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So the important question is, will GM be among the problem children who actually dumps its pension obligations on the taxpayer? As luck would have it, GM's numbers are just out, and . . . um . . . they're losing a lot less money than they used to!!! Only $4.3 billion since they emerged from bankruptcy. And the CEO says they might even make a profit in the near future, maybe.
To be fair, that includes whopping dose of one-time charge. On the other hand, there's a lot of grim news lurking deeper in the reports, according to The Truth About Cars:
Of course, you have to dig into the numbers to find the bad news, like the $56.4b in "cost of sales," or the $700m interest cost, or the 48 percent North American capacity utilization in 2009, or the 16.3 percent US car market share.
Make no mistake, these companies are still on life support. The CBO expects that the lion's share of the government's losses on TARP will come, not from anything the Bush administration did, but from the Obama administration's decision to bail out the automakers and to a lesser extent, its bailout of homeowners. It seems that a big chunk of our cost may come from picking up the gold plated pensions . . . "Cadillac Plans", if you will . . . of the automakers. And lest you think I'm picking on unions over management, it was management that used the UAW as a prop to extract these gargantuan sums from the pockets of innocent taxpayers.
I feel like we ought to get a little something back, here. At the very least, they could offer everyone in America that OnStar service that sounds so great in the commercials.
(NAV Image Credit: GM Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com/flickr) |
This year, Cardinal Joseph Tobin, C.Ss.R, of Newark, N.J., will be honored at Catholic Charities’ 14th annual Justice for All awards dinner, to be held in Atlantic City on Oct. 11.
Through this annual event, Catholic Charities recognizes individuals and organizations who, by their actions, demonstrate extraordinary commitment to building a just society and serving the needs of the poor.
Cardinal Tobin receives this award because of his leadership and defense of immigrants and refugees, as well as his call for all hearts to be enkindled so as to protect access to health care, promote educational and employment opportunities, and protect vulnerable adults on the margins of our communities.
He will be recognized with the Saint John Neumann Award – an award bestowed upon individuals who summon Catholics and all people of goodwill to proclaim the message and path of Jesus and Saint John Neumann, who were both close to the sick, championed the poor, befriended sinners, and are a beacon for all immigrants.
Cardinal Tobin is a native of Michigan, the oldest of 13 children, and a member of the Redemptorist order. He is well known for being a proponent and protector of the rights and dignity of those who are most in need of protection – especially immigrants and refugees.
In November 2016, Pope Francis named Cardinal Tobin to serve as the sixth Archbishop of Newark. In assuming this post, he shepherds one of the most diverse regions of the country. It’s a role for which he was well prepared.
He has traveled extensively in developing nations, and speaks English, Spanish, Italian, French and Portuguese, as well as reads other languages. Sharing in the same pastoral vision as Pope Francis, Cardinal Tobin serves the poor with humility and is a fierce advocate for human rights. He promotes multicultural outreach and a greater role for women in the church.
“Cardinal Tobin is the kind of leader who can help the church in the United States grow in mercy, ecumenism and magnanimity,” said Kevin Hickey, executive director of Catholic Charities.
Cardinal Tobin’s defense of immigrants and refugees is renowned.
“What keeps despots and dictators awake at night, what topples evil empires is the little person who goes into the square in the middle of town in the dark of the night and scrawls on the wall, ‘No,’ and I want to say to you, we are the ‘No’ that God scrolls on the wall,” Cardinal Tobin once said in explaining his bold position on refugees. “We are the ‘No’ to a nation who is heartless, who would deport people, separating them from their families and their loved ones simply because they are victims of a broken system.”
The Justice for All awards dinner has a dual purpose — honoring the extraordinary service performed by the individuals receiving Justice in Action awards, and raising funds that allow Catholic Charities to provide direct assistance to those it serves throughout the Diocese of Camden.
Each year, with the funds raised by the dinner, Catholic Charities serves more than 33,000 individuals and families within the six southern New Jersey counties that make up the Diocese of Camden. Since its inception in 2004, the annual event has raised more than $800,000.
Every dollar is used for direct services. The funding helps those struggling with addiction, and with housing and food emergencies. Health education and nutrition programs, especially in rural areas, promote healthy living. A prison ministry prepares those reentering society and reentering the lives of their families. Financial counseling services, employment support and English language classes enable clients to develop vital skills to secure good jobs. Refugees and veterans in need are a special focus.
“When people lead stable, dignified, self-sufficient lives, families are strengthened and communities flourish,” noted Hickey. “That’s what Catholic Charities is all about, and that’s what this important fundraiser supports.”
In addition to honoring Cardinal Tobin, a group of “Disciples of Mercy” will be recognized at the dinner as well. Begun during last year’s Jubilee Year of Mercy, the Disciples of Mercy awards recognize an individual or small ministry group in each deanery who exemplifies their Catholic identity and its mission of mercy to alleviate poverty or benefit the marginalized in South Jersey. These efforts may be through a parish-specific project or in collaboration with a local, national, or global social service/humanitarian agency.
Nominations for this award can be made on-line at: http://catholiccharitiescamden.org/disciples-of-mercy/
The Justice for All awards dinner will be held at Resorts Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City. For more information about the event, visit: www.CatholicCharitiesCamden.org/JFA2017 |
CAIRO — The continuing protests against the military takeover here showed signs on Friday of shifting into a movement against the authoritarian tactics of the new government rather than one demanding the return of the ousted president, Mohamed Morsi.
Although the evidence is tentative and anecdotal, any expansion of the protests’ base would be a significant setback for the new government. It has so far enjoyed considerable support for its crackdown on Mr. Morsi’s Islamist supporters in the Muslim Brotherhood, whom it describes as violence-prone extremists.
As tens of thousands gathered in the streets of Cairo for the ninth Friday of protests against the takeover, few carried the posters of Mr. Morsi’s face that were once the banner of the Brotherhood’s “anti-coup” coalition. Instead, almost everyone held a sign with a logo memorializing the mass killing by security forces of hundreds of Morsi supporters on Aug. 14: a four-fingered salute, because the Arabic word for fourth is the name of the square where the protesters were staging their sit-in, Rabaa.
In a sharp change from the past, some of the marchers said openly that they did not expect Mr. Morsi to return to office, or they grudgingly acknowledged his government’s failures. At least a few said they did not want him back for longer than it took to hand over power to a new government or oversee new elections. |
Since Sigmund Freud coined the term "father complex" over a century ago, our culture has been fixated on the supposed impact of our male progenitors' behavior on our lives; in pop culture especially, there's an entrenched idea that a woman's early relationship to her dad affects her romantic and sexual life. (Thus the ubiquitous concept of "daddy issues.")
Is there any truth to the trope? Researchers at the University of Utah recently set out to study what they call the "robust association… observed between fathering quality and sexual risk taking among adolescent girls." Their findings, published by Developmental Psychology in a study called "Impact of Fathers on Parental Monitoring of Daughters and Their Affiliation With Sexually Promiscuous Peers," confirm that a father's relationship with his daughter does influence the daughter's likelihood to engage in "risky sexual behavior" (RSB).
Read More: My Father, the Creeper Who Tries to Have Sex With My Friends
Researchers define RSB as unprotected sex, sex in conjunction with the use of drugs or alcohol, sex with someone who injects drugs, sex with someone who is abusive, "engaging in concurrent sexual relationships with different partners," and receiving compensation for engaging in sexual activity.
The study collected data from 202 individuals comprised of sister pairs so that researchers could compare the differences (or lack thereof) in each one's sexual behavior, with the control of having the same father. The sister pairs were chosen from families whose parents remained together throughout the adolescence of both sisters, and those whose parents divorced before the youngest sister turned 14. Families whose parents remained together were used as the control group, while divorced families made it possible to have sister pairs where one sister—the eldest—was exposed to the father for a longer period of time.
All participants were between the ages of 18 and 36. According to its lead author Dr. Danielle J. DelPriore, the study's subjects are what set this research apart from other studies on the topic. "By comparing full biological sisters who grew up under the same family conditions, we can rule out the possible influence of genetics and environmental factors," she tells Broadly.
The association between father absence/low quality fathering and adolescent sexual behavior has been shown to be stronger for daughters than for sons.
Instead, the research focused on the quality of father-daughter relationships (FDRs), parental monitoring (parental knowledge, supervision, communication, and behavioral control), and the amount of time daughters were exposed to their fathers during adolescence. FDR was measured by two scales: harsh-coercive fathering and paternal warmth/supportiveness. Participants were asked to rate the degree to which their father exhibited these traits on a four-point scale.
Researchers found that fathers in divorced families had greater influence on their eldest daughters' sexual behavior. When the quality of the father's parenting was high, the eldest daughter was more likely to engage in less RSB, as well as less likely to associate with peers who engaged in less RSB when compared with the youngest daughter. They found the opposite to be true as well: If the father had low-quality parenting tendencies in a divorced family, the eldest daughter was more likely to engage in RSB than the youngest.
"We decided to focus on daughters because of past research and theory," says Dr. DelPriore when asked why she decided to focus on the sexual behaviors of daughters and not sons in relation to their fathers. "The association between father absence/low quality fathering and adolescent sexual behavior has been shown to be stronger for daughters than for sons."
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The study offers a section on the practical significance of its findings. "The current work suggests that high parental monitoring and low [peer risky sexual behaviors] are protective factors against adolescent [risky sexual behaviors]," it reads. It suggests that both parental monitoring and adolescents' susceptibility to deviant peer influence "provide two additional modifiable factors that can be targeted for prevention and intervention" in the future.
For now, Dr. DelPriore believes that the biggest takeaway from her research is that "what mattered for a daughters' behavior was the amount of time she lived with her father and was exposed to his behavior, for better or for worse."
In essence, daddy issues, like all cliches, are real. |
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The global superstar talks about the masculine facade of Donald Trump, the strength he inherited from his mother, the philosophy he shares with fans, and the joy he delivers on stage
Bruce Springsteen exists at that rarefied level of fame where you get to move like a Dalek, without ever actually having to touch anything. When he is out in public, at least – when he is being the Springsteen who is Brooooooce, the Springsteen who is the Boss, rather than the one who’s been married for 25 years and has three kids – no obstacles stand in his way. No door is left unopened, no person steps out in front of him, and if you find yourself in his orbit, you can’t help but find the gravitational pull of stardom yanking you into your position.
I’ve seen and experienced this a couple of times. In 2010, when he attended a screening of the documentary about him, The Promise, at BFI Southbank in London, a friend and I were walking down the red carpet towards the cinema when there was a stir around us; we felt it before we noticed the faces lining the barriers turning in one direction. Behind us, Springsteen had alighted from a people carrier. We panicked – We’re not meant to be here! Where do we go? – and made ourselves as small and invisible at the edge of the carpet as we could while he ambled past and the energy followed behind. I don’t remember how the doors opened, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t have to lift a finger.
Then backstage at the Ricoh Arena in Coventry, this past June. Springsteen was just finishing his final number – an acoustic version of his wonderful 1975 redemption song Thunder Road. We were in the access tunnel at the side of the stage, where a fleet of black luxury cars lined up, windows tinted, engines ticking over, waiting for him and the band to leave the stage, to be whisked from the stadium before the house lights have flashed on, while tens of thousands are still finishing their drinks and working out where the nearest exit is. It is, doubtless, the same wherever he plays.
The 67-year-old Bruce Springsteen who enters the room at his favoured London luxury hotel – door opened by someone else, naturally, and it took three people to wait with me for him to enter – has skin the colour of wealth and clothes so casual they could only be expensive: a close-fitting jacket, a slightly scoop-necked T-shirt, and jeans whose left leg is flecked with white paint, as if he’s just been touching up the cornicing in the corridors. You half wonder if someone splattered the paint on for him, just to keep things looking blue collar.
He’s here promoting his autobiography, Born to Run. Before London, he’d been on a nine-date book tour of US cities, meeting his flock, opening – touchingly – with an appearance in his home town of Freehold, New Jersey (pop: 12,052), to which people travelled from across the east coast. Even that turned into a major operation: the Guardian reported that at least eight police officers were on duty around the branch of Barnes and Noble, with around twice that number of private security guards.
Springsteen estimates he has scrawled his signature on 17,000 copies of the book. Perhaps surprisingly, he’s rather enjoyed the experience. “You meet the fans – only for 10 seconds, but you meet them one by one,” he says. “And they have an opportunity: what’s the one thing you always wanted to say over the 40 years of the relationship we’ve had? I actually found it quite moving. Always enjoyed that part. I used to love to drift around, bump into people, see what their lives were like, wander into their lives for a few moments then drift back out. It appealed to the transient nature of my personality. I liked the idea of being here and then being gone, this little spirit moving through the world.”
A couple of days before we meet, he opens the European leg of his promo jaunt with an event in front of an invited audience of journalists at the ICA in London, where he notes that when the fans have met him, one of the commonest responses has been: “You’re shorter than I expected.” Here, too, the reverence is striking. When questions are opened to the floor, someone identifying himself as “Eddie from Ireland” tells Springsteen: “Such is the affection that the people of Ireland have for you, that if you ran for president of Ireland in the morning, you’d be elected.” When the event winds up, a throng of middle-aged men gathers at the front of the stage to get their copies of Born to Run signed.
In Trump’s case, the facade is easy to see through, and what you see is a bundle of anxiety, fragility and insecurity
It is a pretty decent book, in a genre – the rock autobiography – replete with stinkers. (But then, you’d hope it would be a pretty decent book given that Springsteen was reportedly paid $10m to write it.) It deserves to have topped the bestseller lists on both sides of the Atlantic, for its honesty about Springsteen’s difficult childhood, his troubled relationship with his father, his struggles with depression, and his unyielding faith in the redemptive power of rock’n’roll. He writes about the first time depression struck, in the early 1980s, in a way that resonates powerfully: he is on a road trip with a friend, stopping at a small-town fair, when, “From nowhere, a despair overcomes me; I feel an envy of these men and women and their late summer ritual, the small pleasures that bind them and this town together. Now, for all I know these folks may hate this one-dog dump and each other’s guts and be screwing one another’s husbands and wives like rabbits. Why wouldn’t they? But right now, all I can think of is that I want to be amongst them, of them, and I can’t. I can only watch.”
That depression still haunts him, fended off by performing – in the book he talks of being “crushed between 60 and 62, good for a year, and out again from 63 to 64” – and I want to ask what his favoured antidepressant is, whether Sertraline (Zoloft in the States) performed the miracles for him it did for me. But there doesn’t really seem to be a good way to ask about a hero’s pill regimen.
***
It’s less than a month, when we speak, before the US elections, and Springsteen is getting increasingly confident that Donald Trump won’t win. He’s no less scathing about the Republican candidate for that confidence, though. We talk about the contrast between the American ideal of masculinity – generous, confident, empathetic, determined; the one you think of when you imagine the “Greatest Generation” who fought in the second world war – and the one Trump presents. He laughs at the difference. “In Trump’s case, the facade is easy to see through, and what you see is a bundle of anxiety, fragility and insecurity,” he says. “It’s the thinnest possible mask of masculinity. And it wouldn’t fool anybody from the Greatest Generation.” There’s a faint hesitation around his use of those words, as if acknowledging that not everyone who fought in the war, including his father, was necessarily great. “It’s such a thin costume that for me it doesn’t hold for a moment. But there have been quite a few people he has attracted along the way, so I suppose the bluster works to a certain degree. He’s really quite an embarrassment if you’re from the USA. It’s simply the most rigid and thinnest veil of masculinity over a mess.”
Springsteen notes that he’s been asked about Trump a lot as he’s promoted his book. And, despite a reputation for political engagement, he’s evidently a little tired of it. In fact, he’s been relatively quiet this election. Though he appeared at campaign events for both Barack Obama and John Kerry, he hasn’t stumped for Hillary Clinton. His most notable piece of activism this year came in April when he pulled out of a show in North Carolina in protest at the state’s “bathroom law”, dictating which public toilets transgender people could use: “To my mind, it’s an attempt by people who cannot stand the progress our country has made in recognising the human rights of all of our citizens to overturn that progress,” he wrote on his website at the time.
His politics are simple, and basically non-partisan. When he’s used his voice it has tended to be to support specific causes – his tours have supported food banks in cities where he’s played; he went on Amnesty International’s Human Rights Now! tour in 1988; he donated £16,000 to Durham miners during the 1985 miners’ strike. In song, he has returned repeatedly – not just in Born in the USA – to the plight of America’s Vietnam veterans.
He believes in fairness, people being treated decently, the right to a job, medical treatment, education, decent housing, childcare, and open government. He once surprised an interviewer by observing: “To me, these are all conservative ideas… Economic stability. Health. That’s not remotely radical.”
Arguably the biggest influence on his politics was his manager, Jon Landau, the former music writer whom he met when he was studying a gig review pinned up outside a Boston club before his appearance in April 1974. Landau, the review’s writer, sidled up and asked the young musician what he thought. Thus began a friendship that transformed into a professional relationship, and something more: in Born to Run, Springsteen speaks of him being “the Clark to my Lewis”. It’s not so much that Landau told Springsteen what to think, more that he guided him to the books and films that might provoke him to think.
My mother was decent, compassionate, strong, wilful. The best part of me picked up a lot of those characteristics
One of the binds of that, though, is the number of heartland American fans – the ones who are voting Trump – who believe Springsteen would think like them if only, as one contributor to the Backstreets fansite recently suggested, he hadn’t been “brainwashed” into liberalism by Landau and others in his inner circle. On the other hand, there are those who think it outrageous that someone whose songs display an extraordinary empathy for ordinary people should dare to have homes in New Jersey, Florida and Los Angeles, and charge £100 per ticket to see him (the guarantee he demands from promoters for live shows is reputed to be among the largest in music; certainly, I received no reply from Landau last year when I wrote offering a guaranteed £700 and a lift down from London in my Ford Focus if Springsteen fancied playing a solo set at Ramsgate Music Hall).
For Springsteen, politics seems to be about the way you live your life as much as anything. It’s about being decent. About being fair to others. Being a good man. So what does being a good man entail?
“That’s a big question,”
It is.
“I guess, really… I probably learned the best answers to that from my mother. My mother was basically decent, compassionate, strong, wilful. She insisted on creating a world where she could make her children feel as safe as possible, even though she certainly had her faults in that area. But she was consistent. You could count on her. Day after day after day. And she was very strong. The best part of me picked up a lot of those characteristics and I struggle to live up to them today. So I think dependability, strength, wilfulness… put in the service of something good – those are the things that matter to me.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bruce Springsteen photographed in New Jersey, October 1979. Photograph: The Estate of David Gahr/Getty Images
His mother had to be the rock because his childhood in New Jersey was, to say the least, peculiar. He spent a chunk of it in the early 1950s living in Freehold with a paternal grandmother who loved him too much, compensating for the death of her daughter in 1927 (“It was very emotionally incestuous and a lot of parental roles got crossed,” he told the writer Peter Ames Carlin); school was cruel, his father Doug – consumed by an often silent rage against the world, and against the son who mystified him – crueller still, emotionally at least.
Born to Run paints a picture of a childhood that is semi-feral, where Springsteen might refuse to go to school, and his grandmother would back him up. “I think I was a little unusual in that I went into rock’n’roll music to create order out of my life,” he says. “My younger life felt rather chaotic, so I was in search of some stability, actually, some order.”
As a kid, he felt invisible. That stopped when he started playing guitar. “Suddenly I was able to make a very loud noise, and a noise that was not so easy to ignore,” he says. “I had my little rock’n’roll band and we were playing to a small gym full of dancers and their friends, and they immediately looked at you as a presence in their lives.”
When he was 19 his parents moved to California, and he was free to pursue music, to become – as he would say on stage years later – a “prisoner… a prisoner of rock’n’roll”.
Politics started entering Springsteen’s music, though far from explicitly, with his fourth album, Darkness on the Edge of Town, in 1978. That was when his music ceased to be the myth-making epics of his first three albums, and he started writing instead about ordinary people and their struggles. He wasn’t informed by reading political tracts. “I just referred to my experiences growing up – my parents’ lives, my sister’s life.”
His parents had struggled to make ends meet, his mother working as a legal secretary, his father in a succession of blue-collar jobs. His sister had married in her teens, and she and her husband’s travails inspired his masterly song The River, about a couple trying to face up to the wedge that joblessness drives into relationships. “I was surrounded by people who were youthful but living very complicated adult lives,” he says. “They were having kids at young ages and trying to build a work life and a home life that was very adult. It was very easy to draw upon. It wasn’t a stretch or a strain.”
***
The songs about ordinary lives – combined with Springsteen’s revelatory, ecstatic live performances – built the bond with his audience that has lasted more than 40 years, and itself became the subject of an extraordinarily moving film in 2013, Springsteen & I. I don’t think he takes that relationship for granted. He understands that people want a piece of him for themselves: at that BFI Southbank event in 2010, Springsteen came to the bar afterwards; while his entourage sat in the corner, talking to one another, he perched on the back of a sofa facing the room. A receiving line of people queueing for a photo and autograph formed, and he stayed until everyone had their moment (my photo was out of focus; I got the autograph for my sister).
People think they know Springsteen. They have an image of Bob Dylan (inscrutable), Neil Young (irascible), Paul McCartney (wearingly cheerful; Springsteen laughs when I use the old Smash Hits name of Fab Wacky Macca Thumbs Aloft). But they can imagine watching sports in a bar with Springsteen, which perhaps accounts for why people get a bit overexcited – I do not excuse myself from this – at the prospect of meeting him (fan accounts of encounters almost always dwell, approvingly, on what an ordinary guy he is. Even if he is shorter than expected).
They think they know Springsteen because, these days, he’s as much an idea, an ideal, as a person.
“Sure, that’s true,” he says, of that notion. “You bring with you an entire philosophy, a certain code of living, I suppose. It’s something you pursue. My heroes were people like Frank Sinatra, Hank Williams, Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan. These were all people who brought their entire philosophy along with them, created a world that would engulf you and give you you, assist you in different ways of living, different ways of presenting yourself. Those were the artists that always interested me. They always seemed to carry a realisation of what being a musician might mean, could mean, the possibilities of what being a musician could be. That was something I was at least semiconscious of trying to create.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Springsteen performing with his wife, Patti Scialfa, in 2005. Photograph: KMazur/WireImage
And when did he realise he had become an idea in the minds of his public?
“I’m not sure. If you’re doing it right, it’s a byproduct of all your actions and all your choices and what you’ve created.”
It should be noted at this point that Springsteen appears to know exactly what he thinks about every aspect of his life and art and how they interact. I guess that’s inevitable. First, he’s just written a 500-page book about those subjects; second, he’s been in therapy for decades; third, he and Landau based their entire relationship on talking at exhaustive length about all this stuff. But, for an interviewer, it’s a bit odd. The most fascinating moments in interviews usually come when you catch a subject by surprise and you can see them deciding what they think about something. With Springsteen, it feels more like he’s searching through his mental hard drive for the relevant file.
My life was changed in an instant by something that people thought was junk – pop music records
That’s not to say his answers are not fascinating (they are) or cursory (they very much are not). When asked what he means when he says his covenant with his audience depends on honesty, he replies without pause, without any errs or urrms, in a single perfect paragraph, that requires not one piece of tidying in the transcription: “I guess we come out and deliver the straight dope to our crowd as best we can. It’s coming on stage with the idea: OK, well the stakes that are involved this evening are quite high. I don’t know exactly who’s in the crowd. But I know that my life was changed in an instant by something that people thought was purely junk – pop music records. And you can change someone’s life in three minutes with the right song. I still believe that to this day. You can bend the course of their development, what they think is important, of how vital and alive they feel. You can contextualise very, very difficult experiences. Songs are pretty good at that. So all these are the stakes that are laid out on the table when you come out at night. And I still take those stakes seriously after all that time, if not more so now, as the light grows slightly dimmer. I come out believing there’s no tomorrow night, there wasn’t last night, there’s just tonight. And I have built up the skills to be able to provide, under the right conditions, a certain transcendent evening, hopefully an evening you’ll remember when you go home. Not that you’ll just remember it was a good concert, but you’ll remember the possibilities the evening laid out in front of you, as far as where you could take your life, or how you’re thinking about your friends, or your wife or your girlfriend, or your best pal, or your job, your work, what you want to do with your life. These are all things, I believe, that music can accommodate and can provide service in. That’s what we try to deliver.”
I email that paragraph to a Springsteen obsessive friend, who blogs about both Springsteen and burgers. She writes back: “It sounds silly, and I try to explain to people, but going to Springsteen shows has shaped a lot of changes in my life. I went to South Africa for a week on my own for four concerts, felt revived, like I could achieve anything. So I left my job and tried to get into journalism, something I’d wanted to do since I was 10. And that’s why I feel like I have to go to Australia [to see Springsteen next year], too, because I need to find that direction again. It’s a funny way to live your life, seeking these highs, living the lows, but ultimately I think I’m better off for it. I really don’t know what I’d do without his music in my life.”
I ask Springsteen if he ever looks at fansites and messageboards.
“No.” (I bet he does. I really, really bet he does.)
Then is he unaware of the section of his hardcore fanbase who complain that his sets are too predictable because he only changes half of a three-hour-plus set from night to night, instead of the whole thing? “I’ve seen that,” he says. “You have to indulge your hardcore fans. It’s really all right.”
You’re more tolerant than I’d be. I’d tell them where to get off. No one else changes their sets like you! They should be grateful!
He doesn’t reply. He just laughs long and hard, his head back, his eyes creasing.
***
On 5 June this year, as the sun set over Wembley Stadium, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band struck up the sombre opening chords of Tougher Than the Rest, the 1987 single about the difficulties of adult love that marked his return after Born in the USA had made him the world’s biggest rock star. Stepping up to the front of the stage to duet with him was Patti Scialfa, a member of the E Street Band since 1984, and his second wife – his first marriage, to Julianne Phillips, ended quickly (in Born to Run, Springsteen admits he was wholly unready for it). Three days after performing what might as well be their theme song, Scialfa and Springsteen marked their 25th wedding anniversary.
Her presence changed not just Springsteen’s life but his work, too. The E Street Band stopped being an all-male preserve, a gang, forcing a change in their behaviour and attitudes. “I think women are in general a good influence on growing up, on growing into your manhood,” he says, delicately.
And then when they had children – two sons, Evan and Sam, born in 1990 and 1994, and a daughter, Jessica, in 1991 – his life was altered even more profoundly. “If I was going to chop my life into sections,” he says, “it would be before the children and after the children, certainly. Just changed my entire worldview. Changed the way I looked at myself. Changed the way I looked at my job. Gave me an entirely separate identity away from my music, which I found to be very fulfilling.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Springsteen performing in 1984, the year Born in the USA took him to new commercial heights. Photograph: Images Press/Getty Images
Before he had children, Springsteen had assumed that whatever he was working on was what everyone around him should be concentrating on. He recalls his bafflement when Jon Landau had his first child, and would suddenly start leaving recording sessions at 6pm, to go and bathe his baby daughter. “I remember thinking…” he adopts a puzzled tone, “You gotta go home and bathe your daughter? We’re doing A, B, C or D, which I happen to think is the most important thing in the world right now. But of course it’s not.”
Having children made Springsteen realise that his work wasn’t his life, it was a substitute for life. “I realised that previously I’d expanded my work life so that I’d have something to do during the day, and into the evening. Without it, what am I gonna do? Go home, sit in a chair and watch TV? So I’d expanded the time it took me to do my job. Once the kids came along, I realised, I could squeeze my previous 18 hours of work day into six or eight, without any problems whatsoever. I realised the song is always going to be there – there’s always going to be a song in your heart or in your head – but kids, they’re there and then they’re gone. And when they’re gone, they’re gone. Once I realised that, I found a tremendous freedom from the tyranny of my own mind.”
I still have pride in what I do. I still believe in its power. I believe in my ability to transfer its power to you
You couldn’t say that Springsteen has slowed down, though, especially now the kids are gone. This summer’s tour of European and US stadiums saw him playing some of his longest ever shows, breaking the four-hour barrier – with no intermissions, unlike his late-70s marathons – on occasion. Springsteen says he has no problems finding the energy to play them, but it’s not so easy for some of his bandmates. Before Springsteen arrives, his co-manager Barbara Carr mentions that Max Weinberg, the 65-year-old drummer, spends all his time between shows sequestered in his hotel room, the windows blacked out, the gaps between door and frame filled to block out all noise, simply recuperating from the previous gig.
That’s the price the band must pay in order to deliver what Springsteen wants: “I come out on stage to deliver to you the greatest band in the world,” he says. “I still have great pride in what I do. I still believe in its power. I believe in my ability to transfer its power to you. That’s never changed. One of the things our band was very good at communicating was that sense of joy, which I think makes us somewhat unique. Rock bands try to project a lot of different things: intensity, mystery, sexuality, cool. Not a lot of rock bands concentrate on joy, and I got that from my relatives on the Italian side – they lived it and they passed it down to me.”
The ambition that drove him to chase perfection 40 years ago – when he would spend hours shouting “Stick!” at Weinberg in the studio, insisting he somehow find a way to play his snare without the sound of stick hitting the skin being audible – is still present.
I ask if, for all his testimonies to the simple power of playing rock’n’roll, and how he says he’s happy pitching up for an impromptu set at a local bar with a pick-up band, whether he would have been content if he’d ended up precisely as popular as his friends and contemporaries Southside Johnny and Joe Grushecky, blue-collar rockers who never transcended the clubs. “I would probably be an old, disgruntled entertainer,” he says, then chuckles at the very notion that he might not have conquered the world. “I was shooting for the whole show. But I certainly would have made my peace with it. Any time you make your living as a musician, you’re way ahead of the game. You’re way ahead of the game. I always thought: Gee, I’m making a living scratching on a piece of wood. I can’t complain too much.”
In 1975, when he was promoting the Born to Run album, there was a story Springsteen used to tell interviewers. While he was recording the album in New York, he was staying in a grotty outpost of Holiday Inn, in one of Manhattan’s less salubrious districts. In his room was a mirror, which hung crooked. Every morning he would dutifully straighten the mirror. And when he returned to his room, the mirror would be askew again. And so, once more, he’d correct it. And again it would slip off centre.
It is, I suggest, a perfect metaphor for a man driven, even when the reasons for his drive, his desperation, might seem unclear to those around him. He smiles. And, rather unexpectedly, quotes Immanuel Kant back at me: “Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.”
And then the door opens, and he glides away, no obstacles in his path.
Born to Run is published by Simon & Schuster (£20). Click here to buy it for £16.40
Bruce’s backpages: the songs that define Springsteen
Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)
1973
A showstopping, Van Morrisonesque epic that’s still a highlight of Springsteen’s live shows, Rosalita sprawls and swerves and swings, irresistibly. It also has the couplet that most encapsulates the joy it must have been to be young and on the cusp of greatness: “Tell him this is his last chance to get his daughter in a fine romance / Cos the record company, Rosie, they just gave me a big advance.”
Born to Run
1975
It took until his third album for Springsteen to write the song that defined him, and of which he has still not tired. “Good songs collect the years, cumulative meaning,” he says. “They grow with you. Play Born to Run and it just allows more people in. I’ll see a 15-year-old kid singing every word, and I’ll see a grandma too! A good song keeps its arms open and welcomes those who come to it over the years.”
Darkness on the Edge of Town
1978
The album Darkness on the Edge of Town saw Springsteen ditching mythologising and writing about adult dilemmas. “I was very concerned about writing music that I felt an adult voice could sing,” he says. “I felt that was a trap some bands fell into. I never wanted to have to come out on stage and pretend. Of course, it’s all pretending, I suppose. But I wanted to feel comfortable in my own skin.”
The River
1980
In growing up, Springsteen says, “you have to come face to face with a lot of your weaknesses and the things you do poorly, so that you’re able to assess the landscape and find out what are the righteous paths you can travel down, and what are the roads that are just going to lead you to a dead end. The River, of course, is the song I wrote about that specific idea.”
Born in the USA
1982
The acoustic version recorded at the time of the Nebraska album allows none of the ambiguity of the stadium-crushing version released two years later. Spare and haunted, a howl from the margins, and utterly unsuited to being co-opted by Ronald Reagan, it would remain unreleased until the 1998 Tracks box set.
Brilliant Disguise
1987
Springsteen’s first marriage failed – but led to the brilliant, introspective album Tunnel of Love. This single seemed to be an autobiographical take on his relationship, with a devastating payoff: “God have mercy on the man / Who doubts what he’s sure of.”
The Ghost of Tom Joad
1995
The lives of the dispossessed were the theme of the largely acoustic album The Ghost of Tom Joad. The title track seems to echo Born to Run when it claims “the highway is alive tonight”. But this time “nobody’s kidding nobody about where it goes”. Desolate and beautiful.
Long Walk Home
2007
An idealised small-town America turns out to be a ghost town as the Bush years come to a close – “the diner was shuttered and boarded, with a sign that just said ‘Gone’.” To get back to the America of the national dream will take a long walk – so long we shouldn’t wait up for Bruce. |
Arsène Wenger has admitted it is becoming more difficult to sign potential stars of the future due to pressure from supporters and scouts for big names to be brought to Arsenal.
Wenger's reputation for unearthing talent at a cut price is arguably the best in the Premier League, the manager having turned a number of players into top-class internationals since he was appointed by Arsenal in 1996.
Patrick Vieira signed from Milan for £3.5m and went on to inspire the north London club to seven major trophies, and Nicolas Anelka and Cesc Fábregas also arrived for nominal fees. The £10m spent on Thierry Henry in 1999 was regarded as a risky amount for a relatively unknown winger.
Wenger, who said that any incomings during the January transfer window were not a priority until Theo Walcott agrees to a contract extension, believes the arrival of such gems is more unlikely in the modern era. Asked how tough it is to make decisions on incoming players, he said: "It's very difficult because the level of expectation is very high."
"People want to see Lionel Messi. They don't want to see a promising guy. First of all the name gives hope. When a guy has no name people are already sceptical, so it's much more difficult for us."
Arsenal play at Swansea City in the FA Cup third round on Sunday and Wenger will hope his defence can snuff out the threat from Michu, whom many consider to be the signing of the season following his £2m arrival from Rayo Vallecano last summer.
"We had heard of him," said Wenger. "He was a guy who disappeared a little bit. He was in clubs where he was bombed out and so you always think: 'OK, he doesn't make it there, why should he make it here?' But he has done extremely well. He looks as well that it is not accidental what he is doing, that he is a really good player.
"We have some other clubs who are doing very well and sometimes when you are a big club your scouts are a bit more cautious because they think: 'Oh, it is Arsenal, it has to be a top-four player.' So naturally they are less looking at players who play at smaller clubs, which Swansea can afford to do. You are always scared that he is a player who, if he does not do well, the scouts are looked at as responsible. The competition is higher on the scouting front, that is for sure."
The Frenchman added: "The country where we were really, really competitive was France. They produce less players than they did 10, 15 years ago at the top level. The emerging countries now look to be Germany and Spain and they have many good young players; they have taken over."
Wenger said Arsenal will let Sébastien Squillaci and Johan Djourou leave the club before the start of next week, and confirmed that the Schalke midfielder Lewis Holtby has caught his eye, although Tottenham have also been linked with a move for the 22-year-old.
Demba Ba, who is expected to complete his transfer from Newcastle United to Chelsea soon, was also under consideration by Arsenal, but Wenger opted instead to sign the French striker Olivier Giroud.
Squillaci is keen to return to France. The defender told Var-Matin: "I am experiencing this situation which I am not enjoying. Given offers, I will leave, possibly during the window or else I will wait until June. Marseille, Nice, Monaco, Ajaccio and Bastia are the clubs who are talking to me. I am 32, I have two or three good seasons left in me." |
Two Washington DC events team up to bring musical jams to the publicWASHINGTON, DC — Nov.2, 2012 — Japanese art and pop culture festival AnimeUSA welcomes staff from video game music festival MAGFest to assist in the next upcoming AnimeUSA, November 9-11, 2012 at the Marriot Wardman Park in Washington, D.C.MAGFest will be hosting a "Jamspace" at AnimeUSA, which is a unique room that combines live bands with opens jams. Baltimore locals Rare Candy ( http://www.rarecandyband.com/ ) will perform their synth rock video game covers, and chiptune artist Inverse Phase ( http://inversephase.bandcamp.com/ ) will use classic game hardware to re-imagine pop and rock favorites in ways you never thought possible. Whenever a scheduled band isn't playing, Jamspace will be open all weekend for open jam.MAGFest provides the guitar, bass, drums, and keyboard, and you provide the talent (or lack thereof). Join in the fun at the jamspace at AnimeUSA!About Anime USA: In 1999 Anime USA began as a northern Virginia convention started by fans, and in 2004 become a non-profit educational organization. Our mission is to educate the public about and promote Japanese arts and popular culture. As in the beginning, we remain a convention of fans, by fans, and for fans. Anime USA is a 501 (c) 3 nonprofit.Anime USA 2012 will be held November 9-11 in our new location: the Marriott Wardham Park in Washington, D.C. For more information and to register for the convention, visit us at www.animeusa.org About MAGFest: MAGFest, The Music And Gaming Festival, is an annual event in the Washington D.C./Virginia/Maryland area dedicated to the celebration of video games and video game music. Each year, MAGFest offers 24-hour console, arcade, and PC game rooms, over twelve live video game cover bands, chiptunes, a vendors area, and guest speakers from the video game industry and fan scene. It also features a "JamSpace" available to all attendees for impromptu music performances. Numerous other events are scheduled each day. The 11th annual MAGFest, or MAGFest 11 for short, is scheduled for January 3-6 2013. |
On the need to use error-correcting memory
I asked a computer shop for a quote about a PC configuration featuring 4GiB of ECC RAM. The shop gave me a quote, but omitting the ECC part. When I pointed out the omission, I got an answer stating that ECC is not needed unless you want to do "very precise calculations".
