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By Duke Staff UPDATE 2:49 10/23/15 President Dougherty emailed a letter of apology to Student Government Association President John Foster Friday morning. In the letter, Dougherty apologizes to those who were offended, but also defends his position, saying: “….I made the point that life off campus allows for greater access to alcohol, sometimes in violation of state law. It also allows for sexual behaviors that we cannot accept on the campus of a Catholic university.” The full text of the letter can be found here: President Dougherty’s Letter ____________________________________________ ORIGINAL ARTICLE BEGINS HERE: According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, “libertine” means “a person … who leads an immoral life and is mainly interested in sexual pleasure.” It is an ugly, unflattering word to use to describe someone. And yet it is exactly the word Duquesne University President Charles Dougherty used to describe non-resident Duquesne students during his Town Hall address to faculty Tuesday afternoon. “We know why they move off-campus,” Dougherty said, referring to juniors and seniors who decide not to stay in dorms. “They flaunt [sic] the state liquor laws and they live a libertine lifestyle that is not allowed on campus. “We are aware of the mardis gras that goes on [off-campus] every weekend.” Dougherty made these comments as part of his address to campus faculty about the university’s financial situation. According to Dougherty and Vice President for Management and Business David Beaupre, there are 304 empty beds in campus dorms this semester. This means that only 92 percent of campus beds are occupied, compared to 98 percent in the spring. As Dougherty pointed out, when juniors and seniors move off-campus, the university loses room and board money. As more and more juniors and seniors move to neighborhoods such as the South Side, the Hill District and Oakland, university officials are trying to determine why. More than half of The Duke’s staff lives off-campus. Perhaps we can provide some insight into why students move away; other than flaunting liquor laws and leading libertine lives, of course. The primary reason to move off campus is price. Price, price, price. Room and board rates start at $5,000 and can reach $7,000. This means students are spending at least $1,250 each month, which is roughly double what a student renting a house on the South Side spends on rent, utilities and groceries. On top of that, Duquesne only offers one apartment-style dorm: Brottier Hall. Although there are 304 empty beds on campus this year, Brottier is completely full. Students want kitchens, areas to entertain guests, and some freedom to decorate, rearrange and furnish — and they can get that off-campus. The staff of The Duke are not libertines, along with the many students who choose to live off campus — and we have the work ethic and GPAs to prove it. Saying that students only move off-campus to drink and party is offensive and inaccurate. That might be the motivation for some students, but certainly not all. In addition, students who wish to live “mardis gras” lives do so regardless of the locale. A five-second perusal of the Duquesne Police’s weekly crime log shows that students regularly drink, party and abuse drugs on campus. The Duke staff would like to encourage the university’s administration to dig a little deeper if they really want to determine the reasons upperclassmen are abandoning campus.
Kesha is back in the game, and she's as sparkly as ever. Today, she released her first single since 2013: an updated version of Zedd's 2015 song "True Colors." The song is currently available on Spotify and Apple Music. Kesha's legal battle to get out of her recording contract — which requires her to work with producer Dr. Luke, whom she claims emotionally and sexually abused her — isn't over yet. Still, this is a victory for the #FreeKesha movement: The single was released with permission from her label. To celebrate, Kesha shared a clip of herself smelling the flowers in a bedazzled leotard set to the music. A video posted by Kesha (@iiswhoiis) on Apr 28, 2016 at 7:30pm PDT ❤ @zedd #truecolors spoke to me so deeply I had to spread the beautiful message of personal empowerment pic.twitter.com/3yPuwWDpMr — kesha (@KeshaRose) April 29, 2016 Meanwhile, Zedd is becoming a hero to Kesha fans who are creating loving tributes to the DJ. haha omg love the edits look how adorable he is A photo posted by Kesha (@iiswhoiis) on Apr 28, 2016 at 11:34am PDT Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.
One thing has always annoyed me about Hangouts: there's no search option. How can you have a messaging service and not allow people to search through their conversations inside the service?! That's beyond comprehension. Of course there's a way to circumvent it by searching through chats in Gmail. But that neither was intuitive nor made sense unless you were familiar with the feature. According to screenshots we've received from a test preview version of Allo, Google's new messaging app doesn't suffer from that silly limitation. Search is well implemented and it's universal throughout the app. There's a search icon on the top right of the main screen that lets you look for a contact/group's name (in case you have lots of chats and need to quickly find a specific person/group) or any word(s) inside a chat. We're told that the search function is quite extensive, not only encompassing things you've typed and letting you navigate through multiple results in the same chat (left and middle screenshots below, respectively), but also going through Assistant's automated messages too (right screenshot below). So you could even find Assistant's answers and suggestions with a simple search. Based on this test preview version of Allo, this is another functional feature that wasn't available in Hangouts and that's now implemented in Allo. The other one we've covered was the option to delete sent and received messages from the chat history on your phone.
NBC Newswire via Getty Images Advertisement - Continue Reading Below Among Jeep’s presentation to investors covering the brand’s plans for the next few years was a juicy but exciting piece of news: The Wag’s back, people! We are of course referring to the Wagoneer nameplate, which last adorned a Jeep product in the early ’90s. For 2018, Jeep will affix the Grand Wagoneer name to a plus-sized, more-luxurious Grand Cherokee with a third-row seat. If this formula sounds familiar, that’s because Jeep tried a similar tack with the ungainly Commander a few years back. Unlike that boxy, oddly proportioned behemoth—which was unwisely introduced just before gas prices spiked and more-efficient three-row crossovers were coming into vogue—we suspect the new Wagoneer will hew closer to the original model’s recipe. That means a more opulent interior than other Jeeps, along with a certain je ne sais quoi, which we hope will again take the form of body-side wood paneling. Based on Jeep’s plan to totally redesign the Grand Cherokee for 2017, look for the Grand Wagoneer to ride on the GC’s updated architecture instead of using today’s bones. The three-row rig, if executed as well as today’s Grand Cherokee, should prove to be quite the moneymaker for Jeep, especially since Sergio Marchionne has stated that it’s intended to be a Land Rover competitor. Just make sure it has lots of wood where the world can enjoy it, OK, guys? For tons of additional product news from every Fiat-Chrysler brand, click here. Advertisement - Continue Reading Below
I want to address those members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who are among the groups of dissenters, critics, and agitators in the Church who suddenly find themselves in an uneasy association with people who increasingly are openly hostile to the Church, its leaders, and its teachings. I know that some of you are uncomfortable with the direction in which your associates have gone. Uneasy with the comments and conversations on the websites you frequent. Some of you quietly feel misgivings and twinges of conscience about the blatant public denigration of the Church and the Apostles by the people with whom you identify and with whom you have built friendships. You were seeking answers to your questions and resolution for your doubts, but now all you see is increased doubt, questioning, and strife. Some of you are asking yourselves “How did this happen? I’m a good member of the Church. Why do other members call me or the group with which I participate apostate? How did I get here?” Let me reassure you that there is a place for you in the Church. We want you here. And yes, we want you with all your doubts, questions, and complaints. The misgivings you feel about where you suddenly find yourself are valid. Don’t reject them. Listen to them. It doesn’t matter how you got to where you are as much as it matters that there is a way back. You have fallen into a trap. And that’s okay. All of us have fallen into spiritual traps and mental snares that have led us down paths that we never would have imagined for ourselves. It may not be the same trap into which you have fallen, but we have all found ourselves far from where we intended and know what it feels like. Getting out of the trap requires courage and humility. But there is a way out. The first step is to open up your mind and heart to the possibility that you have fallen into a trap. I know that there are abundant historical and other facts that seem incontrovertible to you; things, that it seems, are impossible to unsee once you have seen them; ideas that feel so compelling that you do not feel you can deny them. But the facts are rarely as complete or comprehensive as they appear. And the ideas that seek to explain those facts are not the same thing as the facts themselves. We all have frameworks of interrelated ideas through which we interpret information and communication. These interpretive frameworks are powerful. They have logical, emotional, and social components. They can possess our minds and hearts and make it feel as if we have no other choice. But you do have a choice. You can choose to believe. You can choose to trust in the living apostles and prophets. You can choose to entertain the possibility that the framework through which you have come to interpret the church is false, no matter how compelling and logically complete it may feel. Though that which you have seen may not be able to be unseen, it may not mean what you think it means. A “faith transition” is really just switching interpretive frameworks. And while it is easy to see apparent flaws in your previous framework, I assure you that your new framework is also full of holes, problems, and inconsistencies. You’ve exchanged one set of warts and contradictions for another. Choose to question the doubting framework through which you have come to view the church and its leaders. There are alternative, faithful frameworks that account for the same facts, but do not lead to the same conclusions. You have a choice. The second step is to acknowledge that the general membership of the church is not nearly as uninformed and naive as they have been labeled. They are not all blind sheep. Many of them have suffered deeply and faced challenges to their faith that would blow your mind. Many of them are as familiar with the issues and facts as you are. Do not confuse conformity with superficiality or ignorance. Many are not ignorant (though they may be ignorant of your interpretive framework). They are faithful and informed, but they are also private. They share their sacred experiences cautiously with those who will not mock. Nothing you have learned is new. Rather than dismissing members because they have not adopted the doubting interpretive framework that you have, consider that they may know something that you do not that leads them to an alternative, trusting interpretation of the same facts. The third step is to realize that it is possible to pursue good and righteous objectives through wicked means. Even if the desires and objectives you have are righteous, the means by which you seek to bring them to pass can put you at odds with the church, the apostles, and the Lord. You must consciously decide to separate yourself from those who pursue their objectives, even objectives that you believe are good, in ways that undermine belief in the prophets, the church, and in God. The prophets are not infallible, but they are true prophets, and you can trust them. You can believe that God is powerful enough to make his will known to his authorized representatives, even in their weakness, and that He is leading the Church through them. Changes may come. But when they do it will be through those with the proper stewardship. The fourth step is to realize that there is a real, fundamental difference between dissent and disagreement that is shared in private and that is broadcast in public. Public disagreement introduces a lot of complex dynamics and problems. Public discussions of doubt are susceptible to manipulation by those who have different motivations than you do, especially on the Internet where people can easily pretend to be what they are not. If you are looking for a safe place to discuss your doubts and questions, public Internet forums are often better at cultivating communities of doubt and reinforcing interpretive frameworks than they are at helping people work out their doubts in faithful ways. Beware of those who conflate public dissent with private dissent. The last step I want to mention is that you need to reconsider the notion that the living apostles and prophets of the church are ignorant, uninformed, or insulated from criticism. The highest authorities of the church are intelligent, strong willed, educated, and experienced. They are aware of the issues. They know the history. They know what is going on. They are familiar with the arguments and criticisms. They have spoken to people just like you. They have friends and family members who have struggled with the same things that you have. They don’t need you to inform them. They already know. Are they perfect? No way. And nobody is asking you to believe that they are. What we are asking you to believe is that they are true prophets and apostles of Jesus Christ and that we can trust the Lord to guide the Church through them. Give yourself space to believe that their decisions really are inspired, even if you can’t understand how they could be right. This isn’t comprehensive, but it’s a start. This is an ongoing process. Nobody is pretending that there is a simple formula that can fix this. It may be painful and difficult and take a while. But you can do it. Just give some space for belief in these things. Getting out of the snare may require alienating some beloved friends and associates. I know that is painful and hard to do. But it is very difficult to break out of a false framework while surrounding yourself with people who reinforce it. Allow yourself to question your framework. Allow yourself to question your own fallibility as much as you do that of the prophets. Give weight to your misgivings about what is happening around you. Pray and ask for help to recognize what is true. And be patient. Don’t make any hasty decisions or rash declarations. I know that many will dismiss my invitation. My hope is that at some point when you stop and look around, and see how far you are from where you expected to be, and ask yourself “How did I get here?” that you will remember what I have said. That you will open your heart and mind. And that you will know that there is a way back. There are many of us who will be ready to put our arms around you and help you along the way. Summary: 1. Question interpretive frameworks of doubt and remember that you can choose other faithful frameworks for interpreting facts. 2. Recognize that many faithful members of the church are neither ignorant or naive and still have a very conventional faith; conformity does not mean superficiality or ignorance. 3. Realize that good desires and objectives may be pursued through wicked means. It isn’t enough to be trying to make righteous changes. The way you go about it matters. 4. Accept that there is a difference between public dissent and private dissent and be wary of the dangers inherent in public forums that reinforce doubt. 5. Trust that God is capable of communicating with his authorized representatives. Give up on the idea that the apostles are ignorant or isolated from information. [Cross Posted from Sixteen Small Stones]
Place in Ahal Province, Turkmenistan Derweze (from Persian: دروازه‎, literally "gate"; also known as Darvaza) is a village in Turkmenistan of about 350 inhabitants, located in the middle of the Karakum Desert, about 260 km north from Ashgabat. Darvaza inhabitants are mostly Turkmen of the Teke tribe, preserving a semi-nomadic lifestyle. In 2004 the village was disbanded following the order of the President of Turkmenistan, Saparmurat Niyazov, because "it was an unpleasant sight for tourists."[citation needed] Darvaza gas crater [ edit ] Panorama of the crater site, 2011 Turquoise Lake Crater, 2010 The Derweze area is rich in natural gas. While drilling in 1971, Soviet geologists tapped into a cavern filled with natural gas.[1][2] The ground beneath the drilling rig collapsed, leaving a large hole with a diameter of 70 metres (230 ft) at . To avoid poisonous gas discharge, it was decided the best solution was to burn it off.[3] Geologists had hoped the fire would use all the fuel in a matter of days, but the gas is still burning today. Locals have dubbed the Darvaza gas crater the "Door to Hell".[4] See also [ edit ] References [ edit ]
Conservative leader and Founder of the Eagle Forum Phyllis Schlafly said GOP frontrunner Donald Trump is a candidate that will give conservatives “a choice not an echo” during Trump’s campaign rally in St. Louis, Missouri at the Peabody Opera House on Friday afternoon. “I want you to meet Donald Trump,” Schlafly told the crowd full of Trump supporters. “I had the chance to meet with him a couple minutes ago and I asked him to stand by the Republican platform because we have the best conservative platform we’ve ever had. He endorsed it. He will stand by it. He is a real conservative and I ask you to support him.” Schlafly also told the crowd that she is confident Trump will appoint conservative Supreme Court justices like Justice Scalia. “I think he has the courage and the energy — you know you have to have energy for that job — in order to bring some changes and to do what the grassroots want him to do, because this is a grass roots uprising. We’ve been following the losers for so long.” “This is a great, great lady,” Trump said about Schlafly after taking the stage. Trump recalled last nights GOP primary debate in Miami, Florida, saying, “They are getting ratings on these debates.” “I wanted to act very presidential last night,” Trump said about his performance. He said in the past a presidential debate was a “ratings graveyard” for news networks. “They want to do it for themselves. They don’t want to do it for us,” Trump said, adding that a network called him and said they want to have two more debates. The real estate mogul said he wants to put the debates away but added, “I guess it’s been very helpful,” since he is leading in the polls. Trump commented on recent incidents about protesters and violence at his campaign rallies. He said there is “a lot of enthusiasm” at the rallies but that his supporters are “not angry people.” “But, we do get angry when we see the stupidity with which our country is run,” he added. “These are trouble makers,” Trump said about the protesters, several of which interrupted the rally. “They realize there are no consequences to protesting.” “Our country has got to toughen up, folks,” he added. “These people are bringing us down.” “There has to be some law and order,” Trump said. “The divisiveness is incredible.” “We’re going to end it,” Trump vowed. “I’d love to meet those people for ten minutes… what do we want? We want homes, we want education,” Trump said, adding, also wanting borders, a strong military, and jobs. “They can’t want anything more.” Trump moved on to criticizing the Democratic Party’s frontrunner Hillary Clinton. “Did you ever notice the way she’s so nice now? Ever notice, ‘Oh yes, the president is right about this, right about that,’” Trump mocked. “You know, she was never that way to him. She never liked him and he never liked her and then now all of a sudden everything he’s doing is fine.” “He said things about Bill… and Bill has never forgotten it and then all of a sudden she’s saying he is the greatest thing that ever happened,” Trump said about President Obama. “She’s becoming him,” Trump told his supporters, saying that’s how he will win. “We’re not going to let it happen.” Trump then moved to criticizing his competitor Ohio Gov. John Kasich ahead of the Ohio primary on Tuesday. “The governor, and I like him, but he’s in favor of the Trans Pacific Partnership, the TPP. It’s a disaster,” Trump began about Kasich. “I am a free trader… but it’s got to be reasonable. It’s got to be fair.” Trump then mentioned Obamacare. “Kasich, in Ohio, brought Obamacare to Ohio. It’s a disaster,” he added saying people are very unhappy with it.
DETROIT, MI - DECEMBER 22: Roddy White #84 of the Atlanta Falcons warms up prior to the start of the game against the Detroit Lions at Ford Field on December 22, 2012 in Detroit, Michigan. The Falcons defeated the Lions 31-18. (Photo by Leon Halip/Getty Images) Atlanta Falcons receiver Roddy White was one of several professional athletes who took to Twitter on Saturday night to react to the George Zimmerman verdict. Zimmerman was found not guilty in the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla., a case that garnered national attention. While many athletes voiced their disappointment, one of White's tweets took a dark turn. Fucking Zimmerman got away with murder today wow what kind of world do we live in — Roddy White (@roddywhiteTV) July 14, 2013 All them jurors should go home tonight and kill themselves for letting a grown man get away with killing a kid — Roddy White (@roddywhiteTV) July 14, 2013 Later, the four-time Pro-Bowler acknowledged the negative reaction he received for the tweet. It's crazy how people on twitter want me to get in trouble for a tweet that they are retweeting because they want something to happen thanks — Roddy White (@roddywhiteTV) July 14, 2013 UPDATE Roddy White apologized about his tweet on Sunday morning. I understand my tweet last nite was extreme. I never meant for the people to do that. I was shocked and upset about the verdict. I am sorry. — Roddy White (@roddywhiteTV) July 14, 2013
It is understood that one of the patients, thought to be a paramedic, began receiving treatment for a “strain of H1N1” at the south-eastern hospital last week. A second person was brought in shortly afterwards and, according to local reports, is a patient who was collected by ambulance from an address in Wexford town. Neither patients’ condition is believed to be life threatening, and the woman, who is a mother-of-two, is believed to be responding well to treatment after being transferred from intensive care. A spokesman for Wexford General Hospital confirmed the “influenza-like illness” was the swine flu strain. Swine flu is one of a number of strains of flu which is currently circulating but it can be particularly dangerous for certain groups, including pregnant women. It was at the centre of a pandemic in 2009 when it claimed a number of lives as there was vaccine for many months to offer protection. However, it is now included in the winter flu jab and at risk groups are advised to be vaccinated. Most patients with the flu do not need to be hospitalised but a pregnant women with swine flu are more likely to be admitted and are at greater chance of serious illness from the strain. Flu levels generally are currently high and have been contributing to the trolley crisis. For those concerned about contracting a flu-like illness, there are still around 500,000 flu jabs left. Online Editors
Latest News Mike Siemienas, spokesperson for one of the biggest food producers in the US, General Mills (GM), recently said they never used GMO oats in their product. But recently, the company has issued a statement saying that they have removed GMO corn, corn syrup, and sugar beets from their Original Cheerios. They also promise not to use GMO ingredients in their original Cheerios product. The change doesn’t apply to other types of Cheerios. As NaturalSociety’s own Elizabeth Renter recently reported, the move by General Mills to remove GMOs from Cheerios is nice, but it’s hardly a major victory.It was an easy move for the company to take genetically-modified ingredients out of Cheerios because there were only 2 to begin with—corn starch and sugar beets. This simple decision will probably increase sales measurably. But to remove the genetically-modified ingredients from the rest of their cereal? Even General Mills says there’s no chance. Still according to John Roulac, co-founder of GMO Inside, “This is a huge victory for the non-GMO movement.” Without a government mandate for labeling, Cheerios will now have the words “not made with genetically modified ingredients” printed on the boxes. It just goes to show that smart manufacturers should be cognizant of public opinion, and until the long-term science is truly in on GMOs, why would any company do less? When GM asked why they decided to do it, their response was, “It’s simple. We did it because we think consumers may embrace it.” Tom Forsythe, of GM’s global communications branch, says they didn’t do it because of any concern for safety or public pressure, but if ‘consumer’s will embrace it’ sounds a little similar to ‘public pressure’ to you, we’re on the same page. In the past, GM has listed the following organizations in a statement on their website that support GMO use: In defense of their use of GMO in the past the company states clearly on the same site: “This technology is not new. Biotech seeds have been approved by global food safety agencies and widely used by farmers in food crops for almost 20 years.” You may have noticed that their list is also heavily weighted toward support of the Grocery Manufacturer’s Association and government agencies that are funded with buyouts and political donations from Big Ag companies and Monsanto, which recently spent millions illegally to defeat a labeling bill in Washington. Independent science on GMOs tells a whole different story. The Grocery Manufacturer’s Association wants foods filled with GMO to be labeled ‘natural.’ At least your morning cereal is safe for now.
U.S.A. –-(Ammoland.com)- The bureaucrats Hillary Clinton worked with at State still are withholding what they know about her illicit email practices. You can see that in the deposition transcript of John Bentel, the State Department’s former Director of Information Resource Management of the Executive Secretariat, who was ordered by U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan to respond to our questions. We released the transcript this week. Mr. Bentel, whose office handles information technology for the Office of the Secretary, answered 87 questions with: “On advice from my legal counsel, I decline to answer the question and I invoke my Fifth Amendment rights.” We had the same experience with IT political appointee Bryan Pagliano, the Clinton State Department IT official who reportedly provided support for the Clinton email system. Bentel asserted his Fifth Amendment right in answer to many key questions about issues raised directly by Judge Sullivan. On August 19, 2016, Judge Sullivan granted Judicial Watch’s request to depose Bentel, citing significant discrepancies in Bentel’s previous statements on the Clinton non-state.gov email system: The Court is persuaded that Mr. Bentel should be deposed because the record in this case appears to contradict his sworn testimony before the [House Select] Benghazi Committee . . .. Specifically, Mr. Bentel testified that he was not aware that Secretary Clinton’s email account was housed on a private server until media reports in 2015 . . .. However, several emails indicate Mr. Bentel knew about the private server as early as 2009. Bentel asserted his Fifth Amendment rights in response to all questions about what he knew about Hillary Clinton’s email system and its impact on the Freedom of Information Act. In ordering Bentel’s deposition, Judge Sullivan also cited a May 2016 Inspector General’s report that found that Mr. Bentel told employees in his office that Secretary Clinton’s email arrangement had been approved by the State Department’s legal staff and also instructed his subordinates not to discuss the Secretary’s email again: In one meeting, one staff member raised concerns that information sent and received on Secretary Clinton’s account could contain Federal records that needed to be preserved in order to satisfy Federal recordkeeping requirements. According to the staff member, the Director stated that the Secretary’s personal system had been reviewed and approved by Department legal staff and that the matter was not to be discussed any further . . . . According to the other S/ES-IRM staff member who raised concerns about the server, the Director stated that the mission of S/ES-IRM is to support the Secretary and instructed the staff never to speak of the Secretary’s personal email system again. Bentel asserted his Fifth Amendment right when asked about this reference to the State Department Inspector General’s report and about his FBI interview. Mr. Bentel, on advice of the Obama Justice Department and personal counsel, refused to answer any questions about whether Hillary Clinton was paying his legal fees or offered him employment or other financial incentives. Pagliano also declined to say who was paying for his legal representation. We previously deposed seven former Clinton top aides and current State Department officials, including top Clinton aides Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin. We also deposed IT official Bryan Pagliano, who asserted his Fifth Amendment right not to testify during the Judicial Watch deposition. And Clinton last week answered our questions under oath regarding her non-government email system. The depositions come in connection with a Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit that seeks records about the corrupt patronage job given to Clinton confidante Huma Abedin, who served as deputy chief of staff to former Secretary Clinton (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:13-cv-01363)). The fact that yet another State Department official took the Fifth highlights the disturbing implication that criminal acts took place related to the Clinton email system and our FOIA requests. About Judicial Watch Judicial Watch, Inc., a conservative, non-partisan educational foundation, promotes transparency, accountability and integrity in government, politics and the law. Through its educational endeavors, Judicial Watch advocates high standards of ethics and morality in our nation’s public life and seeks to ensure that political and judicial officials do not abuse the powers entrusted to them by the American people. Judicial Watch fulfills its educational mission through litigation, investigations, and public outreach. For more information, visit: www.JudicialWatch.org.
Bloomberg Shares of Netflix Inc. tumbled more than 8.5%, and both Etsy Inc. and Twitter Inc. set all-time lows Wednesday, as the tech sector was bludgeoned by a market selloff and Morgan Stanley downgraded the industry to underweight. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell 160 points, or 3.4%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 365 points, or 2.2%. The Technology Select Sector SPDR ETF, whose biggest holdings include Apple Inc. AAPL, +0.06% Microsoft Corp. MSFT, +0.69% and Facebook Inc. FB, -0.30% fell 2.7%. Netflix’s NFLX, +0.29% stock plunged to $106.56, marking the stock’s worst one-day percentage decline since Oct. 15. The stock is still trading up more than 130% from 12 months ago. Shares of Etsy ETSY, +16.34% skidded 4.9% to $6.99, below the previous record low of $7.35 set on Tuesday, while Twitter’s TWTR, -3.06% tumbled 4.8% to $18.68, a dollar below the last record. GoPro’s shares closed up 0.7% to $14.61 in the regular session, but plunged 23% in after-hours trade, on track for a record-low open of around $11.32, after the action camera maker issued a sales warning, and said it would cut 7% of its staff. Other tech sector losers on Wednesday were Mobileye N.V. US:MBLY Shopify Inc. SHOP, -1.32% TripAdvisor Inc. TRIP, +0.13% and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. AMD, -2.02% all down by more than 5%. Shares of Amazon.com Inc. AMZN, +0.21% slumped 5.8% to $581.55. Less affected but also in the red was Apple, down 2.5% to $97.37; as well as Alphabet Inc. GOOGL, +0.42% down 3.5% to $719.57; Facebook, down 3.9% to $95.44; Microsoft Corp., down 2.1% to $51.64; and Tesla Motors Inc TSLA, -0.30% . , down 4.6% to $200.31. Morgan Stanley downgraded the entire sector to underweight from market weight on Wednesday and said it was reducing its exposure to technology by 3%. Apple, LinkedIn Corp. US:LNKD and Palo Alto Networks Inc. PANW, +0.71% were among the stocks the brokerage retreated from, while it slightly raised its position in Alphabet. Interestingly, Fitbit Inc. FIT, +0.76% which has suffered steep selloffs and record levels of short interest in recent months, ended the day slightly higher. Its shares rose 1.1% to $19.85 despite tumbling 12% below its $20 IPO for the first time on Tuesday. The market selloff comes at the start of earnings season, with Intel kicking off the tech-sector companies after the bell on Thursday.
Get the biggest rugby stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email Hours after winning plaudits for the way he handled the Rugby World Cup final, Welsh referee Nigel Owens was handed the World Rugby Referee Award. The Welshman won the gong at the star-studded World Rugby Awards ceremony at Battersea Evolution in London on Sunday. Owens became the seventh referee, and second Welshman, to take charge of a Rugby World Cup final at Twickenham on Saturday. The 44-year-old is a veteran of three Rugby World Cups and 68 test matches and is the most experienced member of the current referee panel. Jérôme Garcès, of France, and Alhambra Nievas, of Spain, were also nominated for the award but Owens was the winner. He took to twitter yesterday to claim this tournament, which New Zealand won on Saturday, was the "best Rugby World Cup ever". But he will be back in domestic action next week, as he takes charge of Gowerton against Cymych in the Swalec League Division One West. Dan Carter, Michael Cheika and Sonny Bill Williams Also at the glamorous ceremony, All Blacks superstar Carter won the big award for the first time, after emerging the hero during his team's 34-17 win on Saturday. (Image: Getty Images) Watch the moment Nigel Owens tells Dan Carter off at Twickenham Wallabies coach Cheika won the coach of the year award after leading his team from a relative shambles to the final. The other big news to emerge was Saturday's star Sonny Bill Williams being given a new World Cup winners medal after handing his to an eight-year-old who ran onto the pitch to congratulate him. The Winners World Rugby Player of the Year in association with MasterCard – Daniel Carter, New Zealand World Rugby Team of the Year – New Zealand World Rugby Coach of the Year – Michael Cheika, Australia World Rugby Women’s Player of the Year – Kendra Cocksedge, New Zealand World Rugby Breakthrough Player of the Year – Nehe Milner-Skudder, New Zealand World Rugby Sevens Player of the Year in association with HSBC – Werner Kok, South Africa World Rugby Women’s Sevens Player of the Year – Portia Woodman, New Zealand World Rugby Referee Award – Nigel Owens Vernon Pugh Award for Distinguished Service – Nigel Starmer-Smith Award for Character in association with Land Rover – Pakistan Rugby Union Rugby World Cup Best Match Moment – Japan (v South Africa, RWC 2015) IRPA Special Merit Award – Brian O’Driscoll (Ireland) and Nathan Sharpe (Australia) IRPA Try of the Year – Julian Savea, New Zealand (v France)
The video will start in 8 Cancel Get the biggest Liverpool FC stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email Adam Lallana was missing from Liverpool training at Melwood today - and is set to miss up to four weeks with an injury picked up on international duty. Liverpool players returned to Melwood on Monday for a double session and returned to West Derby for another work-out today. While Lallana's international colleague with England, Nathaniel Clyne took part in team training, there was no sign of Lallana. Admittedly Clyne did not play against Lithuania but a normal rhythm would have had Lallana back with the team today. It is understood Lallana suffered a problem with his thigh and could miss up to four weeks despite completing the full game for England. The midfielder played 66 minutes against Germany last Wednesday before playing a full 90 minutes in the qualifier against Lithuania. Video Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will start in 8 Cancel Play now Afterwards, Lallana posted on Instagram: "Two great finishes from two top centre forwards.... fantastic to have a chance to share a pitch with Jermain Defoe this week - been on the receiving end of his quality enough times as an opponent.... nice to able to celebrate as a team-mate today. Back to Liverpool and derby week!" That appeared relatively upbeat but there are suggestions a problem with his thigh has flared since. It is another significant blow to Jurgen Klopp's planning ahead of the Merseyside derby with several other stars already likely to miss out. Jordan Henderson - who travelled with the squad attended the warm weather training in Tenerife last week - has not yet trained outside, making a start against Everton at Anfield on Saturday most unlikely. Daniel Sturridge is in a similar boat, his troublesome hip not yet sufficiently recovered to allow him into team training. Klopp's tendency in the past is to need to see two or three days of full training before considering a player for a start. Lucas Leiva would be the obvious candidate to step into midfield with Lallana missing.
Yet another Daily Show correspondent is striking out on his own: Comedy Central on Tuesday greenlit a news satire show led by Jordan Klepper. Klepper’s Monday-Thursday, 11:30/10:30c broadcast is “a companion series” to The Daily Show With Trevor Noah, according to an official release from the network. Klepper will perform in the guise of his Daily Show persona. Episode will begin airing in the fall. “The choice to entrust me with the 11:30 p.m. timeslot is both incredibly humbling and deeply disturbing,” Klepper said in a statement. “Without a doubt, it has utterly destroyed my confidence in Comedy Central’s decision making acumen. Dear God, now I have to work with these fools.” The focus of the fledgling series: Institutions are even less worthy of the public’s trust than the lying mainstream media. Like The Daily Show, he’ll work with a team of contributors. Unlike The Daily Show, those contributors will be “contractually obligated to reinforce his singularly correct world view,” per the release. Klepper also will executive-produce the series alongside Noah and Stuart Miller (The Daily Show). Earlier this week, the network announced that The President Show — hosted by Donald Trump impressionist Anthony Atamanuik (in character) — would fill the 11:30 slot starting Thursday, April 27. If that series is picked up for a second season, our sister site Deadline reports, it will be moved to a different time. The Daily Show has had two prior spinoffs: The Colbert Report, helmed by Stephen Colbert, and The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore.
On the Catechising of the Uninstructed Please help support the mission of New Advent and get the full contents of this website as an instant download. Includes the Catholic Encyclopedia, Church Fathers, Summa, Bible and more all for only $19.99... Introductory Notice In the fourteenth chapter of the second book of his Retractations, Augustine makes the following statement: There is also a book of ours on the subject of the Catechising of the Uninstructed, [or, for Instructing the Unlearned, De Catechizandis Rudibus], that being, indeed, the express title by which it is designated. In this book, where I have said, 'Neither did the angel, who, in company with other spirits who were his satellites, forsook in pride the obedience of God, and became the devil, do any hurt to God, but to himself; for God knows how to dispose of souls that leave Him:' it would be more appropriate to say, 'spirits that leave Him,' inasmuch as the question dealt with angels. This book commences in these terms: 'You have requested me, brother Deogratias.' The composition so described in the passage cited is reviewed by Augustine in connection with other works which he had in hand about the year 400 A.D., and may therefore be taken to belong to that date. It has been conjectured that the person to whom it is addressed may perhaps be the same with the presbyter Deogratias, to whom, as we read in the epistle which now ranks as the hundred and second, Augustine wrote about the year 406, in reply to some questions of the pagans which were forwarded to him from Carthage. The Benedictine editors introduce the treatise in the following terms: At the request of a deacon of Carthage, Augustine undertakes the task of teaching the art of catechising; and in the first place, he gives certain injunctions, to the effect that this kind of duty may be discharged not only in a settled method and an apt order, but also without tediousness, and in a spirit of cheerfulness. Thereafter reducing his injunctions to practical use, he gives an example of what he means by delivering two set discourses, presenting parallels to each other, the one being somewhat lengthened and the other very brief, but both suitable for the instruction of any individual whose desire is to be a Christian. Chapter 1.— How Augustine Writes in Answer to a Favor Asked by a Deacon of Carthage 1. You have requested me, brother Deogratias, to send you in writing something which might be of service to you in the matter of catechising the uninstructed. For you have informed me that in Carthage, where you hold the position of a deacon, persons, who have to be taught the Christian faith from its very rudiments, are frequently brought to you by reason of your enjoying the reputation of possessing a rich gift in catechising, due at once to an intimate acquaintance with the faith, and to an attractive method of discourse; but that you almost always find yourself in a difficulty as to the manner in which a suitable declaration is to be made of the precise doctrine, the belief of which constitutes us Christians: regarding the point at which our statement of the same ought to commence, and the limit to which it should be allowed to proceed: and with respect to the question whether, when our narration is concluded, we ought to make use of any kind of exhortation, or simply specify those precepts in the observance of which the person to whom we are discoursing may know the Christian life and profession to be maintained. At the same time, you have made the confession and complaint that it has often befallen you that in the course of a lengthened and languid address you have become profitless and distasteful even to yourself, not to speak of the learner whom you have been endeavoring to instruct by your utterance, and the other parties who have been present as hearers; and that you have been constrained by these straits to put upon me the constraint of that love which I owe to you, so that I may not feel it a burdensome thing among all my engagements to write you something on this subject. 2. As for myself then, if, in the exercise of those capacities which through the bounty of our Lord I am enabled to present, the same Lord requires me to offer any manner of aid to those whom He has made brethren to me, I feel constrained not only by that love and service which is due from me to you on the terms of familiar friendship, but also by that which I owe universally to my mother the Church, by no means to refuse the task, but rather to take it up with a prompt and devoted willingness. For the more extensively I desire to see the treasure of the Lord distributed, the more does it become my duty, if I ascertain that the stewards, who are my fellow-servants, find any difficulty in laying it out, to do all that lies in my power to the end that they may be able to accomplish easily and expeditiously what they sedulously and earnestly aim at. Chapter 2.— How It Often Happens that a Discourse Which Gives Pleasure to the Hearer is Distasteful to the Speaker; And What Explanation is to Be Offered of that Fact 3. But as regards the idea thus privately entertained by yourself in such efforts, I would not have you to be disturbed by the consideration that you have often appeared to yourself to be delivering a poor and wearisome discourse. For it may very well be the case that the matter has not so presented itself to the person whom you were trying to instruct, but that what you were uttering seemed to you to be unworthy of the ears of others, simply because it was your own earnest desire that there should be something better to listen to. Indeed with me, too, it is almost always the fact that my speech displeases myself. For I am covetous of something better, the possession of which I frequently enjoy within me before I commence to body it forth in intelligible words: and then when my capacities of expression prove inferior to my inner apprehensions, I grieve over the inability which my tongue has betrayed in answering to my heart. For it is my wish that he who hears me should have the same complete understanding of the subject which I have myself; and I perceive that I fail to speak in a manner calculated to effect that, and that this arises mainly from the circumstance that the intellectual apprehension diffuses itself through the mind with something like a rapid flash, whereas the utterance is slow, and occupies time, and is of a vastly different nature, so that, while this latter is moving on, the intellectual apprehension has already withdrawn itself within its secret abodes. Yet, in consequence of its having stamped certain impressions of itself in a marvellous manner upon the memory, these prints endure with the brief pauses of the syllables; and as the outcome of these same impressions we form intelligible signs, which get the name of a certain language, either the Latin, or the Greek, or the Hebrew, or some other. And these signs may be objects of thought, or they may also be actually uttered by the voice. On the other hand however, the impressions themselves are neither Latin, nor Greek, nor Hebrew, nor peculiar to any other race whatsoever, but are made good in the mind just as looks are in the body. For anger is designated by one word in Latin, by another in Greek, and by different terms in other languages, according to their several diversities. But the look of the angry man is neither (peculiarly) Latin nor (peculiarly) Greek. Thus it is that when a person says Iratus sum, he is not understood by every nation, but only by the Latins; whereas, if the mood of his mind when it is kindling to wrath comes forth upon the face and affects the look, all who have the individual within their view understand that he is angry. But, again, it is not in our power to bring out those impressions which the intellectual apprehension stamps upon the memory, and to hold them forth, as it were, to the perception of the hearers by means of the sound of the voice, in any manner parallel to the clear and evident form in which the look appears. For those former are within in the mind, while this latter is without in the body. Wherefore we have to surmise how far the sound of our mouth must be from representing that stroke of the intelligence, seeing that it does not correspond even with the impression produced upon the memory. Now, it is a common occurrence with us that, in the ardent desire to effect what is of profit to our hearer, our aim is to express ourselves to him exactly as our intellectual apprehension is at the time, when, in the very effort, we are failing in the ability to speak; and then, because this does not succeed with us, we are vexed, and we pine in weariness as if we were applying ourselves to vain labors; and, as the result of this very weariness, our discourse becomes itself more languid and pointless even than it was when it first induced such a sense of tediousness. 4. But ofttimes the earnestness of those who are desirous of hearing me shows me that my utterance is not so frigid as it seems to myself to be. From the delight, too, which they exhibit, I gather that they derive some profit from it. And I occupy myself sedulously with the endeavor not to fail in putting before them a service in which I perceive them to take in such good part what is put before them. Even, so, on your side also, the very fact that persons who require to be instructed in the faith are brought so frequently to you, ought to help you to understand that your discourse is not displeasing to others as it is displeasing to yourself; and you ought not to consider yourself unfruitful, simply because you do not succeed in setting forth in such a manner as you desire the things which you discern; for, perchance, you may be just as little able to discern them in the way you wish. For in this life who sees except as in an enigma and through a glass ? Neither is love itself of might sufficient to rend the darkness of the flesh, and penetrate into that eternal calm from which even things which pass away derive the light in which they shine. But inasmuch as day by day the good are making advances towards the vision of that day, independent of the rolling sky, and without the invasion of the night, which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man, there is no greater reason why our discourse should become valueless in our own estimate, when we are engaged in teaching the uninstructed, than this — namely, that it is a delight to us to discern in an extraordinary fashion, and a weariness to speak in an ordinary. And in reality we are listened to with much greater satisfaction, indeed, when we ourselves also have pleasure in the same work; for the thread of our address is affected by the very joy of which we ourselves are sensible, and it proceeds from us with greater ease and with more acceptance. Consequently, as regards those matters which are recommended as articles of belief, the task is not a difficult one to lay down injunctions, with respect to the points at which the narration should be commenced and ended, or with respect to the method in which the narration is to be varied, so that at one time it may be briefer, at another more lengthened, and yet at all times full and perfect; and, again, with respect to the particular occasions on which it may be right to use the shorter form, and those on which it will be proper to employ the longer. But as to the means by which all is to be done, so that every one may have pleasure in his work when he catechises (for the better he succeeds in this the more attractive will he be) — that is what requires the greatest consideration. And yet we have not far to seek for the precept which will rule in this sphere. For if, in the matter of carnal means, God loves a cheerful giver, how much more so in that of the spiritual? But our security that this cheerfulness may be with us at the seasonable hour, is something dependent upon the mercy of Him who has given us such precepts. Therefore, in accordance with my understanding of what your own wish is, we shall discuss in the first place the subject of the method of narration, then that of the duty of delivering injunction and exhortation, and afterwards that of the attainment of the said cheerfulness, so far as God may furnish us with the ideas. Chapter 3.— Of the Full Narration to Be Employed in Catechising 5. The narration is full when each person is catechised in the first instance from what is written in the text, In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, on to the present times of the Church. This does not imply, however, either that we ought to repeat by memory the entire Pentateuch, and the entire Books of Judges, and Kings, and Esdras, and the entire Gospel and Acts of the Apostles, if we have learned all these word for word; or that we should put all the matters which are contained in these volumes into our own words, and in that manner unfold and expound them as a whole. For neither does the time admit of that, nor does any necessity demand it. But what we ought to do is, to give a comprehensive statement of all things, summarily and generally, so that certain of the more wonderful facts may be selected which are listened to with superior gratification, and which have been ranked so remarkably among the exact turning-points (of the history); that, instead of exhibiting them to view only in their wrappings, if we may so speak, and then instantly snatching them from our sight, we ought to dwell on them for a certain space, and thus, as it were, unfold them and open them out to vision, and present them to the minds of the hearers as things to be examined and admired. But as for all other details, these should be passed over rapidly, and thus far introduced and woven into the narrative. The effect of pursuing this plan is, that the particular facts which we wish to see specially commended to attention obtain greater prominence in consequence of the others being made to yield to them; while, at the same time, neither does the learner, whose interest we are anxious to stimulate by our statement, come to these subjects with a mind already exhausted, nor is confusion induced upon the memory of the person whom we ought to be instructing by our teaching. 6. In all things, indeed, not only ought our own eye to be kept fixed upon the end of the commandment, which is charity, out of a pure heart, and a good conscience, and faith unfeigned, to which we should make all that we utter refer; but in like manner ought the gaze of the person whom we are instructing by our utterance to be moved toward the same, and guided in that direction. And, in truth, for no other reason were all those things which we read in the Holy Scriptures written, previous to the Lord's advent, but for this — namely, that His advent might be pressed upon the attention, and that the Church which was to be, should be intimated beforehand, that is to say, the people of God throughout all nations; which Church is His body, wherewith also are united and numbered all the saints who lived in this world, even before His advent, and who believed then in His future coming, just as we believe in His past coming. For (to use an illustration) Jacob, at the time when he was being born, first put forth from the womb a hand, with which also he held the foot of the brother who was taking priority of him in the act of birth; and next indeed the head followed, and thereafter, at last, and as matter of course, the rest of the members: while, nevertheless the head in point of dignity and power has precedence, not only of those members which followed it then, but also of the very hand which anticipated it in the process of the birth, and is really the first, although not in the matter of the time of appearing, at least in the order of nature. And in an analogous manner, the Lord Jesus Christ, previous to His appearing in the flesh, and coming forth in a certain manner out of the womb of His secrecy, before the eyes of men as Man, the Mediator between God and men, who is over all, God blessed for ever, sent before Him, in the person of the holy patriarchs and prophets, a certain portion of His body, wherewith, as by a hand, He gave token beforetime of His own approaching birth, and also supplanted the people who were prior to Him in their pride, using for that purpose the bonds of the law, as if they were His five fingers. For through five epochs of times there was no cessation in the foretelling and prophesying of His own destined coming; and in a manner consonant with this, he through whom the law was given wrote five books; and proud men, who were carnally minded, and sought to establish their own righteousness, were not filled with blessing by the open hand of Christ, but were debarred from such good by the hand compressed and closed; and therefore their feet were tied, and they fell, while we are risen, and stand upright. But although, as I have said, the Lord Christ did thus send before Him a certain portion of His body, in the person of those holy men who came before Him as regards the time of birth, nevertheless He is Himself the Head of the body, the Church, and all these have been attached to that same body of which He is the head, in virtue of their believing in Him whom they announced prophetically. For they were not sundered (from that body) in consequence of fulfilling their course before Him, but rather were they made one with the same by reason of their obedience. For although the hand may be put forward away before the head, still it has its connection beneath the head. Wherefore all things which were written aforetime were written in order that we might be taught thereby, and were our figures, and happened in a figure in the case of these men. Moreover they were written for our sakes, upon whom the end of the ages has come. Chapter 4.— That the Great Reason for the Advent of Christ Was the Commendation of Love 7. Moreover, what greater reason is apparent for the advent of the Lord than that God might show His love in us, commending it powerfully, inasmuch as while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us ? And furthermore, this is with the intent that, inasmuch as charity is the end of the commandment, and the fulfilling of the law, we also may love one another and lay down our life for the brethren, even as He laid down His life for us. And with regard to God Himself, its object is that, even if it were an irksome task to love Him, it may now at least cease to be irksome for us to return His love, seeing that He first loved us, and spared not His own only Son, but delivered Him up for us all. For there is no mightier invitation to love than to anticipate in loving; and that soul is over hard which, supposing it unwilling indeed to give love, is unwilling also to give the return of love. But if, even in the case of criminal and sordid loves, we see how those who desire to be loved in return make it their special and absorbing business, by such proofs as are within their power, to render the strength of the love which they themselves bear plain and patent; if we also perceive how they affect to put forward an appearance of justice in what they thus offer, such as may qualify them in some sort to demand that a response be made in all fairness to them on the part of those souls which they are laboring to beguile; if, further, their own passion burns more vehemently when they observe that the minds which they are eager to possess are also moved now by the same fire: if thus, I say, it happens at once that the soul which before was torpid is excited so soon as it feels itself to be loved, and that the soul which was enkindled already becomes the more inflamed so soon as it is made cognizant of the return of its own love, it is evident that no greater reason is to be found why love should be either originated or enlarged, than what appears in the occasion when one who as yet loves not at all comes to know himself to be the object of love, or when one who is already a lover either hopes that he may yet be loved in turn, or has by this time the evidence of a response to his affection. And if this holds good even in the case of base loves, how much more in (true) friendship? For what else have we carefully to attend to in this question touching the injuring of friendship than to this, namely, not to give our friend cause to suppose either that we do not love him at all, or that we love him less than he loves us? If, indeed, he is led to entertain this belief, he will be cooler in that love in which men enjoy the interchange of intimacies one with another; and if he is not of that weak type of character to which such an offense to affection will serve as a cause of freezing off from love altogether, he yet confines himself to that kind of affection in which he loves, not with the view of enjoyment to himself, but with the idea of studying the good of others. But again it is worth our while to notice how — although superiors also have the wish to be loved by their inferiors, and are gratified with the zealous attention paid to them by such, and themselves cherish greater affection towards these inferiors the more they become cognizant of that — with what might of love, nevertheless, the inferior kindles so soon as he learns that he is beloved by his superior. For there have we love in its more grateful aspect, where it does not consume itself in the drought of want, but flows forth in the plenteousness of beneficence. For the former type of love is of misery, the latter of mercy. And furthermore, if the inferior was despairing even of the possibility of his being loved by his superior, he will now be inexpressibly moved to love if the superior has of his own will condescended to show how much he loves this person who could by no means be bold enough to promise himself so great a good. But what is there superior to God in the character of Judge? And what more desperate than man in the character of sinner? — than man, I ask, who had given himself all the more unreservedly up to the wardship and domination of proud powers which are unable to make him blessed, as he had come more absolutely to despair of the possibility of his being an object of interest to that power which wills not to be exalted in wickedness, but is exalted in goodness. 8. If, therefore, it was mainly for this purpose that Christ came, to wit, that man might learn how much God loves him; and that he might learn this, to the intent that he might be kindled to the love of Him by whom he was first loved, and might also love his neighbor at the command and showing of Him who became our neighbor, in that He loved man when, instead of being a neighbor to Him, he was sojourning far apart: if, again, all divine Scripture, which was written aforetime, was written with the view of presignifying the Lord's advent; and if whatever has been committed to writing in times subsequent to these, and established by divine authority, is a record of Christ, and admonishes us of love, it is manifest that on those two commandments of love to God and love to our neighbor hang not only all the law and the prophets, which at the time when the Lord spoke to that effect were as yet the only Holy Scripture, but also all those books of the divine literature which have been written at a later period for our health, and consigned to remembrance. Wherefore, in the Old Testament there is a veiling of the New, and in the New Testament there is a revealing of the Old. According to that veiling, carnal men, understanding things in a carnal fashion, have been under the dominion, both then and now, of a penal fear. According to this revealing, on the other hand, spiritual men, — among whom we reckon at once those then who knocked in piety and found even hidden things opened to them, and others now who seek in no spirit of pride, lest even things uncovered should be closed to them — understanding in a spiritual fashion, have been made free through the love wherewith they have been gifted. Consequently, inasmuch as there is nothing more adverse to love than envy, and as pride is the mother of envy, the same Lord Jesus Christ, God-man, is both a manifestation of divine love towards us, and an example of human humility with us, to the end that our great swelling might be cured by a greater counteracting remedy. For here is great misery, proud man! But there is greater mercy, a humble God! Take this love, therefore, as the end that is set before you, to which you are to refer all that you say, and, whatever you narrate, narrate it in such a manner that he to whom you are discoursing on hearing may believe, on believing may hope, on hoping may love. Chapter 5.— That the Person Who Comes for Catechetical Instruction is to Be Examined with Respect to His Views, on Desiring to Become a Christian 9. Moreover, it is on the gound of that very severity of God, by which the hearts of mortals are agitated with a most wholesome terror, that love is to be built up; so that, rejoicing that he is loved by Him whom he fears, man may have boldness to love Him in return, and yet at the same time be afraid to displease His love toward himself, even should he be able to do so with impunity. For certainly it very rarely happens, nay, I should rather say, never, that any one approaches us with the wish to become a Christian who has not been smitten with some sort of fear of God. For if it is in the expectation of some advantage from men whom he deems himself unlikely to please in any other way, or with the idea of escaping any disadvantage at the hands of men of whose displeasure or hostility he is seriously afraid, that a man wishes to become a Christian, then his wish to become one is not so earnest as his desire to feign one. For faith is not a matter of the body which does obeisance, but of the mind which believes. But unmistakeably it is often the case that the mercy of God comes to be present through the ministry of the catechiser, so that, affected by the discourse, the man now wishes to become in reality that which he had made up his mind only to feign. And so soon as he begins to have this manner of desire, we may judge him then to have made a genuine approach to us. It is true, indeed, that the precise time when a man, whom we perceive to be present with us already in the body, comes to us in reality with his mind, is a thing hidden from us. But, notwithstanding that, we ought to deal with him in such a manner that this wish may be made to arise within him, even should it not be there at present. For no such labor is lost, inasmuch as, if there is any wish at all, it is assuredly strengthened by such action on our part, although we may be ignorant of the time or the hour at which it began. It is useful certainly, if it can be done, to get from those who know the man some idea beforehand of the state of mind in which he is, or of the causes which have induced him to come with the view of embracing religion. But if there is no other person available from whom we may gather such information, then, indeed, the man himself is to be interrogated, so that from what he says in reply we may draw the beginning of our discourse. Now if he has come with a false heart, desirous only of human advantages or thinking to escape disadvantages, he will certainly speak what is untrue. Nevertheless, the very untruth which he utters should be made the point from which we start. This should not be done, however, with the (open) intention of confuting his falsehood, as if that were a settled matter with you; but, taking it for granted that he has professed to have come with a purpose which is really worthy of approbation (whether that profession be true or false), it should rather be our aim to commend and praise such a purpose as that with which, in his reply, he has declared himself to have come; so that we may make him feel it a pleasure to be the kind of man actually that he wishes to seem to be. On the other hand, supposing him to have given a declaration of his views other than what ought to be before the mind of one who is to be instructed in the Christian faith, then by reproving him with more than usual kindness and gentleness, as a person uninstructed and ignorant, by pointing out and commending, concisely and in a grave spirit the end of Christian doctrine in its genuine reality, and by doing all this in such a manner as neither to anticipate the times of a narration, which should be given subsequently, nor to venture to impose that kind of statement upon a mind not previously set for it, you may bring him to desire that which, either in mistake or in dissimulation, he has not been desiring up to this stage. Chapter 6.— Of the Way to Commence the Catechetical Instruction, and of the Narration of Facts from the History of the World's Creation on to the Present Times of the Church 10. But if it happens that his answer is to the effect that he has met with some divine warning, or with some divine terror, prompting him to become a Christian, this opens up the way most satisfactorily for a commencement to our discourse, by suggesting the greatness of God's interest in us. His thoughts, however, ought certainly to be turned away from this line of things, whether miracles or dreams, and directed to the more solid path and the surer oracles of the Scriptures; so that he may also come to understand how mercifully that warning was administered to him in advance, previous to his giving himself to the Holy Scriptures. And assuredly it ought to be pointed out to him, that the Lord Himself would neither thus have admonished him and urged him on to become a Christian, and to be incorporated into the Church, nor have taught him by such signs or revelations, had it not been His will that, for his greater safety and security, he should enter upon a pathway already prepared in the Holy Scriptures, in which he should not seek after visible miracles, but learn the habit of hoping for things invisible, and in which also he should receive monitions not in sleep but in wakefulness. At this point the narration ought now to be commenced, which should start with the fact that God made all things very good, and which should be continued, as we have said, on to the present times of the Church. This should be done in such a manner as to give, for each of the affairs and events which we relate, causes and reasons by which we may refer them severally to that end of love from which neither the eye of the man who is occupied in doing anything, nor that of the man who is engaged in speaking, ought to be turned away. For if, even in handling the fables of the poets, which are but fictitious creations and things devised for the pleasure of minds whose food is found in trifles, those grammarians who have the reputation and the name of being good do nevertheless endeavor to bring them to bear upon some kind of (assumed) use, although that use itself may be only something vain and grossly bent upon the coarse nutriment of this world: how much more careful does it become us to be, not to let those genuine verities which we narrate, in consequence of any want of a well-considered account of their causes, be accepted either with a gratification which issues in no practical good, or, still less, with a cupidity which may prove hurtful! At the same time, we are not to set forth these causes in such a manner as to leave the proper course of our narration, and let our heart and our tongue indulge in digressions into the knotty questions of more intricate discussion. But the simple truth of the explanation which we adduce ought to be like the gold which binds together a row of gems, and yet does not interfere with the choice symmetry of the ornament by any undue intrusion of itself. Chapter 7.— Of the Exposition of the Resurrection, the Judgment, and Other Subjects, Which Should Follow This Narration 11. On the completion of this narration, the hope of the resurrection should be set forth, and, so far as the capacity and strength of the hearer will bear it, and so far also as the measure of time at our disposal will allow, we ought to handle our arguments against the vain scoffings of unbelievers on the subject of the resurrection of the body, as well as on that of the future judgment, with its goodness in relation to the good, its severity in relation to the evil, its truth in relation to all. And after the penalties of the impious have thus been declared with detestation and horror, then the kingdom of the righteous and faithful, and that supernal city and its joy, should form the next themes for our discourse. At this point, moreover, we ought to equip and animate the weakness of man in withstanding temptations and offenses, whether these emerge without or rise within the church itself; without, as in opposition to Gentiles, or Jews, or heretics; within, on the other hand, as in opposition to the chaff of the Lord's threshing-floor. It is not meant, however, that we are to dispute against each several type of perverse men, and that all their wrong opinions are to be refuted by set arrays of argumentations: but, in a manner suitable to a limited allowance of time, we ought to show how all this was foretold, and to point out of what service temptations are in the training of the faithful, and what relief there is in the example of the patience of God, who has resolved to permit them even to the end. But, again, while he is being furnished against these (adversaries), whose perverse multitudes fill the churches so far as bodily presence is concerned, the precepts of a Christian and honorable manner of life should also be briefly and befittingly detailed at the same time, to the intent that he may neither allow himself to be easily led astray in this way, by any who are drunkards, covetous, fraudulent, gamesters, adulterers, fornicators, lovers of public spectacles, wearers of unholy charms, sorcerers, astrologers, or diviners practising any sort of vain and wicked arts, and all other parties of a similar character; nor to let himself fancy that any such course may be followed with impunity on his part, simply because he sees many who are called Christians loving these things, and engaging themselves with them, and defending them, and recommending them, and actually persuading others to their use. For as to the end which is appointed for those who persist in such a mode of life, and as to the method in which they are to be borne with in the church itself, out of which they are destined to be separated in the end — these are subjects in which the learner ought to be instructed by means of the testimonies of the divine books. He should also, however, be informed beforehand that he will find in the church many good Christians, most genuine citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem, if he sets about being such himself. And, finally, he must be sedulously warned against letting his hope rest on man. For it is not a matter that can be easily judged by man, what man is righteous. And even were this a matter which could be easily done, still the object with which the examples of righteous men are set before us is not that we may be justified by them, but that, as we imitate them, we may understand how we ourselves also are justified by their Justifier. For the issue of this will be something which must merit the highest approval — namely this, that when the person who is hearing us, or rather, who is hearing God by us, has begun to make some progress in moral qualities and in knowledge, and to enter upon the way of Christ with ardor, he will not be so bold as to ascribe the change either to us or to himself; but he will love both himself and us, and whatever other persons he loves as friends, in Him, and for His sake who loved him when he was an enemy, in order that He might justify him and make him a friend. And now that we have advanced thus far, I do not think that you need any preceptor to tell you how you should discuss matters briefly, when either your own time or that of those who are hearing you is occupied; and how, on the other hand, you should discourse at greater length when there is more time at your command. For the very necessity of the case recommends this, apart from the counsel of any adviser. Chapter 8.