experimenting means failed experiments. And that’s OK, too. It’s part of the process.
Empowering staff to try new things and fail is a great weapon against burnout.
One foot in digital, one foot in print
So here we are, two years in, and we’ve improved our journalism. Digital audience and digital revenue have grown tremendously. And just over the horizon we catch glimpses of Paton’s “crossover” point where digital growth exceeds print losses and local journalism is saved.
But there’s a lot of truth to Paton’s analogy of changing the tires on a moving car. It has felt like that at times. Hey, at least he warned us!
JRC is a company of small newsrooms – dailies and weeklies where top editors are laying out pages for the print edition after a day of live blogging, tweeting and editing video, and motivating the team in between.
It’s amazing how much they’ve willingly placed on their shoulders over the past few years.
We’re at a stage when some key remaining pieces (a new, integrated CMS, for example, and the Thunderdome project that will provide print pagination and national news coverage) are coming soon, but not here yet.
Rather than complain about the difficulty of jumping into digital first with both feet when they still have one foot in print, they’re finding ways. They’re masochists. Or they really believe in what John Paton is saying. Probably both.
You can keep that up for only so long, though, before burnout endangers the mission.
And if a local editor is attempting to put the whole thing on his or her back, chances are they are putting off some difficult but inevitable decisions.
What’s not part of the mission? Why are we still doing it?
Is the newsroom still organized around print or the premise of a larger staff than exists today? How should job descriptions change?
Are you working more hours, juggling more stuff and obtaining more gray hairs to avoid answering these questions?
Old way or new way, staff of 50 or staff of 25, every day you arrive at work and make decisions about what you are not going to cover and not going to get to.
If learning new tools is important, if dedicated training time is what it will take to get there, you have to decide (for you, or for one of your employees, or both) to do one less thing that day.
If using a new tool improves the quality of your journalism and/or helps you connect that journalism to a wider audience, but takes longer than the old way, you have to decide to drop something that’s less important.
The first step to overcoming burnout is knowing that it’s OK to make those decisions.
If they came easily, it would be much smoother sailing in my own newsrooms right now, and I wouldn’t be thinking so much about whether my staff is burning out. But I do think it’s the conversation we need to have.
Elaine Clisham was shaking her head at the latest dust-up over whether media organizations should link to other news outlets and sources of information in their reporting on the web.
On Twitter recently, Mathew Ingram and others again debated media organizations' failure to link to other sources.
Clisham said that newspaper industry leaders such as her former American Press Institute colleague Steve Buttry had been preaching the importance of linking for years.
“The fact we’re still talking about this is exactly the problem!” she wrote on Twitter in response to a discussion among MG Siegler, Mathew Ingram, Charles Arthur and Caitlin Fitzsimmons that was sparked by Siegler’s scoop of the Wall Street Journal on a story, and the Journal’s subsequent refusal to link to his original story when they followed up on the news with independent confirmation.
But the fact is, the newspaper industry wasn’t listening to Buttry. Linking is still a foreign concept if you are still writing the same story you used to write for print, except that it’s also published on the web. And linking does not come easily with content management systems built for print editions.
(Full disclosure: Buttry is now community engagement and social media director for the company I work for, Digital First Media/Journal Register Company, which means we, at least, have to listen to him).
Buttry makes the case far better than I could in a recent blog post referencing the Siegler-Wall Street Journal spat, “4 reasons why linking is good journalism; 2 reasons why linking is good business.” See also this 2010 Jonathan Stray post he references. And Ingram’s recap, “Is linking just polite, or is it a core value of journalism?”
But I wonder if the practice of linking – or reporters’ and editors’ failure to do so – could be far more significant than we realize in the transition to digital journalism.
In his new book, “The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do In Life and Business,” New York Times reporter Charles Duhigg writes about “keystone habits” that have defined or transformed both corporate cultures and individuals’ lives.
He tells the story of how Paul O’Neill shocked investors when he first took over as CEO of Alcoa by saying nothing about profits, but instead telling executives that the company’s number one goal would be to improve worker safety.
“I knew I had to transform Alcoa,” O’Neill told me. “But you can’t order people to change. That’s not how the brain works. So I decided I was going to start by focusing on one thing. If I could start disrupting the habits around one thing, it would spread throughout the entire company.”
O’Neill’s approach at Alcoa led to record profits. The focus on worker safety prompted a cultural change that instituted a more disciplined and conscientious approach to all aspects of the business.
O’Neill’s success at Alcoa is just one example of a keystone habit, a pattern that has the power to start a chain reaction, changing other habits as it moves through an organization. Keystone habits, I found in writing my book, can influence how people work, eat, play, live, spend, and communicate.
What could be a bigger “keystone habit” of journalism that is part of the open and networked web than linking?
And what could be a bigger “keystone habit” of just plain and basic good journalism than what Buttry calls out as “honesty, transparency, attribution and context?”
We are teaching reporters and editors to link out as part of our Digital Ninja School newsroom training experiment. And a new content management system built by Saxotech that we are rolling out across Journal Register Company combines print and digital and incorporates the ability to link at every step in the process.
But I wonder if it should be moving closer to the top of our list. Maybe linking is the “keystone habit” that could be the lynchpin to creating newsrooms that are truly “digital first.”
UPDATE: Alex Howard had this to say on Twitter about my last sentence:
@mathewi Agree, tho @mattderienzo should drop “maybe” from the last sentence. The Web is made of links. You’re not “digital 1st” without ’em
— Alex Howard (@digiphile) March 3, 2012
I agree we aren’t “digital first” without linking. The “maybe” part is wondering if this one key aspect of digital first is a behavior that, if embraced by all, could become the catalyst for bigger change.
October 14, 2011 mattderienzo Leave a comment
As I was packing for a trip north to speak at the Maine Press Association convention this weekend about our Newsroom Cafe project in Connecticut, this story came across my Twitter feed this morning.
The Portland Press Herald, my hometown daily, is laying off 38 employees and eliminating 23 additional jobs through buyouts, with the “majority” coming from the newsroom. I’m guessing that’s going to have a severe effect on the mood at this conference.
The size of this layoff is dramatic for a paper its size – (Portland’s newsroom has already been winnowed significantly during a rocky ownership change from the Seattle Times to a group of investors). And the Portland newsroom is one full of veteran, longtime journalists. We’re not talking about layoffs of just-out-of-college J-school grads.
This is huge. And it’s a good opportunity for the industry as a whole to stop and reflect on how we do this.
I’m not questioning the need for these cuts. I wouldn’t anyway without knowing the financial circumstances the Press Herald is facing, but as a community daily newspaper publisher myself I know how difficult of a print advertising environment they must be facing.
But what if a newspaper such as the Press Herald engaged the journalists affected by these cuts in an entrepreneurial brainstorming session on the news and information gaps that exist in Maine?
What if they – in a formal process – helped them use their severance checks as seed money for new, independent journalism enterprises?
There are niches and opportunities out there better filled by the start-up culture this would create than the legacy media brand.
It’s bound to happen with a layoff like this anyway. Check out Connecticut, where former legacy media journalists have launched enterprises such as CT Watchdog, CT Mirror and CT News Junkie.
So why not help set them up as “competitors” that could really function as independent partners to the Press Herald? Use your legacy base to aggregate and curate the work of these new efforts. Help sustain them – and your own operation – by taking on part or all of their advertising sales for them.
If the Press Herald doesn’t do that, the Bangor Daily News should, or one of the Portland TV stations.
The ideas here are straight from the preachings of Jeff Jarvis – and there are more and more resources these days for stoking entrepreneurial journalism, including Jeff’s one program for that at CUNY.
Portland – or the next legacy media company to lay off journalists – should reach out for help and pursue an approach like this. It will be good for journalism, good for your community and may be your only chance at spinning a cutback into growth for your brand.
April 29, 2011 mattderienzo 2 Comments
Fifty community members showed up for a local blogger's presentation on Irish genealogy at the Troy Record.
What if a newspaper could unlock brand new areas of content and news coverage via citizen journalism, use this to connect with audience members yearning for information on these niche topics, and become a virtual and physical center of community information and discourse in the process?
Well, take a look at what’s happening at the Troy (N.Y.) Record under the leadership of Editor Lisa Robert Lewis and newsroom digital specialist Tom Caprood.
Over the past year, the newspaper has recruited 50 local bloggers to be part of its Community Media Lab. (The Troy Record is a Journal Register Company paper, and it’s part of a company-wide effort that has led to a network of more than 1,000 local blogging partners.) According to Caprood, 90 percent of them are blogging for the first time due to the newsroom’s outreach and training of citizen journalists.
Others had “hobby blogs” with small audiences. After partnering with the Troy Record, which links to their posts from its website and promotes their work, they saw their traffic explode. One blogger said the big bump in traffic that the newspaper brought him and interaction from new readers moved his blog from off the radar screen to near the top of Google searches on the topic he is writing about.
Recognizing the gold mine of interesting content being produced by these new bloggers, and the newspaper office’s great location in the heart of downtown, Lewis, Caprood and Troy Record Publisher James Murphy started working on plans for a physical space showcasing these new community connections.
The Troy Record renovated an old circulation office into a community room with free public wifi and a flat-screen monitor for presentations.
They turned an old circulation department office on the first floor of the Troy Record building into a community meeting room. And in early March, they scheduled their first public workshop. A local CPA who blogs about tax advice and is a member of the Community Media Lab put together a program on tax tips ahead of the April 15 Tax Day crush.
“Not one person came,” said Caprood. “That was our first learning experience.”
The newsroom adapted quickly, spreading word about their next event, a program on Irish genealogy presented by another Community Media Lab blogger, by reaching out to local organizations, posting it on message boards and publishing a story about it in the print and online editions of the Troy Record.
“We went from having zero to having 50 people show up two days later,” Caprood said. The room was packed to the point where there was just enough room for emergency exits.
Newsroom staff scrambled to take down names and email addresses of community members in attendance, seeing the opportunity to build something for the future.
The newspaper quickly scheduled a second night with the Irish history blogger, and another 50 people showed up, including a big contingent of new faces.
“Then we had a bass fishing forum,” Caprood said. Again, it was hosted by a Community Media Lab blogger. He shared secrets about the best local fishing spots, and even brought lures and equipment to show off.
A Community Media Lab blogger shared tips and secrets on the best local fishing spots at a workshop hosted by the Troy Record earlier this month.
Twenty-five people showed up this time. “Afterwards, people stuck around for half an hour looking at his lures and asking questions,” Caprood said.
A workshop on social media followed, with 20 community members attending in addition to Troy Record staff themselves, eager to learn more as they integrated Twitter and Facebook into their news reporting.
Last night, the newspaper’s longtime horse racing columnist presented a workshop on the ins and outs of handicapping and the unique features of the nearby Saratoga racetrack as compared to other tracks around the country.
Each workshop the Troy Record hosts is live-streamed on TroyRecord.Com, and Caprood is working on a landing page that will archive replays of each session for future viewing. He has also run live chats during the workshops to field questions and comments from people watching at home or from afar.
The newspaper has also opened the space up for use by community groups, including a recent work session by an organization attempting to promote regional tourism. Free public wifi has been added to the space, and a large flat-screen monitor installed for presentations.
“The end game right now is to get people down here into the building,” Caprood said. “I think the perception among community members has been that it’s not OK to just walk into our building and engage with a reporter or editor. We’re trying to get rid of that mindset.”
Caprood said there is opportunity all around for the newspaper to become more involved as a facilitator of community engagement and problem-solving.
In May, the Troy Record will host a forum with the heads of local theater companies, facilitated by a Community Media Lab blogger who writes about the arts.
The newspaper is planning to open up its first floor on city Election Day for community members who want to watch the votes be tallied and participate in live-streamed commentary and reaction.
Tom Caprood is the Troy Record newsroom's digital specialist.
Caprood said the newspaper wants to be a resource for the growing number of neighborhood-specific organizations who are attempting to revitalize Troy.
Tonight is the monthly “Troy Night Out,” where businesses stay open late and art exhibits are hosted throughout the downtown.
And in a symbol of literally being more “open” than ever before, the newspaper is participating for the first time in the four-year history of the event. It will host a lecture and exhibit of photos taken in the aftermath of 9/11 by former Gov. George Pataki’s official photographer.
Tomorrow, the Troy Record newsroom is crowdsourcing an effort to document a citywide Earth Day cleanup. Neighborhood leaders are sending in “before and after” pictures and videos that will be mapped out on TroyRecord.Com as a display of what a community working together can accomplish in one day.
Murphy said that the good will these kind of outreach projects and creativity have generated for the paper has been significant.
“When I first got here as publisher, people asked about the newspaper like they were talking about a funeral because of our company’s recent bankruptcy and cutbacks over the years,” Murphy said. “Now it’s nothing but positive feedback for what we are doing for the community. The buzz has been terrific and it builds every month, and the result has been significantly larger audience for both our digital and print products.”
“People are noticing,” Caprood said.
Other newspapers attempting to figure out “community engagement” should take notice, too.
We’re adding a full-time curator position at The Register Citizen.
Jenny Golfin, whose duties have included morning shift web updating, social media management and reporting, will be devoted full-time to this new role. Her mission will be to provide our audience with links to breaking and comprehensive news and information relevant to their community and interests. Putting the reader first, she’ll link out to blogs, Twitter feeds, YouTube videos and even the work of our longest-standing “traditional” competitors, not just to content produced by our staff writers at The Register Citizen, or by sister Journal Register Company publications in Connecticut.
Why does a local paper our size need, and how does it justify, having a full-time curator on staff?
Well, 10 years ago, it was us, a competing daily newspaper a few towns to our south, a local radio station with a morning news report and the TV stations from Hartford and New Haven.
Scarcity of news sources. High demand for information. Let the good times roll.
Today, our audience turns to thousands of niche websites, blogs and online hyperlocal startups devoted to a single town, neighborhood or interest. Patch.com is arriving on the scene as big media (AOL)’s attempt to scale hyperlocal across a national footprint. The audience itself is now the biggest source of local information out there, equipped with mobile smart phones, free WordPress and Blogger accounts and YouTube logins.
And audience members’ connections to each other via Facebook, Twitter and other social media trump connections, if there are any, between audience member and legacy media brand.
In Torrington, we’ve established a Community Media Lab, partnering with local bloggers and niche online sites. Similar efforts across our sister publications have established a network of more than 1,000 citizen blogging partners across Journal Register Company.
We have computer workstations loaded with open-source blogging and video editing software in our open newsroom for citizen journalists and bloggers to use. We offer free classes and workshops in our newsroom classroom, including “Blogging 101” and how-to’s on social media, video production and journalism basics.
In December, we established a community engagement editor position, in part, to partner with and train bloggers and citizen journalists.
The curator position will help us share that work with our audience, and make sense of the exploding range of information sources out there. Jenny’s first assignment was to study the work of Andy Carvin, the NPR staffer who has provided some of the best coverage of the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya over the past few months in a very non-traditional way. Carvin has used his Twitter feed to curate the Tweets, Facebook posts, YouTube videos and blog posts of eyewitnesses in real time.
She’ll use tools such as lists and hashtags on Twitter and Google Reader and Google Alerts to find and present content relevant to Northwest Connecticut communities and to niche interests including moms from Litchfield County, local and statewide politics and local arts and entertainment.
Another goal of our new curator position will be to make sure that our original content contains links out to referenced and additional information. Failing to link remains a big failure of traditional print media, and we aim to fix it on our sites.
February 20, 2011 mattderienzo 4 Comments
In a great #wjchat hosted by Jay Rosen Wednesday night on “radicalism in the newsroom,” this question was posed:
“Are J-schools today part of the problem or solution? How should they change? Should something replace them?”
I’ve gotten a lot of questions about my answer, envisioning journalism schools that are “integrated into newsrooms, creating (a) continuous learning environment for the student and the experienced.”
In the old days, journalism schools prepared students “to be published” by news organizations that had authority because they owned printing presses, broadcast licenses and radio towers.
Today, everyone can be a publisher, and news organizations can range from a single-person kitchen table blogger to a crowdsourced network of otherwise disconnected and “unorganized” people coming together around a common purpose.
Every one of today’s journalism students has been published, and is in effect a publisher themselves, before attending a single day of class. That’s a strong argument for an “on-the-job learning” model similar to what is happening at the University of Missouri.
The same “everyone’s a publisher” reality argues for both newsrooms and journalism schools opening their doors to the community to be part of what Journal Register Company CEO John Paton is fond of calling “the new news ecology.”
Newsrooms should have a relationship with students pursuing journalism as a professional career. But they should also be teaching, and learning from, the soccer mom who blogs about every twist in debate over her school district’s new curriculum policy, the retired coach who maintains the world’s best statistical history of girls’ field hockey in Northwest Connecticut, the local United Way director who is blogging about the people behind the 24 nonprofits the group raises money for, and the resident who gets up every morning to test water quality in a local river and posts results on his website advocating for regional watershed protection.
We’re taking steps toward this at The Register Citizen Newsroom Cafe, launching one of Journal Register Company’s Community Media Labs for bloggers and citizen journalists, but also building a classroom right into the newsroom and offering free workshops for citizens, bloggers and staff.
But most important in relation to the most pressing issue for traditional media, newsrooms could use a journalism school environment themselves right now. As an industry, John Paton has said, “we’re no good” at migrating to a digital model. We have a lot of learning to do, at every level of our organizations.
So here’s my idea:
A traditional news organization should start – or merge with – a journalism school. Just a guess, but starting over would probably be easier from a pure P&L standpoint.
The Anytown News and Journalism School would employ professional reporters and editors, and journalism professors, and many who are doing both simultaneously or alternately.
They would accept students/apprentices into a formal work/study program. Instead of paying tuition, maybe these students would get paid to learn, and work.
It would be funded by creating an organization whose “student projects” are money-making, entrepreneurial journalism platforms.
But importantly (and different from any model I’ve heard about), every single full professional (or “journeyman” or “master” if you want to carry the traditional apprentice methodology of other trades) staff member would be required to continue their education, formally, until they resign or retire.
Student apprentices would graduate with a bachelor’s degree and a new title and pay grade. And then move into the next phase of their education and professional career.
This would provide a better journalism school experience, in my opinion, while opening the profession to a wider and more diverse population by making it affordable (we pay you instead of you paying tuition!). And it would create the world’s best formal staff training program, something we’d all be thinking about if we paid attention to the wisdom of Steve Buttry.
And why limit it to the newsroom?
Lord knows traditional media needs a new model for ad revenue. Why not bring business school professors, and students, and the community, and advertisers, into your finance and advertising departments, or mash up the whole thing a la Jeff Jarvis’ entrepreneurial journalism program?
February 8, 2011 mattderienzo 1 Comment
The Washington Post made a huge statement yesterday about the accuracy of its reporting, engaging with its audience and building a stronger relationship of trust with its readers.
A link to this page – asking readers and sources to bring errors to editors’ attention – now appears on every online story the paper publishes.
We launched something similar – a “Fact Check” box on every story page on RegisterCitizen.Com – earlier this year.
The Washington Post goes much further, and hits all the right notes in seeking to engage with and learn from its audience. In addition to asking for a simple report on mistakes in a story, its form also asks, “What do we need to know to improve future stories on this topic?” It suggests that readers suggest “additional people to speak with, areas to explore, etc.”
The Washington Post corrections/fact check page even has a “yes/no” opt-in to the question, “Would you be willing to help with other stories?”, suggesting that the paper is building a foundation for future crowdsourcing efforts, perhaps by specific topic.
This is a huge symbolic shift, I hope, away from the “fortress journalism” that traditional media has clung to even as the web and social media have completely changed the audience dynamic out from under them.
And the fact that it comes from a Top 5 major American newspaper that has been criticized strongly for allowing “the print guys” to win must offer a glimmer of hope to new media thought leaders such as Jay Rosen, Craig Silverman and Craig Newmark, who have been beating the drum on fact checking and corrections for some time.
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Kevin M Barrett, MD
Associate Professor, Jacksonville, FL, Neurology
EmailBarrett.Kevin@mayo.edu
Intensive vs Standard Treatment of Hyperglycemia and Functional Outcome in Patients with Acute Ischemic Stroke: The SHINE Randomized Clinical Trial
Johnston, K. C., Bruno, A., Pauls, Q., Hall, C. E., Barrett, K. M., Barsan, W., Fansler, A., Van De Bruinhorst, K., Janis, S. & Durkalski-Mauldin, V. L., Jul 23 2019, In : JAMA - Journal of the American Medical Association. 322, 4, p. 326-335 10 p.
Pharmacotherapy for Patients With Atrial Fibrillation and Cerebral Microbleeds
Badi, M. K., Vilanilam, G. K., Gupta, V., Barrett, K. M., Lesser, E. R., Cochuyt, J. J., Hodge, D. O., Brott, T. G. & Meschia, J. F., Jan 1 2019, In : Journal of Stroke and Cerebrovascular Diseases.
Prevalence of Previously Undiagnosed Abdominal Aortic Aneurysms in Patients with Intracranial Aneurysms: From the Brain and Aortic Aneurysms Study (BAAS)
Erben, Y., Barrett, K. M., Freeman, W. D., Lin, M., Tawk, R., Ball, C. T., Melton, V. S., Thuro, L. M., Hakaim, A. G., Brott, T. G. & Meschia, J. F., Jan 1 2019, (Accepted/In press) In : Neurocritical care.
Intracranial Aneurysm
Subarachnoid Hemorrhage
Ruptured Aneurysm
Severity of White Matter Hyperintensities and Effects on All-Cause Mortality in the Mayo Clinic Florida Familial Cerebrovascular Diseases Registry
Hasan, T. F., Barrett, K. M., Brott, T. G., Badi, M. K., Lesser, E. R., Hodge, D. O. & Meschia, J. F., Mar 1 2019, In : Mayo Clinic proceedings. 94, 3, p. 408-416 9 p.
Comparison of Stroke Outcomes of Hub and Spoke Hospital Treated Patients in Mayo Clinic Telestroke Program
Demaerschalk, B. M., Boyd, E. L., Barrett, K. M., Gamble, D. M., Sonchik, S., Comer, M. M., Wieser, J., Hentz, J. G., Fitz-Patrick, D. & Chang, Y. H. H., Jan 1 2018, (Accepted/In press) In : Journal of Stroke and Cerebrovascular Diseases.
Ambulance-based assessment of NIH Stroke Scale with telemedicine: A feasibility pilot study
Barrett, K. M., Pizzi, M. A., Kesari, V., TerKonda, S. P., Mauricio, E. A., Silvers, S. M., Habash, R., Brown, B. L., Tawk, R. G., Meschia, J. F., Wharen, R. & Freeman, W. D., 2017, In : Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare. 23, 4, p. 476-483 8 p.
Cardioembolic Stroke
O'Carroll, C. B. & Barrett, K. M., Feb 1 2017, In : CONTINUUM Lifelong Learning in Neurology. 23, 1, p. 111-132 22 p.
Carotid revascularization and medical management for asymptomatic carotid stenosis: Protocol of the CREST-2 clinical trials
Howard, V. J., Meschia, J. F., Lal, B. K., Turan, T. N., Roubin, G. S., Brown, R. D. J., Voeks, J. H., Barrett, K. M., Demaerschalk, B. M., Huston, J. III., Lazar, R. M., Moore, W. S., Wadley, V. G., Chaturvedi, S., Moy, C. S., Chimowitz, M., Howard, G. & Brott, T. G., Oct 1 2017, In : International Journal of Stroke. 12, 7, p. 770-778 9 p.
Carotid Stenosis
Carotid Endarterectomy
Factors Associated With Time to Site Activation, Randomization, and Enrollment Performance in a Stroke Prevention Trial
CREST-2 Investigators, Sep 1 2017, In : Stroke. 48, 9, p. 2511-2518 8 p.
Random Allocation
Patient Management Problem
Barrett, K. M., Feb 1 2017, In : Continuum (Minneapolis, Minn.). 23, 1 Cerebrovascular Disease, p. 288-292 5 p.
Patient Management Problem-Preferred Responses
Stroke Caused by Extracranial Disease
Barrett, K. M. & Brott, T. G., Feb 3 2017, In : Circulation Research. 120, 3, p. 496-501 6 p.
IV thrombolysis for acute ischemic stroke: Is there a paradigm shift on the horizon?
Barrett, K. M. & Gottesman, R. F., Jul 12 2016, In : Neurology. 87, 2, p. 132-133 2 p.
Temporal trends in safety of carotid endarterectomy in asymptomatic patients: Systematic review
Chaturvedi, S., Barrett, K. M., Brott, T. G., Munster, A. B., Franchini, A. J., Qureshi, M. I., Thapar, A. & Davies, A. H., Jan 19 2016, In : Neurology. 86, 3, p. 312-313 2 p.
An Acute Stroke Evaluation App: A Practice Improvement Project
Rubin, M. N., Fugate, J. E., Rabinstein, A., Flemming, K. & Barrett, K. M., 2015, In : The Neurohospitalist. 5, 2, p. 63-69 7 p.
Point-of-Care Systems
Cerebral microbleeds and tissue plasminogen activator
Barrett, K. M. & Spengos, K., Sep 15 2015, In : Neurology. 85, 11, p. 925-926 2 p.