Cosmic rays
Those damn cosmic rays! Not only are they an obstacle to manned space missions (I didn't say low earth orbit) but they also come down and flip our precious bits. Apparently, they do so at a rate of something between 1 and 20 upsets per bit per 10^13 hours. An average value of 1.3e-12 upsets/bit/hour is quoted in the following paper by Eugene Normand:
SEU at ground level
Consequences
Suppose you're compiling your kernel, and then a cosmic ray hits your machine and flips a bit in the kernel code. Then you proceed to use that kernel code, and your machine locks up randomly every day, leading to catastrophic loss of data.
Suppose you are in the process of copying your birth/wedding/funeral/whatever video to your new hard disk and a bit flips in the middle of the file. You then make further backups of that file, but ten years later you realize that you can only play the file up to the 5th minute because after that mplayer crashes.
Suppose you are a software developer, more specifically a firmware developer, and a cosmic ray flips a bit in your toolchain , and you deliver consistently buggy software... thru no fault of your own. Badly in debt, you get run over by a truck and have no money to pay for appropriate medical care. You die... because of cosmic rays!
Now all these scenarios are possible... but how probable are they?
Computing the probabilities
Quantities involved
Let m be the number of actual RAM bits in your system. For simplification, I'll suppose that your RAM usage ratio is constant at 100% - otherwise, just scale down m accordingly. Let T be a suitable length of time and let p the probability of any given bit being hit during that time T . Let n_d be the bus word width (typically n_d = 64 ) and n_c be the number of error correction bits (typically n_e = 8 for a Hamming plus parity code on 64 bits). Then m_w = m / n_d will be the number of words in the system.
Probability of a bit error
First, let's assume you have a system with no error-correction nor parity. The probability that you'll experience a bit error during the time T will be 1-(1-p)^m .
For T=1 hour , p = 1.3e-12 and m = 4*2^30*8 that gives 0.044 or 4.4% . That is quite a high probability. Indeed, in one day, that leads to a probability of 66% and in 72 hours to a probability of 96% .
So the probability of having at least one bit error in 4 gigabytes of memory at sea level on planet Earth in 72 hours is over 95% .
Note that you don't need 72 hours of continuous operation for that to happen. If you leave your computer on from 8 in the morning to midnight, that'll mean that you'll have a bit error in 4.5 days with probability exceeding 95% . Modern operating systems use all the available memory as a disk cache. Very easy to fill it up.
If your computer writes back some of that data to disk, the bit error becomes permanent. With all the journaling, restore set point, and continual software upgrades that a modern PC does (whatever its operating system is) bit rot can become a major concern.
At that rate, with 4GiB of RAM, a worst-case rot rate of about 1 bit per day can be expected. Until you buy your next computer in three years, a thousand bits might have been corrupted - without counting the cascade effects of bad bits leading to more bad bits by software processes.
Would you agree to such a data corruption rate? I won't. But how much does ECC help?
Error detection
ECC-capable RAM modules sold on the market are meant to be used with SECDED (single error correction, double error detection) codes. Such a code is the parity-augmented Hamming code for words of m bits that requires log_2(m) + 2 bits. Thus for 64-bit words that gives n_e = 8 error correction bits.
What happens when a single bit is flipped in a word? A log message might be generated, but there generally is no cause for cncern.
What happens when two bits are flipped in the same word? A fault condition is signaled on the CPU bus, triggering an interrupt. The OS then takes appropriate action such as killing the offending process.
If more than two bits are flipped, the corruption might go undetected, or not.
Probability of no errors with ECC memory
For a given memory word, the hardware will experience no problems if there is zero or one bit flips. So trouble starts with two or more bit flips.
Let n = n_d + n_e . Then the probability of having one or less bit flips in a given word, that is, the probability of a no error or a correctable error is p_w = (1-p)^n + n*p*(1-p)^(n-1) . Note that this supposes that the word is not accessed between the first and second bit flips - because in that case the word would be corrected and written back. I assume this simplification is good enough for our purpose, since we are computing a worst-case.
Now since we have m_w words, the probability of a word error for the whole memory is p_W = 1 - (1 - p_w)^m_w during time T . With p = 1.3e-12 (for T = 1 hours ) this gives p_w = 4.32e-21 and p_W = 1.25e-19 . That is, instead of a 3% chance of having a bit error in your system every hour, you only get a negligible p_W = 2.32e-12 per hour. At that rate, you can wait 2.7 million years before you get an uncorrectable bit error at a probability of 96% .
Of course all that assumes that the cosmic-ray-induced bit errors are independent. Apparently that assumption is well-founded, unless you manage to find a memory module whose RAM chips are stacked one on top of the other and you place them vertically.
Conclusion and summary
A system on Earth, at sea level, with 4 GB of RAM has a 96% percent chance of having a bit error in three days without ECC RAM. With ECC RAM, that goes down to 1.67e-10 or about one chance in six billions.
Further reading
Memory errors and SECDED by crypto superstar D. J. Bernstein.
Update 1
After I posted this to Reddit user crazynotes pointed to this paper DRAM Errors in the Wild: A Large-Scale Field Study which gives even more alarming empirical data, this time by including hard errors as well. |
Over the summer many churches reported a spike in attendance — the result, it turned out, of an influx of Pokémon Go players.
Now that this phenomenon has started to dissipate and Mewtwo and Pikachu are once again lapsed, religious leaders are back to Square One: In a society where there are so many demands on our time and choices for how to occupy ourselves, what makes people attend a house of worship and, perhaps more importantly, what makes them put down roots in a religious community?
Which raises the question of what exactly Catholics are looking for in parish life. Given that almost 13 percent of Americans are former Catholics, the issue isn’t academic. Catholics who have left the church make up the second-largest religious group in the United States.
Some leaders may be tempted to try a lot of new bells and whistles to bring them back or to attract new followers. But some recent studies suggest that the church would be better off going “back to basics.”
According to a recent Pew study, more than two-thirds of Catholics said the quality of sermons played an important role in their choices of house of worship, and 71 percent said feeling welcomed by church leaders played that role. While many religious communities are worried about playing more contemporary music or building a better website or being more active on social media, the truth is that the people in the pews are looking for a significant spiritual message on Sundays and a community they’ll feel at home in.
Indeed, many Catholics seem to be looking for the kind of neighborhood church that used to be more common.
According to Pew, “for Catholics who have looked for a new congregation, no single factor is more important than location.” More than three-quarters said location was a major factor.
Parishes used to be assigned by neighborhood, but now it’s really more of a choice for worshipers to find a place they like. Today, though, in the quest to find a welcoming community, the neighborhood church may simply have an advantage. Younger people especially are looking for more and more of their lives to be in walking distance.
In a new book called “Great Catholic Parishes,” William E. Simon Jr. looks at the question of what makes a vibrant parish. Simon and his team asked the pastors of 244 thriving churches what made their parishes work.
Their answers mirrored the responses to the Pew survey. According to Simon, “They excel on Sundays.” Which means not only that they focus a great deal of attention on their sermons, but also “they are visible, prepared and present during the Sunday experience.”
Simon also reports that these growing parishes “share leadership.” With the number of priests still in decline and one in five parishes not even having a resident pastor, sharing leadership with lay people is a matter of necessity. But it’s easy to imagine how this sharing might also lead to more welcoming communities.
Lay people joining a new parish might find there are more opportunities for them to participate, and the chasm that used to exist between the clergy and the laity might be closing.
Simon also notes that those who haven’t attended a Catholic service recently might “be surprised by the huge emphasis the most successful parishes place on active evangelization within and outside the parish. Catholic churches are much less passive than they used to be.”
In a recent study of 250 evangelical, mainline and Catholic churches, researchers at Fuller Theological Seminary actually put together a list of “things your church doesn’t need.” They included “a trendy location,” “a big budget,” “contemporary worship” and “a big modern building.”
For those who are worried about the future of the Catholic Church and other religious institutions in America, this is good news. When it comes to finding a spiritual home and growing in it, Americans are not a superficial bunch.
Naomi Schaefer Riley is a senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum. |
The 87th Academy Awards ceremony is going to take place on 22 February, 2015. The 87th Academy Awards are also globally known as The Oscars. It has been presented by AMPAS (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences). This time the same ceremony is going to take place in Hollywood (Dolby Theatre), Los Angeles. All the pre -events before the D-day has already been decided by AMPAS. All is set to go like the various diners, get-together, nomination's official announcement and many more. In short the Oscars season will officially start from 5 February, 2015 and will end up on 23 February, 2015.
87th Academy Awards Oscars 2015 Best Actresses:
In addition the schedule for The 87th Academy Awards ceremony has already been finalized. All the performances are on the check list. Rehearsals are going on very fast. Celebrities who are taking part in the ceremony are full of enthusiasm. They are looking forward for the ceremony night. One thing we can say is that just like it's all past 86 Academy Awards ceremony, this award ceremony will be the best amongst all of the previous ceremonies. But the official announcement regarding the nominations were done on January 15, 2015 at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater located in Beverly Hills, California. The same were announced by Cheryl Boone Isaacs who is president of the Academy. Director J. J. Abrams and Alfonso Cuarón both assisted him for the announcements. 87th Academy Awards Oscars 2015 Predictions
As you all are well aware there are number of categories in which there is only one winner amongst the chosen nominees. In all the categories the most awaited and loving categories (as a fan's view) are Best Film, Best Actor, Best Actress and the Best Director. Entirely all the categories have at least 4 to 5 nominees in which the winner will only be the most deserving one. The winner will be choose only by the number of votes one will have. Before the The 87th Academy Awards ceremony, the viewers will be given a chance to vote for their favourite one before the ceremony day. Before one day the voting will be end and followed by the counting of the votes and on the next day it will be announced which means it will be a great fun to find out at last that who has actually won the title in a number of categories.
Complete List Of Nominees 87th Academy Awards Oscars 2015
Further moving on and talking about the ceremony time schedule, so there will be Nominees Luncheon on this coming Monday on 6th February in which so many varieties will be there in order to serve the guest the best meals. After few days of luncheon day, the official process of voting gets starts. 87th Academy Awards Oscars 2015 Nominees In between there will be a small event of Scientific and Technical Awards also which will held on 7th February, 2015. This final voting process will come to an end on Tuesday, February 17, 2015. And this final voting will be followed by the counting of the votes. And as you all know already that the result will be declared only and only at the grand day of The 87th Academy Awards Ceremony. |
Epic Games co-founder and industry legend Tim Sweeney was very, very vocal about his thoughts on the Oculus Home platform when the Oculus Rift virtual reality (VR) head-mounted display (HMD) launch a few months ago. The developer called the company out on its decision to only allow users to play content through its own store unless they opted in to getting experiences from third-party retailers like Steam, calling the move “very disappointing”. His stance on this matter hasn’t changed, but his views on content exclusive to some HMDs might surprise you.
Speaking in a recent interview with GameSpot, Sweeney defended both Oculus VR and PlayStation VR maker Sony Interactive Entertainment’s (SIE’s) approach to funding videogames that would then appear only on their respective platforms.
“Well, I think that’s a perfectly valid business model,” he said. “It’s one of the ways to nurture an industry before it’s viable itself. If you look at what’s led to the success of the PlayStation and the Xbox platforms, it’s been the … what was key to their launches were the awesome first party titles that those companies funded for millions of dollars, or tens of millions of dollars, or even hundreds of millions of dollars to ensure that there were great titles available at launch that really defined the platform.”
Despite this somewhat surprising defence, Sweeney remained consistent when it came to Oculus Home’s closed ecosystem approach. “The fact is that PC gamers aren’t idiots,” the figurehead explained. “Gabe Newell is the smartest person in the PC industry because he fundamentally realizes it. These gamers are smart; they know what’s happening. When companies do this sort of thing, it pisses them off. Everybody wants to have control over the computer. They want to have complete freedom to install anything from any source. They don’t want any company’s product forcing them to do things against their will.”
Could continued pressure from the likes of Sweeney get Oculus VR to change its approach to Oculus Home somewhere along the line? It looks unlikely right now, especially considering criticism of the company’s exclusive efforts hasn’t got it to budge. Then again, the company recently undid some security checks that allowed the ReVive hack to once again give HTC Vive users access to some Oculus Rift exclusives, so there’s always hope for people like Sweeney.
For more on the latest news and updates in the world of VR, make sure to check back with VRFocus. |
The U.S. and Ukraine formally kicked off almost two weeks of naval exercises on Monday in and around the Black Sea as part of the latest iteration of Sea Breeze.
The Russian military has pledged to keep close tabs on the 11 nation drills and has dispatched the Krivak-class guided missile frigate Ladny to shadow U.S. guided missile destroyer USS Donald Cook (DDG-75) since the destroyer crossed into the Black Sea last week, according to a report from the Russian news agency Interfax.
The exercise comes as tensions between Russia and the West are still high since Russia’s 2014 seizure of Crimea and as the civil war in Ukraine continues in near the Russian border.
Members of the Russian State Duma have called the actions provocative moves by the U.S. and NATO to aid in Ukraine in the conflict.
“These multinational exercises should be viewed as direct participation by the U.S. and NATO in ramping up the strategic and combat preparedness of the Ukrainian armed forces,” Franz Klintsevich, a member of the State Duma’s Defense Committee, told state controlled RIA Novosti on Monday.
“The negative impact this will have on the ongoing armed conflict in Donbass is tantamount to sending lethal weapons to Kiev.”
Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said during remarks at the opening ceremony in Odessa said the exercises would help increase security in the region.
Since the seizure of Crimea, NATO and the U.S. have maintained a near constant presence in the Black Sea that have led to low level confrontations between NATO and Russian forces, including a an April 2014 buzz of Cook by Russian fighters and complaints from Canada about a September 2014 overflight of surveillance aircraft and fighters over HMCS Toronto (FFH-333).
“After Crimea was annexed, the Black Sea region is no longer stable and secure,” Yatsenyuk said during the official opening ceremony of the exercises in Odessa on Tuesday according to Interfax.
U.S. 6th Fleet said the exercise — which has been held since 1997 — will focus on “maritime interdiction operations as a primary means to enhance maritime security,” during the at-sea phase of the exercise as well as anti-submarine warfare (ASW) and protecting against small boat attacks.
“Naval forces are stronger when we operate together with our partners. Eleven nations have gathered here for the sole purpose of increasing our ability to work with each other,” Vice Adm. James Foggo III said in a Tuesday statement.
“This impressive commitment shows our dedication to confront today’s challenges together as one force.”
The exercise is scheduled to run until Sept. 12. |
New customs union with EU after Brexit is still an option, analysts say
Signing Britain up to a customs union with the European Union need not prevent it from striking important trade deals elsewhere, according to influential new thinking in Whitehall.
Officials and business leaders are anxious to puncture what they see as myths about a customs union that have deterred ministers from considering it as a much-needed economic option after Brexit.
While leaving the existing EU customs union is a direct consequence of Brexit, civil servants believe that agreeing a new customs union with the EU is not only possible but still compatible with key aims of Liam Fox’s Department for International Trade.
“There is a crucial difference between the [existing] customs union and a [future] customs union and [chancellor Philip] Hammond understands this now because the Treasury have taken him through it,” said one official familiar with the process.
Half-in, half-out of customs union would be worst Brexit option, says thinktank Read more
“The simplistic analysis by those who want to paint it in the worst way is that it’s totally unacceptable because we would still be bound by EU trade deals. That is true of membership of EU customs union but you can have customs unions with the European Union customs union.”
Such a deal would allow physical products to trade freely across borders without export duties or delay only as long as the EU and UK shared a common external tariff with other countries. But most experts are agreed that such a deal need not prevent Britain seeking deals with countries outside the EU to liberalise trade in the crucial services sector.
“Customs unions are about trade in goods by definition because you only pay tariffs on goods,” explained the anonymous official. “They are nothing to do with the trade in services, which is the majority of what the UK does, so why should signing up to a customs union to facilitate what you do in trade in goods constrain what you do in services?”
“We could go off and see if we can do better than the EU in trade in services,” they added. “There is an argument that is not a bad thing to try because the EU generally, particularly France and Germany, has never been keen on liberalising trade in services. It’s never been keen in the single market, let alone with third parties, so the UK striking out on its own might be able to do a bit better. The point is what you don’t do is ruin your trade in goods while you find out.”
Importantly from a British perspective, Turkey, which has such a customs union with the EU, is not obliged to follow EU single market rules on allowing freedom of movement.
“It’s still challenging, but a lot of this is why people have started talking about customs union so much recently,” said the official, who believes some immigration agreement would still be necessary. “You can’t get anywhere on trade in services without discussing the terms on which the people providing the services can move back and forth.”
Brexit weekly briefing: goodbye single market and customs union Read more
Nonetheless, this variant of soft Brexit could prove more palatable than full membership of the single market to many in Westminster and business.
“Though retaining a customs union with the EU would madden the Tory right, there is a strong macro-economic case for doing so,” said Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform. “According to the Treasury’s unpublished analysis, the economic benefits of future [free trade agreements] would be significantly less than the economic cost of leaving the customs union.”
The government has spoken little about its plans since Theresa May’s Lancaster House speech when she called instead for a “bespoke customs union” with carve-outs for vulnerable sectors such as the car industry.
This was dismissed by EU leaders as “cherry-picking” and would breach World Trade Organisation rules that say bilateral customs unions are only permissible if they cover “substantially all trade in goods”.
Privately, officials in Brussels are said to be much more open to the idea of a wide-ranging new customs union with Britain, as long as it respects existing common market rules and has a dispute resolution mechanism such as the European court of justice. |
London’s Royal Society of Medicine spends Rs2.5 million on the apparatus
MINGORA: Through Malala Yousafzai, the Royal Society of Medicine in London donated medical equipment worth Rs2.5 million to Saidu Teaching Hospital (STH). The equipment was handed over to the hospital by Global Peace Council Pakistan (GPCP) on Thursday.
GPCP President Ahmad Shah said the council approached Malala Yousafzai and asked her to help overcome the shortage of medical equipment at STH. She subsequently discussed the matter with the Royal Society of Medicine, which approved funding for the equipment.
“Today we are happy the equipment was handed to the hospital administration; it will undoubtedly benefit the people of Swat,” Shah told The Express Tribune.
Swat Deputy Commissioner Mahmood Aslam Wazir, who was also present on the occasion, thanked the GPCP and the Royal Society of Medicine for the donation. “This was equipment that the hospital needed and I hope local humanitarian organisations will follow in the footsteps of these foreign donors.”
The hospital administration also expressed its gratitude to the London-based society and the girls’ education activist for the help. STH Medical Superintendent Sadiqur Rehman said GPCP officials first approached the hospital and asked about its requirements, adding this was the best way to go about things.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 26th, 2014.
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The writer, who penned the Discworld series as well as many children's books, said an unexplained experience had caused him to reconsider his beliefs.
He said: "I'm certainly not a man of faith, but as I was rushing down the stairs one day... it was very strange. I suddenly knew that everything was okay, that what I was doing was right, and I didn't know why.
"It was a thought that all the right things are happening in the circumstances, and I thought, 'Well that's all right then.' I don't actually believe in anyone who could have put that in my head - unless it was my dad, and he's been dead a few years."
The author's comments will come as a surprise to fans of his Discworld novels, which contain frequent references to gods acting childishly.
Mr Pratchett, who has sold more than 60 million books, has previously said he was "rather angry with God for not existing".
But in an interview with a Sunday newspaper, he said: "It is just possible that once you have got past all the gods that we have created with big beards and many human traits, just beyond all that, on the other side of physics, they just may be the ordered structure from which everything flows.
"That is both a kind of philosophy and totally useless - it doesn't take you anywhere. But it fills a hole."
Pratchett, 60, was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's last year, a condition which he described as "an embuggerance".
He recently attacked the NHS for its decision to deny the Alzheimer's drug Aricept to younger sufferers whose condition is not yet considered severe.
He said: "If I ate myself into obesity I could get that for nothing. If I wanted Viagra I could get that for nothing. But I can't get a drug that gives me that little bit of extra edge."
The author has pledged more than £500,000 towards research into the degenerative disease. |
Finally finished!From the initial sketch, every piece of this picture changed at least once. Overall, this was a very frustrating piece to work on. It's been a while since I've drawn an eastern style dragon, so I thought I'd give it a shot. It took several attempts to find a good pose and design, but I think it turned out well in the end.I've been trying out some different brush packs lately. The magic circles are stock from [link] I usually try not to use stock like that, but those circles were too cool to pass up. My attempt was much less impressive, but maybe I'll design a few awesome ones someday.Making that mirror was one of my favorite parts of this picture.Also, I tried to show a smoother texture and more even distribution of detail on this picture, compared to my last few pieces.I defined a few custom brushes when making this one, and have uploaded them here for people to use: [link] I hope you enjoy it! |
Kozhikode: Kerala High Court judge Justice B. Kemal Pasha on Sunday lashed out at the shortcomings of Muslim Personal Law saying it was highly discriminatory. The judge said while elaborating on Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act that the Law let the men marry four times and easily divorce the wives through extra-judicial divorce and questioned why the the same law is not applicable to women.
Justice Pasha’s comments came a day after the Supreme Court accepted a writ petition filed by V. P. Zuhra, president of NISA, a progressive Muslim women’s forum, seeking its intervention into discriminating Muslim women according to Sharia law.
In the petition, Ms Zuhra had maintained that the Sharia law was against the Constitution and it was un-Islamic. Justice Pasha said it was not a codified law and it had many shortcomings including inequality in the areas of marriage, divorce and succession.
“The women are not even getting the privileges said in the Quran. They are subjected to change by the precedent. The inheritance law is another example. A man can not write a will of his own regarding his properties. He has the right to write only about one-third of his properties, that too with the consent of his relatives. Even if a man wants his entire assets to be handed over to his wife and children, that is not possible,” he said.
He stressed that it was time for a change and exhorted women’s organisations to come up against this discrimination. The judge attended the programme of Punarjani Charitable Trust in the morning and reiterated his words in a debate organised by NISA at Nalanda Auditorium in the afternoon. |
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Check out The Book! It’s a really great novel we released recently that’s a sequel to Part 4 of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure!
I think that guy’s not wearing a shirt, he’s just got tattoos of clothing all over his chest and arms.
So we decided on switching to volume releases for the high quality versions rather than releasing a magazine medium-quality version the next month. They’ll be higher quality and they’ll be the “finalized” versions of the chapters once they’re compiled in the volumes. Though volumes only come out some 5+ months after the chapter originally comes out in Ultra Jump magazine. We’re working on V15-16 right now and we’ll try to keep up with doing the latest ones, then work our way back.
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Who, for example, could object to a paper that opens with something as reasonable as:
"At a time of extraordinary domestic and international policy challenges, Americans need high-quality news. Readers and viewers must decipher the policy options that the country faces and the manner in which various decisions affect them personally. It often is not readily apparent how to assess complicated policy choices and what the best steps are for moving forward."
You know you are wading into difficult waters, however, when in the very next paragraph West and Stone quote warnings about the perils of the present political polarization from Brookings’ Thomas Mann and the American Enterprise Institute’s Norm Ornstein. AEI is indeed a conservative think tank, and a jewel of one at that, but any idea that coupling these two scholars from AEI and Brookings produces a balanced analysis should go out the window. Ornstein is AEI’s resident liberal and about as representative of the scholarship at AEI as I am of the Harlem Globetrotters. Mann and Ornstein are themselves very partisan players who would like nothing better than to go back to the old days when Tip O’Neill got the better of Bob Michel in the House of Representatives; they blame all of Congress’s dysfunctions on the Republicans, especially the Tea Party branch. So when West and Stone blame the role the news media are currently playing in the polarization that Mann and Ornstein decry there is more than just the sound of academic “tsk, tsking”—there’s also a slight whiff of “here’s hoping that we could set this darn clock back.”
In fact, attempts to do just that permeate the entire paper and its recommendations. West and Stone even chide the practice of pairing conservatives and liberals on TV to comment on issues, which they say results in “polarization of discourse and ‘false equivalence’ in reporting.” Getting both views means there is a lack of “nuanced analysis,” which “confuses viewers,” they write. As with all liberal grousing, there is also throughout the paper the suspicion that the average American is not capable of filtering the news by himself. Another passage reads, “the average reader’s ability to critically judge this new presentation of digital data is still developing and is lagging behind the ubiquity of interactives and infographics on the web.”
So journalists should lead the average American reader out of his torpor by linking to thoughtful commentary that give the context the reader needs, just like in the old days. And who might be good examples of such much-needed context-givers? West and Stone observe that “Platforms such as the Washington Post’s Wonkblog and Andrew Sullivan’s “The Dish” provide daily developments in policy news for those seeking to understand the intricacies of complex issues.” And, no it doesn’t end there. They also recommend Democracy Now!, which they describe as “a daily, independent program operated by journalists Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez. It runs stories that have ‘people and perspectives rarely heard in the U.S. corporate-sponsored media.’ Among the individuals it features include grassroots leaders, peace activists, academics, and independent analysts. The program regularly hosts substantive debates designed to improve public understanding of major issues.”
Both Sullivan and Klein are uniformly liberal in all issues and supportive of Barack Obama’s agenda. They are also, however, deep-thinking innovators who explain things thoroughly in their respective sites, even if from their perspectives. Not so for Goodman and Gonzalez, who can only be described as neo-Marxist apologists for Chavez, Castro and the Sandinistas.
We can only be thankful that West and Stone revealed their weakness for Goodman and Gonzalez for it alerts the discriminating reader to be on the lookout for danger to come, and it doesn’t take long to materialize. Buried beneath moderate-sounding verbiage there is nothing less than a call for neutering the citizen journalist through mass editing (crowd sourcing) and for making it harder for average web searchers to find ideas that do not conform to the accepted wisdom. “Citizens without journalistic training may be more likely to report inaccuracies or file misreports,” they write. “Because they are reporting of their own volition, it is possible that they might have a specific agenda or bias. They may repeat false ideas reported elsewhere and help bad ideas go viral.” Combining the mass editing of crowdsourcing (“the virtues of collective reasoning,” as the authors put it) with citizen journalism, however, would be a way to hold these untrained journalists accountable.
Perhaps even more troubling is their proposal for dealing with diversity of views on the web. West and Stone quote New York Times managing editor Jill Abramson as opining that there is “a human craving for trustworthy information about the world we live in- information that is tested, investigated, sorted, checked again, analyzed, and presented in a cogent form. …. They seek judgment from someone they can trust, who can ferret out information, dig behind it, and make sense of it.” I think we all know what the managing editor of the Times thinks when she talks about sorting and analyzing news. So here’s what West and Stone propose:
"Search engines employ many criteria in their algorithms, but many of them are based on the popularity of particular information sources. Yet these algorithms lack the embedded ethics of human gatekeepers and editors. Articles or sources that generate a lot of eyeballs are thought to be more helpful than others which do not. This biases information prioritizing towards popularity as opposed to thoughtfulness, reasonableness, or diversity of perspectives. “Digital firms should be encouraged to add criteria to their search engines that highlight information quality as opposed to mere popularity. They could do this by adding weight to sites that are known for high-quality coverage or providing diverse points of view. This would allow those information sources to be ranked higher in search results and therefore help news consumers find those materials."
In other words, Google, Facebook et al should move up higher and promote the “high quality coverage” practiced by Abramson, Klein, Sullivan, Gonzalez and Goodman, and which would produce once again the type of politics that Ornstein and Mann find acceptable. Much lower down would be the muck-raking journalism of James O’Keefe and Breitbart, the opinions of Sean Hannity and Hugh Hewitt or pieces run by National Affairs or NRO. Sen. Cruz’s refusal to go along with higher spending, or Sen. Lee’s analysis of how our current welfare system keeps the poor poor would be about 20 clicks away, if anywhere at all.
The mainstream media's attempts to ignore, belittle, and compete with the independent media has failed, so now they are desperately trying to appeal to anyone, from the government to Google, who will stack the odds in their favor This is precisely why I have continued pointing out the behavior of the SFWA with regards to me and other SF/F writers who refuse to join the hive mind. The Left always attempts to eliminate its opposition, by hook or by crook, because it doesn't believe in open and honest competition, but manipulation and con artistry. This isn't a current phenomenon; John C. Wright writes eloquently about how the founder of SFWA and the Clarion Writer's Workshop, Damon Knight, waged a long-running campaign against one of the original Big Three of Science Fiction , A.E. van Vogt, which succeeded to the point that most people today wrongly believe the Big Three were Asimov, Heinlein, and either Arthur C. Clarke or Ray Bradbury.(As we see time and time again, the rabbit of little ability but a highly developed talent for social manipulation and bureaucracy hated his superior in intellect and accomplishment. Knight famously claimed van Vogt was: "not a giant as often maintained. He's only a pygmy who has learned to operate an overgrown typewriter." I found this informative because after reading Knight's fiction about ten years ago, I'd wondered how he could possibly have ever been named an SFWA Grandmaster. It turns out it was an Appreciation Grandmastership; he was the Scalzi of his day and began his now-forgotten SF career as the writer of a fanzine called.)So, we see the phenomenon writ small in the SFWA. We see it writ large in the European Union. But what we see is the same fractal political phenomenon that is always and everywhere dedicated to reducing the limits of the freedom of human thought.
Labels: media, SFWA |
This is a list of streams in the U.S. state of Colorado.
Alphabetical list [ edit ]
The following alphabetical list includes many important streams that flow through the State of Colorado, including all 158 named rivers. Where available, the total extent of the stream's drainage basin[1] is shown after the name. The names of the 17 Colorado rivers with a drainage basin of more than 10,000 square kilometers (3,900 sq mi), about three times the area of Rhode Island, are shown in bold.
Notes [ edit ]
Of the 158 named rivers that flow through the State of Colorado, all but the Green River[3][4] and Cimarron River have their headwaters in that state.
As of February 1, 2008, the U.S. Board on Geographic Names had identified 5,564 natural streams in the State of Colorado. Of this number, 147 larger streams (2.6%) were named river and 11 (0.2%) were named rio. The vast majority of the Colorado streams (5082 or 91.3%) were named creek. Of the remaining Colorado streams, 122 (2.2%) were named arroyo, 60 (1.1%) were named wash, 44 (0.8%) were named fork, 18 (0.3%) were named branch, 17 (0.3%) were named brook, 17 (0.3%) were named run, 15 (0.3%) were named rito, 10 (0.2%) were named slough, but not a single stream was named stream. Perhaps the strangest stream name in Colorado belongs to the West Fork East Fork Williams Fork located in Garfield County.
Many streams in Colorado share a name with another stream in that state. In addition to the Canadian River that is the largest tributary of the Arkansas River, there is also a Canadian River that is a tributary of the North Platte River. In addition to the Cimarron River that is another major tributary of the Arkansas River, there is also a Cimarron River that is a tributary of the Gunnison River. There is a Fall River that is a tributary of the Big Thompson River as well as a Fall River that is a tributary of Clear Creek.
There are 72 streams in the State of Colorado that are named Willow Creek, 71 streams named Spring Creek, 53 streams named Cottonwood Creek, 49 streams named Bear Creek, 49 streams named Beaver Creek, 48 streams named Dry Creek, 33 streams named Rock Creek, 33 streams named Sand Creek, and 32 streams named Mill Creek. The Arkansas River and the Colorado River flow through Colorado, as do a Florida River, an Idaho Creek, an Illinois River, an Indiana Creek, a Maryland Creek, a Michigan River, a Minnesota Creek, six Missouri Creeks, a Montana Creek, two New York Creeks, two Ohio Creeks, two Pennsylvania Creeks, two Tennessee Creeks, seven Texas Creeks, and a Virginia Creek.
Tributary chart [ edit ]
The following tributary chart shows many important streams that flow through the State of Colorado including all 158 named rivers. The chart is arranged by tributary and area of the drainage basin.[1] The names of the 17 Colorado rivers with a drainage basin of more than 10,000 square kilometers (3,900 sq mi) are shown in bold. Oceans and streams outside of Colorado are shown in italics.
Pacific Ocean
Atlantic Ocean
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ] |
Our unique and interesting planet has many secrets and phenomenon that we have not even begun to understand. But we are a curious and intelligent race and try to pursue knowledge and unravel mysteries to the best of our abilities. While some get solved and some do offer some kind of explanation, there are still some happenings that leave the best of researchers and scientists ‘scratching their heads’.
Just like ancient legends and folklore, some geological occurrences too are difficult to understand. The mysterious ‘hole’ phenomenon is another puzzle that needs some better explanations than the ones that are being offered as to the strange appearance of holes in the ground. Some happen overnight. Some have been there for millennia and some occur in the strangest of places, which are alleged to be some of the remotest and difficult-to-reach terrains in the world.
The ones that can be dated and are somewhat similar in appearance are said to have been seen since the end of the 1980s. These have been reported in the US, Russia and Guatemala. The holes in the ground that have been found in parts of Russia are in deep forests. They are round and deep as if dug into the ground by a skilled group of people or by some sophisticated machinery.
People found deep holes in three parts of Russia in the Ryazan region, Kaluga region and the Krasnoyarsk region.
A shepherd named Pyotr Malinkin, in the Russian region of Kaluga, was feeding his cows as usual in the pasture. Wandering five kilometres inside the field, he saw a huge hole in the ground, which was six metres in circumference. He was quite shocked as the hole was not there the previous day. To his further amazement, the cows would not eat the grass from near the hole, and they seemed scared.
Some enthusiasts and researchers went to examine the huge pit and found out from the locals that the hole just appeared overnight and was a not perfectly round but was oval in shape. There were no marks of buckets or digging equipment nearby and the inside was absolutely smooth and vertical and at the depth of 4.5 metres, some water was seen. The locals later built a fence round it. Exactly the same kind of hole mysteriously appeared 10 years ago in the Ryazan area, this time too nobody could explain its appearance.
When some interested people went to examine it, they were told by the locals that there was another huge hole which too had appeared several decades ago which was a couple of kilometres ahead and was even larger. Superstitious elders thought there was something or someone underground and threw sacks of grains in the pit as a sacrifice. When researchers tried to find this hole, they were not successful as a lot of trees and bushes had grown in the area. Nearby, according to the local townsfolk, is a spring that they call “the angry spring” as it boils over if anyone goes near it.
Moreover, according to a legend, there was a church that sunk nearby when Napoleon’s army came. However, researchers and scientists claim that the soil under the Kaluga region is limestone and water under the ground dissolves so the soil cause the ground to cave in. But what they cannot explain is how the holes are so perfectly vertical with such smooth walls. According to the Siberian News Agency, 100 kilometres away from the highway that connects Krasnoyarsk and Abakan, about 10 holes have been found which have cave-like entrances. Explanations range from local people playing pranks or maybe some strange animals that live around the area.
In Guatemala, an enormous 330-foot deep hole appeared right in the middle of the town and sunk almost 12 houses and killed a couple of people as well. Almost a thousand people were evacuated. But it is said that this was a ‘sinkhole’, which was caused due to the rains, and there was an underground sewage system which had ruptured.
Then we have the strange phenomenon occurring in Eastern Washington in the US; the case became famous as the “Cookie Cutter Phenomenon”. A huge piece of earth was scooped out from a wheat field as if someone had used a giant cookie cutter to take out tonnes of earth and threw it 73 feet away. How it happened no one knows but scientists say that if two seismic events take place underground, it can throw out a big chunk of earth and probably toss it away. But it is said that no such event had occurred in the area.
And lastly, there are holes of another kind in Peru. Strange and mysteriously carved and on the side of a barren rock are hundreds of man-sized holes stretching for miles. The locals say that these holes, which seem like they were always there on these barren rocks, have remained a puzzle, as there are no legends, or ancient stories that talk about them. Some are six to seven feet deep and some are just shallow carvings, but they are all in the formation of a path — a path that does not seem to be of any use. Even if in the ancient past, there had been a settlement somewhere around the place, the reason for these precise and painstakingly made holes has evaded the best of archaeologists. Of course, there are many assumptions but none are satisfactory.
So what is the mystery of holes both large and small appearing here in the midst of populated and remote regions of the world.
For now, the whole truth remains hidden. |
Janice Fiamengo by
T
he election of Donald J. Trump revealed a bitterly divided nation and a large body of voters fed up with the status quo: fed up with a perennially ailing economy and a shrinking middle class; fed up with an overly intrusive state that crippled businesses with innumerable regulations and sought to redistribute wealth; fed up with a massively burdensome and insupportable debt; fed up with a president mentored by revolutionaries and malcontents who seemed not to like ordinary Americans much if at all; fed up with a leader who paid court to hostile foreign powers while alienating or outright betraying America's traditional allies; fed up with a president who spoke of heartland Americans as bitter people who cling to their guns or religion or bigotry; fed up with a president who told business owners "You didn't build that," called the Fort Hood terrorist attack an episode of workplace violence, and announced at the United Nations that the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam; and most of all, perhaps, fed up with an administration that placed the whole country in thrall to political correctness, making a range of important subjects off-limits for discussion on pain of job loss or public disgrace. Many of these voters felt that America had changed beyond all recognition, had lost its core values, and that neither Republican nor Democrat politicians offered any real resistance to that, or even seemed to notice.Donald Trump promised to change everything: to make America great again; to revive American industry; to put Americans back to work and make it possible for them to feed their families and to have prosperity once again; to reduce burdensome taxes and over-regulation of businesses; to renew American patriotism and the traditional family; to stop pretending that children do just as well without a father and money; to stop pretending that masculinity is toxic; to make it acceptable and normal once more to love God and to celebrate America's Judeo-Christian heritage; to decrease the mass immigration that is changing the face of America for the worse; to root out the Muslim Brotherhood sympathizers who have been given key positions in the American administration; to halt illegal immigration and to put a stop to the sanctuary cities that make a mockery of American laws; to rebuild the American military and to signal American power, not acquiescence, to America's foes; to honor American veterans in a manner appropriate to their service; to renew ties with America's traditional allies; and to vigorously protect America from domestic and foreign terrorism. Perhaps most importantly, he promised to make it possible for Americans to speak their minds frankly without being publicly shamed for it.This is a tall order. Donald Trump will require every ounce of his legendary courage and determination to withstand the incessant volleys of criticism, slander, fake news, nasty allegation, scandalous accusation, vitriolic protest, and angry opposition — the cries of racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, and misogyny that are now the stock in trade of the Democratic Party. His many enemies will stop at nothing to derail, distort, denounce, and destroy him and his new administration.As he takes office, he faces a herculean task to rebuild and regenerate the country. But he has a vision, he loves the country, and he has a track record of success against the odds. We heartily wish him well. May God protect and bless the new President of the United States of America, and may his plans for America bear abundant fruit. |
Unfinished business: native title compensation
Posted
Today's Closing the Gap speech made clear Tony Abbott's commitment to tackling Indigenous disadvantage, but as Marcus Priest writes, there is another sleeping giant from the days of Keating that the Prime Minister will need to confront: native title compensation.