— Of the Method to Be Pursued in Catechising Those Who Have Had a Liberal Education 12. But there is another case which evidently must not be overlooked. I mean the case of one coming to you to receive catchetical instruction who has cultivated the field of liberal studies, who has already made up his mind to be a Christian, and who has betaken himself to you for the express purpose of becoming one. It can scarcely fail to be the fact that a person of this character has already acquired a considerable knowledge of our Scriptures and literature; and, furnished with this, he may have come now simply with the view of being made a partaker in the sacraments. For it is customary with men of this class to inquire carefully into all things, not at the very time when they are made Christians, but previous to that, and thus early also to communicate and reason, with any whom they can reach, on the subject of the feelings of their own minds. Consequently a brief method of procedure should be adopted with these, so as not to inculcate on them, in an odious fashion things which they know already, but to pass over these with a light and modest touch. Thus we should say how we believe that they are already familiar with this and the other subject, and that we therefore simply reckon up in a cursory manner all those facts which require to be formally urged upon the attention of the uninstructed and unlearned. And we should endeavor so to proceed, that, supposing this man of culture to have been previously acquainted with any one of our themes, he may not hear it now as from a teacher; and that, in the event of his being still ignorant of any of them, he may yet learn the same while we are going over the things with which we understand him to be already familiar. Moreover, it is certainly not without advantage to interrogate the man himself as to the means by which he was induced to desire to be a Christian; so that, if you discover him to have been moved to that decision by books, whether they be the canonical writings or the compositions of literary men worth the studying, you may say something about these at the outset, expressing your approbation of them in a manner which may suit the distinct merits which they severally possess, in respect of canonical authority and of skillfully applied diligence on the part of these expounders; and, in the case of the canonical Scriptures, commending above all the most salutary modesty (of language) displayed alongside their wonderful loftiness (of subject); while, in those other productions you notice, in accordance with the characteristic faculty of each several writer, a style of a more sonorous and, as it were more rounded eloquence adapted to minds that are prouder, and, by reason thereof weaker. We should certainly also elicit from him some account of himself, so that he may give us to understand what writer he chiefly perused, and with what books he was more familiarly conversant, as these were the means of moving him to wish to be associated with the church. And when he has given us this information, then if the said books are known to us, or if we have at least ecclesiastical report as our warrant for taking them to have been written by some catholic man of note, we should joyfully express our approbation. But if, on the other hand, he has fallen upon the productions of some heretic and in ignorance, it may be, has retained in his mind anything which the true faith condemns, and yet supposes it to be catholic doctrine, then we must set ourselves sedulously to teach him, bringing before him (in its rightful superiority) the authority of the Church universal, and of other most learned men reputed both for their disputations and for their writings in (the cause of) its truth. At the same time, it is to be admitted that even those who have departed this life as genuine Catholics, and have left to posterity some Christian writings, in certain passages of their small works, either in consequence of their failing to be understood, or (as the way is with human infirmity) because they lack ability to pierce into the deeper mysteries with the eye of the mind, and in (pursuing) the semblance of what is true, wander from the truth itself, have proved an occasion to the presumptuous and audacious for constructing and generating some heresy. This, however, is not to be wondered at, when, even in the instance of the canonical writings themselves, where all things have been expressed in the soundest manner, we see how it has happened — not indeed through merely taking certain passages in a sense different from that which the writer had in view or which is consistent with the truth itself, (for if this were all, who would not gladly pardon human infirmity, when it exhibits a readiness to accept correction?), but by persistently defending, with the bitterest vehemence and in impudent arrogance, opinions which they have taken up in perversity and error — many have given birth to many pernicious dogmas at the cost of rending the unity of the (Christian) communion. All these subjects we should discuss in modest conference with the individual who makes his approach to the society of the Christian people, not in the character of an uneducated man, as they say, but in that of one who has passed through a finished culture and training in the books of the learned. And in enjoining him to guard against the errors of presumption, we should assume only so much authority as that humility of his, which induced him to come to us, is now felt to admit of. As to other things, moreover, in accordance with the rules of saving doctrine, which require to be narrated or discussed, whether they be matters relating to the faith, or questions bearing on the moral life, or others dealing with temptations, all these should be gone through in the manner which I have indicated, and ought therein to be referred to the more excellent way (already noticed). Chapter 9.— Of the Method in Which Grammarians and Professional Speakers are to Be Dealt with 13. There are also some who come from the commonest schools of the grammarians and professional speakers, whom you may not venture to reckon either among the uneducated or among those very learned classes whose minds have been exercised in questions of real magnitude. When such persons, therefore, who appear to be superior to the rest of mankind, so far as the art of speaking is concerned, approach you with the view of becoming Christians, it will be your duty in your communications with them, in a higher degree than in your dealings with those other illiterate hearers, to make it plain that they are to be diligently admonished to clothe themselves with Christian humility, and learn not to despise individuals whom they may discover keeping themselves free from vices of conduct more carefully than from faults of language; and also that they ought not to presume so much as to compare with a pure heart the practised tongue which they were accustomed even to put in preference. But above all, such persons should be taught to listen to the divine Scriptures, so that they may neither deem solid eloquence to be mean, merely because it is not inflated, nor suppose that the words or deeds of men, of which we read the accounts in those books, involved and covered as they are in carnal wrappings, are not to be drawn forth and unfolded with a view to an (adequate) understanding of them, but are to be taken merely according to the sound of the letter. And as to this same matter of the utility of the hidden meaning, the existence of which is the reason why they are called also mysteries, the power wielded by these intricacies of enigmatical utterances in the way of sharpening our love for the truth, and shaking off the torpor of weariness, is a thing which the persons in question must have made good to them by actual experience, when some subject which failed to move them when it was placed baldly before them, has its significance elicited by the detailed working out of an allegorical sense. For it is in the highest degree useful to such men to come to know how ideas are to be preferred to words, just as the soul is preferred to the body. And from this, too, it follows that they ought to have the desire to listen to discourses remarkable for their truth, rather than to those which are notable for their eloquence; just as they ought to be anxious to have friends distinguished for their wisdom, rather than those whose chief merit is their beauty. They should also understand that there is no voice for the ears of God save the affection of the soul. For thus they will not act the mocker if they happen to observe any of the prelates and ministers of the Church either calling upon God in language marked by barbarisms and solecisms, or failing in understanding correctly the very words which they are pronouncing, and making confused pauses. It is not meant, of course, that such faults are not to be corrected, so that the people may say Amen to something which they plainly understand; but what is intended is, that such things should be piously borne with by those who have come to understand how, as in the forum it is in the sound, so in the church it is in the desire that the grace of speech resides. Therefore that of the forum may sometimes be called good speech, but never gracious speech. Moreover, with respect to the sacrament which they are about to receive, it is enough for the more intelligent simply to hear what the thing signifies. But with those of slower intellect, it will be necessary to adopt a somewhat more detailed explanation, together with the use of similitudes, to prevent them from despising what they see. Chapter 10.— Of the Attainment of Cheerfulness in the Duty of Catechising, and of Various Causes Producing Weariness in the Catechumen 14. At this point you perhaps desiderate some example of the kind of discourse intended, so that I may show you by an actual instance how the things which I have recommended are to be done. This indeed I shall do, so far as by God's help I shall be able. But before proceeding to that, it is my duty, in consistency with what I have promised, to speak of the acquisition of the cheerfulness (to which I have alluded). For as regards the matter of the rules in accordance with which your discourse should be set forth, in the case of the catechetical instruction of a person who comes with the express view of being made a Christian, I have already made good, as far as has appeared sufficient, the promise which I made. And surely I am under no obligation at the same time to do myself in this volume that which I enjoin as the right thing to be done. Consequently, if I do that, it will have the value of an overplus. But how can the overplus be super-added by me before I have filled up the measure of what is due? Besides, one thing which I have heard you make the subject of your complaint above all others, is the fact that your discourse seemed to yourself to be poor and spiritless when you were instructing any one in the Christian name. Now this, I know, results not so much from want of matter to say, with which I am well aware you are sufficiently provided and furnished, or from poverty of speech itself, as rather from weariness of mind. And that may spring either from the cause of which I have already spoken, namely, the fact that our intelligence is better pleased and more thoroughly arrested by that which we perceive in silence in the mind, and that we have no inclination to have our attention called off from it to a noise of words coming far short of representing it; or from the circumstance that even when discourse is pleasant, we have more delight in hearing or reading things which have been expressed in a superior manner, and which are set forth without any care or anxiety on our part, than in putting together, with a view to the comprehension of others, words suddenly conceived, and leaving it an uncertain issue, on the one hand, whether such terms occur to us as adequately represent the sense, and on the other, whether they be accepted in such a manner as to profit; or yet again, from the consideration that, in consequence of their being now thoroughly familiar to ourselves, and no longer necessary to our own advancement, it becomes irksome to us to be recurring very frequently to those matters which are urged upon the uninstructed, and our mind, as being by this time pretty well matured, moves with no manner of pleasure in the circle of subjects so well-worn, and, as it were, so childish. A sense of weariness is also induced upon the speaker when he has a hearer who remains unmoved, either in that he is actually not stirred by any feeling, or in that he does not indicate by any motion of the body that he understands or that he is pleased with what is said. Not that it is a becoming disposition in us to be greedy of the praises of men, but that the things which we minister are of God; and the more we love those to whom we discourse, the more desirous are we that they should be pleased with the matters which are held forth for their salvation: so that if we do not succeed in this, we are pained, and we are weakened, and become broken-spirited in the midst of our course, as if we were wasting our efforts to no purpose. Sometimes, too, when we are drawn off from some matter which we are desirous to go on with, and the transaction of which was a pleasure to us, or appeared to be more than usually needful, and when we are compelled, either by the command of a person whom we are unwilling to offend, or by the importunity of some parties that we find it impossible to get rid of, to instruct any one catechetically, in such circumstances we approach a duty for which great calmness is indispensable with minds already perturbed, and grieving at once that we are not permitted to keep that order which we desire to observe in our actions, and that we cannot possibly be competent for all things; and thus out of very heaviness our discourse as it advances is less of an attraction, because, starting from the arid soil of dejection, it goes on less flowingly. Sometimes, too, sadness has taken possession of our heart in consequence of some offense or other, and at that very time we are addressed thus: Come, speak with this person; he desires to become a Christian. For they who thus address us do it in ignorance of the hidden trouble which is consuming us within. So it happens that, if they are not the persons to whom it befits us to open up our feelings, we undertake with no sense of pleasure what they desire; and then, certainly, the discourse will be languid and unenjoyable which is transmitted through the agitated and fuming channel of a heart in that condition. Consequently, seeing there are so many causes serving to cloud the calm serenity of our minds, in accordance with God's will we must seek remedies for them, such as may bring us relief from these feelings of heaviness, and help us to rejoice in fervor of spirit, and to be jocund in the tranquility of a good work. For God loves a cheerful giver. 15. Now if the cause of our sadness lies in the circumstance that our hearer does not apprehend what we mean, so that we have to come down in a certain fashion from the elevation of our own conceptions, and are under the necessity of dwelling long in the tedious processes of syllables which come far beneath the standard of our ideas, and have anxiously to consider how that which we ourselves take in with a most rapid draught of mental apprehension is to be given forth by the mouth of flesh in the long and perplexed intricacies of its method of enunciation; and if the great dissimilarity thus felt (between our utterance and our thought) makes it distasteful to us to speak, and a pleasure to us to keep silence, then let us ponder what has been set before us by Him who has showed us an example that we should follow His steps. For however much our articulate speech may differ from the vivacity of our intelligence, much greater is the difference of the flesh of mortality from the equality of God. And, neverless, although He was in the same form, He emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, — and so on down to the words the death of the cross. What is the explanation of this but that He made Himself weak to the weak, in order that He might gain the weak? Listen to His follower as he expresses himself also in another place to this effect: For whether we be beside ourselves, it is to God; or whether we be sober, it is for your cause. For the love of Christ constrains us, because we thus judge that He died for all. And how, indeed, should one be ready to be spent for their souls, if he should find it irksome to him to bend himself to their ears? For this reason, therefore, He became a little child in the midst of us, (and) like a nurse cherishing her children. For is it a pleasure to lisp shortened and broken words, unless love invites us? And yet men desire to have infants to whom they have to do that kind of service; and it is a sweeter thing to a mother to put small morsels of masticated food into her little son's mouth, than to eat up and devour larger pieces herself. In like manner, accordingly, let not the thought of the hen recede from your heart, who covers her tender brood with her drooping feathers, and with broken voice calls her chirping young ones to her, while they that turn away from her fostering wings in their pride become a prey to birds. For if intelligence brings delights in its purest recesses, it should also be a delight to us to have an intelligent understanding of the manner in which charity, the more complaisantly it descends to the lowest objects, finds its way back, with all the greater vigor to those that are most secret, along the course of a good conscience which witnesses that it has sought nothing from those to whom it has descended except their everlasting salvation. Chapter 11.— Of the Remedy for the Second Source of Weariness 16. If, however, it is rather our desire to read or hear such things as are already prepared for our use and expressed in a superior style, and if the consequence is that we feel it irksome to put together, at the time and with an uncertain issue, the terms of discourse on our own side, then, provided only that our mind does not wander off from the truth of the facts themselves, it is an easy matter for the hearer, if he is offended by anything in our language, to come to see in that very circumstance how little value should be set, supposing the subject itself to be rightly understood, upon the mere fact that there may have been some imperfection or some inaccuracy in the literal expressions, which were employed indeed simply with the view of securing a correct apprehension of the subject-matter. But if the bent of human infirmity has wandered off from the truth of the facts themselves — although in the catechetical instruction of the unlearned, where we have to keep by the most beaten track, that cannot occur very readily — still, lest haply it should turn out that our hearer finds cause of offense even in this direction, we ought not to deem this to have come upon us in any other way than as the issue of God's own wish to put us to the test with respect to our readiness to receive correction in calmness of mind, so as not to rush headlong, in the course of a still greater error, into the defense of our error. But if, again, no one has told us of it, and if the thing has altogether escaped our own notice, as well as the observation of our hearers, then there is nothing to grieve over, provided only the same thing does not occur a second time. For the most part, however, when we recall what we have said, we ourselves discover something to find fault with, and are ignorant of the manner in which it was received when it was uttered; and so when charity is fervent within us, we are the more vexed if the thing, while really false, has been received with unquestioning acceptance. This being the case, then, whenever an opportunity occurs, as we have been finding fault with ourselves in silence, we ought in like manner to see to it that those persons be also set right on the subject in a considerate method, who have fallen into some sort of error, not by the words of God, but plainly by those used by us. If, on the other hand, there are any who, blinded by insensate spite, rejoice that we have committed a mistake, whisperers as they are, and slanderers, and hateful to God, such characters should afford us matter for the exercise of patience with pity, inasmuch as also the patience of God leads them to repentance. For what is more detestable, and what more likely to treasure up wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, than to rejoice, after the evil likeness and pattern of the devil, in the evil of another? At times, too, even when all is correctly and truly spoken, either something which has not been understood, or something which, as being opposed to the idea and wont of an old error, seems harsh in its very novelty, offends and disturbs the hearer. But if this becomes apparent, and if the person shows himself capable of being set right, he should be set right without any delay by the use of abundance of authorities and reasons. On the other hand, if the offense is tacit and hidden, the medicine of God is the effective remedy for it. And if, again, the person starts back and declines to be cured, we should comfort ourselves with that example of our Lord, who, when men were offended at His word, and shrank from it as a hard saying, addressed Himself at the same time to those who had remained, in these terms, Will ye also go away? For it ought to be retained as a thoroughly fixed and immovable position in our heart, that Jerusalem which is in captivity is set free from the Babylon of this world when the times have run their course, and that none belonging to her shall perish: for whoever may perish was not of her. For the foundation of God stands sure, having this seal, The Lord knows them that are His; and, let every one that names the name of Christ depart from iniquity. If we ponder these things, and call upon the Lord to come into our heart, we shall be less apprehensive of the uncertain issues of our discourse, consequent on the uncertain feelings of our hearers; and the very endurance of vexations in the cause of a work of mercy will also be something pleasant to us, if we seek not our own glory in the same. For then is a work truly good, when the aim of the doer gets its impetus from charity, and, as if returning to its own place, rests again in charity. Moreover, the reading which delights us, or any listening to an eloquence superior to our own, the effect of which is to make us inclined to set a greater value upon it than upon the discourse which we ourselves have to deliver, and so to lead us to speak with a reluctant or tedious utterance, will come upon us in a happier spirit, and will be found to be more enjoyable after labor. Then, too, with a stronger confidence shall we pray to God to speak to us as we wish, if we cheerfully submit to let Him speak by us as we are able. Thus is it brought about that all things come together for good to them that love God. Chapter 12.— Of the Remedy for the Third Source of Weariness 17. Once more, however, we often feel it very wearisome to go over repeatedly matters which are thoroughly familiar, and adapted (rather) to children. If this is the case with us, then we should endeavor to meet them with a brother's, a father's, and a mother's love; and, if we are once united with them thus in heart, to us no less than to them will these things seem new. For so great is the power of a sympathetic disposition of mind, that, as they are affected while we are speaking, and we are affected while they are learning, we have our dwelling in each other; and thus, at one and the same time, they as it were in us speak what they hear, and we in them learn after a certain fashion what we teach. Is it not a common occurrence with us, that when we show to persons, who have never seen them, certain spacious and beautiful tracts, either in cities or in fields, which we have been in the habit of passing by without any sense of pleasure, simply because we have become so accustomed to the sight of them, we find our own enjoyment renewed in their enjoyment of the novelty of the scene? And this is so much the more our experience in proportion to the intimacy of our friendship with them; because, just as we are in them in virtue of the bond of love, in the same degree do things become new to us which previously were old. But if we ourselves have made any considerable progress in the contemplative study of things, it is not our wish that those whom we love should simply be gratified and astonished as they gaze upon the works of men's hands; but it becomes our wish to lift them to (the contemplation of) the very skill or wisdom of their author, and from this to (see them) rise to the admiration and praise of the all-creating God, with whom is the most fruitful end of love. How much more, then, ought we to be delighted when men come to us with the purpose already formed of obtaining the knowledge of God Himself, with a view to (the knowledge of) whom all things should be learned which are to be learned! And how ought we to feel ourselves renewed in their newness (of experience), so that if our ordinary preaching is somewhat frigid, it may rise to fresh warmth under (the stimulus of) their extraordinary hearing! There is also this additional consideration to help us in the attainment of gladness, namely, that we ponder and bear in mind out of what death of error the man is passing over into the life of faith. And if we walk through streets which are most familiar to us, with a beneficent cheerfulness, when we happen to be pointing out the way to some individual who had been in distress in consequence of missing his direction, how much more should be the alacrity of spirit, and how much greater the joy with which, in the matter of saving doctrine, we ought to traverse again and again even those tracks which, so far as we are ourselves concerned, there is no need to open up any more; seeing that we are leading a miserable soul, and one worn out with the devious courses of this world, through the paths of peace, at the command of Him who made that peace good to us! Chapter 13.— Of the Remedy for the Fourth Source of Weariness 18. But in good truth it is a serious demand to make upon us, to continue discoursing on to the set limit when we fail to see our hearer in any degree moved; whether it be that, under the restraints of the awe of religion, he has not the boldness to signify his approval by voice or by any movement of his body, or that he is kept back by the modesty proper to man, or that he does not understand our sayings, or that he counts them of no value. Since, then, this must be a matter of uncertainty to us, as we cannot discern his mind, it becomes our duty in our discourse to make trial of all things which may be of any avail in stirring him up and drawing him forth as it were from his place of concealment. For that sort of fear which is excessive, and which obstructs the declaration of his judgment, ought to be dispelled by the force of kindly exhortation; and by bringing before him the consideration of our brotherly affinity, we should temper his reverence for us; and by questioning him, we should ascertain whether he understands what is addressed to him; and we should impart to him a sense of confidence, so that he may give free expression to any objection which suggests itself to him. We should at the same time ask him whether he has already listened to such themes on some previous occasion, and whether perchance they fail to move him now in consequence of their being to him like things well known and commonplace. And we ought to shape our course in accordance with his answer, so as either to speak in a simpler style and with greater detail of explanation, or to refute some antagonistic opinion, or, instead of attempting any more diffuse exposition of the subjects which are known to him, to give a brief summary of these, and to select some of those matters which are handled in a mystical manner in the holy books, and especially in the historical narrative, the unfolding and setting forth of which may make our addresses more attractive. But if the man is of a very sluggish disposition, and if he is senseless, and without anything in common with all such sources of pleasure, then we must simply bear with him in a compassionate spirit; and, after briefly going over other points, we ought to impress upon him, in a manner calculated to inspire him with awe, the truths which are most indispensable on the subject of the unity of the Catholic Church, on that of temptation, on that of a Christian conversation in view of the future judgment; and we ought rather to address ourselves to God for him than address much to him concerning God. 19. It is likewise a frequent occurrence that one who at first listened to us with all readiness, becomes exhausted either by the effort of hearing or by standing, and now no longer commends what is said, but gapes and yawns, and even unwillingly exhibits a disposition to depart. When we observe that, it becomes our duty to refresh his mind by saying something seasoned with an honest cheerfulness and adapted to the matter which is being discussed, or something of a very wonderful and amazing order, or even, it may be, something of a painful and mournful nature. Whatever we thus say may be all the better if it affects himself more immediately, so that the quick sense of self-concern may keep his attention on the alert. At the same time, however, it should not be of the kind to offend his spirit of reverence by any harshness attaching to it; but it should be of a nature fitted rather to conciliate him by the friendliness which it breathes. Or else, we should relieve him by accommodating him with a seat, although unquestionably matters will be better ordered if from the outset, whenever that can be done with propriety, he sits and listens. And indeed in certain of the churches beyond the sea, with a far more considerate regard to the fitness of things, not only do the prelates sit when they address the people, but they also themselves put down seats for the people, lest any person of enfeebled strength should become exhausted by standing, and thus have his mind diverted from the most wholesome purport (of the discourse), or even be under the necessity of departing. And yet it is one thing if it be simply some one out of a great multitude who withdraws in order to recruit his strength, he being also already under the obligations which result from participation in the sacraments; and it is quite another thing if the person withdrawing is one (inasmuch as it is usually the case in these circumstances that the man is unavoidably urged to that course by the fear that he should even fall, overcome by internal weakness) who has to be initiated in the first sacraments; for a person in this position is at once restrained by the sense of shame from stating the reason of his going, and not permitted to stand through the force of his weakness. This I speak from experience. For this was the case with a certain individual, a man from the country, when I was instructing him catechetically: and from his instance I have learned that this kind of thing is carefully to be guarded against. For who can endure our arrogance when we fail to make men who are our brethren, or even those who are not yet in that relation to us (for our solicitude then should be all the greater to get them to become our brethren), to be seated in our presence, seeing that even a woman sat as she listened to our Lord Himself, in whose service the angels stand alert? Of course if the address is to be but short, or if the place is not well adapted for sitting, they should listen standing. But that should be the case only when there are many hearers, and when they are not to be formally admitted at the time. For when the audience consists only of one or two, or a few, who have come with the express purpose of being made Christians, there is a risk in speaking to them standing. Nevertheless, supposing that we have once begun in that manner, we ought at least, whenever we observe signs of weariness on the part of the hearer, to offer him the liberty of being seated; nay more, we should urge him by all means to sit down, and we ought to drop some remark calculated at once to refresh him and to banish from his mind any anxiety which may have chanced to break in upon him and draw off his attention. For inasmuch as the reasons why he remains silent and declines to listen cannot be certainly known to us, now that he is seated we may speak to some extent against the incidence of thoughts about worldly affairs, delivering ourselves either in the cheerful spirit to which I have already adverted, or in a serious vein; so that, if these are the particular anxieties which have occupied his mind, they may be made to give way as if indicted by name: while, on the other hand, supposing them not to be the special causes (of the loss of interest), and supposing him to be simply worn out with listening, his attention will be relieved of the pressure of weariness when we address to him some unexpected and extraordinary strain of remark on these subjects, in the mode of which I have spoken, as if they were the particular anxieties — for indeed we are simply ignorant (of the true causes). But let the remark thus made be short, especially considering that it is thrown in out of order, lest the very medicine even increase the malady of weariness which we desire to relieve; and, at the same time, we should go on rapidly with what remains, and promise and present the prospect of a conclusion nearer than was looked for. Chapter 14.— Of the Remedy Against the Fifth and Sixth Sources of Weariness 20. If, again, your spirit has been broken by the necessity of giving up some other employment, on which, as the more requisite, you were now bent; and if the sadness caused by that constraint makes you catechise in no pleasant mood, you ought to ponder the fact that, excepting that we know it to be our duty, in all our dealings with men, to act in a merciful manner, and in the exercise of the sincerest charity, — with this one exception, I say, it is quite uncertain to us what is the more profitable thing for us to do, and what the more opportune thing for us either to pass by for a time or altogether to omit. For inasmuch as we know not how the merits of men, on whose behalf we are acting, stand with God, the question as to what is expedient for them at a certain time is something which, instead of being able to comprehend, we can rather only surmise, without the aid of any (clear) inferences, or (at best) with the slenderest and the most uncertain. Therefore we ought certainly to dispose the matters with which we have to deal according to our intelligence; and then, if we prove able to carry them out in the manner upon which we have resolved, we should rejoice, not indeed that it was our will, but that it was God's will, that they should thus be accomplished. But if anything unavoidable happens, by which the disposition thus proposed by us is interfered with, we should bend ourselves to it readily, lest we be broken; so that the very disposition of affairs which God has preferred to ours may also be made our own. For it is more in accordance with propriety that we should follow His will than that He should follow ours. Besides, as regards this order in the doing of things, which we wish to keep in accordance with our own judgment, surely that course is to be approved of in which objects that are superior have the precedence. Why then are we aggrieved that the precedence over men should be held by the Lord God in His vast superiority to us men, so that in the said love which we entertain for our own order, we should thus (exhibit the disposition to) despise order? For no one orders for the better what he has to do, except the man who is rather ready to leave undone what he is prohibited from doing by the divine power, than desirous of doing that which he meditates in his own human cogitations. For there are many devices in a man's heart; nevertheless, the counsel of the Lord stands forever. 21. But if our mind is agitated by some cause of offense, so as not to be capable of delivering a discourse of a calm and enjoyable strain, our charity towards those for whom Christ died, desiring to redeem them by the price of His own blood from the death of the errors of this world, ought to be so great, that the very circumstance of intelligence being brought us in our sadness, regarding the advent of some person who longs to become a Christian, ought to be enough to cheer us and dissipate that heaviness of spirit, just as the delights of gain are wont to soften the pain of losses. For we are not (fairly) oppressed by the offense of any individual, unless it be that of the man whom we either perceive or believe to be perishing himself, or to be the occasion of the undoing of some weak one. Accordingly, one who comes to us with the view of being formally admitted, in that we cherish the hope of his ability to go forward, should wipe away the sorrow caused by one who fails us. For even if the dread that our proselyte may become the child of hell comes into our thoughts, as, there are many such before our eyes, from whom those offenses arise by which we are distressed, this ought to operate, not in the way of keeping us back, but rather in the way of stimulating us and spurring us on. And in the same measure we ought to admonish him whom we are instructing to be on his guard against imitating those who are Christians only in name and not in very truth, and to take care not to allow himself to be so moved by their numbers as either to be desirous of following them, or to be reluctant to follow Christ on their account, and either to be unwilling to be in the Church of God, where they are, or to wish to be there in such a character as they bear. And somehow or other, in admonitions of this sort, that address is the more glowing to which a present sense of grief supplies the fuel; so that instead of being duller, we utter with greater fire and vehemence under such feelings things which, in times of greater ease, we would give forth in a colder and less energetic manner. And this should make us rejoice that an opportunity is afforded us under which the emotions of our mind pass not away without yielding some fruit. 22. If, however, grief has taken possession of us on account of something in which we ourselves have erred or sinned, we should bear in mind not only that a broken spirit is a sacrifice to God, but also the saying, Like as water quenches fire, so alms sin; and again, I will have mercy, says He, rather than sacrifice. Therefore, as in the event of our being in peril from fire we would certainly run to the water in order to get the fire extinguished, and we would be grateful if any person were to offer it in the immediate vicinity; so, if some flame of sin has risen from our own stack, and if we are troubled on that account, when an opportunity has been given for a most merciful work, we should rejoice in it, as if a fountain were offered us in order that by it the conflagration which had burst forth might be extinguished. Unless haply we are foolish enough to think that we ought to be readier in running with bread, wherewith we may fill the belly of a hungry man, than with the word of God, wherewith we may instruct the mind of the man who feeds on it. There is this also to consider, namely, that if it would only be of advantage to us to do this thing, and entail no disadvantage to leave it undone, we might despise a remedy offered in an unhappy fashion in the time of peril with a view to the safety, not now of a neighbor, but of ourselves. But when from the mouth of the Lord this so threatening sentence is heard, You wicked and slothful servant, you ought to give my money to the exchangers, what madness, I pray you, is it thus, seeing that our sin pains us, to be minded to sin again, by refusing to give the Lord's money to one who desires it and asks it! When these and such like considerations and reflections have succeeded in dispelling the darkness of weary feelings, the bent of mind is rendered apt for the duty of catechising, so that that is received in a pleasant manner which breaks forth vigorously and cheerfully from the rich vein of charity. For these things indeed which are uttered here are spoken, not so much by me to you, as rather to us all by that very love which is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit that is given to us. Chapter 15.— Of the Method in Which Our Address Should Be Adapted to Different Classes of Hearers 23. But now, perhaps, you also demand of me as a debt that which, previous to the promise which I made, I was under no obligation to give, namely, that I should not count it burdensome to unfold some sort of example of the discourse intended, and to set it before you for your study, just as if I were myself engaged in catechising some individual. Before I do that, however, I wish you to keep in mind the fact that the mental effort is of one kind in the case of a person who dictates, with a future reader in his view, and that it is of quite another kind in the case of a person who speaks with a present hearer to whom to direct his attention. And further, it is to be remembered that, in this latter instance in particular, the effort is of one kind when one is admonishing in private, and when there is no other person at hand to pronounce judgment on us; whereas it is of a different order when one is conveying any instruction in public, and when there stands around him an audience of persons holding dissimilar opinions; and again, that in this exercise of teaching, the effort will be of one sort when only a single individual is being instructed, while all the rest listen, like persons judging or attesting things well known to them, and that it will be different when all those who are present wait for what we have to deliver to them; and once more, that, in this same instance, the effort will be one thing when all are seated, as it were, in private conference with a view to engaging in some discussion, and that it will be quite another thing when the people sit silent and intent on giving their attention to some single speaker who is to address them from a higher position. It will likewise make a considerable difference, even when we are discoursing in that style, whether there are few present or many, whether they are learned or unlearned, or made up of both classes combined; whether they are city-bred or rustics, or both the one and the other together; or whether, again, they are a people composed of all orders of men in due proportion. For it is impossible but that they will affect in different ways the person who has to speak to them and discourse with them, and that the address which is delivered will both bear certain features, as it were, expressive of the feelings of the mind from which it proceeds, and also influence the hearers in different ways, in accordance with that same difference (in the speaker's disposition), while at the same time the hearers themselves will influence one another in different ways by the simple force of their presence with each other. But as we are dealing at present with the matter of the instruction of the unlearned, I am a witness to you, as regards my own experience, that I find myself variously moved, according as I see before me, for the purposes of catechetical instruction, a highly educated man, a dull fellow, a citizen, a foreigner, a rich man, a poor man, a private individual, a man of honors, a person occupying some position of authority, an individual of this or the other nation, of this or the other age or sex, one proceeding from this or the other sect, from this or the other common error — and ever in accordance with the difference of my feelings does my discourse itself at once set out, go on, and reach its end. And inasmuch as, although the same charity is due to all, yet the same medicine is not to be administered to all, in like manner charity itself travails with some, is made weak together with others; is at pains to edify some, tremblingly apprehends being an offense to others; bends to some, lifts itself erect to others; is gentle to some, severe to others; to none an enemy, to all a mother. And when one, who has not gone through the kind of experience to which I refer in the same spirit of charity, sees us attaining, in virtue of some gift which has been conferred upon us, and which carries the power of pleasing, a certain repute of an eulogistic nature in the mouth of the multitude, he counts us happy on that account. But may God, into whose cognizance the groaning of them that are bound enters, look upon our humility, and our labor, and forgive us all our sins. Wherefore, if anything in us has so far pleased you as to make you desirous of hearing from us some remarks on the subject of the form of discourse which you ought to follow, you should acquire a more thorough understanding of the matter by contemplating us, and listening to us when we are actually engaged with these topics, than by a perusal when we are only dictating them. Chapter 16.— A Specimen of a Catechetical Address; And First, the Case of a Catechumen with Worthy Views 24. Nevertheless, however that may be, let us here suppose that some one has come to us who desires to be made a Christian, and who belongs indeed to the order of private persons, and yet not to the class of rustics, but to that of the city-bred, such as those whom you cannot fail to come across in numbers in Carthage. Let us also suppose that, on being asked whether the inducement leading him to desire to be a Christian is any advantage looked for in the present life, or the rest which is hoped for after this life, he has answered that his inducement has been the rest that is yet to come. Then perchance such a person might be instructed by us in some such strain of address as the following: Thanks be to God, my brother; cordially do I wish you joy, and I am glad on your account that, amid all the storms of this world, which are at once so great and so dangerous, you have bethought yourself of some true and certain security. For even in this life men go in quest of rest and security at the cost of heavy labors, but they fail to find such in consequence of their wicked lusts. For their thought is to find rest in things which are unquiet, and which endure not. And these objects, inasmuch as they are withdrawn from them and pass away in the course of time, agitate them by fears and griefs, and suffer them not to enjoy tranquillity. For if it be that a man seeks to find his rest in wealth, he is rendered proud rather than at ease. Do we not see how many have lost their riches on a sudden — how many, too, have been undone by reason of them, either as they have been coveting to possess them, or as they have been borne down and despoiled of them by others more covetous than themselves? And even should they remain with the man all his life long, and never leave their lover, yet would he himself (have to) leave them at his death. For of what measure is the life of man, even if he lives to old age? Or when men desire for themselves old age, what else do they really desire but long infirmity? So, too, with the honors of this world — what are they but empty pride and vanity, and peril of ruin? For holy Scripture speaks in this wise: 'All flesh is grass, and the glory of man is as the flower of grass. The grass withers, the flower thereof falls away; but the word of the Lord endures forever.' Consequently, if any man longs for true rest and true felicity, he ought to lift his hope off things which are mortal and transitory, and fix it on the word of the Lord; so that, cleaving to that which endures for ever, he may himself together with it endure forever. 25. There are also other men who neither crave to be rich nor go about seeking the vain pomps of honors, but who nevertheless are minded to find their pleasure and rest in dainty meats, and in fornications, and in those theatres and spectacles which are at their disposal in great cities for nothing. But it fares with these, too, in the same way; or they waste their small means in luxury, and subsequently, under pressure of want, break out into thefts and burglaries, and at times even into highway robberies, and so they are suddenly filled with fears both numerous and great; and men who a little before were singing in the house of revelry, are now dreaming of the sorrows of the prison. Moreover, in their eager devotion to the public spectacles, they come to resemble demons, as they incite men by their cries to wound each other, and instigate those who have done them no hurt to engage in furious contests with each other, while they seek to please an insane people. And if they perceive any such to be peaceably disposed, they straightway hate them and persecute them, and raise an outcry, asking that they should be beaten with clubs, as if they had been in collusion to cheat them; and this iniquity they force even the judge, who is the (appointed) avenger of iniquities, to perpetrate. On the other hand, if they observe such men exerting themselves in horrid hostilities against each other, whether they be those who are called sintœ, or theatrical actors and players, or charioteers, or hunters — those wretched men whom they engage in conflicts and struggles, not only men with men, but even men with beasts — then the fiercer the fury with which they perceive these unhappy creatures rage against each other, the better they like them, and the greater the enjoyment they have in them; and they favor them when thus excited, and by so favoring them they excite them all the more, the spectators themselves striving more madly with each other, as they espouse the cause of different combatants, than is the case even with those very men whose madness they madly provoke, while at the same time they also long to be spectators of the same in their mad frenzy. How then can that mind keep the soundness of peace which feeds on strifes and contentions? For just as is the food which is received, such is the health which results. In fine, although mad pleasures are no pleasures, nevertheless let these things be taken as they are, and it still remains the case that, whatever their nature may be, and whatever the measure of enjoyment yielded by the boasts of riches, and the inflation of honors, and the spendthrift pleasures of the taverns, and the contests of the theatres, and the impurity of fornications, and the pruriency of the baths, they are all things of which one little fever deprives us, while, even from those who still survive, it takes away the whole false happiness of their life. Then there remains only a void and wounded conscience, destined to apprehend that God as a Judge whom it refused to have as a Father, and destined also to find a severe Lord in Him whom it scorned to seek and love as a tender Father. But you, inasmuch as you seek that true rest which is promised to Christians after this life, will taste the same sweet and pleasant rest even here among the bitterest troubles of this life, if you continue to love the commandments of Him who has promised the same. For quickly will you feel that the fruits of righteousness are sweeter than those of unrighteousness, and that a man finds a more genuine and pleasurable joy in the possession of a good conscience in the midst of troubles than in that of an evil conscience in the midst of delights. For you have not come to be united to the Church of God with the idea of seeking from it any temporal advantage. Chapter 17.— The Specimen of Catechetical Discourse Continued, in Reference Specially to the Reproval of False Aims on the Catechumen's Part 26. For there are some whose reason for desiring to become Christians is either that they may gain the favor of men from whom they look for temporal advantages, or that they are reluctant to offend those whom they fear. But these are reprobate; and although the church bears them for a time, as the threshing-floor bears the chaff until the period of winnowing, yet if they fail to amend and begin to be Christians in sincerity in view of the everlasting rest which is to come, they will be separated from it in the end. And let not such flatter themselves, because it is possible for them to be in the threshing-floor along with the grain of God. For they will not be together with that in the barn, but are destined for the fire, which is their due. There are also others of better hope indeed, but nevertheless in no inferior danger. I mean those who now fear God, and mock not the Christian name, neither enter the church of God with an assumed heart, but still look for their felicity in this life, expecting to have more felicity in earthly things than those enjoy who refuse to worship God. And the consequence of this false anticipation is, that when they see some wicked and impious men strongly established and excelling in this worldly prosperity, while they themselves either possess it in a smaller degree or miss it altogether, they are troubled with the thought that they are serving God without reason, and so they readily fall away from the faith. 27. But as to the man who has in view that everlasting blessedness and perpetual rest which is promised as the lot destined for the saints after this life, and who desires to become a Christian, in order that he may not pass into eternal fire with the devil, but enter into the eternal kingdom together with Christ, such an one is truly a Christian; (and he will be) on his guard in every temptation, so that he may neither be corrupted by prosperity nor be utterly broken in spirit by adversity, but remain at once modest and temperate when the good things of earth abound with him, and brave and patient when tribulations overtake him. A person of this character will also advance in attainments until he comes to that disposition of mind which will make him love God more than he fears hell; so that even were God to say to him, 'Avail yourself of carnal pleasures for ever, and sin as much as you are able, and you shall neither die nor be sent into hell, but you will only not be with me, he would be terribly dismayed, and would altogether abstain from sinning, not now (simply) with the purpose of not falling into that of which he was wont to be afraid, but with the wish not to offend Him whom he so greatly loves: in whom alone also there is the rest which eye has not seen, neither has ear heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man (to conceive) — the rest which God has prepared for them that love Him. 28. Now, on the subject of this rest Scripture is significant, and refrains not to speak, when it tells us how at the beginning of the world, and at the time when God made heaven and earth and all things which are in them, He worked during six days, and rested on the seventh day. For it was in the power of the Almighty to make all things even in one moment of time. For He had not labored in the view that He might enjoy (a needful) rest, since indeed He spoke, and they were made; He commanded, and they were created; but that He might signify how, after six ages of this world, in a seventh age, as on the seventh day, He will rest in His saints; inasmuch as these same saints shall rest also in Him after all the good works in which they have served Him — which He Himself, indeed, works in them, who calls them, and instructs them, and puts away the offenses that are past, and justifies the man who previously was ungodly. For as, when by His gift they work that which is good, He is Himself rightly said to work (that in them), so, when they rest in Him, He is rightly said to rest Himself. For, as regards Himself, He seeks no cessation, because He feels no labor. Moreover He made all things by His Word; and His Word is Christ Himself, in whom the angels and all those purest spirits of heaven rest in holy silence. Man, however in that he fell by sin, has lost the rest which he possessed in His divinity, and receives it again (now) in His humanity; and for this purpose He became man, and was born of a woman, at the seasonable time at which He Himself knew it behooved it so to be fulfilled. And from the flesh assuredly He could not sustain any contamination, being Himself rather destined to purify the flesh. Of His future coming the ancient saints, in the revelation of the Spirit, had knowledge, and prophesied. And thus were they saved by believing that He was to come, even as we are saved by believing that He has come. Hence ought we to love God who has so loved us as to have sent His only Son, in order that He might endue Himself with the lowliness of our mortality, and die both at the hands of sinners and on behalf of sinners. For even in times of old, and in the opening ages, the depth of this mystery ceases not to be prefigured and prophetically announced. Chapter 18.— Of What is to Be Believed on the Subject of the Creation of Man and Other Objects 29. Whereas, then, the omnipotent God, who is also good and just and merciful, who made all things — whether they be great or small, whether they be highest or lowest, whether they be things which are seen, such as are the heavens and the earth and the sea, and in the heavens, in particular, the sun and the moon and other luminaries, and in the earth and the sea, again, trees and shrubs and animals each after their kind, and all bodies celestial or terrestrial alike, or whether they be things which are not seen, such as are those spirits whereby bodies are animated and endowed with life — made also man after His own image, in order that, as He Himself, in virtue of His omnipotence, presides over universal creation, so man, in virtue of that intelligence of his by which he comes to know even his Creator and worships Him, might preside over all the living creatures of earth: Whereas, too, he made the woman to be an helpmeet for him: not for carnal concupiscence, — since, indeed, they had not corruptible bodies at that period, before the punishment of sin invaded them in the form of mortality — but for this purpose, that the man might at once have glory of the woman in so far as he went before her to God, and present in himself an example to her for imitation in holiness and piety, even as he himself was to be the glory of God in so far as he followed his wisdom: 30. Therefore did he place them in a certain locality of perpetual blessedness, which the Scripture designates Paradise: and he gave them a commandment, on condition of not violating which they were to continue for ever in that blessedness of immortality; while, on the other hand, if they transgressed it, they were to sustain the penalties of mortality. Now God knew beforehand that they would trangress it. Nevertheless, in that He is the author and maker of everything good, He chose rather to make them, as He also made the beasts, in order that He might replenish the earth with the good things proper to earth. And certainly man, even sinful man, is better than a beast. And the commandment, which they were not to keep, He yet preferred to give them, in order that they might be without excuse when He should begin to vindicate Himself against them. For whatever man may have done, he finds God worthy to be praised in all His doings: if he shall have acted rightly, he finds Him worthy to be praised for the righteousness of His rewards: if he shall have sinned, he finds Him worthy to be praised for the righteousness of His punishments: if he shall have confessed his sins and returned to an upright life, he finds Him worthy to be praised for the mercy of His pardoning favors. Why, then, should God not make man, although He foreknew that he would sin, when He might crown him if he stood, and set him right if he fell, and help him if he rose, Himself being always and everywhere glorious in goodness, righteousness, and clemency? Above all, why should He not do so, since He also foreknew this, namely, that from the race of that mortality there would spring saints, who should not seek their own, but give glory to their Creator; and who, obtaining deliverance from every corruption by worshipping Him, should be counted worthy to live for ever, and to live in blessedness with the holy angels? For He who gave freedom of will to men, in order that they might worship God not of slavish necessity but with ingenuous inclination, gave it also to the angels; and hence neither did the angel, who, in company with other spirits who were his satellites, forsook in pride the obedience of God and became the devil, do any hurt to God, but to himself. For God knows how to dispose of souls that leave Him, and out of their righteous misery to furnish the inferior sections of His creatures with the most appropriate and befitting laws of His wonderful dispensation. Consequently, neither did the devil in any manner harm God, whether in falling himself, or in seducing man to death; nor did man himself in any degree impair the truth, or power, or blessedness of His Maker, in that, when his partner was seduced by the devil, he of his own deliberate inclination consented unto her in the doing of that which God had forbidden. For by the most righteous laws of God all were condemned, God Himself being glorious in the equity of retribution, while they were shamed through the degradation of punishment: to the end that man, when he turned away from his Creator, should be overcome by the devil and made his subject, and that the devil might be set before man as an enemy to be conquered, when he turned again to his Creator; so that whosoever should consent unto the devil even to the end, might go with him into eternal punishments; whereas those who should humble themselves to God, and by His grace overcome the devil, might be counted worthy of eternal rewards. Chapter 19.— Of the Co-Existence of Good and Evil in the Church, and Their Final Separation 31. Neither ought we to be moved by the consideration that many consent unto the devil, and few follow God; for the grain, too, in comparison with the chaff, has greatly the defect in number. But even as the husbandman knows what to do with the mighty heap of chaff, so the multitude of sinners is nothing to God, who knows what to do with them, so as not to let the administration of His kingdom be disordered and dishonored in any part. Nor is the devil to be supposed to have proved victorious for the mere reason of his drawing away with him more than the few by whom he may be overcome. In this way there are two communities — one of the ungodly, and another of the holy— which are carried down from the beginning of the human race even to the end of the world, which are at present commingled in respect of bodies, but separated in respect of wills, and which, moreover, are destined to be separated also in respect of bodily presence in the day of
Towards the end of last year, a shocking statistic appeared deep in the pages of a World Health Organisation report . It was this: suicide has become the leading killer of teenage girls, worldwide. More girls aged between 15 and 19 die from self-harm than from road accidents, diseases or complications of pregnancy. For years, child-bearing was thought to cause the most deaths in this age group. But at some point in the last decade or so – statistics were last collected on this scale in 2000 - suicide took over. And, according to the WHO’s revised data for 2000, it had already just inched its way ahead of maternal mortality at the turn of the millennium. I heard the statistic from Sarah Degnan Kambou, President of the International Centre for Research on Women (ICRW), at a Gates Foundation breakfast last month. Most of my fellow guests worked in the fields of global women’s rights or female health. Yet they were as stunned as I was to hear it. “I’m not quite sure why we haven't realised this before,” says Suzanne Petroni, a senior director at ICRW. “Maternal mortality has come down so much, which is fantastic,” she says. That’s a major factor behind the fall in the overall death rate for 15-19 year old girls from 137.4 deaths per 100,000 girls in 2000 to 112.6 today. It’s an amazing achievement. And it has allowed the spotlight to fall, finally, on what has actually been the biggest killer all along: suicide. The report looks at six global regions. In Europe, it is the number one killer of teenage girls. In Africa, it’s not even in the top five, “because maternal deaths and HIV are so high,” says Petroni. But in every region of the world, other than Africa, suicide is one of the top three causes of death for 15 to 19 year old girls. (For boys, the leading killer globally is road injury). It's particularly shocking given that suicide is notoriously underreported. Leading causes of death for teenage girls Self-harm Maternal conditions HIV/AIDS Road injury Diarrhoeal diseases Source: WHO “We don’t really know the extent of the problem,” says Roseanne Pearce, a Senior Supervisor at Childline in the UK. “Because the coroner often won’t record it as suicide. Sometimes that’s at the family’s request, and sometimes it’s simply to protect the family’s feelings.” In countries where stigma is particularly high, suicides are even less likely to be recorded than they are in the UK. And the poorest countries in the WHO’s report have very patchy data on births and deaths at all, let alone reliable detail on what caused those deaths. In South East Asia, the problem is acute: self-harm kills three times more teenage girls than anything else. (The Eastern Mediterranean, which includes Pakistan and the Middle East, has the second highest rate.) Professor Vikram Patel, a psychiatrist who was recently featured in Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People for his work in global mental health, is blunt in his diagnosis: “The most probable reason is gender discrimination. Young women’s lives [in South East Asia] are very different from young men’s lives in almost every way.” The male suicide rate in this age group is 21.41 per 100,000, compared with 27.82 for girls. This is the age at which girls may be taken out of school and forced to devote themselves to domestic responsibilities, forgetting all other abilities or ambitions. Hitting puberty can mean no longer being allowed to socialise outside the home. Sometimes it can mean no longer being allowed out of the home at all. And, sometimes, it can mean forced marriage. Prof Vikram Patel (Roger Dekker for WIRED) Prof Patel was the founding director of the Centre for Global Mental Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine but now spends much of the year in Delhi, where he works for the Public Health Foundation of India. “Indian media is filled with aspirational images of romance and love,” he says. “The ability to choose your life partner is an idea that’s championed by Bollywood. But that’s completely not the case in reality for most young women.” Young brides, says Suzanne Petroni, “are very often taken away from their peers. They're subjected to early and unwanted sex, and they’re much more likely to experience partner violence than people who marry later. All of these things put them at greater risk of suicide.” In India, says Prof Patel, “female suicide rates are highest in parts of the country with the best education and economy, probably because women grow up with greater aspirations only to find their social milieu limits them.” In Prof Patel’s view, “fifty per cent of those attempting suicide in China and India do not have a mental illness. They suffer logical despair.” The adolescent male suicide rate, though lower, is also extremely high in this region. Prof Patel’s interviews with survivors of suicide attempts have led him to believe that, “for girls, gender issues are usually behind it. For boys, it’s financial insecurities.” Boys face great pressure to succeed and provide. Which strikes me as a gender issue, too - it’s a different problem from those suffered by women, but it’s still a problem rooted in a rigid gender role. Leading causes of death for teenage boys Road injury Interpersonal violence Self-harm HIV/AIDS Drowning Source: WHO In the UK, says Joe Fearns, the Samaritans' Executive Director of Policy and Research, “all of us in suicide prevention are most concerned by men.” That’s because almost 80 per cent of all UK suicides are men. But, says Fearns, “the majority of self-harm cases in the UK and presentations at A&E for self-injury are women.” Part of the reason for the dramatically higher rate of male suicide in the UK (and in most of the western world) is drugs and alcohol; men are more likely to abuse both, leading to more impulsive behaviour. “Men also tend to use more violent means that are less survivable,” says Fearns. Roseanne Pearce at Childline tells me 75% of the girls who contact the service with suicidal feelings are either planning or have attempted an overdose, compared with just over half of boys. Boys are much more likely to be planning or have attempted to hang themselves - a method with a far lower chance of survival. Some of the disparity between the male and female rate is also down to circumstance, says Fearns. He tells me there is a higher than average rate of suicide among those working in heavy construction and farming - “because they have the means”. Far fewer women than men work in these environments. Concepts/Alamy Rhea (not her real name) is 17 and has attempted suicide twice. “Porn was everywhere in my school,” she says. Her boyfriend Andy became “obsessed with it”. She’d “made it clear,” she says, that she “wasn’t ready to have sex,” but one evening he sexually assaulted her in a park. The assaults became routine. Rhea did nothing. “The constant talk about porn had made me feel like what was happening was normal,” she says. She uses that word repeatedly to describe her attitude towards Andy’s assaults: normal. “I felt trapped, like everyone thought it was normal and I had to go along with it if I wanted to be accepted.” The pressure to conform to these perceived expectations was so great that, eventually, Rhea says, “I felt like there was no way out.” She tried to kill herself. “The suicide attempt rate for young women in the UK is extremely high,” says Prof Patel. He believes “sexual pressure” is a significant factor in their unhappiness. Roseanne Pearce agrees, adding that “sexting is another big issue among our callers. Girls become desperate, even suicidal, because they’ve sent a picture and it’s been posted online.” There is also relentless pressure on Western girls look a certain way: to be thin and sexy. The boys at Rhea’s school constantly compared the girls’ bodies to women they saw in porn films, almost always negatively. But, says Rhea, the strongest pressure comes from online media. “Kim Kardashian, for example, and all of her waist-training stuff at the moment.” The Kardashian sisters have been posting endless selfies on social media wearing waist-slimming corsets. I'm really obsessed with waist training! Thank you @premadonna87 for my new waist shapers! #whatsawaist A photo posted by Kim Kardashian West (@kimkardashian) on Oct 29, 2014 at 9:23am PDT Kim Kardashian West shows off her "waist trainer" (Instagram) “Loads of girls at my college are talking about it and they're unhappy because it makes them feel insecure in themselves and like they have to try to look like that.” Rosie Whitaker had been spending a lot of time on social media when she took her own life in 2012, aged just 15. She wasn’t looking at pictures of celebrities, though. Her aunt, Nancy Whitaker, tells me about the dark TUMBLR accounts dedicated to self-harm that Rosie was introduced to by a friend, who was already a self-harmer, and that Rosie became immersed in herself. “They’re very dark images of girls that are just skin and bones, cutting themselves. It’s like they’re competing to see who can be the most shocking.” She says, “you may have people who are not fitting in, for whatever reasons, who have body image issues or are being bullied - children who are vulnerable - and when they discover these websites they think, ‘Oh people understand me, they know how I feel.’ All of a sudden they join the self-harm thing and they feel like they belong.” “But,” she continues, “when you write something like, ‘I'm fat, I’m ugly, I want to die,’” - as Whitaker’s niece Rosie did - “instead of someone saying ‘Oh, don't be silly, you're beautiful,’ they say, ‘Yeah, why don't you just go kill yourself.’" "And when they're in such a vulnerable mindset anyway, a complete stranger’s words like that...” Whitaker trails off. Pearce is familiar with what she describes as “self-harm websites dominated by girls encouraging each other, trying to shock each other, trying, probably, just to get some attention.” Dr Amy Chandler, a research fellow at Edinburgh University who specialises in self-harm and suicide, tells me Western girls are more likely to self-harm than boys and, in her experience, “their explanations for doing it are around control: their body being a site where they can exert control." "Boys have other routes for expressing anxiety and distress,” such as fighting. Girls turn to self-harm, she says, “because it’s not acceptable for them culturally to express anger in the same way”. Whitaker thinks there’s truth in this. “Boys will shout or punch a wall. Their aggression can come out in other ways. They don't necessarily turn it on themselves in the same numbers as girls do.” "It's very difficult to identify someone's motivation when they harm themselves," says Joe Fearns of the Samaritans. But, he says, “groups that have less power” tend to be most vulnerable - suicide rates are consistently higher among the unemployed, and the economically or socially marginalised. Young women in parts of the Middle East and South East Asia are some of the most disempowered and marginalised people in the world. Even in the West, adolescence is a time when girls feel their choices become restricted: that they must look and behave in certain ways to be accepted. “Gender is a pervasive global issue,” says Prof Patel. And, as we’re somewhat belatedly realising, the consequences can be fatal. If you, or someone you know, is having suicidal feelings please call the Samaritans on 08457 90 90 90, Childline on 0800 1111 or the young suicide prevention charity Papyrus on 0800 068 41 41
A HOT and dehydrated man has been pulled out of a greasy ventilation shaft at Melbourne's Crown Casino complex after spending the night trapped in oil and fat in the ceiling of the first floor. The 25-year-old was heard screaming around 10am this morning when chefs at the Automatic Cafe turned on the ovens in the morning and the hot air started drifting up toward him. "You could tell he was saying 'Help!' and he had enough but when we were asking him 'Where are you?' and 'How did you get in there?' he couldn't really give us a direct answer," a chef at the cafe told Network Ten. A search and rescue fire truck and paramedics were called to pull the man out of the shaft. Paramedic Ross Parker was harnessed up and crawled into the shaft to rescue the trapped man who was hot and dehydrated. He grabbed him by the feet and he slipped out, covered in grease from head to toe. Firefighters explored how the man could have possibly got stuck and found a fifth floor entry point. It's believed the man illegally gained access to the steel duct from a stairwell around 11pm the night before, crawled about 30 metres and then fell vertically through the vents until he became wedged just above the cafe's grill. It's not known why the man decided to explore the vents. Police are investigating and will interview him at a later date. Originally published as Grease covered man pulled from ventilation
Labour has blasted Philip Hammond after the Chancellor quietly revealed the so-called Google Tax will miss out on some £700m from multinational firms. Updated forecasts in the Budget last week showed a drop in expected receipts from the Diverted Profit Tax - aimed at catching global businesses that take their profits out of the UK to cut their bills. Back in July 2015 the Treasury expected the measure - introduced by George Osborne - to rake in some £1.8bn between 2016/17 and 2020/21. But as Mr Hammond announced a range of new measures on Wednesday to crack down on tax dodging, that projection was dropped to £1.1bn - a cut of £700m. The independent Office for Budget Responsibility said the forecast was affected by a separate change to income tax collection. Angry Shadow Treasury Minister Jonathan Reynolds ordered the Chancellor to “get a grip of tax avoidance”. “It’s not fair that large multinationals are not paying their fair share yet benefitting from the billions in corporation tax giveaways Philip Hammond is continuing,” he fumed. "The Chancellor said he was announcing a new list of tax avoidance measures, how can we trust him he can’t collect the money from the current ones?” He added: “At a time when the Tories claim we don’t have enough money for our vital public services like our NHS, police and schools, there is no excuse for failing to clamp dodging on tax dodging firms.” Announcing his Budget, the Chancellor vowed to bring forward a plan to collect more tax on things like brand names and trademarks - the profits of which are often squirrelled away offshore. Mr Hammond declared: “It is this government that has clamped down on avoidance and evasion; this government that has seen the tax gap cut by a quarter to a record low. “And this government that has raked in an extra £160bn over seven years for our public services by collecting the taxes that are due.” He added: “So I will take no lectures, but I will take action.”