Dissecting the Association Between Migraine and Stroke
Harriott, A. M. & Barrett, K. M., 2015, In : Current Neurology and Neuroscience Reports. 15, 3
Migraine Disorders
Cortical Spreading Depression
Migraine with Aura
Evidence-based teleneurology practice
Freeman, W. D., Barrett, K. M., Vatz, K. A. & Demaerschalk, B. M., Dec 11 2015, Evidence-Based Neurology: Management of Neurological Disorders: Second Edition. Wiley Blackwell, p. 319-324 6 p.
Mystery Case: A 21-year-old man with visual loss following marijuana use
Whitlock, J. B., Robinson, G. T., Whitlock, J. P., Dredla, B. & Barrett, K. M., May 26 2015, In : Neurology. 84, 21, p. e165-e169
Posterior Cerebral Artery Infarction
Pure Alexia
Marijuana Smoking
Corpus Callosum
Stroke: Advances in Medical Therapy and Acute Stroke Intervention
Barrett, K. M., Lal, B. K. & Meschia, J. F., Oct 17 2015, In : Current Cardiology Reports. 17, 10, 79.
Teleneurosonology: A novel application of transcranial and carotid ultrasound
Rubin, M. N., Barrett, K. M., Freeman, W. D., Lee Iannotti, J. K., Channer, D. D., Rabinstein, A. & Demaerschalk, B. M., Mar 1 2015, In : Journal of Stroke and Cerebrovascular Diseases. 24, 3, p. 562-565 4 p.
Doppler Duplex Ultrasonography
Doppler Transcranial Ultrasonography
The “Starfield” Pattern of Cerebral Fat Embolism From Bone Marrow Necrosis in Sickle Cell Crisis
Dhakal, L. P., Barrett, K. M., Freeman, W. D., Freeman, W. D., Bourgeois, K. & Freeman, W. D., 2015, In : The Neurohospitalist. 5, 2, p. 74-76 3 p.
Fat Embolism
Intracranial Embolism
Osteonecrosis
Erythrocyte Transfusion
TIA risk stratification: What an event was and why it happened are more important than a score
Coutts, S. B. & Barrett, K. M., Jul 28 2015, In : Neurology. 85, 4, p. 304-305 2 p.
What to do With Wake-Up Stroke
Rubin, M. N. & Barrett, K. M., 2015, In : The Neurohospitalist. 5, 3, p. 161-172 12 p.
Clinical reasoning: A 69-year-old man with leukocytosis and hemorrhagic brain lesions
Scott, K. M., Gardner, F. P., Eidelman, B. H., Rivera, C. E., Menke, D. M. & Barrett, K. M., Jul 1 2014, In : Neurology. 83, 1
Clinical Reasoning
Brain Lesion
Emerging subspecialties in neurology: Neuropalliative care
Robinson, M. & Barrett, K. M., May 27 2014, In : Neurology. 82, 21
Genetic stroke syndromes
Barrett, K. M. & Meschia, J. F., Apr 1 2014, In : Continuum (Minneapolis, Minn.). 20, 2 Cerebrovascular Disease, p. 399-411 13 p.
Inborn Genetic Diseases
Appendix: Practical Clinical Stroke Scales
Barrett, K. M. & Meschia, J. F., May 7 2013, Stroke. John Wiley and Sons, p. 153-158 6 p.
Clinical, anatomic, and procedural durability of carotid revascularization
Barrett, K. M., Ossi, R. G., Brott, T. G. & Meschia, J. F., Apr 2013, In : Journal of Stroke and Cerebrovascular Diseases. 22, 3, p. 218-226 9 p.
Perioperative Period
Phase III Clinical Trials
Barrett, K. M. & Meschia, J. F., May 7 2013, In : Unknown Journal.
Barrett, K. M. & Meschia, J. F., May 8 2013, Stroke. Wiley Blackwell, p. ix
Reperfusion therapy for acute ischemic stroke: How should we react to the third Interventional Management of Stroke (IMS III) trial?
Meschia, J. F., Barrett, K. M. & Brott, T. G., Jul 2013, In : Mayo Clinic Proceedings. 88, 7, p. 653-657 5 p.
Resolution of Acute Onset Hemichorea–Hemiballismus After Treatment With Intravenous Tissue Plasminogen Activator
Mccollum, D., Barrett, K. M., Silvers, S. & Dawson, S. B., 2013, In : The Neurohospitalist. 3, 3, p. 131-134 4 p.
Hyperkinesis
Thrombolytic Therapy
Barrett, K. M. & Meschia, J. F., May 8 2013, Wiley Blackwell. 164 p.
Barrett, K. M. & Meschia, J. F., May 7 2013, John Wiley and Sons.
Acute Loss of Bladder Control in a Stroke of the Frontal Cortex
Woessner, H., Vibhute, P. & Barrett, K. M., 2012, In : The Neurohospitalist. 2, 4, p. 129-131 3 p.
Bálint syndrome and visual allochiria in a patient with reversible cerebral vasoconstriction syndrome
Walsh, R. D., Floyd, J. P., Eidelman, B. H. & Barrett, K. M., Dec 2012, In : Journal of Neuro-Ophthalmology. 32, 4, p. 302-306 5 p.
Vasoconstriction
Infarction
Cerebral infarction in older age; Nature or (lack of) nurture?
Barrett, K. M. & Meschia, J. F., Oct 9 2012, In : Neurology. 79, 15, p. 1524-1525 2 p.
Future Neurohospitalist: Teleneurohospitalist
Freeman, W. D., Barrett, K. M., Vatz, K. A. & Demaerschalk, B. M., 2012, In : The Neurohospitalist. 2, 4, p. 132-143 12 p.
Multimodal CT to Differentiate Acute Ischemic Stroke From Stroke Mimics
Carrigan, W. V., Barrett, K. M., Freeman, W. D. & Avalon, N., 2012, In : The Neurohospitalist. 2, 2, p. 60-61 2 p.
Cerebrovascular disease: Ischemic
Barrett, K. M. & Brott, T. G., Jan 1 2011, Neurohospitalist Medicine. Cambridge University Press, p. 1-15 15 p.
Early stroke risk: Tissue is the issue
Barrett, K. M., Sep 27 2011, In : Neurology. 77, 13, p. 1214-1215 2 p.
Enhancing recovery after acute ischemic stroke with donepezil as an adjuvant therapy to standard medical care: Results of a phase iia clinical trial
Barrett, K. M., Brott, T. G., Brown, R. D. J., Carter, R. E., Geske, J. R., Graff Radford, N. R., McNeil, R. B. & Meschia, J. F., May 2011, In : Journal of Stroke and Cerebrovascular Diseases. 20, 3, p. 177-182 6 p.
Hospital-based management of acute ischemic stroke following intravenous thrombolysis
Ossi, R. G., Meschia, J. F. & Barrett, K. M., Apr 2011, In : Expert Review of Cardiovascular Therapy. 9, 4, p. 463-472 10 p.
Intracranial Hypertension
Brain Edema
Hypoxic-ischemic brain injury and prognosis after cardiac arrest
Chiota, N. A., Freeman, W. D. & Barrett, K. M., Oct 2011, In : CONTINUUM Lifelong Learning in Neurology. 17, 5, p. 1094-1118 25 p.
Induced Hypothermia
Intracranial hemorrhage following neuroendovascular procedures with abciximab is associated with high mortality: A multicenter series
Walsh, R. D., Barrett, K. M., Aguilar, M. I., Lanzino, G., Hanel, R. A., Miller, D. A., Chong, B. W. & Freeman, W. D., Aug 2011, In : Neurocritical Care. 15, 1, p. 85-95 11 p.
Glasgow Outcome Scale
Fibrinolytic Agents
Is Fellowship Training Necessary for Neurohospitalists?
Barrett, K. M. & Fowler, M. V., 2011, In : The Neurohospitalist. 1, 3, p. 125-127 3 p.
Neurologic manifestations of acute and chronic renal disease
Barrett, K. M., 2011, In : CONTINUUM Lifelong Learning in Neurology. 17, 1, p. 45-55 11 p.
Renal Replacement Therapy
Peripheral Nervous System
Acute ischemic stroke management: Medical management
Barrett, K. M. & Meschia, J. F., 2010, In : Seminars in Neurology. 30, 5, p. 461-468 8 p.
Neurologic Examination
Emerging subspecialties in neurology: Neurohospitalist
Barrett, K. M. & Freeman, W. D., Jan 2010, In : Neurology. 74, 2
Personnel Staffing and Scheduling
Contact Kevin M Barrett, MD
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Caution urged over rushed legislation following Letwin amendment
Home » Brexit » Caution urged over rushed legislation following Letwin amendment
Following the passing of the Letwin amendment at the weekend by MPs the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, appears set to try and have a meaningful vote on his renegotiated Brexit deal this week. Two major trade bodies have urged caution about rushing legislation.
NFU president, Minette Batters, said: “These developments will no doubt be deeply frustrating for many farmers, who are keen to move on from the current Brexit impasse. However, while it is crucial that our departure from the EU is an orderly one, the terms of our future relationship will have a lasting impact on the future of UK farming for decades to come.
“We have some significant concerns with the terms of this new agreement, and it seems sensible that Parliament will be able to scrutinise the details in the coming days before deciding whether to give its seal of approval.”
Ian Wright CBE, chief executive, Food and Drink Federation, said: “Everybody has had enough of the Brexit debate. It is, though, vital that we didn’t allow the fact that the nation is exhausted to mean we sleepwalk into mistakes that will haunt the UK economy for a generation. We welcome the Letwin amendment. The most urgent priority for the food and drink industry has been to prevent a no-deal exit from the EU on 31st October 2019. The Letwin amendment does that job.
“We welcome more time to scrutinise the new Brexit deal and the legislation designed to enact it. We must also make sure the implementation period is adequate to pass the necessary UK legislation and for businesses to fully adapt. It is important that all of the consequences – including the damaging loss of frictionless trade and regulatory divergence with the EU that the new deal heralds – are properly understood before MPs make their decision.”
Major beef processor opens for sustainability trials
Top retailer gives boost to Welsh Lamb in Japan
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Big Project ME
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Best Practice For Fleets Looking To Lower Costs And Improve Productivity – Panel Discussion
The Trends That Are Shaping The Truck And Fleet Industry – Panel Discussion | T&F Conference 2019
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Construction of Dubai’s Bluewaters ‘75% complete’
By Anirban Bagchi
Developer Meraas says 90% of buildings undergoing façade work at upcoming island destination ahead of handover starting early next year
Construction at the Bluewaters island destination off Dubai’s coast is 75% complete, with most structures having transitioned from structural work to the façade stage of the building process in preparation for handover starting in the first quarter of next year.
According to Meraas, master developer and owner of the project, more than 90% of the buildings at Bluewaters have undergone work on their facades, including all 10 apartment buildings and 17 townhouses. Bluewaters will also have over 200 retail and dining outlets in addition to leisure and entertainment and hospitality components, as well as a plaza – all of which are in advanced stages of construction, the developer said.
The island destination will be home to Ain Dubai, the tallest and largest observation wheel in the world.
Brian Schofield, vice president for projects, at Meraas, said: “The idea behind Bluewaters is to create a family-orientated neighbourhood where homebuyers can put down roots and feel a deep connection to the place they call home, which is why we’re committed to ensuring work on each of the island’s features continues moving forward simultaneously.
“This requires a great deal of coordination and in bringing the entire Bluewaters experience to life, we’ve engaged five main contractors and over 40 of the world’s leading consultant firms to ensure we are able to deliver a creative urban destination that meets the highest international standards of quality. At its peak, 16,500 employees and 25 cranes a day have worked on Bluewaters, with 64 million man-hours recorded and 12,000 direct jobs sustained over the last 12 months.”
According to a statement by Meraas, five major projects are underway simultaneously at Bluewaters, including Ain Dubai, a new landmark in Dubai that will reach heights in excess of 210m. The five projects include work on the mid-rise towers and townhouse; the boulevard, retail and dining, leisure and entertainment experiences; two hotels; and the infrastructure that connects the community to the city.
Bluewaters is connected by direct road access to Sheikh Zayed Road and also by a driverless Group Rapid Transport system with 25 autonomous vehicles ferrying 2,500 people an hour in each direction on the 4.5-minute journey between Bluewaters and the Dubai Metro. A 265-metre pedestrian bridge will also link the island to more lifestyle opportunities at The Beach, Meraas said.
Michelle Saywood, vice president of design at Meraas, said: “Meraas is passionate about urban environments like Bluewaters, where people can experience the city. This commitment has evolved and has seen new urban landscapes emerge that offer unique experiences for residents and visitors in Dubai. The vibrancy that we are injecting into destinations like Bluewaters has also become a benchmark for developments across the city.”
The residences at Bluewaters were released to the market starting earlier this month, after Core Savills were appointed by Meraas as exclusive sales agents for the homes at the project.
Manisha Dayaram, associate director – head of projects, at Core Savills, said: “From what we have seen in the market, we expect around 80% of the community that lives at Bluewaters to be homeowners who will be looking not just at how the residences are taking shape, but at the facilities, amenities, infrastructure, and services that will be available to them when they move in.”
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Michling Consultants
Archive (September 2019)
Why Apple Asks for Your Passcode or Password with a New Login (and Why It’s Safe)
If you’ve set up or restored an Apple device recently and have two-factor authentication enabled on your Apple ID, you may have seen a message during configuration that defies your understanding of how Apple maintains device privacy and account security.
The message reads something like, “Enter Mac Password. Enter the password you use to unlock the Mac ‘name here’. This password protects your Apple ID, saved passwords, and other data stored in iCloud. Your password is encrypted and cannot be read by Apple.” The prompt might instead ask for your iPhone or iPad passcode.
I had to take a photo of this unusual login screen, as it was during setup and screen capture wasn’t available.
Doesn’t this seem contradictory, confusing, and just plain wrong? Why would Apple ask for the password or passcode for one of your other devices? Could it be some sort of scam? What exactly is going on here?
I encountered this issue, as did Take Control publisher Joe Kissell, in preparing the iOS 13 and iPadOS 13 revision to my long-running networking and security book, Connect and Secure Your iPhone and iPad. (It has a new, shorter title in this release, and is already updated for iOS 13.1—check it out if you’re looking for more information about iOS networking, privacy, and security.)
While I had heard of this prompt happening once last year, I had never seen it myself. Now I’ve figured out what is going on by reviewing Apple’s documentation and deducing the missing pieces. The short answer is that this prompt is actually Apple working to protect your security, and the explanation is accurate. But it’s not sufficiently detailed—that would require screens of text—to explain what’s going on. Here’s the skinny.
iCloud Stores Two Kinds of Secured Data for You
All the data that’s synced between your devices via iCloud is encrypted while in transit (generally using HTTPS) and at rest on Apple’s servers. Some of it is available in decrypted form if you were to access it via iCloud.com. For that subset, Apple maintains the encryption keys that protect the data when it’s at rest, and it could turn over that data if forced to by law enforcement.
Apple discloses which data is stored with encryption keys it possesses. In very rare circumstances, someone who compromised Apple’s keys or server security could extract that iCloud.com-accessible information from a transmission or from iCloud. It’s extremely unlikely, but it’s not strictly impossible.
This data could also be at risk in a successful phishing attack. Phishing requires only that an attacker fools someone into thinking they are entering their credentials into a legitimate site that is, instead, a man-in-the-middle. There are many kinds of phishing attacks, one severe type of which involves obtaining fraudulently issued HTTPS certificates that can have all the trappings of a legitimate and secure site.
The attacker could then simply use your login name and password to initiate an attempt to log in to iCloud, even triggering Apple to send you an extra login token used for two-factor authentication, which, if you entered it on the phishing site, could be used by the attacker at iCloud.
Apple users have been phished, of course, although as far as I know, Apple has never suffered from a fraudulent certificate attack. Some visitors to Google sites were phished in this way on multiple occasions several years ago. Since then, certificate-issuing and -tracking procedures and the way browsers check for legitimately issued documents have substantially reduced but not eliminated that particular risk.
Because of phishing risks, Apple has chosen to protect some data that it views as highly secure or very private with end-to-end encryption that prevents Apple from knowing anything about the contents of the synced data. Apple doesn’t possess any of the keys required to decrypt this data passing through its servers. Instead, those keys reside only on individual iPhones, iPads, and Macs.
There’s a full list of end-to-end encrypted services at Apple’s iCloud security overview page, but they include iCloud Keychain, Screen Time information, Health data, Wi-Fi passwords, the People album in Photos, and the new Find Me service’s crowdsourced location information. There are also likely other bits of data that facilitate device-to-device interactions.
As a result, you cannot view these categories of data at iCloud.com, only using your devices. In essence, iCloud acts as a sync service with zero knowledge about what it’s transmitting. If Apple were asked to disclose this information by a government, it could only produce unreadable encrypted data, by design. (This approach is distinct from the way Apple stores even more sensitive data—credit-card numbers, passcodes, and fingerprint or face parameters—in the Secure Enclave of iPhones, iPads, and Macs with T2 chips. That data never even leaves the Secure Enclave, and much of it is stored in the chip already irreversibly transformed through one-way encryption.)
Apple’s iCloud syncing system relies on public-key cryptography, which uses linked pairs of keys: one public and one private. The public key can be shared freely and used by anyone who wants to encrypt material meant for the owner of the private key, who can then decrypt that data. For iCloud Keychain and similar sensitive data, Apple has your devices generate and maintain a set of public and private keys that enable interaction with the information synced across iCloud. The devices never reveal their private keys and have the public keys of all the other devices connected to an iCloud account.
The data protected in this way is stored as individual packages—for example, a URL, account name, and password as a single unit—and identified with random metadata that’s meaningless except to establish a unique ID for each data package. Devices in the user’s sync set, including newly enrolled hardware, sync by exchanging metadata information. Let’s say your iPhone is missing a Web site login you just created on your Mac. The Mac encrypts the login entry with the public key of the iPhone, which receives it via iCloud sync, and then decrypts it with its private key. This approach is both typical and sensible.
The hard part isn’t syncing data privately. Rather, it comes when you want to add a new device to this set. To understand how that works, we need to understand the role of your iCloud password.
An Extra Element to Protect against Interception
Apple’s iOS 12 security white paper explains this system in some depth, noting that your iCloud Apple ID account password by itself can be used to enroll a new device. That isn’t as worrying as it might sound, because Apple doesn’t know your password. Instead, it stores only an encrypted form of the password. Whenever you enter your password, it’s run through a one-way encryption algorithm that performs a vast number of mathematical operations—the process is called “hashing”—that makes it effectively impossible to determine the original password. (This is also used for a lot of data stored in a Secure Enclave, like your passcode.)
You could enable an iCloud Security Code as an “out-of-band” element—something that is never transmitted by the same means as other data. Out-of-band elements are a common way to block data hijacking by requiring a secret that has never been put online. In this case, it’s something you create or Apple creates for you on one device and that you enter on another.
(Never heard of an iCloud Security Code? You’re not alone! It’s barely mentioned on Apple’s site, and Apple’s white paper doesn’t discuss the code deeply. I recall using one years ago, and TidBITS publisher Adam Engst had never heard the term before editing this article.)
But there’s a flaw in both the iCloud password and the iCloud Security Code approaches, and I wonder if that’s why Apple is now asking for passwords or passcodes from other devices in your sync set. The iCloud Security Code is yet another piece of information to remember and deal with and thus runs counter to Apple’s commitment to simplicity. It was also created when iCloud Keychain was the only set of data Apple secured end-to-end and synced via iCloud, and before both two-step verification and the later two-factor authentication for Apple ID. It may not be robust enough to match Apple’s current security and authentication requirements.
As for the iCloud password, it suffers from a different set of concerns. While Apple doesn’t know your iCloud password, whenever you log in at iCloud.com, your encrypted password is sent to Apple, which holds it just long enough to perform the hash and test it against its stored value. However, it’s not inconceivable—though, again, it’s unlikely—that the password could be captured during that transmission, phished, or stolen in some other way. Apple obviously thinks about it in this way: Since it’s conceivable that the password could be intercepted, Apple has to defend against interception as though it happens every day.
Some companies have tried to move away from the need to transfer even a hashed password. AgileBits, for instance, built 1Password.com around newer browser-based encryption algorithms—no unencrypted passwords or data are stored by AgileBits or ever sent to the browser. Instead, the browser itself performs all the necessary encryption and sends the encrypted data to AgileBits. After login, the 1Password.com servers only send encrypted packages to the user’s browser, which holds encryption keys locally and only for the duration of the session.
Apple hasn’t transitioned to this method with iCloud.com, and so it makes sense that instead of relying on an iCloud password, which could be stolen or phished, it has instead moved to this device-passcode/password system. Apple hasn’t yet documented this new approach, which is why I’m not being more precise about how it all works. None of the text on the screen users see appears on Apple’s support or marketing sites, and there’s no mention of the process in the white paper noted above or elsewhere. But I’ve heard about the process previously from readers, Take Control publisher Joe Kissell recently saw it on setting up a new device, and I finally saw it after upgrading to iOS 13 on my iPhone.
Here’s how the new system works, as far as I can determine:
You log into your Apple ID on the device you’re setting up and confirm a second-factor login. (Password-only Apple ID accounts, which Apple strongly discourages and which we recommend against, don’t seem to get these dialogs.)
On at least one of the devices in the iCloud sync set, Apple adds an encrypted version of that device’s passcode or password to the set of shared information. The only information attached to that payload that Apple can read is the type of device and the name of the device.
Apple syncs this information to iCloud, and the setup process on the new device then pulls it down, prompting you to enter the passcode or password.
Once you enter the correct passcode or password, the new device dumps the passcode/password data from the set, instead generating and relying on a new pair of encryption keys, just like the other devices. The new device becomes part of the trusted set of devices that can sync your end-to-end encrypted iCloud data.
It’s possible that Apple retains the encrypted passcode and password of the shared key for every device that’s in the set. However, that would seem to be an ongoing risk, as it would conceivably allow someone who obtains that secret to gain further access.
What this process appears to show is that Apple never sees, handles, or stores your device passcode or password in unencrypted form, and it never passes the passcode or password over anything but secure transport. It requires only your Apple ID account name and password, sent over HTTPS, as the first stage of logging into iCloud, but not for the later stages.
Overall, this new approach seems rational and secure. Apple would do well to give users more confidence in what’s happening by providing an explanatory support document, and I hope Apple will give in-depth details when it updates the iOS security white paper for iOS 13.
27 Sep 2019,00:57AM /
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Admin 27 Sep 2019,00:57AM
How To Prevent Viruses And Other Malware On Your Mac
A computer virus may interfere with your Mac’s performance and health by corrupting or destroying data on your Mac. A virus can have profound and damaging effects. This short article explains how you can protect your Mac from viruses and other malware. They are annoying, time consuming, and very frustrating.
Even thought the terms “virus” and “malware” are often used interchangeably, they do not mean the same thing. Malware is any type of malicious software. A virus is a type of malware. Common types of malware include:
adware, for example see: Amazon Winner, Free Gift Card, Congratulations Scams & How To Stop Them
Can my Mac get viruses or malware?
The short ansIr is yes. No computer system is completely immune. HoIver, Mac is less susceptible to viruses than Windows PC. It is Certain that macOS is more secure than Windows. But it is also very simple to prevent viruses from getting on your Mac.
See also: Your System Is Infected With (3) Viruses
How do I know if my Mac has a virus?
You may be able to tell if your Mac has a virus if you experience any of the conditions below:
ads and popups are appearing often
your Mac is very slow
your Mac is behaving oddly
you are having Safari homepage problems
Do Macs need antivirus software?
This is up to you. I personally do not have any antivirus software installed on my Mac. I think if you follow the tips described in this article, you will not need an antivirus program.
It is important to note here that many-antivirus software is not compatible with macOS. There are also many fake anti-virus programs that contain malware. Be very careful if you want to get a antivirus program.
Simple Tips to Secure your Mac
If you think that you might have malware or adware on your Mac, follow the tips below:
1.Restart your Mac from time to time
This is important because macOS includes built-in features that remove known malware when you restart your Mac. To restart your Mac, you can choose Restart from the Apple menu.
1. Keep your software up to date
Periodically, Apple releases macOS updates that can help protect your Mac. You can update your Mac easily. To do this, simply choose System Preferences from the Apple menu and then click Software Update. If there is an update available, click Update Now.
Note: you may also want to check the “Automatically keep my Mac up to date” box.
2. Do not install software on your Mac that you do not know
The safest place to download programs and apps is the Mac App Store. HoIver, not all credible apps might be available in the Mac App Store. If you need to download and install a third party app and you are sure that that app cannot have any viruses, then download it from developer’s Ib site.
3. Do not click links in emails
If you do not know the sender, do not click any links. Further, do not open attachments. Some viruses may spread as soon as you open the attachment.
4. Use the Mac Firewall app
Mac Firewall can help notify you about suspicious activity. Here is how you can configure this:
Open System Preferences on your Mac
Click Security or Security & Privacy
Click the Firewall tab
Click “Turn On Firewall” (make sure that you unlock this section, simply by click the lock in the loIr-left corner that says “click the lock make changes” and enter your password)
To configure the Firewall preferences, click Advanced. You can also configure the options by clicking the Firewall Options button.