At the time of Paul Keating's Redfern Speech in 1992 acknowledging the dispossession of Aboriginal people, Prime Minister Tony Abbott was but a pugilistic staffer in the office of Opposition Leader John Hewson.
Hewson was later to refer to the passage of Keating's Native Title Act as a "day of shame", but in his Closing the Gap speech today, Mr Abbott revealed the Keating speech had a big impact on him.
"My job was to disagree with everything," Mr Abbott said today.
"While I could quibble with aspects of that speech, I couldn't disagree with its central point: that our failures towards Australia's first people were a stain on our soul. That was a watershed moment for me, as for others."
Abbott has made tackling Indigenous disadvantage one of the cornerstones of his Prime Ministership.
He is already championing constitutional changes to formally recognise Aboriginal people as the original occupants and owners of Australian lands. Warren Mundine, chair of Abbott's Indigenous Advisory Council, went one step further and put the issue of treaties with Indigenous groups to recognise land ownership back on the agenda.
However, there is another sleeping giant from the days of Keating that he will also need to confront. It is one of the biggest pieces of uncertainty and unfinished business arising from the Native Title Act 1993 - what is the value of Aboriginal people's common law property rights?
Native Title Act 1993 (Cth) validated grants of land that diminished native title and, as a result, were contrary to the Racial Discrimination Act 1975, and affected Indigenous groups were entitled to compensation, in the same way that non-Indigenous land holders are entitled to recompense if their land is resumed for, say, a major road. In introducing the Native Title Bill in 1993, then prime minister Paul Keating said:
In the interests of fairness for existing grant holders, where compensation is owed to native titleholders for validation of past grants, it will be government, not the grant holder, who pays. We recognise that the Commonwealth should make a proper contribution towards compensation costs….We take the view that any special attachment to the land will be taken into account in determining just terms.
Compensation has been previously paid to Aboriginal groups for extinguishment of their native title rights as part of a broader native title agreement; for example in the case of the Crescent Head determination in 1996. Similarly, the Western Australia Government resolved liability for compensation arising out of the determination of native title around Broome through an Indigenous Land Use Agreement by providing the Yawuru People with around $200 million in monetary benefits and land, as well as consent to future acts by the State.
However, it is still unclear how to calculate the value of native title. Some have argued that native title is equivalent to freehold title, whereas others argue that given native title rights and interests can be much less than those of a freeholder - in particular, it cannot be sold or "alienated" - it is worth less. Others still say that "just terms" compensation should be higher than freehold value to consider the non-economic loss arising from loss of spiritual connection of indigenous people to land.
This issue was recently canvassed in the Federal Court in a South Australian case known as De Rose. Despite previous agreements, the De Rose case was the first time compensation orders have been made by the Federal Court under the Native Title Act since its introduction. In 2005, the non-exclusive native title rights and interests of the Nguraritja people of the Western Desert in north-west South Australia were recognised in the De Rose Hill native title determination. However, this determination excluded areas of land where native title had been extinguished.
Last year, the SA Government agreed to settle its compensation obligations for native title that had been extinguished. Justice John Mansfield made clear in his judgment that there was detailed negotiation over the method used to calculate the final figure and competing valuation methods were put forward. Eventually, while the SA Government did not agree the current freehold value of the extinguished area was necessarily relevant to the value of native title rights and interests lost, it was agreed to be relevant to calculating the total sum to be paid. Said Mansfield J:
Ultimately, the parties exchanged amounts which they would be prepared to offer or accept until a mutually agreeable amount was reached … The Agreement reflects an outcome within the range of the valuation figures and is viewed by all parties to be appropriate in the circumstances.
However, the amount South Australia finally agreed to pay was redacted from the agreement made public. Mansfield defended the non-disclosure of the final figure, highlighting that other cases would follow and the De Rose case would create a precedent for future compensation claims.
The disclosure of that figure, where there are presently no decisions addressing in a reasoned way how compensation under the NTA is to be assessed, may create expectations either on the part of other applicants or on the part of other States or Territories in other matters which private consensual agreement should not produce. In addition, the disclosure of that figure may be seen to set a tariff for other compensation.
As a result, while the De Rose case is important, it fails to provide much-needed guidance on the total liability of states, territories and the Commonwealth for extinguished native title. For states like Queensland and Western Australia, where a large proportion of land is under claim, this issue looms large. As a result, when the Native Title Act was introduced in 1993, then-prime minister Paul Keating wrote to the states and territories confirming the Commonwealth's commitment to fund 75 per cent of the compensation costs arising from native title in order to ally their concerns about the impact of the legislation. This arrangement was subsequently confirmed in correspondence in 1998 with former prime minister John Howard. As a result, Australian Government budget papers routinely recorded compensation costs for native title extinguishment as an unquantified contingent liability. In 2007-08, budget paper No. 1 stated:
The Australian Government has offered to assist the States and Territories in meeting native title compensation costs arising under the Native Title Act 1993.… The Australian Government's liability cannot be quantified due to uncertainty about the number and effect of compensable acts, both in the past and in the future, and the value of native title affected by those acts.
However, that position changed during the last Federal Government. According to the WA Government, the Federal Government withdrew the long-standing offer during this time. A letter from former prime minister Julia Gillard tabled in the Western Australia Parliament by state attorney-general Christian Porter, said the Commonwealth bore "no legal or other obligation to Western Australia for the cost of native title compensation and settlements". This change was confirmed in 2013-14 budget, which simply noted in contingent liabilities that "the Australian Government has previously offered to assist State and Territory governments in meeting certain Native Title costs pursuant to the Native Title Act 1993 (the NTA)".
For a state like WA, which has negotiated a significant native title agreement around Broome, there are clear financial ramifications from this change. In 2011, Mr Porter claimed it was a "one billion dollar plus issue":
There are now more than 91,000 square kilometres of determined land in WA, and that amount of determined land will increase. This is an area larger than the entire state of South Australia.
This year the WA Government is also expected to finalise its most significant settlement with Aboriginal people in the south-west of the state and it is reported to be worth up to $1.3 billion in payments and land. Such settlements offer the opportunity for economic development that a bare recognition of native title do not. But they come at a significant cost.
Mr Porter is now sitting on Abbott's backbench as the member for Pearce. As a result, it seems likely that this issue will be raised within the new Government. This is especially so given Prime Minister Tony Abbott has expressed a particular interest in Indigenous issues and brought responsibility for them into his own department. Following the outcome in De Rose, it is also now likely other Indigenous groups will seek compensation.
Marcus Priest is a lawyer at Sparke Helmore in Canberra. He is a former political journalist at the Australian Financial Review and former senior advisor to Attorney-General Robert McClelland. Follow him on Twitter @MeddlesomPriest. View his full profile here.
Topics: aboriginal, native-title |
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CADF director calls for ban on Tramadol
2016 WADA banned list comes into effect
"Gérard Guillaume, representing the MPCC teams' doctors, said that this drug was 'dangerous in competition' while [the UCI's] Mario Zorzoli drew attention to its 'side effects'," read the MPCC statement. "Tramadol causes drowsiness and conditions that could lead to falls in a race. Doctors of teams that are members of MPCC are committed to no longer use tramadol in competition."
Tramadol is not on the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) list of banned substances, but has once again been added to the agency's Monitored List for 2014. The substance has been on the Monitored List since 2012 and recent reports have raised the issue of abuse of the substance within the professional peloton.
Dr. Prentice Steffen, head physician for the Garmin-Sharp team, spoke to Cyclingnews previously about the pain-killer's performance enhancing abilities.
"It’s not a big performance enhancer but it could make the difference of a fraction of a percent," said Steffen. "It’s like nothing compared to EPO or blood doping but it’s more on the side of cortico-steroids. If blood doping is a ten then it’s a two, maybe.
"I can imagine it being used for training. Anything that makes an intense effort or suffering more tolerable is going to give you a training advantage."
WADA's monitoring program is utilised to test for specific substance which aren't on the Prohibited List but which WADA wishes to keep tabs on in order to detect patterns of misuse. WADA has confirmed that a ‘significant’ number of tests have shown traces of the drug.
The MPCC, however, hopes that WADA will place tramadol in the Prohibited List.
"MPCC has always endeavoured to defend the riders’ health and it is in this sense that have been established the controls of cortisol rate in several major competitions this year," said the MPCC. "The battle for tramadol to be registered in the list of prohibited substances by the World Anti-Doping Agency follows the same logic." |
SCP-2695
The following document is currently outdated, last updated 1/12/1920 . Note that outdated Foundation practices and procedures may differ from current standards. Updated documentation is currently under revision by Level 3 staff.
SCP-2695.
SCP-2695
Object Class: Safe
Special Containment Procedures: SCP-2695 is to be monitored and housed within Humanoid Containment Level 1 within Site-04. Personnel may be required to escort SCP-2695 should she find difficulty in walking. Requests from SCP-2695 for entertainment, conversation, or other needs may be put under review by Dr. Pritchard before transference of requested materials.
Description: SCP-2695 is an elderly woman, originally residing in Montreal, Canada. SCP-2695 is 68 years of age and identifies itself as "Lucibelle Perhacs." SCP-2695 is by all means a non-anomalous human being, and is of average physical and mental health.
SCP-2695-T refers to a No. 5 sewing needle embedded within SCP-2695's aorta. SCP-2695 claims that the wound was recent, but no damage or punctures were found to have existed internally or on the epidermis of their chest. SCP-2695 also claims that she feels no discomfort or pain from SCP-2695-T's presence.
Since SCP-2695's initial containment, an additional three sewing needles have appeared within their right atrium and pulmonary valve, suggesting that SCP-2695-T is currently self-replicating at a rate of one needle per two weeks.
Attempts to surgically remove SCP-2695-T have been unsuccessful thus far. Despite the usage of X-ray imaging, personnel have been unable to extract SCP-2695-T without causing harm SCP-2695.
Discovery: SCP-2695 was reported by Reconnaissance Agent Ghersi, at the Montreal General Hospital in Canada. on the date of 11/25/1919, claiming that she believe she may have suffered a fracture after falling at home. Local doctors located SCP-2695-T's placement within the subject's right hand, which gave Agent Ghersi incentive to notify a recovery team. Disinformation efforts were effective in diagnosing SCP-2695 with a rare disease, allowing Foundation personnel to escort SCP-2695 to Sector-08 for further analysis.
<Begin Log, [11/29/1919]> Dr. Pritchard: Good afternoon, Mrs. Perhacs. I trust that you have been feeling well since your arrival? SCP-2695: Ah, yes. I admit, I didn't realize how serious this accident was, until you told me you were bringing me to America, goodness! My heart was quite stricken for a moment, until one of your kind gentlemen explained the situation. Dr. Pritchard: I can imagine, hahah. As of now, I just decided to come by to ask you a few questions about your life before you were diagnosed with this, um, condition. SCP-2695: It's quite alright, doctor. You don't mean that day at the hospice, I suppose? Dr. Pritchard: Exactly that. SCP-2695: Hmm. It really was an uneventful thing, you see? I had my sewing kit so I could fix some of my youngest's vest, Mark, and I tripped— oh, and you know why it was torn? He was on that silly rope swing my dearest Les had set up in the yard, God rest his soul, and he went ahead and allowed it to be torn on a tree branch, even when I told him— Dr. Pritchard: I'm sorry to interrupt, ma'am, but if you would please keep this transcript related to the event that caused you to choose to seek care, that would be especially helpful. SCP-2695: Oh oh, apologies. But yes, he had torn his clothes again, and I dropped my sewing kit— no, more like a sewing crate, it's become such a passion for me! So yes, I fell down while carrying it partway, down the stairs, and my daughter found me prone. Quite an ordeal, but there's worse that could've happened, and thankfully I wasn't hurt too bad from the fall. I'm not the toughest missus out there, but it's going to take more than a fall to knock the breath out of me, see? Ohoho! Dr. Pritchard: So, no real pain in any of your limbs since? That is to say, your arms or legs? SCP-2695: Not at all, but these days I have been feeling a bit weakened, of a sorts. Likely that it is my age. You young men are busy fixing up a cure, I presume? Dr. Pritchard: Yes ma'am, though this really is something we haven't seen before. All we ask for is your patience, and we may be able to find a solution to this peculiar case. SCP-2695: I see. Well, technology is a wondrous thing, and you people are quite well versed in it. Wondrous, that it's progressed so much. I have my faith in you. Dr. Pritchard: If it should give you any comfort, your condition is providing a lot of information for me, and I can assure you it will be used to help many others. [Dr. Pritchard stands up.] Thank you for your time, Mrs. Perhacs. SCP-2695: I can give any amount of time, doctor. I've lived a very good life.
Site Director Avery Lennox 8/21/2003 Due to several oversights by three certain personnel, including questionable freedoms granted to SCP-2695, failure to document several interactions and alterations regarding both SCP-2695 and SCP-2695-T, and tampering of data related to SCP-2695 and Site-45, reprimands for all seven personnel in charge of managing SCP-2695 have been dealt. I have selected a handful of Level 3 personnel to salvage what little data was procured from this utter disgrace of a project. Please send the finished article to me ASAP, so that I may review it and assure myself that there is no further unnecessary bias towards this anomaly. |
Dear Reader, As you can imagine, more people are reading The Jerusalem Post than ever before. Nevertheless, traditional business models are no longer sustainable and high-quality publications, like ours, are being forced to look for new ways to keep going. Unlike many other news organizations, we have not put up a paywall. We want to keep our journalism open and accessible and be able to keep providing you with news and analysis from the frontlines of Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World.
The United States on Tuesday issued an unusually harsh statement against settlement activity in which it accused Israel of “systematically seizing Palestinian land” in the West Bank.
US State Department spokesman John Kirby further charged that such seizures plus “settlement expansions and legalization of outposts is fundamentally undermining the prospects for a two-state solution.”
He spoke to reporters in Washington from a prepared text in response to a query about Israel’s decision earlier this week to advance plans for 560 new homes in the West Bank settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim. It addition, there were reports that it had authorized 240 new homes in the Jewish east Jerusalem neighborhoods of Har Homa and Ramot.The announcements of settlement activity were made in the wake of two terror attacks that claimed the lives of Hallel Yaffa Ariel, 13, and Rabbi Michael “Miki” Mark, 47.Ariel holds duel Israeli-US citizenship as does Mark’s wife Chava and his two children, all of whom were injured when Palestinian gunmen fired at their vehicle.Israel has traditionally linked settlement building or the advancement of plans with terror attacks, out of a belief that it is the best response to such violence.One reporter asked Kirby if he felt this was an appropriate linkage.“There is no justification for terrorism,” said Kirby. However, he added, “that doesn’t change our opposition to settlement activity.”Right wing Israeli politicians have criticized Netanyahu for the move, noting that the new activity, was not that significant. Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel called on the government to authorize thousands of new units in West Bank settlements.But in spite of the limited scope of Israel’s settlement announcement, the US went well beyond its boiler plate response.It also criticized Israel for the Jewish population growth over the pre-1967 lines, both in east Jerusalem and in Area C of the West Bank, known to settlers as Judea and Samaria.“Moreover, approximately 100 settlement outposts in Area C have been built without formal Israeli Government approval, making them illegal even under Israeli law. Again, as the Quartet report makes clear, these actions risk entrenching a one-state reality and raise serious questions about Israel’s long-term intentions,” Kirby said.The United Nations and the European Union also condemned the new settlement activity. But it was a standard response that was not nearly as harsh as the US statement.Late last week the Middle East Quartet called on Israel to cease settlement construction and expansion in a report that it issued.But the issue of settlement activity was only one, of many issues, raised by the Quartet in its report. The Palestinian Authority is disappointed with the document which it had hoped would blame the frozen peace process on settlement construction. Publication of the report was delayed by almost a month. It is presumed that Quartet — Russia, the US, the EU and the UN — spent the extra time toning down the document under pressure from the US.The London-based Arabic language daily newspaper al-Hayat reported Tuesday that the PA decided to halt its cooperation with the Quartet on the Middle East following the report.PA Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah’s office said, however, that the relationship with the Quartet had not been severed.“The Palestinian Leadership expressed its dissatisfaction with the recent Quartet Report. The Report offers an imbalanced assessment of the realities on the ground, and equates between the victim and the colonizer, while giving Israeli settlers a pass. As far as "cutting ties"---no official statement or decision has been made as of now,” said Hamdallah’s Director of Communications, Jamal Dajani.In Washington Kirby said, in response to the al-Hayat report, that all his office had seen was “a PLO statement that takes issue with some aspects of the Quartet report, and that’s our understanding, is that this is more a statement of their concerns and objections to the report itself.”
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Sixty-five seconds into Wednesday night’s Amway Canadian Championship match, it appeared as though Ottawa Fury FC had turned a corner. Brazilian winger Oliver had just popped home a loose ball off of a corner, and Ottawa led rivals FC Edmonton in the first leg of a crucial cup tie in the second minute.
Sixty-three minutes into Wednesday night’s match, all seemed to be well in-hand for Marc Dos Santos’ Ottawa side. Oliver’s goal held up as the lone one in a then-1-nil match, and French goalkeeper Romuald Peiser had just denied FCE super-sub Lance Laing on a penalty.
But as the whistle went for full-time, the scoreboard read FC Edmonton 3, Ottawa Fury FC 1, and questions need to be asked.
Fury FC Suffer Worst Loss in Club History
Three FCE goals in the span of thirteen minutes all but sealed the fate of Fury FC in the Amway Canadian Championship, as the team will have to make the long trek to Edmonton needing to reverse a two-goal deficit.
Lance Laing entered the match for Colin Miller’s FCE side in the 59th minute, and the substitution paid immediate dividends for the Eddies. Laing’s pace on the left flank created all sorts of problems for Ottawa, and he would finish the night with a goal and an assist.
The match seemed so secure, so safe. Ottawa led through 82 minutes, and Romuald Peiser had only been truly called into question twice in those first 82 minutes. But something went wrong, very wrong.
FCE substitute Daryl Fordyce drew his side level on 83 minutes, somehow finding himself unmarked in front of the Ottawa goal to tap home Tomi Ameobi’s rebound.
Laing would then steal the ball from a sleepy Rafael Alves in the 88th before slotting past Peiser to shock the small but vocal crowd in attendance in Ottawa.
The nail in the coffin of Marc Dos Santos’ side came in the 95th minute, when Laing sprinted down the left flank before Tomi Ameobi unmarked at the back post. Ameobi smashed home from short-range, and FCE’s bench erupted, elated at their quick turnaround.
Ottawa boss Marc Dos Santos was surprisingly vocal in his criticism of the referee Geoff Gamble in his post-match presser, openly questioning his honesty.
“I’m a very honest guy,” said the emotional Fury FC manager, “and I doubt the credibility and honesty of some people.”
Dos Santos and his team believed that referee Gamble missed a, “clear,” handball late in the match which would have given Ottawa a penalty, though Fury FC defender Ryan Richter’s 63rd minute handball was distinctly more visible on replay.
Perhaps Dos Santos’ outburst was meant to deflect the blame away from his players, or perhaps it was merely an emotional moment and he will regret it in the morning. Regardless, blaming officials in a match which saw his team give up three goals in the span of thirteen minutes seems slightly misdirected. At best, the theoretical penalty would have made it 3-2 for the Albertan visitors – hardly a scoreline to write home about.
FCE super-sub Lance Laing had himself a night to remember on the pitch, but was also involved in an altercation with Dos Santos near the Ottawa bench at the full-time whistle, and apologized afterwards.
“I want to apologize to them, Marc and the coaching staff,” said the Eddies’ Jamaican international. “Marc Dos Santos is a very good coach and has treated me very well in the years I have played against him, and I wanted to apologize for maybe starting that.”
Numerically, this is not the worst loss in club history. That occurred back on July 26th of last year, when Ottawa was pumped 3-nil by Carolina at WakeMed Park early in the 2014 Fall Season.
However when one considers the weight of expectation this year, the genuine belief that the club could get a result against FCE at home and maybe just move on to face MLS side Vancouver in the second round, this loss stings harder than any other. The fashion of defeat – a dominating sixty minutes, wasted by a defensively incapacitated thirteen – makes it hurt all the more.
For all intents and purposes, this first round Canadian Championship fixture is over. Conceding three away goals, and trailing by two goals period, after a home leg is simply too large a mountain to overcome.
The frustrating thing for Fury FC supporters will be the fact that Ottawa had multiple opportunities to put the Eddies away. Striker Andrew Wiedeman missed a glorious opportunity towards the end of the first half, and many other half-chances were not fully grasped. At one point, Ottawa led 9-0 in shots. To see their club fall apart in the span of thirteen minutes against a team that hadn’t posed any kind of offensive threat for the first hour of the match, must have been crushing.
It has been a middling start to the campaign for the sophomore club. A dominating victory against NASL title contenders Minnesota United shines brightly on the early season schedule, while 3-1 losses against Carolina and Edmonton represent black marks, especially the Edmonton one.
With three fixtures in seven days ahead, Marc Dos Santos will have some serious thinking to do regarding his selections and tactics. |
From today’s Batman Eternal.
And from YouTube.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecJGIQDsr-M[/youtube]
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEi4I6UWuDQ[/youtube]
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfTrSFCGxcQ[/youtube]
It’s called a “Title Drop” folks… but with all this talk of the future…
…and all those Batsuits… is the one on the midground on the right the Batsuit we’ll see in Batman’s future, teased on the cover of FCBD Divergence?
Criminals are a superstitious and cowardly lot… I shall become a Grasshopper!
Comics courtesy of Orbital Comics, London. With a Kickstarter launch party and private view for their Beast Wagon exhibition, featuring original artwork and preview pages from the Owen Michael Johnson and John Pearson comic, with work from Steve White, Iain Laurie & Conor Boyle.
About Rich Johnston Chief writer and founder of Bleeding Cool. Father of two. Comic book clairvoyant. Political cartoonist.
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Red Bull Media House and U.S. digital filmmaking pioneers Brain Farm Digital Cinema have teamed to produce “The Fourth Phase,” the sequel to “The Art of Flight,” the 2011 global home entertainment hit.
Overall No. 1 iTunes movie in the U.S., “Flight” is arguably the most successful action sports film of the last decade.
At the American Film Market, RBMH’s Philipp Manderla, head of feature films, will world premiere two 10-minute segments from “The Fourth Phase,” directed like “Flight” by BDC CEO Curt Morgan, as well as Jon Klaczkiewicz. RBMH will handle worldwide sales.
“Fourth Phase,” like “Flight,” stars Travis Rice, a double X Games gold medal winning snowboarder who has helped raise the bar on snowboard filmmaking, in running big mountain lines and soaring to amazing height – at tree tops level in one “Flight” backwoods sections – as he performs tech trips. In “Phase,” he undertakes a 15,000 mile mission following the hydrological cycle around the North Pacific Rim, discovering more than just new terrain.
“The Fourth Phase” will be the “biggest and most anticipated film Red Bull Media House has ever been involved in,” Manderla said.
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“’The film combines spectacular action with ways of producing snowboarding action not done before, taking it to the next level.”
A production-services house, Brain Farm has consistently raised digital filmmaking’s ceiling. On “The Fourth Phase,” Brain Farm will use 4K ultra HD to highlight details and realism. Each 4K cameras set-up weighs approximately 60 pounds; some scenes required up to five cameras.
“Making this film has been one of the most challenging yet gratifying experiences in my life. Our team has pushed deep into the backcountry with new technology in hopes to capture snowboarding in a way it has never been seen before,” said Morgan.
“From the adventure, to the outstanding athleticism, to the very real story that unfolds, this film will undoubtedly be unique.”
RBMH and Brain Farm will use this winter for additional shooting and is in post-production on sequences shot. Partners aim for a September/early October world premiere, depending on how “The Fourth Phase” is taken onto the market, Manderla added. RBMH will use the AFM and Berlin to finalize release strategies on “The Fourth Phase,” he added.
Also at the AFM, RBMH will be screening “Chasing Niagara,” a coming of age tale of friendship structured by the preparations of big waterfall kayaker Rafa Ortiz, aided by film director/top kayaker Rush Sturges and Evan Garcia, to run the Niagara Falls. Produced by Sturges’ River Roots for RBMH, “Chasing Niagara” was one of the big hits at San Sebastian’s Savage Cinema showcase in September.
“Streif,” turns on the world’s most legendary downhill race, in Kitzbühel, Austria. |
After the U.S.S. Cole was attacked in Yemen in October 2000, the Navy needed to get the damaged ship to Pascagoula, Mississippi for repairs and refit. But you can't just tow a ship with a 40-foot hole in its side through the Indian and Atlantic Oceans and hope it stays afloat. So it hired Dockwise, a Dutch shipping outfit whose specialty is moving enormous pieces of cargo.
Dockwise sent the MV Blue Marlin, which sailed up to the Cole and used its huge ballast tanks to submerge itself. It slid underneath the destroyer before rising up and lifting the entire ship out of the water, and carried it just like any other cargo. The 505-foot Cole easily fit on the Blue Marlin's 584' x 206' deck. It was successfully moved from Yemen to Mississippi and returned to Navy service within a few years.
MV Blue Marlin carries the stricken U.S.S. Cole to Mississippi from Yemen. U.S. Navy
Impressive at the Blue Marlin is, it pales in comparison to its younger, much larger brother, the Vanguard. Built in 2012, the world's largest float-on/float-off ship doesn't have a traditional stern or bow. All its buoyancy casings, which keep the ship from keeling over, including several that are movable to accommodate different loads, are mounted on the side of ship.
That way, the unobstructed 230-foot wide loading deck runs the length of the 900-foot ship. This allows Dockwise to move loads that may exceed even that impressive length by having enormous items like ships overhang its stern or bow. This thing could carry the Chrysler Building.
Formed by the 1993 merger of two shipping companies, Dockwise is the world's largest operator of heavy-load "semi-submersible" vessels. It's used extensively by the world's navies as well as energy exploration companies looking to install and redeploy offshore drilling platforms for oil and gas development. Though some competitors operate semi-submersibles, Dockwise says its focus on this technology and its fleet of more than 20 ships make it unique in the shipping industry.
The Vanguard is semi-submersible thanks to enormous water tanks that slowly fill to submerge the the ship by more than 50 feet. It can then slide underneath ocean-going behemoths like offshore oil rigs, lift them up, and transport them across the ocean at speeds as high as 14 knots (16.1 mph) thanks to its 27 megawatt twin-screw propulsion system.
The Dockwise Vanguard carries Chevron's Jack & St. Malo drilling platform from South Korea to the Gulf of Mexico. Dockwise
Upon arrival, the Dockwise ship submerges again and slides away. The company says the Vanguard's ability to transport enormous rigs weighing as much as 110,000 metric tons fully assembled can save companies time and big bucks. Its next largest ship, the aforementioned Blue Marlin, can only lift structures up to 76,000 metric tons, and is limited by its more traditional ship design with both a bow and stern.
As an added bonus, the Vanguard can act as a drydock, lifting enormous structures for maintenance and overhaul at sea, rather than wasting time and money by hauling them back to land.
The Vanguard was even selected to remove thecapsized Costa Concordia cruise ship from the coast of Italy, but it seems the deal fell through. |
WINTER HAVEN, Fla. — Two child care workers have turned themselves into police after investigators said they were suspected of berating a child with autism in an incident recorded on video, reports CBS affiliate WTSP.
In the video, which was first posted to the social media platform Snapchat, two women who police believe are 26-year-old Kadericca Smith and 19-year-old Alexis Henderson can be seen laughing at the 8-year-old boy inside Our Children's Academy, in Winter Haven, Florida.
"Chicken, chicken, chicken," one woman can be heard saying, as the boy comes out from hiding under a desk.
Later, one of the women is seen holding the boy's arms before apparently swiping his legs from under him.
Police were first made aware of this on Sept. 1 and say in an initial interview, both women "felt they were acting appropriately" and did nothing wrong. At the time, police hadn't pressed charges because the Florida Department of Children and Families was still investigating.
Warrants were later issued for the women's arrest, and they reportedly turned themselves in Friday.
Henderson is charged with child neglect and Smith faces charges of child abuse and battery. Henderson received bond after being booked into jail, but Smith is being held with bond.
Kaderrica Smith (left) and Alexus Henderson CBS affiliate WTSP
Smith faces charges of child abuse and battery.
Police say the school immediately fired the two women following the incident. Both also had blocks placed on their certifications so they cannot be employed by other childcare facilities.
The 8-year-old did not require medical attention. |
Seven-year-old Zaid Abdul Mohsen, the son of Syrian refugee Osama Abdul Mohsen, who was in the news recently after being tripped by a camerawoman while fleeing from the police in Hungary, accompanied Real Madrid star Cristiano Ronaldo onto the pitch before the club's La Liga clash against Granada on 19 September.
Real Madrid had invited Osama Abdul and his two sons to the match on Saturday, which saw the players of the club wear T-shirts in support of the thousands of refugees fleeing from the Syrian civil war.
The Santiago Bernabeu crowd was in good voice during the game, and greeted the duo of Ronaldo and Zaid Abdul with boisterous applause into the field. Real Madrid won the game by a solitary goal, which saw them move to the top of the table with 10 points from 4 games.
Earlier, Zaid Abdul Mohsen had moved to the Spanish capital with his father and sibling, after a local academy in the city offered a coaching role to Osama Abdul, in a bid to help the family rebuild their lives.
Speaking to reporters after the game, Osama said, "Seeing Real Madrid was absolutely amazing. I am happy and so is my family."
"Zaid kept saying: I have seen Ronaldo! I really love Ronaldo!" he further added. |
Update
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GRAND RAPIDS, MI — Got a question to ask the co-founders of Founders Brewing Co.? Do you wonder how they decide what beer to make? Are you not able to find Founders beer somewhere you wish you could? Are you curious about why there was a beer named “Dave’s Not Here” on draft in the taproom recently? Well, Mike Stevens and Dave Engbers will be online and ready to answer your questions tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 17, for an hour prior to the brewery’s 15-year anniversary party starting at 11 a.m.
The Live Chat will take place in the comments section of this entry
. Bookmark this page if you'd like to participate. The live Q&A follows a week’s worth of coverage coinciding with the brewery’s anniversary. Click any of the links above to read back though the series, and learn what Founders was called before the brewery was renamed, how much beer they expect to make in the next couple years, what the “13-man rule” used to be in the company’s original taproom, and how you can get your hands on the brewery’s new anniversary barleywine called Bolt Cutter. There's a good story behind that name. If you're not already familiar with it, here's a good place to get the details. After the live chat, if you feel like trying some of that Bolt Cutter, it’ll be on draft at the anniversary party and will stay on tap at the taproom for as long as it lasts. Be warned, though: It might not last long. In the meantime, please click on the video to the right, produced by MLive entertainment concierge Todd Chance, which features Mike Stevens discussing the brewery's early days. If you want to know the name of the most disgusting beer he drank in college, you'll just have to click and watch.
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Oct. 6, 2014, 6:44 PM GMT / Updated Oct. 6, 2014, 11:36 PM GMT
Dallas officials, including Mayor Mike Rawlings and Texas Health Commissioner Dr. David Lakey, held a news conference Monday to discuss the response to the Ebola investigation and containment regarding patient Thomas Eric Duncan — and said that local anxiety could be more damaging than the virus itself.
"The concern is the stress of this and the fear of this could be more damaging to the community than the virus itself," said Lakey. "This isn’t West Africa. This is a very modern city. We don’t have the level poverty that they have in West Africa, that is conducive to the spread of the disease."
He said he was so confident that people who aren't showing signs of illness that he shook hands with one man who was being monitored. Local officials have complained that certain service providers, like tutors, have been reluctant to come into the neighborhood where Duncan was staying because of Ebola fears.
Lakey also said that all of the 48 people being monitored as contacts with Duncan before he was admitted to the hospital were showing no signs of fever or illness.
Hospital officials earlier on Monday said Duncan remains in critical but stable condition. He is now receiving an investigational medication, brincidofovir, they said.
Duncan, the Liberian national who was the first person to be diagnosed with the Ebola virus while in the United States, traveled to Dallas to marry his longtime girlfriend and the mother of his 19-year-old son, the pastor of the woman's church told NBC News on Saturday.
Duncan arrived in Dallas on Sept. 20 via a flight plan that had taken him from Monrovia, Liberia, through Burssels, Belgium, and Washington, D.C. It's believed he contracted the deadly virus in his hometown five days earlier when he helped a pregnant neighbor get to the hospital believing she was having a miscarriage. The woman later died of Ebola.
Duncan began showing symptoms of the illness on Sept. 24 but didn't go to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital until Sept. 26 — and he was sent home with antibiotics by hospital staff who didn't realize the severity of his case. Two days later, on Sept. 28, an ambulance was called to his Dallas apartment to take him back to the hospital. On Sept. 30 it was confirmed that Duncan had Ebola.
President Obama held a meeting with various cabinet members and agency heads on Monday to discuss the Ebola crisis — including Secretary of State John Kerry, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Martin Dempsey, CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden, USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah, and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson.
Following the meeting the president said that he was "confident" that the American people are safe and that the chances of an outbreak in the U.S. are "extremely low. He said his administration would work on additional measures to screen people entering the U.S. from high-risk countries, and "we're also going to be working on protocols to do additional, faster screening both at source and here in the United States"
A U.S. airlines trade group was also meeting with health and safety officials on Monday to discuss whether additional screenings for Ebola could help contain the spread of the virus.
IN-DEPTH
— Hasani Gittens |
We launch our new UKIPwatch blog today with the first in a series: Pinning Down Farage. Just as Pinning Down Miliband scrutinises and exposes the failings of Labour policy, this series will do the same for UKIP.
UKIP policy is designed to be like a fog. It might give an impression of where they stand, or where they’d like you to think they stand, but if anyone tries to grasp it the intention is that it should be intangible enough to swirl away – allowing instant deniability.
But with one MP, and the prospect of at least a few more come May, what the insurgents actually think matters. What programme are they laying out for the nation? What might their proposals be should they find themselves in coalition negotiations? What do they think about how the country should be governed?
We’ll ask these questions on a number of fronts over the coming weeks, but let’s start with economic policy.
2010
As part of the fog approach to policy, UKIP has now distanced itself from its entire 2010 manifesto – in January, Nigel Farage claimed he hadn’t put it together or read it, despite having signed the foreword – but it gives an insight of sorts into where they have come from. The document has apparently been deleted from their website, but it’s still available elsewhere online, as is the more detailed report of their economy working group.
In some ways, it was a radical rightist pitch – cutting state spending back to 1997 levels, introducing a flat tax, raising the income tax threshold to £11,500 and abolishing a raft of EU regulations and Brussels-inspired taxes.
At the same time, though, they proposed a sizeable economic stimulus through a programme of state building of nuclear power stations (£3.5 billion per annum), prisons (no cost specified), flood defences (£3 billion per annum), increased defence commissioning (an extra £4 billion per annum) and – wait for it – “a transport investment programme centred on high-speed rail lines”. Yes, high speed rail lines. Three new high speed rail lines, in fact – London-Newcastle/Manchester; London-Bristol-Exeter; and London-Birmingham.
In short, they denounced the scale of public spending while simultaneously promising to spend billions more. The excuse used to jam that square peg into the round hole was that we would save money by no longer paying cash to the EU – but our EU subscriptions are less than their planned stimulus spending alone.
How things have changed
It’s fair to say there are a number of inconsistencies between UKIP 2014 and UKIP 2010. Yes, they’ve distanced themselves from that manifesto, but let’s consider what UKIP says when other parties break promises.
The Conservative Party hasn’t done some of the things it said in its General Election manifesto. UKIP’s reaction is to cry LibLabCon, to allege that this is proof of the Westminster establishment’s lies. And yet, in most instances the Tory leadership is open about the fact that it would still like to fulfil its pledges but is constrained by the lack of a Commons majority and the practicalities of coalition. By contrast, UKIP simply ditches its past promises and either pretends never to have heard of them or dismisses them as irrelevant – behaviour it would condemn in anyone else.
As a self-proclaimed major party of British politics, they deserve to be subjected to the appropriate standards of scrutiny.
The party’s 2015 manifesto has yet to be published, but we do have two key sources to refer to in order to gain an insight into what it will likely say. The first is an interview given by Tim Aker MEP, their Head of Policy, to Progress Magazine in August. The second is the conference speech titled “UKIP’s economic plan”, delivered by Patrick O’Flynn MEP, their newly appointed Economy Spokesman.
Here are a few examples of the way things have changed since 2010:
High-speed rail: Having proposed three high speed lines in 2010, UKIP now opposes the one which the government is building. Their defence is to say that they object to the route because of its impact on the countryside – although it’s hard to see how three lines would have had less impact, and intercity lines rather inevitably run through the countryside regardless of how you rejig the route.
Flat tax: In June, Farage publicly ditched flat taxation on the Andrew Marr show. He said his party hadn’t explained it well in 2010, but then abandoned it entirely rather than trying to explain it better. Furthermore, O’Flynn announced at their recent conference that the party would deliberately further complicate the tax system by introducing a new 35p rate of income tax.