Economics is like actuarial science: Voodoo predictions based on a set of assumptions and mathematical models. The thing is, none of those models work when behavior is erratic, rules broken and and focus put on the quick buck rather than true growth. If no other lesson from the financial meltdown resonates, let that one ring. Alan Greenspan knows it too. That's why he came before Congress on October 28, 2008 and told them he was wrong: He was wrong, yes, but now he's not willing to blame the Wall Street moguls for everything. In March, he gave this gem of an interview to Bloomberg News. Here are some of the mind-boggling parts: HUNT: Right. Let’s talk about the subprime a little bit. You said in your Brookings speech, I’m going to quote you, “We at the Federal Reserve (this was a footnote I think actually) were aware - GREENSPAN: I’m impressed. HUNT: - (inaudible) as early as 2000 of instances of some highly irregular subprime mortgage underwriting practices but regrettably viewed it as a localized problem subject to standard prudential oversight, not the precursor of what was to happen.” Is that saying you saw instances of highly irregular underwriting, but you didn’t dig deeper? GREENSPAN: No, we knew that there was a lot of egregious underwriting going on. The critical issue is that it wasn’t subprime per se that created the triggering of the crisis. It was securitized subprime. And securitization didn’t happen until mid-2003, 2004 in the volume, including not only securitization but essentially adjustable rate mortgages - subprime adjustable rate mortgages I had to read that twice, but I think I understand it now. My interpretation: "We knew there were a lot of toxic assets being created, but it was ok because at that point they weren't carved up and bundled as securities." This happens after the S&L mess, Orange County, California's bankruptcy after a $1.6 billion dollar loss on derivatives, and the failure of Long Term Capital Management in 1998 due to a huge derivative loss. If there was a lesson to learn from those three events it is this: Bad loans make bad investments. If that has the ring of truth, how on earth can Greenspan sit and admit with a straight face that he knew bad loans were being made? Of course, Greenspan loves hedge funds now, especially since he consults for one of the biggest ones, and has since January, 2008. They love him too. Digby points out that the guy who loves him best is John Paulson. THAT John Paulson. The Goldman-Sachs-is-in-very-deep-trouble John Paulson. Let that deep conflict of interest sink in. His next tidbit made my head explode. In a discussion about the deficit, the current recovery, whether it's sustainable, and whether a value-added tax makes sense he says this: GREENSPAN: The problem, however, is very much the type of issue that Greece has got. We can find money to bail them out in the short run. But unless the underlying system contracts, the deficit contracts, it’s just delaying the problem. So I’m not convinced by any means that we can succeed in stabilizing this long term outlook strictly from a value added tax because unless we come to grips with the fundamental issue, which is the fact that we have promised in the ways of benefits for Medicare, for Social Security physically more than we have assets to deliver with. So the economy can only grow so far and right now the claims on the real economy, forget finance, are getting larger and larger. And it is not an issue just in Social Security I might add, its money. You can always print money and solve it. Medicare is a defined - is not a defined benefit program. It is one based on the physical needs of the population. Those darn American people again. Sitting around on Main Street, getting in the way of the economic recovery with their health care and retirement needs. Those entitlements. This is the same guy who gave away the Treasury to the rich guys by green-lighting Bush tax cuts. The same guy who testified that cutting the deficit and creating a surplus was the way to economic growth in the 90s before he said if the deficit got too low and the US got too solvent, it could cause economic problems in 2000. The same guy who let John Paulson endow a chair in economics in his name at NYU so he could leave a legacy of inconsistent, erratic, self serving conservative monetary policy to students in perpetuity. If you're in the mood for some common sense abuse, read the whole thing. He'll explain why big banks shouldn't be broken up but why they shouldn't be bailed out, why regulators missed the warning signs of the meltdown (I'd argue they ignored them, didn't miss them), why Fannie and Freddie were good before they were bad, and more. It would be so nice if something made sense for a change. - Alice in Wonderland
As part of NHL.com's offseason 30 in 30 package, fantasy hockey insiders Matt Cubeta and Pete Jensen will break down each team's fantasy landscape. They will look at the players at the top of the ranks, an undervalued player, an overvalued player, a deep sleeper (players likely ranked outside the top 200 overall players) and the goalie outlook for each NHL team. Leading the way: Zach Parise Parise totaled 33 goals and 62 points with outstanding secondary stats in 74 regular-season games for the Wild, then had 10 points in 10 postseason games. He finished last season as the 21st-best player in Yahoo leagues, and I have him at No. 25 overall in my offseason rankings. If you can land Parise in the third round of your draft, you'll be completely satisfied with his consistent category coverage. Since joining the Wild in 2012-13, Parise's 0.42 goals-per-game is 11th-best, his 0.83 points-per-game ranks 25th and his 3.63 shots-per-game is sixth in the NHL. His 32 power-play goals are fourth in the League and his plus-32 rating is 21st. Parise should also get you about 40 penalty minutes per season. He really is a complete fantasy player. WILD FANTASY-RELEVANT PLAYERS Below is a list of the fantasy-relevant players in the Minnesota Wild organization. These players have been arranged by NHL.com's fantasy staff based on projected value and by position. These players range from top-tier assets to deep sleepers and should be on your radar in standard Yahoo leagues. FORWARDS Zach Parise Jason Pominville Thomas Vanek Mikko Koivu Mikael Granlund Charlie Coyle Nino Niederreiter DEFENSEMEN Ryan Suter Matt Dumba Marco Scandella Mike Reilly GOALIES Devan Dubnyk * Red indicates newcomer to team Zach PariseJason PominvilleThomas VanekMikko KoivuMikael GranlundCharlie CoyleNino NiederreiterRyan SuterMatt DumbaMarco ScandellaDevan Dubnyk MORE FANTASY HOCKEY STORIES › Undervalued: Jason Pominville Despite the fact that he's been in the NHL since 2003, Pominville continues to provide strong fantasy value. In his second full season with Minnesota, Pominville posted 18 goals, 54 points, a plus-9 rating, eight penalty minutes, 14 power-play points and 252 shots on goal. His 18 goals were tied for the fewest he's scored in his career in an 82-game season, but a lot of that had to do with bad luck. Pominville registered a career-low 7.1 shooting percentage on those 252 shots, well below his career mark of 11.2 percent. Expect that percentage to revert to the mean and for Pominville to eclipse the 25-goal mark for the fifth time in his career. As long as he remains on the top line alongside Parise (as he was for the majority of the season), Pominville should once again be near a top-75 fantasy player (he finished 80th in Yahoo leagues last season). Overvalued: Ryan Suter We all know how good of a defenseman Suter is in reality. It's a shame his NHL-best 29:03 of ice time per game last season means nothing in fantasy hockey. Don't pay for Suter's name come draft day. The 30-year-old had two goals and 38 points last season with a plus-7 rating, but he still finished 175th among all players in Yahoo leagues and 31st at his position. He won't help you much in the PIMs department and Suter's power-play production has declined in each of the past four seasons. In 2011-12 he averaged 0.32 power-play points per game; last season that number dipped all the way down to 0.14 PPP per game. If you can get him late in your draft, that's fine. But don't waste a top 100 pick on him just because he's great in reality. Deep sleeper: Charlie Coyle At some point Coyle, a first-round draft pick by the San Jose Sharks in 2010, is going to break out. I loved him going into last season and it just didn't happen (11 goals, 24 assists, plus-13 in 82 games). At 6-foot-3 and 221 pounds, Coyle has the size and ability to be a fantasy mainstay in what will be his third full NHL season. We've seen minimal progress in each of the past two seasons, but is that 25-goal, 50-point season coming in 2015-16? I think this is the year. The one thing to keep an eye on come training camp is where Coyle falls on the depth chart. In the playoffs he mostly played center on the third line with Thomas Vanek and Nino Niederreiter on his wings, but if he ends up moving back to the wing (as he did in 2013-14) and finds himself in the top-six, he could really flourish. Either way, Coyle's upside is worth the gamble late in your draft. Goalie outlook: Devan Dubnyk and Darcy Kuemper Dubnyk came out of nowhere last season to deliver a prolific fantasy season between the pipes. After being acquired by the Wild on Jan. 13, he finished with 27 wins, a 1.78 goals against average, .936 save percentage and five shutouts in 39 games. He was the top goalie from that point on and ended up as the second-most valuable fantasy goalie (behind Carey Price) and No. 15 player overall in Yahoo leagues for the full season. After signing a long-term deal with the Wild, Dubnyk is the clear-cut No. 1 goalie with Kuemper serving as a solid backup. But the question is, can Dubnyk come close to repeating last season's performance? The Wild ranked 11th in the NHL last season with 3,453 SAT against (shots attempted against) and had the League's best penalty kill (86.3 percent). The Wild are a good defensive team, but they are not one of the best and that, combined with the fact that Dubnyk has never posted numbers close to what he did last season, would lead me to believe that he is a strong candidate to regress this season. While an improvement on his career averages (2.69 GAA and .914 save percentage) should be expected, a repeat of anything close to what he did with Minnesota last season is likely out of the question. I ranked Dubnyk eighth among goalies going into this season, and he should be off the board somewhere near the fourth round. ---
YARMOUTH, MA — Fentanyl-laced marijuana is being investigated as the cause of a Cape Cod man's near-death over the weekend. Police on Monday said officers found the man not breathing and without a pulse in Yarmouth Saturday afternoon. First responders had to administer two doses of Narcan to revive him, police said. "Detectives believe that it is possible that the marijuana was laced with fentanyl," Yarmouth police said in a statement. The man's girlfriend told police the two smoked marijuana out of a bong at a house on Winslow Gray Road, police said. (Sign up for free daily newsletters and breaking news alerts from Massachusetts Patch sites.) "The girlfriend admitted to the Officers that they both smoked the marijuana but did not realize it may have been laced with another drug which caused the overdose," Yarmouth police said in a statement. "The victim had no pulse and was not breathing. Yarmouth FD provided emergency first aid and life support as well as Narcan and promptly transported him to Cape Cod Hospital by ambulance ... a second dose of Narcan was given and the victim started to respond." The girlfriend was hospitalized as a precaution but appeared to be OK otherwise, police said. Fentanyl-laced marijuana has been found earlier this summer in Ohio in Hamilton County, according to a state coroner. There are few recent reports of the mixed drugs in other states. In Canada, fentanyl mixed with marijuana was discovered in recent weeks in the Ontario province, according to health officials there. Photo: Shutterstock
The first large-scale genetic study of people in Papua New Guinea has shown that different groups within the country are genetically highly different from each other. Scientists at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and their colleagues at the University of Oxford and the Papua New Guinea Institute of Medical Research reveal that the people there have remained genetically independent from Europe and Asia for most of the last 50,000 years, and that people from the country's isolated highlands region have been completely independent even until the present day. Reported in Science, the study also gives insights into how the development of agriculture and cultural events such as the Bronze or Iron Age could affect the genetic structure of human societies. Papua New Guinea is a country in the southwestern Pacific with some of the earliest archaeological evidence of human existence outside Africa. Largely free from Western influence and with fascinating cultural diversity, it has been of enormous interest to anthropologists and other scientists seeking to understand human cultures and evolution. With approximately 850 domestic languages, which account for over 10 per cent of the world's total, Papua New Guinea is the most linguistically diverse country in the world. To discover if the linguistic and cultural diversity was echoed in the genetic structure of the population, researchers studied the genomes of 381 Papuan New Guinean people from 85 different language groups within the country. The researchers looked at more than a million genetic positions in the genome of each individual, and compared them to investigate genetic similarities and differences. They found that groups of people speaking different languages were surprisingly genetically distinct from each other. Anders Bergström, the first author on the paper from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, said: "This is the first large-scale study of genetic diversity and population history in Papua New Guinea. Our study revealed that the genetic differences between groups of people there are generally very strong, often much stronger even than between major populations within all of Europe or all of East Asia." Professor Stephen J. Oppenheimer, second author of the paper from the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, University of Oxford, said: "We found a striking difference between the groups of people who live in the mountainous highlands and those in the lowlands, with genetic separation dating back 10,000-20,000 years between the two. This makes sense culturally, as the highland groups historically have kept to themselves, but such a strong genetic barrier between otherwise geographically close groups is still very unusual and fascinating." Human evolution in Europe and Asia has been greatly influenced by the development of agriculture around 10,000 years ago. When small bands of hunter-gatherers settled into villages and started farming, they expanded and over time gave rise to more genetically homogenous (similar) societies. However, despite the independent development of agriculture in Papua New Guinea at about the same time, the same process of homogenization did not occur here. This may indicate that other historical processes in Europe and Asia, such as the later Bronze and Iron Ages, were the key events that shaped the current genetic structure of those populations. Dr Chris Tyler-Smith, corresponding author on the paper from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, said: "Using genetics, we were able to see that people on the island of New Guinea evolved independently from rest of the world for much of the last 50,000 years. This study allows us to glimpse a different version of human evolution from that in Europe and Asia, one in which there was agriculture but no later Bronze Age or Iron Age. Papua New Guinea might show the genetic, cultural and linguistic diversity that many settled human societies would have had before these technological transformations."
Image copyright PA Image caption Martin Kimber will step down as chief executive following the child abuse scandal in Rotherham The chief executive of Rotherham Council is to step down following a report that exposed the scale of child sexual exploitation in the town. Martin Kimber will leave the post in December, he has announced. In a statement, he said wanted to reiterate his "sincere apology to those who were let down". A report published last month said at least 1,400 children were sexually exploited from 1997-2013, mainly by men of Pakistani heritage. Mr Kimber, who joined the authority in 2009, said: "I believe that new leadership will enable the town to recover more quickly from the events of the last two weeks, and strongly signal a new beginning at this critical time in its recovery." Council leader Roger Stone quit following the publication of the report, which was commissioned by the council and detailed gang rapes, grooming, trafficking and other sexual exploitation on a wide scale. Calls for further resignations have gathered momentum as the spotlight turned to others at the helm of local services during the time of the abuse. 'Blatant' failings South Yorkshire's Police and Crime Commissioner, Shaun Wright, who was in charge of children's services in Rotherham from 2005 to 2010, has so far resisted calls to step down. In the wake of the Jay Report, Mr Kimber said no council employees would face disciplinary action because there was not enough evidence to prosecute. The report concluded there had been "blatant" collective failures by the council's leadership. The Labour Party has since suspended four members, including Mr Stone, ex-deputy leader Jahangir Akhtar and councillors Gwendoline Russell and Shaukat Ali, pending an investigation. Investigations South Yorkshire Police has commissioned an independent investigation into its handling of the scandal. The inquiry will "examine the role of both the police and council... and address any wrongdoings or failings," Chief Constable David Crompton said. The government is also considering carrying out an inspection of the council. Communities Secretary Eric Pickles told the House of Commons he hoped to make an announcement about the investigation "very soon", as soon as the person he wanted to lead it had cleared their diary. Mr Wright will face questions from MPs on Tuesday about his knowledge of the abuse. The Home Affairs Select Committee will also hear evidence from Mr Crompton, senior Rotherham Council official Joyce Thacker and NSPCC chief executive Sir Peter Wanless, who is leading a review into the Home Office's handling of abuse allegations.
Looking for news you can trust? Subscribe to our free newsletters. As more Republicans abandon their support for Donald Trump, the National Rifle Association has launched a more than $22 million ad blitz to help elect him and defeat Hillary Clinton. As reported by the Center for Public Integrity, the gun lobby is responsible for 16 percent of all pro-Trump television ads aired during this election cycle. The NRA ads mostly target residents in the swing states of Ohio, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, and and are tailored to court women—a demographic that’s expected to largely vote against Trump. According to CPI, the NRA has been behind about 1 of every 8 presidential TV ads aired in Ohio in October. (It’s aired about 1 in 9 presidential ads in North Carolina and about 1 in 20 ads in Pennsylvania during the month.) While there’s been some discord within the NRA over its unprecedented support for Trump, the group’s massive spending can be understood as a last-ditch effort to block a Clinton presidency at all costs. Clinton has been a vocal proponent for more gun control measures, including expanded background checks and closing the so-called gun show loophole. While she has sought to reassure the gun owners that her support for “common sense gun safety measures” is compatible with the Second Amendment, the NRA’s advertising machine claims otherwise. This recent NRA-backed ad, which played in the Nevada, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and North Carolina, depicts Clinton as an “out-of-touch hypocrite” who would leave Americans unarmed and defenseless.
poster="http://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201612/3944/1155968404_5263812149001_5263764360001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" true McCain and Graham: U.S. needs to hit Russia hard for election hacking Republican Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham called Wednesday for Congress to take a tougher stance against Russia for meddling in the U.S. presidential election. In an interview on Fox News from Latvia, where he and Graham were touring the Baltic states, McCain said legislators should “increase the sanctions on Russia for this misbehavior” and urged a permanent American military presence in the Baltic states, as well as arming Ukraine with weapons. Story Continued Below Graham echoed those statements, saying that for President Barack Obama to take action now would do little good and that “you need to hit Russia in a sustained fashion.” “Let the new Congress and the new president deal with Russia, pass new sanctions, much tougher than the ones we already have,” Graham said, arguing that Obama acting on his way out of office would “send the wrong signal.” McCain said the issue is “of the utmost seriousness.” “Look, if you’re able to change the results of an election, then you have undermined the very fundamentals of democracy,” McCain said, adding that he doesn’t, however, believe the Russian hacking affected the election result. The Arizona senator said America is still the strongest nation in the world but it needs to prove it and not let Russian President Vladimir Putin undermine the “new world order” that’s been in place for the 70 years since World War II. “Vladimir Putin is a thug and a bully and a murderer,” McCain said. “He understands strength, and that’s all that he understands.” Graham predicted there will be a bipartisan vote in Congress early next year over the Russian hacking and that new sanctions will be imposed on the country “for interfering in our elections and trying to interfere in democratic elections all over the world, including in the Baltics.” “These are wonderful little countries,” McCain said, and “they need American presence and American support.”
HP CEO Whitman Just Got a Big Pay Raise Remember how when she first took over as CEO of the computing giant Hewlett-Packard, Meg Whitman agreed to take a base salary of only $1 a year? That changed on Nov. 1, when the company’s board of directors voted to increase her base pay to $1.5 million per year, a new filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission says. Here’s the text of the filing in full: “On December 11, 2013, the independent members of the Board of Directors of Hewlett-Packard Company (“HP”) approved an increase in the base salary of Margaret C. Whitman, HP’s President and Chief Executive Officer, from $1 per year to $1,500,000 per year to bring Ms. Whitman’s salary to a competitive level among the salaries of the chief executive officers of HP’s peer companies. This salary increase is effective as of November 1, 2013.” The dollar-a-year figure was mostly meaningless in the first place as Whitman has also been compensated in large part with company shares. Last year she took home more than $15.3 million. Most of that was in the value of share grants and options worth about $13 million. Then there was a performance-based bonus worth $1.7 million. With HP’s shares up by more than 90 percent since the end of last year, Whitman is likely to do well in 2013, as well. We’ll know more about that when the proxy filing hits — which should be early in 2014.
RAISINA TATTLE: Barq resurrects his anthem protest Shafiqur Rahman Barq plans to repeat his anthem protest Bahujan Samaj Party's Lok Sabha member Shafiqur Rahman Barq has no regret over the controversy he stirred up during the last day of the Budget session by walking out when Vande Mataram was played. On the eve of the Monsoon session, the MP said he would remain absent from Parliament on Monday to protest against the singing of the national song. On May 8, Speaker Meira Kumar had rapped the member after noticing his misdemeanor and said this should never be done again. But Burq is clearly in no mood to listen. Guest from Nepal Nepali Congress president Sushil Koirala arrived in India on Sunday on a five-day visit. The trip comes at the invitation of the Government of India. He will discuss Nepal's ongoing peace process and the Constituent Assembly elections with the Indian leadership. Koirala will call on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid, UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi and BJP leader Sushma Swaraj among others. CBI standoff The government may disagree with the CBI's proposal to enhance the powers of its director, but the agency is likely to press its case to ensure there is no interference in its functioning. The matter is listed for hearing before the Supreme Court on Tuesday. Sources said CBI's proposal that its director should report directly to the Minister of Personnel and Training is aimed at cutting red-tape as many files remain stuck at various levels in different ministries. The post is currently held by Ranjit Sinha. Setting the stage for a standoff on the issue, the Centre had on August 2 rejected CBI's stand, saying an all-powerful chief without checks and balances entails the risk of potential misuse. Shinde's surgery Sushil Kumar Shinde is recovering from lung surgery Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde underwent a surgery for a lung ailment at Mumbai's Breach Candy Hospital on Sunday. Details of his ailment were not immediately known, but sources said Shinde will be discharged in a day or two. He will miss at least the first few days of the Monsoon session, which begins on Monday. Before being admitted to hospital, Shinde had met Maharashtra CM Prithviraj Chavan and government officials and also attended an Iftar party hosted by Chavan at the Haj House. He had also participated in a function at the National Sports Club. His sudden ailment has therefore baffled many. Home truth The move to create a separate Telengana has triggered an in-house war in the Congress. While Congress leaders from Telengana and Seemandhra are already at each other's throats, Nagpur MP Vilas Muttemwar, a votary of separate state of Vidarbha, has accused fellow Maharashtrian and Union home minister Sushil Kumar Shinde of misleading the country on the issue. In a scathing letter to Shinde, Muttemwar wrote that Shinde's statement that Telangana's case was considered because it was older and more deserving than Vidarbha is not based on historical facts and evidence.
OTTAWA—Russia is denying that its aircraft did a provocative flyby over a Canadian warship sailing in the Black Sea this week. On Monday, Canadian defence officials said a Russian aircraft — one of three in the area — flew low over HMCS Toronto as it sailed in the Black Sea on Sunday, a move condemned as “provocative” by Defence Minister Rob Nicholson. The HMCS Toronto (pictured) is taking part in a military exercise known as Sea Breeze, involving ships from Ukraine, the United States, Romania and Turkey. ( Andrew Vaughan / THE CANADIAN PRESS file photo ) But on Tuesday, Russia defence staff rejected claims their aircraft buzzed the frigate, saying the aircraft were on a routine flight. “The route of Russian Air Force planes crossed the area where the Canadian Navy’s Toronto was, but without approaching the foreign warship,” Russian Defense Ministry’s spokesman Igor Konashenkov told ITAR-TASS. The news report said the aircraft were on a scheduled flight over neutral waters near the Russian state border, he added. “All flights were and are carried out in strict accordance with international rules for the use of air space over neutral waters,” Konashenkov said. Article Continued Below According to the Canadian version of events, the frigate HMCS Toronto was sailing in the Black Sea, home to a large Russian naval fleet, when it was approached by three Russian aircraft early Sunday. The aircraft circled the ship, flying about 300 metres above the water and about 500 metres away from the vessel, according to a Defence Department source. “While the Russian military aircraft that circled the HMCS Toronto did not in any way pose a threat to the Canadian ship, their actions were unnecessarily provocative and risk escalating tensions even further,” Nicholson said in a statement Monday. The frigate is taking part in a military exercise known as Sea Breeze, involving 12 ships in all from Ukraine, the United States, Romania and Turkey. The exercise has taken on extra sensitivity because of ongoing tensions between the West and Moscow over Russia’s military actions against Ukraine. Read more about:
"Kiss In Sweden 1976-2013", a book about all the times KISS visited Sweden filled with exciting stories, interesting facts and almost 1000 pictures, is available for order at www.kissisverige.com. The authors — Johan Falk and Roney Lundell — have one thing in common: their passionate interest in the rock group KISS, and they hope and trust that fans will feel this passion and feel their heart rate increase when they have the book in their hands and open it for the first time. Comment the authors: "Our story begins when KISS lands at Torslanda Airport just outside of Gothenburg around 4 p.m. on the 25th of May 1976. They arrive by plane unmasked and a Swedish photographer takes a few shots as KISS are about to embark on their first tour in Sweden, a tour which has generated scandalous headlines in the media long before the plane even landed. KISS will come back to visit Sweden again in 1980, 1983, 1984, 1988, 1996, 1997, 1999, 2008, 2010 and 2013 and the band or parts thereof have made promotional visits here in 1982, 1985, 1987, 1992 and 1994. The story of KISS in Sweden ends as Gene [Simmons] and Paul [Stanley] board an aircraft taking off from Kristianstad Airport in Everöd at 4 p.m. on the 8th of June 2013, bound for Norway. "The goal with the book has from the very start been to document all of KISS' visits to our country as thoroughly as possible. We searched far and wide for all the cool pictures that were forgotten or ended up gathering dust in an attic somewhere. We talked to those who met the band, privately or professionally, and we spared no dime uncovering the facts and unknown stories which has until now remained undocumented. We set out to do a book that we ourselves would like to read and we think we have succeeded. We are sure that all KISS fans will enjoy our book! "The book has 336 pages and weighs in at 1.7 kg. It is filled with almost 1000 pictures (over 600 photos and most of them have never been published before)."
MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. (WLTX) -- The FBI has arrested a man suspected of being a white supremacist who they say talked about carrying out a Dylann Roof style attack. Benjamin Thomas Samuel McDowell, 29, was taken into custody and booked at the jail in Horry County. A criminal complaint filed in federal court says back on December 26, McDowell began writing on Facebook about a Jewish synagogue in Myrtle Beach. McDowell, the complaint states, has established connections with white supremacist extremists that he gained while serving in prison, and has tattoos on his body that show his affiliation with those groups. On January 5, he made another online post, according to the document, where he began to reference Roof, the man convicted of the racially motivated killing of nine people at an African-American church in Charleston in 2015. "Dylann roof did what these tattoos wearing so bad--- is supposed to be doing they don't give f--- about their white race," he wrote. He went on to say that Jews were "here to destroy the white man." According to the complaint, he went on to say "if you ain't got the heart to fight for Yahweh like dylann roof did [sic] you need to shut the f--- up." The FBI says a day later, McDowell requested on Facebook Instant Messenger that he wanted "iron," which is a code word for a gun. On January 12, the FBI says McDowell agreed to meet an undercover FBI agent who McDowell believed handled problems for the Aryan Nations. The two met up at a hotel in Myrtle Beach, The agent said McDowell voiced frustration over other white supremacists, saying that screaming "white power" wasn't getting the job done. "I got the heart to do that s---, but I don't have the good training," McDowell reportedly said. He told the agent, according to the complaint, that he was looking for a way to conduct an attack on non-whites without getting caught. "I'm wanting to do this s---, and I got the heart to do this," McDowell reportedly said. "I seen what Dylann Roof did and in my heart I reckon I got a little bit of hatred and I..I want do that s---. LIke, I got desire...not for nobody else..it just...I want something where I can say, "I f---ing did that' me personally. If I could do something on a f---ing big scale and write on the f---ing building or whatever, "In the spirit of Dylann Roof." The agent says McDowell said he had not decided on a place or time to conduct an attack. In a phone call later, the undercover agent says McDowell wanted him to get a .40 handgun because he intended to conduct the attack outside the county where he lived. McDowell was not supposed to have a gun because he is a convicted felon. "I wish the day we all get off Facebook and white Warriors like we was born to be like Dylan [sic] roof be we gotta do it in a smart way." he later wrote. The FBI says he then called the agent again, I just be plotting it out, like, I mean you just run up there on them if they back there partying, and all, with a f---ing AK and rip them sumbitches down, and throw, a dam something at them." He reportedly asked again for a gun, and later asked for hollow point ammunition. The two then agreed to meet in person on February 15, where McDowell would buy the gun. McDowell then purchased the weapon, and agents moved in to take him into custody at a motel in Myrtle Beach.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Cavs fans studded on an E. 9th Street parking garage Wednesday left a lasting image of Cleveland's NBA championship parade. People hung from the fifth, sixth and eighth stories of the structure to catch a glimpse of parade. The images went viral, and several media outlets, including USA Today, speculated or implied that the revelers climbed to their viewing spots from the bottom of the garage like spiders. That's not how they did it. As you'll see from the video above, the spectators climbed through openings in between columns of the garage's exterior and stood on small ledges parallel to the floor. Openings are fenced off on all sides of the garage except the side that faces E. 9th Street. Watch the video above to see cleveland.com reporter Matt Goul demonstrate the ease with which spectators climbed to watch the parade.
DENVER – Denver investigators say a 33-year-old woman had a relationship with an underage boy and had two children with him. The Denver District Attorney charged Alicia Hernandez with sex assault on a child and sex assault. According to the arrest affidavit, on September 6, DPD sex crimes unit received a report of an inappropriate sexual relationship from Denver Department of Human Services. The victim, now 18, was 14 at the start of the relationship and Hernandez was 29-years-old at the time. According to court records, the victim told police he met Hernandez at Garfield Park four years ago and told her he was 18. The victim told investigators after a year of dating, the couple had sex, Hernandez got pregnant and their first child was born in June of 2013. Hernandez told police she did indeed meet the victim at a park. She believed they conceived their first child in August or September of 2012. According to court records, Hernandez then got pregnant again and their second child was born in January of 2015. Denver DA’s office says Hernandez has been released from custody on a $50,000 bond. She’s scheduled back in court in October. Copyright 2016 KUSA
Sol 1241: Wrapping up at Namib Dune 1 February 2016 Curiosity is still parked at Namib dune, and we are we are close to finishing the science investigation here. The team is still working to diagnose the CHIMRA anomaly, but the arm was cleared for use in today’s plan. The science activities in today’s plan include some additional MAHLI images to supplement the previously acquired selfie, and some long-distance ChemCam RMI mosaics to study layering on Mt. Sharp and the northern crater rim. We’ll also acquire a Mastcam image to document the target “Erongo,” and use Navcam to search for dust devils and monitor the atmosphere. Then we’ll use MAHLI to document several of the scoop and dump locations. There’s also an early science block on the morning of Sol 1242, during which Mastcam and Navcam will image the ripple target “Epupa” under favorable morning illumination conditions. I’ll be on duty later this week so I’m catching up on our remaining science requirements at this location. By Lauren Edgar --Lauren is a Research Geologist at the USGS Astrogeology Science Center and a member of the MSL science team.
Three years ago, Democrats and Republicans joined to expand the nation’s oldest federal wildlife law to cover illegal logging. But then federal investigators picked Gibson Guitar as the first target of the new provision, confiscating guitars and pallets of ebony two years ago that allegedly came from wood illegally logged in Madagascar. In August they seized more than 100,000 fingerboards allegedly made from imported Indian rosewood, along with electronic files. Gibson Guitar’s chief executive , Henry Juszkiewicz, is striking back with efforts to amend the law, to provide more certainty not just for instrument manufacturers and dealers but also for musicians, who theoretically could run afoul of it by possessing instruments containing illegal wood. That’s put him in the spotlight of the conservative campaign against what some view as federal regulatory overreach, and he’s gained an eclectic band of allies — including tea party adherents and the Democrat who represents the home of country music. “I’m being pulled into this involvement through the Justice Department action,” Juszkiewicz said. “I’m sort of in the frying pan and my thought process is, that’s wrong. . . . Let me look at what is the problem, and let me fix it.” Interior Department spokesman Adam Fetcher declined to comment on the federal inquiry into Gibson’s actions. No criminal charges have been filed in what federal officials call an ongoing probe; Gibson is fighting for return of the confiscated material. Juszkiewicz’s campaign — which includes hiring the lobbying firm Crowell & Moring on retainer for more than $10,000 a month — has begun to yield results. In mid-October, Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) introduced a bill that would protect anyone who unknowingly possesses wood that violates the Lacey Act from prosecution; exempt any wood products owned before May 22, 2008, from the law; and compel the federal government to publish an Internet database of illegal wood sources to inform the public. “The Gibson incident highlighted the urgency of looking at Lacey,” Cooper said. “I do want to protect guitar players and musicians who have old instruments. That’s the main focus of the law.” Country music star Vince Gill and other musicians, such as Steve Bryant, who wrote the song “Keep Your Hands Off Our Wood,” argue that they could be held liable for old instruments without proper documentation. Institute for Liberty President Andrew Langer, a conservative activist, said the Lacey Act is getting much more attention now than when he and others decried it after David McNab was convicted in 2001 of illegally importing lobster tails from Honduras. “Given that it’s Gibson Guitar, it’s certainly much, much higher profile than a seafood importer in the Gulf.” Senior officials from the Justice Department and Interior’s Fish and Wildlife Service have repeatedly rejected the idea that musicians could run afoul of the Lacey Act. In a Sept. 19 letter to Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), who co-sponsored Cooper’s bill, officials from the two agencies wrote, “people who unknowingly possess a musical instrument or other object that contains wood that was illegally taken, transported or sold in violation of the law and who, in the exercise of due care, would not have known it was illegal, do not have criminal exposure. The Federal Government focuses its enforcement efforts on those who are removing protected species from the wild and making a profit by trafficking in them.” To win GOP support, Cooper wrote a bill that covers far more than musicians. It would remove requirements for retailers and manufacturers bringing in non-solid wood products — such as pulp and paper — to identify their source, as well as prevent the confiscation of illegally logged wood from someone who did not knowingly possess it. Environmentalists, forest product manufacturers, union officials and several lawmakers warned that revamping the Lacey Act could have profound economic and ecological consequences. Northland Forest Products chief executive Jameson S. French, who helped push for the 2008 amendment, said the measure “sent the message to the global business community that the U.S. meant business about no illegal wood products being brought into this country.” The American Forest and Paper Association estimates that illegal logging costs the U.S. timber and wood products industry $1 billion a year, and it opposes any immediate change to the Lacey Act. French said America’s grade lumber exports have soared in recent years as overseas suppliers look for hardwood products that can reenter the United States without a problem. The environmental stakes are high as well. National parks in Madagascar have been decimated by illegal logging since a 2009 coup d’etat created political disarray there. In places such as Masoala National Park, a reserve affilated with the Zurich Zoo, poorly paid poachers create trails into the forest, consume forest lemurs and flying foxes to sustain themselves and fell five trees for every one of precious wood they take because ebony and rosewood timber cannot float on their own. Part of the drive to retool the Lacey Act stems from its requirement that businesses take “due care” to ensure their suppliers were not violating the law in the wood’s country of origin. Langer calls the requirement “onerous.” Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), who co-authored the 2008 amendment, said responsible businesses shouldn’t have a compliance problem. “The whole concept here was to promote people being more conscious of what happened in their supply chain,” he said. Gibson and other major guitar manufacturers conducted a fact-finding mission in Madagascar in 2008. Taylor Guitars and Martin Guitars stopped obtaining wood from Madagascar, but according to an e-mail that has surfaced in the federal probe, a Gibson employee wrote that a local supplier could still obtain ebony from “the gray market.” Juszkiewicz — who backs Cooper’s bill but is still seeking changes in it that would provide U.S. firms with greater certainty about what wood is acceptable to import — said he believes it is possible to obtain legitimately harvested wood from Madagascar. He said he decided to keep buying there because he doesn’t see “prohibition” as an answer. “How does that fix the problem?” he asked, adding that a better approach is to say, “We want to buy the wood from you, but we only want to buy the wood that’s good.” Alexander Von Bismarck, who as executive director of the D.C.-based nonprofit Environmental Investigation Agency documented the illegal timber trade in Madagascar, said the country doesn't need that kind of help. “We found that the money that flows to the timber barons is systematically moved overseas while the logger in Madagascar gets a few dollars a day to break into a national park and steal wood,” he wrote in an e-mail. “That’s not supporting development, that’s just supporting crime.” Research director Alice Crites contributed to this report. Read more on PostPolitics.com Mitt the inevitable? ‘SNL’ lampoons Perry’s ‘oops’ gaffe Gloria Cain enters political fray
Please enable Javascript to watch this video WASHINGTON TERRACE, Utah – One family displaced by a tornado in Washington Terrace Thursday returned home Saturday to find out they had been the victims of a theft while they were away. Several areas of Washington Terrace were deemed unsafe after the tornado, but Friday night and Saturday morning those areas reopened and residents were allowed to return home. By Saturday afternoon, several boxes of stuff filled the front yard of the Padilla home. "We've been going through everything, trying to just grab and go," Karen Padilla said. Inside, her house sat in disarray. Her family's belongings ended up thrown about after the tornado hit her home. Much of it is not salvageable, she said, and some areas of the home have been deemed structurally unsound. The family can no longer live there. On top of the overwhelming and emotional job of sorting through and cleaning up, they found a nasty surprise. "As we're going through stuff, we started realizing that we had had somebody that had came in our house and had stolen stuff," she explained. "They were upstairs, they were downstairs. They knew exactly kind of where to go and get. " The family says the stolen items include an Xbox, tablets, video games and even some loose change. The Weber County Sheriff's Office said it is investigating the theft and looking for leads. They said just the one home reported the looting. “It’s sad when you lose stuff, but when somebody comes in and takes advantage of that, you know, then... Where is the world going to anyway?” Padilla asked. There are still a few things to be grateful for. She said they reunited with the family pets-- a dog and two cats. She also found two hand-painted angels her mother made had survived the destruction. Across the street, Ronna Steele crawled out of the rubble of a nearly upside-down garage, dragging a bicycle. She said she and another person were inside that garage fixing her bike when the tornado uprooted the entire building and threw it on its side. Steele returned on Saturday to retrieve her bike and look at the damage. "I don't see how we made it out, looking at that," she said. "I just can't believe we didn't get hurt, I can't believe that we didn't. That's amazing. I don't know how that's possible" Next door, Paul Hulet unlocked his door and stepped inside. Like everyone else on the block, he and his family returned Saturday for the first time to take in the scene of wreckage. Glass shards litter his entire living room. A piece of his sprinkler system from his lawn somehow ended up inside on the carpet. His wife's piano-- one of their most beloved possessions-- is completely trashed. They may not be able to move back in for a while, but he's keeping his spirits up. "We survived," he said, adding, "Now, we just got to put everything back together."
Steve Watson Infowars.net Tuesday, Oct 14, 2008 Like him or loathe him, last night CNN’s Glenn Beck became the only mainstream media source thus far to address on national TV the reality of the situation Americans are facing with the manufactured financial implosion – the direct threat of domestic martial law and a global financial dictatorship. Beck’s guest, Peter Schiff, respected author of "Crash Proof" and president of the brokerage firm Euro Pacific Capital, joined him in outlining that martial law, the use of armed troops on the streets to quell dissent, is a real possibility should the economic crisis not improve or worsen to the point where civil unrest is fomented. The following exchange between Beck and Schiff, who was also economic adviser to Ron Paul during his presidential campaign, is from the CNN transcript of last night’s show: SCHIFF: You know, what`s going to happen, of course, is as inflation starts running out of control and prices start going through the roof, the government again is going to focus on the symptoms and not the disease. And they`re going to impose price controls on energy, on food, on a lot of other things that are vital, which means shortages, which means long lines, black markets, civil unrest. All this stuff is coming if we don`t stop. […] BECK: Peter, let`s talk a little bit about martial law. Why would that even be a consideration? SCHIFF: Well, I don`t think it was a threat if they had rejected the bailout Bill, but I think it is a possibility a few years down the line. We just spoke a little bit about price controls and the effect that they`re going to have. A d v e r t i s e m e n t If we have shortages of food, if we have rolling blackouts. And people are upset, and they`re hungry, and they`re cold, there could be civil unrest. There could be looting, rioting, and that might be the impetus for the government to declare martial law. BECK: You know, I don`t think you`re a couple of years away from something like that. I mean, honestly, Peter, I mean, look at what`s happening. In a half hour, I`ve got a congressman on about — about the racism cries. I mean, there are people that are right now so disenfranchised, and I think being encouraged to be disenfranchised on both sides, that at any time this damn thing could break apart. SCHIFF: Yes. And we`re giving the government so much power. And you know, you give up a lot more civil liberties. When you have martial law and you`ve got the military policing our streets, when you`ve got suspension of habeas corpus, you`ve got curfews, you can`t be out of your house after dark, and they can just pick you up and put you in prison and keep you there indefinitely without charges, and there`s nothing you can do about it? I mean, we`re giving up one liberty after another, all to protect ourselves from this economic crisis, which needs to happen anyway, but it doesn`t need to be nearly this bad. BECK: Peter, this is — I mean, we`re in Crazytown, USA. But my gut tells me that, two years down the road — let`s just use that number — this country is not going to look anything like it does today. Our world has changed; it just hasn`t caught up. During the ten minute segment, Beck and Schiff also pointed out that America is headed for Weimar Republic style hyperinflation at the hands of global bankers, stated that the financial implosion has been manufactured by design, warned that the Treasury has been given dictatorial powers and raised the question of whether the end game is a one world currency and one world financial governance. Beck also played the now infamous clip of Democratic Congressman Brad Sherman from October 2nd stating that several members of Congress were threatened before the bailout vote that martial law would be instigated in America if the legislation was not passed. Watch the entire segment below: Though Beck was unable to bring Rep. Sherman on to his show, the Congressman did appear exclusively on the Alex Jones show on October 3rd to discuss the threat of martial law. Peter Schiff also appeared on the Alex Jones show recently to discuss this important issue.