5. Turn on popup blocker in Safari
You can do that by going to the Ibsites tab of Safari preferences. From the column on the left, select “Pop-up Windows”. Then select “Block and Notify” or “Block”. Please note that some Ibsites may use pop-ups for information content. You can read this article to learn more.
6. Use Safari’s security features
Open Safari and click Safari and Preferences. Then click the “Security” tab and check the “Warn when visiting a fraudulent Ibsite” box. This will help you to recognize harmfull Ib sites.
See also: Critical Security Warning! Your Mac is Infected
Further notes, never download any Flash Player update because you got a pop-up window saying t it was out of date. I recommend deleting Flash Player. But if you want to use Flash Player, update it by going to System Preferences > Flash Player and then click the Updates tab and click Check Now.
I see that there are many Mac cleaner apps that are heavily advertised online. Do not download them if you are unsure that they are credible.
24 Sep 2019,15:02PM /
Admin 24 Sep 2019,15:02PM
If you upgraded to IOS 13, your iPhone just got a major security upgrade. Here are some of the ins and outs.
If you own a relatively new iPhone, this week you should have received a notification that the latest iOS 13 update is ready to download. Besides the more obvious additions—like the introduction of dark mode, and the unexpected joys of Apple Arcade—it also features a raft of security and privacy enhancements.
This is not mean’t to be a tutorial, although some of the screen shots show where to go to make some settings. Here is some information how the latest version of IOS keeps you even more protected.
Photograph: Apple
As well as using Facebook, Google, and Twitter to sign into new apps and services, you can now sign in with Apple too. The option limits data passed over to the third party to your username and email address, and Apple will even create a temporary email address for you if you like—if you start getting unwanted messages, you can just shut it down and walk away.
Fine-Tune Location Controls
You now get more granular control over how apps access to your current location. In addition to being able to grant that permission all the time or only when the app is running, you can now also allow it just once on a temporary basis. The next time the app needs your location, it'll have to ask for it again.
As in iOS 12, you'll get occasional pop-ups reminding you which apps are tracking your location. In iOS 13 though, you can see more of the data that the app actually logs, as well as the app's explanation for why it needs that data in the first place. If you don't buy the argument, you can block access.
Block Bluetooth Access
After you've installed iOS 13, you might see a flurry of apps asking for permission to transmit data over Bluetooth—data that can, in some cases, be used to track where you are, via Bluetooth beacons in stores and elsewhere. If you're not happy with granting permission, turn it off. Note that the permission to able to transfer data over Bluetooth is separate to streaming audio over Bluetooth, so you won't suddenly lose your connection to your headphones.
Stay Safe From Wi-Fi Tracking
As with Bluetooth, in a pre-iOS 13 world some unscrupulous apps were able to track your location without actually asking for permission to do so. Instead, they would take note of the public Wi-Fi networks you passed by. This has now been disabled in iOS 13. There's no option for it or setting to toggle; the privacy feature is baked in automatically.
Share Photos Without Locations
Of course you want to share your photos with friends and family, but maybe you don't want to share your home and office address with everyone you post a picture to. In iOS 13, when you share a picture through the Photos app, you'll notice a new option to strip the location data before you send it.
Silence Unknown Callers
You can, if you want, route calls from unknown numbers straight to voicemail in iOS 13. The feature is a little smarter than you might think , though: A well as checking numbers in your Contacts app, it also looks through Mail and Messages for unsaved numbers that you might be familiar with. Also, when calls are carrier-verified as genuine and not spoofed, you'll see a tick next to the number to let you know it's probably not yet another spammer.
Find Devices Anywhere
You'll notice a new Find My app on your iPhone after you install iOS 13, which helps you keep track of both your friends and your Apple devices, however you've mislaid them. As well as the features you'll already be used to—being able to ring your iPhone remotely, for instance—the new app can even locate your devices when they're not actively connected to Bluetooth or Wi-Fi.
This works via a very low-power Bluetooth signal emitted by your lost device. Apple creates an anonymous, invisible, secure scouting network from all the other Apple devices out there in the wild. If any of these devices detects your phone, you'll get an update on where it is.
Set Permissions for Individual Websites
Safari for iOS 13 now lets you control access to the camera, the microphone, and your current location on a site-by-site basis. If you're happy about some sites getting access to these permissions but not others, you can tailor it to your liking. The feature is managed through the Safari section of Settings. Cross-site tracking, where ad networks can follow you across multiple sites, is now prevented by default too—in iOS 12, it was optional.
Keep Contacts More Private
There's a small but perhaps significant change in the Contacts permission as well. Apps that get access to your list of contacts will no longer be able to read the notes field alongside each contact. If you've used these fields to record sensitive data—like your father's PIN code or your real feelings towards your aunt—third-party apps will no longer be able to view them.
Block VoIP Apps From Collecting Data
In iOS 13, Voice-over-IP apps—those ones that let you make audio and video calls over the web—are no longer able to collect data in the background while they're not running. While this data collection could ostensibly be used to connect calls faster if you didn't have the relevant app open, it was also open to potential abuse. It's expected that apps like WhatsApp and Snapchat will need to be redesigned as a result.
Encrypt HomeKit Video Streams
Part of the reason that there aren't as many devices that work with HomeKit as with, say, Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant, is that Apple has some fairly restrictive rules that manufacturers need to meet. One of those, new in iOS 13, is the requirement that HomeKit-compatible security cameras must encrypt footage before it leaves your home, so no one else can see it.
Put HomeKit on Your Router
Another security feature introduced with HomeKit on iOS 13 is support for HomeKit-enabled routers. When these devices appear on the market, they'll be able to isolate individual smart home devices, so if a malware infection should strike one of them, it won't be able to spread to the others.
Which Mac systems can be upgraded to macOS Catalina
A mac mini diplay of Catalina
My Mac is old, can I upgrade to macOS Catalina?
The latest Mac operating system will run on the following devices:
MacBook (2015 or newer)
MacBook Air (2012 or newer)
MacBook Pro (2012 or newer)
Mac mini (2012 or newer)
iMac (2012 or newer)
iMac Pro (2017 or newer)
Mac Pro (2013 or newer)
4 Sep 2019,11:28AM /
Admin 4 Sep 2019,11:28AM
Select Month.. January February March April May June July August September October November December Select Year.. 2019 2020
Welcome to the NEW Michling Consultants Blog
8 things Apple’s iOS does better
Looking for a Way to Download Instagram Media
How to Sync iMessages on a Mac
Apple AirPods-How to unlock all of their magical features
Saving Tabs Setup In Safari For Reuse
Tricks You May Not Know Your Mac Could Do
Do you know why Mac Catalina is such an extensive upgrade?
The Command and Option keys are so useful!
Here Are Some Quick Mac tips
https://mespn.com
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Acral subcutaneous steatocystoma multiplex: A distinct subtype of the disease?
Angelo V. Marzano, Simona Tavecchio, Ylenia Balice, Ilaria Polloni, Stefano Veraldi
Steatocystoma multiplex (SM) is a hamartomatous malformation of the pilosebaceous duct consisting of dermal cysts filled with a sebum-like material. SM lesions are typically located in areas with sebaceous follicles, although atypical presentations involving sites lacking sebaceous follicles have exceptionally been described. We reviewed retrospectively a series of 32 histologically diagnosed SM observed in our department in the period 2006-2010, evaluating the kinds of lesions and their locations, and family history of SM and associated disorders, to focus on the clinical features of the acral subcutaneous variety of SM and to estimate its prevalence. We found five patients (four women and one man) with asymptomatic deep, skin-colored nodules on the flexor surfaces of distal upper extremities with a mean age at diagnosis and at disease onset of 32.5 and 26 years, respectively. The prevalence was 15%. All five cases were sporadic. The male patient had eruptive syringomas as an associated condition, together with a family history of this tumour. Acral subcutaneous SM may represent a distinct disease variety by virtue of its distinctive clinical features. Dermatologists should be aware of this form, which has to be included in the wide panel of diseases involving subcutaneous tissue.
Australasian Journal of Dermatology
Steatocystoma Multiplex
Sebum
Subcutaneous Tissue
acral subcutaneous steatocystoma multiplex
eruptive syringomas
steatocystoma
Marzano, A. V., Tavecchio, S., Balice, Y., Polloni, I., & Veraldi, S. (2012). Acral subcutaneous steatocystoma multiplex: A distinct subtype of the disease? Australasian Journal of Dermatology, 53(3), 198-201. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1440-0960.2011.00851.x
Acral subcutaneous steatocystoma multiplex : A distinct subtype of the disease? / Marzano, Angelo V.; Tavecchio, Simona; Balice, Ylenia; Polloni, Ilaria; Veraldi, Stefano.
In: Australasian Journal of Dermatology, Vol. 53, No. 3, 08.2012, p. 198-201.
Marzano, AV, Tavecchio, S, Balice, Y, Polloni, I & Veraldi, S 2012, 'Acral subcutaneous steatocystoma multiplex: A distinct subtype of the disease?', Australasian Journal of Dermatology, vol. 53, no. 3, pp. 198-201. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1440-0960.2011.00851.x
Marzano AV, Tavecchio S, Balice Y, Polloni I, Veraldi S. Acral subcutaneous steatocystoma multiplex: A distinct subtype of the disease? Australasian Journal of Dermatology. 2012 Aug;53(3):198-201. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1440-0960.2011.00851.x
Marzano, Angelo V. ; Tavecchio, Simona ; Balice, Ylenia ; Polloni, Ilaria ; Veraldi, Stefano. / Acral subcutaneous steatocystoma multiplex : A distinct subtype of the disease?. In: Australasian Journal of Dermatology. 2012 ; Vol. 53, No. 3. pp. 198-201.
@article{944c414a17c04658a61c930e4f69a955,
title = "Acral subcutaneous steatocystoma multiplex: A distinct subtype of the disease?",
abstract = "Steatocystoma multiplex (SM) is a hamartomatous malformation of the pilosebaceous duct consisting of dermal cysts filled with a sebum-like material. SM lesions are typically located in areas with sebaceous follicles, although atypical presentations involving sites lacking sebaceous follicles have exceptionally been described. We reviewed retrospectively a series of 32 histologically diagnosed SM observed in our department in the period 2006-2010, evaluating the kinds of lesions and their locations, and family history of SM and associated disorders, to focus on the clinical features of the acral subcutaneous variety of SM and to estimate its prevalence. We found five patients (four women and one man) with asymptomatic deep, skin-colored nodules on the flexor surfaces of distal upper extremities with a mean age at diagnosis and at disease onset of 32.5 and 26 years, respectively. The prevalence was 15{\%}. All five cases were sporadic. The male patient had eruptive syringomas as an associated condition, together with a family history of this tumour. Acral subcutaneous SM may represent a distinct disease variety by virtue of its distinctive clinical features. Dermatologists should be aware of this form, which has to be included in the wide panel of diseases involving subcutaneous tissue.",
keywords = "acral subcutaneous steatocystoma multiplex, eruptive syringomas, steatocystoma",
author = "Marzano, {Angelo V.} and Simona Tavecchio and Ylenia Balice and Ilaria Polloni and Stefano Veraldi",
journal = "Australasian Journal of Dermatology",
T1 - Acral subcutaneous steatocystoma multiplex
T2 - A distinct subtype of the disease?
AU - Marzano, Angelo V.
AU - Tavecchio, Simona
AU - Balice, Ylenia
AU - Polloni, Ilaria
AU - Veraldi, Stefano
N2 - Steatocystoma multiplex (SM) is a hamartomatous malformation of the pilosebaceous duct consisting of dermal cysts filled with a sebum-like material. SM lesions are typically located in areas with sebaceous follicles, although atypical presentations involving sites lacking sebaceous follicles have exceptionally been described. We reviewed retrospectively a series of 32 histologically diagnosed SM observed in our department in the period 2006-2010, evaluating the kinds of lesions and their locations, and family history of SM and associated disorders, to focus on the clinical features of the acral subcutaneous variety of SM and to estimate its prevalence. We found five patients (four women and one man) with asymptomatic deep, skin-colored nodules on the flexor surfaces of distal upper extremities with a mean age at diagnosis and at disease onset of 32.5 and 26 years, respectively. The prevalence was 15%. All five cases were sporadic. The male patient had eruptive syringomas as an associated condition, together with a family history of this tumour. Acral subcutaneous SM may represent a distinct disease variety by virtue of its distinctive clinical features. Dermatologists should be aware of this form, which has to be included in the wide panel of diseases involving subcutaneous tissue.
AB - Steatocystoma multiplex (SM) is a hamartomatous malformation of the pilosebaceous duct consisting of dermal cysts filled with a sebum-like material. SM lesions are typically located in areas with sebaceous follicles, although atypical presentations involving sites lacking sebaceous follicles have exceptionally been described. We reviewed retrospectively a series of 32 histologically diagnosed SM observed in our department in the period 2006-2010, evaluating the kinds of lesions and their locations, and family history of SM and associated disorders, to focus on the clinical features of the acral subcutaneous variety of SM and to estimate its prevalence. We found five patients (four women and one man) with asymptomatic deep, skin-colored nodules on the flexor surfaces of distal upper extremities with a mean age at diagnosis and at disease onset of 32.5 and 26 years, respectively. The prevalence was 15%. All five cases were sporadic. The male patient had eruptive syringomas as an associated condition, together with a family history of this tumour. Acral subcutaneous SM may represent a distinct disease variety by virtue of its distinctive clinical features. Dermatologists should be aware of this form, which has to be included in the wide panel of diseases involving subcutaneous tissue.
KW - acral subcutaneous steatocystoma multiplex
KW - eruptive syringomas
KW - steatocystoma
JO - Australasian Journal of Dermatology
JF - Australasian Journal of Dermatology
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action-adventure / blogging / comic books / Crime Dramas / Have Cheetah,Will View / mystery / Private Detective / superheroes / Suspense / thriller / TV series / Writing
Have Cheetah,Will View #171 – “Human Target- Season One” (2010)
Posted on 23/03/2018 by The Inner Circle 2 Comments
It’s 5:43 pm
It’s a chilly spring day here in SE Michigan. I have the windows open despite the chill because the cheetah really wants to smell and feel some fresh air. He wants to hear the birds chirp,kids laugh and play and most likely sense some female cats are in heat because he is racing up and down the stairs.
Back in 2009 the film “Watchmen” hit the theaters,it was the film that made director Zack Snyder a household name and helped fuel the current superhero movie run. The movie itself was either loved or hated by fanboys everywhere and for the general audience found itself also with mixed emotions about what they were seeing. While the debate raged on in boards and chat rooms everywhere,everyone agreed about one thing:
Jackie Earle Haley owned the movie as the anti-hero Rorschach,it was an blistering performance to is easily and without question one of the top 3 acting performances in ANY superhero movie…the other two can be anyone you want to name but Haley will always be on the list….always.
So when Warner Brothers decided to try and reboot the DC Comics character Christopher Chance aka Human Target for Fox in 2010,my interest was high because getting any superhero shows on TV is always a good thing and when show’s cast was named and Jackie Earle Haley’s name popped up,I knew I was going to watch it.
Human Target first appeared in DC Comics as a back-up story in “The Brave and the Bold” and “Detective Magazine”. DC later did a series,a few mini-series and a few one shots before moving the title to Vertigo,DC’s adult comic book line.
Mark Valley was cast as Christopher Chance,an ex-assassin who after losing a person he was trying to protect from his own employer,decided to work for the side of the angels. He protects people from major threats by placing himself in the line of fire in order to stop said threat,Chi McBride plays his friend Winston,a former police detective for the San Francisco Police Department who helps land jobs for Chance and is often a back-up to Chance and Jackie played Guerrero,an ex-assassin with deep ties to Chance and is completely ruthless in watching Chance’s back.
The show debuted on Fox on 15 Jan 2010 as a mid-season replacement and it was a blast. The first 13 episodes were full of action,drama,sadness and a sense of fun. I never missed a show when it aired that first season.
Human Target was a bubble show for Fox and we fanboys had to wait til May until Fox said they had renewed the show for the second season…..and when I can find that season,we’ll talk about it.
But I will say this right now,the first season was the best season. The pilot episode was directed by Simon West who has a wealth of experience in directing action movies like “Con Air” and great mystery films like “The General’s Daughter” (my favor John Travolta movie). West also had worked with Mark Valley in the short lived series “Keen Eddie”.
The first episode was everything the show was hyped up to be and it only got better.
A great premise about someone trying to kill a whistleblower on a brand new bullet train showed that “Human Target” was not your average superhero show as Christopher Chance,while trying to avoid doing so,wasn’t afraid of killing to protect the person he is helping.
A theme that ran throughout the first season was redemption and in the second episode “Rewind”,we start learning about Chance’s back story as he and Winston are hired to protect a unknown hacker named Casper who is targeted because Casper has come up with a skeleton key that could hijack the internet. When the plane they are on runs into trouble,Chance and a flight attendant are the only ones who can save the plane.
We see just how far Guerrero will go to protect Chance as well…
We learn that Chance was once worked for a group of highly skilled assassins and whose leader has hand-picked Chance as the next leader before he vanished after the job that cost the life of the woman Chance was trying to save. Now the The Old Man wants Chance back and despite Guerrero’s best efforts,we know that in each episode the noose is tightening up a little more and it’s a matter of time before he found.
The guest stars for Human Target were pretty strong as a host of well known faces popped up in the first season. Tricia Helfer,Courtney Ford,Kim Coates,the fantastic Lennie James,the lovely Amy Acker and Emmanuelle Vaugier all guest starred.
The season’s last episode,”Christopher Chance” is a kick ass homage to “Have Gun,Will Travel’s own classic origin story,”Genesis”, of how Paladin got his name.
In this episode,we find out how Christopher Chance got his name,who killed the woman he was first hired to kill and then went rogue in trying to save her. The origin,just as in HGWT,is told via flashback to a third party. The end of the episode reveals that The Old Man has caught up to Chance and he has kidnapped Winston in order to for Chance to look for a book. The first season ended being a cliffhanger and quite a dandy one at that.
The second season only last 12 episodes before Fox pulled the plug…what is funny is that the Human Target’s Neilsen numbers back then would have it as a major hit today. The show was just another of Fox’s infamous quick hooks of great shows that weren’t given time to develop a audience. It was also the last show I watched on Fox with any regularity,why invest time and energy in a show when the network was just going to cancel it?
In the DVD release,there are two 15 minute extra features,a director’s commentary on the Pilot show and several unaired clips. “Human Target” is a show worth looking up and adding to your collection,especially if you are a fan of action-adventure,superhero shows and great acting.
What show have you watched that was cancelled way too early in your opinion? Did you ever watch “Human Target” when it on? What did you think of the show? Did you have a favorite character or moment? Drop a comment below!!
Tags: action-adventure, blogging, Carmine Infantino, Chi McBride, Christopher Chance, comic books, DC Comics, DC VERTIGO, Fox Network, Have Cheetah - Will View, Have Gun-Will Travel, Jackie Earle Haley, Len Wein, Mark Valley, McG, Paladin, Simon West, Warner Brothers, Watchmen, Zack Snyder. Bookmark the permalink.
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Theodian culture
Although every member-city of the Theodian Confœderation has a culture of its own, there is an engineered "high" culture of sorts meant to serve as a neutral and inspiring source whence the member-cities can draw, and which is taught in schools and used in national ceremony. This article details just that: High Theodian culture.
This article was current as of 2019, November.
1 Conventions
2 Customs
2.1 Architecture & design
2.2 Popular culture
2.3 Time
2.4 Ceremonies & religion
2.5 Race & gender
2.6 Kinship
2.7 Naming practices
3.1 Theodian
3.2 English
Main article: Theodian conventions
The Theodian bond
Theodia has its own brick-bond. It is unique in that it uses only one size of brick (3:1:1) throughout, and in that its pattern can be repeated infinitely. It is coincidentally similar to the Flemish bond, but was developed independently in 2014. The bricks conventionally have dimensions of 237mm:79mm:79mm, as 79mm is the average width of a hand.[1]
Theodia has a rather unique tradition of furniture. The stereotypical bed in Theodia is actually a circular bed hung from a central point, and chairs are commonly shaped like saddles. Also, most toilets are sitting-squatting (ie, you sit in a squatting position) toilets equipped with bidets. Interior doors only cover the center of the doorway, being completely open at their tops and bottoms, so as to allow greater airflow, while still preventing sight.
This article or section contains information which is outdated. You can help MicroWiki by updating it.
A depiction of warm-weather Theodian garb
Traditional Theodian clothing is divided into two 'cold' and 'warm' weather versions, the former being the outfit designed when Theodia was planning to found itself in Greenland, and the latter being the outfit designed when Theodia was still based out of Neapolita. Each item can be variously trimmed about its edges, and the sash generally takes the same colour as the trimming. As well, the arms and legs are seen as somewhat mystically analogous, and so are clad similarly. Each outfit was respectively designed to be capable of keeping Theodians either warm in the Tundra or cool in the tropics, while remaining comfortable, relatively simple, unique, and minimally interferant with movement. The former was derived from the latter.
Items common to the two are:
Underwear, including crotch-wear (most typically of a kind that minimizes the need for one to cross ser legs whilst sitting (eg, boxer-briefs)) and potentially a bra, depending upon a person's bustiness (although the location of the sash somewhat decreases the need for a bra);
A simple halter-top dress going down to about the knees;
A sash tied at the waist; and
A poncho covering down to about the elbows.
The cold-weather version is generally composed of the following (with all cloth being most typically some kind of woolen knit), in addition to the above items:
Underwear, including crotch-wear (eg, boxer-briefs) and potentially a bra, depending upon a person's bustiness (although the location of the sash somewhat decreases the need for a bra);
Tabi-socks that go halfway up the thighs;
Gloves which go halfway up the upper arm and cover the second-highest segment of each finger only halfway;
A keffiyeh/shemagh or balaclava;
Waterproof boots which go about halfway up the calves; and
Mittens which have individual sections for both the thumb and the index fingers, and which extend about halfway up up the lower arm.
The warm-weather version is generally composed of the following (with all cloth being seersucker, often twilled, and usually made of linen or hemp), in addition to the items in the first list:
Huarache sandals; and
An Asian conical hat.
As in many cultures, there are certain norms of use regarding what clothing to wear at what times. When indoors, it is courteous for one to lower the mask of ser headwear or to drop ser hat onto ser neck, as well as to remove ser sandals or ser outer gloves and boots.
The staple ingredients of Theodian cuisine are quinoa, kale, and sardines, all of which were chosen for their nutritional worth and safety of consumption. Pride is typically taken in processing foods prior to consumption, with this seen as a sign of civilization. Often, quinoa is sprouted and processed into pasta or bread, kale is shredded, and sardines are ground and pattied. Fruits are often jellied and spread.
Instead of coffee or steeped tea, Theodians typically drink filtered matcha, oftentimes with sugar or cream added. Matcha is ground tea; it has the caffeine of coffee without the jitters, and it has the antioxidants etc of tea. The small granulation and high surface area of the matcha makes for especially quick preparation in comparison to most coffees, let alone in comparison with most teas. Additionally, since matcha is sourced from the leaves of any of several varieties of plants, it can be grown in far more places (as well as more sustainably) than coffee.
Porridge (often preserves-infused) and matcha are a typical breakfast, as they are quick and easy to prepare, and respectively have a high fullness factor and a powerful stimulant. Eggs on toast is also a popular breakfast food. Lunch often involves sandwiches and wraps (Theodians take their sandwiches as seriously as the English), as they are easy to transport, do not require heating before consumption, and are minimally interruptive to one's work. Peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches are particularly popular, and Theodians mix and match different nut-butters and fruit-preserves at whim. Dinner is often the most intricate meal, with pastas, meats, and vegetables featuring most prominently. Dinner is also the meal for which Theodians are most likely to dine out.
There is, as yet, no established traditional style of Theodian music.
Information regarding the technical conventions of Theodian folk music can be found here.
The de jure national sport of the Republic of Theodia is battlegaming, or LARPing, and is widely popular throughout the country. The official ruleset in Theodia is FiodiLARP, which is currently under development. Its goal is to emulate realistic combat in a safe manner.
Association football is also quite popular, as is archery.
The past is considered "behind" and the future is considered "ahead", since we typically move forward, and it seemingly makes sense to describe the arrow of time similarly. This is in contrast to cultures that describe time as left-to-right, up-to-down, or east-to-west. This metaphor is not perfect, however, as people who are ahead in a line get to the end of the line before people who are behind in that line; and of course you can see things ahead of you and you can "see" far into the past, while you cannot see behind you or very far into the future.
Ceremonies & religion
Main article: Theodian holidays
Theodia has 6 main holidays each year, 3 major, 3 minor; there are essentially 2 per Third. Major Holidays occur in the intercalary days between Thirds; while minor holidays take place halfway through each Third. Tertiary holidays, such as independence day, are also present; though they typically have far fewer festivities.
Religion, in Theodia, is generally considered to be another word for a collection of philosophies and political structures; and practice and study of belief is generally viewed through this lens. The government is firmly dedicated to belief pluralism, and advocates liberal religion, using Unitarian Universalism as a means by which to achieve this, having declared it as the state religion. To a certain extent, the religious policy might be considered to be "pluralism through moralism", with "moralism", in this case, meaning the enforcement of dogma (or its lack).