Higher business taxes: 2010’s tax-cutting rhetoric is in stark contrast to another gem in O’Flynn’s speech:
“UKIP proposes that a Treasury Commission, using the best brains of that elite Whitehall department, be set up to design a turnover tax for large businesses. Every major company would have to show it had paid a set proportion of its turnover in corporation and other taxes or would face an additional charge.” Essentially, a tax on unprofitable businesses – hardly an enterprise-friendly environment or an encouragement to invest in the UK. To top it all, that “Treasury Commission using the best brains of…Whitehall” sounds an awful lot like a quango – something else the 2010 manifesto promised to clamp down on.
What doesn’t work
Of course, parties do have the right to change their minds on things (though they ought to admit they have done so and explain why, not simply try to move on as though nothing ever happened). It’s troubling that UKIP has performed so many about-turns since 2010, but it might be forgivable if it was to generate better ideas.
So how do the policies we know of so far stack up? As well as the proposals for higher taxes on businesses and greater income tax complexity, there are at least a couple of other problems:
Ban foreign investment: In traditional foggy phrasing, Aker hints at restrictions on foreign investment:
“There is a discussion going on about whether foreign governments have the right to buy up stakes in our national assets and national resources”So much for the “free trade” which features so prominently on the UKIP website. A major success of the British economy in recent years (thanks in part to the safe haven status gained by not joining the Euro) has been in attracting Foreign Direct Investment – creating jobs in the UK and funding our industries. The new openness to the world economy we would gain by leaving the EU is a common UKIP theme, but it seems their first response to it would be protectionism.
Bedrooms for no-one: As I pointed out in August, the first hints of UKIP’s welfare policy are confused to say the least. Aker has said they are “firmly against the bedroom tax”, but also that they oppose bigger houses for those with more children. In summary: no bedrooms for actual children, taxpayer-funded unoccupied bedrooms for those without. Which is odd.
The rise of Red UKIP
As their newfound attachment to protectionism, taxing business and opposing the so-called “bedroom tax” suggests, the pursuit of votes at the expense of principles has seen UKIP shift leftward in recent weeks.
They have chosen to chase Labour votes, and at the same time have picked up a large chunk of new members who are left-leaning – two factors that combine to drive the creation of what has been termed Red UKIP.
In a way, it’s an extension of their commitment to the Lib Dem playbook – a smaller party can maximise its chances by posing as all things to all people.
Perhaps that’s how it started – saying left-wing things (promising to protect benefits in the Wythenshawe by-election, for example) but reverting to Farage’s centre right economic stances on the national stage. But now left wing economics and rhetoric are gaining a real foothold at the top of the party:
The Handbag Tax: An attention-grabbing part of O’Flynn’s Economic Plan was announcing a feasibility study of a “luxury goods rate of VAT” (incidentally, VAT was one of those taxes UKIP pledged to abolish in their 2010 manifesto, but hey). An envy tax targeted at the “very well heeled”, this would be levied through arbitrary price thresholds for shoes, handbags and cars. After what is reported to be a stand-up row, Farage junked the idea two days later, taking advantage of the foggy language to say it was just an idea. But the fact remains: this was UKIP’s Economy Spokesman, their equivalent of George Osborne or Ed Balls, proposing a tax to punish the successful. His leader forced him to u-turn this time, but that isn’t much of a reassurance as to his instincts.
Nor is this likely to be the end of the shift leftwards. The New Statesman reported on a UKIP fringe meeting discussing how to target Labour voters, at which one activist and regular candidate, Ian Dexter, advocated mass renationalisations, said that “money has to be prised out of the rich” and argued against his party’s pledge to abolish Inheritance Tax. With the party planning to target more Labour voters, and more lefties joining its machine, I doubt we’ve seen the end of Red UKIP.
More to come?
Of course, UKIP’s full 2015 manifesto is yet to be published. We’ll know more when it comes out, but the signs aren’t encouraging thus far. With complete about-turns on previous pledges, increased complexity in the tax system, new levies on business, as well as flirtations with protectionism and unpleasant envy taxes, their economic policy is in a troubling state.
Foggy, deniable language might work on TV, but not if you seek to be a “kingmaker” in Government. None of us can afford for someone to play games with the British economy. |
And in the past 20 years, the Internal Revenue Service has made it easier for workers to pay taxes if they don’t have a social security number (or a fake one, for that matter). Workers who are paid illegally in cash can still pay their taxes with an Individual Tax Identification Number (ITIN), filing a return just like any other taxpayer; having a history of paying taxes can be an important step in securing legal status. In 2010, about 3 million people paid over $870 million in income taxes using an ITIN, and according to the IRS, ITIN filers pay $9 billion in payroll taxes annually. (The IRS says it does not share ITIN information with immigration authorities.)
Tanya Gonzalez, the executive director of the nonprofit Sacred Heart Center in Richmond, Virginia, organized the first federally-funded, bilingual tax-assistance program in the region, which sits in one of the two states that have seen increases in the number of undocumented immigrants since the recession. She kept hearing that undocumented immigrants in the Richmond area were getting ripped off by tax preparers, and a friend at the IRS told her about the federal grants offered to open free tax-assistance centers in low-income areas.
At Sacred Heart’s tax-assistance site, she has helped hundreds of immigrants apply for a taxpayer identification number, which allows them to file their taxes as contractors. The use of ITIN has grown popular among immigrant workers in Richmond, she says, as many await comprehensive immigration reform. Past legalization efforts have required undocumented immigrants to prove how long they’ve been living in the United States, and to pay the taxes they owe before receiving legal status. “They want to show that they’ve been paying taxes and have their papers in order as much as they can.” says Gonzalez, adding that some people are on payment plans, while others simply can’t afford to pay taxes at all.
One undocumented worker from Central Mexico who gets help with his taxes at Sacred Heart told me that he began paying taxes four years ago, after learning that it might one day help him stay in the United States. (He asked not to be named because of his legal status.) A 31-year-old landscape worker, he moved to Richmond in 1999 and now makes up to $1,700 a month maintaining golf courses seven days a week. Workers at Sacred Heart told him that if he filed taxes with an ITIN, it could help him gain legal status in the United States if Congress passes comprehensive immigration reform. As those efforts remain stalled in Washington, D.C., his wages are recorded into the Earnings Suspense File, and his taxes go into the Social Security trust funds. “So many people say we are here burdening the country, but we are paying their retirements,” he told me. For now, he doesn’t mind supporting the social security system, he says, but hopes one day he can reap the benefits too.
This article is part of our Next America: Communities project, which is supported by a grant from Emerson Collective.
We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com. |
Last night was Jon Stewart’s final episode of The Daily Show for three months, while he takes his first-ever hiatus from the fake news program to direct his first movie, the geopolitical prison drama Rosewater. Here’s his heartfelt goodbye at the end of the episode, which summer fill-in host John Oliver interrupts to measure the set for his new redesign. Oliver takes over Monday.
Check out the rest of Stewart’s last Daily Show for a while below, which features him explaining how Rosewater grew out of a terrible situation in which journalist Maziar Bahari was detained and brutally interrogated in an Iranian prison for 118 days as a result of being interviewed by The Daily Show’s Jason Jones, replays that clip, explains his movie, and, of course, investigates Brooklyn’s new bike share program: |
The group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, an organization comprised of police officers, prosecutors, judges and other criminal justice professionals, endorsed Initiative 502 in Washington State. The initiative, if approved by voters, would legalize and tightly regulate marijuana for adults over the age of 21. From LEAP’s endorsement:
Norm Stamper, the former Seattle chief and a spokesman for the group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), said, “Everyone knows that marijuana prohibition has failed. When even those who once worked to enforce these laws are saying this, the only logical next step is to enact a system that legalizes, regulates and controls marijuana. Doing so will not only take money away from the gangs and cartels that sell marijuana now, but will generate new, much-needed revenue that can be used to pay the salaries of police officers and teachers and for substance abuse prevention and education.” David Nichols, a retired judge in Bellingham, added, “Replacing the criminalization of the marijuana trade with a public health approach grounded in science will allow our criminal justice system to fully focus on stopping and solving violent crimes and crimes against property. We don’t need the backs of our police cars, our courtrooms or our jails filled with people caught on marijuana charges.”
It is not too surprising that a group dedicated to ending prohibition would endorse a marijuana legalization ballot measure, but their active involvement in the effort to getting it approved should be very helpful.
As former cops and judges, LEAP members are often better able to convince older and more conservative voters to support reform. Their experience and background can carrry weight with some groups that are less inclined to see legalization as a good move. While it is possible to show people that statistics proving the war on marijuana has been a policy failure, the personal stories of people who were directly involved in this “war” are often more effective at swaying opinion. |
Israeli strikes have hit an arms depot operated by the Lebanese Hezbollah group near Damascus airport, Syrian opposition sources told Al Jazeera.
Witnesses said a total of five strikes occurred near the Damascus airport road, about 25km from the capital, early on Thursday.
Syrian state TV quoted a military source saying rockets fired from Israeli territory targeted a military area in the southwestern part of the airport which caused explosions.
Later on Thursday, Israeli military reported shooting down an aerial "target" over the Golan Heights.
Israeli media said residents in the northern Israeli town of Safed reported seeing two missiles being launched and of explosions occurring afterwards.
Al Jazeera's Imtiaz Tyab, reporting from Beirut, said the missiles were so powerful that the impact was felt several kilometres away in the Damascus countryside.
"In recent weeks, Israel has increasingly carried out a number of strikes against Hezbollah targets for what they describe as a 'red line'," he said.
Allegedly video of the #Damascus International Airport tonight on fire after what are claimed to be Israeli airstrikes. pic.twitter.com/jftHcxtyQ2 — Vince Beshara (@Jacm212) April 27, 2017
'We will act'
Israeli Intelligence Minister Israel Katz, speaking from the United States where he has been meeting US officials, told Israeli Army Radio: "I can confirm that the incident in Syria corresponds completely with Israel's policy to act to prevent Iran's smuggling of advanced weapons via Syria to Hezbollah ... Naturally, I don't want to elaborate on this.
"The prime minister has said that whenever we receive intelligence that indicates an intention to transfer advanced weapons to Hezbollah, we will act." Katz added.
An Israeli military spokeswoman declined to comment.
Reuters news agency, citing an intelligence source, said the depot that was targeted handles a significant amount of weapons that Tehran, a major regional ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, sends regularly by air.
The source said the arms depot gets a major part of the weapons supplied to an array of Iranian-backed armed groups, led by Hezbollah, which have thousands of fighters engaged in battle against Syrian rebels.
Rami Abdurrahman, head of the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the blasts were heard across the capital, jolting residents awake.
Activist-operated Diary of a Mortar, which reports from Damascus, said the explosions near the airport road were followed by flames rising above the area.
Previous Israeli strikes
In May 2013 Israel struck three areas in Damascus suburbs, allegedly to destroy Iranian rockets being delivered to Hezbollah. Damascus airport was also hit by Israel in May 2013.
The Syrian army said on January 13, 2016 that Israel had targeted the Mezze military airbase. Mezze airbase is just a few kilometres from the presidential palace.
Israel has in the past targeted Hezbollah positions inside Syria where Iranian backed groups are heavily involved in the fighting.
The Syrian government warned in January that it would retaliate against any attack targeting its own areas.
Hezbollah-linked Al-Manar TV channel said the dawn raid struck fuel tanks and a warehouse near Damascus International Airport and that it was probably the result of an Israeli strike.
It added that initial indications were that the blast had caused only material damage and not deaths. |
News in Science
Weedkiller 'makes boy frogs lay eggs'
One of the most common weed killers in the world, atrazine, can chemically castrate male frogs, turning them into females that lay eggs say US researchers.
Professor Tyrone Hayes of the University of California, Berkeley and colleagues report their findings in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"Atrazine-exposed males were both demasculinised (chemically castrated) and completely feminised as adults," says Hayes.
Atrazine is widely used by farmers around the world as a herbicide, particularly in production of corn, sorghum and sugar cane.
Earlier studies have found that the chemical feminised zebra fish and leopard frogs and caused a significant decline in sperm production in male salmon and caiman lizards.
"Atrazine exposure is highly correlated with low sperm count, poor semen quality and impaired fertility in humans," say Hayes and colleagues.
While previous studies have shown atrazine adversely affects amphibian larval development, this latest study of African clawed frogs shows the process can go even further, says Hayes.
"Before, we knew we got fewer males than we should have, and we got hermaphrodites. Now, we have clearly shown that many of these animals are sex-reversed males," says Hayes.
Males produce eggs
Hayes and colleagues compared 40 male control frogs with 40 male frogs reared from hatchlings until full sexual maturity, in atrazine concentrations similar to those experienced year-round in areas where the chemical is found.
Of the male frogs exposed to atrazine 90% had low testosterone levels, decreased breeding gland size, feminised laryngeal development, suppressed mating behaviour, reduced sperm production and decreased fertility.
The remaining atrazine-exposed male frogs developed into functional females.
"10% of the exposed genetic males developed into functional females that copulated with unexposed males and produced viable eggs," the researchers wrote.
The larvae that developed from those eggs were all male.
"Atrazine has caused a hormonal imbalance that has made them develop into the wrong sex, in terms of their genetic constitution," says Hayes.
Atrazine levels
Hayes and colleagues exposed frogs to water contaminated with 2.5 parts per billion of atrazine.
In Australia, environmental groups have been concerned about the adequacy of testing of Australian waterways for chemicals such as atrazine.
For example, in 2008, Tasmanian Greens MP Tim Morris said Freedom of Information requests had revealed atrazine levels in the state's waterways as high as 7.42 parts per billion.
The National Health and Medical Research Council recently released revised guidelines that restrict the level of atrazine in drinking water to 20 parts per billion.
Whether the effects found in frogs translate to humans is far from clear.
Frogs have thin skin that can absorb chemicals easily and they literally bathe in the polluted water.
Australian regulatory response
The Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA) says the link between atrazine and gonad development in amphibians is the subject of ongoing debate.
It says it is aware of these and other studies suggesting potential adverse environmental or human health impacts from exposure to atrazine.
"Should these evaluations reveal a causal link between atrazine and adverse impacts, the APVMA would consider appropriate regulatory responses," says Simon Cubit of the APVMA.
Atrazine is no longer approved for use in Europe and the US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) announced last year it would launch a new scientific evaluation of atrazine's effect on humans.
Cubit says the US EPA has indicated that its focus will be data generated since 2003, some of which suggests a potential association with birth defects, low birth weight and premature births.
"The APVMA is very interested in the work being undertaken by the US EPA and will liaise with the US regulator," says the spokesperson. |
Public or Permissioned chains — Whats the best option for enterprises?
Thomas Mueller Blocked Unblock Follow Following May 24, 2017
I have to say, the first two days of Consensus 2017, were very surprising for me. I was a bit sceptical about the event due to the trading focused agenda. This was spurious. The day was very balanced between trading, technology and business relevant topics all covered in a mass of interesting sessions. My next surprise was about the very clear separation between the use of blockchain technology for enterprises and for public scenarios. At day one there were a lot of talks and panels about that and there were mostly clear pros for using permissioned blockchain within the enterprise business. The only one, who has clearly supported the use of public blockchains for enterprises, was David Sønstebø, founder of the blockchain startup IOTA. But is this really such a obvious decision? I think it’s a bit more difficult because the use of permissioned blockchains could have been some disadvantages regarding the expected benefits of using blockchains. That’s why I will try to give some advice (from my point of view)
The difference between public and permissioned blockchains
The best analogy to understand the difference between public and permissioned blockchain is the comparison with Internet and Intranets. The public blockchain is like the Internet. Everybody knows it and everybody has access to it. The bitcoin blockchain as the wellknown one and Ethereum which gets more and more famous because of the rising Ether price. Ethereum is not only a blockchain, it is a comprehensive development platform for decentralized computing, consisting of the ledger, smart contracts, distributed apps and much more. That’s why it’s currently the first choice for running apps on it. The vision of Ethereum is to become the foundation of the new internet or web 3.0. All transactions, apps and smart contracts are kept within the public network, accessible for everyone without a special permission (that’s why it’s called permissonless or public). In contrast to that, a permissioned blockchain is like an company intranet and only accessible by a dedicated group of users which has the eligibility to join the closed network.
I’m the same opinion as David and we at contractus put on the public chain but more on this later. Public chains are well established and ready to use by everyone so why do enterprises prefer using permissioned chains?
Permissioned chains have a better transaction performance
Due to block size limit of an block and the time it takes to mine the next one (Bitcoin 10 minutes, Ethereum 14 seconds) there us a transaction limit in all public chains. It could (or may) take a while until a transaction is commited to the blockchain. This impact on transaction throughput and speed is one core reasons to choose permissiond blockchains and of course, there are mass problems on Bitcoin chain. Because of the higher block generation speed, Ethereum is not so hardly confronted with such transaction problems but has a limitation too. In booth blockchains is currently much work done to handle that issue. The Raiden Network for Ethereum and the Lightning Network for Bitcoin aim the target to allow secure off-chain transactions and allows to increase the transaction speed. The principle behind this approaches is comparable by ordering drinks in a bar. Within a predefined corridor, each new drink is written on a beermat and at the end of the evening, the the total is billed. This principles saves a lot of transaction costs and execution time by using public blockchain.
Permissioned block chains are more secure
In opposite to a widespread opinion, public blockchain are not anonymous. Every transaction resists permanently on the chain and is discoverable by everybody. That’s why it’s absolutely critical to decide which data to write into the blockchain itself (and which into encrypted payload, referenced from the transactions in the chain). Within a permissioned chain there is often a differentiation between public transactions which are accessible by all members of the permissioned network and private transactions, send directly from one participant to another.
Speed of innovation
Established chains can only be changed in it’s core behavior by doing a fork. This depends on the majority of miners which is hard to achieve as the current bitcoin forking discussions show. As far as an innovation, helpful for doing enterprise business, requires a core change, it would be really hard and time-consuming to do this change. In permissioned blockchains, changes can be implemented quite faster since it only requires the “vote” of the attendees or owners of the permissioned blockchain.
A clear decision, of course not! Also the public blockchain has some mission critical advantages.
Public blockchains are accessible by every user
Every user with an internet connection can access the blockchain and use the services on the chain. This is very helpful if enterprises want to think outside the box and want to do business with unknown or unfamilar business partners. One of the main causes of inefficient cross-enterprise communication is that the effort of integrating partners is much to high so the integration is done manually by sending excel files or pdf (or even worse faxes). By using public chains, this effort will be dramatically reduced and this is more than a nice to have benefit. Beside the significantly lower integration effort the boundless cooperation possibility is a further important pro for public chains. It’s possible for the first time to find new business partners with whom the enterprise wasn’t in business before.
Public blockchains allows decentralized cooperation on eye level
One of the main advantages of public blockchains is the missing of an central authority. Especially for cooperation between independent business partners on an equal footing, a classic centralized infrastructure is often inadequate and prevents the use of digital processes within the cooperation. If companies want to cooperate with unknown or unfamiliar partners and don’t want to use one’s platform, public blockchain is a very good possibility. Permissioned chains work also decentralized, due to their operation by a central provider or business partner, the claim of decentralization is not really fullfilled.
Whats the recommendation for enterprises?
As you can see the differences are on the infrastructure level (security, performance,…) and the level of business model (who is able to participate, think outside the box,…). So start thinking from the business and not the technology point of view. Are there requirements to share information or processes with business partners which are not digitally integrated today? Do you want to get in cooperation with new partners? Do you have the requirement to give third parties access to a subset of the transaction data to verify them? In that cases, the public blockchain is an interesting opportunity for you. If you have very hard regulatory or special data security and data protection requirements and are you working in a predefined, stable partner network? Then a permissioned chain may be a good option for you.
Which blockchain shall I use?
There are a lot of permissioned chains out there, Hyperledger, Chain or Quorum are only examples of it. As for each IT system, IT departments will run evaluations to find the right one (which may take a while) before the business project is able to start. Maybe my recommendation can help to fasten this process. Even Ethereum is not the most innovative chain (due to the reason of unchangeability I mentioned before) but it’s a public blockchain there’s foundation technology also runs in a permissioned mode. So a deployment scenario could be to start with Ethereum as a permissioned chain and in the moment the public chain meets the requirements (and there is a great chance it will do in short time) you can switch to the public one. The great benefit in such a scenario is that all the contract code has to be written only one time. As only Ethereum comes along with this advantages it is the Blockchain of our choise and should be yours also. If you have any further questions on this topic or want to discuss blockchain architecture with one of our experts lets get in contact. |
JUDGES 13
« Judges 12 | Judges 13 | Judges 14 »
The Birth of Samson
13:1 And the people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord , so the Lord gave them into the hand of the Philistines for forty years.
2 There was a certain man of Zorah, of the tribe of the Danites, whose name was Manoah. And his wife was barren and had no children.
3 And the angel of the Lord appeared to the woman and said to her, “Behold, you are barren and have not borne children, but you shall conceive and bear a son.
4 Therefore be careful and drink no wine or strong drink, and eat nothing unclean,
5 for behold, you shall conceive and bear a son. No razor shall come upon his head, for the child shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb, and he shall begin to save Israel from the hand of the Philistines.”
6 Then the woman came and told her husband, “A man of God came to me, and his appearance was like the appearance of the angel of God, very awesome. I did not ask him where he was from, and he did not tell me his name,
7 but he said to me, ‘Behold, you shall conceive and bear a son. So then drink no wine or strong drink, and eat nothing unclean, for the child shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb to the day of his death.’”
8 Then Manoah prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord, please let the man of God whom you sent come again to us and teach us what we are to do with the child who will be born.”
9 And God listened to the voice of Manoah, and the angel of God came again to the woman as she sat in the field. But Manoah her husband was not with her.
10 So the woman ran quickly and told her husband, “Behold, the man who came to me the other day has appeared to me.”
11 And Manoah arose and went after his wife and came to the man and said to him, “Are you the man who spoke to this woman?” And he said, “I am.”
12 And Manoah said, “Now when your words come true, what is to be the child’s manner of life, and what is his mission?”
13 And the angel of the Lord said to Manoah, “Of all that I said to the woman let her be careful.
14 She may not eat of anything that comes from the vine, neither let her drink wine or strong drink, or eat any unclean thing. All that I commanded her let her observe.”
15 Manoah said to the angel of the Lord , “Please let us detain you and prepare a young goat for you.”
16 And the angel of the Lord said to Manoah, “If you detain me, I will not eat of your food. But if you prepare a burnt offering, then offer it to the Lord .” (For Manoah did not know that he was the angel of the Lord .)
17 And Manoah said to the angel of the Lord , “What is your name, so that, when your words come true, we may honor you?”
18 And the angel of the Lord said to him, “Why do you ask my name, seeing it is wonderful?”
19 So Manoah took the young goat with the grain offering, and offered it on the rock to the Lord , to the one who works wonders, and Manoah and his wife were watching.
20 And when the flame went up toward heaven from the altar, the angel of the Lord went up in the flame of the altar. Now Manoah and his wife were watching, and they fell on their faces to the ground.
21 The angel of the Lord appeared no more to Manoah and to his wife. Then Manoah knew that he was the angel of the Lord .
22 And Manoah said to his wife, “We shall surely die, for we have seen God.”
23 But his wife said to him, “If the Lord had meant to kill us, he would not have accepted a burnt offering and a grain offering at our hands, or shown us all these things, or now announced to us such things as these.”
24 And the woman bore a son and called his name Samson. And the young man grew, and the Lord blessed him.
25 And the Spirit of the Lord began to stir him in Mahaneh-dan, between Zorah and Eshtaol.
« Judges 12 | Judges 13 | Judges 14 » |
CIOs are under pressure to support fast-evolving digital business scenarios but are finding traditional project and development methods unsuitable, according to Gartner, Inc. Enterprises are increasingly turning to agile development to speed up projects and illustrate their value.
Nathan Wilson, research director at Gartner, said that executed well, use of agile methods has the capability to transform IT-business relationships and have a major positive impact on IT value delivery. However, the value will be delivered only if the CIO and the entire IT management team are dedicated to the culture change that is necessary for success.
"Done well, agile development can be an integral part of the portfolio of methods that the CIO uses to deal with increasing business demand for innovation," said Mr. Wilson. "Done badly, agile development will create a lot more problems than it solves."
Gartner has identified 10 guiding principles for agile development:
No. 1: Agile is not one thing
Agile development methodologies are a set of approaches to software development that share a common philosophy but are sharply distinguished in the details of their implementations. They therefore tend to be adapted to different sorts of problems. Sophisticated organizations with a lot of experience may well use more than one of these approaches, but an organization that is getting started should select one approach and master it before attempting other approaches.
No. 2: Agile is not a "pick'n mix" methodology
Agile methods are highly systematic. Every component element of the methodology is crucial to the success of the methodology. A common mistake is for an organization to embrace some elements of an agile methodology, such as the sprint, but to ignore or play down other elements, such as managing "technical debt." Such organizations enjoy the kudos that comes from rapid development and release of new code, but they are storing up trouble by failing to address technical debt.
No. 3: Embracing agile is a joint business-IT activity
The full benefits of agile cannot be achieved without engaging with business leaders, management and the user community. If the rest of the business does not have an immediate appetite for working in a new way, careful planning and communication will be needed to bring different communities of managers and users on board.
No. 4: With agile, it is important to walk before you try running
Experienced agile practitioners can tackle large-scale developments — the equivalent of climbing Mount Everest. But it takes many years to develop the necessary skills to be able to take on such large-scale software projects. Any organization that is starting out on the agile journey needs to start in the foothills to develop the confidence and competence to take on larger tasks.
No. 5: Embracing agile is embracing continuous learning
Agile practitioners must be committed to continuous improvement in quality and cost-effectiveness, which means that every development is analyzed for lessons that can be used to improve policies and working practices. This analysis and learning are not the responsibility of a small number of senior practitioners; they are fundamental components of the workload of all agile practitioners. Furthermore, the learning is not just appropriate to the programmers who are directly involved in software development; it is also essential for all the related skills, such as project management, architecture, quality assurance and IT budget management.
No. 6: Agile is about teams and teams of teams
The basic organizational unit of delivery in agile development is a small team, typically expressed as "seven, plus or minus two" people — both developers and quality assurance. From an HR perspective, managing agile teams involves walking a fine line between keeping productive teams together and moving individuals between teams to encourage cross-fertilization of ideas. If people are moved too frequently, the teams fail to develop into highly productive units; if people are not moved between teams enough, then each team starts to become isolated and diverges from the other teams. It is important to note that physical location of teams is much more important with agile methods than with conventional approaches to development.
No. 7: Documenting, managing and eliminating technical debt is a core concept of all agile methods
Technical debt is the difference between the state of a piece of software today and the state that it needs to be in to meet appropriate and necessary requirements for quality attributes such as reliability, performance efficiency, portability, usability, maintainability and security. All development creates technical debt. The difference with agile methods is that technical debt is recognized and added to the backlog, not swept under the carpet. Any organization that seeks to embrace agile methods must put in place the necessary elements of the chosen method dedicated to ruthless refactoring and the elimination of technical debt.
No. 8: Working with third-party development service providers on agile development demands special care and attention
Many user IT organizations have a long history of outsourcing application development to specialist service providers. While there is a role for service providers in agile development, it is a very different commercial model and a very different engagement model. Since colocation with business users is axiomatic to agile methods, the opportunities for sending large amounts of work offshore are somewhat limited, so some form of supplemental staffing is likely to be a more useful model.
No. 9: The impact of agile goes well beyond the software development teams
An integral component of the agile methodologies is the concept of "continuous delivery." Agile methodologies are predicated on continuous engagement with business managers and users, and lead to the delivery of a continuous stream of new and modified software into the operational environment. This demands significant changes in working practices for both business governance and relationship management and the infrastructure and operations teams.
No. 10: Other software development methodologies will still have a place in your portfolio
In most commercial and public sector organizations, the application portfolio will present many different classes of development problems, some of which will be well-suited to agile, while some may be better-suited to incremental, iterative development and some to a modified waterfall model. Agile is not "better"; it is simply better-adapted to some problems, but not so well-adapted to others.
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What kinds of disclosure statements would be meaningful? This post describes some disclosure statements that would really tell you something about the authors, and explains why disclosure statements are actually meaningless.
Disclosure statements I would like to see
Study showing that exercise can promote weight loss
Disclosures: the lead author has been a lifelong sports enthusiast and firm believer in the notion that “exercise is medicine”. He is also actively fund raising for a new Institute of Sports Medicine and has made a lucrative side career as motivational speaker with regular media appearances to promote exercise as the cure for all that ails us (including excess weight). The positive message of this paper, which just happens to be very much in line with the author’s thinking on the subject, clearly justifies the lack of a control group and the exclusion of participants who did not lose weight as non-compliant “outliers”.
Study showing that low vitamin D intake causes diabetes
Disclosures: The lead author is on the verge of promotion to tenure but still needs a couple of “big” papers for his CV. Given that a negative study is unlikely to make the cut, extra efforts were taken to massage the data to ensure a positive finding (at least in one subgroup) to increase chances of acceptance in a high impact journal. Never mind that this cross-sectional study cannot actually prove causality, the “provocative” title and the assumptions of causality made in the paper should ensure welcome media attention.
Study showing that weight gain may be linked to lower cognitive function
Disclosures: The senior author has long harboured (in secret) the opinion that fat people cannot be very smart (after all how difficult is it to push away from the plate?). She is also the author of a book on using will-power and positive thinking on conquering obesity and another book on improving cognitive health. She also runs a website where she promotes the use of nutrition supplements to enhance brain function. Never mind that in this study unintentional weight loss had an even bigger effect on cognitive decline – that, after all, is nothing anyone can do much about (also makes for a less sexy paper).
Study showing that early breast cancer screening can save lives
Disclosures: At age 15, the principal investigator lost her mother to breast cancer. This is why the paper chooses to focus on the lives saved rather than on the potential harm caused by frequent false-positives findings or the poor cost-effectiveness of routine screening.
Study showing that individuals with obesity spend food stamps on sugar-sweetened beverages
Disclosures: The author is a card-holding member of the Libertarian party and would like to see government reduce taxes and end hand-outs to folks not willing to work for a living.
Study showing that industry funded research is more likely to show favourable results
Disclosures: The left-leaning senior author has long held the view that Big Pharma, Big Food, Big Energy, Big (take your pick) is the root of all evil and must be kept away from the holy church of independent science, even if much of the research funded by these organisations would never get done (even better!).
Study showing that a widely used cholesterol lowering drug has prevented over 1,000,000 heart attacks
Disclosures: The principle investigator has on several occasions been invited to a cup of coffee by the sales rep of the company that makes this drug. The masters student and post-doc involved in this study have each eaten a slice of pizza (may have been two slices) provided by another (unrelated) drug company at a science fair celebrating young researchers.
Why disclosure statements are meaningless
On a regular basis, whether it is for papers I write, conferences I speak at, or committees I sit on, I am deluged by “Conflict of Interest Declaration Forms” that seemingly require more personal information than my annual tax return.
The goal of all of this, apparently, is to provide “transparency”, so that the respective audience can judge the objectivity (or lack thereof) of my work based on whether or not I may or may not have a percieived “conflict of interest”.
In my humble opinion, this is an entirely irrelevant and useless exercise, which does nothing to actually ensure objectivity in how my work or actions are interpreted or perceived.
[The “disclosure statements I would I would like to see” above are] meant to illustrate how non-declared “conflicts of interest” may be as (if not more) relevant to a real or perceived conflict than whether or not I have consulted for a company or received research funding from industry (or, for that matter, any other interest group – by definition an “interest group” is interested in the outcome of where its money goes – no group that I am aware of is giving away free handouts).
Consider the issue of peer review. Although hardly perfect, the whole purpose of the time-honoured peer-review process is to allow knowledgeable peers to evaluate the scientific merit of a paper. It is their job to fairly evaluate the paper to the best of their ability: Is the topic important? Is the hypothesis relevant? Is the methodology valid? Are the proper statistical tests applied? Are the full data presented? Are the findings interpreted cautiously (and not overstated)? Are limitations acknowledged?
These are the questions that count – in fact, they are the only questions that count. Who funded the study, or what the personal relationship of the authors were to the funding source, is entirely irrelevant – all funders pursue goals, whether commercial, political, or ideological – who cares?
If the paper meets the scientific standards required by the journal (and we assume here that higher impact journals have higher standards and do a more thorough job of vetting all of the relevant aspects of a paper), the funding source should be irrelevant – if the study is well conducted, the findings should stand on their own merit. If anyone does not believe the data or findings or interpretations, they are welcome to disagree – but their criticism should be based on scientific arguments – not just by pointing fingers at the funding source (or ad hominem attacks on the authors).
If any serious doubts do arise about any of the above questions (e.g. methodology, analysis, interpretation, etc.), it is up to the reviewers and editors to either request clarification or to reject (or even retract) the paper. After all, that is what the whole notion of peer-review is about.
So what about the argument that industry funded studies are more likely to report positive findings than other research and should therefore be taken with a grain of salt?
I can think of several possible explanations including the simple fact that no industry that wants to stay in business is likely to fund a trial where there is not at least a fighting chance of having a favourable result.
I am therefore not at all surprised that industry often goes to great lengths to perform due diligence regarding what trials to fund (often more so than some peer-review committees I have sat on) in the hope for a “positive” outcome. Studies that don’t stand a fair chance of producing positive findings is not where industry is likely to (or can be reasonably expected to) put its money. This, however, is not the same as saying that the data or the study (or the investigators) are somehow manipulated to produce positive results – that would be outright scientific fraud.
So rather than wondering about why industry funded studies so often tend to be favourable, I am in fact surprised every time this “biased” funding by industry does leads to results that are far from favourable (or even damaging) to the sponsor (for e.g. I just happened to be one of the PIs of a 10,000 patient study on a an anti-obesity drug, which showed this drug to modestly increase the risk for non-fatal cardiovascular events, a finding which led to the drug being taken off all markets worldwide – hardly a result that the sponsor (who footed the cost of almost $200 million for the trial) wanted to see).
Every researcher I know would like to see their study confirm their favourite hypothesis (or rather discard the null-hypothesis) – the funding source has nothing to do with this – the rewards of a positive finding are evident: high-impact publications, peer-recognition, media interest, promotion, tenure, and funding for yet more studies. I have yet to meet a “successful” researcher who has build a career on a track record of “negative” studies.
But peer-review is not the only mechanism that provides checks and balances. Clinical trials have to be registered, study protocols have to be vetted by ethics committees, good clinical practice guidelines need to be followed, sites are monitored (including random and targeted checks by regulators), primary data sources have to be archived, raw data may have to be made available to the reviewers (or even the public), data monitoring boards must ensure participant safety, the list of checks and balances (at least in clinical trials) goes on and on.
None of this will provide 100% protection against fraud or criminal intent – but nor will a disclosure of the funding source or a statement as to what shares my grandkids happen to own in their education funds.
The only consequence that I see resulting from “disclosures gone wild” is the undermining of public trust in the scientific process. Thus, no matter how relevant, precise, accurate, arms-length or important the findings – simply seeing a statement of industry funding on a paper, is often automatically interpreted as tainting the study.
Oddly enough, the same folks who would criticize an industry funded study showing a positive result for a given product, would often have no problem citing that same study if it happened to show an outcome more in line with their own views and thinking on the matter.
So, rather than obsessing about who is funding what, let us allow the science speak for itself. Let us make sure we respect the peer-review process and ensure that all the other checks and balances are in place.
If we do not trust the scientific process, the addition of a disclosure statement will hardly make us trust it more.
Editors note: This was originally published at Dr. Sharma’s Obesity Notes and has been republished here with permission from the author and minimal editing indicated by brackets. Original posts: Disclosure Statements I Would Like to See and Why Disclosure Statements Are Meaningless.
Dr. Arya M. Sharma is the Chair of Obesity Research and Management at the University of Alberta. Follow him on Twitter @DrSharma. |
Grassroots football came to an abrupt halt across Merseyside on Sunday as teams boycotted matches in protest at rising pitch fees and a lack of investment from football authorities and the government.
Around 300 people gathered in freezing conditions at Camp Hill in Liverpool, home to the FA Chartered Standard club Woolton FC, to call for the Premier League to give 7.5% of broadcasting income – currently a record £5.5bn for the 2013-16 period – into the grassroots game. The Premier League originally agreed to give 5% of its total income to grassroots football but that has fallen to below 1% with the organisation, the government and Football Association each cutting contributions from £20m to £12m a year.
Similar events were held nationwide, including at Hackney Marshes in London, as the Save Grassroots Football campaign attempts to force a parliament debate on the lack of investment via an e-petition on direct.gov.uk. The campaign founder, Kenny Saunders, said: "The main aim is to get more investment from the Premier League but the protest is not just aimed at the Premier League. Local councils are increasing pitch fees across the country and kids, or their parents, can't afford it. We want to raise awareness of the e-petition.
"This isn't just about Merseyside. The same thing is happening in Manchester, Newcastle and London. Walsall council have just increased their pitch fees by 300%. I think many councils are waiting for this e-petition to finish in February before they announce their own pitch fee rises but we won't be going away."
Approximately 95% of junior football teams on Merseyside agreed to boycott matches this weekend to join the protest, before councils postponed matches due to waterlogged pitches – a decision that underlined the campaign's argument about poor facilities.
"Matches are called off week-in, week-out from December to February because of poor facilities and waterlogged pitches," Saunders added. "That's eight to 12 weekends of football that is being lost. If you missed eight to 12 weeks of school you would fall miles behind and, to me, that's why the kids in this country are miles behind other countries in terms of their football development."
Public sector cuts have impacted on the grassroots game due to local authorities raising pitch fees. A glaring example was given at the Camp Hill protest, where representatives of the Bootle, Litherland and Netherton Junior Football League revealed the extent of the costs being demanded by Sefton Council.