Developed 2011/05/01 - 2012/04/10. Published 2012/07/12. The beast above is a robotic system intended to be operated remotely in hazardous areas where network infrastructure is scarce. The robot is controlled over a WiFi network that originates on the robot and is extended by dropping the black repeater units on its back. I and seven other computer and electrical engineers built this monster as part of a senior design project at Northeastern University. Quick Overview Robot controlled over WiFi 40" long, 28" wide, 16" tall, about 150 lbs. Custom-built (except for treads) out of aluminum Range: 1 km with one on-board router and two droppable long-range repeater modules Running time: ~12 hours On-board webcam with microphone, night vision, pan and tilt On-board GPS for location tracking Custom-made remote user interface, works on any device with a web browser Built with an EEE PC running Ubuntu, Arduino, and Node.js Total cost: ='( For God's sake WHY? In the summer of 2011, we began what is known at Northeastern University as our Capstone design program. This is a senior project where we apply our computer and electrical engineering knowledge to some project. The project could be anything we wanted, and we wanted a giant robot. In my previous robotic project, my partner and I happened upon a few research papers and calls for proposals to build WiFi-deploying robots for use in military applications. It turns out that having ad-hoc WiFi networks can really come in handy in military operations and in disaster-affected areas, where physical network infrastructure may have been damaged. Our group thought that the need for a WiFi deployment system was high enough to justify further exploration, and eventually we hit upon the idea that we could also use a robot to deploy a network while doing reconnaissance, and that this robot could also be controlled over the network it was deploying. This was a sufficiently interesting idea for us to start work. The Design In essence, this project is a robotic system for reconnaissance and WiFi network deployment. There are three main parts to it: the WiFi deployment system, the physical robot, and the robotic controls / operator interface. WiFi Deployment System Probably the most interesting part of this project, and unfortunately the least-developed, is the WiFi deployment system. We decided early on that it would be best to have a WiFi network as opposed to another band as this would ensure maximum compatibility with the largest number of off-the-shelf devices. This way, any consumer device could connect to our network, and we could use consumer devices in our robot's construction. Ideally, each repeater module in our network would be tiny and able to be dropped in any order. This would give us a robust network of theoretically infinite size. Unfortunately, cheap, off-the-shelf WiFi repeater units are not available and the network configuration for the devices we did find was extremely difficult, so we decided to use consumer-grade Linksys routers loaded with the open-source dd-wrt firmware. Using dd-wrt, we were able to configure these routers as network repeaters. To lengthen their range, we used long-range antennas, power amplifiers, and 14.8V lithium-polymer batteries. Finally, we put all this in a Pelican case to protect them from the elements. These are attached to aluminum skis and fastened to the robot with a 3D-printed latch mechanism that is actuated by a solenoid. In this scheme, each repeater repeats the on-board router's WiFi signal. Any device with a WiFi card can then connect to this repeated signal and communicate with other devices in the network, including our robot if they have the correct credentials. The Robot Our entire robot assembly is custom-built from scratch, as there were no reasonably-priced off-the-shelf robots that could perform the functions we needed. It was constructed out of aluminum at a hacker space called Artisan's Asylum with a healthy amount of blood and tears. It is a little more than 3 feet long, 2 feet wide, and weighs about 150 pounds. It has carried at least a 200 pound person on its back with no complaint. It can go roughly 8-10 mph at top speed. We suspect that with a more powerful motor controller, we would be able to climb a set of stairs, thanks in large part to its impeccably-designed center-of-gravity. It did not require any welding, only tapping, to build. In short, this thing is indestructible (except, like the Wicked Witch of the West, when exposed to water). Note carefully that I didn't mention any mechanical engineers in our group. This is because there were none. Our entire robot was designed and built almost single-handedly by my previous partner in crime who is responsible for the wooden robot, Dan Landers. In several months he accomplished the following: hundreds of iterations of 3D design in CAD software, built a full-size wooden prototype as a proof-of-concept, learned to work with metal, and finally built the exact physical manifestation of his 3D model in metal using a CNC machine and waterjet cutter, without ever having done something like this before. He is an amazing specimen that is now helping out with a 14-foot rideable hexapod. I tremble to think what he will work on next. One really neat thing my partner custom-designed and built is a mechanical device called a tensioner. In its normal form, this thing takes up slack in something such as a chain (like on a bicycle). In this case, it gives tension to our robot's treads. When our robot runs over an obstacle the treads deform, causing them to tighten around the sprockets and load-bearing wheels. With this tensioner, most of that squeezing force goes into squeezing the spring in the direction indicated by the arrow. This helps the treads stay firmly on our robot, just where they should be. As for the electrical components, our robot is powered by a battery of nine 14.8V Lithium Polymer, er, batteries for a total of 45Ah. These are stepped down to 12V using a DC-to-DC converter in order to power both our on-board peripherals and 12V brushed DC motors. We custom-built an H-Bridge for our motor controls (quite a project!), but this proved to be the source of a lot of issues. We watched many times as the magic smoke left our electronic components from the massive current our motors drew on startup. In the future, we would probably look more into an off-the-shelf motor driver, despite their expense. The H-bridge is attached to an Arduino that outputs PWM signals. The Arduino is attached via serial port to the brains of the robot, our EEE PC (which is snuggled lovingly inside a Pelican box). Software / User Interface Since our hardware is made up of heterogeneous components cobbled together, we needed software to let all these things talk to each other. That was my job. As the only person with extensive software experience, I had the privilege of writing all the code for this project. This was a great excuse to play around with Node.js and learn JavaScript better. Here are all the things you can do from the web interface: Control the robot's speed and direction using your keyboard's arrow buttons or the web buttons View live webcam footage and control it (including pan/tilt, night vision, and audio) Drop WiFi repeater units to extend robot's range View robot and repeater positions in real-time on a map using on-board GPS View repeater signal strengths in real-time View the status of the interface's connection to the robot Begin replaying the robot's movements backward if it loses its WiFi connection Run over everything So how does this thing work? In order to speed up development time and reduce development complexity, I volunteered my EEE PC running Ubuntu Linux to be the brains of our robot. With its solid-state drive and small form factor, it proved to be a good candidate to stow on-board the robot. From this computer, we ran a node.js web server that served the user interface and communicated with our on-board peripherals. Given my previous experience in web development, a web interface was the only thing I was qualified to make. Luckily, a web interface has the advantage of working on pretty much any device with a web browser (including laptops, tablets, and phones), which means no specialized hardware is needed to control our robot. And given the recent development of websockets, we were able to control our robot in real-time from a web browser. Also, given that our robot is processing a wide variety of data asynchronously, an event-driven model makes a lot of sense, and this is exactly what node.js provides. I find it highly amusing that this robot is written almost entirely in JavaScript. To see for yourself view the open source code on Github. Conclusion We are all very proud of our accomplishment in building this robot. It performs near flawlessly exactly as we intended and is utterly badass. If you have any questions, please feel free to email me and I will answer to the best of my abilities. Here is us looking attractive with our robot: Updates May 10, 2013. We are still alive! The WiFi router died, the netbook died, somebody jumped on and broke the antenna during a demo, and we broke the drivetrain by trying to have the robot tow a car, but we are still alive! We ripped out all the broken parts and replaced them with new parts (including replacing the netbook with a Rascal Micro so we're not using node.js anymore) and revamped the user interface so now we can get decent analog control using multitouch on our phones. Check out the video below to see the improved robot in action! February 15, 2013. We did the Harlem Shake with Artisan's Asylum. October 13, 2012. We took Bobak to Maker Faire Somerville and had a blast showing it off. We even discovered a wonderful new capability that we will soon post here. For the Faire, we attempted to switch to an alternate RC control scheme not using the onboard-wifi network at all, but it turns out that this creates a huge, battery-destroying current so nevermind that for now! An experimental phone/tablet control interface is in the works, too. October 7, 2012. On the weekend of September 29, we took the robot to Maker Faire NYC! Woohoo! At the last minute we swapped in some new motors without testing them, but luckily they worked wonderfully! Except on the last day when we decided to drive it the mile back to the parking lot and they overheated and started smoking on a street corner in Queens, New York. Fun! We're mentioned twice in this article on BuzzFeed, here in Hack-a-day, and in the slideshow in this WNYC article. Here are a few pictures (credit Mara Smith): September 17, 2012. Here's the robot's TV debut on SpikeTV! Also here are some excellent pictures taken by Brooks Canaday for an interview with News@Northeastern. August 29, 2012. We are touring with the robot! We are taking the robot to New York City twice in September. First, we are filming a segment for Spike TV's All Access Weekly in Times Square that will air September 13. Then for September 29 and 30, we will have the robot at Maker Faire New York! Come say hi! August 11, 2012. We completely rewired the entire robot, making things more organized, modular, and neater. In addition, we used some new motor controllers that can easily handle the kind of current we draw from the motors. What does this mean? Faster, stronger robot. With these fixes, we took it to Maker Faire in Providence, Rhode Island where we did a live demo. Unfortunately one of our gearboxes broke. We will be fixing that in the meantime and running more tests. Below is a picture of us at Maker Faire teaching children how to make world-destroying robots. August 6, 2012. We were in Engadget! Below is a picture of our robot next to the friggin' Mars rover on the front page of Engadget.
Oregon's Jeff Merkley Becomes First Senator To Endorse Bernie Sanders Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley announced his endorsement of Bernie Sanders for president Wednesday in The New York Times. He is the first U.S. senator to endorse Sanders. ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST: In the Senate, it is now 40 to 1. That's 40 Senate endorsements for Hillary Clinton, one for Bernie Sanders. That endorsement came this morning on the op-ed page of The New York Times. It's from Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, who's in the studio with us. Welcome to the program. JEFF MERKLEY: Well, thanks so much. It's great to be with you. SIEGEL: What do you see as Sen. Sanders' path to victory given Hillary Clinton's significant lead in pledged delegates and popular vote? MERKLEY: Well, I'm going to leave the analysis of the challenge to others. Certainly, it is an uphill climb, but amazing things can happen in campaigns. My motivation is really to call to - for support for the candidate that I think has the strong, bold vision of where America needs to go on the biggest issues facing our nation. SIEGEL: There's been some criticism of Bernie Sanders that he might be in out of his depth when he was questioned about how he would break up the banks by the Daily News editorial board. He seemed to not have any good answer for the most important issue he's been raising. Is he really experienced enough to run the country? MERKLEY: Absolutely. We're blessed with two candidates on the Democratic side who bring a tremendous amount of experience. But you have to look at the entirety of their record. Bernie Sanders was a tremendous mayor of Burlington. He reshaped the city, reshaped the waterfront. He brought in a minor-league team - baseball team that put that city on a great course of livability. He proceeded in the House to be the most effective House member out of 430 in offering amendments, amendments targeted to assist the middle class and the families that are struggling in America. He came to the Senate; he forged a bipartisan coalition around a major veterans bill. And he's done that just time and time again. And he's been such a clear voice on these big challenges in our financial system, in our health care system and certainly when it comes to the issue of living-wage jobs. SIEGEL: In your op-ed page article endorsing Sen. Sanders, you mentioned how impressed you are with his positions on the environment, on the banks, on middle-class economics. You don't mention health care and you don't mention free public college tuition. And I'm just curious, given your experience in the U.S. Senate and having been there for the Affordable Care Act being passed, having been there for the last couple of rounds of what they called the doc fix, when the Senate tried to control reimbursement rates for physicians - do you think the U.S. Senate or the Congress generally is four years away from approving a single-payer health care system? MERKLEY: No, the challenge I had in my editorial was simply you only get so many inches on the page. SIEGEL: Yeah. MERKLEY: And certainly, Bernie Sanders deserves a lot of credit for pushing forward a vision of affordable college education and certainly career technical education as well. SIEGEL: But are those positions that you, based on your experience of the Senate, that you believe could actually become law in the next president's four-year term? MERKLEY: Well, we've just seen the state of Oregon essentially make community college free. It's a last-dollar-in strategy on top of what the federal government is already doing. And the point is to lay out of a vision of where we need to get to. Realize that right now students going to college in America face a financial gauntlet that discourages many of them at the time they think of going to college and discourages many more back when they're in junior high, affecting the entire path of their life. That is not an American Dream vision for our nation. SIEGEL: Well, it's not quite a yes. It's - you're not quite saying yes, I can imagine us within four years going to free public higher education and a single-payer health care system. I don't hear you agreeing... MERKLEY: No, I think... SIEGEL: ...With that. MERKLEY: ...That that vision is out of reach. But the underlying point of laying out a vision is to move the nation in that direction. And each time that Bernie Sanders had laid out a vision, he's been willing to take modest steps in the direction as we go. And so that is important to understand. For example, in the Affordable Care Act, he pushed very hard - I was on the committee - to greatly expand our federally-qualified health centers. Those are the health clinics in our neighborhoods and rural areas and urban areas that are the front-door to affordable health care. And so that was a huge accomplishment doing that. But that's an example of being willing to take an important step that's within reach. SIEGEL: If Hillary Clinton wins a pledged-delegate majority, should Sen. Sanders endorse her? MERKLEY: Absolutely - and vice-versa... SIEGEL: Even if that happens several weeks before the convention. MERKLEY: Yes, I think that once you have a clear victor in the primary, the two sides need to come together. It's important for whoever wins to reach out. You have two individuals who are, again, very capable. Both of them are a hundred times better than anyone running on the Republican side of the ticket. And to the success of our nation, they need to work together. They must work together. And both sides need to make that happen hand-in-hand. SIEGEL: Sen. Jeff Merkley, a Democrat of Oregon - first senator to endorse Bernie Sanders for president - thanks for talking with us. MERKLEY: You're very welcome. Thank you. Copyright © 2016 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
The Baltimore Orioles have taken their seven-year offer to slugger Chris Davis for approximately $150 million off the table, a source told ESPN MLB Insider Buster Olney on Thursday. According to a source, the Orioles didn't raise the offer -- "not a nickel" -- since Wednesday, before deciding to pull it back. It's possible the talks will resume where they last left off -- the two sides spoke as recently as Wednesday -- but one source said the Orioles are going about the business of remaking the team for 2016, whether it includes Davis or not, and pursuing other players. Chris Davis has hit 159 home runs over the past four seasons, including 47 in 2015. Brace Hemmelgarn/Getty Images "There's a lot of rumors out there, lot of interest," Orioles general manager Dan Duquette said Thursday. "But now's the time of the year to buckle down and for people to make choices, what they're going to do with their teams and for players to choose what teams they're going to play for. "I believe we're making a little progress on figuring out how we're going to put our team together this year. I always like to try to get the core of the team before Christmas, but it doesn't always work that way. Sometimes you need patience, and sometimes you've got to move. We're moving on the things we can move on, and I can see our team being pretty good next year." Davis led the majors with 47 home runs in 2015, and he's hit 159 homers over the past four seasons -- more than any player on the free-agent market. He was second in the American League with 117 RBIs in 2015, but he also led the majors with 208 strikeouts. Despite being prone to slumps at the plate, Davis has been valued for his prodigious power. A lefty slugger, he is the only player in the past five seasons to hit at least 50 home runs in a season, blasting 53 for the Orioles in 2013. Davis, who turns 30 in March, has also played at third base and right field since arriving in Baltimore before the 2011 season.
The new year will mark a change for public housing across the nation. Smoking will no longer be allowed. Last week the department of U.S. Housing and Urban Development announced that the law has been approved. Now, the housing agencies will have 18 months to implement smoke-free policies. We talked to several public housing residents who smoke, and they say this isn't going to be an easy change. Danny Slaughter has lived in Bristol, Virginia public housing for 10 years. He smokes two packs of cigarettes a day and says he's tried to quit, but can't. "If they do this then I will have to move from here," Slaughter said. The new law prohibits using tobacco products in living units, indoor common areas, and administrative offices. You will also have to be 25 feet away from the housing to smoke outside. At Edgemont Towers in Bristol, Tennessee, it's a tough sell for some. "I just think it's totally ludicrous" "I don't have enough money I can't move out, go somewhere else. And I smoked all my life and I just don't think it's fair." One resident I spoke with, who doesn't mind that others smoke, doesn't want it in her personal space. "If they come in and light up, I'll ask them not to do that because I don't smoke and I don't want it in the house," Selby Shelton. Steve Scyphers is the executive director of the Bristol Housing Authority. While he supports the new law, he knows enforcing it is going to be difficult. "We've known for quite sometime that this was coming, but just to be honest, we've been avoiding it because we're dreading it," he said. Scyphers said the only way they'll be able to catch someone is if a neighbor says they saw someone smoking. This is a big concern for people living at Edgemont Towers, who consider it a large community. "My concern is that it's gonna cause residents against residents because they're gonna be policing each other. the ones who don't smoke are gonna be policing the ones who do," resident Carol Holt said. For the people living in the public housing, it all comes down to doing what they want where they live. "If you're old enough to smoke, you ought to be allowed to smoke in your own home without being bothered by people you're not hurting nobody but yourself," Slaughter said. Steve Scyphers tells us in Bristol, Tennessee, about 1,200 people live in public housing. He estimates more than 50% of their adult residents are smokers. He also said residents will get one warning before the possibility of eviction. Some people we talked to say they'll move out if they can't smoke in their homes. But, if housing in Bristol, Tennessee drops below 97% occupied, they'll lose funding.
However, of late it's been at the forefront of this league and I have read a lot of people having problems with it, as well as some suggesting it needs to be nerfed/removed/changed. Hopefully this post will provide some insight into what went into this item. Also, to preface, the design process and experience I had will be very different to what more recent diamond/eternal supporters had. I actually had a fantastic time and felt like all my ideas were discussed and considered. The background For those of you who did not play back then, it is important to understand the state of the game at the time. The design of this item began in open beta, during the challenge leagues of Anarchy/Onslaught. For those of you who were not playing at the time, Energy Shield dominated the game. Kaom's Heart was another similarly powerful item, but it did not drop in the challenge leagues. The most powerful builds tend to rely on Energy Shield, usually low-life with Shavronne's but Chaos Innoculation builds also were common. Mana was a very different animal at the time. The only use mana had was to reserve as many auras as humanly possible and that was it. Eldritch Battery was not used a lot, except in very specific builds. I sought to change this. On the 20th of July, 2013, I sent the following to Rory to begin the process. " When it comes down to it, I am not too interested in creating a very powerful unique, I only wish to create a very unique item that spawns creative thinking into building characters around it. I have been thinking about it for the last few days, and I feel that there is not enough of an incentive to stack as much mana as possible. If you are familiar with the skill Energy Shield from Diablo 2, it was one of the few builds that encouraged stacking energy over vitality. One idea I had was making my item do something similar. Perhaps make the item work in such a way that instead of stacking health (or energy shield) you have the option to stack mana if you use this unique. I don't believe even with Eldritch Battery anybody has tried to really push the limits of how much total mana one could stack. I have a goal in mind already, my only question is how to reach this goal. I love items that you are forced to build characters around, ones that create a niche of their own. Even ones that make you need to perform a lot of calculations to make it perfect in a build. One example I can think of off the top of my head is the Facebreaker item. It is truly unique, spawns a number of builds based on this item and this item alone. At the same time, it is not an end game unique that almost every build wants to get (like a Kaom's heart).When it comes down to it, I am not too interested in creating a very powerful unique, I only wish to create a very unique item that spawns creative thinking into building characters around it. I have been thinking about it for the last few days, and I feel that there is not enough of an incentive to stack as much mana as possible. If you are familiar with the skill Energy Shield from Diablo 2, it was one of the few builds that encouraged stacking energy over vitality. One idea I had was making my item do something similar. Perhaps make the item work in such a way that instead of stacking health (or energy shield) you have the option to stack mana if you use this unique. I don't believe even with Eldritch Battery anybody has tried to really push the limits of how much total mana one could stack. Sounds reasonable enough? I had also requested a way to IM with Rory in order to brainstorm ideas easier. It was great that he agreed, I truly believe it wouldn't have turned out half as nicely without that. Let's begin. Early ideas It seems odd that after talking about D2's Energy Shield that we talked about a slew of different ideas on how to make mana a more desired resource, doesn't it? At the beginning, I was given to understand that health and mana worked off different systems and could not be made to easily interacted with each other. So we had to be creative with it came to making mana a defense. One of our first ideas was armour getting boosted by your maximum mana. It sounded simple enough on paper and seemed to allow mana to be slightly more desirable, but the problem was that it was simply a case of it being too boring. Did it really matter after a certain point of armour? This idea was scrapped soon after. Moving on, another idea that I pitched was a mod that checked how much damage the character took, and if it exceeded x% of your health, it hit your mana instead. This was also quickly scrapped because not only was it similarly annoying to code, it was also incredibly wordy to put on an item! Now we come to the idea that we stayed with the longest. I suggested that it might be cool for the item to be found an a low level and "grow" with the character. Rory suggested the idea that the item gave you benefits for specific plateaus of maximum mana reached. For example, when you reached 1000 mana, it would give you a defensive boost. When you reached 2000, it would give you another one on top of that. When you reached 5000.. you get the idea. This was an incredibly neat idea, to be honest. It allowed us to let the item drop at a very low level, because it really did grow with the character. Problems came up when we talked about how long the item could scale with future additions to the game. What if, in the future, 5000 mana was something everybody and their dog could reach? The item would be worthless. Call it a selfish desire to see the item not possibly fall into obscurity, but there you have it. We chose to scrap this idea too. Finally, another idea we had was a mod similar to Cloak of Flame. The mod was going to be x% of physical damage taken as cold, where that x was determined by your mana. There were two problems with this. One was that Lightning Coil was due to come out soon. The second was that, once again, it was incredibly wordy. Settling on the mod Eventually, we circled back to the original mod that I pitched. What about % damage taken as mana before life? Was there a way to creatively program this? Rory eventually asked them because he agreed that it was probably the most interesting idea we had come up with and they agreed to program this interaction. Success! We talked about the number a little, starting with 50%, before coming back down to 30%, fearing that it might end up being too powerful. With this starting point, testing began. Initial screenshot of the test item. The flavor text is awesome! The product of testing Feedback was incredibly positive. I was told that playing with this mod was incredibly fun and rewarding. So much that GGG wanted to make this affix a keystone. I was incredibly taken aback, but quite happy. We talked about allowing the keystone to stack with item, but decided against it. While it would have been cool to have a dedicated mana build that focused, we were concerned that it would lead every build that ever took the keystone to need the unique, and vice versa. Similarly, we talked about it's interaction with energy shield, and chose to not allow it to interact. This was for two reasons. For one, we were unsure how popular the item would actually be, and chose to err on the side of caution and not add on to current ES dominance. Secondly, degen effects were one of the biggest drawbacks to this build, and we were concerned going CI would completely negate that. Finally, we had to talk about what would differentiate the keystone and the unique. I had known from the get go that the keystone would be far away from Eldritch Battery, so saving points was certainly a thing. In addition, since the item did not have any defensive options such as life or resists, we decided to give it Mana Regen, which was incredibly unique and remains one of the only ways to get mana regen on a chest. We also made it 10% stronger than the keystone. Do keep in mind that despite all this, Rory was not sure if it would be used a lot. He was right. During the first league that it released in, the item was barely worth a few chaos orbs. It took people a long time to recognize how to build around the item. The release trailer and leak Everybody who played close to release probably remembers the teaser videos that followed. One of them happened to mouse over the keystone, which was called Mana Shield. It invited huge speculation into it's properties and everything else. I tried to resist the desire to post anything, and for the most part succeeded. Of course, Mana Shield was just a placeholder name, but nobody knew that! Base Item and Rarity Recall that I had no intention of creating an end game overpowered unique. I wanted something accessible and easy to find, like Facebreakers. However, I had to balance between easily accessible and a high enough base item so that it's base stats were not horrible. Merciless Ledge was one of the most popular farming spots, so I just requested that the item drop there. This would allow most people to start focusing on the item as soon as they entered merciless. Originally, I had requested a pure INT base. However, we later changed this because Rory suggested that giving it a DEX/INT base might inspire Evasion builds that made use of this affix. In fact, some believed that Evasion builds would make use of the affix the best. I agreed. It was a choice between Crimson Raiment and Lacquered Garb, and went with the Garb. Artwork and Flavor Text I had always wanted the item to be a shadowy cloak. The artwork really does reflect that. I think they did a great job. The blue runes that lie on the item was an idea a friend of mine had to enhance it's mystique. Above was the finished concept artwork. I loved it. I had left the flavor text entirely up to GGG, and think they did an amazing job. Name Interestingly, I had always intended for the item to be called Cloak of Defiance, so that was not a very long discussion. Daresso's Defiance was also coming out soon, so there was some concerns as to name clashes. However, it was soon clarified that there were no issues, and the name stuck. The keystone had a much longer history. From my understanding, the names changed quite a lot. As you can see, the keystone had yet another name when I was shown the finished product! Eventually, the name was changed to Mind over Matter, which is the name it released with. Goals As stated, my goal was always to make mana something more than an aura dump. I wanted to create a different defensive option available to players who built around it. Creating a keystone was a simple side-effect that I had not intended. It was really cool to contribute to the game in an immortal way like that. I hope it was towards the improvement of the game and not otherwise. The item itself, as I stated, was supposed to be very niche. It was never supposed to be popular or FOTM or anything of the sort. You can imagine my surprise when it became so over the last league. If it's power has to be tuned down, so be it. As long as it is a niche build-around-me unique, my goals have been accomplished. Closing Rory was amazing to work with. I can't tell you how much fun it was to brainstorm with him. We spent quite a bit of time discussing ideas. I have heard that newer designers don't have the same level of interaction, and that's a shame. To future designers, be very clear with what you want your item to do. It is the best way to make it a reality. Don't jump from idea to idea, have a focused path and a focused goal. As long as that focused idea is inherently an interesting one, you can be sure that the item has the capacity to turn out amazing. I hope plenty of people have enjoyed playing with both the unique and the keystone. I put a lot of time and effort into it. Rory was also responsible for a lot of it. Hopefully it's something people enjoy using for years to come! - Hrishi Hello everyone. Quite a while ago, I helped with the design of Cloak of Defiance as well as the keystone, Mind over Matter. I had originally not intended to post up something with insight into it's design, because I had intended for the item to be one of those niche items that only a few fanatical users would cling onto and use.However, of late it's been at the forefront of this league and I have read a lot of people having problems with it, as well as some suggesting it needs to be nerfed/removed/changed. Hopefully this post will provide some insight into what went into this item.Also, to preface, the design process and experience I had will be very different to what more recent diamond/eternal supporters had. I actually had a fantastic time and felt like all my ideas were discussed and considered.For those of you who did not play back then, it is important to understand the state of the game at the time. The design of this item began in open beta, during the challenge leagues of Anarchy/Onslaught. For those of you who were not playing at the time, Energy Shield dominated the game. Kaom's Heart was another similarly powerful item, but it did not drop in the challenge leagues. The most powerful builds tend to rely on Energy Shield, usually low-life with Shavronne's but Chaos Innoculation builds also were common.Mana was a very different animal at the time. The only use mana had was to reserve as many auras as humanly possible and that was it. Eldritch Battery was not used a lot, except in very specific builds. I sought to change this.On the 20th of July, 2013, I sent the following to Rory to begin the process.Sounds reasonable enough? I had also requested a way to IM with Rory in order to brainstorm ideas easier. It was great that he agreed, I truly believe it wouldn't have turned out half as nicely without that.Let's begin.It seems odd that after talking about D2's Energy Shield that we talked about a slew of different ideas on how to make mana a more desired resource, doesn't it?At the beginning, I was given to understand that health and mana worked off different systems and could not be made to easily interacted with each other. So we had to be creative with it came to making mana a defense.One of our first ideas was armour getting boosted by your maximum mana. It sounded simple enough on paper and seemed to allow mana to be slightly more desirable, but the problem was that it was simply a case of it being too boring. Did it really matter after a certain point of armour? This idea was scrapped soon after.Moving on, another idea that I pitched was a mod that checked how much damage the character took, and if it exceeded x% of your health, it hit your mana instead. This was also quickly scrapped because not only was it similarly annoying to code, it was also incredibly wordy to put on an item!Now we come to the idea that we stayed with the longest. I suggested that it might be cool for the item to be found an a low level and "grow" with the character. Rory suggested the idea that the item gave you benefits for specific plateaus of maximum mana reached.For example, when you reached 1000 mana, it would give you a defensive boost. When you reached 2000, it would give you another one on top of that. When you reached 5000.. you get the idea.This was an incredibly neat idea, to be honest. It allowed us to let the item drop at a very low level, because it really did grow with the character. Problems came up when we talked about how long the item could scale with future additions to the game. What if, in the future, 5000 mana was something everybody and their dog could reach? The item would be worthless. Call it a selfish desire to see the item not possibly fall into obscurity, but there you have it. We chose to scrap this idea too.Finally, another idea we had was a mod similar to Cloak of Flame. The mod was going to be x% of physical damage taken as cold, where that x was determined by your mana. There were two problems with this. One was that Lightning Coil was due to come out soon. The second was that, once again, it was incredibly wordy.Eventually, we circled back to the original mod that I pitched. What about % damage taken as mana before life? Was there a way to creatively program this? Rory eventually asked them because he agreed that it was probably the most interesting idea we had come up with and they agreed to program this interaction. Success!We talked about the number a little, starting with 50%, before coming back down to 30%, fearing that it might end up being too powerful. With this starting point, testing began.Initial screenshot of the test item. The flavor text is awesome!Feedback was incredibly positive. I was told that playing with this mod was incredibly fun and rewarding. So much that GGG wanted to make this affix a keystone. I was incredibly taken aback, but quite happy.We talked about allowing the keystone to stack with item, but decided against it. While it would have been cool to have a dedicated mana build that focused, we were concerned that it would lead every build that ever took the keystone to need the unique, and vice versa.Similarly, we talked about it's interaction with energy shield, and chose to not allow it to interact. This was for two reasons. For one, we were unsure how popular the item would actually be, and chose to err on the side of caution and not add on to current ES dominance. Secondly, degen effects were one of the biggest drawbacks to this build, and we were concerned going CI would completely negate that.Finally, we had to talk about what would differentiate the keystone and the unique. I had known from the get go that the keystone would be far away from Eldritch Battery, so saving points was certainly a thing. In addition, since the item did not have any defensive options such as life or resists, we decided to give it Mana Regen, which was incredibly unique and remains one of the only ways to get mana regen on a chest. We also made it 10% stronger than the keystone.Do keep in mind that despite all this, Rory was not sure if it would be used a lot. He was right. During the first league that it released in, the item was barely worth a few chaos orbs. It took people a long time to recognize how to build around the item.Everybody who played close to release probably remembers the teaser videos that followed. One of them happened to mouse over the keystone, which was called Mana Shield. It invited huge speculation into it's properties and everything else. I tried to resist the desire to post anything, and for the most part succeeded.Of course, Mana Shield was just a placeholder name, but nobody knew that!Recall that I had no intention of creating an end game overpowered unique. I wanted something accessible and easy to find, like Facebreakers. However, I had to balance between easily accessible and a high enough base item so that it's base stats were not horrible.Merciless Ledge was one of the most popular farming spots, so I just requested that the item drop there. This would allow most people to start focusing on the item as soon as they entered merciless.Originally, I had requested a pure INT base. However, we later changed this because Rory suggested that giving it a DEX/INT base might inspire Evasion builds that made use of this affix. In fact, some believed that Evasion builds would make use of the affix the best. I agreed. It was a choice between Crimson Raiment and Lacquered Garb, and went with the Garb.I had always wanted the item to be a shadowy cloak. The artwork really does reflect that. I think they did a great job. The blue runes that lie on the item was an idea a friend of mine had to enhance it's mystique.Above was the finished concept artwork. I loved it.I had left the flavor text entirely up to GGG, and think they did an amazing job.Interestingly, I had always intended for the item to be called Cloak of Defiance, so that was not a very long discussion. Daresso's Defiance was also coming out soon, so there was some concerns as to name clashes. However, it was soon clarified that there were no issues, and the name stuck.The keystone had a much longer history. From my understanding, the names changed quite a lot.As you can see, the keystone had yet another name when I was shown the finished product!Eventually, the name was changed to Mind over Matter, which is the name it released with.As stated, my goal was always to make mana something more than an aura dump. I wanted to create a different defensive option available to players who built around it.Creating a keystone was a simple side-effect that I had not intended. It was really cool to contribute to the game in an immortal way like that. I hope it was towards the improvement of the game and not otherwise.The item itself, as I stated, was supposed to be very niche. It was never supposed to be popular or FOTM or anything of the sort. You can imagine my surprise when it became so over the last league. If it's power has to be tuned down, so be it. As long as it is a niche build-around-me unique, my goals have been accomplished.Rory was amazing to work with. I can't tell you how much fun it was to brainstorm with him. We spent quite a bit of time discussing ideas. I have heard that newer designers don't have the same level of interaction, and that's a shame.To future designers, be very clear with what you want your item to do. It is the best way to make it a reality. Don't jump from idea to idea, have a focused path and a focused goal. As long as that focused idea is inherently an interesting one, you can be sure that the item has the capacity to turn out amazing.I hope plenty of people have enjoyed playing with both the unique and the keystone. I put a lot of time and effort into it. Rory was also responsible for a lot of it. Hopefully it's something people enjoy using for years to come!- Hrishi Last edited by Hrishi on Oct 20, 2014, 2:53:12 AM Last bumped on Mar 17, 2016, 10:38:21 PM
The once lush mountainsides in parts of the British Virgin Islands are now bare. In Road Town, the capital city nestled on the island of Tortola, hillsides are strewn with broken branches, roofing materials, and cars, some of them blown upside-down. Many homes have been stripped down to their frames. Many businesses are gone. We spent day on Virgin Gorda helping with water, supplies, shelter. Incredible spirit from everyone here https://t.co/U0m3Kf1APM #Irma pic.twitter.com/t0BinWSIdg — Richard Branson (@richardbranson) September 8, 2017 The governor said there have been reports of casualties from Hurricane Irma, which hit the British Virgin Islands on Wednesday afternoon as ferocious Category 5 storm. Irma cut electricity throughout the islands and knocked out other vital communications infrastructure, essentially leaving the British Virgin Islands’ 35,000 residents largely isolated not only from each other but also from the rest of the world. There are few ways for them to know when the British government is sending help — or whether it will get there before Hurricane Jose threatens to strike. [Hurricane Irma will batter Florida and ‘devastate the United States,’ officials warn] Several calls placed to people on the British Virgin Islands on Friday morning were met with error messages and busy signals. When calls went through, sometimes those on the other end could not hear. When a call finally connected to a local newspaper editor on Tortola, he said that he had ridden out Irma with a few dozen others in a choir loft at St. George’s Episcopal Church. “It’s just carnage here,” said Freeman Rogers, a Road Town resident and the editor of the BVI Beacon. “One concern right now is Hurricane Jose, whether or not it's going to hit us and how hard,” he said, explaining in a phone interview that people are running low on food and water, clean clothes and medical supplies. “People don’t have roofs. It'd be really rough if we got hit with another big hurricane.” Rogers, originally from South Carolina, was able to get online Thursday and post a story and photo on his newspaper's website. Reporting from a churchyard, he touched on this key concern: “Communications are mostly down and many homes are largely inaccessible because roads are blocked with vehicles, telephone poles, roofing metal and other debris.” He asked a Post reporter Friday to help him look up conditions on Hurricane Jose — now a strengthening Category 4 storm that could threaten these islands with tropical storm conditions by Saturday night. On Wednesday, as Irma barreled toward the islands, Rogers and his girlfriend had put their cat, Bamboo, in a safer area in the hallway in their home and fled. “We came to the shelter because we were worried the roof would blow off,” he said. The original shelter, a small building outside the church, started losing its metal roofing, Rogers said, so people sought shelter inside the sanctuary, where windows and doors had already been ripped from the hinges. Rogers said some friends hid in bathrooms at home, “literally holding onto each other so they wouldn't blow away.” The cat, Rogers said, survived. [What’s in the path of Hurricane Irma] Thousands of miles away in Los Angeles, Sarah Thompson, who lives on the west end of Tortola on Frenchman's Cay, had spoken Wednesday morning to her husband, Christian. Thompson, a British attorney, had gone to see friends on the West Coast during what she and her husband thought would be a mere tropical storm. He was hunkering down in their island home. Abruptly, she lost all communication. She tried to call and text him back, she said, but her messages would not go through. She said she heard nothing until early Thursday, when she received a text from the wife of one of his friends: “Using a tourist’s phone. We are all okay. Please let everyone know.” Thompson tried to call and text back — getting crossed phone lines, or nothing at all. Pleasure craft lie in Paraquita Bay as Hurricane Irma passed Tortola, British Virgin Islands, on Sept. 6, 2017. (Ron Gurney/Handout via Reuters) British Virgin Islands Gov. Gus Jaspert acknowledged in a message on Facebook there was a frustrating vacuum of information because communications infrastructure was down across the islands. “I know many of you are concerned about what will happen in the short term over the next couple of hours and days,” he said, encouraging people seeing the message to “share as widely as you can” because of communications difficulties. “I would like to appeal to you to remain calm and to reassure you that we are doing all that we can to assist you.” British Virgin Island residents — and family members in other places — who were reached by The Washington Post said they understand that the United Kingdom is limited in what it can do until Hurricane Jose passes through. But there is still a sense of frustration — not that the British government isn't responding to the dire need, but that there seems to be no clear strategy, and no good way to communicate it. Prime Minister Theresa May has said that British military personnel have been working “round the clock” to provide relief to the battered islands. British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said Friday the RFA Mounts Bay — a ship carrying aid supplies and a crew capable of repairing damage — was heading to the islands from Anguilla on Friday morning to “distribute humanitarian aid.” The British government has allocated more than $42 million to help victims on the British Virgin Islands, and more than 20 tonnes of shelter kits and solar lanterns were on their way to the Caribbean, according to a press release. [Richard Branson emerges from wine-cellar bunker after Irma ‘utterly devastated’ his private island] Official photos posted on Twitter showed a helicopter hovering over the deck of the ship, which the U.K.'s Department for International Development said was delivering supplies to Anguilla, with promises that more is on the way to the British Virgin Islands. John Duncan, the former governor of the British Virgin Islands, said in a tweet Friday morning that government aid had indeed arrived. #UKaid is on the ground from Mounts Bay - shelter kits to help with #Irma response in Anguilla. More going to British Virgin Islands. pic.twitter.com/SAI6fxrBCf — DFID (@DFID_UK) September 8, 2017 In need of answers, people on Facebook have been posting pleas, urgent information and photos of the destruction. In a Facebook group called BVI Abroad — Hurricane Irma, someone posted a photo Friday showing a ship floating in front of mountainous terrain claiming “confirmed that the British Navy is in the BVI.” The group has also put together an online database “to help friends and family post the status of loved ones in the British Virgin Islands affected by Hurricane Irma. As many know the communications are down in most of the BVI and people are trying to find out if friends and family members in the BVI are safe.” Thompson said she had seen the photo of the apparent navy ship but “there was no chronology of what was going to happen.” “It’s not like the U.K. has been silent on it, but there’s not been a clear message on steps or what’s exactly going to happen,” she said. “In a situation like this, you need a strategy and a timeline, and there’s not been any of that.” The Post tried to contact the governor's office numerous times Friday, but the phone rang continually, then gave a busy signal. For those of you that are wondering about our beloved home of the BVI and the effects of #hurricaneirma...these are some... Posted by Brittany Meyers on Wednesday, September 6, 2017 Thompson answered a call from The Post around sunrise Friday from a hotel room in Los Angeles. With a weary voice, she said she had not slept in 48 hours, too worried about her husband at home in the British Virgin Islands. Seconds later, she got another call. She said it was from someone she did not know — someone who was apparently using a satellite phone in Tortola, calling to give her a message. There was a long silence, then she said she had to phone her family and friends to give them the news. “I just got a call,” she said. “My husband is alive.” Read more: The terrifying worst case scenario for Southeast Florida in Hurricane Irma ‘It’s like someone with a lawn mower from the sky has gone over the island’
Credit supply and the housing boom Alejandro Justiniano, Giorgio Primiceri, Andrea Tambalotti There is no consensus among economists on the forces that drove the historical rise of US house prices and household debt that preceded the Global Crisis. In this column, the authors argue that the fundamental factor behind that boom was an increase in the supply of mortgage credit. This rise was brought about by the diffusion of securitisation and shadow banking, and by a surge in foreign capital inflows. The finding is based on a straightforward interpretation of four key macroeconomic developments between 2000 and 2006, provided by a simple general equilibrium model of housing and credit. The Global Crisis precipitated the worst US recession since the Great Depression. The spectacular rise in house prices and household debt during the first half of the 2000s, which is illustrated in Figures 1 and 2, was a crucial factor behind these events. Yet, economists disagree on the fundamental causes of this credit and housing boom. Figure 1. Real house prices Notes: FHFA is the all-transactions house price index from the Federal Housing and Financing Agency. CoreLogic is the repeated sales national house price index produced by CoreLogic. Both indexes are deflated by the headline consumer price index, and normalized to 100 in 2000Q1. Figure 2. Household mortgages-to-GDP ratio Notes: Household mortgages are nominal home mortgages from the balance sheet of households and nonprofit organizations in the Flow of Funds. GDP is in current prices from the NIPA tables. The higher loan-to-value ratio hypothesis The most common narrative in the macroeconomic literature attributes the surge in debt and house prices to a progressive loosening of collateral requirements for mortgage borrowers, such as those brought about by the diffusion of mortgages with higher initial loan-to-value (LTV) ratios, of multiple mortgages on the same property, and of home equity lines of credit. Several recent papers use quantitative general equilibrium models to explore the implications of these less stringent collateral requirements for house prices and other macroeconomic outcomes (e.g. Favilukis et al. 2013, Bianchi et al. 2012, Boz and Mendoza 2014, Garriga et al. 2012). In all of these models, a collateral constraint limits households' ability to borrow to a fraction of the value of their real estate. When this maximum loan-to-value ratio is relaxed, households can increase their leverage and borrow more. As a result, the demand for both credit and housing increases, boosting home prices. There is little doubt that during the boom collateral requirements became looser, at least for certain borrowers, as documented for instance by Duca et al. (2011), Favilukis et al. (2013), and Geanakoplos (2010). But can higher loan-to-value ratios account qualitatively and quantitatively for the unprecedented increase in house prices and debt, while remaining consistent with other macroeconomic developments during the same period? Two facts suggest that the answer to this question is no. First, if the relaxation of collateral constraints had been widespread, it should have resulted in a surge of mortgage debt relative to the value of real estate. In the data, however, household debt and real estate values rose in tandem, leaving their ratio roughly unchanged over the first half of the 2000s, as shown in Figure 3. In fact, this ratio only spiked when home prices tumbled starting in 2006. Figure 3. Household mortgages-to-real estate ratio Notes: Household mortgages are nominal home mortgages from the balance sheet of households and nonprofit organizations in the Flow of Funds, as in figure 2. Real estate is the market value of real estate also from the Flow of Funds. Second, more relaxed collateral requirements allow borrowers to increase their demand for credit. Therefore, interest rates must rise to convince the lenders to supply the additional funds demanded by the now less constrained borrowers. In the data, however, real mortgage interest rates fell during the 2000s, as shown in Figure 4. Figure 4. Real mortgage interest rates Notes: 30-year conventional mortgage rate minus three different measures of expected inflation from the Survey of Professional Forecasters. 10Y CPI corresponds to the 10-year ahead CPI forecast; 1Y CPI corresponds to the 1-year ahead CPI forecast; 1Y GDPDEF corresponds to the 1-year ahead GDP deflator forecast. The credit supply story The fall in mortgage interest rates depicted in Figure 4 points to a shift in credit supply as a straightforward alternative explanation of the credit and housing boom of the early 2000s. We develop this hypothesis within a simple general equilibrium model in Justiniano et al. (2015). In the model, both borrowing and lending are subject to a friction. On the borrowing side, this friction takes the form of a collateral constraint, as in the rest of the literature. Therefore, changes to this constraint, such as those due to a higher maximum loan-to-value ratio, shift the demand for credit. On the lending side, we model the friction as a limit to the amount of funds that savers can direct towards mortgage finance. This simple lending constraint is equivalent to a leverage restriction on financial intermediaries, along the lines of Brunnermeier and Sannikov (2014) and He and Krishnamurthy (2013). Changes to this constraint then act as credit supply shifters. Lending constraints, which are the main novel feature of our framework, are a simple modelling device to capture a host of technological and institutional factors that restrain the flow of savings into the mortgage market. Starting in the late 1990s, the explosion of securitisation and of market-based financial intermediation, together with changes in the regulatory environment, lowered many of these barriers, increasing the supply of mortgage credit. Among the sources of looser lending constraints, the pooling and tranching of mortgages into mortgage-backed securities (MBS) plays a central role through several channels. First, tranching creates highly rated assets out of pools of risky mortgages. These assets can then be purchased by those institutional investors that are restricted by regulation to only hold fixed-income securities with high ratings. As a result, the boom in securitisation contributed to channel into mortgages a large pool of savings that had previously been directed towards other safe assets, such as government bonds (Brunnermeier 2009). Second, investing in those same senior mortgage-backed-securities tranches freed up intermediary capital, due to their lower regulatory charges. Combined with the rise of off-balance-sheet vehicles, this form of ‘regulatory arbitrage’ allowed banks to increase leverage without raising new capital, expanding their ability to supply credit to mortgage markets (Acharya and Richardson 2009, Acharya et al. 2013). Third, securitisation allowed banks to convert illiquid loans into liquid funds, reducing their funding costs and hence increasing their capacity to lend (Loutskina and Strahan 2009). International factors also played an important role in increasing the supply of funds available to American home buyers, as a ‘glut’ of global savings flowed towards US safe assets, including agency mortgage-backed-securities (Bernanke et al. 2011). Figure 5 plots the effects of a relaxation of lending constraints in a calibrated version of our model. When savers and financial institutions are less restricted in their lending, the supply of credit increases and interest rates fall. Since access to credit requires collateral, the increased availability of funds at lower interest rates makes the existing collateral—houses—scarcer and hence more valuable. As a result of higher real estate values, borrowers can increase their debt, even though their debt-to-collateral ratio remains unchanged. Quantitatively, the responses of debt, house prices, aggregate leverage and mortgage rates reported in Figure 5 match well the empirical facts illustrated in Figure 1 through 4. Figure 5. Response to a change in the lending limit Notes: Response of key macroeconomic variables to a relaxation of the lending constraint, in the calibrated model of Justiniano et al. (2015). Conclusion In this column, we argued that any reconstruction of the fundamental causes of the housing and credit boom that preceded the Great Recession must be consistent with four stylised facts: house prices and debt surged, the ratio of debt to house values was roughly constant, and real mortgage rates fell. From the perspective of these four facts, explanations that rely exclusively on an increase in credit demand associated with more generous credit conditions—for instance in the form of higher loan-to-value ratios—are lacking. On the contrary, a shift in credit supply associated with the emergence of securitisation and shadow banking, is qualitatively and quantitatively consistent with the four facts. This interpretation of the macroeconomic facts has the additional merit of being consistent with the micro-econometric evidence of Mian and Sufi (2009 and 2010). They show that an expansion in credit supply was the fundamental driver of the surge in household debt, and that borrowing against the increased value of real estate accounts for a significant fraction of this build-up in debt. Shifting the focus of the inquiry into the causes of the boom from credit demand to credit supply has potentially important implications for the study of macro-prudential policy, since much of the literature on this topic has tended to model the boom as stemming from looser borrowing constraints. Exploring the normative implications of the alternative view proposed in this article is an exciting avenue for future research. Disclaimer: The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the Federal Reserve Banks of Chicago, New York or the Federal Reserve System. References Acharya, V, and M Richardson (2009), “Causes of the Financial Crisis”, Critical Review, 21, 195–210. Acharya, V V, P Schnabl, P., and G Suarez (2013), “Securitization without risk transfer”, Journal of Financial Economics, 107, 515–536. Bernanke, B, C Bertaut, L Pounder DeMarco, and S Kamin (2011), “International capital flows and the returns to safe assets in the United States, 2003-2007”, International Finance Discussion Papers 1014, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.). Bianchi, J, E Boz, and E Mendoza (2012), “Macroprudential Policy in a Fisherian Model of Financial Innovation”, IMF Economic Review, 60, 223-269. Boz, E, and E Mendoza (2014), “Financial Innovation, the Discovery of Risk, and the U.S. Credit Crisis”, Journal of Monetary Economics, 69, 1-22. 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He, Z, and A Krishnamurthy (2013), “Intermediary Asset Pricing”, American Economic Review, 103, 732-770. Justiniano, A, G E Primiceri, and A Tambalotti (2015), “Credit Supply and the Housing Boom”, CEPR Discussion Paper 10358. Loutskina, E, and P E Strahan (2009), “Securitization and the Declining Impact of Bank Finance on Loan Supply: Evidence from Mortgage Acceptance Rates”, Journal of Finance, 64, 861-889. Mian, A, and A Sufi (2009), “The Consequences of Mortgage Credit Expansion: Evidence from the U.S. Mortgage Default Crisis”, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 124, 1449-1496. Mian, A, and A Sufi (2011), “House Prices, Home Equity-Based Borrowing, and the US Household Leverage Crisis”, American Economic Review, 101, 2132-56.
A growing number of married couples in Korea are opting to have no children as the cost of raising them continues to soar. Statistics Korea on Monday said nine percent of women who tied the knot between 2005 and 2009 have decided not to have children. The proportion has risen from just two percent of those who married between 1980 and 1984. The number of children women now have is also dwindling, with the number of expected children (existing plus planned) among women who got married between 2005 and 2009 at just 1.91. For women who married between 1950 and 1954, the number of expected children was 4.49. That means there will be fewer than 2.1 children born per couple, the minimum number of children necessary to maintain population growth. But in reality, the birthrate among women of childbearing age barely stands at one child.
While the presidential campaign was still in progress it was possible to think that there might be some positive change in America’s broken foreign policy. Hillary Clinton was clearly the candidate of Washington Establishment hawkishness, while Donald Trump was declaring his disinclination for democracy and nation building overseas as well as promoting détente with Russia. Those of us who considered the foreign policy debacle to be the most dangerous issue confronting the country, particularly as it was also fueling domestic tyranny, tended to vote on the basis of that one issue in favor of Trump. On December 1st in Cincinnati, president-elect Donald Trump made some interesting comments about his post-electoral foreign policy plans. There were a lot of good things in it, including his citing of $6 trillion “wasted” in Mideast fights when “our goal is stability not chaos.” And as for dealing with real enemies, he promised to “partner with any nation that is willing to join us in the effort to defeat ISIS and radical Islamic terrorism…” He called it a “new foreign policy that finally learns from the mistakes of the past” adding that “We will stop looking to topple regimes and overthrow governments, folks.” Regarding the apparent inability of governments to thoroughly check out new immigrants prior to letting them inside the country, demonstrated most recently in Nice, Ohio and Berlin, Trump described how “People are pouring in from regions of the Middle East — we have no idea who they are, where they come from what they are thinking and we are going to stop that dead cold. … These are stupid refugee programs created by stupid politicians.” Exaggerated? For sure, but he has a point, and it all is part and parcel of a foreign policy that serves no actual interest for people who already live in the United States. But, as so often with Trump, there was also the flip side. On the looney fringe of the foreign and national security policy agenda, the president-elect oddly believes that “The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.” So to reduce the number of nukes we have to create more of them and put them in more places. Pouring gasoline on a raging fire would be an appropriate analogy and it certainly leads to questions regarding who is advising The Donald with this kind of nonsense. Trump has promised to “put America first,” but there is inevitably a spanner in the works. Now, with the New Year only six days away and the presidential inauguration coming less than three weeks after that, it is possible to discern that the new foreign policy will, more than under Barack Obama and George W. Bush, be driven in significant part by Israeli interests. At least Obama had the good sense to despise Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but that will not be true of the White House after January 20th. Trump’s very first telephone conversation with a foreign head of government after being elected was with Netanyahu and during the campaign, he promised to invite Bibi to the White House immediately after the inauguration. The new president’s first naming of an Ambassador-designate to a foreign nation was of his good friend and bankruptcy lawyer David Friedman to Israel. Friedman had headed Trump’s Israel Advisory Committee and is a notable hard liner who supports the Israeli settler movement, an extreme right-wing political entity that is nominally opposed by existing U.S. government policy as both illegal and damaging to Washington’s interests. Beyond that, Friedman rejects creation of a Palestinian state and supports Israel’s actual annexation of the West Bank. U.S. Ambassadors are supposed to support American interests but Friedman would actually be representing and endorsing a particularly noxious version of Israeli fascism as the new normal in the relationship with Washington. Friedman describes Jerusalem as “the holy capital of the Jewish people and only the Jewish people.” Trump is already taking steps to move the U.S. Embassy there, making the American government unique in having its chief diplomatic mission in the legally disputed city. The move will also serve as a recruiting poster for groups like ISIS and will inflame opinion against the U.S. among friendly Arab states in the region. There is no possible gain and much to lose for the United States and for American citizens in making the move, but it satisfies Israeli hardliners and zealots like Friedman. The Trump team’s animosity towards Iran is also part of the broader Israeli agenda. Iran does not threaten the United States and is a military midget compared either to nuclear armed Israel or the U.S. Yet is has been singled out as the enemy du jour in the Middle East even though it has invaded no one since the seventeenth century. Israel would like to have the United States do the heavy lifting to destroy Iran as a regional power. If Washington were to attempt to do so it would be a catastrophe for all parties involved but that has not stopped hardliners from demanding unrelenting military pressure on Tehran. Donald Trump is not even president yet but he advised Barack Obama to exercise the U.S. veto for the resolution condemning Israeli settlements that was voted on at the United Nations Security Council on Friday, explaining that “As the United States has long maintained, peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians will only come through direct negotiations between the parties, and not through the imposition of terms by the United Nations. This puts Israel in a very poor negotiating position and is extremely unfair to all Israelis.” This is a straight Israeli line that might even have been written by Netanyahu himself. Or by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which fumed “AIPAC is deeply disturbed by the failure of the Obama Administration to exercise its veto to prevent a destructive, one-sided, anti-Israel resolution from being enacted by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). In the past, this administration and past administrations have rejected this type of biased resolution since it undermines prospects for peace. It is particularly regrettable, in his last month in office, that the president has taken an action at odds with the bipartisan consensus in Congress and America’s long history of standing with Israel at the United Nations.” Ah yes, the fabled negotiations for a two state solution, regularly employed to enable Israelis to do nothing while expanding their theft of Arab land and one wonders how Trump would define what is “fair to the Palestinians?” So we are already well into Trump’s adoption of the “always the victim argument” that the Israelis have so cleverly exploited with U.S. politicians and the media. Not content with advising Obama, Trump also reportedly took the Palestinian issue one step further by directly pressuring the sponsoring Egyptians to postpone any submission of the resolution. Expecting to have a friendly president in the White House after January 20th, Egypt’s president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi complied on Thursday but the motion was reintroduced by New Zealand, Venezuela, Senegal and Malaysia on the following day. The resolution passed with 14 yes votes and a courageous U.S. abstention after Obama finally, after eight long years, developed a backbone. But unfortunately, Trump’s interventions suggest that nothing critical of Israel will be allowed to emerge from the U.N. during his term of office. Referring to the U.N. vote, he said that “things will be different after January 20th.” The United Nations resolution produced an immediate reaction from Israeli Firsters in Congress and the media, led by Senator Chuck Schumer and the Washington Post. The Post featured a lead editorial entitled The Obama Administration fires a dangerous parting shot and an op-ed The United States just made Middle East peace harder by no less a redoubtable American hero than Eliot Abrams. Look in vain for any suggestion of what might be construed as an actual U.S. interest in either piece. It is all about Israel, as it always is. The problem with Israel and its friends is that they are never satisfied and never leave the rest of us Americans alone, pushing constantly at what is essentially an open door. They have treated the United States like a doormat, spying on us more than any ostensibly friendly nation while pocketing our $38 billion donation to their expanding state without so much as a thank you. They are shameless. Israel’s ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer has been all over American television sputtering his rage over the United Nations settlements vote. On CNN he revealed that Israel has “clear evidence” that President Obama was “behind” the resolution and he announced his intention to share the information with Donald Trump. Every American should be outraged by Israel’s contempt for us and our institutions. One has to wonder if the mainstream media will take a rest from their pillorying of Russia to cover the story. For many years now, Israel has sought to make the American people complicit in its own crimes while also encouraging our country’s feckless and corrupt leadership to provide their government with political cover and even go to war on its behalf. This has got to stop and, for a moment, it looked like Trump might be the man to end it when he promised to be even-handed in negotiating between the Arabs and Israelis. That was before he promised to be the best friend Israel would ever have. Israel’s quarrels don’t stay in Israel and they are not limited to the foreign policy realm. I have already discussed the pending Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, a bipartisan effort by Congress to penalize and even potentially criminalize any criticism of Israel by equating it to anti-Semitism. Whether Israel itself wants to consider itself a democracy is up to Netanyahu and Israeli voters but the denial of basic free speech rights to Americans in deference to Israeli perceptions should be considered to be completely outrageous. And there’s more. Israel’s government funded lawfare organization Shurat HaDin has long been using American courts to punish Palestinians and Iranians, obtaining punitive damages linked to allegations regarding terrorist incidents that have taken place in Israel. Now Shurat HaDin is using our courts to go after American companies that do business with countries like Iran. Last year’s nuclear agreement with Iran included an end to restraints on the Islamic Republic’s ability to engage in normal banking and commercial activity. As a high priority, Iran has sought to replace some of its aging infrastructure, to include its passenger aircraft fleet. Seattle based Boeing has sought to sell to Iran Air 80 airplanes at a cost of more than $16 billion and has worked with the U.S. government to meet all licensing and technology transfer requirements. The civilian-use planes are not in any way configurable for military purposes, but Shurat HaDin on December 16th sought to block the sale at a federal court in Illinois, demanding a lien against Boeing for the monies alleged to be due to the claimed victims of Iranian sponsored terrorism. Boeing, meanwhile, has stated that the Iran Air order “support(s) tens of thousands of U.S. jobs.” So an agency of the Israeli government is taking steps to stop an American company from doing something that is perfectly legal under U.S. law even though it will cost thousands of jobs here at home. It is a prime example of how much Israel truly cares about the United States and its people. And even more pathetic, the Israel Lobby owned U.S. Congress has predictably bowed down and kissed Netanyahu’s ring on the issue, passing a bill in November that seeks to block Treasury Department licenses to permit the financing of the airplane deal. The New Year and the arrival of an administration with fresh ideas would provide a great opportunity for the United States to finally distance itself from a toxic Israel, but, unfortunately, it seems that everything is actually moving in the opposite direction. Don’t be too surprised if we see a shooting war with Iran before the year is out as well as a shiny new U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem (to be built on land stolen from Palestinians, incidentally). Trump might think he is ushering in a new era of American policy based on American interests but it is beginning to look a lot like same-old same-old but even worse, and Benjamin Netanyahu will be very much in the driver’s seat.