In accordance with this, groups may not be exclusive on the basis of belief. This, of course, has no bearing on freedom of association; and since this lack of restriction can still allow spontaneous self-segregation that can lead to factionalism, Theodia has also opted to open communal-style temples (called "pantheons) in large-enough numbers that everyone living in an incorporated community may attend one, as such prominent institutions will have a certain draw; and with such freedom and openness of belief, there wouldn't seem to be much of a reason to create a private, more-focused temple, unless it is specifically exclusive or introduces foreign political structures. In each pantheon, priests of all persuasions may schedule time to preach and teach, so long as they generally conform to Unitarian Universalism's seven principles; and there are open-hours where people may offer the music of their faith to any who would listen. Books and materials of a great many religions are also present at each pantheon, as well as rooms to discuss philosophy, spirituality, theology with others. This is in-line with the state's policy of interculturalism, as such open dialogue and frequent meeting will hopefully help foster mutual respect among groups who would otherwise have been siloed off, thus calming many potential tensions, oftentimes before they can even start. In order to accomplish this community temple goal, many existing temples and community centers in newly-incorporated areas are requisitioned at the time of incorporation. Additionally, Theodian education includes a segment wherein students are introduced to philosophy, as well as the beliefs of a great many religions.
However, there are times where the allowance of an exclusionary worship practice is required for certain Theodians to feel spiritually sated, such as communion with the Catholic Church: such communion cannot be given without sanction by the Catholic Church, and without it, practitioners believe themselves damned to Hell; however, at the same time, practitioners also believe non-Catholics to be damned to Hell, and this creates a concerning opportunity for convertive peer pressure ("convert, or you're going to Hell") that can lead to great tension between different groups. Allowances of such exclusionary practices must be explicitly given by the Theodian government; and once allowed, exclusionary practices must take place quietly and expediently, and not as part of a main religious service at a pantheon, and non-practitioners must still be allowed to attend and watch if they wish to do so.
Race & gender
Race, in the physical sense, is, in Theodia, seen as a zoological equivalent to botanical variety. So, people with greatly different genetic lineages differ from each other only as much as a Granny Smith differs from a Golden Delicious, and that, while one may have preferences between the varieties, they are all ultimately the same thing. Because of this, the society doesn't consider one's race to be of much note, and the government doesn't collect racial data on censuses (This latter bit is also partly because of Theodia's policy of mandatory DNA sequencing at birth; the results are pinned to a person's government ID, so it would be redundant and pointless to ask citizens for an arbitrary racial label.).
Ethnicity, on the other hand, is considered in applications for citizenship, but only on these; once a citizen, people, by definition, help define what it is to be "Theodian", and so are considered to be of Theodian ethnicity.
There are neither de jure nor de facto concepts of formal, sex-linked gender roles in Theodia, since unbalanced, arbitrary restrictions, obligations, and benefits afforded to people on the sole basis of their birth is considered to be aristocratic and inherently antithetical to achieving equality of opportunity.
This does not, however, mean a society without gender. Theodian citizens are not eunuchized, sex steroids do influence the brain, and humans have evolved so that men and women would be at least somewhat different. Theodia (and accordingly its languages) recognizes the existence of biological sex. The important thing here is that social roles are not explicitly prescribed directly on the basis of sex, but are instead simply allowed to emerge on an individual basis.
Accordingly, most gendered language has been made epicene in both Theodian and Theodian English. This is not intended to stop people from thinking about gender; but, rather, to afford them the opportunity not to. In languages such as English, it is difficult to speak of someone without first having to think about their gender; and in languages like Spanish, it is even more-so.
As there are no explicit gender roles in Theodia, the country's traditional clothing is the same for both men and women.
Romance & sexuality
Marriage is not a part of Theodian law in either monogamous or polygamous forms (using "-gamy" to refer also to "-andry" etc); so where the term "marriage" is used in relation to Theodia, it refers to an exclusionary religious practice (More information on such practices can be found in the religion section.). Legally, the society is amorous, with "amory" being essentially a decentralized web of relationships, in contrast to monogamy, in which a single unit is formed; and polygamy, in which a centralized network is formed. However, with any sort of amory, all partners are theoretically quite politically equal. It further allows and possibly even facilitates changes in relationships that coincide with personal development on the behalves of all parties, as well as potentially cleaner cessation or lessening of relationships than marriage. For those who seek to live together, cohabitation or communitarianism are the two typical means by which Theodians accomplish this. Due to non-interaction in this by the state and a cultural acceptance of such free exploration of romance, Theodian citizens can be considered some of the most romantically free in the world.
Theodians are also quite free sexually, but there are of course some notable restrictions. Child-adult sexual relations are not allowed, nor is non-consensual sex (rape). Public sexual exhibitionism is likewise restricted. Nudity is less so. Nipples are generally covered in public unless at the beach / changing / 'etc', and there is no bias to this based on the hormonality of a person, unlike in most western societies where really only estrogenized people need to cover their breasts.
Familial organization
Due to Theodia's polyamorous society, the family is structured differently than is common in many other societies. The family is generally seen as composed of guardians, siblings, and wards. Children throughout their lifetime may have many guardians as their guardians' relationships change. Often, a child will stay with their biological parent, but not always. Adoption is a very casual thing, and people are generally very open about it. One of the reasons is that there isn't really the pressure to have biological children that exists in other societies, as lineage is not drawn through blood. A person's siblings are all those people with whom se shared a guardian at the same time; and a ward is someone under a guardianship. People growing up will typically have a network of parents (guardians) and siblings, and their family is that network of people. The extended family is composed of the guardians and siblings of one's guardians. There is no stigma against relationships between close-kin, in part due to one's biological siblings commonly only living with them for a short time.[2]
Theodians traditionally have only a single formal name (called a "handle") and any number of nicknames (called "nicks"), but they do not have any surnames, as one's dynastic heritage is considered wholly unimportant, and so is not recognized by law. The way Theodians name themselves has throughout history been largely defined by the active naming legislation.
The ancient period of Theodian naming practices refers to the time near the country's founding. Not much is known about naming practices at this time. It is assumed that names approximately followed the continuously changing older versions of Theodian, with considerable influence from English spellings. It is also known that middle names were required to be the favourite parent's last name followed by '-sson', and that last names typically showed some sort of familial affiliation.
The two national languages of the Republic of Theodia are Theodian and English.[3] Many citizens also are somewhat proficient in Spanish.
Theodian
Main article: Theodian language
Theodian is the first of the the two national languages of the Republic of Theodia. It is a micronational engelang/explang (a type of constructed language, or 'conlang'). It was designed by undergraduate student and amateur linguist, Miles Bradley Huff (Swena). Most Theodians are at least marginally interested in learning the language due to its purported cognitive advancements and perceived coolness. It is a formal language, to be governed by the Linguistic Council of Theodia. Informal varieties are not stigmatized; the formal variety exists mainly to assist people in avoiding communicational difficulties posed by linguistic change-over-time and dialectal variation, as well as improving legislative clarity.
Main article: Theodian English
The other national language is English, specifically, Theodian English.[4] This dialect is spoken by Theodians and is similar to Southwest-Floridian / American English, the main differences between them being a few spellings, pronunciations, pronouns, and phraseology. One notable feature is the lack of mandatory gendered language.
Theodian conventions
Theodian Fiscal Calendar
Theodian holidays
Theodian English
Theodian language
V · T · EThe Technocratic Republic of Theodia
Main article - Economy - Foreign affairs - Government - Military - Symbology - Territory
Flag Model - Foundation - Transition - Maturation - Notable Theodians
Constitution - Economics - Traffic
Culture - Calendars - Holidays - Systems
Theodian - Writing-system - Dialect of English
Constitution - Email - Website
↑ http://www.theaveragebody.com/average_hand_size.php
↑ http://forum.micronation.org/showthread.php?tid=301&pid=2249#pid2249
↑ http://theodia.webs.com/about
Retrieved from "https://micronations.wiki/index.php?title=Theodian_culture&oldid=516396"
Theodia
Articles that are out of date
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Scorned, Love Kills: 6 Active Duty Military Homicide Cases Featured on Investigation Discovery
Posted on October 31, 2018 by Jennifer Norris
Preview: An Army Major lay lifeless in his bed, shot twice at close range while sleeping next to his wife. Investigators would soon uncover an intricately planned murder plot involving sex parties, adultery and coercion. -Behind the Picket Fence, Scorned: Love Kills (S1, E1)
Scorned, Love Kills Premiered ‘Behind the Picket Fence’ on Investigation Discovery: Army Spouse Joan Shannon Finds the Perfect Hitman (January 21, 2012)
The young and wild Monique Wallace is married to 40-year-old Paul Berkley, a navy reservist and father of two in suburban North Carolina. But with Paul leaving on a mission overseas, temptation and lust will lead them all down a dark path to murder. -Rules of Engagement, Scorned: Love Kills (S2, E7)
Scorned, Love Kills Premiered ‘Rules of Engagement’ on Investigation Discovery: Navy Reservist Paul Berkley Murdered While Home on Leave (March 9, 2013)
Fred and Jennifer have a picture perfect marriage. But when Fred meets Danielle, a young doctor in the Navy, Jennifer fights to keep Fred for herself. The love triangle explodes, leaving police struggling to understand a grisly crime scene. -Naval Affairs, Scorned: Love Kills (S3, E1)
Scorned, Love Kills Premiered ‘Naval Affairs’ on Investigation Discovery: Jealous Wife Kills Fred Trayers After Learning About Affair (January 4, 2014)
Sexy psychologist and doting Air Force wife Michelle begins a swinging affair with Army Sgt. Diamond while her husband, Captain Marty Theer, is away. But all’s fair in love and war, and Marty’s return will remind them that love is a battlefield. -Sergeant Swinger, Scorned: Love Kills (S4, E1)
Scorned, Love Kills Premiered ‘Sergeant Swinger’ on ID: Air Force Captain’s Murder Reveals Wife’s Evil Intent, Adultery & Greed (October 4, 2014)
American soldier Megan Touma has left her husband for her lover Edgar. Turns out Edgar has a spouse of his own. When Megan gets pregnant Edgar must make a decision between two women. Someone will be left brokenhearted and someone will be left dead. -Love is a Battlefield, Scorned: Love Kills (S5, E2)
Scorned, Love Kills Premiered ‘Love is a Battlefield’ on ID: Married Army Soldier Edgar Patino Murders Girlfriend & Unborn Child (March 14, 2015)
Preview: While Kathy Lipscomb spends late nights at the hospital with the handsome Dr. Pearle, her husband’s career in the Air Force is taking off, but so is his relationship with a hot young officer. When the affairs are exposed the consequences are fatal. -Sex, Secrets & Sergeants, Scorned: Love Kills (S5, E5)
Scorned, Love Kills Premiered ‘Sex, Secrets & Sergeants’ on Investigation Discovery: Kathy Lipscomb Found Dead on Side of Texas Highway (April 10, 2015)
About the Show | Scorned: Love Kills | Investigation Discovery
Sex Helps Wife Plan Murder | Scorned – Love Kills (Preview)
Behind the Picket Fence | Scorned: Love Kills | Investigation Discovery (S1, E1)
Behind the Picket Fence | Scorned: Love Kills | Investigation Discovery (website)
Behind the Picket Fence | Scorned: Love Kills | Investigation Discovery (Amazon)
Rules of Engagement | Scorned: Love Kills | Investigation Discovery (S2,E7)
Rules of Engagement | Scorned: Love Kills |Investigation Discovery (website)
Rules of Engagement | Scorned: Love Kills |Investigation Discovery (Amazon)
Naval Affairs | Scorned: Love Kills | Investigation Discovery (S3,E1)
Naval Affairs | Scorned: Love Kills | Investigation Discovery (website)
Naval Affairs | Scorned: Love Kills | Investigation Discovery (Amazon)
Sergeant Swinger | Scorned: Love Kills | Investigation Discovery (S4,E1)
Sergeant Swinger | Scorned: Love Kills | Investigation Discovery (website)
Sergeant Swinger | Scorned: Love Kills | Investigation Discovery (Amazon)
Love is a Battlefield | Scorned: Love Kills | Investigation Discovery (S5,E2)
Love is a Battlefield | Scorned: Love Kills | Investigation Discovery (website)
Love is a Battlefield | Scorned: Love Kills | Investigation Discovery (Amazon)
Two Couples, Two Dangerous Affairs | Scorned: Love Kills (Preview)
Sex, Secrets & Sergeants | Scorned: Love Kills | Investigation Discovery (S5,E5)
Sex, Secrets & Sergeants | Scorned: Love Kills | Investigation Discovery (website)
Sex, Secrets & Sergeants | Scorned: Love Kills | Investigation Discovery (Amazon)
True Lies | Forensic Files [Full Episode]
Posted in Armed Forces, Army, Domestic Violence, Felony Crime, Homicide, In Their Name, Military Policy, Navy, Scandals, Sexual Assault, Stateside Death, True Crime, USAF, Veterans | Tagged 1986, 2000, 2002, 2005, 2008, 2010, Adultery, Army, Behind the Picket Fence, Black Widower, David Shannon, December, Discovery ID, Domestic Abuse, Domestic Violence, Drew Peterson, Edgar Patino, Elizabeth Shannon, Episode 1, Episode 17, Episode 5, Episode 7, Fayetteville NC, Felony Crime, Financial Motive, Fort Bragg, Frank Martin Theer, Fred Trayers, Homicide, ID Go, Investigation Discovery, JBSA, Jennifer Trayers, Joan Shannon, John Diamond, Joint Base San Antonio, July, June, Kathleen Lipscomb, Life Insurance, Love is a Battlefield, Marty Theer, Megan Touma, Michelle Theer, Monique Berkley, Murder, Naval Affairs, Navy, Navy Reserve, North Carolina, Paul Berkley, Rules of Engagement, San Antonio TX, Scorned: Love Kills, Season 1, Season 2, Season 3, Season 4, Season 5, Sergeant Swinger, Servicemen's Group Life Insurance, Sex Secrets & Sergeants, SGLI, Stacy Peterson, Texas, Violence, Violent Crimes, William Lipscomb | Leave a reply
Crime Junkie Podcast Featured the Suspicious Deaths of LaVena Johnson & Tina Priest in ‘Conspiracy: Women in the US Military’ (October 22, 2018)
Crime Junkie Podcast
“In 2010, statistics came out that 120 female U.S. soldiers stationed in Iraq had died. Half of those deaths were reported to be non-combat related. 30 those non-combat related deaths were ruled suicides, but there is evidence to suggest many of them may have actually been murders. In this episode, we dive into the case of LaVena Johnson and other women of the U.S. military who died very suspicious deaths during Operation Iraqi Freedom.” –Conspiracy: Women in the US Military, Crime Junkie Podcast (10/22/18)
10 Unsolved Military Cases
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Conspiracy: Women in the US Military | Crime Junkie Podcast (website)
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Conspiracy: Women in the US Military | Crime Junkie Podcast (Bullhorn)
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Conspiracy: Women in the US Military | Crime Junkie Podcast (RadioPublic)
Non Combat Deaths of Female Service Members in the U.S. Military (Iraq)
Army Soldiers at Fort Hood in Texas Are Dying at Alarming Rates Stateside
Army Pfc. LaVena Johnson Died of Non Combat Related Injuries in Iraq; Death Ruled Suicide But Independent Autopsy Revealed Rape & Murder (July 19, 2005)
Army Pfc. Tina Priest Died From a Non-Combat Related Incident in Iraq; Death Ruled Suicide But Family Suspects Rape & Murder (March 1, 2006)
‘The Silent Truth’ Documentary: The Rape, Murder & Military Cover-Up of Army Pfc. LaVena Johnson in Iraq (July 1, 2014)
The Strange & Unexplained: ‘The Biggest Suspicious Unsolved Military Mysteries’
15 Active Duty Cases That Beg for Prevention Efforts, Military Justice Reform, and the End of the Feres Doctrine
Military Policy and Legislation Considerations for the Investigations of Non Combat Death, Homicide, and Suicide of US Service Members
Posted in Armed Forces, Army, Cold Cases, Felony Crime, Homicide, In Their Name, Military Policy, Non Combat Death, Sexual Assault, Suicide, Suspicious Deaths, True Crime | Tagged 2005, 2006, 2018, Accountability, Army, Cold Case, Cold Case Justice, Cold Cases, Conspiracy: Women in the US Military, Cover-up, Crime Junkie, Crime Junkie Podcast, Death Ruled Suicide, Federal Jurisdiction, Fort Campbell, Fort Hood, Homicide, Independent Investigations, Iraq, LaVena Johnson, Military Jurisdiction, Military Justice, Military Justice Reform, Military Policy, Murder, Non Combat Death, Non Combat Related Incident, Non Combat Related Injuries, Non-Combat Deaths, October, Overseas Deaths, Player FM, Podcast, Podcasts, Rape, Sexual Assault, Stitcher, Suicide or Murder?, Suspicious, Suspicious Death, Tina Priest, True Crime, Unsolved, US Army, Women in the US Military | Leave a reply
The Strange & Unexplained: ‘The Biggest Suspicious Unsolved Military Mysteries’ (August 15, 2018)
(photo courtesy of India Today)
10. Paul Whipkey, U.S. Army (missing since July 10, 1958)
9. Chad Langford, U.S. Army (found dead March 12, 1992)
8. Kirk Vanderbur, U.S. Marine Corps (died on February 16, 1992)
7. James Sabow, U.S. Marine Corps (found dead January 22, 1991)
6. Yosef Alon, Israeli Diplomat (found dead on July 1, 1973)
5. William Miller, U.S. Marine Corps (found dead on September 16, 1972)
4. Gareth Williams, MI6 spy (found dead in London on August 23, 2010)
3. Ralph Sigler, U.S. Army (found dead in motel on April 13, 1976)
2. David Cox, U.S. Marine Corps (murdered on January 5, 1994)
1. LaVena Johnson, U.S. Army (found raped & murdered on July 19, 2005)
7 Eerie Military Stories from Unsolved Mysteries That Still Haunt us
10 Suspicious Unsolved Military Mysteries
National Security Blanket Hides Murders of US Military Personnel
The Mysterious Disappearance of Paul Whipkey (Unsolved Mysteries)
The Mysterious Death of Chad Langford (Unsolved Mysteries)
Kirk’s Story, U.S. Marine Corps, Camp Lejeune, North Carolina
The Homicide of United States Marine Corps Colonel, James E. Sabow: A Forensic Analysis Submitted to the United States Congress
FBI reopens case of 1973 assassination of Israeli diplomat
Cold-case trial, Did wife, pals kill Marine?
‘Spy in bag’ Gareth Williams was ‘murdered by Russian hitmen after sexual photo blackmail plot’
Tales from the Morgue: Ft. Bliss Spy: Suicide or Murder?
New England’s Unsolved: Who killed US Marine David Cox?