Colin Chadd, league secretary, said: "We had a meeting with Sefton Council in October when they said their pitch fees would not be increased. We paid £2,015 last year for the full use of 10 pitches on Buckley Hill and three pitches at Brookvale. On Friday I received a letter saying that this year we would have to pay £5,320.
"After 20 years they have changed from charging teams a block fee for the pitches to charging per team per game. The cost of maintaining a pitch is the same but this way they can charge more money from teams. We'd have to double the amount we charge kids in subs to cover these costs. We won't be paying it."
Saunders called on Liverpool and Everton, indeed all Premier League clubs, to invest more in a grassroots system that provides them with Youth Academy hopefuls from as young as five years old. Kevin Duffy, of the Skelmersdale and Ormskirk League, told the protest: "Over 1,000 kids have missed football in our league this weekend to make a statement about lack of investment in grassroots football. What is going on is wrong. No kid was born in a Premier League club's academy. They all start in grassroots football and we need to protect it." |
This is a video that features the legitimate Manbij Revolutionary Local Council with english subtitles announcing the creation of a FSA Manbij Military Council.
As a reminder and overall view, a democratic process began in Syria with the election of local councils to manage and run the public affairs and civil services in the areas liberated by the FSA. The LCCs are associated to the SNC and then with the NC. They participated to the creation of the FSA military councils. That democratic process was stopped with the destruction of the cities and villages and their infrastructures, the arrival of Daesh, the hostility of the Islamist factions in other cases, and the reconciliation strategy by the Assad’s regime. Aleppo case is an exception because it succeeded to integrate the Islamists in the process. If FSA Darya did not decide to surrender the city, the local management would be hailed today as a democratic success.
The LCC of Manbij was elected before the arrival of Daesh and went into exile in Turkey when Daesh took over the town. It has returned to Jarablus since its liberation. It works closely with the NC and the FSA, and has no relation whatsoever with the PKK/QASAD.
In the video, the Manbij LCC is declaring the formation of a FSA Manbij Military Council from Jarablus and the designated commander thanking the Local Council for his appointment.
The video I posted weeks ago, did not include the speech of the MMC commander and was not with english subtitles. |
Angband Humor
Tolkien and his poor writing
by Chris Kern
Beren goes through all the trouble of having Luthien put Morgoth to sleep, sneaking in, etc. All he has to do is read some glyph of warding scrolls and shoot him with some bolts. He should have found some if he went down to level 100 of Angband. And how did he get down so low with only Angrist? This story is obviously not well thought out.
Hurin manages to slay Mim, and the story makes to mention of his stuff getting disenchanted. I guess mabye he didn't have magical things, but Tolkien could have given us a little clue.
According to Unfinished Tales, in the final days before Hurin's capture he would not wear his iron helm. Why the hell not? Didn't he notice when he put it on there was magic light and he suddenly could see all the monsters around him? No wonder he got captured.
Gothmog fails to summon anything in his fight with Echtelion, even though there is no mention of an anti-summoning corridor.
Turin somehow manages to use Mormegil, with its huge minuses, to off Glaurung in one blow. I don't think so. Glaurung also has "Gothmog syndrome" when he doesn't summon any ancient dragons. "Father of Dragons" indeed.
Excuse me, Mr. Tolkien, it's "Mugash" not "Muzgash", and he's a kobold, not an orc. Geez.
It is impossible for Bard to kill Smaug with one arrow using the Long Bow of Bard, unless our redoutable human has hacked the source code. One wonders exactly what the "black arrow" is.
This could be attributed to luck, but while in Moria the party manages to completely avoid the Evil Iggy. Gandalf also uses an unorthodox strategy of beating the Balrog which involves no invulnerability potions.
Okay, I thought Gandalf was supposed to be honorable. But he had cheat death on! Glorfindel also uses cheats.
Is Samwise Gamgee at some kind of negative level? Sting provides at least 3 attacks, but he only makes two seperate swipes against Shelob. Also, Shelob exhibits "Gothmog Syndrome" when she fails to summon even one spider.
Okay...how did Aragorn turn a Broken Sword into Anarion? The book mentions "forging". Nice euphemism for "hacking"; he obviously went to the Forge of Hex Editing. I think he took cheating lessons from Gandalf.
Gandalf was putting on a show for the Fellowship. With Narya and its immunity to fire, he had nothing to fear from Muar. He obviously had some ulterior motive, probably to cover up the fact that his Cheat Death option is on.
Beren somehow gets the Iron Crown of Morgoth even though he doesn't slay the evil fiend. There's some heavy duty cheating going on here....
Tolkien overestimates the power of the One Ring. Sorry, but "Control Ringwraith", "Resurrection", and "Rule the World" are not innate powers of the ring, nor are they in the list of "Bizarre Things" that it activates for. Perhaps Tolkien misread the spoilers?
After slaying Muar, Gandalf does not pick up Calris. (Or maybe he didn't read the spoilers to find out that it was good; although this is unlikely given his other cheating.)
The Variant Maintainer
by Julian Lighton (author of SAngband)
Effects of too much Angband
by various people on rec.games.roguelike.angband
Sizing up your friends thinking about how many hit points they have.
Hitting on girls saying, "Hey, I'm so tough I could kill Tiamat"
Thinking about how many XP's you would get if you killed your neighbor's stupid dog.
Your girlfriend is lying on the couch watching "Facts of Life" reruns.
Rummaging through your closet hoping to find Ringil.
Screaming 'MCA', when hungry.
Screaming 'MAB' and 'MAH' every hundred yards.
When you've been playing a good 10 hours and going outdoors, you start to 'cringe from the light'.
Trying to read WOR's when waiting for the elevator.
Hitting on girls saying, 'Hey I just *killed* Tiamat'.
Making silly pick-up lines like 'Wanna go home to my place and look at all my weapons of Westernesse?'.
Ordering 'potions of confusion' instead of beer.
Eating mushrooms of hallucination and watching all the ascii symbols appear.
Searching the walls of every building you come in for secret doors.
Trying to disarm your flight bag.
Only carrying a maximum of 22 items at any given time, regardless of size.
Refusing to use a bank and carring all your money on your person only to get mugged by a filthy street urchin while leaving your house.
Asking the bookstore if they have Raal's Tome of Destruction.
Trying to frost bolt your worst enemy.
Automatically killing singing happy drunks whenever you find them.
Carrying a flashlight in one hand, a pencil in another, and a notebook in another.
Putting on clothes you find lying around, just to see what happens to your AC.
Resting for the better part of a day wherever you happen to get tired.
Hunting around for a potion of Cure Light Wounds for that paper cut.
Hacking away at where you think clear icky things are.
Continually walking up and down flights of stairs, refusing to enter a floor until you get a 'special' feeling about the place.
Wishing that you were on the wizard-list for real life (ie. reality).
Letting every dog that you meet breath on you in hopes that your physique will be improved.
Spending entirely to much time wondering what NEXUS or CHAOS would smell like.
Refering to male-genitalia as a Rod of Probing.
Hoping that yours is not a Rod of Speed.
Bashing down every door you come to after you find that you not dexterous enough to simply open them.
You know you have compiled too much variants when: you know which order the files are in, and their relative compilation speeds. (Mark Howson)
When I was your age...
by various people on the Angband IRC channel
New ZAngband Features!
by various people on the Angband IRC channel
Save Our Slime Molds!
by Aidan Ryder, Eric Bock, and DSCreamer on rec.games.roguelike.angband
Aidan Ryder: Does anyone else collect and name slime molds? My home looks a bit like this: a) A slime mold {Milton} b) A slime mold {Jeremy} c) A slime mold {Thomas}.... :Eric Bock: :LOL! :That's probably the strangest Angband ritual I've ever heard of. :AFAIK, you're the only one :) The only one in the "Save Our Slime Mold" association? And I wondered why the conventions were underattended... And I do it in RL too...;) :Any particular reason? And do any of them look even remotely close to :something one would want to munch on? :) I've always visualised a slime mold as sort of a green lump with little eyes on stalks on top. They are my friends. Do not eat them. You know, I cry whenever I find Slime Mold juice. ::DSCreamer: ::Don't! Slime mold juice is artificial! Must be some errr... interesting E numbers in it... ::Artificially produced by magic in the alchemy shop, of course.
What Angband *really* is
Robert: What is a "cow-ear"? I hope it's not what I think.
Newbie .. just coming in: What is Angband?
Adam: It's exactly what you think. Kind of scary, eh? A little doggie chew toy. And it's in the middle of my carpet.
The amphibious Whale
by Remco Gerlich on rec.games.roguelike.angband
Your ancestors have killed thousands of these creatures. It is fed up with evolution, and returning to dry land. It is often found on beaches, where groups of helpful treehuggers will try to pull it back into the sea. It doesn't move; it hopes the environment freaks will think it's dead. A kill of this creature is worth tons of blubber for any character. It can claim to be a mammal, repeat that it is a mammal, repeat that it is a mammal, and explode (in very gory fashion).
Famous last words
by various people on rec.games.roguelike.angband
It did HOW MUCH damage?!
Just one more round before I use that potion of *Healing*.
Cyberdemon? What's that?
Hey, I didn't know those things could breathe!
I'll be fine unless he hits with ALL his attacks.
I'd sure get a lot of XP if I could beat that guy...
OK, I'll save just enough mana to cast Teleport.
Great Hell Wyrm? No prob, I resist fire.
The Angel of Death? Who needs nether resistance?
Either he's going to kill me or I'm going to kill him.
WHO summons Ancient Dragons?
Hey, I'm stunned, what's that?
I think I've finally gotten the hang of this.
Wonder what that is?
If I try this staff it's bound to get me out of here
Why can't I find the cure serious wounds when I need one?
I'll be safe down these stai....arrrgh!
I wonder what a Sky Drake breathes?
What happens if I drink this? It'll cost less than IDing it.
What does 'breeds explosively' mean?
It took me for /how/ /many/ HP?!!! (killed by the Tarrasque)
Argh! Get of the keyboard you bloody cat... Oh No! <sob> (killed by a small fluffy cat... grrr...)
Just one more turn... C'mon, recover damn you! Oh. (poisoned)
I'll just start windoze on the 2nd processor - no need to save... (killed by a software bug ;)
He's stunned, I don't need to heal quite yet...
He can't possibly mana storm three times in a row. (After of course getting sauron down to 1 star.)
What's it doing this high in the dungeon?
What's toxic waste?
Aaargh!
Journal of a Barbarian Monk (YASD)
This is Bob Hayworth, reporting live for Dungeon News at the scene of another brutal slaying. Officials have just finished removing the body of Yet Another Dumb Adventurer, who was apparently killed by a magical book. The exact cause of death is unknown at this point, but preliminary reports suggest water bolts, fire and poison were involved. Eyewitness monsters describe the battle as short but bloody, with all of the blood apparently coming from the adventurer, who did not actually even hurt the magic book. I will now try to get a few words from the victor. Mr. Raal's, do you feel this killing was justified? Mr. Raal's? Mr. Raal's, just a few words, please? Mr. Raal's? Do you have something to say? C'mon, out with i- aaaaarrrggggh!!
Bob? Are you there Bob? We've lost the satellite feed, Bob. Are you still there? Excuse us, folks, we're having some technical difficulties. We'll be back after a short word from our sponsors, Bad Idea Jeans...
Murphy's and Sod's Angband Laws
"If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong"; and
"If something is going to go wrong, it will do so at the worst possible time and place".
These two laws govern and explain everything that happens to us from why our toast always fall with the jam side (or jelly side for our American friends :-) )down to why the queue you are in at the Supermarket is always the slowest. It is a sad but inescapable truth that these two laws and their corollaries extend themselves into the game of Angband.
Murphy and Sod's Angband Laws |
Precise Computation of CLR Object Size 5 (100%) 1 vote (100%)vote
I think many developers have been wondering: How many bytes does an object instance take in managed code? What’s the limit for a CLR object? Are there any differences between 32-bit and 64-bit systems for memory allocation?
Preface
First, let’s recap, there are 2 kinds of objects in .NET: value types and reference types that are created on the stack and in the heap (managed by GC), respectively. Value types are intended for storing plain data, like integers or characters. Every field in a value type object is being copied during the variable assignment. Also, the life-cycle of such objects depends on the usage scope. Default sizes of value types are defined in Common Type System:
Reference types, on the other hand, are references to a memory location spanned by an object instance in heap.
The following diagram shows the internal structure of CLR objects:
For reference type variables, a fixed size value (4 bytes, DWORD type) containing the address of an object instance created in heap (there are also Large Object Heap, HighFrequencyHeap, etc., but I won’t focus on this subject here) is pushed to stack. For example, in C++, this value is called a pointer, in .NET – a reference to the object.
The initial value of SyncBlock is null. However, SyncBlock may store the hash code of an object (when calling the GetHashCode method) as well, or the syncblk record, which is placed by runtime into object header during synchronization (using lock, or Monitor.Enter directly.).
Each type has its own MethodTable, and all instances of the same type use the same MethodTable. This table stores information about the type itself (interface, abstract class, etc).
Reference type pointer is a reference to object stored in a variable at offset +4 offset. The rest are class fields.
SOS
Let’s move on to practice. It’s impossible to detect the object size with standard functionality of CLR. Yes, we have the sizeof operator in C#, but it is designed for value types. In the case of referenced types, it is useless.
There is an extension of Visual Studio debugger called SOS (Son of Strike) for such purposes.
Before using it, we should enable unmanaged code debugging:
To activate SOS, we need to open VS > Debug > Windows > Immediate Window during debugging and enter the following:
.load sos.dll 1 . load sos . dll
After this, it will be loaded successfully:
SOS includes lots of commands. In our case, we will need the following ones:
• !DumpStackObjects (!DSO) – displays the list of detected objects within a current stack;
• !DumpObj (!DO) – displays the information about an object at a specified address;
• !ObjSize – returns the full size of an object. We will examine this command later.
To learn about the rest of commands, enter !Help.
For demo, let’s create a simple console application and put MyExampleClass class:
class MyExampleClass { byte ByteValue = 255; // 1 byte sbyte SByteValue = 127; // 1 byte char CharValue = 'a'; // 2 bytes short ShortValue = 128; // 2 bytes ushort UShortValue = 65000; // 2 bytes int Int32Value = 255; // 4 bytes uint UInt32Value = 255; // 4 bytes long LongValue = 512; // 8 bytes ulong ULongValue = 512; // 8 bytes float FloatValue = 128F; // 4 bytes double DoubleValue = 512D; // 8 bytes decimal DecimalValue = 10M; // 16 bytes string StringValue = "String"; // 4 bytes } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 class MyExampleClass { byte ByteValue = 255 ; // 1 byte sbyte SByteValue = 127 ; // 1 byte char CharValue = 'a' ; // 2 bytes short ShortValue = 128 ; // 2 bytes ushort UShortValue = 65000 ; // 2 bytes int Int32Value = 255 ; // 4 bytes uint UInt32Value = 255 ; // 4 bytes long LongValue = 512 ; // 8 bytes ulong ULongValue = 512 ; // 8 bytes float FloatValue = 128F ; // 4 bytes double DoubleValue = 512D ; // 8 bytes decimal DecimalValue = 10M ; // 16 bytes string StringValue = "String" ; // 4 bytes }
Now, let’s calculate the estimated size for the class instance – so far, it is 64 bytes.
However, let’s recall the passage about the object structure from the beginning of this article. So, the final size will be:
class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { var myObject = new MyExampleClass(); Console.ReadKey(); //Here, we put a breakpoint } } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 class Program { static void Main ( string [ ] args ) { var myObject = new MyExampleClass ( ) ; Console . ReadKey ( ) ; //Here, we put a breakpoint } }
.load sos.dll !DSO 1 2 . load sos . dll ! DSO
and run debugger (F5).We need to enter the following commands into Immediate Window:
The following screenshot shows the address of myObject which will be passed to the !DO command as a parameter:
And the size of myObject is 72 bytes, isn’t it? No, it’s not. The thing is we forgot to add string size of the StringValue variable. 4 bytes is just a reference. Now, it’s time to find out its real size.
Enter the !ObjSize command:
Thus, the real size of myObject is 100 bytes. Additional 28 bytes are taken by the StringValue variable.
Additional 28 bytes are taken by the StringValue variable.
However, let’s check it by using StringValue variable address (01b8c008):
What does System.String’ size comprise of?
First, characters in CTS (System.Char type) are Unicode ones and span 2 bytes.
Second, string is nothing but an array of characters. For example, we assigned the “String” value to StringValue field, which equals 12 bytes virtually.
Third, System.String is a reference type. It means that it is placed in GC Heap and will consist of SyncBlock, TypeHandle, Reference point + the remaining fields of the class. Reference point will not be considered in this case, since it was already calculated in the MyExampleClass class (reference, 4 bytes in size).
Fourth, the System.String structure looks as follows:
Additional class fields comprise of the following variables: m_stringLength of Int32 type (4 bytes), m_firstChar of Char type (2 bytes). The Empty variable is not calculated since it is an empty static field.
Let’s also look at the size – 26 bytes instead of previously calculated 28. Let’s recalc:
StringValue = SyncBlock (4) + TypeHandle (4) + m_stringLength (4) + m_firstChar (2) + “String” (12) = 26 Additional 2 bytes are result of the alignment carried out by the CLR memory manager.
Additional 2 bytes are result of the alignment carried out by the CLR memory manager.
x86 vs. x64
Basic difference lies in the size of DWORD – a memory pointer. For the 32-bit systems, it is 4 bytes, for 64-bit systems – 8 bytes.
So, while an empty class equals 12 bytes in x86, it equals 24 bytes in x64.
CLR Objects Size limit
It is considered that the size of System.String is limited only by available system memory.
However, any instance of any type cannot take more than 2Gb. This limitation applies to both, x86, and x64 systems.
For example, even though List has the LongCount() method, it does not mean that it can store 2^64 objects. As a workaround, we can use the BigArray class that is specifically designed for such purposes.
Conclusion
In this article, I wanted to review CLR object size calculation process. Of course, there are pitfalls, especially when it comes to the !ObjSize command, which can lead to double counting because of the intern strings.
The question of object size and its memory alignment raises only in case of huge demand for resources usage optimization.
References: |
× VCU details $6 billion impact on state; cultural influence on region
RICHMOND, Va. – A report researched and produced by Virginia Commonwealth University found the academic institution has generated nearly $6 billion in economic activity, supports 63,000 jobs in Virginia, and has a cultural impact on the region as well.
VCU’s Center for Urban and Regional Analysis examined VCU’s economic and cultural impact in a report titled “VCU’s Impact on the Region: Talent, Innovation, Collaboration.”
VCU’s economic impact within the city of Richmond was reported to be $1.5 billion and included about 18,000 jobs.
In the metropolitan area, the impact is $4 billion and 47,000 jobs.
For each dollar spent by VCU, including payroll, employee spending, and student spending, expands the Richmond economy by $2, the regional economy by $3.70 and the state’s economy by $3.20, the report found.
VCU Health System, a nearly $3 billion enterprise, has more than 11,000 employees, more than around 36,000 admissions annually, nearly 100,000 emergency department visits and more than 650,000 outpatient visits.
VCU officials said that the numbers are only a part of the university’s impact and that VCU has a role as a “regional steward” and influences culture. An excerpt of the report states that VCU is synergistically linked with the community and “integral part of the very soul of the community.”
The report also references the student body size, employees, and percentage of alumni who stay within the region.
“Thus, at any given moment, well over 10 percent of the population of the entire Richmond metropolitan area is comprised of former or current VCU students, faculty and staff. In the city of Richmond, this percentage is undoubtedly much higher. While they certainly do not all share the same political attitudes or tastes, their youthful, creative energy contributes in countless ways to shaping the identity of Richmond.”
Michael Rao, Ph.D., president of VCU and VCU Health, said the report’s findings will help VCU address some of the complex issues faced by the community.
“We learned a lot from this report about what VCU has been, and what we should become,” Rao said. “Our focus will be the people behind these numbers — the people of Richmond — and how we can continue to use our expertise, talents and resources to help solve some of the most challenging issues our city faces, including K-12 education, health disparities, housing and others.”
“We have already begun work on these complex issues, and this report is a call to action to forge ahead in helping achieve what’s difficult,” Rao concluded.
Richmond Mayor Levar M. Stoney said the strong relationship between the city and the university is beneficial to both partners.
“The impact of VCU upon the city of Richmond cannot be overstated,” Stoney said. “Its artistic, cultural, academic and economic contributions through its university and health system have helped make us the destination city we are today, and will play a huge role in our future success going forward.”
Barry Matherly, president and CEO of the Greater Richmond Partnership, cited VCU’s role in engaging with the community as critical to the region’s success.
“I think the big connection here is that VCU actually wants to be a part of the community and engages in a very thoughtful way to make sure that the community is growing with the university,” Matherly said. “And I think the ability to focus, not only just on inside of the walls of the university, but to focus externally around it, makes it that powerful engine that’s helping drive this economy.”
The full report and a video about the report’s findings are available at president.vcu.edu/impact/. |
The United States Postal Service's computer networks were breached, the USPS announced this morning. The breach was discovered back in September -- it's not clear when the actual attack(s) took place -- and the Washington Post is reporting that Chinese government is responsible. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation is leading investigations into the breach; FBI officials aren't saying who they believe is responsible.
The entire USPS staff of over 800,000 employees is affected by the breach: "names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, addresses, dates of employment and other information" were all taken, according to USPS officials. The breach reportedly doesn't affect USPS customers, both in-store and online via USPS.com, though some customer information (names, email addresses and phone numbers) was also taken -- if you "contacted the Postal Service Customer Care Center via phone or email between January 1st and August 16th." Officials are saying no other customer info was taken. "At this time, we do not believe that potentially affected customers need to take any action as a result of this incident," a statement from the USPS says.
All USPS employees are being offered one free year of credit monitoring in wake of the information breach, though we're guessing that a few of those approximately 800,000 people are seeking employment elsewhere after today's news. |
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Jurgen Klopp has vowed to overhaul Liverpool’s approach to the loan system as he wants youngsters to stay put at the Academy as they learn their trade.
The Reds currently have more than a dozen players out on temporary deals, including most of their best under-21 starlets.
That list includes the likes of Harry Wilson, Kevin Stewart, Ryan Kent, Sheyi Ojo, Samed Yesil, Jordan Williams, Lloyd Jones, Danny Ward, Lawrence Vigouroux, Sergi Canos, Taiwo Awoniyi and Ryan McLoughlin.
First-team squad players Mario Balotelli, Andre Wisdom, Tiago Ilori, Luis Alberto and Lazar Markovic are also out on loan.
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Klopp has been getting to grips with the loan system in England and intends to make some changes to how Liverpool use it.
“Of course I am looking at the loan players,” he said.
“I try to learn all about English football because it is completely different to other countries. Liverpool a few years ago had 20 to 25 players out on loan.
“It is not normal to have players on loan in Germany, but in England it is.
“When I have time I watch these players. I went to Wolverhampton to watch Ojo but he didn’t play!
“It’s part of my job – what we do with the guys here and those out on loan. There will be a time when we have to make a decision.
“I’m not sure in this moment it’s always best to give young players to other clubs. I think it’s a kind of pressure you don’t need at that age.
“You play together with experienced players every day and have to show you are better than them. Everyone at home is expecting you to take the next step.
“Maybe we need to cool down the situation a little bit, hold on to these guys longer and let them play in our second team and develop as a team. We will see what we will do in the future.
“Usually a manager in England has not enough time to change things. But we will try to take our ideas and change a few things for the future.” |
$5 Jailed Unlim It’s your first day in lockup. We’re happy that you’ll support us. We’ll send you an email to show thanks and you’ll get your name listed on our website (werealive.com) as a backer.
$10 Locked Down! Unlim You’ll get our Lockdown exclusive poster and the previous reward. If only you could somehow use the poster to escape…
$20 Early Inmate 250 You’re one of our first inmates. You’ll get all three segments of the 5+ hour epic at a discount AND before the general public. Maybe crime does pay…
$25 Inmate Unlim Well, you weren’t one of the first 250 inmates, but you’re still getting all three pieces for less than non-inmates AND before the public release date!
$30 EARLY ESCAPE PLANNER! 100 You weren’t the first in the prison, and you won’t be the last! You’ll get the entire story, before the public, and our poster, to cover up the escape hole you’ve dug out in your cell. See you on the outside!
$35 ESCAPE PLANNER! Unlim You’re not the first to escape, but you’re not sticking around! You’ll get the entire story, before the public, and our poster, to cover up the escape hole you’ve dug out in your cell. Why do the guards keep allowing posters in the cells?
$40 LOCK UP! Unlim You’ll skip the rec yard this time. You’ll be busy listening to all three parts of Lockdown and the entire digital soundtrack.
$60 DON’T PANIC! 20 You want your family to know you’re alright, so you find the gruffest voice you can. SCOTT CHARLES MARVIN, the voice of Burt, will record a personalized outgoing voicemail for you. You’ll also get a digital copy of Lockdown to pass the time in your cell.
$60 ONE PHONE CALL! 20 You’re not sure how you ended up in jail, but you better make the one phone call count! You’ll get a 15 minute Skype session with the Producers of We’re Alive. You better listen to the digital copy of Lockdown you’ll receive so you know what they’re talking about!
$75 BOOK CART! 80 KICKSTARTER ONLY- You’ll get a physical copy of the entire script, which won’t be available anywhere else, more than 350 pages, and a digital copy of Lockdown.
$80 CONTRABAND! 200 You’ll get a limited edition CD set of Lockdown. Just don’t let the guards see, or they’ll take it away.
$100 INKED! 50 You’ll get a signed copy, by Kc, of the cut and bound script. You’ll also receive a digital download of Lockdown.
$120 SITTIN’ PRETTY! 50 You might not be at the top of the food chain, but where you’re sitting isn’t so bad. You’ll get the limited edition CD set of Lockdown, a digital script, the digital soundtrack download and a digital download of Lockdown.
$200 Guard! 100 You’ve been collecting contraband for a while now. You’ve got the limited edition Lockdown CD set, signed by cast and crew, a bound, and signed, copy of the script, and somehow you confiscated a digital script, and the soundtrack. (CD set signatures depend on cast and crew availability.)
$500 5 YEAR SENTENCE! 2 You’ve been in for a while, so you have one of the only 500 ORIGINAL, first printing signed copies of We’re Alive Season 1. The guards know what it means to you, so you get to keep it. You’ll also get a digital download of Lockdown.
$600 LIFE SENTENCE! 3 You know what you did and why you’re here. At this point you may as well start talking. You’ll get to voice a character with 1-2 lines in the story. After all, loose lips sink ships. You’ll also get a digital copy of Lockdown as proof of your cooperation. You’ll also get a digital copy of the story and a signed script. If you’re interested in remote recording, please contact us. (Travel and accommodation not included.)
$700 DINNER WITH THE WARDEN! 5 The warden is rewarding your good behavior with a work release. You’ll spend it at a dinner party with the creator and producers of Lockdown. Spend the evening eating, and discussing Lockdown and We’re Alive. You’ll also get the CD set of Lockdown a digital copy and a signed copy of the script. Must be able to travel to Orange, CA. (Travel and accommodations not included)
$800 TRUSTEE! 5 You’ve followed every rule and play by the book, and the guards have noticed. At this level, you’ll receive an Associate Producer credit in the series and on IMDB. You’ll also get a digital copy and CD set of Lockdown and a signed script. Don’t let that power go to your head, though.
$1000 LIFE SENTENCE WITHOUT PAROLE! 3 Life sentence wasn’t enough for you. You’re stuck here forever. You’ll get to voice a character. These roles have 4-6 lines, your chance to stand out in Lockdown. You’ll also get a digital and signed physical copy of the signed script. On top of that you’ll get a digital copy and CD set of Lockdown. If you’re interested in remote recording, please contact us. (Travel and accommodations not included.) |
UPDATE 8/11/17: Publisher Flyhigh Works announced last week that its superb rhythm game Voez would receive 14 news songs on Switch in a free update tomorrow, November 9th.
The only thing we didn't know at the time, was what those songs (which will bring the total track list up to 160) would actually be. We can finally stop wondering, though! Flyhigh Works has released a trailer demoing all 14 new songs, and you can watch it below.
ORIGINAL STORY 2/11/17: Superb rhythm game Voez is getting another free update on Switch next week, and it will add 14 new songs to the game's already extensive track roster.
Voez's 1.3 update is due to arrive next Thursday, November 9th, and publisher Flyhigh Works has revealed two of the 14 incoming tracks. These are '25 Color Twilight' and 'Promise from Another World', and there's the briefest peek at them in Flyhigh Works' recent news update video. Just skip to the 16:20 mark below.
If you've not yet had the pleasure, Voez is an absolutely fantastic, mesmerising rhythm game. It's entirely touch-based (although Flyhigh Works recently announced that controller input will be added at a later date) and masterfully blends catchy genre-spanning Japanese and Korean pop with exhilarating beat patterns and stellar visualisations. All of which comes together to look something like this:
Voez started life as free-to-play mobile game, and pay-to-play songs are added to that version on a regular basis. The Switch version, however, launched with 116 complete songs included in its £20-ish price. Two updates since then have increased the roster to 146, and the 14 new tracks brings the total up to 160, making that £20 look even more reasonable.
Flyhigh Works usually reveals the full track listing for each new Voez update in a video prior to launch, so I'll update the story if and when that finally arrives. |
Single Image Super Resolution involves increasing the size of a small image while keeping the attendant drop in quality to a minimum. The task has numerous applications, including in satellite and aerial imaging analysis, medical image processing, compressed image/video enhancement and many more. In this blog post we apply three deep learning models to this problem and discuss their limitations and promising ways to overcome them.
Single Image Super Resolution: Problem statement
Our objective is to take a low resolution image and produce an estimate of a corresponding high‑resolution image. This problem is ill‑posed – multiple high‑resolution images can be produced from the same low‑resolution image. For instance, suppose we have a 2×2 pixel sub‑image containing a small vertical or horizontal bar [Fig. 1]. Regardless of the orientation of the bar, these 4 pixels will correspond to just one pixel in a picture downscaled 4 times. With real life images, one needs to overcome an abundance of similar problems, making the task difficult to solve.
Figure 1: from left to right, ground truth HR image, corresponding LR image,
prediction of a model trained to minimize MSE loss
First, let’s introduce a quantitative quality‑measurement method to evaluate and compare the models. For each model implemented, we will compute a metric commonly used to measure the quality of reconstruction of lossy compression codecs, called Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR). This metric is a de‑facto standard used in Super Resolution research. It measures how much the distorted image (possibly of lower quality) deviates from the original high‑quality image. In this setting, PSNR is the ratio of maximum possible pixel value of the image (signal strength) to maximum mean squared error (MSE) between the original image and its estimated version (noise strength), expressed in logarithmic scale.
\(PSNR = 10 \cdot log_{10}\frac{MAX_I^2}{MSE}\)
The larger the PSNR values, the better the reconstruction, and therefore maximization of PSNR naturally leads to minimizing MSE as the objective function. That was our approach in two out of three models we present here.
In our experiments, we trained the models to upscale input images four times (in terms of width and height). Above this factor, upscaling even small images becomes hard – for example, an image upscaled eight times has a 64x bigger pixel count. Storing it consequently requires 64x more memory in raw form, to which it is converted during training.
We have tested our models on benchmarks commonly used in the literature – Set5, Set14 and BSD100. The performance of the models described on these datasets is cited in the papers, which allowed us to compare our results to those other authors have put forward.
The models were implemented in PyTorch, an open‑source neural network framework developed by Facebook.
Why deep learning?
One of the most commonly used techniques for upscaling an image is interpolation. Although simple to implement, this method leaves much to be desired in terms of visual quality, as the details (e.g. sharp edges) are often not preserved.
Figure 2: Most common interpolation methods produce blurry images. From top to bottom:
nearest neighbour interpolation, bilinear interpolation and bicubic interpolation. The image
was upscaled 4x.
More sophisticated methods exploit internal similarities of a given image or use datasets of low‑resolution images and their high‑resolution counterparts, effectively learning a mapping between them. Among example‑based SR algorithms, the sparse‑coding‑based method is one of the most popular.
This method requires a dictionary to be found that will allow us to map low resolution images into an intermediate, sparse representation. In addition, the HR dictionary is learned, and will allow us to restore our estimate of a high resolution image. Such a pipeline usually involves several steps and not all of them can be optimized. Ideally we would like to have all of these steps combined in one big step with all of its parts being optimizable. That effect can be achieved by a neural network, the architecture of which is inspired by sparse coding.
See more here.
SRCNN
SRCNN was the first deep learning method to outperform traditional ones. It is a convolutional neural network consisting of only 3 convolutional layers: patch extraction and representation, non‑linear mapping and reconstruction.
Before being fed into the network, an image needs to be upsampled via bicubic interpolation. It’s then converted to YCbCr color space, while only luminance channel (Y) is used by the network. The network’s output is then merged with interpolated CbCr channels to produce a final color image. We chose this procedure because we are not interested in changing colors (this is the information stored in the CbCr channels), but only their brightness (the Y channel), and ultimately because human vision is more sensitive to luminance (“black and white”) differences than chromatic differences.
We found SRCNN really difficult to train. It was sensitive to hyperparameter changes, and the set‑up presented in the paper (learning rate 10-4 for the first two layers, 10-5 for the last layer, SGD optimizer) caused our PyTorch implementation to produce sub‑optimal results. We observed small changes under some different learning rates, but in the end the thing that gave us the biggest performance boost was switching to Adam optimizer, with a learning rate of 10-5 used for all layers. The final network was trained on 14k 32×32 subimages from the same dataset as in original paper (91 images).
Figure 3: Upper left – bicubic interpolation, upper right – SRCNN, bottom left – perceptual loss, bottom right – SRResNet. SRCNN,
perceptual loss and SRResNet images were produced by our implementations of corresponding models.
Perceptual loss
Although SRCNN is already better than standard methods, there are some ways in which it can still be enhanced. As mentioned earlier, the network is unstable, and one may also wonder whether optimizing MSE is an optimal choice.
Clearly, the images obtained by minimizing MSE are overly smooth. (MSE tends to produce an image resembling the mean of all possible high resolution pictures, resulting in a given low resolution picture [Fig. 1]). MSE also does not capture the perceptual differences between the model’s output and the ground truth image. Consider a pair of images, where the second one is a copy of the first, but shifted a few pixels to the left. For a human the copy looks almost indistinguishable from the original, but even such a small change can cause PSNR to decrease dramatically.
How should the perceived content of a given image be preserved? A similar arises in neural style transfer, and perceptual loss is a potential solution. It too optimizes MSE, but instead of using the model output itself, one can use the high‑level image feature representations extracted from pretrained convolutional neural networks (in our case output from 7th layer of VGG16). The intuition behind this idea is that a network trained for image classification (like VGG) stores in its feature maps the information on what details of common objects look like. And we want our upscaled image to be made up of objects resembling real world ones as much as possible.
Apart from changing the loss function, network architecture is also remodeled. The model is much deeper than SRCNN, uses residual blocks and does most of the processing on low‑resolution images (which accelerates training and inference). Upscaling also happens inside the network. In their paper, the authors used transposed convolutions (also called deconvolutions) with kernel 3×3 and stride=2 for that purpose. Artifacts produced by this model seemed similar to those known as the checkerboard effect. To reduce this effect we also tried deconvolution with a 4×4 kernel and nearest neighbor interpolation followed by a 3×3 convolutional layer with stride=1. In the end, interpolation followed by convolutional layer gave the best results, but didn’t remove the artifacts completely. Similar effects were observed in the original report.
Similar to the process described in paper, our training pipeline consisted of a dataset of 288×288 random crops from nearly 10k images from MS‑COCO. We set the learning rate to 10-3 and used Adam as our optimizer. Unlike in the paper cited above, we skipped post‑processing (histogram matching) as it didn’t provide any improvement.
SRResNet
In order to maximise our PSNR performance, we decided to implement a network called SRResNet, which achieves state‑of‑the‑art results on standard benchmarks. The original paper mentions a way of extending it in a way that allows more high frequency details to be restored.
As with the residual network described in the previous paragraph, SRResNet’s residual blocks architecture is based on this post. There are two minor additions: first, SRResNet uses Parametric ReLU instead of ReLU, which generalizes the former by introducing a learnable parameter that makes it possible to adaptively learn the negative part coefficient. The other difference is the image upsampling method used – in SRResNet, sub‑pixel convolutional layers are used. This technique is thoroughly explained here.
The images generated by the SRResNet we trained are almost indistinguishable from the results presented in the paper. The training took two days, during which we used Adam optimizer with a learning rate of 10-4. The dataset used consisted of 96×96 random crops from MS‑COCO, similar to the perceptual loss network.
Future work
There are several promising deep learning‑based approaches to single image super resolution that we didn’t test due to time constraints.
This recent paper mentions superb PSNR results gained thanks to the use of a modified SRResNet architecture. The authors remove batch normalization from the residual layers, and increase the number of residual layers used from 16 to 32. The resulting network trains for seven days on NVIDIA Titan Xs. Our implementation of SRResNet trained for two days to get our results, which allowed for faster iterations and more efficient hyperparameter tuning, but would not be possible had the ideas described been implemented.
Our perceptual loss experiments show that PSNR may not be a good metric to use for evaluating super resolution networks. In our opinion, more research needs to be done on different types of perceptual loss. In the papers we have examined, we’ve only seen simple MSE between VGG feature map representations of network output and ground truth. It’s unclear why MSE, being a per‑pixel loss, would be a good choice in this case.
Another promising direction for super resolution is Generative Adversarial Networks. This original paper extends SRResNet by using it as part of the architecture called SRGAN. Images generated by the resulting network contain high frequency details, like animals’ fur or grass straws. While they may look more believable, the images generated suffer in the PSNR statistics.