UNLV Libraries, Special Collections Faro featured in 1993 film 'Tombstone' Playing faro (From Bicycle Cards' faro rules) The faro table layout featured 13 playing cards, from ace to king, either glued, laminated or painted on felt, face up. Bets were physically placed on the card or cards the players wanted to win. They also could place a small “copper,” or penny, on a card to bet on the losing card. Or they could split their bets between cards or bet on the high card. A box was used to deal two cards face up, with a spring inside that pushed the deck to the top. The first card dealt was the losing card. The second was the winning card. Bets were paid or collected after each deal of the losing and winning cards. A “casekeeper” would keep track of which cards were played on a small abacus-like device. At the end of the deck, players would “call the turn” by betting the order of the remaining three cards. If they get the order right, the dealer would pay 4-to-1 odds. When Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday holstered their six-guns and sat down at a frontier saloon to gamble, they wouldn’t play poker. The hot game of the Old West was called faro, or farobank. Earp dealt a game at the Oriental saloon in Tombstone, Ariz. Down the street, Doc Holliday picked up extra money as a dealer in the Bird Cage saloon. Gamblers loved it. The hands played fast. A lot of people could play at once, like modern-day craps and roulette. And a smart player could make a fortune “bucking the tiger” — an animal often associated with the game — as the house had only a razor-thin edge. But if you go to a Las Vegas casino today, don’t bother trying to find a faro game. The only faro table you’re likely to see here is at the Clark County Museum. “There wasn’t enough of an edge for the house. So a lot of the casinos just started going away from it,” said Mark Hall-Patton, museum administrator. “They could make more on slot machines and other games.” David Schwartz, director of UNLV’s Center for Gaming Research, said gamblers coming to Las Vegas after World War II were more familiar with craps, which they played in the armed forces. So craps became king. Some of the city’s more famous gamblers, however, continued to play faro at downtown casinos into the late 1950s and early 1960s. Faro was Nick “the Greek” Dandolos’ favorite casino game because it had the lowest house percentages, Hall-Patton said. A profile of Dandolos on pokernews.com says he once played farobank for 40 hours at the Golden Nugget. Michael Gaughan, owner of South Point, remembers as a teenager watching Dandolos and other gamblers play faro at the Las Vegas Club, then owned by Gaughan’s father, Jackie Gaughan. The last place Gaughan remembers that offered the game was the frontier-themed Bonanza Hotel and Casino, which was on the Strip where Bally’s is today, during the 1960s or early 1970s. Gaughan also remembers the Stardust having the game in the 1970s. The last place on record running faro games in Las Vegas was the Bingo Palace, now Palace Station, in 1978 or 1979. “It was a single table, adjacent to the pit area,” said Jim Edwards, who retired in 2010 as the senior agent and the training coordinator for the Nevada Gaming Control Board’s enforcement division. The faro table at the Bingo Palace was open only in evenings and on weekends, he said. The only other working table Edwards saw after that was in Reno, at the Ramada, which had a faro table until 1985. You can try your hand at faro for fun at the Wichita Faro website operated by Sean Gleeson, an Oklahoma City gaming programmer who built the game for fun to demonstrate his programming skills. Gleeson said he tried to get local gaming manufacturer IGT and other companies interested in turning it into an electronic casino game, but nobody was interested. They said because it wasn’t an original game, there was no way to license it, Gleeson said. The heyday for faro was during the California gold rush, Edwards said. It also was played extensively in Nevada after the discovery of the Comstock Lode in 1859 near Virginia City. “The problem with faro is it lent itself quite easily to cheating,” Edwards said. When there were high-limit games for tens of thousands of dollars in Virginia City, there was always a concern about the game being dishonest. The box used to deal the cards could be rigged to misdeal the cards, he said. Players became so concerned about cheating from a gaffed box, they would instead put the deck in the middle of the table and drive a nail through it. The players would then tear off the cards one at a time — which meant they would go through a lot of decks, Edwards said. Gaughan said the game has run its course. “You’ll never see a live faro game in your lifetime,” he said.
All photos by the author This article originally appeared on MUNCHIES Netherlands. It's finally that time of year again. The new season of Game of Thrones is here, and while I can't imagine that you clicked on this article if you don't already love the show, I'd like to stress the fact that this is a big deal. Why? For one, because fans—me included—have been waiting for this season for more than a year. And then also it's a whole thing that people are able to just live their lives for a year and then fully surrender themselves to the violent fantasy world of the Seven Kingdoms for six weeks. Game of Thrones is the place where fantasy and mainstream meet, where sex is just as omnipresent as murder. It's also the place of Hodor Hodor Hodor (please note that if you don't watch the show, you're not going to appreciate my hilarious jokes). But a year is a long time, and we need to recap. Who was who, who murdered whom, who's doing whom, and what the hell is Ed Sheeran doing in that forest? These are all important questions to ask yourself as you dive into the seventh season. To get in the right mood for the new episodes, I decided to combine two of my favorite things: Food and a GoT marathon. When I watch the show, I don't pay much attention to the culinary aspects of things. The series regularly decapitates main characters in full frame, so it's not necessarily super appetizing. But even the Game of Thrones characters enjoy their food—the Westerosi, for example, love pork and wine. So, to properly prepare myself for new kills, explicit sex scenes, and fights with zombies and dragons, I decided to dine like a Westerosi myself. Breakfast Bread, bacon, grapes, and milk. No one in Game of Thrones appears to be a vegetarian, so I mentally prepared myself for a day full of meat. It's 10:00 AM. Normally that would entail yogurt with slices of banana or a boiled egg, but today's menu consists of hard pieces of salted meat and delicious bread. I tear the bread with my bare hands and drink milk like a real wildling. I didn't actually milk a cow for it, but it really feels tough in combination with the rest of my breakfast. I feel primed to fight a beastly battle with dragons and other monsters, because this breakfast is heavy. Especially the bacon that I cooked with Wildfire (or, you know, on my stove). It's suddenly clear to me why everyone in the series wants to fight so often: These beastly breakfasts leave you with a slightly aggressive feeling. With some of the burned bacon still resting between my teeth, I'm looking forward to the other meals I'll be eating today. Lunch Sausage with bread, milk, and wine. It might look a bit sad, sure, but don't forget that meat really fills you up. That's why my battle lust disappeared after lunch, replaced by a desire to take a nap. It's the perfect moment to start the first episode and digest while lazing about on the couch. Instead of milk, I decide to have wine—none of the Game of Thrones characters shy away from alcohol. I adopt the role of the lazy queen who lets servants fight for her and dote upon her with food. Have I reached a Game of Thrones mindset yet? Yes, but mostly because of my full stomach and meat-induced fatigue. I don't get off the couch until an hour later. I blame the lunch wine. Perhaps the excessive alcohol consumption is why everyone wants to kill each other in the Seven Kingdoms: If you have to fight dragons, you're better off drinking beforehand. Snack Cake and dates. I admit it: That's a muffin. I'm just happy I get to eat a meal that isn't entirely comprised of meat for once. I genuinely dislike dates, but it's not like a real Khaleesi would eat a bag of potato chips, so I reluctantly opt for the oversized raisins. I peel the skin off first—not just because the dryness of it bothers me, but out of the pure fear of finding fruit flies in them. Perhaps this is how it feels to see conspiracy theories everywhere—how can you enjoy your food when there's the constant stress that someone out there wants to behead you? The thought isn't a reassuring one, and I'm grateful for the impenetrable television screen between myself and the Seven Kingdoms. I'm loving the distance between me and the Hound, Cersei, Little Finger (I'm totally afraid he's going to do something terrible this season), the White Walkers, dragons, and lest we forget: All the nasty diseases. Dinner Rotisserie chicken, bread, grapes, and beer. This meal is my some of my best work, even though I really didn't do anything for it (I bought this chicken pre-prepared). Microwaves don't exist in the Seven Kingdoms, so it's not like I can heat up a lasagna. This rotisserie chicken with bread and grapes looks like it came straight out of a GoT castle. The poultry is delicious, the grapes are superb, and I just keep drinking wine and beer. I don't feel particularly chic when I tear off a piece of chicken with my teeth, but I've already concluded that, in the world of Game of Thrones, I probably wouldn't have belonged to the most prominent family anyway. Moreover, Westeros doesn't really strike me as the place for a neatly chopped chicken breast. The only bummer is that I'm not really into chewing on bones. But it ultimately doesn't matter because the chicken and alcohol are both nice. Though it might be a bit weird if you're watching the show with friends ("Hi guys! I brought a snacking chicken!"). But I totally recommend it if you're watching solo. If you have a lot of spare time or somehow live in a universe where no one has heard of Game of Thrones, the best idea is to go all in and binge watch it—all the previous seasons in one or two weekends. Stock up on meat, barrels of wine, and kegs of beer, and marathon it all in style. You'll still get the post-dinner lulls, but that's what couches are for. But don't succumb to the fatigue and sleep through all the intricate storylines.
Energy deficit and dietary macronutrient intake are thought to independently modulate cognition, mood and sleep. To what extent manipulating the dietary ratio of protein-to-carbohydrate affects mood, cognition and sleep during short-term energy deficit is undetermined. Using a randomized, block design, 39 non-obese young adults (21±1 years, BMI 25±1 kg/m(2)) consumed diets containing 0.8 g, 1.6 g or 2.4 g protein per kg body weight per day for 31 days. Carbohydrate intake was reduced to accommodate higher protein intakes while dietary fat was maintained at 30% of total energy intake. Cognitive performance, mood, self-reported sleep quality, and plasma amino acid concentrations were periodically assessed during a 10-day energy balance period and a subsequent 21-day, 40% energy deficit period. Anger, tension and total mood disturbance increased during the initial ten days of energy deficit (P<0.05), but by the end of the energy deficit returned to levels not different from those measured during energy balance. No effects of dietary protein-to-carbohydrate ratio on cognitive performance, mood or self-reported sleep quality were observed during energy balance or energy deficit. Thus, high-protein, low-carbohydrate, moderate-fat diets do not appear to benefit or impair cognition, mood or sleep in non-obese adults during energy deficit. These findings suggest that energy deficit may initially be psychologically difficult for non-obese individuals attempting to lose weight, but that these changes are transient. Employing strategies that alleviate decrements in mood during this initial period of adaptation may help sustain weight loss efforts. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01292395. Published by Elsevier Inc.
Ezra Baeli-Wang, a senior fencer studying PWAD and Chinese, was just trying to think of a satirical caption for his sorority girl-esque pic collage when he birthed a brilliant prank. He claimed in his caption that he was signing “a 4 year, $350 million contract with the Montenegro Musketeers” – even though there’s no such thing as professional fencing. And people bought it. “People who know me well know that I’m not an exceptionally talented fencer and no one goes pro in fencing, so I wanted to make an overdramatic Instagram caption about how fencing changed my life,” Ezra said, “then it just got a ridiculous amount of attention.” His post got almost 250 likes on Facebook and almost 400 on Instagram. Ezra said he had convinced a few people he was really going pro. But it really wasn’t until Theophilus Onigbinde, a senior fencer studying Business Administration, joined in that the prank went from good to great. “I thought Ezra’s prank was really funny and I wanted to add fuel to the fire,” Theo said, “I decided to make my caption even crazier.” Theo claimed in his Instagram post that he signed “a 6 year, $500 mil contract commencing in 2020.” Ezra said that ironically, even more people believed them after Theo posted. The guys started to get congratulations posts on Facebook and “great job, man!”s on Instagram. Ezra’s friend Rayna Yvars suggested that they ask UNC’s athletic director, Bubba Cunningham, to be part of the prank because he and Ezra are basically besties. “I’m lucky to have a great working relationship with Bubba through my involvement in Student Athletic Advisory board and other activities,” Ezra said, “he has a great sense of humor. Its a joke that I take a selfie with him every time I see him.” Bubba thought the prank was hilarious and helped organize a fake signing for the guys. They decided to post photos of the signing with even more ridiculous captions to finally get people to understand that this was all an elaborate joke they pulled just because they’re extra. When I asked if anyone was straight disgusted with the joke, Ezra laughed for about 30 seconds before he could reply. “People who are good friends of mine know I get a kick out of being attention grabbing on social media,” he said, “They’re probably sick of it.” The guys and I talked about how little coverage fencing gets at UNC and how that really is what allowed their prank to be possible. Even though it aided their antics this time, they do wish more people understood the sport. “We don’t necessarily want a campus presence, but we do wish that people understood that we take on a D1 workload,” Theo said, “People don’t take the sport seriously because it’s fencing. But people on the team work really hard to be successful athletes. It’s serious.” Successful athletes and successful (albeit accidental) jokesters. Go heels.
There are 18 months until the 2016 presidential election and Sen. Rand Paul is vying for the Republican nomination. But some of his biggest allies in his hours-long talkathon Wednesday haven’t been members of his own party; they’ve been Democrats. Paul took to the Senate floor shortly after 1 p.m. Wednesday in opposition to the National Security Agency’s collection of bulk data and ended his speech just before midnight. Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which is used to authorize that collection, will sunset June 1, sending the Senate into a tailspin as it tries to find a resolution before it leaves for a one-week recess. Fellow Kentuckian and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has urged the Senate to pass a clean reauthorization of the program, but Paul and others have vowed to stand in the way. Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden, who has threatened to filibuster any extension of the Patriot Act, was the first and not all-that-unexpected Democrat to come and speak in support of Paul’s position Wednesday. But he was far from the last. Seven Democrats spoke with Paul, compared with just three Republicans. Wyden’s visit set in motion more Democratic Senate speeches from New Mexico’s Martin Heinrich, West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, Delaware’s Chris Coons, Washington state’s Maria Cantwell, and Connecticut’s Richard Blumenthal. Even Chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Jon Tester—the man responsible for trying to take Paul’s Senate seat into Democratic control in 2016—came down to speak out alongside the Republican senator. It is a stark reminder of how on issues of civil liberties, party lines are blurred and politics can be murky. Even in the lead-up to a presidential cycle, Wyden took the floor to applaud Paul for blocking any motion to move forward on a straight reauthorization of the bulk collection of metadata. “As long as the senator from Kentucky has the floor, that cannot happen,” Wyden said. Paul will be able to use his Democratic support on the NSA as evidence of his bipartisan appeal as he hits the campaign trail. Paul already started using his self-proclaimed filibuster to raise money for his campaign within hours of hitting the floor. But Democrats who came out to “stand with Rand” said they weren’t even thinking about politics when they decided to come down and speak with him. Heinrich said he was happy to support his colleague across the aisle Wednesday because when it comes to issues of national security, politics have to be put aside. “It’s a sort of in the fabric of certain states to want to know that the government is not in your business if you are behaving yourself. It is not a left-right thing,” Heinrich said. Noticeably absent, however, from Paul’s speech for the first long stretch was fellow 2016 candidate Ted Cruz, who also supports reforming the NSA’s data-collection program. America’s LibertyPAC, the super PAC sanctioned by Paul, tweeted out a photo of Cruz Wednesday night with his hands in the air that read: “Hold up. Who said I cared enough about your rights to #StandWithRand? Cause I don’t” Cruz came to the floor a little after 10 p.m. to preside. He spoke with Paul just before 11:30 p.m. This post has been updated with additional senators who join Paul on the floor.
Photo illustration by Juliana Jiménez. Images courtesy Facebook The first question Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg was asked at a company Q-and-A last week was whether he’d ever consider adding a “dislike” button. He didn’t say no. Instead, he kicked off his response by saying, “We’re thinking about it.” Let me attempt a rough translation of what Zuckerberg meant by that: “Why yes, tech reporters and news anchors of the world, please do flood the airwaves and Internet with 11 million fluffy ‘what-if’ stories about my company on this slow news day in December.” It was, in other words, a canny answer from a publicity perspective. But was it true? Is Facebook really thinking about adding a dislike button? The short answer is “no,” for reasons that run deep in the company’s DNA—and that Zuckerberg would be loath to explain honestly. But the way Zuckerberg answered the question is surprisingly revealing—and troubling, coming from perhaps the most influential man in online media today. And it helps explain why Facebook is so much more conducive to baby photos, viral hoaxes, and false cheer than it is to intelligent discussion of news and ideas. Zuckerberg’s full response is in the video below, and well worth watching if you want to see a powerful billionaire attempt to explain how something that’s clearly in his own company’s economic interest is actually in the interest of humankind at large. The key lines are these: Some people have asked for a dislike button because they want to say, “That thing isn’t good.” And that’s not something that we think is good for the world. So we’re not going to build that. That’s actually a pretty clear response—if a somewhat disingenuous one, as I’ll show. But first, what is Facebook thinking about building, if not a dislike button for people who dislike things? Zuckerberg didn’t say, exactly, but he did drop some clues. When people share “sad moments in their lives,” or “tough cultural or social things” on Facebook, Zuckerberg said, others don’t always feel comfortable pressing “like.” To address that, he went on, the company has been exploring ways for users to easily convey emotions like surprise, laughter, or empathy. That’s consistent with past reports that Facebook has experimented with a “sympathize” button that could appear in place of the like button on sad, angry, or downbeat posts. But Zuckerberg noted at the end of his response that “we don’t have anything coming soon.” That makes sense: Facebook’s algorithms are intelligent enough today to discern a happy post from a sad one most of the time, but not with 100-percent accuracy. (It’s also perfectly fine in most cases to hit the like button on a friend’s post when sympathy is your real intention.) What’s really interesting about Zuckerberg’s comments is not the substance of his answer, but the way he justified it. Here’s what he didn’t say: A “dislike” button on Facebook would dissuade people from posting, liking, and sharing as freely as they might otherwise. For a company that trades in data about users’ behavior, more behavior is almost always better. Its algorithms optimize for “engagement,” which includes posts, likes, clicks, shares, and comments. Among the metrics Facebook does not optimize for: honesty, exchange of ideas, critical thinking, or objective truth. Seeing dislikes on other people’s posts might dissuade you from mindlessly liking them yourself. Seeing dislikes on your own posts might make you think harder about what you’re sharing. Either way, it’s a barrier to engagement and, as such, an impediment to Facebook’s growth. And just imagine how the brands that pay Facebook’s bills would feel about seeing dozens, hundreds, tens of thousands of dislikes on their own posts. Zuckerberg would have a lot to answer for on his next earnings call with investors. All of these are legitimate business reasons for Facebook to keep shrugging off calls for a dislike button, although there might be ways around each. (For instance, the dislike option could be disabled on posts by brands, and there could be an option for users to disable it on particularly sensitive personal posts.) But again, these aren’t the reasons Zuckerberg cited in his Q-and-A. Instead of talking about why the dislike button would be bad for Facebook, he insisted it would bad for society at large. He literally said that giving Facebook users a way to disapprove of the site’s content is “not something we think is good for the world.” Later he added that if Facebook ever does add buttons for emotions other than liking, the company would “need to find out the right way to do it so [it] ends up being a force for good and not a force for bad.” Can’t wait for the A/B tests on that one. One way to view this is that Zuckerberg is simply bullshitting us. He knows this is really about Facebook’s financial interests, but he understands that would sound unseemly, so instead he feeds us bromides about what’s good for the world. If so, then fine: No one really expects a CEO to be totally frank about his company’s motivations. The more worrisome possibility is that, on some level, Zuckerberg actually believes what he’s saying. This would imply one of two things: One possibility is that he has become so wrapped up in his company’s mission—to “make the world more open and connected”—that he sees any obstacle to its continued growth as bad for humanity. That sort of false identification of one’s self-interest with the interests of everyone else can lead to grandiosity and a conviction that the ends justify the means. It’s pretty standard-issue in Silicon Valley. The other possibility is more mundane but no less worrisome. It’s that Zuckerberg fails to appreciate the critical roles of conflict and disagreement in a free society—that he believes we’d all be better off if we were impeded from expressing negative sentiments. “If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all” is an admirably mature stance—for a first-grader. In a man who has become perhaps the most powerful force in media, it’s quite the opposite. This matters because Facebook has become the largest driver of traffic to news and opinion sites around the Web. And because its algorithms are more influential in determining what people see than any editor on the planet. And the like button now influences not only the distribution of news, but how it’s produced and framed. (No media entity is ignorant of the fact that headlines conducive to Facebook sharing are likely to help its bottom line.) It’s part of the reason that, at a time when Twitter was ablaze with debates about race, the use of force, the militarization of the police, and the rights of protesters in a democracy, Facebook was drowning in ice bucket challenges. One sees itself as a forum for real-time news and commentary; the other thinks the best alternative to a like button might just be a “hug” button. Screenshot courtesy of the author According to Facebook, at least 6,661 people like that idea. How many people dislike it? We’ll never know. This article is part of Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, New America, and Slate. Future Tense explores the ways emerging technologies affect society, policy, and culture. To read more, visit the Future Tense blog and the Future Tense home page. You can also follow us on Twitter.
Zakir Rashid Bhat alias Musa, the former engineering student and successor to Burhan Wani, has dissociated himself from Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, his parent organisation, over ideological issues, saying if the organisation "does not represent me, I also do not represent Hizb". The war of words erupted after Musa, 34, threatened to behead the Hurriyat leaders for calling Kashmir’s ongoing struggle "political" rather than "Islamic", and vowed to hang those advocating a secular State at Lal Chowk in Srinagar. The threat was, according to some commentators, aimed at the moderate faction of Hurriyat Conference and the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front; both have been maintaining that political aspirations of people have to be respected and distinguished from religion. The truth may be hard to swallow, but Musa is saying exactly what the separatist leaders in Kashmir have been propagating to mobilise their cadre since the beginning of the armed insurgency that broke out in the region in 1989 after decades of political discontent. At the heart of this 'secular versus Islamic' State debate are the events of 1989 when the majority of militant groups and parties used to mobilise people on the rallying cry of Islamic slogans that were anything but secular in nature. "Hum kya chahte? Azaadi (What do we want? Freedom)," the crowds would chant and still do. Then it would be followed quickly by another slogan, "Azadi ka matlab kya? La Ilah Ha Illallah (What is the meaning of Azadi? There is no God but Allah)" and "Yahan kya chalega? Nizame-i-Mustafa. (What will be implemented here? The order of the Prophet Mohammad)". "The undercurrent, tone and tenure of these slogans, leave aside the movement, was Islamic, but one can’t say with assurance that people, who raised these slogans, had any idea of what they were chanting. But Islam was a rallying cry," said historian Fida Hussain. However, many disagree, including Shakeel Bakshi, separatist leader and Islamic Students League patron. "Even at that time, people had their own ideology and different view points." Gowhar Geelani, a political commentator based in Srinagar, says Kashmir’s struggle has drawn strength from multiple identities that include, Kashmiri identity, Muslim identity and religious identity. "The more there has been religious ascendency in India, whether it's Narendra Modi becoming the prime minister or Yogi Adityanath becoming chief minister — although through a democratic process. There has been counter-radicalisation in the Valley in a certain section of the population. But the majority would like to separate religion from politics," Geelani told Firstpost. In early nineties, faith was utilized for political mobilization including by groups like Jamaat-e-Islami and many others who sought refuge in religion to address the political problem. In an audio message, Musa said on Saturday: "Geelani is saying azaadi for Islam and I do not have differences with him. We want imposition of Shariat." But the militant commander seems to have little idea that the real reason for the friction between Jamaat-e-Islami, a constituent of the erstwhile Hurriyat Conference and later Hurriyat led by Geelani, was that the Jamaat wanted to take religion and politics together but Geelani wanted to focus only on the political part (the Kashmir issue) and overlook religion for the time being. "The basic problem is that there is no Islamic Shariat being followed and there is no Islamic rule. In a secular State, we can’t implement Islam properly," Muhammad Abdullah Wani, the former chairman of the Jama'at-e-Islami, said in an interview. "Today, Jama'at-e-Islami is not associated with any of the political or religious organisation for the very same reason and we are more into social activities," he added. Jama'at is known for its role in the separatist movement in the 1990s, when its cadres were part and parcel of almost every activity. "The slogans that reverberated were never like, say, 'What do we want? A secular State'," a senior police officer, who has been at the forefront of fighting insurgency in the Valley, said, "One day, the monster was going to come home to roost." For example, the Jama'at-e-Islami, the political formation that gave birth to the Hizbul-Mujahideen, used Islam for political mobilisation in the Valley. It bore the brunt of the turmoil. Its cadre was murdered in broad daylight, almost on a daily basis, before it choose another path of organising rallies against moral corruption and western cultural influences. Jama'at was founded by Pakistan's Abul Ala Mawdudi, a renowned theologian and ideologue of 'Political Islam', way back in 1941. Its basic objective was to promote moral values and Islamic practices. In Jammu and Kashmir, its central concern was freeing Islam of the syncretic folk practices he believed had corrupted the essence of the faith. The Hizbul Mujahideen, of which Musa was a part until Saturday, was one of the organisations that started the insurgency in the Valley and it was dependent on Jamaat-e-Islami for religious motivation, having grown out of the movement. "Religion has and always will be used to draw inspiration for the affairs of the State but not for running the State," Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, the head priest of Kashmir and Hurriyat leader, said, "The State has to have secular credentials where minorities are protected and rights of dispossessed assured." If one goes by the social media feeds in Kashmir, a majority of the people have disapproved of Musa's statement, but invoking Islam was the foundation on which the political struggle in Kashmir was built. Now, Frankenstein's monster seems to have come back to hunt its creators. Firstpost is now on WhatsApp. For the latest analysis, commentary and news updates, sign up for our WhatsApp services. Just go to Firstpost.com/Whatsapp and hit the Subscribe button.
menestra de lentejas Ecuadorian menestra de porotos is a traditional bean stew dish, made with beans simmered in a sauce of onions, tomatoes, garlic, cumin, chili powder and cilantro or parsley. Menestras are popular dishes in Ecuador, they can be made with lentils or beans. They are usually served with rice, plantains, salad and your choice of protein: beef, pork, fish, chicken or an egg (vegetarian option). Theis a common type of menestra that you will find in Ecuador. My mom, with her background in New Mexican food, made menestra de porotos or beans more frequently than menestra de lentejas. She is probably to blame for my intense dislike of canned beans; once you get used to cooking beans from scratch it is really hard to eat bland canned beans. Yes, you can add spices and flavor to canned beans, but it doesn’t compare to homemade cooked beans. Print Menestra de porotos or bean menestra stew Rate this recipe 1 2 3 4 5 49 ratings Author: Layla Pujol Yield: For 8-10 people Menestra de porotos is an Ecuadorian bean stew, made with beans simmered in a sauce of onions, tomatoes, garlic, cumin, chili powder and cilantro or parsley. Ingredients 1 lb dry beans, soaked overnight 2-3 tbs oil 1 red onion, diced 6 garlic cloves, crushed 1 cup of diced and peeled tomatoes (fresh or canned) ½ tsp achiote or annatto powder 1 tsp cumin seeds – whole 1 tsp ground cumin 1 tsp chili powder, more or less to taste 8 or more cups water 2-3 tbs finely chopped cilantro or parsley Salt and pepper to taste To serve with bean menestra: Ecuadorian style rice Fried ripe plantains, or Patacones/tostones Tomato and onion curtido salsa Carne asada style steaks, pork, fish or Fried eggs Aji criollo hot sauce Instructions Heat the oil over medium heat in a saucepan or pot, add the diced onions and crushed garlic, let cook for about 2-3 minutes. Add the diced tomatoes, achiote powder, cumin seeds and ground cumin, chili powder, and pepper. Cook for another 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add 8 cups of water and bring to a boil. Add the soaked beans and simmer for about 2 hours or until tender. Cooking time for beans depends on the type of beans and their freshness. Add salt to taste, adjust any other seasonings to taste. Mix in the chopped cilantro or parsley. For extra flavor, you can make an additional batch of refrito with onions, garlic, tomatoes, and cumin to add in at this point. Serve with Ecuadorian style cooked rice, fried plantains, salad with tomato and onion curtido, fried or grilled meat (or fish /poultry/egg), avocado slices and some good aji or hot sauce on the side. 5.0 ©Laylita.com In Ecuador you can find a huge variety of beans, I love going to the market and looking at all the different colors of beans. Menestras are usually made with dry beans, however one of my favorite is menestra de porotos tiernos or fresh beans. Fresh beans are harder to find here in the US, though I did see some last summer at the farmer’s market and will try a fresh bean menestra this summer. A menestra would not be a true menestra without the essential side dishes: rice (a must – no substitutions) helps soak up the sauce that the beans simmered in. The fried ripe plantains complement the dish with a nice sweet touch. Some avocado slices and a small side salad, with onion and tomato curtido, add freshness and acidity. Finally, most restaurants will offer you a choice of fried or grilled meat, pork, chicken, or fish, with the menestra. When I was growing up, my mom tried to limit the amount of meat we ate, so it was very common for her to serve this menestra de porotos with a fried egg instead of meat. If you are vegetarian and are ordering this dish at a restaurant you can also request an egg in place of the meat. the refrito The beans in the menestra get their flavor from simmering the spices and vegetables that make upor base of the dish. The refrito for this menestra is made with diced red onions, diced tomatoes, crushed garlic, achiote or annatto powder, cumin (both whole and ground, and chili powder; very basic ingredients that add a lot of flavor to the beans. The final touch is the chopped fresh cilantro or parsley that is added at the end. You can also make additional refrito to add at the end for an extra touch of flavor for the menestra. This bean menestra is a very easy dish to make; it takes a couple hours to cook and the beans need to soak overnight, but the preparation is very simple. Step by step preparation photos for Ecuadorian bean stew or menestra de porotos OUR LATEST RECIPES OUR LATEST RECIPES
In the last ten years, the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to grant review in at least 88 Second Amendment cases where lower courts upheld gun safety laws. This includes a number of gun lobby-backed lawsuits advocating for a dangerously unlimited interpretation of the Second Amendment—one that ignores the careful safeguards expressed in the Supreme Court’s landmark Second Amendment case, District of Columbia v. Heller. By repeatedly declining to review lower court decisions that upheld federal, state, and local gun laws, the Supreme Court has reconfirmed that the Amendment is not an obstacle to the laws that keep our communities safe from gun violence. Since the Court’s 2008 decision in the Heller case, lower courts across the country have been inundated with costly and time-consuming challenges to state and local gun laws. However, lower courts have consistently upheld these laws, noting that many of these laws have been successful at protecting people from gun violence and keeping guns out of the hands of criminals while still allowing law-abiding citizens to keep guns in their homes for self defense. Since 2008, there have been over 1,310 Second Amendment cases challenging gun laws nationwide, with an overwhelming majority—nearly 93%—of the lower court decisions upholding those laws. Many of these Second Amendment challenges to gun laws make their way to the Supreme Court. However, the Court has refused to hear these cases, leaving lower court decisions upholding the laws intact and keeping strong gun laws on the books. For example, the Supreme Court has refused to hear cases that: Challenge restrictions on concealed and open carrying of firearms in public. For example, the Supreme Court denied review in Peruta v. California, a case in which the Ninth Circuit upheld California’s strong concealed carry permitting standards, and determined that the standards are constitutional because the Second Amendment does not protect the right to carry concealed firearms in public. Similarly, the Court denied review in Kachalsky v. Cacace , a case in which the Second Circuit upheld a New York law prohibiting the issuance of a concealed carry permit unless the applicant can demonstrate that good cause exists to issue the permit, as well as in Woollard v. Gallagher and Drake v. Filko, cases challenging similar concealed carry permit schemes in Maryland and New Jersey. These denials make clear that states still retain the discretion to pass strong laws regulating the carrying of firearms in public even after the Heller decision. For example, the Supreme Court denied review in Peruta v. California, a case in which the Ninth Circuit upheld California’s strong concealed carry permitting standards, and determined that the standards are constitutional because the Second Amendment does not protect the right to carry concealed firearms in public. Similarly, the Court denied review in , a case in which the Second Circuit upheld a New York law prohibiting the issuance of a concealed carry permit unless the applicant can demonstrate that good cause exists to issue the permit, as well as in and Drake v. Filko, cases challenging similar concealed carry permit schemes in Maryland and New Jersey. These denials make clear that states still retain the discretion to pass strong laws regulating the carrying of firearms in public even after the decision. Challenge the constitutionality of laws prohibiting felons, domestic abusers, and/or certain misdemeanants from possessing firearms. The federal government and many states have laws prohibiting felons and/or other criminal offenders from possessing firearms. These laws have been virtually unanimously upheld by lower courts and the Supreme Court has repeatedly declined to review those decisions. For example, the Court declined to review the Tenth Circuit’s decision in United States v. Reese , which upheld a federal law prohibiting persons subject to domestic violence restraining orders from possessing firearms. The Supreme Court’s reluctance to review these decisions shows that policy-makers have the flexibility to prohibit dangerous people from accessing firearms. The federal government and many states have laws prohibiting felons and/or other criminal offenders from possessing firearms. These laws have been virtually unanimously upheld by lower courts and the Supreme Court has repeatedly declined to review those decisions. For example, the Court declined to review the Tenth Circuit’s decision in , which upheld a federal law prohibiting persons subject to domestic violence restraining orders from possessing firearms. The Supreme Court’s reluctance to review these decisions shows that policy-makers have the flexibility to prohibit dangerous people from accessing firearms. Challenge restrictions on the possession of machine guns and other types of military-style weapons. The Supreme Court made clear in Heller that the Second Amendment does not protect “dangerous and unusual weapons” and the lower courts have followed that direction by upholding numerous laws restricting the possession of machine guns and assault weapons. Recently, the Supreme Court denied review in Kolbe v. Hogan , a decision from the en banc Fourth Circuit holding that assault weapons and large capacity magazines are not protected by the Second Amendment. The Supreme Court made clear in that the Second Amendment does not protect “dangerous and unusual weapons” and the lower courts have followed that direction by upholding numerous laws restricting the possession of machine guns and assault weapons. Recently, the Supreme Court denied review in , a decision from the Fourth Circuit holding that assault weapons and large capacity magazines are not protected by the Second Amendment. Challenge firearm registration requirements, waiting periods, and related fees. In Justice v. Town of Cicero , the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a local law requiring the registration of all firearms. The Supreme Court declined to review that decision, leaving law enforcement with an important tool to keep track of guns in their communities. The Court also denied certiorari in Silvester v. Harris, a decision in which the Ninth Circuit upheld a state law requiring a waiting period before firearms may be transferred to a purchaser to discourage impulsive criminal acts and suicides. Further, the Court denied review in two cases involving firearm licensing and background check fees: Kwong v. Bloomberg, a Second Circuit decision, and Bauer v. Becerra, a Ninth Circuit decision. In , the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a local law requiring the registration of all firearms. The Supreme Court declined to review that decision, leaving law enforcement with an important tool to keep track of guns in their communities. The Court also denied certiorari in Silvester v. Harris, a decision in which the Ninth Circuit upheld a state law requiring a waiting period before firearms may be transferred to a purchaser to discourage impulsive criminal acts and suicides. Further, the Court denied review in two cases involving firearm licensing and background check fees: Kwong v. Bloomberg, a Second Circuit decision, and Bauer v. Becerra, a Ninth Circuit decision. Challenge restrictions of firearms in national parks and other publicly owned places. In Heller, the Court acknowledged the government’s continuing ability to regulate the possession of guns in sensitive places, and unsurprisingly, lower courts have upheld laws and regulations that restrict the use of firearms in public parks. The Supreme Court has declined to review any of these decisions. The good news is that these are only some examples of the Supreme Court’s action on gun laws nationwide. The Court has also declined to review numerous other cases upholding federal, state, and local laws and policies restricting the use of firearms, including laws designed to keep guns out of the hands of children and laws that help law enforcement curb gun trafficking. As a result, the numerous federal and state court decisions upholding these and many other common sense gun laws have been left undisturbed, allowing communities to protect themselves from rampant gun violence. The Law Center has filed amicus briefs in support of the life-saving gun measures in Heller and dozens of significant Second Amendment cases since. Our legal team continues to track Second Amendment litigation nationwide and helps to defend these laws in the courts. For more on the types of gun laws being challenged and upheld, read our publication The Second Amendment Battleground: Victories in the Courts and Why They Matter.
In the previous trailers, we've seen Martin Star -- the 34-year-old actor who portrays acerbic and sarcastic Gilfoyle on HBO's Silicon Valley -- sporting a bright yellow jacket and accompanying students from Midtown School of Science and Technology (the school Peter Parker attends) through airport security and sightseeing at the Washington Monument. Footage from the latter shows the monument getting attacked (probably from the Vulture) while Starr's character, Liz Allen (Laura Harrier), and other classmates of hers are taking the elevator to get to the 500' observation deck at the base of the pyramidion. So, we've always assumed that Starr is portraying a teacher in the film, and now he has confirmed it. “I’m the academic decathlon coach,” he told The Wrap, “and one of the teachers at the school so I have a bit of a thing in it.” And even though this is Spider-Man's third film series, Starr thinks Homecoming has taken a unique approach to the character and is telling a fresh story. “It’s capitalizing on popularity and a story that’s very rich and dense, so there’s a lot left to tell,” he said. “And this isn’t a familiar take on it — this is a unique kind of take of a younger Spider-Man trying to figure out life again.” He added, “The story has a lot of action and fun in it, but it’s also a sweet, coming-of-age story of a kid.” A young Peter Parker/Spider-Man (Tom Holland), who made his sensational debut in Captain America: Civil War, begins to navigate his newfound identity as the web-slinging super hero in Spider-Man: Homecoming. Thrilled by his experience with the Avengers, Peter returns home, where he lives with his Aunt May (Marisa Tomei), under the watchful eye of his new mentor Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.). Peter tries to fall back into his normal daily routine – distracted by thoughts of proving himself to be more than just your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man – but when the Vulture (Michael Keaton) emerges as a new villain, everything that Peter holds most important will be threatened.
I had always admired Ivan Illich for his penetrating insights into the pathologies of modern life and the human condition. Like dormant seeds, they sprouted at just the right time in my life and helped me develop a vocabulary for better understanding the commons. The recent conference in Oakland – “After the Crisis: The Thought of Ivan Illich Today,” on August 1-3 — gave me an enlarged, fresher understanding of Illich’s life and writings. Below I’d like to share some of the highlights of the conference, which can help us recover and rejuvenate Illich’s thought for our time. (Illich wrote his most famous works in the 1960s and 1970s, and died in 2002.).(…) Illich “saw in modern life and its pervasive dependence on commodities and services of professionals a threat to what it is to be human. He cut through the illusions and allurements to better ground us in what it means to be alive. He was joyful but he didn’t turn his gaze from human suffering.”The Oakland conference consisted of ten speakers, most of whom had known Illich as collaborators and sparring partners. I can’t summarize all of the presentations or capture all of their subtle complexities, but let me excerpt a handful of thoughtful comments. Institutional Dispossession of Self Richard Westheimer, a former public school teacher and schools consultant, noted a theme that Illich often focused on – the ways in which “we define ourselves by what we lack, and therefore our dependencies.” Medicalized childbirth is one such example – “our inaugural ritual inducting us into our church of neediness,” said Westheimer, an advocate for home birth. He described the ways in which hospitals use machines and medical charts to “establish and verify their institutional and professional relationship to us.” This process is how “medical institutions constitute the patient apart from their consciousness” and human agency – the beginning of institutional dependence. This dynamic plays out in many areas of life, particularly education, where the empty rituals of “education” and the quest for marketable credentials eclipse real learning. Westheimer blames this reflexive dependence on institutions as a key factor in the student loan/indebtedness crisis. Some 45% of US college graduates are now working in jobs that don’t require degrees, and another third are working in jobs that require degrees purely as a credential (but are otherwise irrelevant to the specific job). Formal schooling has become a marketable ritual. Learning occurs accidentally or elsewhere. Other speakers echoed this theme. Jean Robert, an activist and architect from Cuernavaca, Mexico, focused on how economics today amounts to “a painfully acquired form of blindness” that ignores the “moral sentiments” that Adam Smith had once celebrated as central to humanity. But in the hands of economists, the sympathies that we feel for other human beings were turned into a formal economic theory about the “envy of riches.” Robert pointed out that there used to be a clear distinction between “the economy” and subsistence, the latter being a form of household provisioning that lay outside of the marketplace. But economics aggressively annexed the idea of subsistence. This destroyed the distinction that once recognized self-provisioning as a separate endeavor that connected us to each other and to nature. Illich’s contribution was to re-establish and re-articulate this distinction. In so doing, he brought a focus back to the human body and human sensibilities in economic life. He often called this the vernacular domain. Robert pointed out the consequences of internalizing the categories of mainstream economic thought: It warps our self-perception. “To be enmeshed in a system is to charge your perception of yourself,” Robert said. Our sense of “autoception” – how we form our identities and relationships to others – becomes skewed. This is why we need to “reclaim the vernacular,” he said…. (….) The Dangers of Totalizing Systems Trent Schroyer, who has been active in exploring alternative economic cultures — most notably as the former president of “The Other Economic Summit” and the author of Beyond Western Economics — emphasized this theme as well. Citing Illich’s criticisms of “development” as material, economic progress, Schroyer described development as “a form of secular messianism” that is profoundly “autistic.” That is, it is incapable of integrating emotions and consciousness into the larger institutional system. He sees four ways to try to combat this trend: the regeneration of publics, the cultivation of non-consumer perspectives, a focus on livelihoods and the relocalization of economics. Notably, all of these are commons-based approaches. Gustavo Esteva, the founder of Universidad de la Tierra and the author of The Oaxaca Commune and Mexico’s Autonomous Movements, elaborated on this theme. He noted Illich’s conviction that “systemic thought is terribly dis-incarnating,” meaning that it elevates abstract universals at the expense of our individuality and humanity. Illich pointed out that the Spanish royalty tried to eliminate the great diversity of local and regional languages in 15th century Spain by establishing a formal, state-sanctioned system of grammar and syntax. The goal, quite literally, was to override and eliminate locally based ways of seeing, thinking and communicating. It was a standardized language of power: a pattern that has recurred countless times since. “Systemic being is disincarnated being,” said Esteva. The most powerful antidote, according to Illich, was friendship. “Real friendship is heretical and political,” said Esteva, explaining that its subversive qualities lie in its ability to help us see ourselves truly: “Now I know who I am because I can see myself in my friends.” So, too, with the commons: “A commons is not a relationship to the land, but a relationship with each other, said Esteva. “That is the way to challenge the system: You are the relationship itself” – an embodied, personal relationship that cannot be corrupted by systems of power. To the extent that systematic thought misrepresents and corrupts how we feel and interpret lived experience, said Esteva, “in the end, there is only poetry.” Recovering our sense of social relationship is a key challenge to Illich, said many speakers, because it is the only way that we can recover our humanity and our sense of ecological limits. “The systematized ‘we’ is a corruption of the carnalized communion of people,” said Jean Robert. “Only within limits can the ‘we’ be made carnate.” Or as Gustavo Esteva put it, citing Illich, we need to recover “a disciplined renunciation that is defined by the community.” Esteva noted that in oral cultures, there is no “I” and “you” in the modern sense; there are, however, a variety of terms with different shadings to describe “we.” There are terms for “a few of us,” and for “all of us,” and for “the community as a whole,” for example. The term comida in Spanish does not just refer to “eating a meal,” but to the many activities associated with growing, preparing, serving the food and eating it socially, so that comida amounts to a symbol of a place where a given community of people lives. “Comida reinforces people’s relationship to the food, to the place and to each other,” said Esteva. Illich and Marx In his formal talk, “Commonism: Enclosing the Enclosers,” Esteva observed that Marxists don’t read Illich because they see him as a reactionary priest with a narrow agenda, and Illicians don’t read Marx because they often see no clear connection between him and Illich. But Esteva argued that “the combination of their ideas offers the best clues to understanding the current conditions of the world and particularly to react to the horror falling on us.” Marx was not the only major influence on Illich, Esteva conceded, agreeing that Gandhi, St. Thomas and others were also important models for him. But Esteva believes that “Illich “started when Marx ended and followed the direction of Marx’s thinking.” For the speakers of this conference, however, it remained an open question just how influential was Marx on Illich’s thought. However one interprets Marx’s influence, however, it was pointed out that Illich’s perspective is valuable today precisely because he provides a way out for people caught between Marx’s Promethean frame of thought and the perception that alternative systems of production are impossible. Illich functions as a corrective to over-reliance on Marx while still recognizing that Marx’s theories about human alienation are powerful. I hope that Esteva’s talk is put online at some point because it is a rich, scholarly account of his interpretation of Illich, especially from a Latin American perspective. Esteva, who is half-Zapotec, an indigenous culture in the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico, had a lot to say about the Zapatistas, their resistance to modern capitalism and their ingenuity and courage in creating a new way of living. Illich on Religion and Aliveness There was much else said at this exciting, vigorous conference, including a series of talks on Illich’s views about politics and religion by Carl Mitcham, author of “After Illich: The Politics of Energy”; Wolfgang Palaver, an Austrian theologian at the University of Innsbruck, Vienna; and David Cayley, formerly of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation who produced a series of interviews with Illich, The Rivers North of the Future. From that day, let me recount only the stories about Illich’s revulsion against the “idolatry of life.” This refers to the tendency of people to make pious commitments to universal, abstract ideas of “life” – which is something very different from lived experience and human presence. “Life” often serves as a bloodless substitute for the sense of “aliveness” that Illich always sought to cultivate. He wanted to honor the sense of immediacy and recognition of the Other that is the essence of aliveness. He wanted us to recognize our identities as biological creatures living in particular circumstances and within ecological constraints. The possibility of grace can only emerge through aliveness, Illich said, because that is the only place in which the artificial boundaries (social, political, intellectual) that separate us can be overcome. This is the lesson of the parable of the Good Samaritan: universal benevolence is less important than authentic caring and connection at an existential level. The “idolatry of life” is often used to prevent such human communion and mask pain and tragedy. Illich believed that the only way to open ourselves to grace is by honoring aliveness. I found myself wondering throughout the conference how Illich’s thought applies to contemporary politics. Perhaps Governor Brown said it best when he said that Illich’s thought is not reducible to politics, but it is highly illuminating of contemporary politics. For more on Illich’s writings, you might want to visit David Tinapple’s website, and a collection of Illich writings posted at the Preservation Institute website. You may also want to check out John Verity’s New Scare City blog which also has a great collection of Illich materials as well as some photos from the Illich conference in Oakland.