Army Pfc LaVena Johnson Died of Non Combat Related Injuries in Iraq, Death Ruled Suicide But Independent Autopsy Revealed Rape & Murder (July 19, 2005)
Posted in Armed Forces, Army, Cold Cases, Felony Crime, Homicide, In Their Name, Military Policy, Missing, Non Combat Death, Scandals, Sexual Assault, Suicide, USMC | Tagged 1958, 1972, 1973, 1976, 1991, 1992, 1994, 2005, 2010, Army, Chad Langford, Cold Case, Cold Cases, David Cox, Disappeared, Gareth Williams, Iraq, Israeli Air Force, Israeli Diplomat, Israeli Embassy, James Sabow, Kirk Vanderbur, LaVena Johnson, Marine Corps, Marine Corps Reserve, Marines, Massachusetts, Military, Military Families, Military History, Military Justice, Military Policy, Paul Whipkey, Ralph Sigler, The Strange & Unexplained, United States, United States of America, Unsolved, Unsolved Cases, Unsolved Crimes, Unsolved Mysteries, Vanished, William Donald Miller, William Miller, Yosef Alon, YouTube | Leave a reply
Posted on December 23, 2017 by Jennifer Norris
Darlene Krashoc, U.S. Army
UPDATE: Army Spc. Darlene Krashoc Sexually Assaulted, Murdered, and Dumped in Parking Lot in Colorado Springs; DNA Match Leads to Arrest of Michael Whyte (March 17, 1987)
Captain Gordon Hess, U.S. Army
Army Captain Gordon Hess Found Stabbed to Death at Fort Knox in Kentucky, Military Investigators Ruled Suicide Despite the 26 Stab Wounds to Neck & Chest Area (1998)
Col. Philip Shue, U.S. Air Force
Air Force Col. Philip Shue Died in an Apparent Car Accident, But Autopsy Revealed Much More; Texas Judge Ruled Cause of Death as Homicide (2003)
Pfc. LaVena Johnson, U.S. Army
Army Pfc LaVena Johnson Died of Non Combat Related Injuries in Iraq, Death Ruled Suicide But Independent Autopsy Revealed Rape & Murder (2005)
Nonnie Dotson, U.S. Air Force
Lackland Air Force Base Nurse Nonnie Dotson Mysteriously Disappeared, Last Seen November 19th, 2006 in Littleton, Colorado While on Leave
SrA Blanca Luna, U.S. Air Force
Cold Case: Air Force Reservist SrA Blanca Luna Discovered Stabbed to Death in Base Lodging at Sheppard AFB in Texas (2008)
SSG Anton Phillips, U.S. Army
Army SSG Anton Phillips Found Stabbed to Death at FOB Mehtar Lam, Afghanistan; CID Offering $25,000 Reward for Information (2009)
Katherine Morris, U.S. Army Spouse
Army Spouse Katherine Morris Found Dead in Car Near Mall; Cause of Death Initially Ruled Suicide But Further Investigation Suggests Homicide Motivated by Insurance Fraud (2012)
Sean Wells, U.S. Army
Fort Bragg Army Soldier Sean Wells Gunned Down in Home by Two Masked Men in Fayetteville, Family Asks for Help Solving Case (2013)
Pvt. Justin Lewis, U.S. Army
Unsolved Homicide: Fort Hood Army Pvt. Justin Lewis Shot & Killed Near Vacant Lot in Neighborhood in Killeen, Texas (2017)
CASES SOLVED BY NCIS COLD CASE SQUAD:
Andrew Muns, U.S. Navy
Michael LeBrun Plead Guilty to Strangling Andrew Muns on the USS Cacapon After Caught Stealing $8,600 from Navy Ship’s Safe, NCIS Cold Case Squad Solves Case (1968)
Lt Verle ‘Lee’ Hartley, U.S. Navy
Lt Verle Lee Hartley, US Navy, Died of Arsenic Poisoning in 1982, NCIS Cold Case Squad Solved Murder 13 Years Later, Wife Pamela Plead Guilty (1982)
Our View: ‘Cold Case’ crimes are worth investigators’ effort
A List of Soldiers Targeted & Murdered for the Servicemen’s Group Life Insurance Benefits (SGLI)
Investigators Persisted When Army Soldier Kelli Bordeaux Disappeared in North Carolina, Convicted Sex Offender Nicholas Holbert Sentenced to Life in Prison for Murder (2012)
Posted in Armed Forces, Army, Cold Cases, Felony Crime, Homicide, In Their Name, Military Policy, Navy, Non Combat Death, Scandals, USAF, USMC | Tagged 1968, 1982, 1987, 1998, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2013, 2017, Afghanistan, Air Force, Air Force Reserve, Andrew Muns, Anton Phillips, Army, Army, Army Criminal Investigation Division, Blanca Luna, CID, Cold Case, Cold Case Squads, Cold Cases, Cold Cases, Colorado, Colorado Springs, Criminal Investigation Division, Darlene Krashoc, Disappeared, Domestic Abuse, Domestic Violence, Fayetteville, Fayetteville Police Department, FOB Mehtar Lam, Fort Bragg, Fort Carson, Fort Hood, Fort Knox, Gordon Hess, Homicide, Homicide Hunter, Insurance Fraud, Iraq, Justin Lewis, Katherine Morris, Kentucky, Killeen, Killeen Police Department, Lackland AFB, Lackland Air Force Base, LaVena Johnson, Lee Hartley, Life Insurance, Maryland, Michael LeBrun, Military, Military Base, Military Spouse, Missing, Murder, Naval Criminal Investigation Services, Navy, Navy, NCIS, Non Combat Death, Non Combat Related Injuries, Non-Combat Deaths, Nonnie Dotson, North Carolina, Philip Shue, Poisoning, Reward, Sean Wells, Sheppard AFB, Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas, US Air Force, USS Cacapon, USS Forrestal, Vanished, Verle Lee Hartley | 1 Reply
The Generation Why Podcast Featured the Suspicious Death of Army Pfc. LaVena Johnson in Balad, Iraq: Was It Suicide or Murder? (November 19, 2017)
The Generation Why Podcast
“Death of LaVena Johnson. July 19, 2005. Balad, Iraq. Nineteen years of age and recently deployed to Iraq, LaVena Johnson had everything going for her. A great education, determination, goals, and a great family. In letters and calls to home, she seemed quite candid about conditions there, both the good and the bad, but was also looking forward to being home for Christmas. On July 19th, though, a grim discovery was made. LaVena was found in a contractor’s tent, dead from an apparent gunshot wound to her head. An aerosol can was used to burn printed emails from a recent boyfriend. The Army ruled her death a suicide. Upset over the recent breakup with her boyfriend she must have hit her breaking point. The first autopsy didn’t really find anything to question this as a suicide. The Johnson family had her exhumed and two additional autopsies would make some startling discoveries. LaVena Johnson had suffered a broken nose, loose teeth, a black eye, and chemical burns on her genitals just to name a few. The Johnson family never believed that LaVena would take her own life and despite the questions surrounding her death, no one seems to want to go beyond saying that this case is ‘inconclusive’. Join us for a difficult discussion of losing a loved one under mysterious circumstances, not getting answers from investigators, and the possible reasons for why LaVena Johnson died back in 2005 in Iraq.” –Death of LaVena Johnson, The Generation Why Podcast (November 19, 2017)
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Six Intriguing True Crime Podcasts Spotlighting Active Duty Military Suicide, Missing, and Murder Cases
The Death of LaVena Johnson (Unsolved Mysteries)
Posted in Armed Forces, Army, Felony Crime, Homicide, In Their Name, Military Policy, Non Combat Death, Sexual Assault, Suicide, Suspicious Deaths, True Crime | Tagged 2005, 2017, Active Duty, Army, Army CID, Army Criminal Investigation Division, Balad Iraq, Crime Junkie, Crime Junkie Podcast, Death of LaVena Johnson, Death Ruled Suicide, Episode 260, Generation Why, Generation Why Podcast, Homicide, Independent Autopsy, Iraq, LaVena Johnson, Military, Military Corruption, Military Justice Reform, Military Policy, Mysteries, Mystery, Non Combat Death, Non Combat Related Injuries, November, OIF, Operation Iraqi Freedom, Pfc. LaVena Johnson, PlayerFM, Podcast, Podcasts, Premiere, Rape, Sexual Assault, Stitcher, Suicide or Murder?, Suspicious, Suspicious Death, The Generation Why, The Generation Why Podcast, The Silent Truth, True Crime, True Crime Podcast, True Crime Podcasts, Unsolved, Unsolved Mysteries, US Army | Leave a reply
August: U.S. Department of Defense Casualties Report from September 11, 2001 to Present (August 31, 2017)
August Casualties Reports from September 11, 2001 to Present:
Total Non Combat Deaths in August from 2001 to Present: 152
Medical: 9 (6%)
Accidents: 9 (6%)
Vehicle Accidents: 26 (17%)
Helicopter Crashes: 58 (38%)
Non Combat Related Incidents: 45 (30%)
Unspecified Causes: 5 (3%)
Total Combat Deaths in August from 2001 to Present:
Non Combat Deaths of Female Soldiers 2001 to Present:
Total Non Combat Deaths of Female Soldiers 2001 to Present:
Non Combat Deaths of Soldiers in August 2003 (22):
07/31/2003: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: James Lambert III, 22, NCD, Iraq, Fort Bragg, North Carolina
08/05/2003: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: David Loyd, 44, NCD, Kuwait, Tennessee Army National Guard
08/05/2003: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: Farao Letufuga, 20, NCD, Iraq, Fort Campbell, Kentucky
08/06/2003: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: Zeferino Colunga, 20, NCD, Iraq, Fort Polk, Louisiana
08/06/2003: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: Leonard Simmons, 33, NCD, Iraq, Fort Campbell, Kentucky
08/07/2003: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: Duane Longstreth, 19, NCD, Iraq, Fort Bragg, North Carolina
08/08/2003: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: Matthew Bush, 20, NCD, Iraq, Fort Hood, Texas
08/08/2003: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: Brandon Ramsey, 21, NCD, Iraq, Illinois Army National Guard
08/09/2003: DoD Identifies Army Casualties: Floyd Knighten Jr, 55, and Levi Kinchen, 21, NCDs, Iraq, Fort Polk, Louisiana
08/11/2003: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: David Perry, 36, NCD, Iraq, California Army National Guard
08/12/2003: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: Richard Eaton Jr, 37, NCD, Iraq, Fort Meade, Maryland
08/12/2003: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: Daniel Parker, 18, NCD, Iraq, Fort Campbell, Kentucky
08/14/2003: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: David Kirchhoff, 31, NCD, Iraq, Iowa Army National Guard
08/20/2003: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: Kenneth Harris, Jr, 23, NCD, Tennessee Army Reserve
08/21/2003: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: Michael Adams, 20, NCD, Iraq, Baumholder, Germany
08/21/2003: DoD Identifies Navy Casualty: Kylan Jones-Huffman, 31, NCD, Iraq, I Marine Expeditionary Force
08/23/2003: DoD Identifies Army Casualties: Stephen Scott, 21, and Vorn Mack, 19, NCDs, Iraq, Fort Carson, Colorado
08/25/2003: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: Ronald Allen Jr, 22, NCD, Iraq, Fort Carson, Colorado
08/25/2003: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: Pablo Manzano, 19, NCD, Iraq, Bamberg, Germany
08/27/2003: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: Anthony Sherman, 43, NCD, Kuwait, Pennsylvania Army Reserve
Non Combat Deaths of Male Soldiers in August 2004 (8):
07/30/2004: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: Tommy Gray, 34, NCD, Iraq, Fort Hood, Texas
08/03/2004: DoD Identifies Marine Casualty: Gregory Ratzlaff, 36, NCD, Iraq, Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, San Diego, California
08/07/2004: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: David Potter, 22, NCD, Iraq, Fort Hood, Texas
08/21/2004: DoD Identifies Marine Casualty: Edward Reeder, 32, NCD, Iraq, Camp Pendleton, California
08/24/2004: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: Donald Davis, 42, NCD, Iraq, Ohio Army Reserve
08/27/2004: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: Luis Perez, 19, NCD, Iraq, Pennyslvania Army Reserve
08/27/2004: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: Omead Razani, 19, NCD, Iraq, Camp Greaves, Korea
08/27/2004: DoD Identifies Marine Casualtiy: Nickalous Aldrich, 21, NCD, Iraq, Camp Pendleton, California
Non Combat Deaths of Soldiers in August 2006 (8):
08/05/2006: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: Daniel Suplee, 39, NCD, Iraq, Florida Army National Guard
08/07/2006: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: Leroy Segura Jr, 23, NCD, Iraq, Fort Benning, Georgia
08/11/2006: DoD Announces Army Casualties: Steven Mennemeyer, 26, and Jeffery Brown, 25, NCD, Iraq, Fort Riley, Kansas
08/24/2006: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: Ruben Villa Jr, 36, NCD, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait
08/29/2006: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: Jeffrey Hansen, 31, NCD, Iraq, Nebraska Army National Guard
08/29/2006: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: Darry Benson, 46, NCD, Kuwait, North Carolina Army National Guard
08/30/2006: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: Matthew Schneider, 23, NCD, Iraq, Wiesbaden, Germany
08/06/2007: DoD Identifies Air Force Casualty: Joey Link, 29, NCD, Germany, Dyess Air Force Base, Texas
08/10/2007: DoD Identifies Marine Casualty: Reynold Armand, 21, NCD, Iraq, Camp Lejeune, North Carolina
08/13/2007: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: Joan Duran, 24, NCD, Iraq, Fort Bragg, North Carolina
08/13/2007: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: Alan Austin, 21, NCD, Afghanistan, Fort Bragg, North Carolina
08/15/2007: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: Alicia Birchett, 29, NCD, Iraq, Fort Campbell, Kentucky
08/16/2007: DoD Identifies Army Casualties: Christopher Johnson, 31, Jackie McFarlane Jr, 30, Sean Fisher, 29, Stanley Reynolds, 37, and Steven Jewell, 26, NCD, Iraq, Fort Wainwright, Alaska
08/20/2007: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: Michael Fielder, 35, NCD, Iraq, Fort Bragg, North Carolina
08/20/2007: DoD Identifies Army Casualties: Paul Norris, 30, and Kamisha Block, 20, NCD, Iraq, Fort Hood, Texas
08/22/2007: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: George Libby, 23, NCD, Afghanistan, Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington
08/23/2007: DoD Identifies Army Casualties: Derek Dobogal, 26, Jason Paton, 25, Garrett McLead, 23, Jeremy Boufard, 21, Phillip Brodnick, 25, Joshua Harmon, 20, Nathan Hubbard, 21, Michael Hook, 25, Jessy Pollard, 22, and Tyler Seideman, 20, NCD, Iraq, Schofield Barracks, Hawaii
08/23/2007: DoD Identifies Army Casualties: Corry Tyler, 29, Paul Flynn, 28, Matthew Tallman, 30, Rickey Bell, 21, NCD, Iraq, Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington
08/25/2007: DoD Identifies Army Casualties: Scott Carney, 37, NCD, Afghanistan, Iowa Army National Guard
08/25/2007: DoD Identifies Army Casualties: Daniel Miller, 43, NCD, Afghanistan, Fort Riley, Kansas
08/04/2008: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: Kevin Dickson, 21, NCD, Iraq, Fort Carson, Colorado
08/04/2008: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: Andre Mitchell, 25, NCD, Iraq, Fort Hood, Texas
08/04/2008: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: Jennifer Cole, 34, NCD, Iraq, Fort Campbell, Kentucky
08/05/2008: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: Brian Miller, 37, NCD, Iraq, Indiana Army National Guard
08/06/2008: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: Timothy Hutton, 21, NCD, Iraq, Bamberg, Germany
08/06/2008: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: Ronald Schmidt, 18, NCD, Iraq, Kansas Army National Guard
08/07/2008: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: Errol James, 29, NCD, Afghanistan, Grafenwoehr, Germany
08/09/2008: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: Danny Maybin, 47, NCD, Kuwait, Fort McPherson, Georgia
08/11/2008: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: John Mattox, 23, NCD, Afghanistan, Fort Hood, Texas
08/19/2008: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: Janelle King, 23, NCD, Iraq, Fort Polk, Louisiana
08/19/2008: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: Jonathon Luscher, 20, NCD, Afghanistan, Pennsylvania Army National Guard
08/20/2008: DoD Identifies Marine Casualty: Travis Stottlemyer, 20, NCD, Bahrain, Marine Corps Security Forces, Norfolk, Va
08/24/2008: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: David Paquet, 26, NCD, Afghanistan, Fort Hood, Texas
08/05/2009: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: Keiffer Wilhelm, 19, NCD, Iraq, Fort Bliss, Texas
08/10/2009: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: Tara Smith, 33, NCD, Afghanistan, Fort Bragg, North Carolina
08/10/2009: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: Matthew Swanson, 20, NCD, Afghanistan, Fort Drum, New York
08/11/2009: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: Richard Walters Jr, 41, NCD, Kuwait, Fort Benning, Georgia
08/20/2009: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: Matthew Hastings, 23, NCD, Iraq, Fort Hood, Texas
08/20/2009: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: Paul Dumont, Jr, 23, NCD, Afghanistan, Fort Eustis, Virginia
08/26/2009: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: Darby Morin, 25, NCD, Afghanistan, Fort Drum, New York
08/05/2011: DOD Identifies Army Casualty: Barun Rai, 24, NCD, Afghanistan, Bamberg, Germany
08/06/2011: DOD Identifies Army Casualty: Jinsu Lee, 34, NCD, Afghanistan, Schofield Barracks, Hawaii
08/11/2011: DOD Identifies 3 US Air Force Service Members Killed In CH-47 Crash: John Brown, 33, Andrew Harvell, 26, and Daniel Zerbe, 28, NCDs, Afghanistan, Pope Field, North Carolina
08/11/2011: DOD Identifies 5 US Army Service Members Killed In CH-47 Crash: David Carter, 47, Bryan Nichols, 31, Patrick Hamburger, 30, Alexander Bennett, 24, and Spencer Duncan, 21, NCDs, Afghanistan, Army General Support Aviation Battalion
08/11/2011: DOD Identifies 2 US Navy Service Members Killed In CH-47 Crash: Jesse Pittman, 27, and Nicholas Spehar, 24, NCDs, Afghanistan, West Coast-based Naval Special Warfare
08/11/2011: DOD Identifies 20 US Navy Service Members Killed In CH-47 Crash: Jonas Kelsall, 29, Louis Langlais, 44, Thomas Ratzlaff, 34, Kraig Vickers, 36, Brian Bill, 31, John Faas, 31, Kevin Houston, 35, Matthew Mason, 37, Stephen Mills, 35, Nicholas Hull, 30, Robert Reeves, 32, Heath Robinson, 34, Darrik Benson, 28, Christopher Campbell, 36, Jared Day, 28, John Douangdara, 26, Michael Strange, 25, Jon Tumilson, 35, Aaron Vaughn, 30, and Jason Workman, 32, NCDs, Afghanistan, East Coast-based Naval Special Warfare
08/15/2011: DOD Identifies Army Casualty: Joe Cunningham, 27, NCD, Afghanistan, Oklahoma Army National Guard
08/17/2011: DOD Identifies Army Casualty: Dennis Jensen, 21, NCD, Afghanistan, South Dakota Army National Guard
08/17/2011: DOD Identifies Army Casualty: Joshua Seals, 21, NCD, Afghanistan, Oklahoma Army National Guard
08/20/2012: DOD Identifies 1 Navy Casualty in Helicopter Crash: Sean Carson, 32, NCDs, Afghanistan, EOD, San Diego, California
08/20/2012: DOD Identifies 2 Navy Casualties in Helicopter Crash: Patrick Feeks, 28, and David Warsen, 27, NCDs, Afghanistan, West Coast-based Naval Special Warfare
08/20/2012: DOD Identifies 4 Army Casualties in Helicopter Crash: Brian Hornsby, 37, Suresh Krause, 29, Richard Essex, 23, and Luis Oliver Galbreath, NCDs, Afghanistan, Schofield Barracks, Hawaii
08/21/2012: DOD Identifies Army Casualty: David V. Williams, 24, NCD, Afghanistan, Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington
08/26/2012: DOD Identifies Army Casualty: Patricia Horne, 20, NCD, Afghanistan, Fort Campbell, Kentucky
08/28/2012: DOD Identifies Army Casualty: Jessica Wing, 42, NCD, Kuwait, Maine Army National Guard
08/20/2013: DOD Identifies Army Casualty: Timothy Santos Jr, 29, NCD, Kuwait, Fort Bliss, Texas
08/04/2014: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: Girard Gass Jr, 33, NCD, Afghanistan, Fort Bragg, North Carolina
08/24/2014: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: Christopher Mulalley, 26, NCD, Afghanistan, Fort Hood, Texas
Aug. 6, 2016: DOD Identifies Air Force Casualty: Flando Jackson, 45, NCD, Qatar, Washington Air National Guard
Aug. 14, 2016: DoD Identifies Army Casualty: Christopher Wilbur, 36, NCD, Afghanistan, Fort Carson, Colorado
August 3, 2017: DoD Identifies Air Force Casualty: David Board, 49, NCD, Kuwait, West Virginia Air National Guard
Posted in Accidents, Armed Forces, Army, In Their Name, Military Policy, Navy, Non Combat Death, Scandals, Suicide, USAF, USMC | Tagged 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017, Aaron Vaughn, Afghanistan, Air Force, Alan Austin, Alexander Bennett, Alicia Birchett, Andre Mitchell, Andrew Harvell, Anthony Sherman, Armed Forces, Army, August, Barun Rai, Benjamen Chisholm, Brandon Ramsey, Brett Walden, Brian Bill, Brian Hornsby, Brian Miller, Brian Morris, Bryan Nichols, Casualties, Casualty, Charles High IV, Christopher Campbell, Christopher Johnson, Christopher Mulalley, Christopher Wilbur, Corry Tyler, Damian Garza, Daniel Derbe, Daniel Miller, Daniel Parker, Daniel Suplee, Danny Maybin, Darby Morin, Darrik Benson, Darry Benson, David Board, David Carter, David Kirchhoff, David Loyd, David Paquet, David Perry, David Potter, David Warsen, David Williams, Dennis Jensen, Derek Dobogal, DoD, Donald Davis, Duane Longstreth, Edward Reeder, Elden Arcand, Errol James, Farao Letufuga, Flando Jackson, Floyd Knighten, Garrett McLead, George Libby, Girard Gass Jr, Gregory Ratzlaff, Heath Robinson, Iraq, Jackie McFarlane Jr, James Lambert III, Janelle King, Jared Day, Jason Paton, Jason Scheuerman, Jason Workman, Jeffery Brown, Jeffrey Hansen, Jennifer Cole, Jeremy Boufard, Jeremy Chandler, Jesse Pittman, Jessica Wing, Jessy Pollard, Jinsu Lee, Joan Duran, Joe Cunningham, Joey Link, John Brown, John Douangdara, John Faas, John Henderson Jr, John Mattox, Jon Tumilson, Jonas Kelsall, Jonathon Luscher, Joshua Dingler, Joshua Harmon, Joshua Seals, Kamisha Block, Keiffer Wilhelm, Kenneth Harris Jr, Kevin Dickson, Kevin Houston, Kraig Vickers, Kuwait, Kylan Jones-Huffman, Leonard Simmons, Leroy Segura Jr, Levi Kinchen, Louis Langlais, Luis Oliver Galbreath, Luis Perez, Marine Corps, Matthew Bush, Matthew Hastings, Matthew Mason, Matthew Schneider, Matthew Swanson, Matthew Tallman, Michael Adams, Michael Fielder, Michael Hook, Michael Strange, Nathan Hubbard, Navy, Nicholas Hull, Nicholas Spehar, Nickalous Aldrich, Non Combat Death, Non-Combat Deaths, Omead Razani, Pablo Manzano, Patricia Horne, Patrick Feeks, Patrick Hamburger, Paul Dumont Jr, Paul Flynn, Paul Norris, Paul Saylor, Phillip Brodnick, Qatar, Reynold Armand, Richard Eaton Jr, Richard Essex, Richard Walters Jr, Rickey Bell, Robert Derenda, Robert Reeves, Ronald Allen Jr, Ronald Schmidt, Ruben Villa Jr, Rusty Bell, Scott Carney, Sean Carson, Sean Fisher, Spencer Duncan, Stanley Reynolds, Stephen Mills, Stephen Scott, Steven Jewell, Steven Mennemeyer, Suresh Krause, Tara Smith, Thomas Hull, Thomas Ratzlaff, Thomas Strickland, Timothy Hutton, Timothy Santos Jr, Tommy Gray, Travis Stottlemyer, Tyler Seideman, United Arab Emirates, US Air Force, US Marine Corps, USAF, USMC, Vorn Mack, Zeferino Colunga | Leave a reply
Nightmare Next Door Premiered ‘The Unwelcome Wagon’ on Investigation Discovery: Michael Severance and Wendi Davidson (September 9, 2016)
Posted on September 9, 2016 by Jennifer Norris
Preview: When Staff Sgt. Michael Severance goes AWOL the community of San Angelo rallies around his new bride. But there is something more sinister behind his disappearance, and investigators uncover a saga of treachery and passion as big as the state of Texas. -Nightmare Next Door, Investigation Discovery (S10 E2)
Air Force SSgt. Michael Severance was poisoned with animal medications by his veterinarian wife Wendi Davidson on January 15, 2005 in San Angelo, Texas. SSgt. Severance enlisted with the United States Air Force in 1998 and was a flying crew chief stationed at Dyess Air Force Base. He met Wendi at a local club and they hit it off right away. Shortly after meeting, she got pregnant with his child. Michael wanted to do the right thing so he eventually married Wendi and moved in with her in a small apartment attached to her new Veterinarian Clinic. He commuted 90 miles one way to the base where he worked. Michael was reported missing to the local police on January 16th after his wife Wendi informed Michael’s parents that she wouldn’t make the flight to Maine with him for a visit with their child because he was nowhere to be found. She cancelled the flights for all three of them. Michael’s parents also called the base to report him missing but Air Force leadership informed them that their hands were tied until he was considered Absent Without Leave (AWOL). After Michael’s leave was up 8 days later and he didn’t return to duty, he was officially considered AWOL. This prompted the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) to join forces with the local civilian authorities. Wendi led all the investigators to believe that Mike had deserted the military. She claimed that he didn’t want to go back to Iraq and was thinking about heading to Canada. Michael, Wendi, and their child were planning a trip to visit his parents in Maine because Mike was scheduled to deploy to the Middle East after returning from the trip.
The San Angelo police department investigators visited Wendi at her veterinarian clinic on January 17, 2005. Wendi told them Mike had been drinking lately and was out all the time, but investigators observed that all of his personal belongings were still at their shared apartment. On January 18th, Wendi filed divorce papers and attempted to get a restraining order against Mike. Civilian investigators were suspicious of Wendi and believed that she was cold and calculating. They gave her a polygraph test but the results came back inconclusive. Once Mike’s leave was up and he was considered officially AWOL, AFOSI joined the San Angelo police department investigation. AFOSI doubted that Michael was a deserter and would just up and leave. In the meantime, the San Angelo police department put a GPS tracking device on Wendi’s car. They learned that on February 7th, Wendi traveled to a remote area owned by a friend of hers. Because investigators considered Wendi a person of interest, they traveled to the location where she had been and found a large retaining pond on the property. In March 2005, investigators were able to look at the search history on Wendi’s computer and learned that Wendi had done a search for ‘decomposition of bodies’ and ‘how to pass a lie detector test’. Investigator’s confronted Wendi but didn’t buy her story so they started turning up the heat. Wendi appeared to dismiss the investigators and then after the interview left the vet clinic in a hurry. She traveled back to her friend’s remote property but this time the police were there to make sure she wasn’t able to disturb a potential crime scene while they worked on obtaining a search warrant.
In the meantime, Wendi confided in her brother Marshall. She told him that she came home and found Mike dead. She said she was scared so she disposed of his body. But her brother didn’t buy her story either and reported her to the police. On March 6th, law enforcement searched the pond on her friend’s property and found Michael Severance’s body anchored down with cinder blocks. When they searched Wendi’s home and business, they found a knife, rope, drug log book, and bottles of medication. Wendi was arrested for the murder of Mike Severance and after 32 days behind bars, her parents raised the $500,000 bond to get her released. Investigators learned that they had only been married for four months when she murdered him. Wendi gave birth to her first child in October 2001. In December 2003, she met Michael and eventually got pregnant but Michael wasn’t ready to settle down or get married quite yet. And Wendi’s parents apparently didn’t like Mike and labeled him lazy and disrespectful; they did not want Wendi to marry him. In September 2004, Wendi gave birth to their son and they were quietly married twelve days later at the courthouse. Two weeks later, Wendi purchased a veterinarian clinic and Mike moved in with her, despite the commute 90 miles one way to work at the base. Shortly after moving in, Mike was sent to Airman Leadership School in Wichita Falls and then he got orders to go to the Middle East. Mike planned a vacation to Maine in January 2005 so his parents could meet his new wife and child, their grandchild, before he was deployed overseas. After Mike returned from Airman Leadership School shortly before their trip to Maine, he observed that Wendi was cold towards him and her mother made it clear that she didn’t like Mike and she didn’t want Wendi going to Maine.
Michael Severance, US Air Force
The coroner was not able to determine if there was physical trauma to Mike’s body due to decomposition. But an autopsy revealed that Michael overdosed on drugs usually found in an animal clinic. They found Phenobarbital and B-Euthanasia in his system and he was stabbed 41 times after he was dead. Investigators learned from Wendi’s google searches that Mike was most likely stabbed post mortem so his body wouldn’t float to the surface in the pond. Wendi was arrested again on April 15th for evidence tampering after police learned she falsified log records at the animal clinic so she could justify taking the medication she used to kill her husband. Her bail was now $100,000 per tampering. In the meantime, her family arranged for her to have a privately administered polygraph. On May 24th, a grand jury indicted Wendi for murder and shortly after she was released on bond again. While awaiting trial, on August 20th, Wendi was arrested for child endangerment. One of her children got lost while looking for her; she was out at a night club. She spent another night in jail. In preparation for trial, prosecutors theorized that Wendi concocted her homicidal plan on January 14th. She asked Mike out to dinner on January 15th and then afterwards they went to a bar where they drank and danced. Upon return to their residence, prosecutors believe that Wendi mixed Phenobarbital in his drink. After he was unconscious, she plunged a syringe full of B-Euthanasia into his chest. Then she had to get rid of his body so she drove him out to the pond on her friend’s property and used fishing line to tie cinder blocks to his body. From google searches she learned that gases will make the body float so she went back to the retainer pond and stabbed him 41 times to release the gases; she attached more weight to his body.
Wendi Mae Davidson was looking at 9 to 99 years in prison so instead of going to trial, she plead ‘no contest’ which also left things open for appeal. Her lawyers argued the validity of the search warrants and believed that the GPS tracker was placed in an illegal manner; the resulting evidence was fruit of the poisonous tree. Wendi Davidson was found guilty of first degree murder and sentenced to 25 years in prison. She also received an additional 10 years for evidence tampering. Investigators and prosecutors were somewhat baffled with the motive for this crime and because Wendi plead ‘no contest’, we may never know the real reason she murdered Mike. Authorities theorized that maybe Wendi was motivated to kill because Mike Severance wanted to leave her. They theorized that Wendi’s mother didn’t like Mike so instead of divorcing him, she killed him. They also theorized that Wendi and her family wanted custody of the child with no incident. It’s important to note that Michael’s family believes Wendi also wanted the $500,000 life insurance payout. This was an unusual case because Wendi never had any known predisposition or tendency for violence but Mike’s family believes that her mother specifically had something to do with Wendi committing the murder. The question remains why didn’t she just divorce him instead of killing him?