Figure 4: From top to bottom: the image produced by our SRResNet implementation,
the image produced by SRResNet extension, and the original image
Conclusion
In this blogpost we have described our experiments with three different convolutional neural networks used for Single Image Super Resolution. The table below summarizes our results.
SRCNN Perceptual loss SRResNet + short inference
+ better than standard methods
– worst results among deep learning approaches + more natural looking results than SRCNN
– strong artifacts + state‑of‑the‑art results
– long inference Figure 5: Advantages and disadvantages of the models discussed
Even a simple three layer SRCNN was able to beat most non‑deep‑learning methods when measured on standard benchmark datasets using PSNR. Our examinations of perceptual loss showed, however, that this measure is not perfect for evaluating our model’s performance, as we were able to produce visually appealing images that were much worse than bicubic interpolation when evaluated with PSNR. Finally, we reimplemented SRResNet and reproduced state‑of‑the‑art results on benchmark datasets.
References
[1] Image Super‑Resolution Using Deep Convolutional Networks
[2] Perceptual Losses for Real‑Time Style Transfer and Super‑Resolution
[3] Photo‑Realistic Single Image Super‑Resolution Using a Generative Adversarial Network
[4] Enhanced Deep Residual Networks for Single Image Super‑Resolution
[5] Real‑Time Single Image and Video Super‑Resolution Using an Efficient Sub‑Pixel Convolutional Neural Network
[6] Training and investigating Residual Nets |
Photograph by Kenishirotie / Shutterstock
The conventional wisdom of how most of us should invest our money is clear—avoid paying high fees to money managers for their supposed stock-picking expertise. In fact, steer clear of single stocks altogether, and simply buy “the market,” meaning an exchange-traded or mutual fund that passively tracks the performance of the entire stock market. And, maybe most important, focus on the long run, by holding investments through their ups and downs rather than trying to time the market by buying low and selling high—too tricky to do, say the experts.
This is good advice, as far as it goes. (And, for what it’s worth, I follow it myself, mostly.) On the other hand, a big pillar supporting it is the “efficient markets hypothesis,” economist-speak for the assumption that the prices of tradable assets like stocks, bonds, and commodities respond immediately and appropriately to new information, an assumption that depends on market participants, in other words people, acting rationally. Here, “acting rationally” means maximizing one’s return for a given level of risk, something economists call “mean-variance optimization.”
This hypothesis, if true, makes stock picking, timing highs and lows, or any other technique, powerless to beat the recommended strategy of simply buying and holding “the market.”
On the other hand, we know that some small percentage of people (think Warren Buffett, and a handful of other superstars) do regularly beat the market. And that the efficient market hypothesis’ picture of people as perfectly rational robots is, at best, an approximation that conflicts with the reality of irrationally exuberant rallies, market crashes in the absence of bad news, or any of Keynes’ animal spirits that all too often drive human behavior and with it that of the markets.
“Put less money into equities when markets are freaking out and leave money in equities when markets are more normal.”
In his new book, Adaptive Markets: Financial Evolution at the Speed of Thought, M.I.T. finance professor Andrew Lo attempts to account for the messier, more feeling realities of human behavior. A key premise is that markets evolve, like species, but much faster: “evolution at the speed of thought.” And that this evolution happens in fits and starts, in response to changes in the environment—hence, what he calls the “adaptive” markets hypothesis. It’s during these times of change that human emotions play their biggest role. Lo believes we are in one of those times now and, in his book, he applies biology, psychology, neuroscience, and history toward the goal of improving on the efficient markets hypothesis—which, Lo says, is not only flawed but is becoming increasingly so as the financial environment continues to change.
I spoke to Professor Lo on the phone one recent evening and he fervently held forth on these ideas. He thinks they support a new conventional wisdom around investing that is more in line with the realities of human behavior.
Why is the efficient markets hypothesis becoming more flawed over time?
Over the last few decades, the environment in which financial markets operate has been changing more rapidly than before. We have a larger population of financial market participants. By larger population, I mean two things. One, the world population has grown, and secondly globalization has allowed capital flows to occur more seamlessly between countries. We have French investors investing in Europe’s residential real estate during the financial crisis because the mutual funds and international holdings and capital flow restrictions are being eased; you’ve got a changing set of species that are participating in financial markets. You also have improvements in technology, so that the world is now much more globally connected than it was before thanks to social media, telecommunications, and so on.
That’s one of the reasons the approximation errors of the efficient markets hypothesis are growing. The hypothesis isn’t wrong, it’s just incomplete. It’s not the complete picture of how humans behave and how they interact with each other in financial markets. My assumption had been that maybe markets are not that efficient at some points, but things should be getting more and more efficient over time. Right? That’s what we learn about how competition works. It wasn’t until I started looking at the data over long expanses of history that it became clear to me that, very much like evolution, it’s not necessarily the case that species get more and more adapted to a given environment. That’s only true if the environment doesn’t change.
But it does change. The exceptions to the efficient markets hypothesis really come about when its standard assumptions are violated. The assumptions include things like stationary business environments, where the risks are relatively well known and humans act relatively rationally, at least from a mean-variance optimization perspective.
How does the adaptive markets hypothesis address the shortcomings of the efficient markets hypothesis?
It’s actually pretty straightforward. What I lay out [in the book] is basically what you would guess if you took the basics of evolutionary theory and extended them to the very special circumstances of financial markets. The efficient markets hypothesis is a special case of adaptive markets. Markets are efficient if the environment is stable and investors interact with each other and natural selection operates over a long period of time.
For example, the great white shark is pretty much in the same form today as it was in the very early days of the Pleistocene era. Part of the reason is that, in its environment, there’s no need for changes to its basic structure, given how well it has adapted. Now, imagine if you take that great white shark and you change the environment in substantial ways, either by changing the temperature of the water or changing the background colors so that the shark is much more visible than it might otherwise be. You’re going to change the ability of that shark to succeed. The implication is that an efficient market, [like the great white], is really an outcome of a very special set of circumstances.
How does irrational behavior enter financial markets?
A good example is the fight-or-flight response. Our evolutionary process hasn’t been able to catch up to the current threats we face, so it’s not surprising that the fight-or-flight response is not going to be the most helpful way to deal with a financial crash in the same way that it’s going to be helpful when you’re being attacked in a back alley. It’s because financial markets and financial threats are a relatively new phenomenon. The fact that when we are stressed financially, we end up exhibiting the same features as if we were threatened physically—that’s an example where human evolution has failed us, but not because there’s anything wrong with that evolutionary pathway.
How is this relevant for the individual investor?
One of the implications is that the risk-reward trade-off that we constantly bombard investors with, and constantly castigate them for ignoring when markets drop, has to be tempered by the acknowledgement that, sometimes, people will react emotionally to large-scale risk exposures. In technical terms, they freak out. When investors freak out, it means that they’re going to be pulling money out of the risky assets [like stocks] and investing them in much safer assets [like savings accounts and CDs].
If I’m right that investors do freak out from time to time, then the question that you might want to ask, during periods where investors are freaking out, is: Is it a good idea to hold stocks, or to put your money in cash during those periods, and then wait until the freak-out factor subsides?
What’s the better strategy?
From the behavioral finance perspective, and certainly from the data perspective, we find it’s the latter. When investors are freaking out, those are the periods where the equity premiums [meaning the extra return stocks should, by the efficient markets hypothesis, give investors as compensation for the extra risk of holding them in lieu of safer assets] are lower than average. In fact, in some cases it’s negative, you get punished for taking risks. The idea behind “volatility cruise control” is to maintain a level of volatility that is comfortable for an investor. Let’s say 16 percent volatility. That’s what the S&P is on average over a long history. If that’s the volatility that you’re comfortable with, then by using modern trading tools, we can get you that volatility actively.
In other words, if the stock market begins to increase in volatility—the VIX, [an index published by the Chicago Board Options Exchange that indicates how volatile traders expect the stock market to be over the next 30 days], goes up to 25 because there’s some kind of a rumor that the tax proposal that the Republicans are putting together isn’t going to work—the volatility cruise control strategy will reduce your level of equity exposure and put more money in cash. Similarly, when the volatility goes back to normal, you will then go back to putting most of your money into equities. That very simple rule of thumb basically has you putting less money into equities when markets are freaking out and leaving money in equities when markets are more normal.
That flies in the face of the conventional, buy-and-hold, wisdom—to sit tight and not freak out during market corrections, to ride them out.
That’s like telling a teenager, “It’s really a good idea for you to abstain from sex because a teenage pregnancy is just not going to be good for you.” It’s good advice, but I can tell you right now it’s not practical. Telling investors, “You know what, you should ignore these short-run dips and focus on the long run,” is good advice, but it ignores human behavior. From October 2008 to January 2009, if you had left your money in the S&P you would have lost 50.9 percent of your wealth. Slightly over half of your wealth would have evaporated in a manner of four months.
You tell me: How many investors do you know who would be perfectly happy and calm about watching half of their investment evaporate before their very eyes, while at the same time listening to news reports about Lehman going under, about Bernie Madoff in December of 2008, about financial markets coming to a halt, about Hank Paulson showing up on TV with a frightened face? If you think about how humans react, the advice that we give them—while it may be good advice if we really, truly stuck to it—it’s not realistic to expect humans to act in that way. That’s really the failing of the standard approach to passive investing. It’s advice that we know for a fact people are not going to take.
Financial innovations such as derivatives and securitization have been widely maligned for playing a role in the last crisis. But you argue that they could be the key to solving some of society’s biggest challenges, including poverty, disease, and climate change. Why?
People respond to incentives, and so if we want to take on much bigger challenges, we need to collaborate across thousands and in some cases hundreds of thousands of people. How do you get 100,000 people to work together? It’s not that easy. In the old days, it was religion and before that it was simple fiat rules, tyranny. The Egyptians built some beautiful pyramids, but they did that with hundreds of thousands of slaves over decades. If we rule out slavery as a possible means of societal advances, there really isn’t any other choice. If we need 100,000 people to cure cancer, to deal with Alzheimer’s, to figure out fusion energy and climate change…I don’t know of any other way to do that other than financial markets: equity, debt, proper financing and proper payout of returns. I think that in many cases [finance] probably is the gating factor. That, to me, is the short answer to the question about why finance is so important.
Bob Henderson studied physics, worked on Wall Street, and is now an independent writer focused on science and finance.
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HEARD the one about the blonde in Austria? Well from tomorrow it will be a criminal offence if you have – and that’s no joke.
The country has outlawed gags about blondes as part of the fight against terrorism.
Officials fear that marginalised blondes – furious at being portrayed as stupid – could take revenge on society.
But Austrian lawyers’ chief Rupert Wolff raged: “This law is an overreaction. It is just not necessary here.” The new law also bans wisecracks about people from, Burgenland the country’s agricultural region, who are often the subject of comedy sketches.
Offenders could be sentenced to two years’ jail.
The legislation was designed to help tackle extremists promoting their views. But by the time it was passed it had widened.
In Hungary, blonde women recently demanded fairer treatment. Spokeswoman Zsuzsa Kovacs said: “Blondes face discrimination at work. People are banned from discriminating against blacks. Why not grant blondes the same protection?”
Blonde jokes
What do you call a blonde with half a brain? Gifted
How do you make a blonde’s eyes twinkle? Shine a torch in her ear
How many blondes does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Two. One to hold the light bulb and one to spin the ladder around |
Article 2, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution tells us the precise wording of the Presidential Oath of Office:
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
There’s no “So help me God” at the end of it.
Incidentally, there’s also no requirement that you have to put your hand on the Bible while you say it. (In fact in 2008, Obama’s official oath was performed without one entirely.)
According to Michael Newdow‘s ultimately-unsuccessful lawsuit (PDF) against the oath from four years ago, no president said the words “So help me God” until “1881, ninety-two years after George Washington’s initial ceremony” — when “Chester A. Arthur took the oath upon hearing of President James Garfield’s death.” After that it didn’t become a “tradition” as we know it until 1933 (with Franklin Roosevelt).
Even though Newdow lost his lawsuit, there’s no reason atheists can’t publicly oppose the phrase this time around as well — if for no other reason than to remind people that the word “God” isn’t an official part of the oath.
For secular America, religious rhetoric is empty. Religious justifications for government action are hollow arguments invoking an authority that we reject. Politicians often use religion to pander to their base, but we find such rhetoric exclusionary and distasteful. You called Nov. 5 “the last day that I will ever campaign.” This term limitation is a gift. You are not beholden to any future constituency. This term is a chance to do something that no president in recent memory has done: reach out to secular Americans. In the past, that might have been politically costly. But this recent election shows that it will be politically costly not to reach out to secular America. We are the future. Use this second term to build a legacy by rejecting the way this country politicizes religion. … Start small. Start by honoring the secular intent of the oath. In its altered, religious form, the oath is a symbol of the disregard this country has shown for its Constitution in the name of God. Our once silent minority will no longer remain silent as politicians trample the document we hold sacred — the Constitution. Honor the oath as you recite it on January 21 and lead us into the new era you promised four years ago.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation’sexplains why Obama has some good reasons to avoid the religious wording
If you’d like to implore Obama not to use the words, FFRF has a few suggestions as to how you can do it. (There won’t be another lawsuit, though.)
It doesn’t seem like a big deal — and, to be honest, it’s not going to do us any real harm if Obama says it — but every time we let something like this slip, the Religious Right adds it to their giant list of Ways to Trick People Into Thinking We’re a Christian Nation. Let’s not let the occasion pass without at least posing a challenge. |
Operation Road's End. Japanese submarines being sunk after World War II. A U.S. Navy Martin PBM Mariner flying boat circles over several Imperial Japanese submarines as they are being scuttled and/or sunk by gunfire on April 1, 1946, off the Goto Islands, of Japan. Smoke drifts over the water from charges ignited aboard a sub. One of the submarines explodes raising a surge of water and huge black cloud. Clear view of a U.S. Baltimore class Cruiser with two scout planes aboard. Sailors watch from the U.S. Destroyer, USS Everett F. Larson (DD-830) as a submarine slips below the surface. Another submarine explodes and sinks. Gunfire from the Larson strikes another submarine. Smoke from the Larson's guns drifts in front of the camera. Closeup of the Larson's forward 5-inch guns, turned to starboard, firing.
This historic stock footage available in HD and SD video. View pricing below video player. |
After several launch attempts since May that were often scrubbed because of weather, the skies were finally clear enough for a NASA Terrier-Improved Malemute sounding rocket to blast off at 4:25 a.m. Eastern Time on June 29, 2017.
Soon after the launch from Wallops Flight Facility (Virginia), puffs of color emerged high in the night sky over the Mid-Atlantic coast. These artificial clouds glowed momentarily red-green and then faded into blue and violet as they drifted in the ionosphere. This upper layer of Earth’s atmosphere extends from 80 to 600 kilometers (50 to 360 miles) above the surface, and it is full of charged particles that get bombarded by solar and cosmic radiation.
In the course of the eight-minute flight, the sounding rocket ejected ten canisters about the size of a soft drink can as part of a test of a new multi-canister ejection system. Once separated from the sounding rocket by several miles, the canisters released blue-green and red vapor that formed the aurora-like clouds seen in the photograph above. Interactions between barium, strontium, and cupric-oxide gave the clouds their color.
The second image is a time-lapse photograph that shows the fire trail from the rocket pushing upward into the night sky. The smaller streak of light is the second stage of the rocket falling back toward the ocean.
Sounding rockets have been used since the 1950s to study the upper atmosphere and ionosphere and to aid in understanding the Earth’s near-space environment. The rockets follow parabolic or “U-shaped” trajectories. In this case, the sounding rocket flew to an altitude of about 118 miles (190 kilometers).
NASA Wallops received nearly 2,000 reports and photos of cloud sightings from areas as far as New York and North Carolina, and inland across Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. Photos submitted by the public can be viewed on the Wallops facebook page.
Photographs by Terry Zaperach for NASA. Story by Adam Voiland, based on a release from NASA Wallops Flight Facility. |
- Police are investigating after two cars struck and killed a man on Atlanta's Downtown Connector early Tuesday morning.
Officers first received a 911 call around 3 a.m. regarding a man walking southbound in the high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lane on Interstate 75/85 near 10th Street. Then, police said they received another 911 call a few minutes later about a man being hit by a car.
Responding officers found the victim dead at the scene.
Police said two vehicles were parked on the side of the interstate when they arrived. Both drivers said they had struck the male pedestrian.
UPDATE medical examiner crews removing man's body from Connector Southbound lanes, police asking those outside vehicles to get back in pic.twitter.com/lpE9XPGIs1 — Kaitlyn Pratt Fox 5 (@Fox5Kaitlyn) July 25, 2017
The investigation caused major delays due to I-75/I-85 southbound being shut down at 10th street as investigators remained on scene collecting evidence.
NOT MOVING people are out of cars, trapped on Downtown Connector as investigators gather clues in HOV lane. Man dead, struck while walking pic.twitter.com/AtL9JnRXQ8 — Kaitlyn Pratt Fox 5 (@Fox5Kaitlyn) July 25, 2017
All lanes reopened shortly before 6 a.m.
INTERSTATE OPEN just cleared fatal pedestrian accident scene in SB lanes of Connector pic.twitter.com/CH0UhrKoMC — Kaitlyn Pratt Fox 5 (@Fox5Kaitlyn) July 25, 2017
Police are working to determine why the unidentified man was walking on the Downtown Connector.
App users: View full article |
Eve was tempted by the apple. Now the smartphone invented by the company that bears its name has a confession app claimed to be the first of its kind to be approved by the Catholic Church.
Confession: A Roman Catholic App for iPhones and iPads is touted as the ''perfect aid for every penitent'' and is designed to be taken into the confessional.
It creates a customised and password-protected ''examination of conscience'' based on a person's age, sex, vocation and the time elapsed - in days, weeks, months or years - since the last confession. It also has seven acts of contrition to choose from, all for US$1.99.
Patrick Leinen, of the three-man team Little iApps, a US company ''with a Roman Catholic twist'', said his team had wanted to engage Catholics with new media in response to the Pope's World Communications Address last year, in which he spoke of its potential benefits.
''Our bishop was very excited about it,'' Mr Leinen said. ''We were able to work with several priests in order to get that examination of conscience created, so it was kind of fun.''
Bishop Kevin Rhoades went as far as to grant it an imprimatur - official endorsement from a church authority. ''The imprimatur itself was pretty neat,'' Mr Leinan said.
''When we were actually testing out the software before release we had one gentleman who hadn't been to confession in about 20 years. He went in and did his confession with it and he said it made it much easier on him.''
His was considering a conversion of the app for Google's Android smartphone. |
A hacker stole $31M of Ether—how it happened and what it means for Ethereum
Yesterday, a hacker pulled off the second biggest heist in the history of digital currencies.
Around 12:00 PST, an unknown attacker exploited a critical flaw in the Parity multi-signature wallet on the Ethereum network, draining three massive wallets of over $31,000,000 worth of Ether in a matter of minutes. Given a couple more hours, the hacker could’ve made off with over $180,000,000 from vulnerable wallets.
But someone stopped them.
Having sounded the alarm bells, a group of benevolent white-hat hackers from the Ethereum community rapidly organized. They analyzed the attack and realized that there was no way to reverse the thefts, yet many more wallets were vulnerable. Time was of the essence, so they saw only one available option: hack the remaining wallets before the attacker did.
By exploiting the same vulnerability, the white-hats hacked all of the remaining at-risk wallets and drained their accounts, effectively preventing the attacker from reaching any of the remaining $150,000,000.
Yes, you read that right.
To prevent the hacker from robbing any more banks, the white-hats wrote software to rob all of the remaining banks in the world. Once the money was safely stolen, they began the process of returning the funds to their respective account holders. The people who had their money saved by this heroic feat are now in the process of retrieving their funds.
It’s an extraordinary story, and it has significant implications for the world of cryptocurrencies.
[video]
It’s important to understand that this exploit was not a vulnerability in Ethereum or in Parity itself. Rather, it was a vulnerability in the default smart contract code that the Parity client gives the user for deploying multi-signature wallets.
This is all pretty complicated, so to make the details of this clear for everyone, this post is broken into three parts:
What exactly happened? An explanation of Ethereum, smart contracts, and multi-signature wallets. How did they do it? A technical explanation of the attack (specifically for programmers). What now? The attack’s implications about the future and security of smart contracts.
If you are familiar with Ethereum and the crypto world, you can skip to the second section.
1. What exactly happened?
There are three building blocks to this story: Ethereum, smart contracts, and digital wallets.
Ethereum is a digital currency invented in 2013—a full 4 years after the release of Bitcoin. It has since grown to be the second largest digital currency in the world by market cap—$20 billion to Bitcoin’s $40 billion.
Like all cryptocurrencies, Ethereum is a descendant of the Bitcoin protocol and improves on Bitcoin’s design. But don’t be fooled: though it is a digital currency like Bitcoin, Ethereum is much more powerful.
While Bitcoin uses its blockchain to implement a ledger of monetary transactions, Ethereum uses its blockchain to record state transitions in a gigantic distributed computer. Ethereum’s corresponding digital currency, ether is essentially a side effect of powering this massive computer.
To put it another way, Ethereum is literally a computer that spans the entire world. Anyone who runs the Ethereum software on their computer is participating in the operations of this world-computer, the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Because the EVM was designed to be Turing-complete (ignoring gas limits), it can do almost anything that can be expressed in a computer program.
Let me be emphatic: this is crazy shit. The crypto world is ebullient about the potential of Ethereum, which has seen its value skyrocket in the last 6 months.
The developer community has rallied behind it, and there’s a lot of excitement about what can be built on top of the EVM—and this brings us to smart contracts.
Smart contracts are simply computer programs that run on the EVM. In many ways they are like normal contracts, except they don’t need lawyers or judges to interpret them. Instead, they are compiled to bytecode and interpreted unambiguously by the EVM. With these programs, you can (among other things) programmatically transfer digital currency based solely on the rules of the contract code.
Of course, there are things normal contracts do that smart contracts can’t—smart contracts can’t easily interact with things that aren’t on the blockchain. But smart contracts can also do things that normal contracts can’t, such as enforce a set of rules entirely through unbreakable cryptography.
This leads us to the notion of wallets. In the world of digital currencies, wallets are how you store your assets. You gain access to your wallet using essentially a secret password, also known as your private key (simplified a bit). There are many different types of wallets that confer different security properties, such as withdrawal limits. One of the most popular types is the multi-signature wallet.
In a multi-signature wallet, there are several private keys that can unlock the wallet, but just one key is not enough to unlock it. If your multi-signature wallet has 3 keys, for example, you can specify that at least 2 of the 3 keys must be provided to successfully unlock it. This means that if you, your father, and your mother are each signatories on this wallet, even if a criminal hacked your mother and stole her private key, they could still not access your funds. This leads to much stronger security guarantees, so multi-sigs are a standard in wallet security.
This is the type of wallet the hacker attacked.
So what went wrong? Did they break the private keys? Did they use a quantum computer, or some kind of cutting-edge factoring algorithm?
Nope, all the cryptography was sound. The exploit was almost laughably simple: they found a programmer-introduced bug in the code that let them re-initialize the wallet, almost like restoring it to factory settings. Once they did that, they were free to set themselves as the new owners, and then walk out with everything.
2. How did this happen?
What follows is a technical explanation of exactly what happened. If you’re not a developer, you can skip to the next section, as this is going to be programming-heavy.
Ethereum has a fairly unique programming model. On Ethereum, you write code by publishing contracts (which you can think of as objects), and transactions are executed by calling methods on these objects to mutate their state.
In order to run code on Ethereum, you need to first deploy the contract (the deployment is itself a transaction), which costs a small amount of Ether. You then need to call methods on the contract to interact with it, which costs more Ether. As you can imagine, this incentivizes a programmer to optimize their code, both to minimize transactions and minimize computation costs.
One way to reduce costs is to use libraries. By making your contract call out to a shared library that was deployed at a previous time, you don’t have to re-deploy any shared code. In Ethereum, keeping your code DRY will directly save you money.
The default multi-sig wallet in Parity did exactly this. It held a reference to a shared external library which contained wallet initialization logic. This shared library is referenced by the public key of the library contract.
// FIELDS address constant _walletLibrary = 0xa657491c1e7f16adb39b9b60e87bbb8d93988bc3 ;
The library is called in several places, via an EVM instruction called DELEGATECALL , which does the following: for whatever method that calls DELEGATECALL , it will call the same method on the contract you’re delegating to, but using the context of the current contract. It’s essentially like a super call, except without the inheritance part. (The equivalent in JavaScript would be OtherClass.functionName.apply(this, args) .)
Here’s an example of this in their multi-sig wallet: the isOwner method just delegates to the shared wallet library’s isOwner method, using the current contract’s state.
function isOwner ( address _addr ) constant returns ( bool ) { return _walletLibrary . delegatecall ( msg . data ); }
This is innocent enough. The multi-sig wallet itself contained all of the right permission checks, and they were sure to rigorously enforce authorization on all sensitive actions related to the wallet’s state.
But they made one critical mistake.
Solidity allows you to define a “fallback method”. This is the method that gets called when there’s no method that matches a given method name. You define it by not giving it a name:
function () { // do stuff here for all unknown methods }
The Parity team decided to let any unknown method that sent Ether to the contract just default to depositing the sent Ether.
function () payable { // payable is just a keyword that means this method can receive/pay Ether if ( msg . value > 0 ) { // just being sent some cash? Deposit ( msg . sender , msg . value ); } throw ; }
But they took it a step further, and herein was their critical mistake. Below is the actual code that was attacked.
function () payable { // just being sent some cash? if ( msg . value > 0 ) Deposit ( msg . sender , msg . value ); else if ( msg . data . length > 0 ) _walletLibrary . delegatecall ( msg . data ); }
Basically:
If the method name is not defined on this contract…
And there’s no ether being sent in the transaction…
And there is some data in the message payload…
Then it will call the exact same method if it’s defined in _walletLibrary , but in the context of this contract.
Using this, the attacker called a method called initWallet() , which was not defined on the multisig contract but was defined in the shared wallet library:
function initWallet ( address [] _owners , uint _required , uint _daylimit ) { initDaylimit ( _daylimit ); initMultiowned ( _owners , _required ); }
Which calls the initMultiowned method…
function initMultiowned ( address [] _owners , uint _required ) { m_numOwners = _owners . length + 1 ; m_owners [ 1 ] = uint ( msg . sender ); m_ownerIndex [ uint ( msg . sender )] = 1 ; for ( uint i = 0 ; i < _owners . length ; ++ i ) { m_owners [ 2 + i ] = uint ( _owners [ i ]); m_ownerIndex [ uint ( _owners [ i ])] = 2 + i ; } m_required = _required ; }
Do you see what just happened there? The attacker essentially reinitialized the contract by delegating through the library method, overwriting the owners on the original contract. They and whatever array of owners they supply as arguments will be the new owners.
Given that they now control the entire wallet, they can trivially extract the remainder of the balance. And that’s precisely what they did.
The initWallet: https://etherscan.io/tx/0x707aabc2f24d756480330b75fb4890ef6b8a26ce0554ec80e3d8ab105e63db07
The transfer: https://etherscan.io/tx/0x9654a93939e98ce84f09038b9855b099da38863b3c2e0e04fd59a540de1cb1e5
So what was ultimately the vulnerability? You could argue there were two. First, the initWallet and initMultiowned in the wallet library were not marked as internal (this is like a private method, which would prevent this delegated call), and those methods did not check that the wallet wasn’t already initialized. Either check would’ve made this hack impossible.
The second vulnerability was the raw delegateCall . You can think of this as equivalent to a raw eval statement, running on a user-supplied string. In an attempt to be succinct, this contract used metaprogramming to proxy potential method calls to an underlying library. The safer approach here would be to whitelist specific methods that the user is allowed to call.
The trouble, of course, is that this is more expensive in gas costs (since it has to evaluate more conditionals). But when it comes to security, we probably have to get over this concern when writing smart contracts that move massive amounts of money.
So that was the attack.
It was a clever catch, but once you point it out, it seems almost elementary. The attacker then jumped on this vulnerability for three of the largest wallets they could find—but judging from the transaction times, they were doing this entirely manually. The white-hat group was doing this at scale using scripts, and that’s why they were able to beat the attacker to the punch. Given this, it’s unlikely that the attacker was very sophisticated in how they planned their attack.
You might ask the question though—why don’t they just roll back this hack, like they did with the DAO hack?
Unfortunately that’s not really possible. The DAO hack was unique in that when the attacker drained the DAO into a child DAO, the funds were frozen for many days inside a smart contract before they could be released to the attacker.
This prevented any of the stolen funds from going into circulation, so the stolen Ether was effectively siloed. This gave the Ethereum community plenty of time to conduct a public quorum about how to deal with the attack.
In this attack, the attacker immediately stole the funds and could start spending them. A hard fork would be impractical–what do you do about all of the transactions that occur downstream? What about the people who innocently traded assets with the attacker? Once the ether they’ve stolen gets laundered and enters general circulation, it’s like counterfeit bills circulating in the economy—it’s easy to stop when it’s all in one briefcase, but once everyone’s potentially holding a counterfeit bill, you can’t really turn back the clock anymore.
So the transaction won’t get reversed. The $31M loss stands. It’s a costly, but necessary lesson.
So what should we take away from this?
3. What does this attack mean for Ethereum?
There are several important takeaways here.
First, remember, this was not a flaw in Ethereum or in smart contracts in general. Rather, it was a developer error in a particular contract.
So who were the crackpot developers who wrote this? They should’ve known better, right?
The developers here were a cross-collaboration between the Ethereum foundation (literally the creators of Ethereum), the Parity core team, and members of the open-source community. It underwent extensive peer review. This is basically the highest standard of programming that exists in the Ethereum ecosystem.
These developers were human. They made a mistake. And so did the reviewers who audited this code.
I’ve read some comments on Reddit and HackerNews along the lines of: “What an obvious mistake! How was it even possible they missed this?” (Ignoring that the “obvious” vulnerability was introduced in January and only now discovered.)
When I see responses like this, I know the people commenting are not professional developers. For a serious developer, the reaction is instead: damn, that was a dumb mistake. I’m glad I wasn’t the one who made it.
Mistakes of this sort are routinely made in programming. All programs carry the risk of developer error. We have to throw off the mindset of “if they were just more careful, this wouldn’t have happened.” At a certain scale, carefulness is not enough.
As programs scale to non-trivial complexity, you have to start taking it as a given that programs are probably not correct. No amount of human diligence or testing is sufficient to prevent all possible bugs. Even organizations like Google or NASA make programming mistakes, despite the extreme rigor they apply to their most critical code.
We would do well to take a page from site reliability practices at companies like Google and Airbnb. Whenever there’s a production bug or outage, they do a postmortem analysis and distribute it within the company. In these postmortems, there is always a principle of never blaming individuals.
Blaming mistakes on individuals is pointless, because all programmers, no matter how experienced, have a nonzero likelihood of making a mistake. Instead, the purpose of a postmortem is to identify what in the process allowed that mistake to get deployed.
The problem was not that the developer forgot to add internal to the wallet library, or that they did a raw delegateCall without checking what method was being called.
The problem is that their programming toolchain allowed them to make these mistakes.
As the smart contract ecosystem evolves, it has to evolve in the direction of making these mistakes harder, and that means making contracts secure by default.
This leads me to my next point.
Strength is a weakness when it comes to programming languages. The stronger and more expressive a programming language is, the more complex its code becomes. Solidity is a very complex language, modeled to resemble Java.
Complexity is the enemy of security. Complex programs are more difficult to reason about and harder to identify edge cases for. I think that languages like Viper (maintained by Vitalik Buterin) are a promising step in this direction. Viper includes by default basic security mechanisms, such as bounded looping constructs, no integer overflows, and prevents other basic bugs that developers shouldn’t have to reason about.
The less the language lets you do, the easier it is to analyze and prove properties of a contract. Security is hard because the only way to prove a positive statement like “this contract is secure” is to disprove every possible attack vector: “this contract cannot be re-initialized,” “its funds cannot be accessed except by the owners,” etc. The fewer possible attack vectors you have to consider, the easier it is to develop a secure contract.
A simpler programming model also allows things like formal verification and automatic test generation. These are areas under active research, but just as smart contracts have incorporated cutting-edge cryptography, they also should start incorporating the leading edge of programming language design.
There is a bigger lesson here too.
Most of the programmers who are getting into this space, myself included, come from a web development background, and the blockchain toolchain is designed to be familiar for web developers. Solidity has achieved tremendous adoption in the developer community because of its familiarity to other forms of programming. In a way, this may end up being its downfall.
The problem is, blockchain programming is fundamentally different from web development.
Let me explain.
Before the age of the client-server web model, most programming was done for packaged consumer software or on embedded systems. This was before the day of automatic software updates. In these programs, a shipped product was final—you released one form of your software every 6 months, and if there was a bug, that bug would have to stand until the next release. Because of this longer development cycle, all software releases were rigorously tested under all conceivable circumstances.
Web development is far more forgiving. When you push bad code to a web server, it’s not a big deal if there’s a critical mistake—you can just roll back the code, or roll forward with a fix, and all is well because you control the server. Or if the worst happens and there’s an active breach or a data leak, you can always stop the bleeding by shutting off your servers and disconnecting yourself from the network.
These two development models are fundamentally different. It’s only out of something like web development that you can get the motto “move fast and break things.”
Most programmers today are trained on the web development model. Unfortunately, the blockchain security model is more akin to the older model.
In blockchain, code is intrinsically unrevertible. Once you deploy a bad smart contract, anyone is free to attack it as long and hard as they can, and there’s no way to take it back if they get to it first. Unless you build intelligent security mechanisms into your contracts, if there’s a bug or successful attack, there’s no way to shut off your servers and fix the mistake. Being on Ethereum by definition means everyone owns your server.
A common saying in cybersecurity is “attack is always easier than defense.” Blockchain sharply multiplies this imbalance. It’s far easier to attack because you have access to the code of every contract, know how much money is in it, and can take as long as you want to try to attack it. And once your attack is successful, you can potentially steal all of the money in the contract.
Imagine that you were deploying software for vending machines. But instead of a bug allowing you to simply steal candy from one machine, the bug allowed you to simultaneously steal candy from every machine in the world that employed this software. Yeah, that’s how blockchain works.
In the case of a successful attack, defense is extremely difficult. The white-hats in the Parity hack demonstrated how limited their defense options were—there was no way to secure or dismantle the contracts, or even to hack back the stolen money; all they could do was hack the remaining vulnerable contracts before the attacker did.
This might seem to spell a dark future.
But I don’t think this is a death knell for blockchain programming. Rather, it confirms what everyone already knows: this ecosystem is young and immature. It’s going to take a lot of work to develop the training and discipline to treat smart contracts the way that banks treat their ATM software. But we’re going to have to get there for blockchain to be successful in the long run.
This means not just programmers maturing and getting more training. It also means developing tools and languages that make all of this easier, and give us rigorous guarantees about our code.
It’s still early. Ethereum is a work in progress, and it’s changing rapidly. You should not treat Ethereum as a bank or as a replacement for financial infrastructure. And certainly you should not store any money in a hot wallet that you’re not comfortable losing.
But despite all that, I still think Ethereum is going to win in the long run. And here’s why: the developer community in Ethereum is what makes it so powerful.
Ethereum will not live or die because of the money in it. It will live or die based on the developers who are fighting for it.
The league of white-hats who came together and defended the vulnerable wallets didn’t do it for money. They did it because they believe in this ecosystem. They want Ethereum to thrive. They want to see their vision of the future come true. And after all the speculation and the profiteering, it’s ultimately these people who are going to usher the community into its future. They are fundamentally why Ethereum will win in the long run—or if they abandon Ethereum, their abandonment will be why it loses.
This attack is important. It will shake people up. It will force the community to take a long, hard look at security best practices. It will force developers to treat smart contract programming with far more rigor than they currently do.
But this attack hasn’t shaken the strength of the builders who are working on this stuff. So in that sense it’s a temporary setback.
In the end, attacks like this are good for the community to grow up. They call you to your senses and force you to keep your eyes open. It hurts, and the press will likely make a mess of the story. But every wound makes the community stronger, and gets us closer to really deeply understanding the technology of blockchain—both its dangers, and its amazing potential.
P.S. If you’re a dev and you want to learn more about smart contract security, this is a really good resource.
Errata: This article originally said that Gavin Wood was the developer of the contract, which is incorrect. Gavin is the founder of Parity and pushed the fix to the contract, but was not the original developer. It also originally claimed that $77M additional funds were vulnerable, but this doesn’t count all of the ERC20 (ICO) tokens that were vulnerable. The total amount is actually $150,000,000+ if you include all ERC20 tokens. As of the time of writing this (July 21st 4PM EST), the total value of the assets saved by the white-hats was $179,704,659.
Haseeb |
As the US military fought their way into Baghdad 10 years ago, the life of one Iraqi girl was changed forever when she was gravely injured in an air raid. Marwa's story, and charitable efforts by outsiders to rebuild her life, reflect the wider struggle of millions of Iraqis over the past decade.
On 9 April 2003, at about the time that the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad was coming down, Marwa Shimari was waking up.
The first thing that came into focus was her mother's face looking down on her in her hospital bed. She was trying to look reassuring, but you could see that she was frightened.
Marwa's brothers and sisters were there too. They were too young to understand what was really happening but she knew they were frightened too - their lively, mischievous big sister had been asleep for more than a day. They had been scared she was never going to wake up.
All of that seemed to register like a flash photograph in that split second between the last moment she was asleep and the first moment when she was really awake.
Then came the pain.
For someone who'd only ever felt the bumps and bruises of childhood there was something frightening about how much it hurt. It was like living in a world where there was nothing but pain.
Marwa can't remember when she first noticed that her right leg was missing - cut off far above the knee. The idea that her life had changed forever at the age of 12 was just too big for a child to understand.