This photo on Barack Obama's Facebook page almost made me cry. No, this isn't some liberal mumbo jumbo. I just can't remember the last time my husband and I held hands. Scratch that. I can't remember the last time we held hands with each other. We are usually on either side of our daughter, each one holding her hands to make a family chain. It's a perfect front of family harmony. I'm all to aware that she won't be holding our hands much longer -- on our trip to see Yo Gabba Gabba! in concert last week, she wanted to hold her babysitter's hand, not mine. But there's something so poignant about the President and Mrs. Obama's fingers draped oh so lightly across one another's that makes me yearn just as much for the days when the hand in mine wasn't slightly sticky. It's a major feminist no-no to admit this, but what I've always loved about my husband is that he's bigger than me. When we were dating and held hands frequently, my hands -- which are relatively large for a woman's -- were engulfed in his man paws. And I felt safe. Screw sex. It was all about comfort and security. Ever notice you start eating more when you're in a relationship because you're comfortable? It's the same concept, only this one didn't make me muffin top in my favorite jeans. I don't agree with everything president does (really, it's called free thinking -- even liberal people do it), but I'd give anything to be in Michelle's shoes. Do you still hold hands? Image via Barack Obama Facebook (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
In fact, the vehicle you see here shouldn’t even be called a VW, since it only uses suspension bits from a 1965 Type 2 van, while most of the rest is hand-built from steel. It still runs a modified air-cooled flat-four engine too, with a supercharger making it push out around 200 hp – the shiny engine is fully exposed at the back. Called the Surf Seeker, the vehicle is the work of Ron Berry whom we were not able to track down on the web in order to confirm this… It features a unique way to get inside, via an Isetta bubble car-like side-opening hatch that peels away the entire front end to grant access. There’s not much more we can say (or know) about it, but it sure looks cool riding on its clearly oversized 24-inch rims… Check it out via the selection of videos posted below! Videos
"Ain't about money. For yakuza, it's all about power. Those that lose power have to give way to those that have it." —Majima to Saejima Goro Majima (真島吾朗, Majima Gorō) is a recuring character from the Yakuza series, and is one of the main protagonists of Yakuza 0 and Yakuza: Dead Souls . His flair has earned him the nickname "The Mad Dog of Shimano (嶋野の狂犬, Shimano no kyōken)" . He is the sworn brother of Taiga Saejima, who he sees as more important to him than almost anyone else. He has a fierce, somewhat twisted sense of loyalty and responsibility, especially when it comes to his ally Kazuma Kiryu. Majima believes he is the only one entitled to kill Kiryu, and has nearly died trying to protect that right. Although he is getting along with his foster daughter, Haruka Sawamura. He would become her fan from when she became an idol until her retirement. Contents show] Biography and early life Edit While much of Majima's personal life is unknown, the furthest scene into the past that he ever appears in has him talking with Saejima about an upcoming hit on behalf the Tojo clan. The plan was to promote the Sasai family to a higher position by launching a hit on the Ueno Seiwa family Patriarch, whom was released from prison and planning to rebuild his clan. Bringing with him a bag containing 6 disposable revolvers, they planned a hit with Majima making protests about not telling Yasuko that both of them are likely to end up in prison for their assassination and Saejima brushing him off. On the day of the hit however, Majima received a phone call from Shibata to forbid him from going to the assassination as the Dojima Family did not want to hold joint responsibility and letting Saejima going off to make the move that would shake the clan for years to come. When Majima refuses, Shibata summons a crowd of men to attack him. Despite his best efforts, he was narrowly bested and chained. Shibata takes out a knife and stabs Majima in the eye before leaving him at the mercy of Shimano. Three years after the hit, Majima was held captive in Osaka, under surveillance from Tsukasa Sagawa. During his later days in Osaka, he befriended Naoki Katsuya, an action film actor at the time and married Mirei Park, who was an aspiring Idol at the time. However, his marriage with Park didn't end well as Majima divorced her after discovering that Park aborted her pregnancy. Yakuza 0 Edit "The customer is king." —Majima as the manager of the Grand Cabaret Majima was held captive in Anagura, the Tojo Clan's personal torture chambers for a year for his defiance against Shimano. Enduring torture everyday, he was let out as a civilian. However, wishing to return to the Tojo in order to welcome Saejima back from prison, he is thrust into the Omi Alliance's Sagawa's hands as he was made the manager of the Grand Cabaret at Sotenbori. Under heavy surveillance by Sagawa's men during all hours of the day, he was thrust into the world of the nightlife making Sotenbori a gilded cage for him. With the promise of returning to the Tojo Clan if he can make 100 million yen in profits for Sagawa and Shimano. Despite the situation, he was able to make 100 million yen in just a year and received the title of "Lord of the Nightlife". Majima became a popular person in Sotenbori, especially among other cabaret businesses and consumers. However Sagawa raised the debt to 500 million and told Majima to that he can continue with his manager job or accept a job that would instantly put him back into the Tojo clan without needing to make any more money. The job in question was to "kill a person named Makoto Makimura who lives in Sotenbori", a hit that was asked from Shimano to Sagawa, due to geographic reasons. Majima reluctantly accepts the hit, despite having never killed anyone before, in part due to Sagawa's threats. Sagawa tells Majima that Makimura is a ruthless pimp, forcing college-aged girls to work for him and taking all of their money. Majima is then given just two days to complete the mark. Majima heads off to a telephone club, and after some time gets a call from a young college-aged woman whom says she knows a Makoto Makimura, succeeding in retrieving information from her of the location of his target. When he enters Makimura's office, a massage parlor, he takes out his knife and prepares to kill, only to find the place empty. As he's about to leave, a young blind woman accidentally walks into him and believes him to be a thief. Majima quickly defuses her fear by telling her that he's one of Makimura's patients. The woman, who works for Makimura, offers to give Majima a massage. Majima gets quite comfortable with her, eventually falling asleep as she massages his back. He's awoken by the sound of Makimura walking in, and the two wait for the woman to leave before fighting. While Majima comes out as the victor, several Omi henchmen led by Oishi arrive at the building, also demanding a Makoto Makimura. The woman returns and is forcefully taken away, while "Makimura" is shot and incapacitated. It is then that Majima learns that his target was in fact the young blind woman after all. Before he lost consciousness, the man posing as Makoto begs Majima to save her. Fighting through a number of Omi yakuza, Majima succeeds in saving Makoto. When they get to safety, she clings to his leg and cries. Majima sees this moment of vulnerability and pulls out his knife. After some hesitation and consideration, he decides to spare Makoto. Majima rents a warehouse from a competitor in the cabaret business to use as a safehouse for Makoto. Needing answers, he begins questioning her as to why the yakuza are after an innocent blind young woman. Though she doesn't know herself, Makoto reveals that she was living with Lee to find a man whom sold her as a sex slave years ago, where she went psychologically blind as a result of the constant trauma before being rescued by Lee. Majima quickly befriends her and tells her about a similar predicament he also suffered from. Majima then meets Lee who figures a way to get them off their backs so they can escape to Kamurocho and find Jun. Lee's plan was to use a body double for Makoto and have Majima or himself perform the task but Majima refuses to let that happen and fights Lee to prevent that from happening. Majima discards the setup only to find out the next day that the double was murdered anyway at the hands of Homare Nishitani, leader of the Kijin group. Fighting Nishitani in the Grand before he was taken into custody in lockup, he reveals that there were two sides in the conflict and that he was paid by a Tojo benefactor to bring back Makoto before Sagawa's men kill her. After the altercation between him and Nishitani, Sagawa asks Majima about the murder he had committed and was suspicious for the fact that the murder was thorough in ensuring no evidence and more importantly why Nishitani had come for a visit as Majima lies about how he killed Makoto. Returning to the warehouse, Majima and Lee discuss their next move as Sagawa's assassins find them. The three were forced to make an attempt to escape from Sotenboori as Lee was killed by a car bomb planted by Sagawa who learns of Makoto's location through the doctor that help patched up Lee. However Masaru Sera arrives to intercept the three of them and takes Makoto to the Camilla Grove for safekeeping. Majima ends up at the mercy of Sagawa who proceeds to torture him for his insubordination and only spares him because he is the only link to the last known whereabouts of Makoto and, suspecting Nishitani knows, sends Majima out on the task with a clear warning to not betray him again. Majima then searches for Nishitani who knows about her whereabouts and fights for Biliken at the Bed of Styx arena. There he learns about the information that Shibusawa knew and that another group, the Nikkyo Consortium led by Masaru Sera was trying to find her as well. As they attempt to leave, Nishitani and Biliken were killed by a cop bribed by Shibusawa and Majima escapes to tell Sagawa where Makoto is held. Fighting their way through the Camilla grove, Majima and Sagawa reach the top only to find Masaru Sera and the truth that Makoto holds the deed to the land. Sagawa then takes Majima to Kamurocho to take Makoto for themselves. As he wanders off to find Makoto, he is sent to see Shimano who reveals that Makoto would have given the deed to Majima and in turn Majima would give the land to Shimano and Sagawa as part of Shimano's strategy to consolidate his power with several different groups to establish his influence in the Tojo clan when the Dojima clan loses influence. Moping about at the revelation that he was being manipulated from the start by Shimano, he fights both Kashiwagi and Nishikiyama for information on Makoto's whereabouts as she makes the revelation to make the Dojima Family pay for the death of her brother. Makoto tells him that her eyesight has gotten better after partially witnessing her brother's death, surprising him that such a thing can happen. However, she can only see his silhouette and cannot clearly make out his face. After smelling a strong scent of vengeance on Makoto's breath, he indirectly declines her offer of killing off the three heads of the Dojima family for 1 billion yen, pleading for her to not go down a road she'll regret. As he goes off to bring food for Makoto after a conversation on wherever or not she should go and sell the land or to use it as leverage as he know it wouldn't be that easy. She sends a delegate to tell him to meet her tomorrow for his decision on if he is going to help her avenge Tachibana's death. Waiting at the Vacant Lot for her, Majima is greeted by Shibusawa's men who reveals that she had went of to handle it herself and sent the men here to meet him. It was here that Majima learned Shibusawa arranged for Biliken and Nishitani's deaths as well and attempts to kill him as well. Surviving the assassination attempt he is told she had went off to sell the land to the Dojima Clan at the Sebastian Building only to arrive at the very moment she was shot by Luo Gui. Witnessing the 'execution' of Makoto right before his eye, he pauses and takes in the reality that has happened before him. Surrounded by Dojima's men, he keeps his eye on Makoto before going on a rampage filled with anger and grief, bringing out a wild and enraged version of Majima that has never been seen before. After clearing out the men, he kneels before Makoto and feels remorse for all that has happened to her but notices that she is still breathing. He gives his best efforts to keep her alive by reassuring her that everything that has happened is not her fault and grabs her hand to make sure she doesn't feel alone during her last moments, but she loses consciousness. Sera enters the scene and observes the situation, taking Makoto to the hospital with Majima. Majima dashes by her side as she is being wheeled to the operating room. Although he is shouting the words towards her, he is more or less telling himself that she'll make it out fine. As the doors to the operating room shut close, he sobs for her recovery, promising that he'll grant her wish of eliminating the Dojima Family. Infuriated at Shibusawa ordering the death of Nishitani and wounding Makoto, he goes on an one man attack on the Dojima HQ and defeats Awano and Lao Gui. He was stopped by Sera, who received the land and tells Majima that Makoto has recovered fully. However, Sera demands one last task from Majima; to kill his boss Shimano for his plot to take land split the power balance with the Omi. Majima returns to the boss' office with a gun in his hand and prepared to finish the job as Sagawa was overseeing the negotiation but expects that one of them going to die. Facing his boss, he prepares to take the fall for the murder of his patriarch in exchange for his return. However, he refuses to kill Shimano and asks in exchange for his own life to learn the truth of Saejima's fate. Unable to provide an answer and to preserve his own life. Shimano kills the Omi delegate and tells Majima it was in his intention to send him to Sotenbori and reinstate Majima back into the clan. Disappointed by the outcome, Sagawa accepts his defeat and embraces his inevitable death. After seeing his lackeys harass Makoto, he puts a stop to it and takes one last good look at her before deciding to leave Sotenbori for good after saying farewell to Sagawa. Although it is seen through out the game that he and Makoto were developing mutual feelings for each other, he makes the heartbreaking choice of not acting upon those feelings he has for her and firmly puts his heart and mind on lockdown. He makes sure his identity isn't revealed because he fears the possibility of her entering a world of darkness again. Majima makes sure the man who takes care of her genuinely loves her, since he cannot do it himself because he'll be returning to the shadows of the yakuza. After being assured, he painfully walks away and disappears in the crowd as Makoto gazes on and wonders if he was the man who had saved her life. In the post game credits, Majima meets Kiryu in person for the very first time, and greets him with the enthusiasm of the Mad Dog of Shimano: "Yo.[...] Kiryu-Chan!". Yakuza Edit "Let's do this... You think you can take me, Kiryu-chan? Get ready... to get fucked up!" —Majima before battling Kiryu for the first time Majima initially appears in Yakuza in the alley behind Serena to find one of his own family members sprawled out on the ground with Kazuma Kiryu standing over him. Delighted over having come across him, Majima catches up with Kiryu, asking about his plans for starting his own family. He openly expresses his envy for how Kiryu is often surrounded by beautiful women (referring presumably to Yumi and/or Reina). Majima decides to "take responsibility" for his family member's attack on Kiryu, striking him repeatedly with an umbrella. Kiryu grabs Majima by the arm and tells him to stop. Majima; disappointed, complies with Kiryu's request before leaving some parting words, saying that Kiryu needs to learn to enforce discipline for when the time comes that he creates his own family. Yakuza Kiwami: Kiryu responds to Majima's advice, stating that he will discipline his family but will do so his way, with "logical methods". Feeling challenged, Majima asks Kiryu if he's looking for a fight. Kiryu refuses, sternly stating that it would not be logical and apologizes for causing any offence. This angers Majima further, who continues to goad Kiryu into a physical confrontation by striking him across the face multiple times with his umbrella, causing him to bleed, before threatening him with a blade. Kiryu stands calmly and refuses to hit back, asking if Majima is satisfied. Impressed by Kiryu's strong resolve, Majima backs down, telling Kiryu that "this world isn't logical" and that he risks getting himself killed if he refuses to change. The Dragon of Dojima acknowledges that his ideals will never change, regardless of his own personal safety. Majima leaves, exciting himself with the prospect of the two of them fighting each other someday. On the day of Kiryu's return from prison, he gets his chance to fight Kiryu and later faces him yet again at Sera's funeral under the orders of Shimano, but chose to take it easy on Kiryu and Kiryu earns his first victory against Majima. After 10 years, Majima and his subordinates attack Makoto Date and kidnap Haruka Sawamura to lure Kiryu so he can face him in the battling cage. When Kiryu arrives, Majima and his crew surround him, and while attempting to intimidate him with a speech, Majima is hit in the head with a baseball from one of the pitting machines. He begins laughing it off, and all but one of the yakuza by his side join in, causing him to respond by beating him, telling him that "was the part where you're supposed to laugh". Kiryu tells Majima to stop, drawing his attention back. Majima admits that he only kidnapped Haruka in order to get his chance to fight Kiryu, causing Kiryu to respond with disbelief at the length the Mad Dog would to just to start a fight. The fight ensues with Majima pulling out his Shadowblade Knife as him and his men attack Kiryu at once. Majima and his men are defeated but he refuses to give up while he can still stand. He notices one of his still-conscious men try to stab Kiryu from behind with his knife, and Majima rushes to get stabbed in his place. He reveals that Kiryu is now his friend and vows to him that he'll be the one to kill him someday. Majima collapses and his men take him away. Later on, when Kiryu and Haruka are at the Shangri-La hotel, Majima crashes into the building with a truck at high speed, unsettling the building and causing the occupants to evacuate. He once again confronts Kiryu by taking a woman hostage, asking her to become his bitch. She admits that despite her line of work as an erotic masseur, she has a boyfriend. Majima suddenly decides to let her go, admitting that he likes honest people and people shouldn't toy with emotions. Kiryu is once again exasperated by Majima rather extensive means of instigating a fight with him, and surprised that Majima was still alive. The two battle once more and their fight unsettles the already-unstable building even more, with Majima punching Kiryu with enough strength that the weakened floor gives way and they fall through. In the end, Majima is defeated again, though he smiles while acknowledging Kiryu to be a "hardass" before he loses consciousness. Yakuza 2 Edit In Yakuza 2, with Shimano dead and his family now disbanded, the Majima Family leaves the Tojo Clan due to differences with its then-chairman Yukio Terada, and establish a construction company. With The Florist gone from Purgatory, Majima immediately takes over the secret underground society. Although no longer interested in the clan, he explains the current situation to Kiryu, describing the year following Kiryu's departure from the Tojo clan. Terada had been running the clan poorly, taking on a pacifist stance as well as putting appeasers to his retinue as well. On top of that, after Majima disbanded his family and Kashiwagi was made Clan Captain he had been sidelined by Terada who was unable to make decisions without his explicit approval. Warning Kiryu about Terada's hidden agendas, he offers his support to Kiryu. Yakuza Kiwami 2: After the conversation, Nishida reports that thugs have attacked a construction site and reveals that thugs have been attacking his business to scoop up the deal on the Kamurocho Hills project. Despite their counterattacks, they have been unable to defend their assets properly which has slowed down the progress of the construction considerably. Kiryu was able to lend his support and help in the defense, freeing up Majima Constructions to help the Tojo Clan. He later takes on all of Shindo's men sent to the town single-handedly and informs Kiryu that Shindo has betrayed the clan after being bribed by Sengoku before passing out. He later would help disarm the bombs with his construction team while Daigo led his forces to fight of the Omi invaders, the day after Majima tells Kiryu to finish off Ryuji Goda and the Jingweon Mafia at the final showdown as he proclaims himself as the one destined to defeat him. The Truth of Goro Majima Edit In February 2006, Majima is competing against other clan members for young head captain of the Tojo Clan, more specifically Uematsu. When he is dropped off in town by his new lackey Kawamura he was beset upon by Uematsu's men and defeats them and heads to the Majima office where Nishida reports that Kawamura went missing. He suspects that Uematsu planned the attack and heads to Uematsu's office to confront him, only to find him shot. Majima returns to Tojo Clan Headquarters and told the other clan members that he found Uematsu killed in his office, but Ibuchi suspects that Majima is trying to put the blame on someone else so that he doesn't get caught for the assassination himself and attempts to use it leverage his chances of becoming next Clan captain. Majima gets angered and goes to find the Florist, who supplies him with information and evidence that Majima's new lackey was at the scene of the crime before he was. Majima is shocked and asks where he could be and the Florist tells him that Kawamura was last seen in Sotenbori, his old town. Majima heads for Sotenbori and bumps into his old friend and business competitor of Odyssey. He explains to Majima that Kawamura was frequenting a massage parlor called Hogushi Kaikan. Majima becomes hesitant but ultimately goes into the parlor in search of his lackey. A receptionist greets him and he asks if she has seen or heard of a man named Kawamura. She tell him that he does frequent the massage parlor and gambles on the floor above them, but hasn't caught sight of him recently and mentions that he has been clear of his gambling debts. Coincidentally, he joined the Tojo exactly a year later after his debt was cleared which raises Majima's suspicions. He thanks her but before he leaves, she asks him to take a massage course, which he declines. She pouts at him and obligates him to at least receive a massage for the exchange of information she gave him. He agrees and asks for the best massage course they have. As Majima waits on the futon for the massage, a young woman walks in and introduces herself as Tateyama Makoto. Majima, recognizing the voice, turns to look and sees that it's Makoto and retreats his face into the folds of his arms in hopes of hiding his face from her. She proceeds to massage him and he grunts in pain from the amount of pressure she applies to his feet. As she approaches closer to him to massage his arm, he turns to glance at her wrist, which is equipped with her watch. He is shocked to see her wearing it and she takes notice of it, asking if he is worried about her wearing a watch. He nods no and she proceeds to tell him about her life. She tell him of how she used to be blind and how a man saved her and returned her watch back. Her old wristband had to be replaced by a new blue one because it was worn out, but she likes the older one better. Ever since she got her watch back, she has gotten married and had a child, something that she has always wanted. Majima listens intently as she tells him that she has stayed in this town ever since because this town holds meaning to her and the man that saved her many years ago. She continues to work at the parlor in hopes of meeting him once more and thanking him properly. As Majima ups and leaves, she stops him and gives him her business card. She looks at him and asks if they met before and Majima, in order to hide his identity from her, nods his head no. She is apologetic for the mistake and he looks at her watch. He then looks up at her for one last time and turns to walk away. She asks if his body felt better after the massage and he whispers to himself that thanks to her, she took 18 years of pain out of him. She thanks him and he leaves. Ayumi contacts Majima and calls him that she has seen Kawamura and he has went to the VIP room and just gunned down a Omi Alliance member. He admits that he had killed Uematsu as well and tries and kill Majima in hopes of gaining his freedom. Majima foils the murder attempt as he demands anwsers from Kawamura, however he was killed by Ibuchi who admits he was the one who paid off Kawamura's debts in exchange for his loyalty. He planted Kawamura to the Majima clan so Majima's family would take the fall for his attempt to seize power and sought to "modernize" the Yakuza by taking over the Tojo clan and using it to go to war with the rivalling Omi Alliance. Majima, hearing enough from a traitor, fights and defeats Ibuchi, but the damage was done, as Kawamura has fanned the flames enough that he expects a war between the Tojo and Omi even without him at that point and kills himself to incite the conflict. Returning to Tojo Headquarters, he informs Terada of what happened as Terada blames himself for being so irresponsible to turn the Clan Captain position to one decided by wealth but Majima defends his decision as a subordinate he isn't supposed to question orders from the Chairman. However with Uematsu and Ibuchi dead, they are now in a weakened state and needed a way to stop the war as Majima proposes a solution. On the day of the meeting, Terada offers his apology to the Omi as Sengoku makes it clear that the actions warrants a war between the two clans. However, Jin Goda allows Terada to make an effort for a punishment for their actions. Majima offers to disband his entire family and all members will go and join him in the disbandment in exchange for not going to war. An offer that the Omi seemingly accepts, however as Terada and Majima leaves, they made it clear, the war is going to happen with or without them. After the disbandment of Majima's family, Majima begins the first day of work as the head of Majima Constructions and the Kamurocho Hills project In the final scene with Makoto, she is on a plane with her family and searches for her passport. As she digs around in her purse, she finds a gift box that she received from her receptionist who told her that someone left it for her at the massage parlor. She opens the contents to find a wristband for her watch that is very similar to her old one. She is exasperated and wonders who could've known about this. She then flashes back to talking to Majima at the massage parlor about her life and finally makes the connection that Majima was her savior 20 years ago. She cries and thanks him for finally letting her life feel complete and free of worries and switches her wristband to the one that he gifted her. Yakuza 3 Edit With the Jingweon Mafia and the Omi Alliance dealt with, Kiryu meets with Majima at the top of Millennium Tower. Kiryu pleads with him once more to go back to the Tojo Clan to support the newly-appointed Sixth Chairman, Daigo Dojima, as a contingency for any future troubles. Majima, reluctant at first since his construction company is now his responsibility, becomes intrigued by Kiryu's idea that he would be able to run amok and cause chaos for the survival of the clan. Majima then explains that he is only swayed by strength, and implies that he will only accept this favor by force. After their fourth battle in the series, Majima loses and promises Kiryu he would return to the Tojo clan, leaving him to wonder what he had got himself into. A year later, suspected of betraying the Tojo Clan over the resort deal, Kiryu heads to Purgatory to meet with Majima to get his side of the story. Greeted by his large entourage of yakuza soldiers, Majima asks Kiryu to follow him to the now-defunct Underground Coliseum where they could talk quietly. Before Majima can answer any further questions, Kiryu must beat him first in the first official coliseum fight since its closure two years ago. After losing once again to Kiryu, he reveals that he got involved for Daigo's sake and that he was also set up by Goh Hamazaki as a suspect of the clan's inner dispute. After saving Kiryu from Land Minister Suzuki's private army outside of the Diet Building, Majima offers to send his family in Okinawa as assistance, which Kiryu refuses. Majima wishes him luck and tells him not to be beaten by Mine and the CIA as he's the one going to kill him someday. During the events of the game, the construction of Kamurocho Hills is still ongoing. Yakuza 4 Edit In 2010, the Majima Family has moved to the old Kazama Family office in the Millennium Tower. Majima follows the trail of Yasuko Saejima, determined to protect her for his old friend, Taiga Saejima. Majima sent Minami to track Yasuko as Lily at Elise. As Akiyama defeats Minami, Majima approaches in. Majima tells Akiyama the reason he came after Yasuko is one Majima should protect for amends what he didn't back in 1985. Majima is aware about Saejima's arrival to Kamurocho, sending Minami over to tell Saejima to meet him. Majima finally meet Saejima after Saejima defeats Minami and other members. Majima insist Saejima to follow him as Saejima wish to know. Majima is later reunited with Saejima at the batting cages where they fight before reminiscing. Majima recounts the story of how he lost his eye to Saejima, and Saejima comments that Majima's Kansai dialect has improved while telling him that Shibata was ultimately murdered. Majima is later arrested to keep him from being an obstacle in Munakata's plan. Majima tells Kiryu that he is only one who Majima got and warn that Yasuko in danger. Majima begs Kiryu to help Yasuko before getting into the police car. Yakuza 5 Edit At the start of Yakuza 5, Majima was in negotiations with the Sapporo branch of the Omi Alliance under orders of Daigo Dojima to help prevent the increasing possibility for war between the two clans. In spite of his claims for peace, Tsubasa Kurosawa sent some assassins to kill Majima mid-negotiation. Majima survives, but was wounded. Local newspapers would report Majima as dead under Kurosawa's command, as to help demoralize the Tojo Clan and incentivize Kiryu to attack Kurosawa's inter-Omi Alliance rival Masaru Watase. In reality, Majima would retreat and heal at the Millennium Tower Tojo Clan HQ. Majima would then make contact via letter with his ex-wife Mirei Park and old buddy-now-Omi Alliance chief member Naoki Katsuya, though this was a part of Katsuya's plan to expose an unknown traitor (Kamon Kanai) from within Katsuya's ranks. However, during the finale the Millenium Tower gets taken over by Kurosawa's men and succeed in capturing Majima, who force him to fight his sworn brother Saejima Taiga under threat of having a sniper (Baba) kill Haruka mid-concert at the Tokyo Dome. He complies at first mostly to save Haruka and as an excuse to fight Saejima again, but soon they both turn on Kurosawa when Baba gets beaten down in his sniper's perch and Daigo Dojima comes to save the two brothers. Yakuza 6 Edit Majima is seen with Saejima at the hospital in ensuring the safety of Daigo after Kurosawa's failed attempt at seizing power for his son; however, police come to arrest Saejima for escaping during the events where Kiryu was arrested. Sugai made a move that resulted in all of the Tojo clan's heads being arrested for their involvement in the Little Asia fire, leaving only Sugai and Someya in actual control and Majima imprisoned with Daigo. They do not make an appearance until the end of the story where they talk to Daigo about making a counterattack against the Yomei Alliance, but Daigo does not respond to their calls for war. Non-Canon Appearances Edit Yakuza Dead Souls Edit During the events of the zombie spinoff Of the End (Dead Souls in English), Majima is watching old zombie films in his flat in Millennium Tower when it is put under quarantine. He escapes the tower only to receive a phone call saying that he is late for the grand opening of Kamurocho Hills, a skyscraper he helped to construct throughout the series. He arrives only to find that it too is under quarantine, and that he must protect the people holed up inside the tower from the zombie invaders. He helps to evacuate the refugees to Purgatory, but in the process gets bitten by a zombie. He fears he may soon become one, a fear that is reinforced when Kiryu and Asagi (a female SDF soldier) remark that his eye has started turning red. In despair, he walks over to the Champion District, where he finds an abandoned Sauna. Thinking he may be able to "sweat out" the zombie toxin, he decides to visit. He is not seen again until the end of the game, where it is revealed that the zombie who "bit" him was in fact previously a toothless old man and thus did not manage to break his skin. It is also revealed that the reason his eye has turned red is because it was allergy season and he was suffering from hay fever. Binary Domain Edit Project x Zone 2 Edit Along with Heihachi Mishima (from Tekken series), he saves Phoenix Wright and Maya Fey (from the Ace Attorney series) from B.O.W.S (Resident Evil) attack. He asks who is responsible for the Thanatos attack, and Heihachi tells him Shadaloo is the main organization responsible for the attack in Kamurocho. Appearance Edit Majima has a lean build, which enables him to possess incredible levels of speed and agility. His build is considerably slimmer than Kiryu especially outside 0, which led to some mockery in 0 (by local thugs) and in the fifth game (by Saejima). In terms of attire, Majima's attire in 0 is a tuxedo jacket with matching bowtie, white dress shirt, slim-fit dress pants, and a pair of black dress shoes. He later changed his attire to his signature snakeskin-motif jacket, leather pants and leather shoes at the end of 0. In later parts of Yakuza 3 and most of Yakuza 4, he wears a charcoal gray suit jacket over a deep red dress shirt with black bowtie, matching dress pants, and a pair of black dress shoes. He originally has a medium-length haircut in most of his appearances and in the flashback scene in 4, but in 0, he grew his hair long enough to be done into a ponytail. In Yakuza 0, Yakuza/Yakuza Kiwami, and Yakuza 2/Yakuza Kiwami 2, his eyepatch is blank. From Yakuza 3 onwards, his eyepatch is adorned with snake ornament. Personality Edit Majima has a very unique multilayered personality. The core of his personality is a cool and collected individual with a high degree of charisma and who is surprisingly very soft at heart. He loves to cut loose when formalities are not needed (particularly during karaoke) and sports a bit of a wild side - something he channels later as his legendary "Mad Dog of Shimano" persona. He is respectful by nature to strangers and superiors, and is surprisingly pragmatic, both of which made him a fantastic businessman throughout his life as shown by his success with the cabaret clubs Grand and Sunshine, and later his construction company. This also led him to be favored by his superiors on multiple occasions, sometimes against his will as was the case with Sagawa. However, in spite of all this, the two traits that likely drew Majima to a life in the Yakuza are his deep personal joy for violence and to a lesser extent his drive for a state of power. This joy for violence would manifest itself early in his career and make him an excellent fighter, although killing is generally against his code of honor. As of the events of Yakuza 0 close, Majima ultimately adopts a persona loosely inspired from his enemy-turned-friend Homare Nishitani, adapting some of Nishitani's mannerisms and ferocity into his own Yakuza style (which he somewhat admits in his final speech with Sagawa) and building upon the reputation he gained during his one-man raid on the Dojima Family HQ in 1988 - arguably the birthplace of said persona. This crazy, psychotic, violent "Mad Dog of Shimano" side of him is what he becomes famous for as a Yakuza, to which he embraces for the rest of his Yakuza career except during times of serious high-level business. Majima enjoys power, and utilizing this fear for the "Mad Dog" becomes one his favorite tools in bending the wills of anyone below him, using regular random beatings on his own men to reinforce it. Majima is very much along the old ways of the Yakuza lifestyle similar to Saejima, valuing power over wealth in terms of deciding the worth of a Yakuza member. Majima has earned his reputation as the "Mad Dog" for his utterly unpredictable and violent attitude that members of his family are often more frightened when he is serious and calm. Despite this, he has never killed a single man not out of mercy but because of his views. To Majima, those that he chooses to kill are either in their dying moments and deserves a merciful death or people who had earned his respect to be allowed to die by his hand. To those that he views as trash and inferior, he would ruthlessly beat them senseless but deny them a glorious death in battle. Majima over the years had gone through several personality shifts, when he was oath brothers with Saejima he served as the calmer mind of the two, while he lacked the same mental commitment as Saejima, he was the one who was concerned about Yasuko's welfare on the day before the hit. His loyalty to Saejima was felt throughout the years, choosing to let Shimano kill him when Sera and Sagawa ordered him to kill Shimano to ensure the secret alliance never reaches the Omi Alliance. After he returned to the good graces of Shimano he created the feared reputation of the Mad Dog, the unpredictable enforcer of Shimano's law. Later years shows his more sincere side and the sense of loyalty that was virtually unknown to Kiryu. After meeting Nishitani, he became a person with no concern for his own mortality as Nishitani gave little care about his own personal well being to achieve his own goals. While debatably good at heart, Majima's not quite as saintly as Kiryu as he doesn't feel compelled to save everyone all the time, but he generally makes a point of saving the innocent from offenders, particularly the young and the weak. He takes the title of Yakuza very seriously and has little qualm with beating those who risk taking the mantle regardless of their ability. Majima also acts as the comic relief in the series. His sense of dark humor is seen in Dead Souls where he laughs at the suffering of several con men as they were about to be bitten by customers they had scammed as well as the Majima training sessions where he will take up disguises for the sole purpose of training Kiryu. In Kiwami 2, Majima makes light of collapsing from his injuries by hitting on Sayama, to her chagrin. Fighting Style Edit Yakuza 0 Edit Majima makes his canonical playable debut with the ability to switch between different fighting styles never displayed in the series before. Mirroring Kiryu, his has four styles revolving around a default balanced style that is effective in most, if not all situations; a style focused on power that relies on slow but immensely strong attacks and increases resistance to enemy attacks; a style focused on speed to hit enemies quickly while dodging just as fast to avoid being hit; and a secret, legendary fighting style that the character in question will canonically adopt as their fighting style for the rest of the series. Majima is skilled in the use of many weapons, including nunchaku, swords, knives, bats, and batons. Compared to Kiryu's brute swinging, Majima wields them with proper technique and training. His choise of empty handed combat seems to be Hapkido mixed with dirty fighting techniques. Balanced - Thug (dubbed Street Fighter in Japanese release) Edit Majima's canonical style throughout Yakuza 0, which is a fluid combination of punches, kicks, rolls and counters, emphasizing on street fighting with hints of trickery and sneak attacks. Majima is also able to dodge twice thanks to his speed. This style also enables Majima to handle certain melee weapons with grace, do disarm tackle at enemies who carry a gun, detect concealed personal arms from enemies, and even snatch weapons off of enemies. Compared to Kiryu's Brawler style, the Thug style has quicker pace. Power - Slugger Edit A fighting style that emphasizes Majima's excellent ability to handle melee weapons, primarily baseball bats. Usage of weapons in this style disabled Majima from grabbing an enemy, but this is switched to a guard-breaking attack. Also, unlike the Thug style which enables Majima to dodge twice from enemies, Slugger only enables Majima to dodge once by default. There are several weapons of choice in this style, aside from the default baseball bat (dubbed Pummeling Bat in international releases), ranging from long poles, kali sticks, tonfa, nunchuk, and sword. The Slugger style emits a yellow/golden aura. He also learns no new slugger moves from his master, but rather learns to master the other weapons. Speed - Breaker (dubbed Dancer in Japanese release) Edit Emphasizing on Majima's dancing skills and agility, this style combines elements from breakdancing and capoeira. In this style, Majima cannot do a grab, but instead, he will perform a backflip. However, when one purchased a certain ability, Majima will be able to dodge, perform a foot lock, and do a strike to an enemy. Weapons can be equipped, but only for those that are in the inventory (a certain ability will enable Majima to throw small objects into an enemy). A unique feature in this style is Majima can increase his Heat by dancing. The Breaker style emits a magenta aura. Legend - Mad Dog of Shimano Edit Majima's Legend style combines street fighting, dancing, and melee weapons skills. It is loosely inspired by Homare Nishitani’s knife fighting style. Majima will hold a tanto (dubbed the Demonfire Dagger) as a default weapon. Unique to this style is the ability to run at an extreme speed. Attacks will mainly consist of kicks, flips and slashes/stabs. This style disables Majima's ability to grab, but is compensated with a low kick ability (or a spinning attack once Majima is at the 3rd Gear Heat level). Counters in this style are done by stabbing an enemy in the abdominal area. As for dodging, the ability to dodge twice is retained in this style. This style disables Majima's ability to grab weapons, but he can equip various weapons stored in the inventory. The taunt for the Mad Dog style involves Majima taking a small step back and laughing maniacally, and is unique in the game because it actually causes him to lose a bit of Heat overall(though less than the Dragon of Dojima's "Serenity" ability). Yakuza Kiwami Edit Majima's default fighting style when fought is the Mad Dog style, but when low on health, he enters Heat mode with another style. In the first encounter at the batting cages, Majima switches to Slugger style, and in the second encounter at Shangri-La, he switches to Thug after he and Kiryu fall through the floor. While they may seem like downgrades, in Yakuza Kiwami, both styles are actually more powerful than Mad Dog. While in Slugger style at the batting cages, Majima cannot be interrupted during combos unlike Mad Dog, and his heavy damage and wide swings may cause Kiryu to lose large chunks of health if he is caught in a single combo. Two hits from Slugger style are able to break through Kiryu's guard. While in Thug style at Shangri-La, Majima's long-winded and relentless attack combos with very few openings can allow him to get many hits in on Kiryu if not careful, while his ability to recover from parries and single hits increases in speed. This makes it difficult to effectively attack him without his response. His dodging speed and distance are also enhanced, allowing him to get behind Kiryu very easily and attack the moment he approaches. In the Majima Everywhere mode, Majima may utilize all of his fighting styles depending on the encounter, including Breaker. Like Thug, Breaker leaves very little openings to attack, and coupled with his wide reach that forces Kiryu to stay outside of range, can make fights long-winded without proper abilities and upgrades. Yakuza 1 onwards Edit During most of the series Majima is shown to be a vicious and aggressive fighter, often using his agility and nimbleness to move fast and land precise strikes. He always fights using his favored Tantō which he often uses in a chain of combos that must be evaded through specific button input sequences. He is shown to counter quick and can also spin like a tornado while hacking at his opponent. Due to the use of his knife he rarely uses punches and thus his style is a mix of kicks and slashes. Because of his knife it is impossible to block him unless one acquires the necessary skills to parry blades. Yakuza Kiwami 2 Edit Yakuza 5 Edit Majima is somehow capable of creating shadow doppelgangers while he himself turns into a dark figure all of whom can hack at Saejima. It is hinted he is able to create these copies through sheer speed. Gallery Edit Goro Majima/Gallery Trivia Edit Majima is one of two characters in the series who has been shown to be a standard boss, a final boss, an AI partner in fights and a playable character, the other being Ryuji Goda . Yakuza 6 is the first Yakuza game (excluding Yakuza 0) to not feature Majima as a boss. It's presumed that Majima struggles with pollen allergy. Other His signature weapon appears to be a Tantō, which he handles with immense grace and agility despite seemingly having no proper training with it. While not relying on it in combat, Majima uses it in tandem with his own punches and kicks. His final unlockable fighting style in Yakuza 0 is his infamous "Mad Dog of Shimano" style. This has him use it for the first time in combat, and while bringing it out, he will laugh maniacally as he adopts his Mad Dog persona. It is seen adorned with floral designs in Yakuza 3, 4, 5 & 0. is his infamous "Mad Dog of Shimano" style. This has him use it for the first time in combat, and while bringing it out, he will laugh maniacally as he adopts his Mad Dog persona. He ranked 1st place in the fan most favorite characters poll according to Sega due to being comic relief. [1] Majima appears to be a fan of baseball and a proficient batter. In Yakuza 4, he fights Saejima in a batting center, even referring it as "our old playground". His Slugger attack in 0 also emphasizes this. He also appears to have a sense of care for the environment. In Yakuza 4's 1985 flashback, he told that a yakuza should also care for the environment, in response to Saejima's complaint about the hot weather. This can also be seen in Yakuza Kiwami's Majima Everywhere, where he can be found about to beat up a civilian for not putting his plastic in the recyclable bin and that it would have gone straight to the incinerator, though he doesn't admit it until after Kiryu fights him. After said fight, Majima goes on to say that "separatin' your trash is a man's civic duty! Ya gonna be there to take responsibility when we got toxic-ass dioxins floatin' around?!".
“It really was like a traveling circus,” Cary Elwes says of filming one of the most beloved movies in the history of cinema, The Princess Bride. Elwes, of course, portrayed the iconic, Zorro-like hero Westley in the Rob Reiner epic—a swashbuckling fantasy/adventure/romance replete with a giant, a six-fingered man, Rodents of Unusual Size, the Cliffs of Insanity, the list goes on. Reiner’s film, released in 1987, boasted a wildly diverse cast including the up-and-coming Brit Elwes as The Man In Black, newcomer Robin Wright as Princess Buttercup, a scenery-chewing Mandy Patinkin as the vengeance-seeking Spaniard Inigo Montoya, wrestler Andre the Giant and thespian Wallace Shawn as henchmen Fezzik and Vizzini, Chris Sarandon as the scheming Prince Humperdinck, Christopher Guest playing against type as the evil Six-Fingered Man, Billy Crystal and Carol Kane as Miracle Max and Valerie, as well as Peter Falk and Fred Savage as the grandfather/narrator and his grandson, respectively. The film’s screenplay, courtesy of the great William Goldman—who took home a pair of Oscars for penning Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All the President’s Men—is endlessly quotable: “Inconceivable!” “Hello, My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” “Anybody want a peanut?” “As you wish.” It’s this last quote, As You Wish, which serves as the title of an upcoming tome penned by Elwes (with help from Joe Layden) about the making of the unlikeliest of cinema classics, The Princess Bride. The book, which will be released Oct. 14, offers a thrilling, behind-the-scenes look at the production’s highs and lows, from would-be castings to various hijinks. Elwes was inspired to write the book following a special 25th anniversary screening of the film at the New York Film Festival, which was rapturously received. “We were all asked that night what our individual recollections were of making the film, and there wasn’t really enough time for me to adequately share my experience with the fans, so I thought this would be a good way to do it,” says Elwes. He had some help, too—the entire cast and crew of The Princess Bride contributed cherished memories to the tome. In an interview with The Daily Beast, Elwes discussed his favorites. One thing the book revealed, which I hadn’t heard before, was that your onetime co-star Colin Firth was considered for the role of Westley. That’s right. I finished a picture a few years earlier with Colin called Another Country, and he’s an old friend of mine whom I love dearly. Apparently, he was in the running. I didn’t even know that myself! There are also interesting bits about who was in the running for Fezzik—that when Norman Jewison had the film set up years prior, a then-unknown Arnold Schwarzenegger was attached, and that Richard Kiel was also strongly considered for the part. I think Richard Kiel did, God bless him, but according to Rob, there was really only one person who could play the role. When you organize a casting call for a giant, you don’t get a lot of callbacks and Andre the Giant was really it. Bill Goldman had suggested him because he describes himself as a lunatic fan of Andre’s, and he’d been to see him wrestle at Madison Square Garden and said, “This is the guy.” Of course, we were so lucky to because he was wonderful in the role. Andre’s drinking was the stuff of legend, too. You share a hilarious story in the book of Andre getting so wasted following the first script reading that he passed out smack in the middle of the lobby of the hotel, and hotel employees had to surround him with a velvet rope. They decided that there was no shifting him. There’s no shifting a 550-pound, 7-foot-4 giant, so they had a choice: either call the authorities, and they didn’t want that kind of publicity, or wait for him to wake up, which was the wiser decision. It should be pointed out that Andre didn’t drink for the sake of drinking—Andre was in a lot of pain, God bless him. His back was injured from carrying all that weight around, and from having other wrestlers breaking chairs over his back. He was due to have an operation right after the shoot, and his doctor didn’t know what kind of pain medication to give him because of his size, so the only way that he could deal with the pain was to drink alcohol. And it didn’t affect him at all. He didn’t flub a line or miss a day. The guy could handle his liquor, let me tell ya. Right. You mention this special drink he made, “The American,” which consisted of 40 ounces of various liquors poured into a pitcher, and he’d drink several of these in a single sitting. Yes. The man was extraordinary. He never even slurred his words or was tipsy! He was absolutely a man who could consume vast amounts of alcohol and not have it affect him at all. I’ve never seen anything like it. I went drinking with him after our first screening in New York, and I was sipping a beer all night—which he thought was very funny. There was no way I was going to compete with that, because I knew he could consume 100 beers in one sitting. Ah, yes. You describe that night of drinking in the book and apparently the NYPD had assigned a cop to shadow Andre when he went out drinking because he’d accidentally fallen on a patron while tipsy? Yes. Apparently there was one time where he tripped and fell on an unsuspecting patron while waiting for his car, and after that, any time he went out drinking the NYPD would send an undercover cop to follow him around—which, by the way, I always thought was a great gig to get. Andre would just order the cop drinks all night—which the guy happily took, by the way! You said in the book that Andre got you to taste “The American.” What did it taste like? I’ve never tasted airplane fuel, but I imagine it’s very close to what that must taste like. It’s very potent indeed, and I remember coughing a lot. But to him, it was like chugging water. Another one of my favorite anecdotes from the book is the little person, Danny, who also had played an Ewok in Return of the Jedi, was playing the big Rodent of Unusual Size (ROUS), and the night before you shot the scene of you two fighting, he got wasted, was pulled over in his custom-made little person car, and sent to the drunk tank. Danny Blackner! Poor guy. He was pulled over by policemen the night before our big scene together, and the cop didn’t believe that he was an actor. When the cop asked him, “What role are you playing?” and he said, “I’m playing a rat,” the cop didn’t believe him and took him downtown. The poor guy had to spend the night in jail! I think the cop was picking on him, frankly. There are quotes from both you and Robin Wright about being “smitten” with one another during filming. Did this ever blossom into a full-on romance? I know Robin recently said of you, “I was convinced we were going to be married.” I didn’t know that at the time! But no, no! Everyone was in love with Robin. We all fell in love with her because she’s just a wonderful, sweet human being. It’s hard not to fall in love with Robin. But we were like a big family and I felt more like her older brother, really. I adore her dearly, and she’s a fabulous woman and an enormous talent. And according to the book, both you and Robin kept demanding more and more takes of the final kiss. We couldn’t stop giggling, you know? It’s like kissing your sister! It’s weird. We were laughing and couldn’t believe we were actually doing it. We ruined a lot of takes from giggling, which is why it took six of ’em. But it was a really nice way to end the picture, too, and I also didn’t want the film to end, in a strange way. It’s crazy that The Princess Bride only made around $30.8 million in its initial theatrical run, and the cast and crew discuss in the book how Fox just had no idea whatsoever how to market it—with the first poster even just featuring Peter Falk reading to Fred Savage in bed. Not to be disingenuous to Fox’s marketing department, but they were confused. They were presented with a film that had many genres. Was it a comedy? An adventure film? A romantic film? A kid’s movie? An adult’s movie? They didn’t know what angle was best, so they settled on the grandson-and-grandfather angle, and we didn’t feel that was the best way to market the film, and neither did the audience. The film didn’t really find its legs until it was released on VHS and people began renting it, buying it, and giving it as gifts to friends and family. How did you get Shepard Fairey to design the limited edition Princess Bride poster that comes with the book? I just asked him! It turns out he’s a big fan of the movie, and that was that. We’re very blessed to have him be a part of the book. If you take off the dust jacket of the hardcover edition of the book, inside is a limited edition Shepard Fairey poster, and it’s absolutely beautiful. So lovely. He’s not the only one who loved the film. In the book, you write about how you were given an audience with Pope John Paul II and he told you how much he loved the film. I got to play him years later in a TV movie, and had I known what I know now about this guy, I would have asked him more questions because he was an actor, poet, and Renaissance man. And he’d seen the film, which was incredible! I was blown away by the fact that he’d actually seen it, and liked it. We have a saint who’s a fan. I guess you can’t beat that, really! An interesting bit in the book concerns Wallace Shawn, who apparently was really overcome with anxiety during filming—in part, because his agent had told him that Danny DeVito was offered the part of Vizzini before him. I noticed he was anxious at the time, but I didn’t know what the reason was, and apparently his agent had told him that they really wanted Danny DeVito for the role of Vizzini. So during shooting, the poor guy was fixated on the idea and really nervous that he was going to be replaced, which is so crazy because when you look at his performance, you can’t think of anyone else playing Vizzini besides Wally. Was there ever talk of a film sequel to The Princess Bride? I understand that Bill Goldman was working on a book sequel that he never finished. Well, Bill had already started writing that sequel himself as a book called Buttercup’s Baby, but he was having a really hard time with it and couldn’t lick it. If Bill Goldman couldn’t lick it then who else was going to do it, you know what I mean? He definitely tried, but I think it’s nice being left as a single film without a sequel. It would be very hard to remake. It’s hard to crystallize what makes The Princess Bride such a cherished film, and one that gets passed on from generation to generation. Why do you think people love The Princess Bride? I have a theory about it. First of all, it’s a really sweet story written by Bill Goldman for his two daughters, and it’s a love letter to them. He asked his daughters, “I’m going to write a book for you both… what do you want it to be about?” And one daughter said “princesses” and the other said “bride.” Even in its inception, it was a very sweet and lovely place to start from, and we carried that sweetness and love into the filmmaking process. And Rob was just the right director at that point in his career. His father, Carl Reiner, had given him the book to read, and he adored it so he had a real respect for the material. I don’t think any other director then or now could have directed it as well as he did, because it has a lot of heart.
Overtime in the NFL is going to look drastically different in 2017, or at least is expected to, with NFL owners expected to pass a ruling that will shorten the length of overtime from 15 minutes to 10 minutes. Saints quarterback Drew Brees, appearing on the "Dan Patrick Show," said he doesn't like the idea because it's going to end up in more ties than ever before. "I'm not sure what the thought process was going into it, but just from what I see I would disagree with it because more games are going to end in ties now," Brees said. "That additional five minutes, especially where the rules changed, to where in essence both teams get a possession, unless someone goes down and scores a touchdown right away. So I think what we already saw with the new rules of, a field goal can't win it on the first possession, we've seen more ties. "I can think of at least three or four off the top of my head that resulted in ties based on that new rule. So now make it to where it's just 10 minutes as opposed to 15 and I think that changes things. Probably see more ties." Brees is right: the rule change should end up with a lot more games being tied. Of the 83 games that went into overtime since 2012, when the NFL adopted the policy of allowing each team an opportunity to possess the football in overtime, 22 of them ended in a score that occurred after the 10-minute mark, according to NFL research. That's more than four additional ties per year over a five-year period. So what would Brees like to see? How about college overtime rules instead? Brees thinks that it would interest more fans and reduce the number of plays that teams have to run. "I like [college overtime rules]. I like it. It's exciting, right? You're limiting the number of plays as well when you give the team the ball at the 20, 25-yard line," Brees said. "They're already in the red zone, they're already in scoring position, whether it's a field goal or a touchdown. I think you're reducing the numbers of plays, it's exciting for fans, it's situational football. So I wouldn't be opposed to us doing something like that." Brees isn't the first NFL player to suggest moving to college overtime rules. After the Packers lost to the Cardinals in overtime during the 2016 NFL playoffs, Clay Matthews suggested that the league should shift to college overtime rules as well. That was the second straight season where the Packers' playoff hopes ended without the offense touching the ball in overtime. The suggestion makes a lot more sense than Russell Wilson's wacky idea of giving one team an immediate field goal attempt from the 35-yard line after winning the coin toss. The league is doing this in the name of player safety, but unless teams start to get a lot more aggressive in overtime -- and they probably won't, because NFL coaches are inherently conservative -- it could result in hurting the product on the field. No one likes ties, or even the coin toss that comes before them.
Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. Jan. 26, 2016, 4:30 PM GMT / Updated Jan. 26, 2016, 4:30 PM GMT By Mark Murray More than $70 million has been spent on advertisements in Iowa, according to the final batch of ad-spending numbers from SMG Delta before Monday’s Iowa caucuses. The biggest overall spender in Iowa has been Jeb Bush’s Super PAC, which has aired nearly $15 million in ads in the Hawkeye State. That’s followed by the nearly $12 million that Marco Rubio’s campaign, Super PAC, and 501c4 outside group have spent. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton’s campaign has aired more than $9 million in Iowa, while Bernie Sanders has spent $7.4 million. As for the two leading Republicans in the Hawkeye State, Donald Trump has doled out $3.3 million on ads, while Ted Cruz (via his campaign and Super PACs) has spent $6 million. Overall – in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and elsewhere – Team Bush has spent more than $62 million on ads, Team Rubio has spent $39 million, Team Sanders has spent $16.4 million, and Team Clinton has spent nearly $15 million. Total Iowa ad spending so far
New York post-punks Interpol have had a wild ride promoting El Pintor, but it's not drawing to a close soon - they've just announced another new single, "Anywhere". The new single will be released 9 March via Soft Limit/PIAS, and is taken from their latest record El Pintor (a former Best Fit Album of the Week), which is out now. Interpol also kick off a UK/Ireland tour in February, including a three-night residency at Dublin's Olympia, and you can peek at the dates below. February 6 - Roundhouse, London 7 - Roundhouse, London 8 - Albert Hall, Manchester 10 - Olympia, Dublin 11 - Olympia, Dublin 12 - Olympia, Dublin 14 - Barrowlands, Glasgow 15 - Metropolitan University, Leeds Tuesday 17 The Forum, London (NME Awards show) Check out the band performing "Anywhere" during last June's Brixton headline date below.