Wendi may have made this decision because control and financial motive is a common motive for murder. It was noted that Wendi met Mike at a bar and shortly thereafter became pregnant; he may have been targeted for exploitation. It was noted that Wendi was in debt after purchasing a new animal clinic providing the motive for financial gain. It was noted that the crime was premeditated as evidenced by her plan to steal the medications from her animal clinic used to kill Mike. It was noted that Mike was murdered only four months after marrying Wendi; was he a means to an end? It was noted that Wendi’s parents didn’t like Mike and their beliefs may have been the fuel to light the fire; she may have been manipulated because she didn’t want to defy or disappoint them, afraid of the consequences. It was noted by Mike’s family that Wendi was the recipient of the life insurance policy. It was noted that Wendi attempted to manipulate the investigation and make Mike out to be someone he was not; even going so far as to get a restraining order a couple days after she killed him. Wendi Davidson does appear to be cold and calculating. Wendi Davidson appears to be a sociopath; but she exercised her right to remain silent in another attempt to abuse the process, she knows how the system works. As a result, she is eligible for parole in April 2019; she will be 41 years old.
Source: Nightmare Next Door ‘The Unwelcome Wagon’
Editor’s note: With a cable subscription, you can download the free ID Go app and watch all of the Investigation Discovery programming at your convenience. And for those who do not have cable, you can watch “unlocked” episodes on the ID Go app including the latest premieres. Download the ID Go app and binge away. For those who prefer commercial free programming during your binge session, Prime Video has an ID channel: ‘True Crime Files by Investigation Discovery” available for $2.99 a month. It’s a compilation of older seasons but totally worth the cost if you are a true crime addict.
When Staff Sgt. Michael Severance goes AWOL the community of San Angelo rallies around his new bride. But there is something more sinister behind his disappearance, and investigators uncover a saga of treachery and passion as big as the state of Texas. -Nightmare Next Door, Investigation Discovery (S10 E2)
Autopsy Finds Airman’s Body Was Stabbed 41 Times
Airman found dead in Texas pond laid to rest in Maine
Vet indicted for allegedly drugging husband to death
Veterinarian indicted on murder charge
Lee family hires PR firm to help in custody fight
Lee Man Eager for Trial in Texas
Murder suspect charged again
Davidson Murder Trial Delayed in Texas Over DNA Evidence
Wife accepts deal in Texas murder case
Wife accepts plea in Texas murder case; Davidson gets 25 years in death of Michael Severance of Lee
Veterinarian sentenced to 25 years for husband’s murder
DVM gets 25 years for husband’s murder
Police Blotter: Murderer nabbed via tracking, Web search
Wendi Mae Davidson v State of Texas (2008)
Dad of Slain Mainer Angered by Insurance Payout
Texas mail chain massacre
She’s Filing Her Nails While They’re Dragging The Lake: Court Of Appeals Of Texas Finds That Local Authorities Didn’t Piggy-Back On Federal Investigation
True-crime writer explores 2005 murder of Lee native
Legally Speaking: Murder, She Googled
‘We just try to enjoy him when we can’: Family of slain Lee native welcomes home his son
Nightmare Next Door – Veterinarian Killed Texas Air Force Hubby, Dumped Body in Stock Pond on Investigation Discovery
A Poisoned Passion by Diane Fanning
One More Reason Why by Diane Fanning
A Poisoned Passion: A Young Mother, her War Hero Husband, and the Marriage that Ended in Murder by Diane Fanning (Amazon)
Servicemen’s Group Life Insurance is a Common Motive for Murder
Air Force SSgt Michael Severance Drugged by Wife; Wendi Davidson Plead ‘No Contest’ to 1st Degree Murder, Sentenced to 25 Years (January 15, 2005)
Newlywed Wife Reports Airman Husband Missing | Investigation Discovery
The Unwelcome Wagon, S10 E2 | Nightmare Next Door | Investigation Discovery (website)
The Unwelcome Wagon, S10 E2 | Nightmare Next Door | Investigation Discovery (YouTube)
Maine Fallen Heroes
Posted in Armed Forces, Felony Crime, Homicide, In Their Name, Military Policy, USAF | Tagged 2005, 2016, A Poisoned Passion, Absent Without Leave, Abuse of Corpse, Air Force, AWOL, Deadly Women, Desertion, Diane Fanning, Disappearance, Disappeared, Discovery ID, Dyess AFB, Dyess Air Force Base, Episode 2, Female Killers, Financial Motive, Greed, Homicide, ID Go, Investigation Discovery, It Takes a Killer, January, Life Insurance, Maine, Maine Fallen Heroes, Michael Severance, Military, Military Policy, Missing, Murder, Nightmare Next Door, Poisoning, Prison Sentence, San Angelo, San Angelo TX, Season 10, September, Sociopath, Sociopaths, Stabbing, Texas, The Unwelcome Wagon, United States, United States of America, US Air Force, USAF, Wendi Davidson, Wendi Mae Davidson | Leave a reply
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Home / Auctions / $40 Marvel Encyclopedia, New Edition Hardcover by Stan Lee
$40 Marvel Encyclopedia, New Edition Hardcover by Stan Lee
Winning Bid: $4.00
“[A] book that mankind has been hungering for, a book that is–now and forever–a shining beacon of wonder, a titanic tribute to talent unleashed” –Stan Lee
Discover the essential facts about Marvel Comics’ timeless heroes such as Captain America, Spider-Man, and Iron Man, and villains like Thanos, Loki, and Kingpin.
Keep up with the ever-expanding Marvel Universe with this new edition of DK’s best-selling Marvel Encyclopedia. Updated and expanded, this definitive Who’s Who of Marvel Comics reveals vital info and secret histories of more than 1200 classic and brand new Marvel characters, and provides the lowdown on recent key events including Civil War 2, Secret Empire, and Infinity Countdown.
From iconic teams such as the Avengers, X-Men, and Guardians of the Galaxy to fan favorites Black Panther, Deadpool, and Captain Marvel to rising stars Amadeus Cho, Squirrel Girl and the Exiles, every significant Marvel character is showcased with the latest comic artwork. Meticulously researched, expertly written, and stunningly illustrated, the Marvel Encyclopedia boasts newly commissioned cover art by one of Marvel’s hottest up-and-coming talents. Including an introduction by Stan Lee, this unique, in-depth, and accessible encyclopedia is an indispensable guide to Marvel Comics that devoted fans and newcomers alike will return to time and again.
The essential book for new fans and for everyone who grew up loving the excitement, heroism, and humor of the Marvel Universe!
Marvel Comics’ roster boasts some of the best known and most popular Super Heroes ever conceived—international household names such as Spider-Man, the Hulk, the X-Men, the Avengers, and Wolverine. This unique, one-volume encyclopedia contains more than 1,200 of Marvel’s most memorable characters, with details of their powers and thrill-packed careers.
The most comprehensive reference guide to the Marvel Comics universe
With exclusive cover artwork by Marvel artist Marco Checchetto, and a foreword from late Marvel Comics legend Stan Lee, this is the definitive character resource for true Marvel Comics fans.
Expanded to cover more than 1200 Marvel Comics characters
From Abomination to Zzzax, discover in-depth profiles on every incredible characters. This updated edition includes 20 new character profiles and updated entries for fan-favorites including The Avengers, Black Panther, Captain Marvel, The Guardians of the Galaxy, Iron Man, Thor, and Spider-Man.
Updated to include more defining moments from Marvel Comics history
New entries explore the latest events from the Marvel Comics Universe, including Secret Wars, Civil War II, Secret Empire, and Infinity Countdown. Discover the story behind these incredible cross-over moments.
SKU: F9-330-1 Category: Auctions
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TMNT Adventures #29
Cover: Chris Allan, Rod Ollerenshaw and Nakrosis
Script: Dean Clarrain
Pencils: Chris Allan
Inks: Jon D'Agostino
Colors: Barry Grossman
Letters: Gary Fields
First Printing: February, 1992
Number of story pages: 26
"Midnight Sun" Part Two
The issue begins with Master Splinter recounting his first hand experience witnessing the atomic bomb being dropped on Hiroshima back in 1945 (Note: TMNT Adventures utilizes the same origin for Splinter that was used in the cartoon, in that he was once a man named Hamato Yoshi as opposed to being the pet rat of Yoshi, as he was in the original comic book from Mirage). Our heroes have arrived at the Industrial Exhibition Hall, one of the few structures that withstood the force of the blast. It has been left in its decimated state to remind everyone of the horrors of war. Splinter reveals that this is the first time that he has seen the building since that fateful day in 1945.
The Sensei is interrupted as Ninjara arrives on the scene and a battle erupts between the TMNT and her sorcerous white ninja forces.
Back at the docks, Fu Sheng agrees to help Chien Khan if he promises not to harm the girl. The Khan agrees and then states that it has taken Ninjara many years to steal all of the artificats required to perform the ritual.
The Turtles continue to battle Ninjara as Fu Sheng prepares the transformation powder for Khan. The Warrior Dragon is released and is now under the control of Chien Khan, who sends him on a mission.
The TMNT are fairing well in the battle when the Warrior Dragon arrives on the scene. The Turtles notice that something is wrong with their friednd, so they hop on board to see what he's up to. Ninjara also manages to climb onto the Dragon, as she threatens to cut out Raph's heart.
At the warehouse, Fu Sheng admonishes and uncaring Chien Khan for ordering the Dragon to destroy a nearby nuclear power plant and use its power to open a gateway to a world of demons.
Ninjara. Ninjitsu action.
The Warrior Dragon is summoned.
The Dragon's up to no good.
Issue #28 Issue #30
TMNT Adventures Index Page
The Official Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Web Site © 2003 Mirage Studios unless otherwise noted. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles®, including Raphael®, Michaelangelo®, Leonardo®, Donatello®, and April O'Neil® are registered trademarks of Mirage Studios USA. Based on characters and comic books created by Peter A. Laird and Kevin B. Eastman.
All rights reserved. Any use of these files electronically or otherwise is strictly prohibited!!!
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Mtuoitre.com
Trang Chủ/health news/Does This Sleeping Position Mean Anything, or Is It Just More Comfortable?
Does This Sleeping Position Mean Anything, or Is It Just More Comfortable?
Illustrations by Irene Goddard
Have you ever woken up and wondered how and why your body contorted itself into such a position? Do you turn onto one side in bed without even thinking? Would you rather stay as far away from your partner as possible at night?
“Sleep is vital for your health and well-being, and the position you sleep in could be just as important for your quality of sleep, your health, and relationship if you share a bed with your partner,” explains Doctor-4-U‘s Dr. Diana Gall.
It can also mean something deep. Your bedtime posture might just indicate a blissfully happy relationship or it may signal an unspoken emotional issue.
From the famous spooning to the lesser known tetherball, here’s a rundown of whether your sleeping position really means anything — or whether it’s just your body’s way of getting comfortable.
One of the most widely known couples’ sleeping positions, spooning involves one person acting as the “big spoon,” cocooning the other in a sideways hug.
“It can be a comfort for many people being so close to their partner,” says Dr. Gall. The “big spoon” is likely to feel protective of their partner, using their body to create a safe environment.
Only a fifth of couples actually sleep in this position though, according to a survey carried out by hotel company Travelodge.
Sleeping on your side “is considered the most comfortable [position] and better for your health,” notes Dr. Gall.
It doesn’t obstruct the airways as much as other positions, so it’s better for your breathing — a godsend for any snorer. And it may also relieve morning aches and pains due to giving your back some pressure-free time.
But there are some downsides.
There’s the chance you may affect your joints by hunching your shoulders and knees.
It can also impact your complexion. Squashing your face into the pillow, says Dr. Gall, “can drag the skin, which isn’t good for plump, wrinkle-free skin.”
Then there’s the comfort side to consider. There’s not a lot of room to move or stretch and it can feel claustrophobic to some.
Loose spoon
When people have been in a relationship for some time, they may graduate to the loose spoon. Essentially, it’s a less restricted version of the original spoon.
You may think this position signifies a relationship problem, but experts say otherwise.
“It still provides that closeness and reassurance,” Dr. Gall says. “But there’s more space between you, allowing you to breathe and relax into a comfortable position.”
Chasing spoon
Instead of situating the spoon in the center of the bed, the chasing spoon is a position where one person has moved to one side of the bed and the other appears to be “chasing” them.
This one is said to have a couple of meanings: that one person wants to be pursued by the other, or that the same person needs space from their partner.
Aside from a potential fall onto the floor, this comes with all the same ups and downs as the regular spooning position.
Face to face, touching
A pretty self-explanatory sleeping position, this involves both people facing each other with their heads at the same level and their bodies intertwined.
Sleeping in this way suggests the two individuals are incredibly close and generally happy in their relationship.
But, in all honesty, this probably isn’t ideal for a good night’s sleep. After all, who wants someone breathing in their face for 8 hours?
So it makes sense that, in a 2014 survey carried out by the UK’s University of Hertfordshire, only 4 percent of couples reported spending the night facing each other.
Face to face, not touching
If you sleep facing each other but don’t touch, some believe there could be an issue in the relationship. Both partners may desire attention from each other, but are failing to give it.
To combat this, experts recommend prioritizing listening to one another and being open and honest about your feelings.
However, it can also be read as another position called pillow talk. This is a sign that you’re close and open to sharing things with each other.
Back to back, touching
Affectionately known as back kissing, sleeping back-to-back while remaining in contact with each other is seen as a super relaxed sleeping position.
Although it may be a sign of closeness, it’s more commonly seen in couples who have been together for less than a year.
Again, this is a form of side sleeping, so your back may feel better in the morning while other joints suffer.
Back to back, not touching
This position also has a cute alternative name: liberty lovers.
Sleeping back-to-back with space in between could indicate connection and independence within the relationship. (Plus, you might get a better night’s sleep.)
But if you’ve suddenly switched from a more intimate position to this, you may need to chat to your partner about the newly developed space.
The liberty lovers posture can be good for the body as it relieves pressure on internal organs. However, it may also detrimentally impact the lower back and shoulders.
Also known as the nuzzle, this practically cherubic position sees one person sleeping flat on their back while the other rests their head on the first person’s chest. Legs and arms often “hug” each other too.
Just like spooning, this is deemed to be a protective posture with an added touch of passion.
But let’s be real: It’s not very comfortable. Someone is likely to end up with stiff or numb limbs.
That said, its heavy skin-to-skin reliance may release oxytocin, the love hormone.
When both people are lying on either side of the bed far away from each other, they’re doing the cliffhanger. Bonus points if a foot sticks out over the edge.
To most people, this would be a sign that there’s a real problem in the relationship.
But if not carried out aggressively, it can actually signify that both people are happy in themselves and with their partner.
However, a 2014 survey of over 1,000 people did find that the further apart couples slept, the worse their relationship.
Lie on your back next to your partner, either holding hands or gently touching their arm or leg. What do you look like? Two paper dolls.
This slightly wooden position gives people intimacy and the chance to get a decent night’s sleep.
Although it may help those who deal with back pain and circulation problems, be aware that one or both of you may end up snoring, turning a peaceful night into an irritating one.
And if your back hurts more in this straight posture, put pillows under your knees to elongate the spine, says Dr. Gall.
If you both like to sleep in completely different positions but simultaneously want some nighttime contact, try the tetherball.
One person curls up in a ball-type posture while the other sleeps on their back, resting a hand on their partner’s hip. Simple.
Touching in even the smallest of ways can impact a relationship, according to a UK survey.
In fact, 94 percent of couples who slept while touching reported feeling happy with their relationship, compared to 68 percent who didn’t touch.
Leg hug
A second passionate posture is the leg hug. Whether your feet are touching every so often or your legs are fully intertwined, this position is asking for intimacy.
If both of you are doing it, that’s a good sign. But if only one person is into the leg hug, there may be a slight imbalance in the relationship.
The leg hug allows both people to sleep on their back, side, or front, giving them the freedom to find what’s most comfortable for them.
An odd name, we know — but it can be rather comfy.
The position involves both of you lying flat on your back and one person placing their head on the other’s shoulder.
According to sleep experts, it’s a symbol of understanding and confidence with one person willing to act as the protector.
Stomach snooze
Sleeping on the stomach isn’t a very healthy position for most. When doing so with a partner, it can symbolize a lack of trust and a degree of vulnerability.
Individually, it can hurt too.
“This is in fact one of the worst positions for causing back pain as it places pressure on your spine,” says Neil Robinson, chief sleep officer at bed manufacturer Sealy UK.
Pain can result in a number of ways, explains Robinson. Front sleeping “makes it difficult to maintain a neutral spine position and can force your lumbar region (the lower region of your spine) to bend beyond its usual limits.”
Plus, it “means you’re forced to turn your head to either side to breathe, which causes the spine in your neck to twist.”
If you love sleeping like this, there’s a way to help avoid some aches and pains: Robinson advises lying with a pillow under your stomach to better align your spine.
A rather intense position, the tangle is apparently rarely seen. When it does occur, it’s usually immediately after an intimate situation or at the beginning of a new relationship.
It can only be described as this: an extremely close hug, but lying down. In other words, not a lot of breathing room.
While the tangle is okay every now and then, long-term incidences may prompt you to rethink how dependent you are on each other.
Unraveling knot
This begins with the aforementioned tangle and eventually unravels so that each person can sleep how they like.
It’s deemed to be a healthier position than the tangle, as it’s equal parts intimate and independent.
However, this is only likely to be seen in couples who’ve been together for a while.
Sleeping in the starfish position (aka space hog) — sprawling out across the entire bed — alone can be beneficial; both for sleep quality and for the state of your body.
Starfishers report being the most likely to wake up feeling refreshed, notes Robinson.
This posture can also diminish back pain, as it “helps to distribute your weight across the widest surface of your body whilst keeping your spine in a neutral position.”
Those dealing with heartburn may see improved symptoms too, adds Robinson, as the starfish “prevents stomach acid from slipping into your esophagus during the night.”
But it can worsen snoring or symptoms of sleep apnea. And if carried out with another person in the bed, it can signify selfishness.
Imagine you’re being told how to sleep by a military officer, and you’re guaranteed to lie flat on your back with your arms positioned straight down next to your body.
The soldier position may exacerbate snoring and isn’t thought to be particularly comfortable. But 11 percent of Americans do it according to a nationwide survey from the Better Sleep Council.
Almost half of Americans sleep like a literal baby, according to the same survey. And many say it’s the most comfortable position to spend the night in.
While curling up is cozy, doing it too tightly can put strain on your lower back and pressure on your abdomen.
To alleviate these effects, try straightening your body out a little. Putting a pillow in between your knees may also help your hips.
When it comes to sleeping positions, it’s safe to say you should take any deeper meanings with a pinch of salt.
Listen to the health benefits and disadvantages, as they tend to be backed up by science — but don’t stress about the impending demise of your relationship.
You might just prioritize comfort over nighttime closeness, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Lauren Sharkey is a journalist and author specializing in women’s issues. When she isn’t trying to discover a way to banish migraines, she can be found uncovering the answers to your lurking health questions. She’s also written a book profiling young female activists across the globe and is currently building a community of such resisters. Catch her on Twitter.
couple sleeping positions
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Covington: Make The Responsible Go Flipping Burgers
The Diocese of Covington has issued one of those sugary apologies for the way a Catholic diocese has treated a group of perfectly decent Catholic boys.
Too little and too late.
Firstly, the apology only came after the diocese was threatened with a law suit. Secondly, the scale of what has happened (a Catholic diocese eagerly taking part to the public lynching of their own boys) is not something that can be washed away with an apology.
What happened is a symptom of a very serious disease: the fact that many Catholic dioceses have sold out to the world to such an extent that they cannot resist taking part in the lynching of their own, lest anyone thinks they are not wordly and politically correct enough.
This should have consequences going way beyond an apology, and I hope that the diocese is sued anyway and this scandal makes as much noise as possible.
The lives of several good Catholic boys could have been destroyed. Obvioysly, this was of no consequence to the people responsible for the statement released by the Covington diocese; people clearly so morally rotten that they do not hesitated one second in believing the “white supremacist” fake news leftist narrative because the boys were… wearing MAGA hats!
It is time for the PR people of the Diocese to go flipping burgers or, alternatively, apply for a job at the CNN or the New York Times, where they will be able to fulfil their real vocation of brown-nosing to liberal culture.
As to the Bishop, we need to know whether he was previously informed and approved of the statement and, if yes, he should be sent to the most rural parish in Kentucky as a parish priest, assuming he still remembers how to celebrate Mass. But honestly, even if he did not know of the statement, he should be held responsible both for the people he employs and for not having fired them in advance of the threat of a law suit.
This happened in Kentucky, for crying out loud. It goes to show what a sewer of political correctness the average US Diocese has become.
Will heads roll? I doubt.
Should they? Most certainly, and many of them.
Catholic dioceses have become the enemies of their own boys. This truly says it all.
Kudos to you, brave Covington boys.
You are making America great again, and FrancisChurch just a little less miserable.
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You are here: Home / Artists / Artist Bio: J3
Artist Bio: J3
December 2, 2015 /in Artists /by Zachary Edwards
When it comes to the world of street art, some artists enjoy the mantra of “Go big or go home.” There are very few artists, however, that take this to heart as much as J3, the American graffiti artist who’s wall paintings have graced public spaces around the world.
J3 was born James Bullough. Growing up in the Washington, DC. area, he learned his craft by studying classical painting, specifically oils, from people as varied as Rembrandt and Picasso. You can immediately see the influence in his own work, where larger-than-life paintings show a mastery of human form and a close eye for perspective in the unique environments that J3 chooses as his canvases.
J3’s wall art is almost exclusively in a realist style that, when combined with their size, makes for truly awe-inspiring pieces that catch viewers off guard. Each is made with a careful reproduction of a human without exaggeration or over-stylization. From there, J3’s pieces change and move according to his vision, settling the eye on the naturalness of his characters. Indeed, his pieces seek to express emotion through the beauty of composition rather than placing his subjects themselves in extremely emotional poses and situations. They can range from the thoughtful to even the funny and quirky, like a giant face peeking at your from behind a bridge.
J3’s art has also changed as his skill has progressed, and his latest pieces have started to play with perspective and continuity while still maintaining a realist bend. For example, recent pieces will split the image into pieces, like looking at it though a series of mirrors. It plays with the eye but also allows his chosen style to bleed into the distinctly uncharacteristic or abnormal without alienating the audience through extreme abstraction. The result is something at once beautiful and unexpected, two characteristics that many forms of street art should aspire to have.
What makes J3 so different from many of his contemporaries is his influence from traditional sources rather than within the street art community. By drawing from outside yet familiar sources, and combining that with his obvious incredible skill with a paint brush, J3 has been able to infuse his work with a familiar look that pushes beyond general graffiti. To look at his pieces is to see skill at the forefront, and it makes for an experience that is both intriguing and unforgettable.
Since getting his start in street art, J3 has moved to other forms as well, including directing, illustration, and even traditional painting. While these certainly don’t have the scale of his murals, they do display the considerable skill of an artist in his prime.
Tags: j3, James Bullogh, murals, street art
https://muralform.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/j3-2.jpg 702 1016 Zachary Edwards https://muralform.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/muralform-logo-2-300x137.png Zachary Edwards2015-12-02 16:45:452019-04-25 10:50:43Artist Bio: J3
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The William and Mary Quarterly
Settler Colonial Prehistories in Seventeenth-Century North America
Susanah Shaw Romney
Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture
Volume 76, Number 3, July 2019, 3rd series
Susanah Shaw Romney (bio)
In 1655, the Dutch residents of Manhattan discussed how they could best attack their Lenape-Munsee neighbors. What they really wanted, according to an initial draft of a petition they wrote to the West India Company directors in the Netherlands, was "the assistance of 3 to 400 good soldiers, who would be willing to settle down in this country after matters have been concluded," with whose help they could "subdue the aforesaid barbarian nation."1 They evidently knew the company would hesitate to finance this request, and so they did not even bother including it in their final draft. As they debated among themselves whether they could or should engage in war without that help, the desire for blood among settler leaders is clear. Why even trouble dissecting whose fault the current conflict was, wondered Johannes La Montagne, "seeing that they have given a just and sufficient, indeed more than sufficient cause, before the conflict"?2 Cornelis van Tienhoven thought it "just and necessary . . . to punish and subject the [savages], by the grace of God, through force of arms," following the example of nearby English colonies, which had proven that "they would never be able to live securely before and until the Indian nation had been subjugated and forced into submission."3 Violence and war, soldiers and [End Page 375] settlers, framed these burghers' arguments over the path forward for New Netherland. Are these colonists' words and actions in the 1650s best understood as an expression of "settler colonialism"? What do we gain, analytically, by interpreting the debate through this rubric?
The term settler colonialism is suddenly everywhere.4 Despite the articulation of complex theories about it, the phrase also has an appeal on a commonsense level. After all, the men discussing whether or not to undertake Lenape-Munsee annihilation were settlers by any definition of the term. And by every measure, what the Dutch were undertaking at Manhattan was colonization. Yet the meaning of words lies not just in their dictionary definitions but also in their use. Before applying the term, early Americanists would be wise to take heed of how scholars in fields distant from our own are using settler colonialism. Doing so suggests both that using it without caution might import unintended anachronistic implications and that studying the seventeenth-century Dutch might be better conceived of as a process of searching out the genealogy and prehistory of settler colonialism. Finding the roots of the settler colonial process, in turn, may suggest the need for theorists to think more historically themselves and to ponder more broadly the when, who, and where of settler colonialism.