"I thought my life was over," Marwa says.
There was no comfort in the memories of the last hours before the accident that made time stand still. She had been sheltering with her family in their simple home as an American air raid shook their village.
I was crying with the pain and I couldn't think clearly about anything Marwa
But "sheltering" is not the right word. The Shimari family home with its flimsy walls and roof offered only the pathetic illusion of shelter.
What they were doing was hiding from the American bombs - if you stayed indoors at least you couldn't see them, even if you could still feel the shaking of the earth trembling deep inside your own body and hear the shrapnel showering against the walls.
In an air raid it is the sound more than anything which robs you of your senses - it is so loud it fills the air around you and fills your head so there is no room to think.
As the bombs fell, Marwa decided to take her sister Adra and run from the house. When you ask her why, where she was running to, she shakes her head thoughtfully as though shaking off the memory of the noise, and confusion and terror.
She and Adra were just running to get away from the noise, chased by the sound of the explosions. She remembers running and running. And then there was one final explosion.
Adra, who was only eight years old, was dead.
And Marwa would never run anywhere ever again.
On the day that changed Marwa's life forever, the skies over Baghdad were cloudy. Somewhere above those clouds Capt Kim Campbell of the US Air Force was fighting for her life.
Campbell's troubles were out of step with the rapid progress American ground forces were making far below.
On a highway west of the city, the US commanders assembled a huge convoy of tanks and armoured vehicles, which they sent hurtling towards the city centre in a gesture that was both a show of force and a display of nerve. The US military loves tough, muscular-sounding jargon and they called it a Thunder Run. A Hollywood movie is in production.
At the same time, the US Marine Corps was closing in on downtown Baghdad from the east, sweeping through Saddam City not far from where the bombs were falling around Marwa's home.
They sent their amphibious tanks across the Diyala River.
The scale of their resources and the level of their ingenuity disheartened Baghdad's Iraqi defenders. As one of them said later: "When we saw the tanks floating across the river we knew we couldn't win."
The battle for Baghdad
Image caption The war reached Marwa on 7 April 2003, days before Baghdad fell to the US-led coalition forces. US troops had taken the city's main airports, hit government buildings and were moving in from all sides. It is not clear what the target of the bomb that injured Marwa was, but ground and air assaults had been raging throughout the city. Image caption The invasion of Iraq had started three weeks earlier, with "shock and awe" air strikes on Baghdad and key targets, before ground troops moved north from Kuwait, through Karbala to the capital. Special forces conducted operations in the north and west of the country. On 3 April, US forces took Baghdad International Airport, but faced sporadic resistance. Image caption With the airport secured, armoured units from the US Army's 3rd Infantry launched "thunder runs" through the city streets to test Iraqi defences. Having caught the Iraqis off guard, they did it again on 7 April, this time turning towards key government sites in central Baghdad. The US Air Force also bombed a "leadership" target in al-Mansour, killing a number of civilians. Image caption As the army struck west Baghdad, US Marines attacked across the River Diyala to the east. They overwhelmed Iraqi forces armed with tanks, surface-to-surface missiles and artillery before seizing al-Rashid Airport. US forces set up base in a cigarette factory - dubbed Camp Marlboro - and the marines moved towards Saddam City and cordoned off any eastern escape routes. Image caption On 9 April, US forces controlled much of Baghdad. The Marines rolled into Firdos Square and helped pull down a giant statue of Saddam Hussein. Iraqi troops put up resistance for a few more days in the president's hometown of Tikrit, but were soon overcome. On 1 May 2003, US President George W Bush declared the end of "major combat operations in Iraq". Saddam Hussein was not captured until December. previous slide next slide
Campbell's fellow flyers had something of a taste for that muscular jargon too. They called her KC, short for Killer Chick. It was based on her initials (KC) but it's one of those handles that makes the military's dangerous and frightening business seem racy… a breeze, an adventure.
Campbell was flying an aircraft the air force calls the A10 Thunderbolt, but which is known to its pilots as the Warthog. She wasn't involved in the attacks around Marwa's home - her targets were elements of Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard, which were engaging an American armoured column in the heart of Baghdad.
The Warthogs are ungainly looking aircraft whose dangerous job it is to fly low and slow over battlefields, bringing their guns and rockets to bear on enemy targets below.
They fly in pairs - the more experienced of the two pilots operates as a leader with a wingman to watch his or her back.
Campbell, the wingman in her formation, can still remember sizing up the situation on the battlefield far below her.
"Initially it was shock - 'Wow they're really firing at us.' But the thing that stands out in my mind is that you recognise the situation the guys on the ground are in… and you do what you can, as quickly as you can, to help the guys on the ground."
Then she was hit.
"I would equate it to a car crash if someone was rear-ending you," Campbell says now, matter-of-factly. "I remember seeing Baghdad down below and thinking: 'Here's where we were just shooting at the Republican Guard. If I have to pull these ejection handles… and I land in the middle of them… this may not go so well for me.'"
Image caption Kim Campbell looks at her stricken Warthog (right), and a pair of A10 Thunderbolts in flight
There is a way of flying the Warthog using a network of cranks and cables after its sophisticated automatic systems have been shot away. It's called manual reversion and it's like driving a car without power steering, except it's a thousand times more dangerous.
Campbell nursed her A10 back to the safety of her base 300 miles (483km) south across the desert in Kuwait with a fellow pilot encouraging her with a carefully edited commentary on the state of her aircraft. He did tell her it was peppered with holes - he didn't tell her that small pieces of the engine were breaking off and spinning away in its slipstream.
Campbell was a young woman and she thought about the things she wanted to do in her personal life and the things she'd left unsaid. Then she got the plane down safely.
She was brave and resourceful but war is an arbitrary and fickle business - if the ground fire that hit her aircraft had been just a few feet to the right or the left then all that courage and resourcefulness might have counted for nothing.
The truth is that Kim Campbell was lucky. Marwa Shimari was not.
If you followed the allied invasion of Iraq on the television networks in 2003, then it would not have sounded like this, these stories of frightened little girls running in blind panic through the chaos of an air raid and lonely pilots grimly calculating the best way to stay alive.
Curving, sweeping arrows on brightly-coloured maps tracked the remorseless progress of the allied armies - the British pushing up towards Basra from the south and the Americans converging on the heart of Baghdad.
History has long since answered the questions that filled the news back then:
would those weapons of mass destruction be found?
would Saddam Hussein's forces really fight?
would the old dictator himself somehow hang on to power again?
But in times of war there are also tiny turns of circumstance that reshape lives forever. The piece of shrapnel that passes 1cm above or below an aircraft's control cables for example, instead of right through them.
Or the split second of hesitation before you decide to run for your life, which means you are right on the spot when a bomb explodes instead of safely past it.
Kim Campbell successfully landed her plane and served out a five-month tour of duty in Iraq before returning to other duties, with her war over.
Marwa Shimari's battles were just beginning.
No-one would argue that the village in which the Shimaris made their home had any strategic value.
It is a place of poverty, of guns and gangs. The crumbling pot-holed roads are really just tracks worn into the mud. The flimsy homes go up without government approval or building control. In Arabic it is called Sabaa Qusour, or Seven Palaces, but there's nothing palatial about it. If the city managers of Saddam Hussein's Iraq could be suspected of having a sense of humour, you might almost think the name was some kind of joke.
Not far from Sabaa Qusour there's a suburb of Baghdad called Sadr City (formerly Saddam City), a grim grid of shabby, crowded backstreets into which more than three million people are packed. It is dirty and chaotic. Electricity comes, when it comes at all, through a fragile-looking spider's web of bare wires that sags just above head height from post to pylon around the whole neighbourhood.
Many Iraqis speak of Sadr City as a place to be feared and avoided. It is said that is how the people of Sadr City in turn talk of Sabaa Qusour.
Marwa remembers a group of Iraqi army tanks arriving and seeking shelter from air attack by parking between their simple homes.
"The Iraqi soldiers didn't talk to us, they were frightened," she says. It wasn't even clear if the troops were heading out to the battlefield to confront the Americans or just running away from it.
As April went on, the US forces began to consolidate their grip on Sadr City. They occupied a disused cigarette factory, calling it Camp Marlboro, and began sending out patrols accompanied by Iraqi interpreters to demonstrate to the local people that things really had changed.
The mixture of military units that the Americans sent into battle was testament to the belief in Washington and London that modern Western armies can rebuild a society even as they're demolishing a regime.
Alongside the infantry units with their Bradley Fighting Vehicles and the tanks of the 2nd Armoured Cavalry Regiment there were soldiers from a Civil Affairs Battalion and a couple of Psyops (Psychological Operations) teams.
For a time the story of Iraq was the story of the American military's attempts to consolidate its grip on places like Sadr City.
How Sabaa Qusour has grown since 2003
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Now
After the quake Now The poor neighbourhood of Sabaa Qusour, where Marwa lives, has sprawled out since 2003.
It is a shock to go there now and see how completely every trace of the American military presence has been eradicated. The danger from al-Qaeda-backed Sunni insurgent groups remains, but these days it's the job of Iraq's own security forces to deal with it.
In Sabaa Qusour, after that first devastating contact in 2003, the villagers saw relatively little of the Americans.
When patrols came, the villagers were scared and resentful.
"They were frightening," Marwa says, "angry, shouting, and pointing their weapons at us with grenades clipped to the front of their uniforms. They came into the houses looking for guns or pieces of cable - the kind of things you can make a bomb out of."
The soldiers didn't find anything in the Shimari house, but what sticks in Marwa's mind is the memory of her mother, running out of the house, terrified, when the Americans arrived. The first time you realise that your mother is scared is one of the most frightening moments of your childhood.
For Marwa this was the beginning of a year in which long, dark spells in bed at home were punctuated by periods in hospital.
She was depressed, and offers this bleak recollection of how life changed for a lively little girl who was a ringleader whenever there was mischief at school.
"Frankly at that age I didn't understand anything, only that I was hurting," she recalls. "I was crying with the pain and I couldn't think clearly about anything. I spent the daytime just crying."
There are no official figures for the civilian casualties of the war because the Americans and the British didn't collate them and the Iraqi authorities couldn't. But one estimate suggests that more than 2,200 Iraqis were killed in the week that Marwa was injured.
It is part of Iraq's tragedy that its oil wealth could easily have been spent on providing top-class hospitals as good as those of Switzerland or Germany or the US. But of course it wasn't. The ramshackle health system provided under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein couldn't cope with the flow of casualties.
To get a feeling for what life was like in the hospitals of Baghdad at that point in Marwa's life, I went to an emergency room in the heart of Sadr City.
At first sight, if you're not used to life in Iraq, it seems daunting.
There's a young guard at the gate idly fiddling with a silver 9mm pistol, the buildings are a little shabby and the authorities seem to use only a special type of institutional light bulb that serves to intensify, rather than dispel, the gloom.
But that is only the skeletal structure of a hospital - the medical staff are its heartbeat and at the al-Sadr General Hospital the heartbeat is strong and steady.
A doctor tousles the hair of a tracksuited young man with acute appendicitis who is groaning plaintively as his friends push him along a corridor in a wheelchair.
"You're going to be fine," he says encouragingly.
Two young nurses in headscarves deal with a worried old man in long flowing robes who is demanding treatment at the reception desk. It's not clear what, if anything, is wrong with him but eventually the two young women take his blood pressure and he wanders off, apparently delighted with the reading.
The chief surgeon, Dr Wiaam Rashad al-Jawahiry, recalls the darker days of 2003 with a shudder.
"Don't make me remember those times," he says. "Things were desperate."
While we are talking about how many victims of bullet wounds and bomb explosions he has treated - "I wouldn't say thousands, but hundreds and hundreds," he says - a young man is brought in with a bullet wound to the chest.
The doctor is calm and methodical and manages somehow to direct his team, reassure the patient and carry on talking to me all at the same time.
The victim's father is brought in, breathless, his clothes spattered with mud. His mood hovers uncertainly between anger and despair. Patiently the doctor extracts the story of the incident.
His air of authority calms the young man's father but he still winces every time his son groans.
The injury was serious, but not fatal. Routine. Al-Jawahiry can remember when the toughest part of his job was standing in reception surrounded by the bodies of the dead and the dying, grimly calculating who was beyond help and who was not.
There weren't enough drugs or operating theatres and plenty of doctors left Iraq back in those days. But enough remained at their posts to keep the system going.
I tell Dr al-Jawahiry that he should be proud to have been a doctor in such a difficult place, at such a difficult time.
He shrugs modestly, but I feel proud just to have met him.
The healthcare system on which Marwa found herself depending was over-stretched and under-resourced.
I keep my sadness and pain inside Marwa
The sorts of care that amputees need - physiotherapy and counselling as well as the fitting of the best possible prosthetic limbs - are precisely the sorts of care that systems like Iraq's struggle to deliver.
Marwa felt her life spiralling downwards into darkness.
Her father had died two years before the American invasion, and her mother's diabetes, which was eventually to kill her, was already showing signs of getting worse.
The little girl who had dreamed of being a doctor never went back to school.
Like many Iraqi children, Marwa was traumatised.
With her mother's health deteriorating, and her brothers and sisters still too young to really understand what was happening to her, she felt utterly alone. There was no-one to talk to and even if there had been there were no words to express her growing sense of desperation.
"I'm not the type of person who speaks out," Marwa says. "I keep my sadness and pain inside myself. I don't say it out loud."
It is hard to imagine a darker or lonelier time in the life of a child.
And then suddenly, out of the blue, help was at hand.
The Iraq war had always been controversial in Europe - even in Britain which was part of the coalition that sent troops to fight. That political scepticism - and a profound sense of shock at the devastation that modern warfare brings - quickly translated into an impulse to do something to help the people of Iraq.
To some Iraqis it was a little bewildering. It felt like the same people who'd sent aircraft to drop bombs were soon sending planes loaded with humanitarian supplies to help the victims.
But the help was desperately needed.
Everything was in short supply in Iraq, from the most basic hospital stores to sophisticated drugs for fighting cancer. There was a shortage of children's wheelchairs.
It was clear that many of the more seriously ill and injured couldn't be treated in Iraq, even if more supplies could somehow be flown in.
So charities began to look at ways of paying for children who'd been badly hurt to travel to Europe or America for treatment. It was expensive but the devastation in Iraq after the long years of suffering under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein had done something to prick the world's conscience.
A great deal would depend of course on finding wealthy and generous benefactors prepared to take an interest in the children and their families.
And for once, fortune was about to smile on Marwa Shimari.
Like many Europeans, Jurgen Todenhofer was bitterly opposed to the war in Iraq. Unlike most of them, he decided to do something about it.
He made six or seven trips to Iraq in the years after the allied invasion and eventually wrote a book about the tragedy of it all.
The war is over now, but for Marwa it will never be over Jurgen Todenhofer
He first heard about Marwa through the UN children's charity Unicef, and in the coming years they were to play important roles in each other's lives.
For Todenhofer, Marwa's story was a way of understanding the conflict.
"Marwa became for me a symbol of this war and of all wars because for those who started it the war is over now, but for Marwa it will never be over," he explains. "She will be living with her disability for another 30, 50 years. No-one knows how long."
Todenhofer wrote books about Iraq but wasn't content just to tell Marwa's story. He wanted to try to change the ending.
He had the contacts and the money to make a difference too. Before he began writing about the consequences of American foreign policy in countries like Iraq, he'd spent 18 years as a member of the German parliament.
His experiences in Baghdad read like a description in miniature of outside attempts to repair the damage of war in Iraq and to treat its casualties.
First and foremost, it is a story of extraordinary personal generosity.
In 2004 or 2005, Todenhofer paid for Marwa and her mother to travel to Germany.
A first operation cleared away the shrapnel still buried deep in Marwa's wounds to prepare for the fitting of a prosthetic leg. He paid for them to stay in a hotel while they waited and then when the leg was fitted he paid for their flight home.
Jurgen Todenhofer The German writer and former politician heard about Marwa through Unicef
The charity had previously organised trips for him to Iraq and Afghanistan, and he'd written a book about the effects of war on children
He used the proceeds to set up a school for street children in Baghdad and a home for children with war injures in Afghanistan
He then wrote the book Andy and Marwa
"Andy" is Lance Cpl Andrew J Aviles, who died the same day Marwa lost her leg
It too became a best-seller in Germany
But this was not merely an idle impulse of compassion from a wealthy man.
Todenhofer visited the Shimari family in their home in Sabaa Qusour to learn more about their lives. And the more he learned about those lives, the more he became determined to change them.
It wasn't easy. The people of Sabaa Qusour had always been suspicious of outsiders and now they had been traumatised by the US air raids too.
Todenhofer understood their anger but the truth of the matter was that Sabaa Qusour was a dangerous place in which to try to do good. And its people weren't inclined to see much of a difference between a German critic of the war and an American supporter.
"There was never any reason to bombard that part of the city," he explains. "Therefore they don't like Western people. The last time I was there I was told that if I come back I will not survive. I was threatened very, very aggressively. I must say I understand it. They don't like us any more."
The cleanliness and efficiency of German hospitals and hotels had come as a shock to Marwa. Then, when she finally came home, the chaos and hardship of her old life was harder to bear.
Todenhofer sensed her sadness and isolation. He was worried that she'd stopped going to school because people laughed at the way she walked on her prosthetic leg.
So he resolved to do more.
He bought the family a new home at a cost of about US $10,000 (£6,600) and then tried to set them up in a little business running a kiosk.
But shortly before her death, Marwa's mother sold their new house to raise the money to renovate the old one, then moved her family back in. Sabaa Qusour is a place of a deep, bred-in-the-bone conservatism which is resistant even to the most benign of changes.
And the idea of a young girl running her own business may feel like a sound solution to the modern European mind, but that's not how it would look to the old-fashioned Shia community of Sebaa Qusour. The kiosk idea never really got off the ground.
Ironically, given Jurgen's passionate hostility towards the allied military campaign, it's tempting to see in this a parallel for broader Western attempts at re-building in Iraq. The US is thought to have spent more than $50bn on reconstruction projects. It's not really clear what US taxpayers have to show for all that money.
Treating Marwa's injuries Marwa arrived in Germany after some visa problems, and was taken to Munich's Alpha Clinic. Her stump was infected, and doctors used a sharp spoon to remove dead flesh without an anaesthetic. Marwa was brave throughout the procedure, but on the way home had to stop the car so she could vomit. Infection in her stump meant a wait for physio treatment and for a new prosthetic to be fitted - a process further complicated by fragments of bone and shrapnel still lodged in her leg. Meanwhile Marwa and her mother lived in a hotel, and were taken to the cinema, to football matches and to the Alps. On their return to Baghdad, she became depressed and showed signs of suffering PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). When Todenhofer returned for a visit, she begged him to take her back to Germany - a wish he was unable to grant.
Somehow donor generosity alone isn't enough.
Give money to the wrong people, or in the wrong way, or at the wrong time, and it will be like putting petrol in a diesel engine, or giving someone a transfusion of blood from the wrong blood group.
It will, in other words, as Western governments found, be difficult. But the difficulties didn't deter Todenhofer.
Marwa was a growing girl and in time needed a new prosthesis. Eventually, Todenhofer took her to the US for state-of-the-art medical care. It did not come cheap - the prosthetic leg alone cost $20,000. Privately, he thought the Americans should pay, they were responsible for Marwa's injuries after all. But they didn't. He paid again.
At the same time, Todenhofer was starting to wonder if there wasn't a downside to plucking a frightened and anxious girl from a shanty town on the edge of Baghdad and exposing her to life in the West in short bursts that were hard for her to make sense of.
"I am not really sure that it was a very good idea to bring her to Germany," he says now. "Because here she lived in a very good hotel. She saw the United States and met some very good people there. People called her the 'Little Princess' but then she had to go back to Baghdad and she wasn't a princess any more."
Marwa herself looks a little wistful when you ask her about those trips to Germany and to the US - everyone was very kind and very friendly, she remembers. Everywhere seemed very clean. She lapses into silence and you are reminded that she is a girl who keeps her painful memories hidden deep inside, and doesn't like to talk about them.
If Marwa's story were a work of fiction, it would probably end somewhere about here.
A kindly benefactor has emerged, wealthy, patient and generous, and while the overall story is one of sadness and loss, there is an uplifting and redemptive message about a stranger reaching across continents to aid a helpless child.
But real life is full of unanswered questions and unexpected turns. It rarely offers clear-cut lessons and messages. Things happen.
Todenhofer continues to provide Marwa's family with money to this day. His bitter criticism of the US invasion of Iraq and all that flowed from it would probably anger many Americans. But there's no doubt that he runs through Marwa's story like a bright thread through a dark tapestry.
The tapestry itself, though, remained unrelentingly dark.
Last year, Marwa's mother Fachla died.
The little girl whose life was filled with a sadness she never put into words, and who stopped going to school because the children laughed at the way she walked, was suddenly the head of the family.
When Marwa was 12, she wanted to be a doctor.
She wanted to help people of course, but somewhere at the back of her mind was the idea that being a doctor would mean financial security and respect.
Things that matter a lot when you grow up in Sabaa Qusour.
It wasn't an unrealistic ambition in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. It was a place that lived in the torturer's shadow, but it offered more opportunities to women than some other Arab societies. There were women doctors and public servants. In truth, being poor may have been more of a barrier to ambition than being a woman.
And unspoken in the background was the assumption that she would marry and have children one day. Probably one day soon. Iraqi Shias tend to marry young.
The injury - that split second in a single American air raid - changed everything, and her dreams of being a doctor died the day she decided she wasn't going back to school.
Her prospects of getting married were damaged by the nature of her injury. Marwa sees Sebaa Qusour as a place of solidarity, a place where "people look out for each other". But attitudes towards disability, perhaps especially in women, are not enlightened.
The matter is not discussed. Marwa is a young woman who values her privacy and dignity, but everyone knows it is one of the central facts of her life.
When her mother died from the effects of diabetes, aged 45, it fell to Marwa to take responsibility for two younger brothers and a sister who still live with her at home.
Things are not easy.
In a country which should be awash with the riches of oil, there are regular power cuts - one hour of current is followed by a two-hour blackout at the moment. And the water supply is cut off more often than not - two days on and three days off.
Marwa is matter of fact about it. "We buy barrels and jerry cans. We fill them in advance whenever we know the water will be off. We are used to it."
They are the practical concerns that worry any head of the house in Sabaa Qusour. And then, of course, there's the problem of getting teenagers to behave.
Marwa, who's only a couple of years older than the older brother, speaks with the exasperated affection which is the authentic tone of motherhood.
"You tell them to stop messing about and they just ignore you," she explains. "And they do it all over again. I remember my own childhood. My mum got fed up with me too."
Her youngest brother Sadaq, in particular, is proving a bit of a handful. Marwa rolls her eyes when she talks about him. But when I ask if he reminds her of what she was like when she was his age, she giggles. He does.
To try to understand a bit more about what it feels like to be 12 in one of Baghdad's more dangerous suburbs, we went to the Juhaina Elementary School which is buried away in a warren of backstreets in the heart of Sadr City.
A local police commander despatched a team of armed bodyguards to watch over us, but the girls were more interested in our cameras than in their guns. It's that kind of place.
The buildings are a little shabby and the school is running low on basic supplies. But Iraq isn't just short of books and whiteboards, it's short of school buildings too.
The girls share their bare classrooms with a boys' school in shifts. Today the boys were here in the morning and it's the girls' turn to come in the afternoon. Tomorrow they'll be back in the morning and the boys will come after lunch. One of the teachers says darkly that I can blame the boys for any signs of damage I might find about the place.
But Juhaina school has a kind of educational secret weapon in its principal Eman Abdulhussein, a tall woman in black robes who radiates a kindly authority.
The older girls packed into one overcrowded classroom fall into a respectful silence when she enters. Once she has them settled to their task, I notice her wandering off across the playground, gently holding the hand of a much younger girl who has somehow become detached from her own class.
The girls we have come to meet are 12, the age that Marwa was when she was injured.
Twelve feels like a good age to be in post-war Iraq, when childish dreams about the future are giving way to more concrete ambitions and thoughts of eventual marriage. Though it's not clear yet whether girls will have more opportunities, or fewer, in Iraq's post-war order, especially if the country becomes less secular.
I wanted to hear about the girls' hopes for the future, so they were set the homework of telling us what they wanted to be when they grew up, and why.
The girls are immaculately turned out and beautifully behaved. Some wear crisp, dazzlingly clean white headscarves. They queue patiently while we film and photograph them.
There is a young teacher in the making, a lawyer, two engineers and one girl who wants to be a journalist. She looks a bit taken aback to receive a discreet round of applause from our team when she has finished.
But the overwhelming majority of the girls proudly announce that they want to be doctors. It makes me think of Marwa.
The teachers are proud of the girls' performance and hopeful that some, at least, really will make it to medical school.
A great deal has happened to the girls' country in the course of their short lives - the fall of Saddam Hussein, the rise of a rather unstable democracy, and first the arrival, then the departure, of the allies.
And whichever one of those factors you choose to credit, the truth is that those girls have a better chance than Marwa ever had of seeing their dreams come true. They are 12 years old in a time of peace. Marwa was 12 in a time of war.
Ten years on from the invasion of Iraq, there is a huge temptation to try to judge whether the intervention was a success or a failure - a temptation to which we are certainly not immune.
And it is possible to make a couple of simple observations about how life is returning to the streets of Baghdad, where there are new restaurants and new car showrooms, and a new sense of normality in many places, much of the time.
But judging the outcome of military interventions like the allied invasion of 2003 will take many years. Certainly far more than 10.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Kevin Connolly at a WWI-era cemetery in Baghdad
The frontiers of the modern Middle East were drawn when Britain and France carved up the assets of the defeated and collapsing Turkish Empire at the end of World War I. You could argue that we are still waiting to find out what the ultimate results of those self-interested manoeuvrings will be.
There's no guarantee, for example, that Syria, which was created as a nation at that point, will remain a viable unitary state when its current civil war is over. And if it disintegrates, what of Lebanon, another former French colony with close ties to its big, dangerous neighbour?
The same could be said of Iraq, where Britain tacked a Kurdish minority in the north on to the traditionally Arab land of Mesopotamia to create the modern state. It was the sort of shotgun marriage to which colonial administrators were dangerously addicted and it's possible that in the chaos of the modern Middle East, that Kurdish region is working quietly towards a kind of undeclared independence.
That process, which would spell the end of Iraq as we've known it, has taken nearly 100 years, which shows the danger of trying to make strategic and historical judgements after only a decade.
And even if history ultimately judges the allied invasion to have been a kind of catalyst that made Iraq a better place, that's not how it looked to Marwa. She remembers it only as a time of fear and destruction.
Her recollection of that time reminds you that war is only complex to strategists and historians. To its victims, it's pretty simple.
Marwa puts it like this. "We lived through a desperate time and we were afraid. We kept thinking at any moment that a bomb would fall from the sky and that we would die. We thought only about when the war would be over, nothing else. "
Jurgen Todenhofer, who poured so much of his time and money into trying to make a difference after the war, says on reflection: "There is no possibility to be successful after such a war. [Former UN Secretary General] Kofi Annan was right when he said everything is worse."
He reserves his harshest words for the political architects of the intervention, George W Bush and Tony Blair.
"They have a wonderful life now," he says. "Bush is a painter, he's writing a book and Blair is the peace envoy for the Middle East. And then you see Marwa. For her it will never be over. You cannot give a leg back to a little girl. She will never have a husband, she will never have a family of her own. That's a crime."
I said earlier that if this was a work of fiction, it would end at an uplifting moment, but that real life is less good at providing clear-cut moral lessons.
Well, it's equally true that real histories throw up twists of fate or aspects of a character that don't fit neatly into the main body of a story.
As I got to know Marwa, I noticed some of my questions made her smile.
When she told me her favourite film was Titanic and that her neighbourhood suffered at least one power cut every three hours, I calculated it would be possible for people to have watched the film without finishing it and realising that the ship sank at the end. That made her laugh out loud.
She even giggled when she watched a rather harrowing video I'd found of her receiving medical treatment shortly after she was injured. "My hair looks scary, ridiculous," she said.
When I asked her where she found the energy that lights up that smile after all she's been through, she said simply: "It's my family. Each of them gives me something to smile about."
Then, after a little pause, she smiled and said: "Your character doesn't change."
On the 10th anniversary of the allied invasion, you can expect plenty of efforts to define the meaning of the war in Iraq, plenty of debate over what lessons - if any - it has to teach us.
But in that simple testament to the durability of the human spirit lies perhaps the most important lesson of them all.
Video by Adam Campbell. Photographs by Hadi Mizban of AP. Additional research by Edwin Lane. |
This design was born from the cheap availability of Audax AP100Z0 drivers. A Maplin close-out saw these 4" drivers sell for �4.98 each (1/3 of their usual price), which begged to be taken advantage of.
I bought six drivers with the tweeter undecided.
Audax AP100Z0
This 4" bass/midrange speaker has been designed to a high specification and manufactured to exceptional quality. It features a non-resonant high impact polymer chassis, a high temperature voice coil and a built in cosmetic ring designed for front-rear and recessed mounting. It also has a fully shielded magnet system making it ideal for all audio video applications. This speaker features an HDA (High Definition Aerogel) cone with high loss rubber surround.
To measure the drivers, they are fixed to my dedicated measuring clamp and the impedance plot is taken with the aid of Speaker Workshop (SW) and the Wallin Jig II. VAS is calculated using the added mass method with 3.56g (weighed against a 1p coin) of blu-tac stuck to the dustcap.
The following parameters are provided:
Parameter Value Source Re 5.7 ohms DMM Sd 52 cm2 Audax Sens. 84.7 db W/M Audax Pe 30 W Audax xmax 2.7 mm Audax
Breaking the drivers in
The following shows the average T/S parameters from the measured drivers calculated after different periods of breaking-in, and compared to the specs provided by Audax. Breaking-in is done using 15Hz and 20Hz test tones running the drivers to xmax or mechanical excursion.
Run-in period Fs Vas Qms Qes Qts Le L1 R1 0 Hours 92.5 2.18 2.93 0.95 0.71 0.16 0.29 14.1 30 Hours 85.4 2.52 2.84 0.86 0.66 0.16 0.29 13.9 50 Hours 79.8 2.81 2.63 0.83 0.63 0.16 0.30 14.2 70 Hours 79.6 2.85 2.63 0.81 0.62 0.16 0.30 14.2 Audax 64.0 4.72 2.16 0.63 0.49 0.45 Difference * 20% 40% 18% 22% 21% 64%
* between break-in results and manufacturer specs. Note figures are rounded.
At first glance the results show a large difference between measured and manufacturer specs. A look at the most important specs: Fs, VAS and Qts, shows that VAS is the only parameter outside an acceptable 30% tolerance. |
While San Francisco residents battled record high temperatures this Labor Day holiday weekend, police were responding to a series of unrelated shootings in the Mission District, Potrero Hill and South of Market neighborhoods that injured eight people.
The gunfire began shortly before 3 a.m. Saturday when shots were fired from a vehicle at two people walking on Mission Street between 17th and 18th streets.
One of the victims, a 21-year-old man, was injured and taken to a hospital while the suspects fled south on Mission Street, police said.
Another shooting occurred around 10 p.m. Saturday at Missouri Street and Watchman Way, behind the Potrero Hill Recreation Center.
The victim, a 28-year-old man, was standing with his friends when he heard four gunshots and was struck in the leg. One of his friends drove him to San Francisco General Hospital.
Around 11:30 p.m., three people were struck by bullets in a drive-by shooting in the area of Guerrero Street and Rosa Parks Lane. The suspect vehicle fled the scene.
Around 1:30 a.m. Sunday, a 27-year-old man was shot as he walked on Sixth Street near Ahern Way in the South of Market neighborhood, not far from the Hall of Justice. He was able to get himself to a hospital for treatment.
Around 2:30 a.m., a 26-year-old man was shot in the 700 block of Missouri Street, just blocks from where a shooting had occurred Saturday night.
He was taken to the hospital but refused to give a statement, police said.
Then at 7:18 p.m., a 16-year-old boy was shot as he walked away from a business in area of 26th and Treat streets in the Mission District.
Police said the boy had heard a shooting and walked in the opposite direction from the gunfire before hearing a vehicle speed off and then being shot himself.
None of the injuries in the various shootings were considered life-threatening, according to police.
No arrests had been reported in the cases as of Tuesday morning and police did not release any detailed suspect or vehicle descriptions.
Read more criminal justice news on the Crime Ink page in print. Follow us on Twitter: @sfcrimeink
Click here or scroll down to comment |
At least 6,000 aboriginal children died while in the residential school system, says Justice Murray Sinclair, the chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Sinclair, who has been tasked with studying the legacy of the residential schools, says that the figure is just an estimate and is likely much higher. Residential schools were established in the 19th century and the last ones closed in 1996.
"We think that we have not uncovered anywhere near what the total would be because the record keeping around that question was very poor," Sinclair told Rosemary Barton of CBC's Power & Politics. "You would have thought they would have concentrated more on keeping track."
Sinclair offered the figure of 6,000 in a later interview with Evan Solomon to air Saturday on CBC Radio's The House — much higher than earlier estimates that put the number of school children who died in the system at less than 4,000, but still possibly far short of the real outcome.
Sinclair, who was Manitoba's first aboriginal judge, said one estimate made in the early part of the 20th century was that 24 to 42 per cent of aboriginal children who attended the residential schools died at school or shortly after leaving school.
Most of the children died from malnourishment or disease. Some children who attended the schools in the 1940s and 1950s were even subjected to science experiments in which they were deprived essential nutrients and dental care.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, struck in 2009, is writing an exhaustive history of the residential school system. The commissioners interviewed over 7,000 people, and the final report, which is expected to be released on June 2, will span six volumes and include over two million words.
'Cultural genocide'
The new death toll comes in the wake of comments made by Beverley McLachlin, the chief justice of the Supreme Court. At an event on Thursday, McLachlin said that Canada attempted to commit "cultural genocide" against aboriginal peoples.
Truth and Reconciliation Commission Chair Justice Murray Sinclair releases his final report next week. (Darryl Dyck/Canadian Press)
"The most glaring blemish on the Canadian historic record relates to our treatment of the First Nations that lived here at the time of colonization," McLachlin said. She was delivering the fourth annual Pluralism Lecture of the Global Centre for Pluralism, founded in 2006 by the Aga Khan, spiritual leader of Ismaili Muslims, and the federal government.
Canada, she said, developed an "ethos of exclusion and cultural annihilation."
Sinclair said he agrees with McLachlin's characterization of the country's history.
"I think as commissioners we have concluded that cultural genocide is probably the best description of what went on here. But more importantly, if anybody tried to do this today, they would easily be subject to prosecution under the genocide convention," Sinclair told Evan Solomon of CBC Radio's The House.
"The evidence is mounting that the government did try to eliminate the culture and language of indigenous people for well over a hundred years. And they did it by forcibly removing children from their families and placing them within institutions that were cultural indoctrination centres.
"That appears to us to fall within the definition of genocide under the UN convention," Sinclair said.
The United Nations' convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide does not address "cultural genocide," but it says genocide may include causing "mental harm" to a racial or religious group.
A spokesperson for Bernard Valcourt, the minister of aboriginal affairs, would not comment on the chief justice's remarks, but issued a statement saying, "While we cannot undo the past, we can learn from it and we have taken the steps necessary to bring closure to the legacy of the Indian residential schools."
Policy of 'aggressive assimilation'
In the 19th century, the Canadian government developed a policy of "aggressive assimilation" calling for aboriginal children to be taught at church-run, government-funded residential schools.
The government felt children were easier to mould than adults, and the concept of a boarding school was the best way to prepare them for life in mainstream society.
Canada's first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, was a strong proponent of the system.
"When the school is on the reserve, the child lives with his parents who are savages; he is surrounded by savages, and though he may learn to read and write, his habits and training and mode of thought are Indian. He is simply a savage who can read and write," he told the House of Commons in 1883.
The last residential schools, St. Michael's Indian Residential School and Gordon Indian Residential School, both located in Saskatchewan, closed in 1996.
In 2008, Prime Minister Harper made a historic apology for the harm caused by the residential school system. |
“There hadn’t been a traveling exhibition particularly devoted to Jim, ever,” said Ms. Falk, who broached the idea to the Smithsonian with Henson’s widow, Jane Henson. “The other shows that have gone up were much more about the Muppets.”
Not that “Jim Henson’s Fantastic World” lacks Muppets. Its more than a dozen examples include Kermit, the unflappable, easygoing frog whom Henson regarded as his alter ego; Bert and Ernie, the “Sesame Street” pals who embodied Henson’s comedic partnership with the puppeteer Frank Oz; Rowlf the dog, the first nationally known Muppet, who went from dog food commercials to “The Jimmy Dean Show”; the wise minstrel Cantus from “Fraggle Rock,” another Henson stand-in; and the inimitable Miss Piggy, absent from most of the tour but resplendent here in a wedding dress. (She had not been available until the show was nearing its end, said Bonnie Erickson, the designer who created her and the executive director of the Jim Henson Legacy. “But she’s delighted to be in New York and on display.”)
The entire exhibition, let alone Miss Piggy, almost didn’t make it to Queens; the tour was to conclude before the Museum of the Moving Image reopened in January after an extensive renovation. But Carl Goodman, the museum’s executive director, passionately wanted the show: Henson’s company and his creative home were just blocks away. Being an added stop has brought benefits. The exhibition runs in New York a full six months, twice as long as anywhere else.
“Other institutions who’ve hosted it would treat it as a kids’ exhibition and have programs just for younger people,” Mr. Goodman said. “We’ve been heartened to see that kids do love it and that we didn’t have to bring it down to their level.”