Lust comes in many forms here in Hollywood, as well as out there beyond the Tinsel where it’s a tad more… normal? You’ve got your sexual lust, power lust, wanderlust, object lust, lust for intimacy, lust for that which dare not speak its name, follower lust, lost youth lust, future lust, pornographic lust, biblical lust, virtual lust. Anyway you skin it, though, lust is interestingly something wholly contained to our own psyche. It has no antecedent, no binary, only fractal likenesses spreading out over history, the now, and the speculative future. Sure, two lusters may collide between the sheets following a plastics convention in Islamabad, around a hearty bowl of moqueca de camarao in a Bahian resort, or a ’67 Porsche 911 in Pebble Beach. But what’s to say these individuals’ lust for the other’s body, the soup, the auto, is equivocal, let alone measurable? No, lust, in its rawest form, is something we must repress, exercise, weigh, or value entirely on our own. Consider the new record from superstar, Lana Del Rey: Lust for Life. When considering, might we assume this particular “lust” to have some corrupted layer to it? Some sort of invasive, or melancholic, or alienating undertone? Something mysterious?* Why might we? Well, because those are the sort of insinuations we tend to foist upon the Lana Del Rey we’ve come to know, or presume we know, over the last near decade, be it through the multitudinous, oft-confounded media halo around her, or perhaps our own desire for her to personally fulfill on some of the themes bandied about her discography. Lana Del Rey is mentally unwell. Lana Del Rey is violence-obsessed. Lana Del Rey is lost in an abandoned era. Lana Del Rey is… happy? “I think I was feeling happy that I was present, and not afraid in a way that I couldn’t enjoy my everyday things,” the musician says of the new record’s title, sat in blue jeans, cross-legged on the floor of a Chateau Marmont hotel suite, enjoying French fries and a Diet Coke on a balmy, breezy Friday afternoon. “I’m the kind of person that really loves those things. Like when I drive, I love every road, and I can’t believe that I’m in L.A. I love the architecture, grabbing a coffee, striking up conversation with the people I encounter. And I hate when I can’t enjoy the little things because in the back of my head I have concerns or preoccupations. So for me, it was that sort of lust for life. It was kind of just about happiness.” Are we ok with that? Can we appreciate a lust from Grammy-nominated Del Rey if it’s not tortured or muddied, glass eyed, drowning in itself? Can this fifth full-length follow previous efforts with titles like Born to Die (2012) or Ultraviolence (2014) with calm, with appreciation for the light and the trees and the way our foamy cappuccino looks so god damned beautiful? It doesn’t really matter, for we’ll never know this lust’s exactitude as I suggest above, and that’s ok. And anyway, nothing is more undefinable or elusive than happiness. What does matter is that the songs on the record possess an incredible richness in production, there’s some excellent and legendary guests on a few tracks, and from the artist’s point of view, a kind of carving down in scope, what I’ll venture to call a distinct maturation in her oeuvre. “The record has fewer dimensions,” she remarks. “But they’re more beautiful than in the past. I had no idea that would make it easier to talk about.” Has this ease with discussing the content perhaps coincided with a sort of softening, or openness toward her in the arenas of public or journalistic reception? “I feel that,” she says thoughtfully. “And it’s helped me be more open as well. Because it’s hard to talk about your innermost feelings if you feel the reception will be cold. And I hung back for a while. I did a handful of interviews, but not many in the last few years. But also I was writing and writing, and digging through stuff, and not writing things as easy to digest or discuss. It still comes from me, but as I’ve evened out as a person, I don’t have as much I don’t want to say. I feel comfortable.” Comfortable could describe the carefree roost Del Rey and fellow pop success, The Weeknd, take atop the “H” of the iconic Hollywood sign in the title track music video for Lust for Life, which shares its name with a seminal record from another pop chameleon – Iggy Pop – and is released a few days before our sit down. The treatment is surreal and campy, almost goofy, in a manner that decadently rams home this happy sentiment, this appreciation for the minute to minute. The two sweetly croon about taking off one another’s clothes, but remain fully and stylishly swaddled, canonically perched up there above us all, as if a second set of lovers might be drifting on some paddle boat below through the “O,” only to be serenaded into an amorous spell before vanishing into the night. The video ends with Del Rey overtaking the frame, batting her signature lashes before a sort of cat-ate-the-canary-like smile spreads over her face and all succumbs to darkness. An evening out as a person. Ironic then, and downright fun, that while this evening out of Del Rey’s personal temperament has found its sonic outlet – refined and leaner – the artist steps into the cosmically perverse, rehearsed, and beautiful universe of celebrated artist David LaChapelle. Here, instead of playing Lana Del Rey for her cover shoot, which we’ve chiefly only ever seen, she embodies everyone else. Their lust, their dreams, their encumbering. The singer enlivens her Instagram geotag “Hollyweird” with some proper role playing. “Da-vid La-Chapelle. Whoa. Da-vid La-Chapelle,” Del Rey says breathily, demonstrably dropping her jaw, while recounting her 14 hour photo shoot with the art photographer. Yes, David LaChapelle: that scramble-slinging riot boy of the Wild West, whose pumped petrol from Pepsi cans, breast milk from dad bands, and inimitable flair from celebrity after celebrity, all of course while flooding museums and arming utopianistas, while whirling through fame and hurt and photo sets and inward plunges and friends and cities and applause. Da-vid La-Chapelle. And fittingly, one of the more influential molders of modern lust, and in particular Hollywood lust, all prismatic and decadent, of the last 50 years. “I just couldn’t believe it,” Del Rey says. “Because I always make things really hard to work, because I don’t want to talk that much. So I had defiantly said to someone, ‘Don’t ask me unless David LaChapelle is shooting it.’ And then I get a call from Stephen Huvane [a partner in Slate PR], and he’s like ‘David LaChapelle is shooting it and you’re going to do it.’ So when I got to his studio, which is like a few blocks from my house, I was blown away. He’s amazing. And he thinks big picture, and different picture, and textures, and he doesn’t want to do a simple portrait right now because that’s not where he is in his life. And I’m the same way. I don’t want to make a pop record if I’m feeling more acoustic, for instance. And so he’s very true to his own space. There’s not that many people that I would follow into the unknown, so to speak, but with him, I would probably do most of what he suggested.” I speak to LaChapelle over the phone. He’s just had lunch with his staff at his Hollywood studio, and no, he “doesn’t want to” discuss the process behind Del Rey’s photos technically, or even creatively – save to say that he’s happy with the images. When questioned why he determined to create the cover story, given he so rarely creates editorial images for magazines anymore in light of global exhibitions and museum showings, he remarks, “I have had a relationship with Flaunt for a long time. Lana’s a down-to-earth person. I like her writing. I saw her show at the Hollywood Bowl, and really liked the music, and that inspired the concept and ideas for the photos. Lana was interested in the artistic angle, not a promotional angle, which I really liked. Much more interested in creating art than promoting something.” A couple weeks back, on set at LaChapelle’s studio, upon Del Rey’s arrival, he points to a handful of easels containing perhaps 15 vintage photographs, blown up large, the pixels swelling. These nostalgic, quotidian moments are today’s creative template. The content? There’s your requisite, slightly tilted living room snap where subjects stare stonily at a television, taken from an adjacent La-Z-Boy. There’s vacations to national parks. There’s weddings. There’s piss ups. There’s youth and death and that gray, cumbersome in-between period where we mutate as far as we can from either end, only to return fundamentally unaltered. It’s all very American, very pastoral, archetypes piled atop clichés, atop Heartland mores. At the bottom of the centered easel is an August haze-soaked summer camp scene of your requisite teepees, oak trees, and some white guy in profile sporting an American Indian-style headdress. Having this particular morning all witnessed Pepsi’s whitewashed plunge into the hellfire of failed advertising with their now retracted Kendall Jenner spot [which pretty inarguably suggested the Black Lives Matter or Women’s March movements viable plot points for Pepsi as Great Equalizer], concern is raised over cultural appropriation and the risks run. LaChapelle considers the concern, but shakes his head and supplies, “It’s not appropriation. You’re just playing a character.” True. Playing a character is borrowing or homage, whereas appropriation could be said to mean taking and using without permission. And in the case of Pepsi: bastardization, insensitivity, myopia. In her videos, it could be said that Del Rey has stepped into a variety of self-representations, or roles, and this adventure into the unknown with Mr. LaChapelle certainly demonstrates her chameleon-like aptitude for character making on photo sets. Still, she shares the unfamiliarity and challenges for her in extending this to song. Notably, there is a track on Lust for Life, recorded with Sean Lennon, a layered and playful number that explores, among other things, John Lennon and Yoko Ono – a canonical deity of lust and artistry if ever there was – that sees Del Rey refreshingly step outside her own paradigm. “I felt like it belonged to someone else,” she says of the single, “Tomorrow Never Came.” “And I never feel that, because I like to keep everything for myself. I thought it might be strange for Sean to sing a song about John and Yoko as well. But I think the fact that I sing, ‘Isn’t life crazy now that I’m singing with Sean.’ It points to the fact that we’re both aware. I didn’t want it to come out exploitative in any fashion. Not that it would. Still, I wanted to be as careful as possible. I wanted it to come across layered with this sort of meta narrative mixed in. In a way it’s a song about a song.” I speak over the phone to Lennon, currently in New York, who originally received a very simple version of the song from Del Rey with only her vocals, guitar, and an organ. “To me,” he shares, “Ninety-nine percent of what is magical about that song was already contained in her original vocal performance. I felt like it was my job to simply highlight and accentuate what was already there in her voice and melody, and in her lyrics. Everything I played was merely ornamental, like tailoring a ballroom gown on an already stunning woman: the only way to mess up is if you take away from or disguise the beauty that is already there.” Considering the lineage in the song and their first collaboration together, I ask Lennon what he learned from the experience. “She has exceptional taste,” he remarks. “I told her that working on her song was a valuable lesson since I often modulate and take unintuitive chordal and melodic twists and turns, and she reminded me that you can be perhaps even more compelling if the melodies and chords feel natural and intuitive, not contrived or disorienting as in my music. Anyway I’ll never forget when she called me after I sent her what I did and her first words were ‘It’s perfect!’ I almost cried with joy because I honestly don’t think anyone has ever said that to me about anything I’ve ever done. It was a very good feeling.” Beyond the meta-awareness of the lyrics and rich instrumentation [Lennon added “acoustic six- and 12-string guitar, electric guitar, lap steel, upright bass, vibraphone, harpsichord, orchestra bells, drums, and Mellotron strings, and shaker”], a particularly resonant lyric repeats itself a handful of times: You weren’t in the spot you said to wait. I ask Del Rey if there are running themes of stasis or waiting elsewhere on the record. “I think that’s why I felt that of anything on the record, that wasn’t my song,” she considers. “I didn’t feel like I was waiting for anything. It’s really not about anything personally, except that I love the sonics of it; the filters. I try to be as careful as I can that I’ll want to sing stuff on stage that I write. And that song will be an easy one to do because it doesn’t pull at any heartstrings or anything. And I know it’s special to Sean as well, because he’s his dad’s biggest fan. And so I like that, in a small way, they had a moment, in whatever surreal way that could happen.” And so with maturity, and the cool calm that Del Rey has amassed, five albums later, she’s able to play someone else, it seems, in song. But like she mentioned, that was a step outside the norm. And I’m not sure the world is all too ready for that anyway. Earlier, as Del Rey arrived in the lobby of the Chateau, we shared a hug and swapped some chit chat while her surprisingly young and surprisingly English manager, Ben Mawson, secured a suite for our interview. Mawson, returning, mentioned his ambitions to visit a mystic in Santa Barbara, smoothly coaxed Del Rey’s cars keys to do so from her reluctant hands (like any accomplished manager ought), and left us and his tab in a stylish puff of smoke as the singer and I strolled toward the elevators. We’re welcomed by a member of the Chateau’s attractive staff, who shares some familiar sweetness with Del Rey, and enters the elevator with us. After some run of the mill small talk regards Del Rey’s new L.A. home of which the staffer has some knowledge, the singer in turn asks how things have been at the Chateau, the Hollywood fixture for celeby notables, bolognese bowls, and rabbit holes. “Oh you know,” the woman remarks. “Things change out there in the world, but here, they stay the same.” The change out there in the world has indeed been pretty seismic. Accordingly, you have my personal favorite track on the record, “God Bless America,” an unbridled spanker of a song that’s title refrain is followed by, “And all the beautiful women in it”—that’s instantly echoing through your melon and one in which Del Rey remarks, “Yeah, I went there.” She describes the song, of which Mawson shared earlier his reluctance to release as a single, given the tendency of Del Rey to net the mentioned public polarization, “It has some strong messaging,” she says nodding. “Some iconography, with Lady Liberty, fire escapes and the streets, and I do get a little New York feel when I listen back to it.” I tell her the song feels grandiose in production, anthemic in verse… very New York in fact, a sparkling pile of empire and accomplishment. And while New York (and its banks) have churned out the free world leader and a boys club not so concerned about everyone therein being blessed, moreover the “beautiful women in it”—reminding us that grandiosity has its pitfalls—“God Bless America” could easily ascend the ladder as a 2017 rally cry. I ask her if she feels the appropriative nature of the song title may stir any pots of sorts.”Well, it’s the God word,” she says measuredly. “But the phrase has wider meaning. It’s more of a sentiment. When I wrote it I didn’t feel like it was confined to a traditional portrait of the Lord, as some sects might see it. It was more like, ‘Fucking God bless us all and let’s hope we make it through this.’ She further explains the genesis, “When all the Women’s Marches were happening, I had already written this song, because I had been hearing a lot of things online. And I have a sister, and a lot of girlfriends, who had a lot of concerns about things that were being said in the media by some of our leaders. And I saw an instant reaction from women, and I was like, ‘Wow. There is no confusing how women are feeling about the state of the nation.’ And so without really trying to, I felt compelled to just write a song and say we are all concerned. And it really made me think about my relationship with women. And I felt proud of myself, because I do love the women in my life. And I take care of them, and I ask them what they think about music, and guys, and problems, and I thought it was so cool that I’m really right there in the same boat with them. And sometimes I’m not. Sometimes I feel like I’ve got my finger right on the pulse of what’s going on, and then some of my music comes out and it’s like, ‘Fuck, that was a miss. Fuck, that’s not what people feel, at all. But with this, I was right there with everyone.” Considering the caution from management around the track, I ask Del Rey if the potentiality for rib kicks, or what have you, is particular to her, not just someone famous. Does she feel she’s been on the receiving end of a sort of media lust? A presumptive, dutiful debunking of myths? “Perhaps,” Del Rey considers. “Or the journalists don’t have enough going on personally andthey feel like their contribution to current culture is myth building. It’s either one. It’s a broad mix. And I’ll definitely take accountability for how my energy has informed a lot of not true stories. But 50% of that has just been someone’s personal agenda.” Still, despite the pricks and pokes over time, Del Rey does feel the media is incredibly important and worth fighting for at the moment. “That’s why I do love journalists,” she says, “when they’re not assholes, because writers are critical thinkers. They’re people who think it’s important to have conversation, and conversation can lead to change.” I’d agree: the fundamental purpose of media is to present the facts and propel conversation. That, of course, has been tossed into the bullshit blender of late; a corrupted election, orchestrated intel leaks, and in turn media’s brandishing “the enemy of the people” by the venal and orange President Trump, has the press in a pretty gobsmacked, beleaguered position. So ass over heels that even the governing party’s own Fox News mascot, Bill O’Reilly, has finally been ousted for sexually pawing and verbally gnawing on women whom his employers have considerably paid off over the years to keep hush. It’s a mess out there, right or left or between. “I feel like this election jolted almost everyone who was floating around, feeling weird, whatever… right into the current moment,” Del Rey says. “I know several people that had a sort of drifter mentality that are now in the thick of it, considering things, and considering their own contributions, and what matters. I’ve known what matters to me for a long time, so I was already kind of there, but I didn’t really see it going this negatively. I feel like we’re in a bit of a Hitchcockian experience, and you’re in a scenario, and every day you wake up and you can’t believe the things being said and done are real. And I think some people are questioning if this shit is actually happening, like especially with the North Korea issues, which are really the scariest because you’re talking about nuclear annihilation.” The world is in an extraordinarily tenuous place. And while it could be said, certainly for the sake of this piece, the earliest seedlings of civilization were wrought with lust for power, we are, it seems, at somewhat of a tipping point. On the topic of the Women’s March, I share a video of the protests in Caracas, Venezuela, where some two million people were marching that morning against President Nicolás Maduro, dozens of whom were reported killed by police or government backing loyalists. I remark that the collectivist, community-making nature of protest could perhaps only be likened to the power of song. Is there anything on the record that explores this swell of community-making here and around the world at present? She considers. “Well, I have a song that’s quite aware about the collective worry, about whether this is the end of an era. It’s called “When the world was at war we kept dancing.” But I actually went back and forth about keeping it on the record, because I didn’t want it there if it would make people feel worse instead of better. It’s not apathetic. The tone of the production is very dark, and doesn’t lead to a fucking happy feeling. And the question it poses: Is this the end of America, of an era? Are we running out of time with this person at the helm of a ship? Will it crash? In my mind, the lyrics were a reminder not to shut down or shut off, or just don’t talk about things. It was more like stay vigilant and keep dancing. Stay awake.” Given the pace and intensity of the environment in our surrounds of which the artist speaks, I point out that there are still moments on the record that feel lonely, or lost in expectancy, far from active. I cite a lyric: “We get all dressed up to go nowhere in particular.” Del Rey shares that she’d had a phone call with a friend earlier that day, about their personal lives, their music, and she states that he too raised that when talking about artistic stall as a demonstration of stasis. She disagreed with him. “It wasn’t about stasis. I meant that you don’t need to have anything to do to get dressed up and feel special.” We live in a culture where pressure and precedent abound, one in which women are constantly challenged with not feeling special based on their body, their skin color, their age, their social position, their follower count. Does she agree? “It’s more like we just don’t have as much cultural practice at taking the time to appreciate ourselves for who we really are,” she says. “We spend a lot of time when the nation was founding building government, money, and then getting the education system down, so it’s not like some cultures where you take time to mediate, et cetera, on your own dreams, wishes, self worth. I think it’s not enough practice. It’s not like they teach you that in school. But I think that that’s changing too. That’s actually a lot of what the record is about. Even in “God Bless America”… ‘Take me as I am, don’t see me for what I’m not… Only you can save me tonight.’ It’s about seeing people: what they’re actually doing. Who they actually are.” In that sense, Del Rey is championing the same values as her influential predecessors, few and far as they may be, or as bamboozled by the power systems in which they thrived. Consider “Beautiful People,” where she trades verses and coalesces on the chorus with the one and only Stevie Nicks, of whom I refer to as a bonafide badass. “I didn’t know what to except or that I could even ask her, Del Rey remarks. “When I went through ideas of women that could really add something to the record, she was the one we kept coming back to. ‘Bonafide badass’ is a great phrase for her. She’s really real. And she’s still fucking touring, which baffles me. There are so few women doing that. You’ve got Courtney Love, who works, sings, tours… there’s not that many women who were making music in the ’70s or ’80s who still make music. It really is pretty crazy.” We’ve been speaking for a little over an hour. I return to a conversation we’d briefly shared on the photo shoot regards this, Flaunt’s music issue, and its theme (“heartbreak”), determined before we’d secured Del Rey as our cover subject. She’d been briefed on this by her publicity team and was admittedly wary about aligning. Again, that embodiment dilemma. Appropriation? Role playing? “Everything I’ve done in the last two years,” she says with confidence, “I would never say anything that wasn’t true. Even in the music. That’s why I was nervous about me being on the cover, and in big font “The Heartbreak Issue” because the thing is, I don’t feel heartbroken. So I didn’t want to continue a narrative that didn’t apply to me. Because the only person who truly cares about whether I continue that narrative, or any, is me. So I have to do my due diligence. And it doesn’t always work, but I’ll be damned if I don’t fucking try.” Del Rey is indeed expected to carry her narratives, whether they’re isolated in meaning to her or not. It comes with the territory I suppose. Perhaps the reason the public has not allowed her persona the room it allots to certain other celebrities to role play is because it conversely feels her not a role player, but an appropriator. Not of cultural identities, or pivotal historic movements, ethnic/religious/nationalistic identities, but of emotions. Did Lana Del Rey, for instance, scoop up the proliferate sentiment of feeling forlorn when she broke out in 2008 while the economy was breaking down? Why if she sings about manipulation are we assumed she’s manipulating or manipulated? Why if she sings about getting dressed up for no reason but to feel special does one imagine her at home, dressed up, going nowhere? Does someone who writes and sings so pointedly and consistently about love defy its fundamentally inarticulable nature? Is this love borrowed or stolen? From us? From whom? How can we tell? Why can some musicians sing about all sorts of shit, and everyone grants them the concession to do so. Why does Lana have to be her music? Some would argue it’s this collision of singer/songwriter—of whom we expect to sing from the experiences of the heart—with that of pop queen, whom we expect to sing about and for us. Others might speculate that Del Rey’s aim is true, that her heart is her guiding light, that this is more than music. And finally, others might suggest that’s the responsibility of art; to cull from emotions everywhere, permission or non, and distill into something accessible. “I know a couple of people who love to write,” she says as we’re collecting ourselves to leave the hotel room, “and love to rhyme, love melodies, and I do too. But to me it’s so much more than that. It feels like a life’s work and it feels like it’s really important just to me, so I put a lot of time into it.” A lust for life, and whatever you make of it. And what Del Rey is making of it is music; earned and owned up to, as the world continues to take from us and we from it. We walk to the balcony and open the French windows. A web of canopies drape the Chateau’s garden courtyard restaurant, bustling with late lunches and tea service. We remark that beneath these canopies, it can feel so glamorous, so suspended. From up here, though, you see it’s just industrial plastic, mildly in need of a good dirt rinse, the patrons beneath it smudged out like those who didn’t sign the waiver in a reality TV dance, playing a role, all but recognizable.
Mitt Romney, the GOP’s 2012 presidential nominee, is among those courting prospects for a possible third-party bid to keep presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump Donald John TrumpHouse committee believes it has evidence Trump requested putting ally in charge of Cohen probe: report Vietnamese airline takes steps to open flights to US on sidelines of Trump-Kim summit Manafort's attorneys say he should get less than 10 years in prison MORE from the White House, according to a Washington Post report. ADVERTISEMENT Other prospects include Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), one of Trump’s most vocal Republican critics, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who suspended his presidential campaign in early May. Kasich’s chief strategist, John Weaver, said the governor isn’t interested in running as an independent. A Sasse spokesman declined to comment. But it’s not looking too good for a late-in-the-game third-party bid, according to the report. Deadlines have passed to get on the ballot in big states like Texas, though organizers argue a legal challenge there would be successful.
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — The United Nations Security Council on Thursday approved the imposition of a no-fly zone over Libya and “all necessary measures” to protect civilians in the war-torn African nation, while air attacks aimed at Col Moammar Gadhafi’s forces were reportedly expected within hours. The U.N. council voted 10-0 to adopt the resolution providing for the use of force in Libva, with five abstentions including China and Russia. Gadhafi, the embattled leader whose rule not long ago was seen as tenuous, was expected to soon arrive in the eastern city of Benghazi to attempt to wipe out the rebel movement based there. The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. is “fine-tuning” military options for strikes against Gadhafi’s forces, should the White House order them. Options include using cruise missiles to take out Libyan military sites and air-defense systems, the Journal reported. NATO involvement in the military action is also possible, according to the report. Roughly one month ago, Libya became one of a number of nations in the region to see a widespread, popular uprising. While the U.S. was initially reluctant to take action on Libya, the specter of violent backlash against rebels and civilians by forces loyal to Gadhafi has increased the sense of urgency among the U.S. and other nations. Separately, The Wall Street Journal reported that Egypt has begun shipping arms to Libyan rebels, with Washington’s knowledge. The shipments “appear to be the first confirmed case of an outside government arming the rebel fighters,” the Journal reported. See report on Egypt arming Libyan rebels on WSJ.com. Benchmark Nymex crude-oil futures rose following news of the U.N. vote. See report on crude-oil reaction.
A larrikin peddling a push bike on the roof of a moving car in south-east Queensland has risked his life in stunt police have called "one of the most dangerous" they have seen. The husband-and-wife team were driving an old Kingswood wagon near the town of Boonah when police caught sight of them. The Police dashcam vision shows a man on the roof of the car when another person emerges from the passenger seat attempting to get onto a second bike on the roof. But those ideas are dashed when the driver decides to heed police orders and pull over. The incident stunned senior officers, who described it as one of the most dangerous road stunts they've come across. "I just shook my head and thought how can collectively three people think so stupid together," Queensland Police Inspector of Road Policing Operations Peter Flanders said. "They would have landed straight on their head and we would have had another fatality, absolutely have another fatality purely because they thought it was a great idea to ride a push bike on top of a moving car." And the fun was well and truly over when the punishment was handed down. The woman lost her licence for six months, copped a $600 fine and was put on probation for two years. © Nine Digital Pty Ltd 2019
The Hat, a San Gabriel Valley institution known for huge pastrami dip sandwiches, will be opening a Riverside County location in Murrieta, according to city officials. Mayor Harry Ramos touted the arrival of the chain — which has 10 locations in Southern California — during his recent state of the city address and it was hyped by the Murrieta Chamber of Commerce in a newsletter. When it opens, the Murrieta location may end up becoming the first in Riverside County. The restaurant is slated for the Sam’s Club center off Murrieta Hot Springs Road, specifically the building that used to house The Hungry Bull. The chain was spun off from a restaurant in Alhambra that opened in 1951. Patrick Ellis, the chamber’s president/CEO, said in a Twitter message he’s been told the restaurant could open in June. “Building looks good, coming along nicely. Can’t wait!” he wrote.
Well I must say I’m bowled over. What a response from so many loyal friends. I appreciate deeply your sentiments. Just have a look at them on the right hand side. Thanks for taking the trouble to write. And as there’s only a week to go…I’ll stick with it meantime. Have you noticed a trend of addressing the impending electoral success as something abnormal? There’s a tone of that in John Harris from the Guardian – How Long Can the SNP Own Scottish Politics? And in Martin Kettle from the same paper – What Now for the Rebels Who Became the Establishment? …with the referendum behind them, they need to find a new purpose. Meantime other writers are seeking a new politics in the light of the SNP success. To be frank, I doubt if Mr and Mrs Scotland is really on the bus to work debating if we should be doing politics differently. For so many of them they have started doing just that – they began voting SNP for the first time in their lives and they like it. For many of us this is the first time we’ve voted for the party that wins, the first time we’ve voted – and got – the government we wanted. Success feels good. It’s empowering. We got sick of Tory governments in London and Labour hegemony in Edinburgh so over the devolution years we’ve eased them out of the way and left them on the sidelines. On the way we’ve transformed politics in Britain. We’ve obliterated the UK Lib Dems and, increasingly, taken on the role of the Opposition at Westminster. We’ve blown apart the carefully constructed voting system at Holyrood and won over the broadest coalition of voters in our country’s history, first edging out the Tories and then bulldozing Labour. With all its faults the SNP represents more comprehensively the attitudes and outlook of the nation than any party has ever done while the MSPs and MPs themselves are like an identikit of the nation – born in council homes, taught in local schools, educated at our universities, self-made businessmen, industry professionals, health workers, carers and gey few career special advisers…and lawyers! The argument that all this needs to stop is the intuitive mindset of the unbeliever. These are the voices of those brought up and conditioned by the constraints of old politics – Labour for 10 years (if you’re lucky) then the Tories for 10. The Westminster-minded only see through the same viewfinder. To them the rise of the SNP is a freak, a spasm, that will pass when emotion dies down and sense returns. They after all are used to setting the parameters within which we are invited spectators. When Yes kicked that idea in the groin in the indyref, there was muted celebration that someone had broken the mould. But to those who make a living from the Millbank village that could only be understood in relation to their world. So it had to transfer in some way to the old binary politics. But it didn’t. It marched right on down the road to London and occupied their green benches. It is supplanting Labour in the Westminster Parliament as internal strife erodes the authority of the official Opposition. Steadily, through their efforts in Parliament and impressive performances in the UK media, the SNP is now courying in to the mind of the British voters where instead of starey-eyed bigots they become mature contributors saying things that chime with English ideas. They are gradually detoxifying themselves in the eyes of a misled electorate whose own fears of future independence are allayed. Persuasive salesman open doors to profitable transactions. An English electorate more relaxed about a new arrangement with a sensible and friendly neighbour helps open that door. I am bemused how winning a democratic majority has translated so quickly into becoming an establishment – at least in the minds of the doubters. It is meant to cast an aspersion of stasis, corruption and decay. Is that what you see in modern Scotland? A country open to immigration, arguing for refuge for abandoned children…a gender-balanced Cabinet…the appointment of a critical anti poverty scrutineer…engagement with an almost universally hostile media…a transformative renewables industry internationally praised. Put it this way – did the Cabinet all attend the same exclusive schools? Or go to Oxbridge? How many are millionaires? Is their money stashed in Panama? Do they have existing links to big business? Has there been a wholesale M(S)P expenses scandal? Is there a long-running suspicion of top-level conspiracy on child abuse or football death cover up? (When there was a huge complex issue who was it who stood against so much world opinion and released the convicted killer?) To me, electing the SNP is the new politics. They fact that so many critics are obsessed with undermining it is the proof you need. They might as well say: Stop voting SNP because we don’t understand it. Can we go back to normal now? There is of course a case for doing politics differently – if you’re the opposition. It isn’t the winner that has to reassess but the losers. Will they merge into one anti-SNP regiment? Hardly. What appears logical on paper rarely works when emotion and tribalism are involved. Logically Edinburgh should have one football team but what happened when Wallace Mercer suggested it? No, I think the next big move will be an STV voting system which will offer elected places to a more diverse range of views to challenge the SNP. The one idea I could envisage is Labour dropping its outdated commitment to the Union as it stands. There is a gap in the market where the Liberals used to be because if we have to wait for independence, there is a compelling case for UK federalism. A Labour group that made that case while not opposing independence longer term might get back into the game. But the issues are complex. There is evidence today that SNP voters are actually to the Left of Labour voters which, if true, leaves Labour stranded without the very people they’re appealing to. But, with less than a week to voting, that’s their problem. Our problem is making sure the forecasts are correct by eliminating complacency and delivering the vote. With an SNP government installed, and I hope, an increased Green contingent, we can look ahead to the council elections next year (I’m assuming we’re still in the EU!). If the re-election of Nicola Sturgeon as First Minister is the mark of a Scottish establishment, it’ll do for me. by
Is Winnipeg Jets assistant coach Pascal Vincent on the move? Winnipeg Jets assistant coach Pascal Vincent has been with the team for five season after a successful 12 year stint in the QMJHL with the Montreal Juniors and Cape Breton Screaming Eagles. Last July Pascal Vincent along with fellow assistant coach Charlie Huddy and goaltending coach Wade Flaherty signed three year contracts with the Jets. Under former Winnipeg coach Claude Noel the power play was Vincent’s responsibility. While coach Maurice has said he is ultimately responsible for the Jets special teams, Vincent is seen as the lead with the power play which aside from the inaugural season back in Winnipeg hasn’t been very successful. 2015: 14.8% (26th) 2014: 17.5% (20th) 2013: 15.4% (25th) 2012: 13.8% (30th) 2011: 17.9% (11th) In Elliotte Friedman’s 30 Thoughts article today he wrote: One other assistant who could be moving on is Winnipeg’s Pascal Vincent. There are rumblings he’s up for some AHL and/or junior openings. Perhaps the allure of a head coaching gig may lure the current Jets assistant coach who still has a few years remaining on his deal with Winnipeg to a new opportunity. As always stay tuned to illegalcurve.com as well as our social media Twitter \| Facebook \| Instagram for all the latest Winnipeg Jets news.
Computer error messages are often rather baffling for those who don’t speak fluent tech, but recently Xbox One owners have been receiving errors that are confusing for…a different reason. A number of Xbox One users have reported getting a rather strange error message when trying to buy things from the Xbox store. The message written in strange, broken English, references My Little Pony, and just generally doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Check it out for yourself, below. For those who can’t see the image for whatever reason, the message reads: Mock Error Title This would be some long description about the error. Read it and weep! And if you haven't looke up this phrase on the Internet, please do! You'll find a My Little Pony episode called "Read it and Weep." Cloudchasers and Wonderbolts, you'll never be forgotten! Sure enough, there is an episode of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic entitled Reed it and Weep. In the episode Rainbow Dash discovers a love of reading while in the horse hospital, and then tries to hide from her friends. I had to Google that information – I didn’t know it off the top of my head. I swear. So, how’d a seemingly random My Little Pony episode end up referenced in an Xbox One error message? Apparently, the error message was only meant for internal testing purposes, but accidentally made its way into an actual Xbox One update. Xbox vice president Mike Ybarra has promised it will be removed. Fix will be in tonight, sorry about that. Test string that shouldn’t show up. — Mike Ybarra (@XboxQwik) July 19, 2017 Honestly, Brony in-jokes are about as useful as most actual error messages. Leave it in, I say. You can check out WWG’s latest Xbox coverage here. [via VG 24/7]
No cash: John W Henry (right) told Liverpool fans he has run out of cash (Picture: Daily Mail) Liverpool owner John W Henry’s Twitter account has caused a social media storm after he apparently gave a rather direct response to a fan who asked him to sign Dutch midfielder Wesley Sneijder. The fan tweeted the Reds owner asking him to make a bid for midfielder Sneijder, explaining what an important asset he could be for the Anfield club. They wrote: ‘If possible please make a bid for Wesley Sneijder to bring him to LFC family. He’s quality and wants to come.’ A fair request – nothing outrageous – but the response was less then courteous, with Henry – or someone purporting to be him – appearing to respond: ‘Im broke.’ The tweet was deleted soon after – suggesting it was either a mistake, misjudged humour, or his account was hacked, the latter seeming the most likely, given that the last of Henry’s tweets to remain live was back in July last year. Evidence: The fan grabbed a screenshot of the tweet before it was deleted (Picture: Chris Haire) Turkish club Galatasaray are believed to have made a £5million offer for the Inter player, but it is said the Dutch star is waiting for an English club or another of Europe’s leading lights to pay the wages his agent is holding out for. If the tweets are to be believed, that big club is not going to be Liverpool.
Lifting the toxic curse JULIAN CRIBB 3 JUN 2014 Image: Fer Gregory/Shutterstock Something more sinister than climate change stalks the human future – and it is high time we gave it the same attention. Few people have any idea of the universal chemical deluge to which we are now subject, daily, and of the growing peril which we—and all our descendants—face. Humanity currently produces more than 140,000 different chemicals, around a third of which are known or suspected of causing cancer, mutations and birth defects or are toxic in some way. Global output of industrial chemicals is around 30 million tonnes a year, which the UN Environment Program (UNEP) thinks could triple by the mid-century. But industrial chemicals are just the tip of the iceberg. Each year humanity also release 130 million tonnes of nitrogen and phosphorus (mainly from food production or poor waste disposal), 400 million tonnes of hazardous wastes, 13 billion tonnes of fossil fuels, 30 billion tonnes of mineral wastes, 35 billion tonnes of carbon, and 75 billion tonnes of topsoil. This is, by far, our biggest impact on the planet and all life on it, including ourselves. Yet most citizens and governments seem unaware of its true scale. Scientific evidence shows these substances are now moving relentlessly round the Earth in water, air, soil, animals, fish, food, trade, in people and in our very genes. Researchers have found toxic man-made chemicals from the stratosphere to the deep oceans, from the peak of Mt Everest (where fresh snow is too polluted to drink, by Australian standards) to remote Pacific atolls, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Toxic chemicals are now being routinely found by researchers in birds, fish, mammals and other life-forms which have never had contact with humans. They occur throughout our food chains. Tests reveal that the modern citizen is a walking contaminated site. The US Centers for Disease Control’s regular survey find industrial ‘chemicals of concern’ in the blood of 90-100 per cent of Americans. The Environmental Working Group, a US NGO, in independent tests reported finding 414 industrial toxins in 186 people ranging in age from newborns to grandparents. EWG also found 212 chemicals of concern, including dioxins, flame retardants and known carcinogens in the blood of new-born babies, who were contaminated while still in the womb. Tests from China, America and Europe have revealed pesticides in the breast milk of nursing mothers – and most loving parents now immerse their children in petrochemicals of known and unknown toxicity – toys, clothing, furnishings, bottles, tableware, food, the home itself, the car, scents and cleansers. Australian research has found that even when dead and buried, people re-release some toxins back into groundwater. Groundwater beneath many of the world’s big cities is now so polluted from this and from industrial emissions as to be undrinkable. Complex mixtures of chemicals now reach us in the air we breathe, the food and drink we consume, and the things we touch every day. We are passing their effects on to our children and grandchildren in our genes, ensuring they lead less healthy lives. This has all happened in just a few decades, and especially in the last 25 years. No previous generations of humans were so exposed, or so polluted. UNEP estimates about 5 million people die and 86 million are disabled yearly by chemicals directly, making it one of the world’s leading causes of death – yet this does not include millions more cases where chemicals are implicated in common diseases like cancers, heart disease, obesity, autism, depression and other life-threatening mental disorders. These chemicals – intentional and unintentional – interact with the tens of thousands of others in our environment and daily intake to create billions of potentially toxic mixtures. The eminent Harvard medical Professor Philippe Grandjean, in recent article in The Lancet, called on all countries to ‘transform their chemical-risk assessment procedures in order to protect children from everyday toxins that may be causing a global ‘silent epidemic’ of brain development disorders’. Every year up to 1000 new chemicals are released onto markets worldwide, mostly without proper health, safety or environmental testing. Regulation has so far banned just eighteen out of 143,000 known industrial chemicals in a handful of countries. At such rates of progress it will take us another 50,000 years to assess and ban all the substances that may be harmful, country by country – so national regulation holds few answers. Furthermore, the globalised chemical industry is rapidly moving out of the developed world (where it is generally well-regulated and ethical) and into developing countries, mainly in Asia, where it is largely beyond the reach of the law. Its toxic emissions are already returning to citizens well-regulated countries in wind, water, food, wildlife, consumer goods and people – and there is little done to stop this. Doctors report the emergence of ‘new’ conditions, like ADHD and certain childhood cancers in young children, as well as unexplained increases in once-uncommon diseases like Alzheimers, Parkinsons, depression, autism and other mental disorders, obesity, diabetes and cancers, whose modern upsurge is now linked in thousands of medical research papers to humanity’s multiple chemical exposure. The issue to consider is that most, if not all, of these conditions are preventable. Nobody has to suffer or die from chemical exposure. The world has been aware of chemical pollution since Rachel Carson wrote ‘Silent Spring’ haslf a century ago - but has regarded it as local issue, restricted to specific sites, chemicals or end uses. This is no longer true: chemotoxicity is now universal and represents a challenge at the species level. An Australian-led scientific effort to assess the full extent of our risk is now under way – the Global Contamination Initiative (GCI). Chemicals and minerals are valuable and extremely useful. They do great good, save many lives and much money. Nobody is saying they should all be banned. But something must be done about the current uncontrolled, unmonitored, unregulated and unconscionable mass release and planetary saturation. If governments cannot stem the toxic flood, the task must fall to millions of individual citizens, acting in their own best interests and those of their grandchildren. In a globalised world only we, the people, are powerful enough, as consumers, to send the market signals to industry to cease poisonous emissions – and to reward it for producing clean, safe, healthy products or services. For the first time in human history, the means exist to share a universal understanding of a common threat and what we can each do to mitigate it – through the internet and social media. This will be an expression of people power and global democracy like none before. Finally, as I argue in the book Poisoned Planet, we need a new human right: a right not to be poisoned. Without such a right, and its universal observance, there will probably never again be another day in our history when we are not.
How’s this for a twist? An average citizen decided to pull a Washington state police officer over, asked him a few questions, and even checked his identification. Gavin Seim pulled the cop over for what appeared to be an unmarked sheriff car violation. And the conversation, remarkably, didn’t get as heated as you might think. Seim asked the officer for some identification to prove who he is. After some hesitation, the officer obliged. He asked if this was some kind of game; Seim responded, “This isn’t a game, it’s called law.” Seim proceeded to inform the officer that stopping people in an unmarked car is in violation of state law. He advised the officer to take the car back and said, “I know you’re smiling, but we the citizens do have a right to hold you guys accountable. If I’m in open violation of the law, I could call a sheriff out here and demand you be written up for this.” And considering what Seim was saying to the cop, their conversation was remarkably cordial. Seim is a very liberty-minded person who explained on his website what he considers problematic here: Ordinary looking unmarked police cars slink around and entrap, so they can write folks up (read tax) for petty faults. That’s not protecting. As my brother Blake says, “serve and protect, not harass and collect.” — But this is also a major safety issue. Unmarked vehicles are a ripe opportunity for confusion in a citizens reaction and for criminals to impersonate lawful authority to get people to stop. People have been raped and even murdered because of this, so the law is good sense. Watch the video below: [h/t Daily Dot] [image via screengrab] — — Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.com
Before the days of Sprinter Vans, I spent a few seasons living in Yosemite in a Coleman children’s tent that I got from Walmart for $19.98. The packaging had a picture of a crosseyed kindergartner sitting inside and holding a purple dinosaur. I bought the tent because its shape most resembled the iconic Bibler I-Tent, the extreme shelter that often appeared in climbing magazines pitched on some impossible Himalayan ridge. I seam-sealed the kids’ tent on my parents’ front porch, and loaded it up into a rusting Nissan Sentra alongside a crate of climbing guidebooks and literature, knock-off Czech cams, and a red Petzl Ecrin helmet that sported a “Hey Fuck Face” sticker parodying The North Face logo. Then, I headed west to Yosemite. I’d climbed in Yosemite several times before, during summer breaks from college. I climbed with strangers who held no discernible climbing experience whatsoever. I pawed my way up south-facing slabs in August, getting so dehydrated and scorched on the granite frying pan that I literally began to hallucinate. This trip, though, I was gonna dig in, climb some big shit. I’d just graduated, and as most of my peers headed off to medical and law school, I, with not a lot of money, no health insurance, and no girlfriend, went into a kids’ tent in the woods. These were the days when the Huber brothers still frequented the Valley, camping in the dirt alongside all the gumbies like me. Bridwell, Bachar, and Kauk all still occasionally showed up, too—and all those myths and legends spun by my favorite climbing writer John Long ossified into a type of bone-hard truth. Back then—and it’s not as if this was all that long ago—the celebrities of the climbing world were the ones who were truly pushing the sport and taking real risk for little reward. They were real honest-to-god dirtbags. It was guys like Dean Potter, who floated in torn Prana rags and walked barefoot among the colossal ponderosa like a native spirit, one moment bounding clear across slack lines in the back of Camp 4; the next moment, gone, off on some other crazy shit. My dirtbag fantasy came to an unexpected end when I got an opportunity to take a desk job working for a climbing magazine, and I spent the next decade covering the sport of climbing as it grew and grew. When I first started writing about climbing, I had a big middle finger to give to all the old bald fucks who protested the direction the sport was taking. Lamenting bygone days is an unflattering habit, one I promised myself I’d avoid, the way one avoids Jim Beyer routes, when I reached an age when it’s appropriate to start behaving in such a surly manner. Thankfully, I’m not yet bald, but I am feeling rather surly when I look around and see the state of climbing, with its increasing focus on marketing and morphing just-above-average millennial climbers into narcissistic brand ambassadors who are famous on social media but don’t appear to actually do anything substantial on the rock. Or, more likely, perhaps, they’ve done one or two hard route of some debatable grade, then ride that achievement for as long and as far as they can. Apparently, I’m not alone. In a recent Instagram, Alex Puccio penned an interesting rant that began, albeit cryptically, with “Dear publicity and Media …” She goes on: “There’s something that really bothers me. I’m pretty frustrated with what it takes to be at the top level of our sport. I feel like I’m a pretty honest climber and person and I will never be ok with taking a higher grade for a climb just to get more recognition and publicity just to be more “famous” in our sport. People will always have their opinions and the sad thing is that when climbers take the inflated grade just to “look cooler” they might get crap from other professional climbers or climbers that are immersed in the sport, but to the majority that doesn’t know any better they look “bad ass”! Sure I could have said I’ve done another V14 or more V13s and even flashed a V12, but that’s not me and I wouldn’t have been honest to myself and to the media. …” As I haven’t been following the bouldering scene all that closely lately, I’m not really sure what—or, rather, who—set off the Pooch on her social-media tirade, but I do think that her frustration is probably warranted, and speaks to a wider problem with climbing media. In the last 10-20 years, a lot has changed in terms of how climbing media is created, disseminated, and interpreted. Climbing news—the legendary “Hot Flashes” of the 1990s—used to be sent in by parcel, only to appear in print months later alongside a well-researched article that gave the ascent a proper context within the history of the sport. When I first started working at Rock and Ice, compiling the Breaking News department for the print magazine was one of my first jobs. Within a few years, however, we ended up getting rid of this department and moving it online, which of course made the most sense as printed news (whose value is, by definition, its timeliness) couldn’t compete with the internet. Still, there were a few years when actual writers and journalists were the ones breaking stories, only doing it online. Now even that has changed. Today, climbers are the ones breaking their own news stories on social media. And of course, often times, there is erroneous information in these guerrilla social-media blitzes, but they get passed on as the rock-solid truth. One recent example that comes to mind is when Ashima Shiraishi posted last September the news that climbing is definitely going to be in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Her post was liked 3,900 times and shared 450 times. I even got calls from editors of major magazines asking me to do a story on this breaking development. In case you haven’t heard, climbing will be in the#2020olympics in #Tokyo!!!!!!! THANK YOU to all of the athletes and… Posted by Ashima Shiraishi on Monday, September 28, 2015 The problem is that Ashima was slightly mistaken; no big deal; she’s 14, and the press release she probably read was indeed confusing. Climbing isn’t officially an Olympic sport yet. I learned that through a very quick email to the IFSC, who promptly informed me that, “Sport Climbing was officially proposed as a new sport for Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games by the Tokyo 2020 Additional Event Programme Panel. The final decision will be announced at the 129th IOC Session in Rio in August 2016. Until then, the IFSC will continue to work with the Athletes and the National Federations to reinforce and improve its organization to prove the solidity of this choice.” Not only is this not surprising, but it’s hardly the worst example of the fact that Facebook has “swallowed everything,” according to this must-read article. It’s hard to even look at Facebook anymore because my feed—probably like everyone else’s—is filled with the most dubious and utter bullshit, about everything from climbing to this most-bizarre election cycle. But the issue is much deeper than simply presenting, however innocently, wrong/misinformed information on social media—whether that’s about climbing in the Olympics, or about an over-inflated grade on a boulder problem. What’s crazy is just how many companies in the climbing/outdoor world are out there encouraging, supporting, and empowering climbers of a rather wide range of skill, vision, and ability to be their own brand ambassadors. This perhaps explains why Puccio, who actually is at the top level of our sport, is frustrated with what it takes to be up there alongside her. It begs the question: what does it take to be a top-level climber? In climbing, there is no World Series or Super Bowl, (though perhaps, if climbing actually makes it into the Olympics, that will change). For a long time, the climbers who were cutting edge were the ones who went out and made names for themselves by actually pushing the limits—through new routes and first ascents. Media and sponsorships followed as a result, but the climbing really was their primary focus. I can’t help but think back to those days in Yosemite, when the Huber brothers, despite all their celebrity, despite all their leather pants, were also the guys putting up the hardest routes on El Cap by day, and sleeping in the dirt alongside everyone else in Camp 4 by night. It’s not as though I believe that in order to be a real, core climber, you have to be a dirty-ass hippie dirtbag—that’s just nostalgia talking. But the fact is, there was a certain dedication, a certain prioritization, that you saw in climbers who obviously were there for the love of the sport, whether they were practicing it at the highest levels (like the Hubers, Potter, etc.), or whether they were just broke idiots with political science degrees from expensive universities sleeping in kids’ tents (like me). It seems that level of sacrifice for the love of the sport is getting rarer—especially for some well-sponsored climbers. Today, it seems like the paradigm has flip-flopped. It’s as if the more media you can create, the more sponsorships you will get, and then, therefore, the more you might be considered a top-level climber. There are only two people in the world who have climbed at a 5.15c level, but there are a shit-ton of people who are at a “5.15c level,” so to speak, in terms of their self-promotion and social-media savviness. One way media companies are learning to survive in this new world order is to put out advertorial content or native advertising, which basically means presenting a sponsored idea for a story as an actual piece of journalism. In other words, corporate marketing interests are turning journalists into advertisers. Likewise, companies are turning some of the best climbers in the world into their own marketing mouthpieces. And that has trickled down to everyone else, too. I’ve seen people who aren’t even sponsored by companies tagging those companies in their Instagram photos. Unless you’re getting paid or being given free gear, why would anyone do this? Have we really become so oblivious to the fact that we’re all being trampled into a single file vision of what climbing should look like? The actual climbing side of climbing is truly beginning to feel secondary to the marketing of it. Today’s breed of sponsored climbers, with their with tens of thousands of followers on Instagram, don’t actually need to even send routes anymore, let alone establish first ascents or envision new creative ways to approach the mountains—the way Dean Potter (and many many others) did. It would seem that the only expectations of what it takes to be a “professional” climber these days is having a vibrant and robust social-media campaign, one in which they post random photos of themselves preparing to climb, training to climb, or just posing down on a route they may or may not one day send—alongside, of course, all the attendant hashtags and sponsor mentions, and maybe a cliched quote or maxim of inspiration, or two. That’s more than enough to justify their existences on their sponsors’ payrolls. As Puccio pointed out, there is also a problem of grade inflation—and perhaps even taking advantage of the often circumstantial “first female ascent”—in order to make what are otherwise average ascents seem much greater or more important than they are. What’s also concerning is that these ascents are often later reported, almost verbatim and without any further historical context to hold one accountable for accuracy, on many climbing magazines’ and climbing-media websites. I’m too old and surly to comment on whether or not this is a “good” direction for the sport. But it certainly seems that that anti-establishment view that drove me into a kids’ tent with a Hey Fuck Face sticker on my helmet is being replaced with something else, something very corporate and something that, at least to me, feels inauthentic. What do you think?
Oral administration of an infusion of lemongrass (Cymbopogon citratus) fresh leaves to rats produced a dose-dependent analgesia for the hyperalgesia induced by subplantar injections of either carrageenin or prostaglandin E2, but did not affect that induced by dibutyryl cyclic AMP. These results indicate a peripheral site of action which was confirmed with the essential oil obtained by steam distillation of the leaves. Silica gel column fractionation of the essential oil allowed the identification of myrcene as the major analgesic component in the oil. Identification of the components was made by thin-layer chromatography and checked by mass spectrometry. The peripheral analgesic effect of myrcene was confirmed by testing a standard commercial preparation on the hyperalgesia induced by prostaglandin in the rat paw test and upon the contortions induced by intraperitoneal injections of iloprost in mice. In contrast to the central analgesic effect of morphine, myrcene did not cause tolerance on repeated injection in rats. This analgesic activity supports the use of lemongrass tea as a "sedative" in folk medicine. Terpenes such as myrcene may constitute a lead for the development of new peripheral analgesics with a profile of action different from that of the aspirin-like drugs.
Another Opportunity to Squander I’ve been in France for the past three days, attending a conference on "The Internet and International Politics." I plan on blogging about that event later this week, but first a few comments about the surprising victory of Hasan Rowhani as the next president of Iran. I suspect that almost everyone will interpret his election as a vindication of whatever position they held before any votes were cast. Hard-liners who have pushed for ever-tighter sanctions and threats of war will claim that the election is a sign that ordinary Iranians are saying uncle and want the government to do whatever is necessary to end Iran’s isolation and encourage economic recovery. So naturally the hawks will call for more of the same. Alternatively, those who have called for engaging Iran and who have defended the legitimacy of the Iranian republic will see this surprising result as evidence that there is real democracy there, however truncated or constrained. And they will of course see this as an opportunity for constructive engagement. Perhaps the only person who will be seriously disappointed by the outcome is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is bound to miss the less-than-competent and reliably cartoonish figure of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Ahmadinejad’s irresponsible and offensive comments about Israel and the Holocaust made it easy to demonize the entire country and helped keep the idea of preventive war on the front burner. Rowhani is hardly a softie on the nuclear question or on regional security issues, but he’s likely to be much harder to portray as a bloodthirsty Persian version of Hitler. Rowhani’s election also presents the kind of political opening that Barack Obama’s administration hoped would emerge from the last Iranian presidential election, way back in 2009. Having extended a (very) tentative hand of friendship when he first took office, Obama was undoubtedly crossing his fingers for Ahmadinejad to lose and be replaced by a more moderate figure. The hope was that a more moderate president in Tehran would respond positively to Obama’s overtures and that Ahmadinejad’s departure would reduce domestic opposition to a less confrontational approach to Tehran. Instead, we got the contested election of 2009 and a harsh government crackdown against the Green Movement, developments that made it harder for both the United States and Iran to pursue an alternative course. Although Rowhani’s election does present an opportunity, my bet is that the United States and Iran will find a way to squander it yet again. Since 2000 (if not before), the bipartisan U.S. approach to Iran has been to demand its complete capitulation on the question of nuclear enrichment and to steadily ratchet up sanctions in the hopes that Tehran will eventually give Washington everything it demands. Obama briefly let Brazil and Turkey pursue a more flexible approach, but his administration quickly scuttled the resulting deal. Given the calcified layers of mistrust between these Iran and the United States — dating back for decades now — achieving a deal on the nuclear question and a broader improvement of relations will require both patience and political courage by both sides. Iran is not — repeat not — going to give up possession of the full nuclear fuel cycle, so the United States will have to accept Iran as a nuclear-capable power. Iran will have to accept strict limits on its program and will have to find ways to reassure its neighbors and the United States about its nuclear and regional ambitions. Back in Washington, any attempt at a serious rapprochement will also have to overcome relentless opposition not only from AIPAC and the other major groups in the Israel lobby, but also from Saudi Arabia and some other Gulf states. Unfortunately, the U.S. political system doesn’t reward patience, and Obama has not shown himself to be especially bold or courageous when it comes to foreign policy. Indeed, he has yet to take and stick to any foreign-policy position that requires him to buck powerful political forces at home. By the time his finger-in-the-wind approach to diplomacy has run its course, the opportunity for a new approach to Iran may be lost, thereby reinforcing the Iranian belief that the only thing the United States will accept is the end of the Islamic Republic, and strengthening the American conviction that even reformist Iranian leaders are beyond the pale. And then there’s the supreme leader, whose views and preferences remain something of a mystery. But not a complete mystery, as Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has repeatedly said he would judge the Obama administration not by its words but by its deeds. This is a perfectly sensible position, of course, and it is also how the United States ought to judge Iran. But that means that if U.S. policy doesn’t change, and if it keeps making the same demands and employing the same tools (i.e., sanctions), we can be confident that nothing will change. And Obama’s decision last week to send small arms to the rebels in Syria is hardly a step likely to make Iran feel better about Washington’s regional objectives. I could be wrong about all this, of course, but so far no one has ever lost money betting on Iran and America’s seemingly infinite capacity to misread the other and thereby maintain their mostly irrational and counterproductive enmity. As is so often the case these days, I would be delighted to be proven wrong.
Zhang Yue, 52, says his 220-storey, 2,750ft-tall building in Changsha, which he has called "Sky City", will be the world's first standardised, factory-built skyscraper: bringing China's mass manufacturing skills to our cities. Nor does Mr Zhang intend to stop at 2,750ft, a height which narrowly eclipses the Burj al Kalifa in Dubai. In his office in the inland province of Hunan are plans for a tower some 1.2 miles high. Mr Zhang, who made his fortune first from making boilers and then from selling industrial air-conditioning units for office buildings, airports and public spaces, turned his attention to construction in the wake of the Sichuan earthquake in 2008. His engineers designed steel beams that could be mass-produced in factories and then rapidly slotted together like Meccano, and which would also be earthquake resistant. The modular sections, complete with ducts for plumbing and electricity, are built at two factories and then shipped to the building site. Theoretically, they can be combined in any scale. "Traditional construction is chaotic," he told Wired magazine in a recent interview. "We took construction and moved it into the factory. It is a structural revolution". Mr Zhang has already built 16 structures in China and one in Cancun, Mexico. For the Shanghai Expo in 2008, he constructed a boxy grey six-floor pavilion in 24 hours. Last year, he built a 30-floor, 328ft-tall hotel by the side of Hunan's Xiang river in 360 hours. At Broad Town, his company headquarters, there is a replica of Versailles and a 130ft-tall replica of an Egyptian pyramid. He demands that all of his 2,000 or so employees are able to run seven-and-a-half miles over a two-day period. Mr Zhang said his buildings produce only one per cent of the waste of traditional construction, use no water to build, have consistent quality, and cost around 30 per cent less. His new skyscraper will house more than 30,000 people, and include a shopping centre and hotels. In a bid to prove that it is not simply a publicity stunt, Mr Zhang has also hired some of the engineers who built the Burj al Kalifa to consult. The foundation is scheduled to be laid in November and if everything goes well, the building will be complete in March 2013.
As the MLS preseason wraps up, clubs around the league are finalizing their rosters ahead of the league’s March 1 compliance date deadline. Atlanta United internationals Kenwyne Jones (Trinidad & Tobago) and Chris McCann (Ireland) have finalized paperwork to acquire U.S Permanent Resident Cards (Green Cards), which means they will no longer count as international players according to MLS rules. After signing with the expansion club in July of last year, both Jones and McCann spent the remainder of 2016 on loan; Jones with Central FC in his homeland of Trinidad & Tobago and McCann with Coventry City of League One (England’s third division). The theory behind inking international players early on is to not only secure their signature, but to also get a proactive start on the immigration process. In Atlanta’s case, this was in order to have everything cleared by the start of the 2017 season. The 32-year-old Jones brings a plethora of professional experience and a distinguished goal-scoring history to Atlanta. With over 100 tallies to his name across all competitions at the club and international levels, the towering Trinidad & Tobago forward hopes to continue that form and be a looming presence for the opposition McCann arrives in Atlanta with over 350 professional appearances in England including stints with Burnley and Wigan Athletic, primarily in the League Championship. The Irish midfielder provides a versatile, box-to-box option for Tata Martino’s side and will look to be one of the leaders and mentors on a roster full of young talent. Both McCann and Jones have officially received their U.S. Permanent Resident Cards and will be back for training this week as the club prepares to compete in its first-ever match and home opener of its inaugural MLS season on Sunday, March 5 at 7:30 p.m. ET against New York Red Bull. You can purchase tickets to the historic match here.
Lucasfilm announced Friday evening that it had no intention of creating a digital double of the late Carrie Fisher in any of its future Star Wars movies, a rare response to internet rumors by the secretive production company. “Carrie Fisher was, is, and always will be a part of the Lucasfilm family,” the company said in a statement. “She was our princess, our general, and more importantly, our friend. We are still hurting from her loss. We cherish her memory and legacy as Princess Leia, and will always strive to honor everything she gave to Star Wars.” Fisher’s untimely death in late December set off speculation that Lucasfilm would attempt to create a performance using motion capture and computer graphics, a technology it used to great effect in its new film, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. ILM, Lucasfilm’s in-house visual effects company hired an actor to play Grand Moff Tarkin, and then used computers to graft on the face of Peter Cushing, the late actor who played the role in the original film in 1977. ILM also recreated a young Princess Leia with the same technology for a small “cameo” at the end of the film. Fisher gave her blessing for the Rogue One recreation, as did Cushing’s estate. Fisher revived her role as Leia — now a General in the Resistance — in 2015’s smash hit The Force Awakens and had completed shooting on this year’s Episode VIII. According to The Hollywood Reporter, she was set to have an even bigger role in Episode IX, which is due out in 2019, and now Lucasfilm is working with director Colin Trevvorow to figure out how to change the film. Fans expressed concern that the solution might be to digitally recreate her, and some were outraged that Cushing — a far less beloved member of the Star Wars universe — was brought back via computers. INVERSE LOOT DEALS Meet the Pod The first bed that learns the perfect temperature for your sleep, and dynamically warms or cools according to your needs. Buy Now In a recent conversation with Inverse, ILM chief creative officer John Knoll promised that they had no intention of going all-in on CGI performances. “Oh, you need an actor,” he said. And there are likely no actors that could ever replace Carrie Fisher.