First, the "when" question. The term settler colonialism was theorized, and remains most widely used, by scholars working primarily on the post-1800 Anglophone world. Central to the theory is the idea of settler colonialism as a structure that requires Native erasure, both ideologically and in the real world, a structure that continues under multiple states into the present. That observation about the continuity of settler colonial structures across time despite regime changes represents the most important lesson that the theory has to offer early Americanists and Atlanticists. Whether or not we use the term to describe the particular historical actors we study, it is crucial that we not become part of the ongoing process of Native erasure ourselves by failing to recognize the central role played by Native nations both in the past and today. The field of early American history has been transformed over the last thirty years by scholars who have reinterpreted the balance of power on the American continent during and after the colonial period. Nonetheless, new syntheses of American history still "disappear" Native people from the story.5 Yet the challenge of settler [End Page 376] colonialist theory goes beyond recognizing the past power of Native groups. Given that settler colonialism remains an ongoing process, interpretations of Native peoples in the past need to be set alongside the continuing struggle of those same tribal nations today. Joshua L. Reid and Nancy Shoemaker provide excellent models for how scholars writing primarily about periods long ago can connect...
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AP Photo/Brandon Dill
David Fizdale not solution for Knicks. No coach is
By Dan FeldmanMay 4, 2018, 11:33 AM EDT
No Knicks coaching hire has been met with widespread skepticism since Mike D’Antoni.
Mike Woodson received, perhaps reluctant but nonetheless existent, support after turning around a losing season and guiding the Knicks to the playoffs as D’Antoni’s interim replacement. Everyone was so enchanted with Phil Jackson running the front office, Derek Fisher was welcomed as Jackson’s hand-picked choice. In a shift in mood, people appreciated Jackson going outside his comfort zone with Jeff Hornacek – and that Hornacek wasn’t Kurt Rambis.
The trend has only continued with David Fizdale, whom the Knicks will reportedly hire.
This is not unique to New York. Nearly every coaching hire is viewed optimistically.
But the sentiment is particularly misplaced there.
The Knicks’ problems are far bigger than any coach can fix. They start with owner Jim Dolan and trickle down through the organization he assembled. Unless president Steve Mills and general manager Scott Perry build a far better roster – and sustain it without Dolan wrongly pushing for or blocking a trade – Fizdale has no chance. It doesn’t matter whether he’s a good coach or not.
Of the Knicks’ seven non-interim coaches since Jeff Van Gundy who also coached elsewhere, all but one (Mike Woodson) had a better record on other jobs:
Coach Years Knicks Elsewhere
David Fizdale 2018- ? 50%
Jeff Hornacek 2016-18 37% 47%
Derek Fisher 2014-16 29% x
Mike Woodson 2012-14 58% 42%
Mike D’Antoni 2008-12 42% 60%
Isiah Thomas 2006-08 34% 53%
Larry Brown 2005-06 28% 56%
Lenny Wilkins 2004-05 49% 54%
Don Chaney 2001-04 39% 41%
These aren’t all bad coaches. The challenge in New York was just too much for them.
Mills and Perry deserve a chance to fix this roster. (At least Perry does. Mills, Jackson’s predecessor and successor, already had one. But there’s no choice now but to let him take his second try.) They have a great start in Kristaps Porzingis, though he’s injured. But it will take patience and skill to dig out of the rest of Jackson’s mess.
Coaches still have culpability in this, and Fizdale looks like a good choice. His energy could help give the Knicks the wakeup call they badly need.
But he can’t do it alone, and unless the Knicks get their act together from the top down, Fizdale won’t have a chance.
Tags: Kristaps Porzingis
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Smith County Adult High School, Carthage, Tennessee (TN)
Former students and alumni of Smith County Adult High School and SMITH COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT, education verification companies, educational institutions and government agencies can now request High School Transcripts, Immunization Records and Graduation Verifications online. Complete the online request, sign a release authorization online, and pay online. 3-easy steps!
You have selected Smith County Adult High School, Carthage, Tennessee (TN)
Smith County Adult High School is located at 207 N Main St, Carthage, TN, 37030.
It ranks 368 out of 377 schools in the state of TN, with enrollment of 0 students. It is a part of the Smith County School District schools district / board of education , which is located at 126 S C M S Ln, Carthage, TN, 37030.
Smith County High School
Carthage, TN
Gordonsville High School
Gordonsville, TN
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There's an old racing adage: when the flag drops, the talking stops, though the word 'talking' is rarely used. It's a cliche, but like all cliches, it is a cliche because it reflects such a basic truth. Without bikes circulating on track in anger, fans and press have nothing to do but engage in idle speculation, and pick over the minutiae of rules, rumors and races long past. As soon as the racing starts again, all is forgotten, and we all lose ourselves in the now. It is the zen which all racing fans aspire to.
So after spending months going round in circles over the 2014 regulations, speculating about who they favor, and expressing outrage at either the perceived injustice of the rules, or the supposed incompetence of those involved in drawing them up at the last minute, the talk stopped at Qatar on Sunday night. The fans filled their bellies on three outstanding races, all of which went down to the wire. With something once again at stake, all talk of rules was forgotten.
And to be honest, the 2014 rules had none of the negative effects which so many people had feared. The best riders on the day still ended up on the podium, while the gap between the winner and the rest of the pack was much reduced. The gap from the winner to the first Ducati was cut from 22 seconds in 2013 to 12 seconds this year. The gap from the winner to Aleix Espargaro – first CRT in 2013, first Open class rider in 2014 – was cut from 49 seconds to just 11 seconds. And even ignoring Espargaro's Yamaha M1, the gap to the first Honda production racer – an outstanding performance by Scott Redding on the Gresini RCV1000R – was slashed to 32 seconds.
Even the cut in fuel did not affect the races as badly as many feared. It appeared that there had been some dissembling going on in both the Yamaha and Honda garages. HRC had been brushing off any suggestions that fuel may be an issue for them, while at Yamaha, there were a number of worried faces. There was a clue that things were not as serious as feared when Jorge Lorenzo stopped worrying about fuel and focused his ire on the new Bridgestone rubber, but Valentino Rossi kept banging the fuel drum. On race day, there was no sign of fuel issues for the Italian, Rossi telling the press conference that his engineers had done a great job to fix the fuel issues, and had given him a properly fast bike. 'I think Yamaha worked well on the fuel consumption,' he said.
It was quite the revival for Rossi. The gamble to drop Jeremy Burgess in favor of Silvano Galbusera as crew chief had paid off. 'Last year I made a very dangerous bet,' he said. Galbusera had no experience in MotoGP, but a positive experience working with him testing a World Superbike machine coming back from a broken leg in 2010 had encouraged Rossi to try. The way of working had now changed, with electronics and data engineer Matteo Flamigni playing a greater role.
The biggest gain for Rossi was clearly in braking. Rossi was able to attack on the brakes at will once again, fighting his way forward from 10th on the grid quickly – and aided by a couple of crashes in front of him – and engaging in hand-to-hand combat with Marc Marquez. Braking was an area where Rossi had suffered all last year, and the joy and determination with which he launched himself into corners spoke volumes about the improvements which have been made.
The battle with Marquez turned the race into an instant classic. From the moment when Rossi arrived on the back wheel of Marquez a third of the way through the race, the pair stalked and sniped, swapping places and sometimes even trading paint. The early skirmishes turned into all out war in the last few laps, the lead swapping four times on the penultimate lap. They were tough moves, no quarter given nor asked by either rider, Marquez squeezing his bike through an impossibly narrow gap at one point. In the end, the reigning world champion came out on top, Rossi losing ground after running the merest fraction wide.
Though Marquez' victory was far from a surprise, the fact that he did manage to win at Qatar is still quite a feat. The Spaniard came to the first race of the year after six weeks laid up with a spiral fracture in his fibula, still in pain and having started walking just a week ago. He worked his way through practice and qualifying methodically, serving notice by taking pole on Saturday – his 10th in 19 starts, a strike rate of over 50% for the youngster – then gambled on using the harder of the two rear tire options in the race. It paid off, and his willingness to fight and his appetite for risk landed him the win and the lead in the championship.
What was even more impressive by Marquez is that he showed that he has learned patience. For the first half of the race, Marquez sat calmly behind Stefan Bradl, happy to let the LCR Honda rider make the pace while he rested the right arm he was using to compensate for the lack of strength in his leg. In the end, he didn't need to choose a moment to attack, as Stefan Bradl crashed out of the lead at turn 6, one of very many fallers. But the fact that Marquez has already learned to control his more impetuous nature bodes well for the champion. It was an outstanding ride by the Repsol Honda man, and a portent of what is to come.
Unlike last year, Marquez managed to hold off Valentino Rossi. The battle between the two had provided the entertainment in the 2013 race, and did the same again, and more, this year. It also showed the progress made by both riders, Marquez coming out on top to win the race, and Rossi battling no longer with a rookie, but with the reigning world champion.
Many people had written Valentino Rossi off, believing him to have lost his edge in the two years he spent at Ducati. I was one of the people who believed that though Rossi was still one of the best racers in the world, he was no longer a match for the three Spaniards who dominated last year. It looks like I was wrong: there is life in the old dog yet, once a few fundamental problems have been overcome. That doesn't mean that a tenth world title is on the cards, but at least Rossi should be able to mix it with Marquez, Jorge Lorenzo and Dani Pedrosa at more races during the season.
Behind Rossi, Dani Pedrosa occupied the final spot on the podium, a decent achievement given his relatively poor results at Qatar. The low-grip surface is something which Pedrosa has always had trouble dealing with, third being the best finish Pedrosa has achieved here. The Repsol Honda rider was happy to have bagged a podium, but he had luck on his side. The Spaniard benefited from crashes in front of him, taking third after Alvaro Bautista went down with a couple of laps to go.
Crashes were a commonplace, and for some riders, particularly expensive. The reason for the crashes was simple: conditions at race time were different than during practice and qualifying. The track was considerably cooler, robbing the track even further of grip. Crashes were down not so much to problems with the Bridgestones, as in the minds of those trying to brake where they couldn't. Stefan Bradl, Alvaro Bautista, Bradley Smith and Jorge Lorenzo all lost the front in braking, overestimating the grip available.
Jorge Lorenzo admitted the mistake had been his. After a dismal start to the weekend, agonizing over a lack of rear grip, the Lorenzo and his Yamaha crew had found some solutions on Saturday, entering the race with determination and some optimism. Lorenzo got his usual lightning start and took off from the front. His optimism ran out at Turn 15, the last left hander before the final corner. He had got extra drive out of the previous corner, and arrived at 15 with a little more speed than expected. 'I made a mistake,' Lorenzo said. Different tires from last year and cooler temperatures had made conditions trickier than expected. 'I didn't take these circumstances into account.' Lorenzo does not often make mistakes, but this was a very expensive one indeed. 25 points down in the championship, and the initiative passed to Marc Marquez.
The man expected to shake up the order came home in fourth, Aleix Espargaro getting a dismal start and never finding a way past the Ducatis. Aleix paid a heavy price for his two crashes during qualifying, both bikes being destroyed, and his team needing to borrow parts from Colin Edwards' second bike to get to the grid on time. He was stuck behind Ducatis for a large part of the race, losing out on top speed to the Desmosedicis along the straight. He managed in the end, and thanks to the carnage ahead of him, ended up in fourth. The elder Espargaro learned a salutary lesson at Qatar: that when you step into the spotlights in MotoGP, they can easily blind you. With the experience from leading the first sessions of practice at Qatar, Aleix can start to build. His day will come, sooner, rather than later.
For the Ducatis, Andrea Dovizioso was delighted to have halved his deficit from 2013. But that still leaves a gap to the leaders of over 12 seconds, and the most significant problem remains. The understeer which plagues the Ducati makes it impossible to ride the bike the way the others can. That will be Gigi Dall'Igna's next challenge, but it is an issue which he will not be able to address until he has more data.
Dovizioso's teammate Cal Crutchlow's performance was affected by matters out of his own hands. The Englishman parked his bike at the side of the track as soon as he crossed the finish line, after a bizarre electronics problem had played havoc with his settings. A malfunctioning transponder meant that the wrong data was being fed to the ECU, with the result that the bike was getting lost on the track. Power delivery was completely out of sync with the track, too little on the straight, too much in the corners, the bike utterly lost. Signs of Crutchlow's problems could be seen on the timing screens, his name shooting up and down the order as his transponder vacillated between functioning and not. It was a tough debut for the Englishman, but the problems were out of his hands.
The issue has happened to Ducati before. At Estoril in 2012, Nicky Hayden's Desmosedici suffered a similar glitch, though in his case, the bike thought it was half a lap further on than it actually was. Given Estoril's very specific layout – a long, fast front straight, with a tight back section with lots of slow curves – having the bike provide the wrong power delivery can be a terrifying experience. Though GPS is banned, locational awareness is programmed based on the timing loops around the track, as well as measured distance traveled. These sorts of malfunctions are some of the reasons put forward by Dorna technical staff, when arguing for the restriction and simplification of electronics. If there is only one power setting for the entire track, then riders can at least be sure of knowing how the bike will react when the throttles are opened.
For a change, the MotoGP race was better than the Moto2 race, though the Moto2 race still turned into a bit of a thriller. Tito Rabat took a totally deserved victory, seeing off an unfortunate Taka Nakagami in the latter stages of the race. After the race, Nakagami would be scrapped from the results entirely, after it was found that his team had fitted an illegal air filter. The error was judged to be an honest mistake, but a violation of the rules is a violation of the rules, and Nakagami was expunged from the results. His removal gave the Marc VDS team the top two steps on the podium, Tom Luthi shifting up into third.
While Rabat's victory was well taken, the really impressive performances were behind him, with the class rookies. Maverick Viñales crossed the line as fifth, later promoted to fourth once Nakagami had been scrapped from the results. The step from Moto3 to Moto2 is one of the biggest in racing; the 2012 Moto3 champion took a year to adapt to the class. For Viñales to be running at the front in his very first race proves the Spaniard is something very special indeed.
Two places behind him, reigning World Supersport champion Sam Lowes ended the race in 6th. Several riders have tried to make the step from WSS to Moto2, but ended up struggling badly. So far, Lowes has dealt with aplomb everything the new series has thrown at him. A podium cannot be very far off.
If the faces dominating Moto2 were no surprise, the finishing order in Moto3 was much more of a shakeup. Though it can hardly be considered a shock that the Alexes Rins and Marquez of Estrella Galicia should be running at the front, there were fears that the team would have trouble in the first few races as they worked to get the brand new Honda ready to compete. HRC appeared to take all of the preseason and the first two sessions of free practice for the Moto3 class, but once qualifying hit, Honda were ready. Two Hondas led the field in qualifying, then four topped the timesheets during warm up, while on Sunday, there were five Hondas in the top ten for most of the race. The Honda NSF250RW is a serious weapon, and Rins and Marquez will be the title contenders which everyone expected.
Yet it was not a Honda which took the first victory of the year, but rather the young Australian Jack Miller. Miller rode a measured and sensible race, profiting from a mistake by Alex Marquez on the final lap. Taking his first victory in Grand Prix racing, Miller celebrated exactly as a rider should: exorbitant one-handed stand up wheelies; stand up wheelies to kiss his fairing; clowning and showboating on the bike, taking on ridiculous and exaggerated poses as he rode the cool down lap. He followed it up with an accidental obscenity in his post-race interview, giving himself over to the joy he felt.
Miller's victory has been a long time coming, but it was one that was inevitable. The years he spent on a badly underpowered FTR Honda meant he had to find ways in his riding of making the bike go faster. That has turned him into a very complete rider, and he shows great promise for the future. Jack Miller is clearly a future world champion.
Two other riders are worthy of note in the Moto3 race. Miguel Oliveira punched well above his weight on the Mahindra, ending the race in fourth, but over 11 seconds ahead of the next Mahindra. The Suter-built Indian bike is down on power compared to the Honda and the KTM, but Oliveira extracted every last ounce of performance from the bike.
Then there's Karel Hanika. Hanika finished in 14th position in his Moto3 debut, a remarkable achievement given the deeply competitive nature of the class. The young Czech rider still has an awful lot to learn, but he has clearly demonstrated his potential.
Three races, three deserved winners, plenty to talk about, and some memories that will live for ever. This is the hallmark of a great weekend's racing. No need to fill our stomachs with the empty calories of speculation, we have the real meat of results to chew over. Bring on Austin.
Stefan Bradl
Tito Rabat
Alex Rins
Karel Hanika
Such...
...an epic race.
And to further enhance the occasion, my Dad (who has never watched a full race) watched it with me and then my nine-months-pregnant wife wobbled in and watched the last six laps with us. It was truly unbelievable stuff, and I was accompanied by my two favorite people.
Win for Marquez, but win for ME, and for Dad and Caroline.
I'm blessed to have seen such a great moment in my beloved sport. With my loved ones.
The Old and the New battle
joonyaboy replied on Mon, 2014-03-24 03:59
The Old and the New battle for victory. Can't ask for much more.
Good to see you admit you
Good to see you admit you were wrong.
Don't ever count Valentino out. He doesn't have the most premier class wins in history for nothing. And he now has amassed the most points in history.
Didn't Rossi finish second last year also?
Machine replied on Mon, 2014-03-24 21:37
Albeit with a much larger gap to the winner, Lorenzo. If Jorge hadn't misjudged the grip on the first lap though that could well have been the case again this year as he had more pace than Rossi throughout practice. I wouldn't be judging Rossi's sacking of Burgess as a resounding success just yet, Rossi was strong at Qatar last year as well but when they returned to more normal tracks he didn't have the pace of the top guys. Hopefully Rossi he has found something as it will improve the racing but it remains to be seen I think.
I'd be far more inclined to
I'd be far more inclined to credit Yamaha and the changes they made to the bike, rather than to use this podium to validate Rossi's bus-toss of Jeremy.
Biaggi-ism
beaufort replied on Mon, 2014-03-24 05:10
First Lorenzo grows a Biaggi beard,
then he crashes out of first place.
If only moto gp news was still around.
biaggi
biaggi was more likely to crash mid/end of race ... right about the time when vr46 would be on his tailpipes (and in his head) :))
but very nice observation ... perhaps shaving would be the right way to come back into title contention ...
Today I was reminded of why I love racing
Erlenkönig replied on Mon, 2014-03-24 06:16
It now seems apparent that the problems with Rossi's bike in the recent past were not just Rossi making excuses, but were real problems which appear to have been solved to some degree. I had suspected this could be the case based on how much faster Rossi was when he switched from Ducati back to Yamaha, but until there is hard evidence you don't really know.
As a side note, Cal Crutchlow's response to the journalist who tried to get a few words from him was needlessly rude. However I also think that the obvious danger posed by the malfunctioning "turn by turn" ECU programming should lead to a mandatory black flag rule for such faults, given the danger posed by incorrect ECU outputs on a bike which has well over 200 horsepower.
In any case, it looks like this season could be one of the best in years, and
I won't be missing any races from now on.
"Today I was reminded"
There were those of us who said all along that Rossi's front end was the problem last year. Why? Because you could see it on the track, and more importantly, it's what Rossi told us all. With Burgess reinventing the wheel to respring/revalve the forks for Assen last year, it was blatantly obvious.
I'm not picking on you, David, or anyone else.....but, I don't know how some of you could doubt, write off, etc, the greatest premier class rider in history. 80 wins in GP, and over 100 across all classes. If ever, in this sport, you would cut someone some slack, and believe what they say about their bike, perhaps you might listen to Valentino.
It just proves in bike racing, and in life, that we'd rather hate than love, and we'd rather write someone off rather than cut them the slack they deserve. Even at 35 years of age you could tell he's riding the wheels off that M1. In the preseason tests he put in the fastest lap of his career around Sepang. Just getting faster and faster.
What he did yesterday in the battle with Marquez doesn't surprise me one bit. Hopefully now, some will believe he can compete instead of constantly riding the guy into the ground.
In preseason testing, Dovi turned in the fastest ever Ducati lap of Sepang. You can't extrapolate that the Ducati is getting faster and faster though... my guess is that Rossi's PB there was more down to the track conditions than to his outright speed.
Last year Rossi came second at Qatar - ergo, at this point in time, not a lot has changed. We need to see how he goes over the next few rounds. I do agree that he looks a lot more comfortable this year than at any time last year. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. I like the guy and enjoyed seeing him fight at Qatar, but I'm not blinded by the past, even though I've been cheering him on for over 15 years now.
Until he is winning again, everyone is just guessing. He needs to be winning before anyone can state - with any degree of accuracy - that he is as good today as he was back when he was a consistent challenger for wins. If he can be that guy, I'll be more than impressed, because he'll be doing it without all of the advantages he's traditionally enjoyed in the past.
Rossi better this year?
Don't we have short memories... The general desire to see Rossi succeed (I'm a fan too) seems to have brought premature optimism. As far as I can tell, there is nothing different to last year. He is off the pace in qualifying, which will be an even bigger penalty this year with an additional 4 or 5 bikes that have a legit chance at starting in front of him. Can he overcome his quali woes?
An equally significant question will be whether he can demonstrate this race pace at other tracks. His performance at Qatar last year was very similar...outpacing Pedrosa and battling with Marquez to the end. But where would Lorenzo have been? Rossi NEVER even came close to beating Lorenzo in a race last year, bar the two where the anesthesia had barely worn off. How will Rossi compare to Lorenzo at other tracks? And if I recall, he only beat the Hondas at two tracks last year...Qatar and Assen.
So far, nothing has changed until we seem him at other tracks...so yes, bring on Austin!! By the way, as a Rossi fan, I have learned to govern my expectations for him. Qatar was made actually infinitely more enjoyable for me by the competitiveness of Alvaro, Stefan and Aleix. Lets see what they can do in Austin...I hope it continues!
gbyrnes95 replied on Mon, 2014-03-24 07:45
One race in and other than Jorge crashing you are right about how little has changed.
Marc swapped positions with Vale and kept the same gap - 0.2 of a second at the finish.
Dani was 0.1 of a second further back from Marc this year (3.37 seconds this year).
The race time was just 0.7 of a second slower this year and Stefan crashed on the same lap...
You're not completely correct
This race was +- 1 sec slower than last years' and that was probably due to the passing between both Rossi and Marc. I don't believe if Lorenzo hasn't crashed he'd take off and leave them all behind like last year. I'd say they would very close all up front until the end of the race.
So, Rossi was indeed 6 or 7 secs faster (don't remember exactly the last year gap) in this race, which is a lot!
but yeah... lets see and hope he can mix at the front more often! The more the merrier!
Dunno if Lorenzo will like thou... If Rossi manages to keep racing like this, now it will be two guys, him and Marc, passing between a bike and the kerb and sometimes using the grass too! :D
Sttrain replied on Mon, 2014-03-24 09:07
Jorge crashed, therefore no points.
Rossi was battling for the lead and was in the lead for a period despite starting from 10th on the grid.
Marquez and Rossi were both 6-7 seconds quicker than last year.
The race for the lead was actually entertaining.
Only the extreme cynics haters would bother writing negatives and downplaying what was a great race, in an era where these are few and far between.
Early days, but I do enjoy seeing the Doctor throwing a few dozen more eggs in the faces of his detractors. Hopefully, to add further change to last year-this may continue.
Miller - Doohan ?
I think Miller was making a reference to Mick Doohan in his slow down lap, it was like imitating his style... Did he say something about that ?
The bit about Espargaro is spot on. And a strong race result like this one will help him a lot more than flying laps on the soft tires. It's the race that counts !
Utter shame for Nakagami.
Doohan? Naahhh. Its was the
DFH replied on Mon, 2014-03-24 12:26
Doohan? Naahhh. Its was the two Troys (Bayliss & Corser) who gave us the stand-up-leg-off wheelie.
Also Doohan
GrahamB29 replied on Mon, 2014-03-24 15:35
The wheelie was pure Corser, but the corners taken with his head over the tank and his bum near dragging on the track was a pretty good Doohan caricature to my eyes :-)
Redding & Smith
Good debut by Scott Redding, finishing ahead of Hayden on the same bike is a very good start.
Bradley Smith had a good weekend too, excepting no points!
But most of all what a change to see a race!
Human Crutchlow
I'm not a huge fan of the guy, and he doesn't do the best interviews IMO, but I do respect him for what he does on bikes. His reaction to Hodgson surprised me too (although he got his media face back fairly quickly I thought), but I can half-imagine what it must feel like to ride one of those machines; and as a top rider he pushes every aspect to gain an advantage as the thing tries to kill him (which probably isn't too much of an exaggeration given the problem). He's not the pull over and retire unhurt type of guy.
Even Rossi let his guard down in the parc ferme interviews and swore on camera. Door-stepping riders at a point in time when they have had no opportunity to 'calm down' gets some 'good' insights and TV, but don't be surprised at the occasional honest and unguarded reaction. This is one of the most dangerous sports you can choose and you cannot deny body chemistry.
It may not be polite or good manners but I prefer the honesty to the sort of sterilised responses that you get with , for example, F1.
I don't know why Cal would ignore someone's wife, but perhaps he just failed to recognise her?
I had a similar experience with the slightly less-well-known James Whitham a few years ago at a track day. He didn't respond to my attempt at saying hello and I was pretty peeved at his 'rudeness' at the time, but he was pushing hard, eyes on full adrenaline boost, and I later reasoned that he was just 'focused' on what he was doing and perhaps switched off and not in 'media mode'.
A top quality start to 2014 all-in-all though. I'm a convert to BT's streaming too - much better than I thought and the commentary was good. Toseland should go easy on the hair dye though.
Cal's dropped his foot in it again?
Heaven forfend!
I don't have BT Sport so I missed that. Hodgson seems such a nice bloke too; still he's new to shoving a mic under people's noses so he'll probably be a bit more sensitive I future (if he needed to be of course).
I'd love to see a clip, purely for reference, and what's someone's wife got to do with it!? Sounds like a west end farce.
is this the footage?
scottwiebe replied on Mon, 2014-03-24 18:23
If this is the controversial footage (assuming it's okay to post video links on this board - forgive me if that's not the case DE) I don't really get what all the brouhaha all about: http://youtu.be/ozgnsXcyccE
Seems pretty benign to me. Don't know where 'someone's wife' fits in either. I guess something has to fill in the time until the next race weekend :)
Wife comment
The wife comment was in a comment which got deleted. And posting links to video is not a problem.
Thanks for finding that!
swiftnick replied on Tue, 2014-03-25 19:15
Yes, fairly innocuous really, Cal was understandably a bit grumpy at 1st yes, then he put the media face on (err under the helmet).
I'm still missing the BBC; the MotoGP player was crap at my place on Sunday evening; broadband not fast enough. How we laughed when it froze during the Rossi / Marc wing-ding...
go bt
Lilyvani replied on Tue, 2014-03-25 21:18
Friend, if your wallet can bear it swallow the pill and get BT. It sorely grieved me to do so myself but I wouldn't have wanted to miss 0.28 of a second of that race. I honestly thought the old ticker was going to pack up when I realised Marquez was going to go for THAT gap. It has to be said, the coverage is excellent.
BT, if you want to pm me I'll give you an address for the cheque!
Thanks for the advice!
swiftnick replied on Wed, 2014-03-26 11:13
I'm grateful, but I live in a rural area so having researched this, I'd just be relying on the same cable and speed. If I was on a nice shiny fibre then I'd do it.
Oh well, I'll rely on you guys!
Whitham is a top bloke
orangespoon replied on Tue, 2014-04-01 09:40
yup, i'd give him the benefit of doubt as well, can be easy to miss people of you are away in your thoughts or distracted by stress/tiredness
i agree on BT sport too, very surprised by its quality, shame about the anchor though, totally out of place
RCV1000R
For the teams who purchased the RCV1000R's wanted to fit a larger, 24L fuel tank is there anything to stop them? Would Honda discontinue support?
It would seem like a waste to purchase a bike and be told you can't do anything with it.
I think there is. Contrary to
javi replied on Mon, 2014-03-24 12:47
I think there is. Contrary to general belief, they don't own the bike. Only after two year of using it it becomes theirs, so I don't know how much can they modify it. It's the same deal with the engine, if it's so under power why can't they modify it instead of waiting for HRC updates?
I get the impression that the
Geonerd replied on Mon, 2014-03-24 14:32
I get the impression that the engine is so weak that the extra fuel literally can't be used.
When you hear someone as PC as Hayden grumbling, "We hope Honda will give us the bike we paid for..." you know it's a dog.
good race...the kid despite
reinmeister replied on Mon, 2014-03-24 12:25
good race...the kid despite the injury showed strength,confidence and most importantly,patience...
lorenzo did a rookie mistake...hopefully it won't happen again...
regarding rossi i also don't think anything has changed since last year...medium tyre but cooler conditions helped duration when on the contrary marquez with the hard suffered a bit...
i still believe that rossi doesn't have the speed the top three have,never had it to be exact...the level these three have achieved the last 3-4 years is higher than the one rossi ever had in regards of keeping that incredible rythm at 100% throughout the race with marginal differences...
Lorenzo's engine allocation
Elliot replied on Mon, 2014-03-24 12:48
Given there are only 5 engines for the season my immediate thought following Lorenzo's M1 barrel-rolling through the kitty litter was whether that engine had been totalled?
-any news on that David?
Great result from Redding, even if the 5 factory riders hadn't crashed out ahead of him he would still have got points plus finished in front of Hayden on equivalent machinery and Edwards on the Open M1.
As Crutchlow's bike was giving 'all the right power in all the wrong places' on the track his distance from Dovi looks quite good.
With Texas then Argentina races coming up next it's still a while (May) before the 'ground war' of Europe begins and we really find out what's what.
er hello
Perenialnovice replied on Mon, 2014-03-24 13:20
Did nobody see that Bradley was catching them at the end- it was inevitable that he would crash- most do when they try to catch up at that stage of a race.
He was right on the pace in practice and Q2. So why is no one raving about him.
He has stepped up, and some. I suspect nobody is talking because they are too busy eating their hats.
I'm on side
Bradley has been much derided here; but Herve knows what he's doing, and he didn't give Smith a job out of generosity.
I'm expecting Bradley to steadily improve this year, and be on the level of Bradl and Bautista. Quite possibly, he could go further and match Crutchlow, with hopefully less crashes. He's an intelligent and measured fellah, and of course doesn't like Pol at all, always a good incentive to beat your teammate!
He's done well pre-season, (as Crutchlow did last year) often a very good sign.
We shall see...
Better, but still behind
macrocephalic replied on Tue, 2014-03-25 10:31
Smith definitely showed improvement in all sessions and the race, but I don't think his performance was up to the praise that the British commentators were giving him. The ultimate result is that he crashed out and scored no points.
If you want to play a game of "what if" and assume that he didn't crash out (which I love to play), then he would have been in fourth place - the second Yamaha out of four, with one of those crashing and one being a rookie. One place ahead of the first open class entry.
If you want to play a fair game of "what if" and assume that no-one had crashed out but instead finished in the position they crashed out of, then he would have been seventh behind Lorenzo and Rossi on Yamahas, and Marc, Dani, Bautista, and Bradl on Hondas.
He was quite a few seconds clear of the Ducatis though, which is the sign of his improvement, because he spent much of last year battling with them.
Maregalli and Zeelenberg
Cant believe it that Masimo Maregalli and Wilco Zeelenberg dont payed one single word about Valentino in their official statement after the such a great race and instead of that, talking only about bad weekend, because of Jorge crash...?!?
I thought that Maregalli is bit more on Rossi's side, while its clear, that Wilco is on 100% Lorenzo's side only.
But still, form Maregalli its for me very strange attitude ...
Not that...
Agent55 replied on Mon, 2014-03-24 14:15
... your writing ability and sheer knowledge of roadracing aren't impeccable David, but why the immediate doubt that Rossi could challenge for the championship? He's already thwarted doubts of being past his prime with a near-win, but he also rode thru half the field to do so! Between his preseason form, new (and improved?) crew chief and harder-than-ever training regimen, I'd say Rossi is confidently looking to the front as the place he intends to be this year.
Qatar is a strange race. Rossi has always gone well here, and I'm sure you remember how the rest of his season went. This is one of Pedrosa's worst tracks, and you can be sure he will be stronger elsewhere. And Lorenzo crashed out. A stupid mistake, but he had already pulled his customary gap as he approached the end of lap 1.
I believe Rossi has a legitimate shot at a podium almost every weekend this year. There is clearly that much improvement. But Marquez rode with a broken and painful leg, causing him to overcompensate with his arm. If Marquez had been fit, it wouldn't have been this close.
One race is just one race. It's tough to draw conclusions. I try to be as coldly analytical as I can, and call what I see. I see a revitalized Rossi. But the three Spaniards are still probably just a fraction ahead.
Next we go to Austin, where Honda dominated. The Argentina, another Honda track. Afterwards, Jerez, where Rossi is strong, but then so are Lorenzo, Marquez and especially Pedrosa. I think Jerez will be the first real measure of where Rossi stands.
If I had to guess, I'd say
If I had to guess, I'd say Rossi's best hope is to beat Pedrosa to third; and that won't be easy either, because DP will have a lot to prove this year too, possibly his last shot on the best bike.
But that's not to denigrate VR, he is still great for the spectacle and the sport will be all the better if he can get amongst it. And to be even fourth best at 35 is good going. Going from 10th to 2nd - how can that not be an excellent show?
Still, we are all guessing, but I'd be very surprised if the battle isn't between MM & JL, but who knows? That's why we watch!
Argentina a Honda track?
MadDaddy replied on Mon, 2014-03-24 19:15
Really? I don't believe that they have ever been there in the 4 stroke era no?
Marcus replied on Mon, 2014-03-24 15:56
David's above comment is spot on.
Lots of people jumped on the Rossi bandwagon last year after Qatar, and we see how that worked out. If anything, I think since he lost the battle with an injured Marquez this year instead of winning a fight against a healthy one, he's taken a step back. He may win a race or maybe two, but he's still the fourth best rider in the world, and even the gap to fifth through nineth has shrunk.
And I think that nobody knows
And I think that nobody knows that, not David, you, or I. We need a few more races before predicting anything.
What I saw yesterday, despite all the passing, was VR turning that bike the way he wants, and more importantly braking how he wants, late. That's a clear improvement from last year.
Like I said before, I'd cut the guy some slack before predicting anything. Jerez, Lemans, Mugello, Catalunya. When these races are complete you'll know if it's 2013 all over again.
These 2014 spec tires do not suit the Yamaha at all, and he was right there battling with MM on the better machine. We shall see.
Miller's case
TimGP20 replied on Mon, 2014-03-24 16:44
' he followed it up with an accidental
obscenity in his post-race interview' what exactly did he do? never caught that...
He spent most of the race in flying formation with Marquez. When Marquez made an error on the last lap, Jack, in his own words, decided "%$@ it, I'll go by myself" : )
At the end of the interview he closed with "thanks, and sorry for my bad language".
VR&MM
My impression was, that Vale was very much riding like he was walking on eggs.
Of course he was way more comfortable than last year and his braking was magnificent, but I believe in earlier days he would have sete-gibernaued him into the gravel just to teach him not to reach for "his" title any further.
I did saw some of the old anger sting when he commented about beeing defeated by MM93 though.
This gives me hope that he still has enough confidence left to be the ruthless son of a gun he used to be on occasions where he had to break the spirit of his opponent.
If he has the right weapon with the M1 this year, I´m sure it will be bloody like hell this year and points will be handed out like candy from DORNA but we will discuss like crazy what was fair and what not.
I believe Rossi is too aware that a WC can´t be won like in the old day´s anymore and consistency is King while crashing is punished more than ever.
I can only hope that this cleverness led to his soft fighting with MM93 and this cleverness will be rewarded at the end.
MM93 is a worthy opponent no doubt. A game changer.
Sliding his elbows everywhere...its a crazy style and awesome to look at.
If Rossi would have stayed at Honda, he´d probably left with 10 titles allready though I must say.
Hopefully MM93 becomes 35 in this sport as well.
Luck?
603710 replied on Mon, 2014-03-24 17:37
Great article David (as usual) but I have to take umbrage with you saying it was luck that got Dani the podium. If Alvaro rode past his ability, past the bike's ability, or beyond what the track conditions allowed, how is luck involved? I'm not necessarily a Pedrosa fan (although I do like/respect him more now than when he was Pedrobot) but you shouldn't get credit taken away as a rider if you DON'T crash and the guy ahead of you did. That's part of racing. Anybody can just close their eyes and pin the throttle wide open, take the lead....and eventually crash out because you never had a chance of maintaining that pace to begin with.
And I have to ask, if it was Marquez behind Bautista, would the narrative have been different? Would you have said Marquez "pressured" Alvaro into crashing?
Watched the Moto2 and Motogp races. Both were excellent races to me. Moto2 seemed to be more like I am used to seeing in the Motogp class. I was SHOCKED to see Lorenzo crash out before completing a lap. Glad to see Rossi fighting for the win, but even more impressed with Marquez having a leg still healing and not afraid to go toe to toe with Rossi to win. A very measured fight which took brains and force to win. Rossi is not an easy person to beat when battling for the win. It is my greatest wish this year to see Rossi back up and fighting for wins in every race. But, I hoped the same last year after Qatar. Scratch that, was yelling in people's faces, "ROSSI IS BACK!!! AND THERE IS NOTHING YOU AN DO ABOUT IT MOTHERF....."
This year I will be a little more cautious. I did not post that here, but said it to friends of mine in person. Would love to see a Young vs Old battle to the end. But I know Lorenzo will be back with a vengeance and Pedrosa will get some wins. Between those two it is hard for even me to see Rossi getting enough wins to take a title. But here is to hoping that Rossi can go out in a blaze of glory. Speaking of going out, can someone ask Colin Edwards to stop.... behind Hayden and Redding?!?!?? There is not reason in the world for that to happen.
Rossi's Changes
terryfiero replied on Mon, 2014-03-24 18:27
New crew chief.
Different riding style.
GIRLFRIEND IN THE PITS!?!?
For someone as superstitious as Rossi to make these changes shows how desperate he is to get his edge back. So far, I think it's working.
VR GF
...and what a hottie that is!!!I guess it does smooth your mood lying along side such a beauty, after becoming second....in the race, I mean:)
Great race
And all it takes is having 2 riders dicing on the last laps to make it so. We had a nice 6 bike lead group for a long time and they were all Factory entries.
Qualifying was exciting because of 2 reasons:
1. The possibility of an Open entry using a soft tire and getting pole. That didn't work out as expected.
2. The satellite and open teams testing there recently when the Factory riders did not.
The racing was exciting because of 2 reasons:
1. The satellite and open teams testing there recently when the Factory riders did not so there were some satellite riders dicing in the lead group.
2. Rossi and Marquez are 2 riders who love to battle in close quarters. Lorenzo, Pedrosa and Stoner, not so much.
Isn't it ironic that the bikes running 20l of fuel and custom electronics provided the best racing of the weekend right down to the last lap? No fuel sipping worries, just 2 of the best on display for all to enjoy all race long. Rossi on the Yamaha was stable as hell and sticking it in wherever he could and Marquez, even with the 'computer controlled' bike, was visibly out of sorts and squirming all over the place. Running wide at T1 with his rear tire 8" in the air was impressive, as was collecting it and regaining the place. Seems to me that the spec tire and testing rules get more in the way of good racing than anything else being looked at.
And as far as the tires go when will people realize that the faster you go the harder a tire you need? The soft Open tire will not be anything but a long life qualifier. Marquez is on the same page as Stoner here. Stoner always chose the hard tire because he was able to use it and Marquez is continuing the tradition.
Here's to Rossi continuing his resurgence!
"The bikes running 20l of
"The bikes running 20l of fuel and custom electronics provided the best racing of the weekend right down to the last lap ... Marquez, even with the 'computer controlled' bike, was visibly out of sorts and squirming all over the place."
Heresy! Heretic! Burn the warlock who dares invoke the vile stench of facts in his worship of the Satan-spawned Magneti Marelli blasphemers!
I crack me up. Really.
Seriously, anytime I read someone talking about how electronics have taken the rider and his/her skills out of the equation, I want to show them a picture of Marquez entering a corner on a MotoGP bike at ... at ... well, damned near every corner I've ever seen him enter.
Lap after lap, I would bet cash American money that the way he enters a corner, he's not coming out on two wheels. And he always does! I try to do that, and it's always the same story - earth, sky, earth, sky, then a nice young man in a clean, freshly-pressed uniform is asking me if I know what year it is.
I consider it a privilege to watch that young man ride a motorcycle, and am grateful that he's riding at a time when the motorcycle is equally amazing.
2dogs replied on Mon, 2014-03-24 22:01
...No need to fill our stomachs with the empty calories of speculation, we have the real meat of results to chew over.
Nice! I'll bet you've waited a while to use a line like that.
Rossi vs Marquez
moto4 replied on Mon, 2014-03-24 22:42
It seems to me that although Marquez looked loose, the reality was he was playing with Rossi in much the same way as Rossi used to with his competition. Listening to the post race interviews was particularly illuminating. Marquez says,"The battle with Valentino was so great. I enjoyed a lot. In the last lap I was 100% but in the laps before we overtake three, or, two or three times." Telling.
Something I noticed in the press conference afterwards was Rossi staring across at Marquez as though he was sizing him up for next time. Make no mistake, he intends to beat him, just hasn't yet worked out how.
the VR stare...
steve hislop replied on Tue, 2014-03-25 07:45
I just watched it again and I also realized those quick stares.
If Marquez would´ve made one wrong move there would have been a fist fight.
A very tense atmosphere...ready to escalate at every instance.
MM knew it as well and was cautios not to deliver a statement demoting Vale nor to look at him too long.
I agree totally that Vale has not yet figured out how to break MM up.
What I´ve seen and written before, is that the ruthless sonoffagun behind that funny jokester mask of Vale is still very much alive and now given the right M1, is ready to outbreak and gibernau MM into the gravel at the next instance.
BUT he was still on glass feet at this first race of the season, testing the ground beeing extra warned by the early departure of JLo.
AND I think he knew how embarassing it would have been if he´d started a maneuver that didn´t work out.
Under the given circumstances he was at his limit.
Things have changed and Vale is in a role unknown to him, where a young impersonation of himself is treating him like he did when he was young:No respect and showing his enormous talent at every possibillity while sitting on superiour material.
He is also aware that he has used up his credit with the race direction in things about critical maneuvers, opposite to MM93 who profits from a down payment given for his rookie title.
I really don't get this idea that Valentino is past it at 35. Doohan was 34 in his final year, as was Fogarty, and both were in shape to win another consecutive title if their careers hadn't been so abruptly ended. Bayliss was 33 when he came into motogp - if the duc had been the package given to stoner who knows how he'd have got on.
Granted the competition right now is ferocious and a tenth title is a big ask, but with a little luck not impossible. Last night really wasn't a replay of 2013. It was Rossi back at his best, and from the look of things in the Yamaha paddock, more like a returned prodigal son than an unwelcome guest. I sense winds of change there if he outperforms Jorge over the next few races.
As for Jorge and all others who crashed out, for him to have still been there at the end he'd have had to go slower, so there's no guarantee he'd have been dicing for the win. This race was no 'false result', it was those with the best all-round skill getting the best results.
I prefer that Rossi finds the
Raydemon replied on Tue, 2014-03-25 12:33
I prefer that Rossi finds the pace to stay with other factory guys, coz he always makes it intresting, unlike lorenzo or pedrosa.With marq and him at the front, races will be more intresting, way more than 2011 and 2012
has impressed me over the last year. The Brit commentators mentioning him at regular intervals was a good thing I think, and deserved (I agree that you can pick your own superlatives). He doesn't seem to have those 'alien' qualities of a few, but he has those Dovisio qualities of quiet and thoughtful development.
He was definitely less of a wallflower on the TV too, so whatever he's been doing for media training has worked as well as the bike stuff.
If you look at his progression he is doing all he needs to and, if he keeps it up and gets the kit, he has as much chance of being Champ as Hayden IMO.
He's not a natural self-promoter from what I have seen (although he must be doing something right) so the rest of us talking him up is a necessary thing I feel (which is why I've posted this!).
Crashing out was undoubtedly frustrating, but when a number of others did the same I suspect he has been told and is learning "when you are in the top five and it feels like you are pushing hard, be careful how much harder you push.....especially at a track like Qatar". C'est la vie. I think he is gaining confidence and ability and has exceeded my expectations in a number of areas. Go Bradders!
Comments about fans
Comments using derogative terms for fans of riders will get deleted. No matter how valid the other points in those posts will be. There is no need to stoop to abuse.
Motoshrink replied on Tue, 2014-03-25 18:34
Much appreciated David. Not only abusive, but primitive. Dignity and respect is essential in mutuality of love for motocyclismo. It is celebrated here, this site is OURS, and I care about it a ton.
Rossi, Stoner, Biaggi, Pedrosa, Hayden, brilliant each and every one. The hero is arising interdependently from within with the fear and doubt of humanity. Sacred sh*t my friends (they are composting the deep primordial crud and it is trancendental).
Thankful for the joy of such paint swapping battles and massaged pliable limits of the possible. Rossi is beautiful. Stoner cornering at a gazillion frames per second is art. Marquez, WOW.
Experiencing awe inherently involves an open full heart. This brings room for being with the fullness of what is with less judgement and projection of 'the story of me vs the world.' Here there is dignity, respect, and gratitude of the glorious display.
Great article David!
Aw C'mon
beaufort replied on Tue, 2014-03-25 20:07
What's wrong with some friendly ribbing of the unwashed Yellow masses, or the Marquez bandwagon, Pedrobot's engineers, or the narcissistic Lorenzo Land inhabitants?
After all, if you don't laugh at yourself, someone else will.
Friendly ribbing
Because about 30 seconds after the friendly ribbing starts, it turns ugly. It takes too much time to police all that. It's much better for everyone if such comments aren't posted, or are deleted when they are.
The Ducati's are closer to
les replied on Tue, 2014-03-25 18:04
The Ducati's are closer to the winner when Lorenzo crashes out of the lead.
Rossi is back better than ever when Lorenzo crashes out of the lead, Stephen crashes out of the lead, Dani is riding a bus around the track, Marc has a broken leg and the track is run at night in the desert.
The ever shifting rules produced a good race because the second, third and forth string bikes did not factor into the results even with half the factory bikes laying on the floor and their own personal magic rule set and qualifying tires.
All in all a very fun race to watch despite Dorna and all those also-ran grid fill bikes and I can't wait for Texas.
My preseason picks this year were:
1 JL
3 VR
4 DP
5 AE
Stay on the bike next race, George :)
When's the next race? When's the next race? When's the next race? When's the next race? When's the next race? When's the next race? When's the next race? When's the next race? When's the next race?
Sorry, bit excited to see MotoGP back : )
So, what is friendly?
motomann replied on Wed, 2014-03-26 09:01
It feels like I'm being a bit stuffed-shirt here, but the thing I like about this site (and dislike about a number of the others I have looked at) is the (usually) decent English that is used (and by that I mean polite grammar, not anything to do with someone using a second language, or having a different form of 'English') and people expressing their opinions in their own way, but without getting at all angry and aggressive (usually - Dorna rule-making excepted).
It is very easy for anyone to act like a child, or talk down to people like some adults do to children. If we use a style and tone that respects other people's position and perhaps politely corrects any 'misunderstandings' there may be I do not see that we lose anything.
For me, David, anything you can do to maintain that atmosphere here will be greatly appreciated.
2013 Nurburgring World Superbike QP1 Result: Davies Edges Sykes For Provisional Pole
Guest Blog: Mat Oxley - Should Rossi retire?
Motegi Unlikely, But Will We Go To Istanbul?
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Home Business Nigeria’s business environment challenging, says MAN
Nigeria’s business environment challenging, says MAN
The Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) has said the composite manufacturers’ CEO’s confidence (MCCI) index for the first quarter of 2019 stood at 51.3 per cent.
MAN President, Mr. Ahmed Mansur, who disclosed this, explained that the newly created MCCI report revealed that the manufacturing sector was struggling as operating conditions remained challenging.
The MAN president made the disclosure in Lagos at the launch of the confidence index.
Mansur, who was represented by Paul Gbededo, the managing director of Flour Mills Nigeria, said the association would no doubt continue to promote a friendlier operating system for the manufacturing sector in Nigeria, to remain global and stay competitive.
According to him, the MCCI is an integral part of the four-year transformation roadmap of the association. This index is a strategic effort to proactively review the impact of government policies on the manufacturing sector, with a view to using the evidence-based feedback to advocate for a specific direction of government policy formulation and implementation, he added.
Speaking further, he said the maiden edition was a statistical indicator created to measure the pulse of the manufacturing sector by sampling the perception of business operators, using CEOs of MAN member-companies across 10 sectoral groups and 14 industrial zones as respondents.
”The index essentially gauges manufacturers’ perception using a set of diffusion factors, macroeconomic conditions and business operating environment indicators.
“The diffusion indicators include business condition, employment condition (rate of employment), production level, level of confidence on the performance of the manufacturing sector and expectations for the next three months.
“Specifically, the general macroeconomic indicators assessed include foreign exchange, lending rate, credit to the manufacturing sector and capital expenditure of the government while the business operating environment condition was measured by the intensity of regulation, multiple taxes/levies, access to seaports, local raw-materials sourcing and government patronage of Made in Nigeria manufactured products,” he said.
He said the fact that operators were struggling signified the minimal impact of regulatory reforms and macroeconomic policies on the performance of the sector.
He further revealed that the MAN sectoral group and industrial zones on the MCCI for the quarter turned out to be a mixed bag.
While few sub-sectoral groups and zones were measured above the 50 points benchmark, adding that majority recorded 50 points and below.
Mansur, bemoaned the numerous challenges confronting the sector. According to him, the outcomes showed that poor electricity supply was ranked first, multiple taxation and over-regulation were jointly ranked second; high-interest rate was third; poor access to Nigerian ports and delay in clearance of containers/cargoes and the attendant demurrage were also ranked fourth.
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