Leading Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan The General Election has only just finished, but the EU referendum campaign is already getting under way. The first settled which party would be in office; the second will settle whether elections in Britain matter at all. Will the United Kingdom be an independent nation, trading with its friends on the Continent while living under its own laws? Or will it be part of a country called Europe? David Cameron is touring EU capitals, making the case for relatively modest reforms. So far, his counterparts have played along, making a big fuss before the cameras over what they know to be quite trivial changes. Yet they haven’t changed their minds about the EU’s destination. The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, whom the PM met yesterday, has been admirably frank. ‘We need a political union, which means we must gradually cede powers to Europe and give Europe control,’ she said recently. ‘We cannot just stop because one or other doesn’t want to join in yet.’ Note the ‘yet’. Mrs Merkel is accustomed to getting her way in Europe. The French Foreign Minister, Laurent Fabius, also made clear that political integration was not up for discussion. ‘It is as if you joined a football club, and then half-way through a match started playing rugby,’ he said after hearing from Mr Cameron. Actually, that’s pretty much how rugby got started, and it’s now a sport that connects Britain to the growing markets of the English-speaking world rather more than to the declining EU, but I doubt this is what Mr Fabius meant. The trouble is that we don’t seem to be listening to what EU leaders are saying. As in the past, we are ignoring events on the Continent, leaving things until almost too late. So far, the two-week-old debate seems almost like a repeat of the 1975 EEC referendum. It’s as if the intervening 40 years have taught us nothing; as if we were still talking about participation in a common market rather than about the political amalgamation EU membership now involves. As in 1975, the multinational giants and the mega-banks are telling us that we must not leave; and, as in 1975, the Confederation of British Industry is pretending that its Euro-fanaticism is typical of British business as a whole. Last week, the aviation giant Airbus UK got in on the act, vaguely hinting — though, of course, not actually saying — that a British withdrawal from the EU might result in the firm’s future investment here being reviewed. So let’s get one thing straight at the outset. No one is talking about Britain leaving the European market. I don’t know a single Eurosceptic who wants to put up trade barriers against our allies in Europe. What we want is free trade rather than political union. Nor, for that matter, have I met a single Eurocrat who says that withdrawing from the political institutions in Brussels would mean leaving the internal market. On the contrary, EU leaders keep telling us that the alternative to our current EU membership is a free-trade-only relationship. The idea that we’d face trade barriers if we pulled out exists only in the press releases of British pro-EU campaigners. They know perfectly well that it’s a straw man — though that doesn’t stop them bashing away at it for all they’re worth. How can I be so sure that our trading relationship would not change? Because every state in Europe, whether or not it is in the EU, participates in the single market: Norway, Andorra, Turkey, Switzerland, Serbia, the Channel Islands and so forth. The only exceptions are Belarus and Russia, which have instead chosen to form a Eurasian union. Are we supposed to believe that only the United Kingdom would be excluded? That we’d be penalised despite the fact that, over the 43 years of our membership, we have bought more from the other member states than we have sold them, to the tune of £40 million a day? It’s hardly normal, after all, for salesmen to chase away their customers. What are the big corporations worried about? If our continued access to the single market is secure either way, why are they bothered about whether we take part in the various non-trade aspects of the EU, such as foreign affairs, energy policy, immigration and criminal justice? To answer that question, look at which businessmen are lining up on which side. While the corporate types tend to be instinctively pro-Brussels, sensing that the EU was designed by and for people like themselves, the entrepreneurs often take a different view. Listen, for example, to Peter Hargreaves, who co-founded Hargreaves Lansdown, one of Britain’s largest and most successful financial enterprises. ‘If you took a blank sheet of paper and wrote down all the benefits that derive from EU membership, you’d still have a blank sheet of paper.’ Or listen to Dr Nigel Wilson, chief executive of the insurance giant Legal & General, who told the Daily Mail earlier this week that the costs of EU regulation were holding Britain back in global markets. ‘I see the world as a huge opportunity for the UK, but we are underachieving by concentrating on Europe, which is growing too slowly,’ he said. ‘This will not lead to economic growth in the UK.’ Why don’t the CBI panjandrums and mega-banks agree? Part of the answer, I’m afraid, is that they have spent a great deal of time and money lobbying in Brussels to get rules that suit them, and that disadvantage their rivals. When I was a new MEP, I was surprised by how keen big businesses were on regulation; I had innocently assumed that they would want less government interference. Now I know better. The multi-nationals see EU rules as a useful way to raise barriers against smaller competitors, who can’t as easily afford the compliance costs. A glance at the EU’s lobbying register tells me that, last year, Airbus spent €500,000 (£360,000) on making its case in Brussels, employing ten lobbyists. Doom merchants insist Britain cannot survive outside of the European Union It’s hardly surprising that such a company should want to keep the status quo. Nor should we take remotely seriously the idea that it might in future reduce investment in Britain if we leave the EU. F ifteen months ago, before the referendum campaign began and the Brussels apparatchiks started twisting arms, Airbus’s chief executive gave an honest assessment of his company’s intentions: ‘Clearly we have a massive investment in the UK and I don’t think there has ever been a plan to change that. ‘Profitable trade and political union are not joined at the hip. Russian and American companies trade with companies in Europe without being part of a political union. Business investment depends on profits, not politics.’ But now, in the heat of the campaign, Airbus is doing its bit for the pro-EU cause. So, even more, is the CBI, which is part-funded by the EU, having received £800,000 in grants from Brussels. The CBI keeps getting it wrong. In the 1970s, it backed Edward Heath’s disastrous controls on prices and incomes. In the Eighties, it opposed Margaret Thatcher’s free market reforms and campaigned to join the Exchange Rate Mechanism. In the Nineties, undaunted, it demanded that we join the euro. Indeed, as late as 2003, Sir Mike Rake, the CBI boss who now tells us we mustn’t leave the EU, was solemnly assuring us that ‘the risks of staying outside the euro far outweigh any risks of joining’. So whom should we listen to: the Brussels-funded lobbies, or the job creators? The people who got it wrong on the euro — Sir Mike Rake, Sir Richard Branson, Nick Clegg, Tony Blair, Ken Clarke, the CBI, the TUC, the BBC, the Financial Times — or the ones who got it right? Successful British exporters such as JCB and Dyson have said we would be better off out — able to trade more freely with non-EU states. Are we going to listen to award-winning British manufacturers, or disgraced banks? Ah, you say, but couldn’t we get the best of both worlds? Mightn’t we negotiate a deal with the EU which leaves us in the single market but able to reject the things we don’t like, such as the Common Agricultural and Fisheries Policies, the harmonisation of tax rates, the multi-billion-pound budget contributions, the open borders, the supremacy of EU law, the political assimilation? I have no doubt that this is the most popular option. But is it on offer? The question on the ballot paper has been altered slightly from the version that all Conservative MPs approved twice in the last Parliament. The neutral verb ‘be’ has been replaced with the slightly loaded ‘remain’. The referendum will now ask: ‘Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union?’ How, then, should those who want a free-trade deal, but not a political union, answer that question? It’s now clear we can’t get such a deal by remaining inside. I have no doubt the PM will secure all his stated goals. Most of them, after all, can be achieved through domestic legislation, and those which do require treaty change are largely trivial. It goes almost without saying that he will be able, by the measure he has himself set, to claim victory. But, when he has done so, we will still be members of the EU on something very close to the existing terms, subject to common policies in foreign affairs, justice, free movement of people, energy, farming, fishing, employment law and social policy. We will, in other words, be voting on the EU we have come to know over the past four decades. If Britain returned a pro-EU vote under those terms, it would be taken as an endorsement of the EU’s stated aims. It would be taken as a mandate to participate in the continuing process of political union. Oh, sure, no one would ask us to abandon the pound, or participate in the EU army the Germans keep proposing. At least, not immediately. But we’d have consented to the principle of further integration, and to the Merkel doctrine: ‘We cannot just stop because one or other doesn’t want to join in — yet.’ So, to get a common market rather than a common government, we shall have to vote ‘No’. Voting to leave the political institutions in Brussels means voting for a Switzerland-style relationship with the EU; one based on commerce and collaboration rather than political fusion. Y ou can’t help noticing that the Swiss are doing pretty well. They top the European wealth league and, according to the United Nations, have the second-best quality of life in the world — with the first position going to fellow EFTA member Norway. The Swiss are so happy with their current deal that their pro-EU campaign has admitted defeat and ceased operations. Now here’s the clinching statistic. Switzerland sells four-and-a-half times as much, per capita, to the EU as we do. Let me repeat that extraordinary figure. Switzerland, from the outside, sells four-and-a-half times as much to the EU, proportionately, as we do from the inside. If eight million Swiss are able to flourish, trading with the EU but governing themselves, how much more might 63 million Britons — a maritime people, linked by habit and history, by language and law, to every continent? The revolution in technology means distance has never mattered less. We can connect to overseas markets, not least those English-speaking and common-law economies which are growing as the EU stagnates. The case against the EU is not nostalgic, fearful or petulant; it’s optimistic, modern and global. We are a buccaneering nation, able to see opportunities beyond the stagnant trade bloc on our doorstep. We are a secure democracy, which finds no reason to accept the primacy of unelected foreign officials.
The following is a transcript of outgoing company commander Capt. Vince Miller’s change of command speech: Good morning everyone. I’d normally begin with our unit motto, but after two and a half years of starting every meeting and discussion with it, I just don’t think I can stomach it anymore. So I’ll say good morning like a normal human being. I should probably thank my battalion commander for the opportunity to command this company over the last few years, in both combat and garrison, but I think I’d rather go out into the parking lot and key his car for saddling me with the greatest collection of idiots, malingerers, and criminals that have ever walked the face of this earth. You’ll notice my wife and daughters aren’t here sitting in the audience today. That’s because Sheila left me six months ago when I had to skip our 10th anniversary trip to Jamaica so I could come in on a Sunday for unit PT, since one of you dipshits decided to go out and get his third DUI. I wasn’t allowed to go to marriage counseling last year when our relationship was on the rocks because the commander had said that soldiers were the priority. So instead I gave my slot to Private Steadman and his former prostitute wife who he met on R&R in Brazil the month prior. Once they got back, she took all his money and Steadman killed himself. So thanks for that. Do any of you morons have any clue how much paperwork it causes when you blow your sad little heads off? At least have the courtesy to go AWOL first. But for fuck’s sake don’t come back for at least 30 days so I can drop you off my books and let someone else deal with the meatsack of failure that is your existence. This would now be the part of the speech where I talk about our glorious combat achievements. Too bad, there’s nothing glorious about walking around Afghanistan for 12 months finding IEDs with your feet. Now I’m deaf in one ear, have almost a pound of shrapnel in my ass, and occasionally I wake up screaming for no fucking reason. But you know what? That doesn’t make me a goddamned hero. That was the worst part about coming back. Not my empty home, empty bed, or shattered dreams. No, it was listening to you fuckwads thump your chests and talk about how badass you all were. Did any one of you actually get a confirmed kill over there? One? I didn’t think so. So in closing, let me say this. Thank you for the countless weekends I lost with my daughters because I had to deal with your trivial bullshit. Thank you for the two suicide investigations that forced me to cancel training events I’d planned for almost a year. And most importantly, thank you for the dishonesty, poor accountability, and outright theft of almost two million dollars in equipment, which is why I won’t be receiving another paycheck until February. May God smite you all with the power of a thousand suns, and your souls be condemned to Hell for eternity. And to the incoming commander. Good luck and God bless you for making such terrible life choices. There’s a bottle of scotch in the third drawer of my desk. You’re going to need it. I hate you all.
Start Times Commentary ACB 52 Fight Card, Results And Highlights - 17:30- 16:30- 11:30- 08:30Frank Mir and Bryan LaceyPatrik Kincl def. Arbi Agujev via TKO (strikes), Round 2Michał Andryszak def. Denis Smoldarev via KO (knee), Round 1Joaz Luiz Nogueira def. Shamil Nikaev via Unanimous Decision (29-28, 29-28, 29-28)Nikola Dipchikov def. Alexander Takacs via KO (knee), Round 1Erhan Kartal def. Rebuenilton Pereira via Unanimous Decision (29-28, 29-28, 29-28)Andrei Vasinca def. Ismail Naurdiev via KO (knee), Round 1Matjaz Vicar def. Kahzmat Musaev via submission (armbar), Round 1Malik Merad def. Cristian Mitrea via TKO (strikes), Round 1D. Yagshimuradov def. Dan Konecke via TKO (strikes), Round 2Niko Gjoka def. Paulo Ridrigo De Sousa via Unanimous Decision (30-26, 30-26, 30-26)After last week's show in Irvine, California, Absolute Championship Berkut (ACB) continue their mini world tour as they head to Vienna, Austria for ACB 52: Another Level of MMA Fighting.The show took a massive hit in the last 24-hours when no fewer than eight of the Russian fighters were refused entry into Austria after issues with their visas. Despite this setback, the card still goes ahead with ten fights and plenty of talent to be keeping your eyes on.In the main event, local hero Arbi Aguev (28-7) takes on Czech fighter Patrik Kincl in a battle of two European welterweights who are known for pushing a fast pace and being involved in high-action brawls.Aguev is off a 'Fight of The Night' performance back in May of last year when he faced Anatoly Tokov at ACB 38. Unfortunately for Aguev, his efforts were in vain that night as he lost via TKO in the fourth round. He was however on a sixteen-fight winning streak prior to that loss, thus he's still only one impressive performance away from reinserting himself back into the ACB welterweight title picture.If Aguev is to do that, he must take out Patrik Kincl who is riding a win streak of three having defeated Robert Pukac, Renat Lyatifov and Sergey Khandozhko in his last three outings. Like Aguev, Kincl had inactive second half of 2016 so one factor to watch out for in this fight could be the potential of ring rust for both fighters.Whatever goes down this evening in Vienna it's likely to be a blast so don't miss out. You can watch all the action here live on Flocombat and follow along for results and highlights.
Dota 2 network StarLadder TV has banned a player for betting on his team losing after a "suspiciously horrible performance," reports Join Dota. Player Alexey "Solo" Berezin bet $100 on his team, roX.KIS, to lose its Star Series match against team zRage last week. Berezin reportedly won $322 in bets for the loss. Starladder issued Berezin a lifetime ban and handed out three-year bans to three of his teammates, as well as a year-long ban for the entire team. Team roX.KIS issued a statement stating they did not throw the match, and that the team "believes in the innocence of its players and staff" and the "evidence base is very uncertain." The team states the IP from which the bet was made is not Berezin's, and the site where he placed the bet, egamingbets.com, allows betters to cash to any account they know the ID for. Since Berzin's ID was publicly available, the team suggests it's possible someone else made the bet in his name. Additionally, they gave reason for their poor performance, stating since they "did not have any chances of getting to the Lan finals" the match was "just a formality." "Solo and Rox team do not agree with these accusations and we continue to ask for a full investigation of this incident(with the help from Starladder judges, players and managers of Rox, and egamingbets)," reads the statement. "We look forward to understanding of this among our fans, and please do not make sudden conclusions."
Fearful of B.C.s deadly fentanyl epidemic and eager for sober guidance, a northern First Nation wants its chief, band councillors and 120 band employees and contractors to pass drug tests. "These people are working for the Nation," said Lake Babine Nation Chief Wilf Adam in Burns Lake. "Their minds have to be clear to make the proper judgments and decisions." 'Their minds have to be clear' As chief of the 2,500 member First Nation spread over several communities, Adam said he'll be first in line to get tested. "This is one way to make sure the drugs and alcohol don't take over the community," said Chief Wilf Adam who volunteered to be first in line for drug and alcohol testing. (Betsy Trumpener/CBC ) "This is one way of making sure the drugs ... don't take over the community," he said, noting Lake Babine's substance abuse problems are not unique. "We keep hearing the word, 'fentanyl.' It's a big city problem, but it's coming to a rural community like ours," said Adam. Adam said the tests will be voluntary, not mandatory, to comply with the law. But he said testing will be ongoing and community members will be watching closely. Drug tests will be 'voluntary' "If the members can look at who got tested and who didn't, they can make their own judgment," he said. Adam says those who test positive will have to go to rehab or lose their jobs. It's the best way, he said, to keep the community safe. These people are working for the Nation. Their minds have to be clear to make the proper judgments and decisions - Lake Babine Nation Chief Wilf Adam Although some have complained the test would violate their rights, Adam said he has the support of band council and his community. The B.C. Civil Liberties Association said it's a unique approach but problematic even as a voluntary initiative. 'Highly invasive' "I have never heard of any such thing before," said BCCLA policy director Micheal Vonn. "You are collecting biological and biographical information that is very personal," said Vonn. "It's a highly invasive form of policing a person." Vonn said it's sensible to want leaders and staff to be clear-headed but "it's quite a leap from that to institute a program of widespread drug ... screening that's a means to achieve integrity."
Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of Concord Equity Research says that Amazon produced 1.6 million Kindles in December, matching the production of Apple's iPads during the month. The catch: Apple apparently ramped production down from 2.1 million in anticipation of the iPad 2, which could be announced as early as January, according to AppleInsider. Kuo formerly served as a reporter for Taiwan's Digitimes, a source of many recent rumors about the iPad 2 and Apple's iPhone production plans. Kuo also estimates that Amazon has sold 5.4 million Kindles since releasing the Kindle 3 and lowering prices across the product line in August. Amazon has called the Kindle 3, released in October, its best selling product ever, but has refused to disclose exact sales numbers. An earlier report from Bloomberg estimated that Amazon will sell more than 8 million Kindles in 2010. The iPad can serve as an electronic book reader, but Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos recently claimed that many consumers buy both devices: the Kindle for reading books, the iPads for games, movies, and Web browsing.
I’ve been a fan of Kobold Press, and Wolfgang Baur’s work in general for several years now, but this was the first Kobold Press book I purchased that was not part of a kickstarter. The TL;DR of it is this: If you are looking for system-neutral guidance on creating your own world for use in an RPG, or even writing a novel, this is a fantastic resource. This book features an all-star list of contributors such as Keith Baker (creator of Eberron), Monte Cook (most recently, creator of Numenera), Chris Pramas (Green Ronin Publishing), other old-guard TSR luminaries such as Jeff Grubb, David “Zeb” Cook, and Steve Winter, Kobold-in-Chief Wolfgang Baur, and my favorite fantasy cartographer Jonathan Roberts. The full list is on the cover of the book. The digest-sized book weighs in at 124 pages. The price at $19.99 seemed a bit steep, but I was willing to give it a go due in large part to the list of contributors, and I was not disappointed. The layout is appealing with essays broken up by subtitles and sidebars, with only a few illustrations as necessary (i.e. the cartography article). Each essay deals with a different aspect or approach to world creation, often detailing common pitfalls and approaches to consider. Some of my favorite articles are Chris Pramas’ “World Building Inside Out and Outside In,” which explores the pros and cons of adding details as your heroes explore the world, or establishing big-picture elements of the world and how that affects the heroes’ current situation. I also really enjoyed “Here be Dragons: On Mapmaking,” by Jonathan Roberts. It spoke to not only how rivers and mountains should work on a map (rivers generally join, rarely branch and flow out to sea), but also more abstract mapmaking between nations or world powers. What is each nation known for? What are their relationships with their neighbors (trade, war, isolationist)? Another one of my favorites was “How to Write a World Bible,” by Scott Hungerford. I was surprised to find this near the end of the book, as to me it seems like such a great jumping-off point for so many of the other articles. It just touches on considering the over-arching concept of the world, the races, technology levels, currency, pantheon, cartography, notable figures (NPCs) and terminology. If I were to organize this book, I would have had this article a lot earlier, with page numbers to other articles that go in to more detail about each subject. All and all a fairly minor gripe, in what overall is an outstanding resource. It should be noted that included in the $19.99 price is not only the print, but also a PDF copy. Very convenient for those of us who like to keep our books on tablet-computers for reference. That certainly sweetens the deal, and is something I wish Goodman Games would do, when I purchase DCCRPG modules. In conclusion, if you are of the mind that published adventures and worlds are for newbies and lazy gamemasters, this will help you flesh out the world you want to create and make it so compelling your players will never want to adventure anywhere else! Advertisements
Rebels including al-Qaeda militants stormed a complex in northwestern Syria on Sunday where some 250 government loyalists have been trapped for two weeks, a monitoring group said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said rebels entered the hospital complex in the town of Jisr al-Shughur, the rest of which they captured a fortnight ago. "The fighters this morning stormed the hospital complex on the southwestern edge of Jisr al-Shughur," Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP. "They entered one of the buildings and are engaged in heavy fighting with soldiers inside the complex." He said the assault began with a car bombing carried out by a member of al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, al-Nusra Front. It is the first time that the rebels have managed to penetrate the complex. Among the 250 people holed up inside are around 150 government troops, apparently including high-ranking officers, as well as their family members and some civil servants, according to Abdel Rahman. On social media, there have been an unverifiable suggestions that some of the officers inside the hospital are Iranian and Russian. #Syria #Idlib Rumors sprout about presence of high rank officers from #Russia & #Iran inside National Hospital of Jisr al-Shughour — C4H10FO2P (@markito0171) May 9, 2015 Government troops and militia have been battling to reach the hospital to relieve the siege. They began their counteroffensive on Wednesday, as President Bashar al-Assad pledged those in the hospital would be rescued soon, and are now around two km away, according to the Observatory. They have been backed by airstrikes against the rebels laying siege to the hospital, which state media said had killed "dozens of terrorists." It remains unclear how much food and ammunition those holed up inside the hospital complex have left. Turning of tides? On 25 April, rebels seized the city of Jisr al-Shughur in an offensive that some analysts described as potentially game changing, challenging a recent sense in some quarters that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was on the verge of reasserting control over the country. One major change in the offensive was a new level of organisation and cooperation among leading opposition groups previously at one another's throats. "So far, Assad has been winning mainly due to the fragmentation of the other side and the lack of skill and experience on the other side,” Randa Slim, director of the Track II Dialogues initiative at the US-based Middle East Institute, told MEE last week. “Now that these two factors on the opposition side have been addressed in some way, I think we are seeing the difference in the playing field," she said. The capture of the city extended the various groups' gains in Idlib province, where they have also captured the provincial capital and a military base in recent weeks. More than 220,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began with anti-government protests in March 2011 that spiralled into civil war after a crackdown by security forces.
One of the problems that has dogged Bernie Sanders‘ campaign has been the behavior of some of his most fervent online supporters, first by helping to alienate the black voters that Sanders’ campaign has had trouble connecting with, and by alienating other non-white, non-male voters. The so-called “Bernie Bros” are a subset of those supporters whose favorite word, but least favorite part of the body, apparently, is “vagina.” They’re a difficult-to-quantify yet visible part of this presidential campaign, and on Sunday morning’s State of the Union, host Jake Tapper confronted Bernie Sanders about the phenomenon, which Sanders denounced in no uncertain terms: Tapper: Have you heard about this phenomenon “Bernie bros?” People who support you, and sometimes attack in very crude and sexist ways… Sanders: Yeah, I have heard about it. It’s disgusting. We don’t want that crap. And we will do everything we can, and I think we have tried. Look, anybody who is supporting me is doing sexist things is — we don’t want them. I don’t want them. That is not what this campaign is about. Republican frontrunner Donald Trump has also become known for his own set of odious followers, and while Sanders surely appreciated the chance to go on record against these trolls for Bernie, voters should ask themselves if it’s fair to tar Sanders with their actions. In the internet age, every intense candidacy has its own brand of kooky or off-putting followers, but where the rubber meets the road is in how their candidates reinforce or undermine such behavior. This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
OTTAWA — The federal government is poised to make it easier to track and arrest potential terrorists. Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Thursday the government is planning to give police and national security agencies “additional tools” that would make it easier to monitor threats, as well as charge and prosecute people planning to carry out attacks on Canadian soil. Mr. Harper was short on details on the proposal first referenced in his speech to the House of Commons last week where he urged Canada to join airstrikes against ISIS extremists in Iraq. Government officials wouldn’t say Thursday when Canadians would have a look at the measures Mr. Harper alluded to. An American news report this week said Canadian and U.S. intelligence officials were concerned about ISIS-inspired “knife and gun” attack plans against Canadian and U.S. targets in Canada. “Our national security agencies monitor these kinds of threats,” Mr. Harper said at an event in Whitby, Ont. “We’re going to bring in additional tools to make it easier for our security agencies to monitor these kinds of threats and to charge and prosecute people when appropriate. We are going to move forward on those matters.” He wouldn’t comment on the specifics of the report, but said “these threats are very, very real.” “[ISIS is] openly promoting the concept of international jihad — that is international terrorism — against targets across the world, including targets in this country.” An NBC news report Wednesday night said Canadian officials were considering increasing security around buildings given intelligence suggesting individuals, inspired by or connected to ISIS extremists, were planning attacks on Canadians. The report quoted unnamed intelligence officials saying that Canadian authorities were monitoring “hundreds of people” in Canada who have either gone to Syria to link up with terror groups and returned, or who have attempted to make the trip. Opposition MPs wanted answers Thursday about the report, and why the information came from American intelligence sources, rather than their Canadian counterparts who had testified before a Commons committee on Wednesday. “Canadians can rely on their intelligence, on their law enforcement community … to keep them safe. This being said, we have to remain vigilant because there is a threat,” Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney said in the Commons. “While we have air strikes over there [in Iraq], we are keeping Canadians safe here.” Government and law enforcement officials wouldn’t say if security was being increased around federal buildings and symbolic sites, such as Parliament Hill. The RCMP said it regularly reviews security around Parliament Hill, but “for operational reasons, specific details about the security measures cannot be provided.” Postmedia News
Danny Roman, the reigning WBA super bantamweight champion, makes the first defense of his recently acquired title against the #13 rated challenger Ryo Matsumoto on February 28 at the famed Korakuen Hall in Tokyo, Japan. The 12-round world championship fight, dubbed “The Challenge,” is promoted by Thompson Boxing Promotions in association with Ohashi Promotions. Roman (23-2-1, 9 KOs), who is based in Los Angeles, became the new WBA belt holder in September after dismantling Shun Kubo by ninth round stoppage in the latter’s home country of Japan. That Roman is traveling back to the island nation for his first world title defense – the site of his most impressive win to date – is of little concern for the aptly nick-named “Baby Face Assassin.” “If you put in the work and the sacrifice like I do then it makes no difference where I fight,” said Roman. “I have a great team behind me. My preparation for Matsumoto is already underway. I know he’s going to bring everything he has and I’m going to be ready for it.” “Danny will be making his case as the best in his class when he faces Matsumoto,” said Ken Thompson, president of Thompson Boxing Promotions. “We’ve watched Danny mature into a top flight world champion and now the world gets to see his special talent. We’re excited for him and have no doubt that he will retain his WBA championship in February.” Matsumoto (21-1, 19 KOs) heads into his first world title fight with a four fight knockout win streak. His 19 knockout wins against 21 total victories is certainly impressive and is among the reasons for his world ranking. “I saw Danny Roman’s title-winning fight over Shun Kubo and he looked formidable,” said Matsumoto. “I know I’ll be an underdog, but I’ll try to do my best to win his belt.” “It’s our great pleasure to welcome such a great champion as Danny Roman,” said Hideyuki Ohashi, president of Ohashi Promotions and former WBA and WBC minimumweight world champion. “Danny is strong and sharp, and his defense with Matsumoto will be a very good fight without doubt.”
HOUSTON – Stephen Belichick attended his first Super Bowl in 1987 when his father’s New York Giants beat the Broncos. The younger Belichick had an extremely obstructed view. He wasn’t born until late March, two months after the game. From that first Super Bowl experience through this Sunday, Stephen will have been to 10 Super Bowls – the 1986 and ’90 seasons when Bill Belichick was the Giants defensive coordinator, 1996 when Bill was Patriots secondary coach for Bill Parcells and the seven for which Bill has been Patriots head coach. SUPER BOWL LI: FRIDAY REPORT The stakes this time are raised for Stephen. As the Patriots safeties coach, the players under his supervision will be trying to shut down one of the most prolific offenses of the past several years, the 540 points Atlanta scored tie them for eighth all-time in a single season. In the run-up to this game, assistant coaches are available to the media and Stephen’s been polite but guarded. Anticipated questions related to working on his father’s staff have come and Stephen’s responses are short enough to make it clear nobody’s getting a monologue on what it’s like. There’s a weariness for the “show” that Stephen has at 29, which has been informed by a lifetime being around the NFL. The Stephen Belichick that’s seen on the field running routes and throwing passes with his brother, Brian, before pregame warmups is a world away from the Stephen Belichick that warily eyes reporters as we circle. Coverage of his dad has left dents, as Stephen indicated when he spoke to Kevin Clark of The Ringer earlier this week. “I don’t know if anyone will understand what those headlines in newspapers really do to families,” Stephen told Clark. “It’s hard, obviously, everyone in the NFL signs up for these jobs and understands the pressures. But some things are more necessary than others...One thing I’ve learned from my dad is we don’t do it for the media, we do it because we love it. We don’t it for the press conferences, which is maybe why other coaches do it...We’ve been labeled every word in the book our whole lives; what’s another [insult] on the list?” Earlier this season, Stephen and his girlfriend, Jen (who, like Stephen, attended Rutgers and played lacrosse), had a daughter, Blakely Rose Belichick. Speaking with Stephen on Friday he made it clear that, knowing what he knows of the NFL, he’s weighing whether he wants to stay in the family business. Asked if he wrestled with the decision to get into coaching, Stephen answered, “All the time. Still do. I love what I do. I would never want to do anything different. But things change, situations change, you see the way or hear about how other teams are run, you see some of the stuff that happens and you wonder, ‘Is this the best thing for my family?’ My family has been through a lot.” Stephen Belichick was eight when Bill was fired by the Cleveland Browns. A police presence was stationed near the Belichick’s house in the days after Belichick’s firing as fans outraged over the Browns move to Baltimore lashed out at anything or anyone that was part of the Art Modell regime. Bill, having taken a job with the Patriots as secondary in February, was in New England while his then-wife Debbie had their kids, Amanda, Stephen and Brian, in Cleveland finishing out the school year. The whole experience left a scar. The idle vilification of Bill Belichick’s personality and integrity over the years has made a mark as well. Sure, there’s been great praise for him as a head coach, but the personal stuff has not gone unrecorded by the people closest to him. Meanwhile, the stability of the Patriots franchise is unique. For most in the coaching life, uncertainty is constant, long-range planning impossible. Now that he’s a father himself, those factors have Stephen measuring his steps. “I know what I want to do,” said Stephen. “This [coaching] is what I want to do. But it’s not all about me. I have a daughter now which has changed my life. I can’t be selfish and just worry about myself.” This is the first Super Bowl for Stephen Belichick as a position coach. But he is – as much as just about any coach on the staff – a veteran of the coaching profession. And he’s very clear that, if it’s decided that a life coaching in the NFL isn’t what’s best, he’s gone. “I’m confident in my skills as a person,” he said. “If I needed to do something that would take me away from this type of spot, I’m more than willing to do that for my family.”
Austin Radcliffe a designer from Indiana has created a blog featuring photos of various objects arranged in tidy near perfect rows. The items are arranged according to color, type, and aesthetics in a meticulous and detailed manner. Ranging from burnt matches to food items the collage and color combinations provide an appealing feast for the eyes. Neat freaks of the world would love to visit this blog, whilst searching for a visually soothing, clean and orderly satisfaction. It certainly is a meditative and pleasing sight. Radcliffe told Print Mag that the deliberate organizing makes it aesthetically pleasing to see neat arrays of various items. Simply put –precision is beauty and that’s how Radcliffe describes the effort that has gone into arranging these items scientifically to achieve a pattern that demonstrate the aesthetic preferences of whoever ay have arranged them. The time, care and effort put into it give importance to the object, visual interest to the viewer and even maybe some function. Things Organized Neatly (h/t: Distractify)
Hiya Dunkin Donuts, Really? Really? I never thought I'd say this but, Rachael Ray is not a terrorist. I'm pretty sure your company isn't secretly funding any terrorist organizations and I'm fairly certain the scarf in question is not a keffiyeh. And I don't have enough time or energy to go into the idea that anyone wearing one is a terrorist... but... we'll save that for another time. I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess Dunkin Donuts is having a bit of a "Freedom Fries" moment. It's okay. Really. We, the American people are usually not this stupid. Okay, so some of us were taken in a few years back with all that talk of patriotism and whatnot. But trust me on this one -- you will not see a dip in your ad sales due to Rachael Ray's scarf. In fact, I will start going to Dunkin Donuts and stop going to Starbucks (when I can, I live in Ca... can you come out here?) if you put the damn thing back on the air. I want it back on the air for about a bazallion reasons not the least of which is: How about we stop the racist/cultural hysteria over Muslims and all people from the Middle East? I have very little faith in corporate America, so I'm going to expect you to listen to the lunatics and keep the ad off the air. Just don't ever expect me to buy a cup of your coffee again. I know, I know, you're damned if you do -- damned if you don't. But how about just using some common sense? Not to mention, we're over that whole "fear" thing. 3 AM phone calls and scarves just scream "desperation" these days, not good business. Sincerely,
A man has been charged with attempted murder after he allegedly walked into an office building in Darlinghurst armed with a knife and stabbed a woman in the hand. Police said the 23-year-old man entered the office block on William Street about 2.20pm on Wednesday. A man has been arrested after a stabbing at 80 William Street. Credit:Tago Fabic He made his way to the office of recruitment agency Max Solutions, on the second floor, and allegedly started yelling threats, including that he was going to kill someone. Police will allege in court that the man then stabbed a female employee in the hand before he was wrestled to the ground by clients and a staff member. The woman also suffered a small cut to her face, police said.
ITT Technical Institute might be closing down for good. Today, we received a tip from someone whose wife works for ITT. They said this morning “she and everyone else on staff—including the school director—got a mysterious direct deposit to their bank accounts for their full normal pay.” Advertisement It’s an off-week from normal payday, so this struck the couple as a little bit odd. But that’s not the only reason. The tipster also said, “There was also an additional amount above her normal pay which we suspect is her PTO pay out.” “ITT Tech hands out portable hard drives to the students, for them to use for their homework and take to the computer lab,” the individual said. “Today, the administration has actually given them to the office workers—like student advisors and financial aid—so they could take home personal documents.” The tip comes following a string of events that that appear to have crippled the for-profit college. Earlier this week, we reported ITT Tech stopped enrolling students at all of its campuses. The decision came after the US Department of Education handed down a series of sanctions against the company, the most damning of which prevented it from admitting students who rely on federal aid to pay for tuition. Advertisement ITT Tech has been widely criticized for accepting billions of dollars in governments grants and loans while failing to provide adequate job training for its students. ITT Tech received an estimated $580 million in federal money (aka your taxpayer dollars) just last year, according to the Department of Education. The company has been criticized because it leaves many students saddled with huge debts and no technical skills. A recent report from The Atlantic revealed “students pursuing bachelor’s and associate’s degrees at for-profit colleges saw their earnings drop, compared to before they started the program.” We’ve reached out to ITT Technical Institute for more information and will update when we ear back. Have you heard anything or know anything about what’s going on at ITT Tech today? Hit us up at tips@gizmodo.com or michael.nunez@gizmodo.com. Advertisement Update (12:45 ET): An ITT Tech spokesperson sent us the following statement:
After digesting the works of Maiden and Priest, there was only one way Frank’s guitar playing could begin. Yet - as the man himself illustrates - no matter where your roots lie, keeping an open mind is crucial to your development as a player and songwriter. “I played metal initially, then punk rock and hardcore,” says Frank. “As a kid, my main focus was learning thrash. It was all about super fast down picking. Later on, I discovered the joys of Bob Dylan and Neil Young. Just learning the rudiments of playing guitar like Neil Young was a challenge. “I knew how to play C, G and D, but now I’m learning tricks like passing notes and how to pick out a melody in a major scale while moving from one chord to the other.” Frank pauses for a few seconds, considering his words: “If you’re from a metal background you can often be disdainful about acoustic. Actually, the intricacies of playing within simpler confines are harder than you think.”
On the way home, boater rescues dog from SF Bay Adam Cohen discovered a group of windsurfers who had found this dog swimming in the bay while on his evening commute from San Francisco to Berkeley Monday night, August 12, 2013. Adam Cohen discovered a group of windsurfers who had found this dog swimming in the bay while on his evening commute from San Francisco to Berkeley Monday night, August 12, 2013. Photo: Adam Cohen Photo: Adam Cohen Image 1 of / 4 Caption Close On the way home, boater rescues dog from SF Bay 1 / 4 Back to Gallery (08-12) 21:36 PDT BERKELEY -- Berkeley resident Adam Cohen's already atypical commute home from San Francisco in a motorized inflatable boat turned even more unusual Monday evening when he helped a group of windsurfers rescue a dog from the middle of the bay. Cohen, 55, vice president of engineering for a tech startup in the Presidio, was heading east across the bay with a co-worker when he saw a group of five windsurfers, sails down, in the water about a quarter mile off the end of the abandoned section of the Berkeley Pier - perhaps two or three miles from shore. Concerned they might be in trouble, he stopped to check. The windsurfers were fine, but they were huddled together in the water around a waterlogged black dog - possibly a Labrador-pit bull mix - they had placed atop one of the boards. One of the windsurfers was on a two-way radio, trying to convince the Coast Guard to rescue the dog. "She was way out there." he said. "It looked like she was trying to swim to Angel Island." Cohen offered to take the dog, which had a collar but no tags, to his North Berkeley home and then to the Berkeley-East Bay Humane Society in the morning. The bay was a bit choppy so it took a while to maneuver his 22-foot Raider 665 into position. "Then we reached down, picked her up and put her in the boat," Cohen said. The dog was shaking and seemed disoriented. He took her home, put her on a pad and wrapped her in a blanket. A couple of hours later, she seemed to be recovering, Cohen said. "She's not eating or drinking yet, but she's gotten up and taken a couple of walks in the yard," he said. On Tuesday morning, Cohen plans to take the dog to the humane society, hoping she has an implanted identification chip or that someone has reported her missing. But there could be a change of plans. "My wife says we should keep her," he laughed.
When we finally announced Dorico’s name last month, and let you know when you will finally be able to use it for yourself, we were inundated with responses on Facebook, Twitter, on the new dedicated Dorico forum on our web site, and by email. Knowing that there are so many musicians out there waiting for Dorico and looking forward to adding it to their toolboxes is great motivation for us as we work hard to ready the application for release. In the meantime, it’s time for another development update. I know that many of you are waiting for details about playback, and I will share some in (I hope) the next instalment of this diary. Our team in London and our colleagues in Hamburg continue to work very hard on the integration of Cubase’s audio engine with Dorico, but there is still much to be done. In this instalment, then, I’m going to tell you about Dorico’s page layout features, and also talk a little bit about lyrics. Page layout One of the areas in which we are trying to make Dorico offer unique and powerful functionality not found in other scoring programs is in page layout. Being able to quickly produce a stable and consistent page layout can be a challenge that tests the skills of even the most experienced users of scoring software. For example, page furniture (such as page numbers, headers consisting of movement titles or instrument names, plate numbers, and so on) must not interfere with the music, and the music must start and end in defined places on the page, whilst still allowing the flexibility that’s needed to handle exceptional circumstances (such as footnotes or critical commentary). We’re taking a new approach that has more in common with desktop publishing applications than it does with the existing mainstream scorewriters. As I wrote in part 12 of this diary, Dorico projects can contain multiple independent pieces of music, known as flows, which can even be for completely different combinations of instruments, assigned to players, which represent the human beings who will ultimately perform your music in the real world. To actually bring your music into concrete, notated form that can be printed out onto paper or displayed on a device for a live performer to read, you bring together some combination of flows and players into layouts. In a typical project, you will have a full score layout, which by default contains the music for all players from all flows, and you will also have a number of part layouts, which by default contain the music for a single player from all flows. You can edit which flows and which players are included in any layout, of course, if you need to. How each layout actually appears is controlled by a combination of the basic layout options, such as page size and margins, page orientation, and stave size (all of which are set in the Layout Options dialog, accessed from Setup mode), and the set of master pages in use. Master pages If you’re familiar with desktop publishing software, then you’ll most likely be familiar with the term master page, from where we’ve borrowed the concept. As the help pages for Adobe InDesign put it: A master is like a background that you can quickly apply to many pages. Objects on a master appear on all pages with that master applied… Changes you make to a master are automatically applied to associated pages. Masters commonly contain repeating logos, page numbers, headers, and footers. They can also contain empty text or graphic frames that serve as placeholders on document pages. In Dorico, a master page actually consists of a pair of pages, one to be used if the page using that master page falls on the left-hand side of a spread, and one to be used if it falls on the right-hand side. The default master page set consists of two master page pairs: the default page pair, which is used for each successive left and right-hand page after the first page of the layout; and the first page pair, which is used for the first page of music in the layout. You can designate a particular page pair within a set as the special first page pair, but if no page pair has this special status, the normal page pair will be used instead. A master page definition itself typically consists of a number of frames. Frames are rectangular boxes that can be positioned on a page, and then filled with content. In Dorico, there are three types of frame: music frames, into which the music chosen for your layout is flowed; text frames, into which you can either type arbitrary text, or choose from a number of tokens (sometimes called “wildcards” or “text inserts” in other programs), which are automatically replaced with preset information from elsewhere in your project; and graphics frames, into which you can load images in a variety of formats. Frames can be positioned anywhere on the page inside the margins defined for the specific page size in use by the layout. All pages in a layout use the same page size, orientation, and margins, but frames can be laid out within those margins differently on every page, if necessary. Frames are defined in a manner that allows the page layout to adapt to changes in page size, orientation, or margins, so that the same master page definitions can be used for e.g. both A4 pages (as typically used in Europe) and Letter pages (as typically used in the United States), or even for A4/Letter and A3/Tabloid. In the language of the modern web, this is known as responsive design, and the behaviour of how a frame’s size and/or position changes when the page size or orientation change is defined in terms of constraints. Constraint-based layout You can think of a constraint as defining the relationship between one of the four sides of a frame, and the corresponding page margin. For example, a music frame that fills the entire height and width of a page, and which will grow or shrink as the page size or area defined by the margin is changed, has constraints on all four sides, all of which have an inset of zero, i.e. the edges of the frames should abut the margins. A frame intended to contain a header, by contrast, would typically span the whole width of a page, so the left and right sides of the frames would be constrained to the left and right margins, with zero inset, and the header would also typically abut the top margin, so it would also have a constraint on its top side with an inset of zero. However, the header should have a fixed height, so it does not have a constraint on its bottom side. This means that as the page size changes, the top of the header frame will remain locked to the top margin, and likewise the left and right sides will remain locked to the left and right margins, but the height of the header frame itself will not change. Once you have understood the basic concepts of a constraint-based layout, you can start to imagine the powerful possibilities this affords, particularly with a view to how music might be dynamically laid out when viewed on a device such as a tablet in place of a traditional paperbased music stand. Overrides By default, each page in a layout inherits from one of the master pages in the set used by that layout: the first page inherits the special first page pair, if present in the set, and subsequent pages inherit the normal page pair. If you edit these master page pairs, then the pages that inherit them will instantly update to reflect those edits, but you can also edit individual pages in the layout in a variety of ways, which creates overrides. Once a page is overridden, it will no longer automatically inherit changes made to its parent master page, until you explicitly clear the overrides, or specify that it should inherit from a different master page. Why would you want to override the layout of a given page? Imagine that you are preparing for publication a critical edition of a new work, and it is your house style to include commentary in the form of footnotes at the bottom of some of the pages, as is the practice of publishers such as G. Henle Verlag. Most pages will likely have no footnotes at all, but some pages may require more than a sentence or two, and perhaps in more than one language (most of Henle’s editions today provide footnotes in three languages: German, English, and French). Those footnotes may need to include small excerpts of music, to show how a passage was reproduced in another source, or to suggest a possible realisation of an ornament, or similar. Producing such a layout in one of the existing mainstream scoring programs can be time-consuming and awkward – to the point that many publishers prefer doing this kind of work either in a page-based illustration program, or in a desktop publishing program – but it is designed to be as efficient as possible in Dorico. Our goal is to eventually obviate the need for completing this kind of complex layout with the use of additional software. To produce a layout like the first page of Beethoven’s C major piano sonata, Op. 53, as shown on Henle’s blog, in Dorico, you would simply drag the bottom of the main music frame on the page upwards to make room for the footnotes, then add two text frames of the same height, each occupying half the width of the page, and enter the text in the appropriate language into each box. To add the small musical excerpt, you could choose either to create a graphic frame and import the music in the form of a graphic (perhaps in a vector format like SVG), but much more fun and dynamic than that, you can add a new music frame and set its contents to an entirely different flow within your project: you could create a new flow for each footnote, edit it as if it were itself an independent piece of music, and then bring it into its own music frame, adjusting its stave size and spacing as needed to make it fit the appropriate space. The possibilities afforded by having multiple independent music frames on the same page are practically endless: not only can you easily create footnotes, but you can create complex layouts of text and music for e.g. exam papers or exercise sheets, or create “fill boxes” that show how a guitarist or drummer might handle a particular solo or break. You can even produce, almost entirely automatically, the four-hands piano layout where Secondo’s music is shown on the left-hand page of a spread, and Primo’s music is shown on the right. There’s so much more power and flexibility behind Dorico’s page layout engine. I’ve barely mentioned text tokens that can dynamically substitute information from elsewhere in your project, such as page numbers and movement titles; or the fact that text can be saved in text flows and shared between different layouts in your project (so you can use e.g. the same performance instructions in the full conductor’s score and a smaller rehearsal score); or the fact that you can easily insert blank pages anywhere in your layout; or import graphics onto a master page so that your company’s logo will appear automatically on the first page; or many other things besides. Hopefully this brief introduction to Dorico’s page layout capabilities has sparked some ideas about how you might be able to use them in your own projects. Of course, if you just want your music to be laid out clearly, simply, and automatically, and you don’t ever want to edit a master page definition, the good news is that the program’s defaults are sensible enough that you never need to, but the power is there, hidden away behind a switch in Engrave mode, just waiting to be unlocked. Lyrics In vocal and choral music, we use the term “lyrics” to represent generically all text that is sung by singers – though in Behind Bars, Elaine Gould seems to studiously avoid the use of the word, instead referring to it as “the text,” which may well be a more accurate approach, since not all sung words in musical works would accurately be described as lyrics, as in either the modern usage of the lyrics to a pop song, or in the literary sense of referring to lyric poetry. Despite its inaccuracy, it’s useful to be able to differentiate sung text from other forms of text that often appears in musical scores – such as performance instructions, tempos, dynamics, and the like – not only in discussions like this diary entry, but also in Dorico’s user interface, so we’re going to stick with it. Inputting lyrics Dorico’s approach to inputting and editing lyrics is hardly revolutionary, but it is efficient and hopefully comfortable. To get started, simply select the note or chord from which you want to start adding lyrics, and type Shift–L. In common with inputting other notations, a pop-over appears, with a read-out of the line number of the lyric you’re about to input. Simply type the word and hit Space to advance to the next note or chord, or if you are typing only one syllable of a longer word, hit – (hyphen) to advance. If you skip over a note or chord without providing a new lyric, hitting Space or – repeatedly will cause either a lyric extender line or one or more hyphens to appear, indicating that the word or syllable is to be sung over multiple notes. So far, so familiar, no doubt. One nice advantage to using the pop-over to input lyrics rather than typing them directly onto the page is that the pop-over always appears at a legible size, independent of the zoom level of the score itself. You can always see what you’re typing, even if you have zoomed out to get more of the system or page in view. You can have as many lines, or verses, of lyrics below (and indeed above) the staff as necessary, simply by hitting the down arrow key in the lyric input pop-over: the line number updates, and as soon as you start typing, the new lyrics are added to the new line. The distance between lines of lyrics, and indeed the distance between the staff and the first line of lyrics, can be controlled via the Engraving Options dialog in Engrave mode, and indeed there is a variety of other options relating to lyrics there, too, including the minimum distance between adjacent lyrics, the gap before or after, and between, hyphens, the thickness of the lyric extender line, and so on. When a line of lyrics is missing across the width of a whole system, no additional gap is left between the remaining lines of lyrics: for example, if you typically have three lines of lyrics, but on one system the second line of lyrics is completely absent, then the third line of lyrics will be moved upwards, closer to the first line of lyrics; if on a subsequent system the second and third lines of lyrics are present but the first line is completely absent, the second and third lines of lyrics will be moved upwards such that the second line of lyrics is positioned vertically where the first line would normally be. Dorico can optionally print line or verse numbers automatically, too, immediately before the first lyric in a given line in a given flow. One further neat trick up Dorico’s sleeve is that you can also designate either a whole line or just a selection of lyrics as being a chorus, which means that those lyrics are automatically written in another font style (by default, using the same font family and size as normal lines of lyrics, only italicised) and centred vertically relative to the existing lines of lyrics on the system where the transition between regular and chorus lyrics takes place. (No, Dorico doesn’t automatically show a curly brace or similar to denote the transition point between regular and chorus lyrics at the moment, but it may in future.) Alignment and spacing Although lyrics put pressure on the vertical spacing of the music, generally forcing staves further apart, they put much more pressure on the horizontal or rhythmic spacing of the music. Firstly, there are the conventions for how lyrics are aligned relative to notes and chords. Single syllables (whether whole words or parts of longer words) that are sung on only one note are centred on that note; melismas, that is to say syllables or words that are sung on more than one note, are left-aligned with the left-hand side of the first note, to draw the singer’s eye rightwards towards the remaining notes to be sung to that sound. Secondly, because lyrics are very often wider than the notes to which they are sung, there can be a significant impact on rhythmic spacing: a lyric on one note cannot be allowed to collide with a lyric on another note, so it is often necessary to widen the spacing, sometimes by a considerable amount, to accommodate lyrics, and if you happen to be unfortunate enough to have very wide lyrics (e.g. “screeched”, “strengths”, “straights”, etc.) on very short note values, you will most likely find that the rhythmic spacing is significantly distorted. Gould allows that very long syllables do not have to be centred precisely under the note: she recommends that they are offset to the right, such that more of the word’s width is found to the right of the note to which it is sung than to the left. In practice, engravers prior to the age of computer engraving seem to have taken a less rigid approach to this problem, essentially allowing lyrics to shuffle either to the left or to the right if this allows a reduction in the amount of rhythmic distortion caused by using precise centre- and left-alignment strictly abiding by the letter of the law. To date, no scorewriting software (to my knowledge) has attempted to make automatically the kinds of adjustments that human engravers used to make when typesetting lyrics – until now. Dorico is the first scoring software to automatically adjust the horizontal position of individual lyrics relative to the notes to which they belong, to minimise the distortion of rhythmic spacing. The mechanism by which this is achieved is a general one that allows items outside the staff to contribute towards rhythmic spacing: this means that, for example, hairpins are never drawn so short that they look more like accents than gradual changes of dynamic; a tempo change followed in quick succession by a gradual increase or reduction in tempo in the form of a rit. or accel. will not collide with each other. In these kinds of situations, the rhythmic space is expanded to accommodate the minimum legal length for the item in question (such as the hairpin) or its actual minimum size (such as the text of the tempo change), over the rhythmic duration of the item. Lyrics are nevertheless unusual in that they can typically influence the space allotted only to a single note at a single rhythmic position: if the same word or syllable is sung over multiple notes, it is typically left-aligned with the first note (opening up more space for a longer lyric to its left), and because there is at least one more note to come, there is typically enough space to the right to avoid increasing the rhythmic spacing in any case. But for a troublesome word like “strength” on a single note, it must be positioned relative to the note such that it neither collides with other words to its immediate left or right, nor does it stray too far under another adjacent note or rest that doesn’t have a lyric of its own for fear of introducing ambiguity over the true home for that word. At the same time, if possible, we want to avoid simply always adding rhythmic space for wide words and syllables: but if we move one lyric left or right in order to avoid adding space, we may introduce a new collision with an adjacent lyric, and end up in a vicious cycle of shuffling lyrics left and right in futility. We are choosing to keep the exact details of how these concerns are balanced under our hats, at least for now, but the result is that lyrics are able to move subtly to the left and to the right to reduce the amount of additional rhythmic space that needs to be added to accommodate them, without introducing ambiguities in the underlay, and without causing collisions elsewhere on the system. The effect is subtle, but this is as it should be, in common with dozens of the other tiny details to which we have paid great attention as we have built Dorico, and in common with the similarly subtle and clever gambits employed by skilled human engravers over the past two centuries. Keep control In contrast to the subtleties of how Dorico adjusts the alignment and spacing of lyrics to produce a pleasing result, the way that it handles edits to the lyrics themselves is decidedly unsubtle, and usefully direct. In other scoring programs, one of the annoyances of working with lyrics is that you cannot easily change the way the application thinks about a given lyric once it has been created – for example, if it turns out that a lyric ends up left-aligned when it should be centred under the note, because it has been copied and pasted from one staff to another. In Product A, for example, there is no option but to delete and re-enter the lyric to change how it’s aligned. In Dorico, by contrast, you can simply select the lyric, open the Properties panel, and change its syllable type, which will not only change its alignment as needed, but also fix up any extender lines or hyphens that are affected by the change. It’s also easy to make larger scale edits, such as changing the order of verses: simply select a lyric in the line you want to move elsewhere, right-click, and choose the new line number. Any existing lyrics in that line number will be swapped with the lyrics you’re moving. You can also easily move lyrics from below to above the staff in the same fashion. More to come With that, it’s time to wrap up this instalment of the diary. Lots of other excellent work is going on in beaming, tremolos, ornaments, bar numbering, localisation, user interface, and, of course, playback, and I’ll touch on some of these areas in the next development update. In the meantime, we look forward to continuing to discuss Dorico with you both in the comments here and in the already pretty lively Dorico forum. Come and join us!

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