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Instead the museum has devised programs, many for adults, featuring Henson’s collaborators as leaders and guests. They include “Look Both Ways and Go” (Sept. 18), an afternoon with Jane Henson, her husband’s original creative partner; “Muppet Music Moments: A Weekend Celebration of Jim Henson’s Birthday” (Sept. 24 and 25), with the music consultant Larry Grossman; and “Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey” (Sept. 25), a screening of a film about the “Sesame Street” puppeteer Kevin Clash, which he and the director, Constance Marks, will attend. This Saturday and Sunday the museum offers “Sound Effects,” an interactive family workshop about “The Muppet Movie.”
With its multiple theaters, the museum can also enhance the exhibition in ways not possible elsewhere. Screenings will feature Henson projects outside the show’s main focus, like the science-fiction film “The Labyrinth” (1986) and episodes from his 1980s TV series “The Storyteller” and “The Jim Henson Hour.”
“The story of how he developed his thinking process and how his creativity grew from that make up the core of our show,” said Deborah Macanic, the project director at the Smithsonian. “If we had focused a lot on individual film projects, we wouldn’t have been able to tell that story.”
While the exhibition has an excerpt from “Time Piece” (1965), an Oscar-nominated short that Henson wrote, directed and starred in, only this museum has devoted an amphitheater to screening the whole nine-minute work continuously (through Sept. 30). A surreal, nonlinear film depicting its harried protagonist in places including the hospital, the street and the jungle, it was, Henson said, “the story of Everyman, frustrated by the typical tasks of a typical day.” No Muppets, no sunny songs.
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Another surprise is the many displays of unrealized projects. But Henson often adapted early rejected concepts into later successful ones. Elements of “The Zoocus,” for instance, an unproduced 1960 variety show, turn up in “The Muppet Show” some 15 years later. “Jim never wasted an idea,” Ms. Falk said.
The show highlights Henson above all as a television pioneer. He was one of the first to use soft material for puppets, which allowed more expressivity on screen. (He made the original Kermit from his mother’s old coat and a Ping-Pong ball.) He was also among the first puppeteers to synchronize his voice with his hand movements, said Cheryl Henson, president of the Jim Henson Foundation and one of his five children. And he devised other innovations by putting operators inside his creations. “He was always excited by the potential of puppetry,” she said. “He never saw it as a limited form just for young children.”
The exhibition, which shows Henson experimenting with new puppet types in the fantasy film “The Dark Crystal” (1982), ends with a montage of film and television clips that include interviews with him and illustrate his approach, both playful and serious.
“He liked to say, ‘unlike anything ever done before,’ ” Cheryl Henson said. “It’s kind of a Barnum & Bailey statement, but he always said that that was what the work had to be.” |
[Part two of this series can be found here]
In a quiet moment over the Christmas break, and being a fun guy, I had time to sit down and go through some of the documents published as part of the planning review process for the new Spurs stadium.
Spurs, normally quite circumspect in how they go about their business, have been quite transparent in publicising information on the new stadium. But there is nothing like a public review process to impell companies to truly let the light in on their plans.
I’ve always been curious about how Spurs are going to actually fund such a massive project, and what repercussions this could have on the team we see once the stadium finally opens.
Among the documentation bundle available to the public was a Viability Report on the scheme.
This report was produced by accountancy firm KPMG for Haringey Council and the Greater London Authority. It does exactly what it says in the tin — assesses whether a planning applicant such as Spurs has a feasible plan to ensure their project is completed.
Having gone through it, it is fair to say this is an interesting document. As the report states, its primary source is information provided by the club.
The report highlights the huge financial challenge facing Spurs, and details the commercial assumptions that are underpinning the project. It also offers some hints about the long-term strategy that may be in play by ENIC.
In this post, I’m going to look at the key financial questions surrounding the stadium scheme. In part two, I’ll look in detail at the most eye-grabbing part of the whole scheme — the NFL provisions.
1 Project Cost and risk
The Viability Report lays bare the immense cost of the project that Spurs have embarked upon. While Daniel Levy, at the recent fan forum, put the final stadium cost at £500 million, KPMG estimates the cost of the entire scheme at between £675 million and £750 million. This includes the development of the land at the south of site — where the apartment blocks, hotel, climbing wall and scuba tank (indeed) will be located.
Whichever way you shake it, this is a lot of money, particularly in comparison with other stadium projects. Per the report, the Stadium of Light cost just £15 million to construct, helped tremendously by the fact it is located in Sunderland and presumably built from cardboard. West Ham are chipping in a derisory £16 million of the £194 million cost of the Olympic Stadium refit. I’ve struggled to find an accurate figure for the Emirates Stadium — on Wikipedia, it cites both £390 million (the commonly held figure) and £440 million. Either way, the cost facing Spurs is significantly above any of this.
The report notes the relative decline in importance of the increased match-day revenues a new stadium would generate amid soaring TV income. “The financial benefits of a new stadium could be less than the merit payments attributed to finishing a few places higher (in the Premier League),” it states.
I’d add on that point though, TV rights may be soaring now, but there is no guarantee they will continue to do so — the Premier League deal is revisited every three years. A world-class stadium, so long as you can continue to fill it, offers secure long-term revenues.
But it just shows how the huge influx of TV money is transforming the environment. The TV income is so high it is seen to be creating an argument AGAINST expanding stadia, even as it provides the finance that should be enabling every club to build for the future like Spurs are doing.
2 The £300 million funding gap
A key area of consideration in the KPMG viability report is the “funding gap” — the difference between what Spurs have already invested and the commitments they have been able to secure, and what still needs to be found. The gap is considerable.
So far, Spurs have spent around £100 million — including in purchasing land. They have also found three banks willing to loan £350 million towards the project. This is no mean feat — the KPMG report notes there has been “little recent appetite to fund stadia projects” This loan is £90 million more than Arsenal secured, more than 10 years ago (more on them later).
This still leaves between £225 million and £300 million to find.
The report lists the potential funding options as public sector contribution, junior debt, equity investment, sales from the southern development, and advanced sales of naming rights and hospitality/season tickets.
I’ll talk about equity investment shortly, but the report shows that Spurs are facing a delicate balancing act. For example, it states securitizing future naming rights and hospitality sales could restrict options when it comes to issuing new debt.
A key to this balancing act is the “bridge loan” that the three banks have offered. Essentially, the banks will advance Spurs £200 million of the £350 million total loan, enabling the club to push on with construction. Levy has spoken previously (I can’t recall exactly when so I can’t find the link) about the naming rights issue — how typically, agreements are reached once construction is well advanced. This removes the risk of a brand being associated with a heavily delayed project such as Wembley, for example.
The report also sets out the likely financing terms: the £350 million loan (including the bridge element), will be a five-year loan that will then be refinanced. This is important guidance for us fans — for five years money will be tight due to high interest payments, but then the burden should soften. This is similar to the Arsenal experience — after they refinanced they were able to push the boat out and make signings like Ozil and Sanchez (Arsenal now have both a massive cash balance and massive debt).
The report stated that the “bridge” loan could have been in place by the end of December 2015. I’ve seen no announcement of this by the club yet. Approval is still needed by the Mayor of London and Secretary of State before construction can advance at full speed, which should be a formality.
You can clearly see Levy’s strategy in terms of ensuring a “train” of money rolling steadily onwards to ensure that adequate finance is in place through the phases of the project.
The £100 million that has already been spent (a proportion of which came from equity investment from ENIC, more later) has enabled Spurs to complete the first phase of the redevelopment (Lilywhite House), and reach the “shovel ready” stage on phase two, the stadium itself. (In fact, it is more advanced with some groundworks already done). The £200 million bridge loan will enable Spurs to go full-speed as soon as it gets the final of the many green lights required. This would include expensive items such as purchasing raw materials. The next £150 million of the loan will then be paid out in installments as the project moves towards completion.
Accepting the £500 million cost for the actual stadium build, with £100 million already spent and £350 million already committed, Spurs are getting there. It is funding the final phase, the southern development, that is more uncertain. However, by then the stadium will be up and running, a naming rights deal will have kicked in, and increased match-day revenues should be rolling in.
3 Lessons from Arsenal
The closest terms of reference for what Spurs are embarking upon comes from Arsenal, understandably. And Arsenal offer some valuable lessons, in particular in funding the project.
Arsenal pushed ahead with their stadium project without adequate funding in place (they had a loan of £260 million), forcing them to halt work at one stage when the money dried up. They were required to issue fresh debt and equity, securitize commercial revenues and curtail transfer activity at a greater level than initially planned, according to KPMG.
I suspect, the cash crunch also limited what work they did on the stadium, in particularly the finishing touches that can give it that unique feeling of “home”. Subsequent to completion, The Emirates had to undergo an “Arsenalisation”, which is a little embarrassing.
Money from the redevelopment of Highbury only started to roll in after the stadium was completed. This will be the same for Spurs, who will finish the stadium then work on the redevelopment of the south of the site. So, it must be noted, the stated idea of funding for the scheme potentially coming from this redevelopment appears optimistic.
Failure to have money in place when required would be doubly painful for Spurs as we are having to play away from White Hart Lane for one season during construction.
The deadlines appear quite tight for the magnitude of the project, and from what I am aware, Premier League rules dictate that you can only play in one “home” stadium per season. One year in Milton Keynes (we need to start accepting that Wembley isn’t likely to happen as Chelsea have more money than us) will be bad, two will be very annoying for fans and cost the club millions in lost revenues.
4 Naming rights, and the assessment of a length of a piece of string
As stated, Spurs will need to find between £225 million and £300 million to complete the stadium scheme. The first priority in bridging the gap will be securing naming rights.
So how much can Spurs expect to receive from naming rights? There is a “how long is a piece of string” aspect to the question, as the report notes, but Spurs have put a clear figure on how much they think they can get from from naming rights and some other related commercial income streams: £30 million per year.
The report states: “Key drivers of commercial revenue growth in the new stadium are expected to be stadium and cornerstone naming rights, and income in respect of increased merchandising and conference events, which together will give annual incremental income of approximately £30 million per year.”
Obviously, I can’t divine how much of this £30 million would be naming rights, and how much conference or merchandising income. But is this even realistic?
Arsenal signed a £90 million, 15-year deal with Emirates, for both shirt sponsorship and naming rights, in 2004. Per The Guardian’s Daniel Taylor, the naming rights were valued at just £2.4 million per year. In 2011, Manchester City signed an FFP-busting £400 million, 10-year deal with Etihad, again for both shirt and stadium rights. In recent naming rights deals in the US, MetLife paid $400 million (£275 million) over 25 years for rights to Meadowlands, home of both New York NFL franchises. Levi’s paid $220 million over 11 years to sponsor the home of the San Francisco 49ers.
The KPMG report makes clear this £30 million figure is the club’s, and it came from an external report. But the huge disparity between what Arsenal achieved in 2004 and Manchester City engineered in 2011 provides few clues, while the rights deal in the US may suggest what Spurs are after is optimistic.
One thing I would also note is that Spurs’ shirt sponsorship with AIA runs until the end of the 2018/19 season, which may rule out a joint shirt and stadium sponsorship deal unless there is a break clause in the contract, or unless AIA is interested in a more comprehensive sponsorship.
The key in Spurs’ negotiations once the club begins marketing the rights will be twofold: securing as big a deal as possible, obviously, but also ensuring that it is “frontloaded” to as great an extent as possible to ensure finance is in place through the later stages of construction.
Can Levy pull a rabbit out of the hat, and land a £225 million to £300 million naming rights deal to cover the gap? We’ll see. But it appears likely that Spurs will need more funding to complete the scheme.
5 That £80 million profit
At this point, it should be noted that Spurs is a profitable club, stonkingly so in the last financial year. Per football finance blogger Swiss Ramble, Spurs booked a cool £80 million profit in the last set of accounts.
This figure was helped by the sale of Gareth Bale to Real Madrid, but Spurs reinvested much of that money in the transfer market.
I suspect, the accounts were polished shinier than the silverware at Buckingham Palace in the last financial year as Spurs knew that they would soon be securing financing for the stadium — the better shape the club is in, the lower the initial rate of interest on the £350 million loan. This financial year, the wage bill will have decreased with some big earners gone, and the wage bill should still be relatively low the following financial year when the new TV deal kicks in, due to the age profile of the squad. Depending on the degree of deferment of certain costs away from last year’s accounts (for example you can do smart things with player amortisation, i.e how you write down the cost of purchasing a player), Spurs could still be quite stonkingly profitable in the next couple of seasons, too.
There is a big difference between flogging the crown jewels to fund a stadium, and reinvesting profits to build the club’s future. In fact, Spurs have been doing this with little complaint for years — the club invested £45 million on the new training facility, for example.
Daniel Levy has been clear there will still be money available to strengthen the squad through construction, and he has no intention of selling any players. He appears to have an ally in Mauricio Pochettino, who doesn’t like to spend unless necessary and is the Premier League’s “Mr Youth Development”.
It would appear that there may be profits from the club in the next couple of seasons that could be poured (almost literally) into building the new stadium.
6 Equity sale: ENIC’s last resort
For what remains, the KPMG report gives some interesting detail on the final likely source of funding: an equity sale.
(As far as I’m aware, there is no public funding for the stadium itself, and KPMG doesn’t give any further details on junior debt issuance).
Talks on an equity investment have already taken place, although the report notes that these are at an earlier stage than talks with banks over a loan. It continues: “The club have verbally indicated that they have received expressions of interest from credible counterparties, including entities with significant experience in financing similar sports stadia construction projects.”
A while back, Spurs confirmed an approach from an investment company named Cain Hoy, a London-based outfit apparently focused on real estate that was set up by several executives of Guggenheim Partners, a major investment company. The approach was serious enough that Spurs were forced to open their books so Cain Hoy could conduct due diligence. Per @ztranche, a Spurs-supporting finance professional, things never went further. The club subsequently put about a figure of £1 billion needed to buy the club. As some noted at the time, this seemed extremely high.
Currently, ENIC’s control of the club is very secure — per the last annual report, ENIC held over 182 million shares in the club, representing 85.46 percent of those in issue. I don’t know who owns the other 14.5 percent — filings to Companies House simply state “other”. Regulations mean any shareholdings over 3 percent must be disclosed. Per Tottenham Hotspur’s annual reports, the last time someone blipped above this mark was in 2009, when Michael Ashcroft (Lord Ashcroft for those who follow British politics) upped his stake to about 4 percent. Polys Haji-ioannou (the older brother of the EasyJet fella Sir Stelios) previously owned just over 9 percent, through his HODRAM vehicle, but it would appear he sold down his stake at the same time that Alan Sugar sold his remaining stake to ENIC in 2007, as it is no longer disclosed as a substantial holding.
By the way, Daniel Levy and his family are “potential beneficiaries of a discretionary trust that ultimates owns 29.41 percent” of ENIC — I always think this is important to remember. He may drive us crazy at times, but he is a Spurs fan and has serious skin in the game.
I picked the brains of @ztranche on ENIC’s strategy, and we held a similar hunch: ENIC view an equity sale, now, as a last resort.
Simply put, the value of Spurs should soar once the stadium is built. The club is making a huge, and risky, investment in a new stadium, dragging down its value. While debt will increase tremendously, revenues will soar once the stadium is built.
By extension, you can see why investors such as Cain Hoy may fancy taking a stake in Spurs now — hence a figure of £1 billion being bandied around to deter them.
The last time Spurs issued fresh equity, it was almost all bought by ENIC itself — this occurred in 2009 and enabled Spurs to press ahead with land purchases, I believe. Could this happen again? I don’t know enough about Joe Lewis or his finances beyond what is in the public domain — but safe to say he has significant means. Forbes puts his net worth of $5.2 billion, and his Tavistock portfolio has a long list of assets. The idea that ENIC itself “buys” much of the new equity, essentially pumping money into the club, with a view that the value is going to soar, is far from outlandish.
I’d note, Spurs will be keen to avoid another lesson from Arsenal — warring factions of investors that create an atmosphere of stasis, or arguably worse, instability. So ENIC strengthening its control of Spurs isn’t a bad thing, per se.
Judging by the amounts Spurs already have committed, the potential for naming rights and the profitability of the club, the amount of finance needing to be raised by ENIC may be fairly modest — by my fag-packet maths, it would more likely be in the tens of millions than the hundreds of millions. This is a relatively small amount in the grand scheme of things. Provided it has the funds, there seems little incentive for ENIC to dilute its shareholding of the club, and even reduce its control by, say, surrendering seats on the board.
To sum up, ENIC appear to have made major strides in ensuring sufficient money is in place to fund the Spurs stadium project. And it will be fascinating to watch their strategy in securing what else needs to be found.
Thanks for reading, please follow me on Twitter for more Spurs chat, my handle is @spurs_report. I’d welcome any feedback on this article.
NEXT: In part two, I’m going to look in detail at the most curious single aspect of the whole stadium scheme — the NFL connection.
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Anatomical Theatre: Depictions of the Body, Disease, and Death in Medical Museums of the Western World
Anatomical Theatre is a photographic exhibition documenting artifacts collected by and exhibited in medical museums throughout Europe and the United States. The objects in these photos range from preserved human remains to models made from ivory, wax, and papier mâché. The artifacts span from the 16th Century to the 20th, and include examples from a wide range of countries, artists, and preparators.
The photographs in this exhibition were taken by Joanna Ebenstein, a New York-based photographer and designer, on the course of a one-month pilgrimage to the famed medical museums of the Western World. On the course of the trip, she visited museums in England, Scotland, Hungary, Italy, Austria, The Netherlands, and the United States (see full list of museums here); at each, she interviewed curators or keepers, and photographed both behind-the-scenes and in the museum exhibit areas.
Anatomical Theatre is a traveling exhibition; it debuted at the University of Alabama at Birmingham's Alabama Museum of the Health Sciences in September 2007. It was supported in part by a Reynolds Associates Research Fellowship in the History of the Health Sciences fellowship. Its next destination has yet to be determined.
THE PHOTOGRAPHER WOULD LIKE TO THANK: Heather Chaplin, Tara Cunningham, James Edmonson, Richard Faulk, Megan Fitzpatrick, Michael Flannery, Pam Grossman, Eric Huang, Laura Lindgren, Susannah McDonald, Evan Michelson, Mike Johns, Gerard Newland, Rosamond Purcell, Stefanie Rookis, Michael Sappol, Gretchen Worden, as well as the curators at all the museums I visited who so graciously opened their institutions to me and my camera.
MASTHEAD IMAGE: W. Swanenburg: Anatomical theater in Leiden, engraving (after drawing by Woudanus), 1610
All contents copyright of Joanna Ebenstein, 2008. |
(CNN) Ohio is prohibiting doctors from performing abortions in cases where tests reveal the fetus has or likely has Down syndrome.
Republican Gov. John Kasich signed the legislation Friday and the law goes into effect in 90 days. "The governor is pro-life and supports policies that protect the sanctity of life," press secretary Jon Keeling tells CNN.
The law prohibits abortions after prenatal tests reveal Down syndrome in a fetus or if there's "any other reason to believe" the fetus has the genetic condition.
A person performing an abortion in such a case could face a fourth-degree felony charge, and physicians could lose their licenses. The woman seeking the abortion would not be held accountable, according to the legislation.
Similar laws have passed in North Dakota and Indiana, though a federal judge blocked the Indiana law. The North Dakota law went into effect in 2013.
Down syndrome is a genetic condition that affects cognitive ability, causing mild to severe learning disabilities and distinctive facial characteristics. The condition can be diagnosed during pregnancy through prenatal screening tests. Treatment can include speech, occupational, emotional and other therapies; supplements and drugs; and assistive devices.
'It is an issue of discrimination'
Anti-abortion advocates praised the new law. "Now that the Down Syndrome Non-Discrimination Act is law, unborn babies prenatally diagnosed with Down syndrome are given a shot at life," said Mike Gonidakis, president of Ohio Right to Life. "Ohio is and will continue to be a state that sees the lives of people with Down syndrome as lives worth living, thanks to this legislation."
Ohio Rep. Sarah LaTourette, a Republican who introduced the House bill last month, said it's not an abortion issue, but rather an issue of discrimination.
"A diagnosis of Down syndrome for your unborn child can be devastating and life-changing. Not everyone is equipped to handle this lifelong commitment, but thankfully, as you can see, there are now many options available to families," she said before the Senate voted on the bill last week.
"I believe that life begins at conception and that abortion should never be considered an option. However, regardless of if you agree with me or not, I hope that you can see that this is not an issue about abortion; it is an issue of discrimination -- discriminating against a person, not allowing them their God-given right to life, simply because they might have Down syndrome."
'What is needed is information, not restrictions'
The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio condemned the legislation, saying it would interfere with women's rights to make personal decisions.
The group had called for Kasich to veto the bill.
"We should never force any woman to become a parent against her will or question her decisions about pregnancy. We don't know her circumstances. Shame on our legislators for judging anyone else's decision about something as important as whether to become a parent," said Gary Daniels, chief lobbyist for the ACLU of Ohio. "We urge Gov. Kasich to do the right thing for Ohio women and families and veto this dangerous legislation."
Emily Chesnut, a mother of four from Cincinnati, became a Down syndrome activist after her 6-year-old daughter was diagnosed with the condition. She said she's against the law.
"I think they are using Down syndrome as a face to restrict women from having abortions," Chesnut said. She believes that women should have the right to make their own medical decisions and that this bill confuses that issue.
Information is what people need when it comes to Down syndrome, she said.
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"I think people who are on both sides would agree we need more information. It's scary when you hear your child is not perfect, but accurate information is the most important," said Chesnut, who previously promoted a bill that required the Ohio Department of Health to have up-to-date Down syndrome information.
When there is a diagnosis, "what is needed is information, not restrictions," she said. |
More than 20% of Germany’s population has a migrant background. Migrants are almost twice as likely to have a university education as the average German.
Statistics released by Germany’s Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) on Monday (3 August) show a recent surge of immigration in Germany. The European Union is out in front, followed by China and Syria.
In 2014, 16.4 million German residents, over 20% of the total population, had a migrant background. This is an increase of 3% in just one year, fuelled mainly by high immigration, according to Destatis.
Germany was home to 10.9 million immigrants in 2014, an increase of more than 10% since 2011. Over half of people with a migrant background (56%) held a German passport, including 46% of immigrants.
European Union immigration increased by over 18% from 2011 to 2014. Poland, Romania and Italy were the most important countries of origin of Germany’s EU immigrants over this period. Together these three countries count 343,000 citizens on German soil, according to Destatis.
Employment was the main motivation for migrants that arrived in Germany after the 2008 financial crisis (28%). Among those that migrated to Germany between 2000 and 2007, only 16.5% came specifically to look for work. Of the immigrants that arrived after 2011, 44% have a university education, compared to 24% of Germans without a migrant background.
The number of migrants from outside the EU also rose substantially between 2011 and 2014, Destatis reported. Germany’s Chinese minority increased by 54%, or 38,000, and the Syrian population almost doubled over the same period, with 35,000 people seeking refuge from civil war in Germany.
36% of all migrants that have arrived in Germany since 1960 said they speak fluent German, while for 11%, German is their native language. |
Experts from the European Food Safey Authority (EFSA) have confirmed previous conclusions that acrylamide, a chemical substance formed when heating foods like potato chips, barbecued meat, and bread, potentially increases the risk of developing cancer.
EFSA’s Panel on Contaminants in the Food Chain (CONTAM) said it stood by a draft opinion, published in July last year, which concluded on an increased risk of cancer caused by acrylamide.
Over the past year, EFSA held a public consultation to improve its scientific opinion on acrylomide, but left its conclusions unchanged, the agency announced on Thursday (4 June).
The risk applies to all age groups, EFSA said in a statement.
Baking and roasting
Acrylamide is a chemical compound that typically forms in food products such as potato crisps, chips, bread, biscuits and coffee, during high-temperature processing (above 120°), including frying, baking and roasting.
Acrylamide has previously been linked to cancer. In 2002, Swedish researchers found the compound by coincidence, and had a strong suspicion that acrylamide was a carcinogenic agent.
“The public consultation helped us to fine-tune the scientific opinion. In particular, we have further clarified our evaluation of studies on the effects of acrylamide in humans and our description of the main food sources of acrylamide for consumers. Also, recent studies that we became aware of during the public consultation phase have been integrated into the final scientific opinion,” said Diane Benford, Chair of the CONTAM panel.
FoodDrinkEurope, a trade association, noted that the levels of acrylamide found in different products are dependent upon a wide-range of factors, but recognises the importance of reducing acrylamide wherever possible.
For more than a decade, industrial food producers have tried to reduce acrylamide in their products and have developed a toolbox in collaboration with the European Commission and EU member states as well as a code of practice and guidance for SMEs.
“These actions have successfully reduced acrylamide levels in a number of foods,” FoodDrinkEurope told EURACTIV.
Individual food companies have also contributed to EFSA’s call for data by providing some 40,000 samples from various food products to ensure the broadest possible survey.
“Europe’s food and drink manufacturers continue to invest significant resources to address the issue of acrylamide, particularly through education, participation in crop research programmes and the introduction of new food processing procedures and technologies,” the industry group added.
No other harmful effects
Apart from cancer, EFSA also considered other possible harmful effects of acrylamide, for example the nervous system. But the effects were not considered to be a concern, based on current levels of dietary exposure, the agency said.
The EU’s food safety agency will now advise and inform EU and national decision-makers on how to reduce consumer exposure to acrylamide in food. Reccomendations might include advice on eating habits and home cooking, or controls on commercial food production. |
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By Evan Smith
The third-place finisher in the primary-election contest to replace U.S. 7th District Rep. Jim McDermott has endorsed second-place finisher Brady Pinero Walkinshaw over primary leader Pramila Jayapal.
Democratic King County Councilman Joe McDermott, who is not related to retiring Democratic congressman Jim McDermott, announced last week that he had endorsed fellow Democrat Walkinshaw over Jayapal, another Democrat, for the November general election.
Primary results posted through Monday morning showed Jayapal leading with 42 percent of the votes to Walkinshaw’s 21 percent and McDermott’s 19 percent. The remaining votes were divided among two other Democrats, two Republicans and two independents.
Elections officials plan to certify results on Tuesday.
The 7th District includes Edmonds, Woodway, Shoreline and Lake Forest Park, in addition to most of Seattle and Seattle’s southwest suburbs.
Joe McDermott, who now chairs the King County Council, said in endorsing Walkinshaw Thursday, “Brady is a bridge-builder who reaches across the aisle to solve real problems.”
Evan Smith can be reached at schsmith@frontier.com. |
Soundtrack Legend Riz Ortolani Dies at 87
Published Jan 23, 2014
Marking some tragic news in the film world today, esteemed Italian soundtrack composer Riz Ortolani has passed away. According to Italian news reports , Ortolani died in Rome this evening (January 23) due to complications with bronchitis. He was 87.While not as esteemed as fellow cinematic scorer Ennio Morricone, Ortolani left a huge mark on the world of cinema and music. Born on March 25, 1926, in Pesaro, Italy, as Riziero Ortolani, the composer worked with such directors as Lucio Fulci, Damiano Damiani, Ruggero Deodato, Vittorio De Sica, Pupi Avati and many others over the course of his long career, venturing into everything from giallo films to spaghetti westerns to exploitation flicks and mondo cinema.Among Ortolani's best known works is 1962's, whose main theme "More" won a Grammy and was also nominated for an Oscar. Over the years, the track was covered by everyone from Frank Sinatra to Judy Garland to Herb Alpert.Ortolani is also well-known for his musical contributions to the controversial cult classic, whose guitar-led theme would go on to stand as one of cinema's most moving and eerily haunting movements.But while Ortolani's career was long and prolific, he also had a mark on modern cinema as well, with Quentin Tarantino using his works in the director'sfilms, as well as in 2012's. Ortolani's song "Oh My Love," sung by his wife Katyna Ranieri, would also appear in Nicolas Winding Refn's 2011 filmBesides his film score work, Ortolani established the Pesaro Riz Ortolani Foundation to promote music through scholarships, seminars, debates, concerts and exhibitions.Sadly, Katyna Ranieri and Ortolani were to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary in the next few days. Along with Katyna, he leaves two sons, Henry and Rizia.Ortolani's funeral will be held in Rome on Saturday (January 25) in the Church of the Artists of the Piazza del Popolo. |
With only months to live, Lakeland teenager Zach Sobiech turns to music
Credit: via CaringBridge.org
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In August of 2009, Lakeland, Minn. teenager Zach Sobiech went for a run and came home with a pain in his left hip. A physical therapist initially told him it might be a problem with his hip flexor, but when the pain didn’t let up Zach went in for more tests. Within a few months, Zach’s family was grappling with a new reality: Their 14-year-old boy had cancer.
Sobiech, now 17, has undergone several rounds of surgery, chemo, and radiation in attempt to stave off his osteosarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer. Earlier this year, a scan revealed that the cancer had returned to his hip and also spread into his lungs. Doctors have stopped chemo and placed him on a new medication that may slow the growth of his tumors, and his prognosis has turned grim.
“Zach has been told that he likely has only months to live,” his Caring Bridge site explains. “His response is to embrace every day with hope and joy. Some days are harder than others, but he remains the upbeat and positive soul he has always been.”
With an uncertain and harrowing future ahead, Sobiech has found a way to channel that hope and joy into a new song, “Clouds.” The song eventually made its way into the hands of KS95 general manager Dan Seeman, who helped to put Zach and his family in touch with a voice coach, studio engineer, and crew of musicians who could help give the song the support it deserves. The end result is a touching video that finds Sobiech saying farewell to his family and friends through his music.
Children’s Cancer has set up a Zach Sobiech Osteosarcoma Fund to raise money for research into his particular form of cancer; gifts of $20 or more will receive a copy of Zach’s album, which includes “Clouds” and a few other original tunes.
Update: Zach Sobiech passed away on May 21, 2013. Read the full story on his life and incredible music career here. |
The senator from Vermont is Hillary Clinton’s rival in the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination.
The senator from Vermont has become Hillary Clinton’s chief rival in the contest for the Democratic nomination.
The senator from Vermont has become Hillary Clinton’s chief rival in the contest for the Democratic nomination.
I adore Bernie Sanders.
I agree with his message of fairness and I share his outrage over inequality and corporate abuses. I think his righteous populism has captured the moment perfectly. I respect the uplifting campaign he has run. I admire his authenticity.
And I am convinced Democrats would be insane to nominate him.
Hillary Clinton, by contrast, is a dreary candidate. She has, again, failed to connect with voters. Her policy positions are cautious and uninspiring. Her reflexive secrecy causes a whiff of scandal to follow her everywhere. She seems calculating and phony.
And yet if Democrats hope to hold the presidency in November, they’ll need to hold their noses and nominate Clinton.
Bernie Sanders regularly calls for a "political revolution" in America, but what does that mean? (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)
Ultimately, I expect that’s what Democrats will do — because as much as they love Sanders , they loathe Donald Trump more. It seems more evident each day that Republicans have lost their collective reason and are beginning to accept the notion that Trump will be their nominee. And I doubt Democrats will make an anti-immigrant bigot the president by nominating a socialist to run against him.
Sanders and his supporters boast of polls showing him, on average, matching up slightly better against Trump than Clinton does. But those matchups are misleading: Opponents have been attacking and defining Clinton for a quarter- century, but nobody has really gone to work yet on demonizing Sanders.
Watching Sanders at Monday night’s Democratic presidential forum in Des Moines, I imagined how Trump — or another Republican nominee — would disembowel the relatively unknown Vermonter.
The first questioner from the audience asked Sanders to explain why he embraces the “socialist” label and requested that Sanders define it “so that it doesn’t concern the rest of us citizens.”
Sanders, explaining that much of what he proposes is happening in Scandinavia and Germany (a concept that itself alarms Americans who don’t want to be like socialized Europe), answered vaguely: “Creating a government that works for all of us, not just a handful of people on the top — that’s my definition of democratic socialism.”
But that’s not how Republicans will define socialism — and they’ll have the dictionary on their side. They’ll portray Sanders as one who wants the government to own and control major industries and the means of production and distribution of goods. They’ll say he wants to take away private property. That wouldn’t be fair, but it would be easy. Socialists don’t win national elections in the United States .
Sanders on Monday night also admitted he would seek massive tax increases — “one of the biggest tax hikes in history,” as moderator Chris Cuomo put it — to expand Medicare to all. Sanders, this time making a comparison with Britain and France, allowed that “hypothetically, you’re going to pay $5,000 more in taxes,” and declared, “W e will raise taxes, yes we will.” He said this would be offset by lower health-insurance premiums and protested that “it’s demagogic to say, oh, you’re paying more in taxes.”
Well, yes — and Trump is a demagogue.
Sanders also made clear he would be happy to identify Democrats as the party of big government and of wealth redistribution. When Cuomo said Sanders seemed to be saying he would grow government “bigger than ever,” Sanders didn’t quarrel, saying, “P eople want to criticize me, okay,” and “F ine, if that’s the criticism, I accept it.”
Sanders accepts it, but are Democrats ready to accept ownership of socialism, massive tax increases and a dramatic expansion of government? If so, they will lose.
Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire and former New York mayor who floated a trial balloon over the weekend about an independent run, knows this. As t he New York Times reported: “If Republicans were to nominate Mr. Trump or Senator Ted Cruz, a hard-line conservative, and Democrats chose Mr. Sanders, Mr. Bloomberg . . . has told allies he would be likely to run.”
President Obama seems to know this, too — which would explain why he tiptoed beyond his official neutrality to praise Clinton in an interview with Politico’s Glenn Thrush. “I think that what Hillary presents is a recognition that translating values into governance and delivering the goods is ultimately the job of politics,” he said. He portrayed Sanders as “the bright, shiny object that people haven’t seen before.”
It doesn’t speak well of Clinton that, next to her, a 74-year-old guy who has been in politics for four decades is a bright and shiny object. The #feelthebern phenomenon has at least as much to do with Clinton as with Sanders: Democrats are eager for an alternative to her inauthentic politics and cautious policies.
I share their frustration with Clinton. But that doesn’t make Sanders a rational choice.
Twitter: @Milbank
Read more from Dana Milbank’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. |
“Aw, c’mon, Pearl! They only have three left!” Steven pleaded, staring into the freezer. Deep in the icy bowels of the cooler, three Cookie Cat wrappers could be seen poking out of the ice, taunting Steven with their frozen goodness.
“Absolutely not,” Pearl replied calmly, fishing a frozen dinner out of the next freezer over. “You remember what happened last time we got you those.”
“But that wasn’t—” Steven began to protest, but Pearl cut him off.
“You buried the last ones we bought!” she said, placing a bag of frozen peas into her basket. “That’s simply not healthy. Now, come along, Steven. We can stop at the Big Donut on the way home.”
Steven grumbled as he pushed away from the freezer and joined Pearl as she meandered through the aisles, grabbing items off shelves and loading them into her basket.
“Thank you for shopping at the Beach City Breadbasket. That’ll be $86.75,” the grocery clerk said in a flat, affectless voice. “Do you have a rewards ca-”
He was cut off mid-sentence as Pearl reached her hand to her forehead and a brilliant flash of white light shot out of her gem. When the light faded, Pearl was holding a wad of bills and change.
“That should cover it,” Pearl said confidently, placing the money on the counter and gathering the bags full of groceries.
Pearl and Steven left the stunned grocery clerk staring at the wad of bills on the counter as they exited the store.
~~~
Pearl placed the bags on the kitchen counter and began her favorite part of the grocery shopping experience: unloading the food into the cabinets in nice, orderly arrangements. Or, at least, they would be nice and orderly until Amethyst noticed there was new food.
However, partway through her second bag, Pearl noticed something unusual: a box of frozen tater tots.
“I don't remember getting these...” she muttered.
“Steven?” Pearl called, glancing over her shoulder at him. “Did you get a box of tater tots at the store?”
“Tater tots?” Steven replied. “No, I don’t think so. I got some waffles, but I think that was it.”
A cold feeling of dread began building up in Pearl’s gut. She took a deep breath to calm herself and picked up the receipt. She scanned through the list of purchases.
There were no tater tots.
The cold feeling of dread sharpened.
“Oh, Steven! I just remembered! I have to... uh, sharpen my swords! You can’t have dull swords in a battle, right?”
“Uh, sure—” Steven began. Pearl cut him off.
“Great! Glad you understand. Can you finish putting these away for me?” Pearl said a little too quickly, edging closer to the temple door all the while, the package of tater tots behind her back. “ I really have to do this soon, thanks! Bye!”
Pearl’s gem flashed, and the temple door slid open. Before Steven could get a word in edgewise, she dashed inside, incriminating tots still in hand.
The temple door slammed shut, and Pearl was left alone in the room of waterfalls. The crashing sound of falling water helped calm her nerves slightly as she stared at the frozen package in her hand.
“Okay, Pearl, there’s no need to panic,” she said, making her way out across the water towards the closest waterfall. “So it looks like you left the store without paying for this. No harm done, right? You can just take it back!”
Pearl reached the base of the waterfall and stepped into it. A moment later, she burst out of the top of the waterfall in a cloud of mist and began to pace.
“Oh, I can’t just take it back. If they take it back, they’ll know I stole it, and I’ll be banned from the store, and they’ll involve the human police and—”
Pearl stopped pacing.
“—they’ll take Steven,” she finished in a whisper.
She stared down at the package of tater tots in her hand. The box was decorated with a picture of an astronaut holding a bag of potatoes below a speech bubble that read, “Blast into flavor with Spudnik brand potato products! Frozen for your convenience: Buy now, eat tater!”
Pearl’s grip tightened as she made up her mind. Nobody was going to take Steven away from her. She had to think of a plan.
She walked to the edge of the waterfall and glanced over it into the abyss that lay beyond.
“First things first: I need to get rid of you!” she said, punctuating her final word by tossing the package of tater tots off the edge and deep into the bowels of the temple.
Pearl strode away from the edge of the waterfall and back towards the temple door. It opened as she approached it, revealing Amethyst and Steven on the floor of the kitchen, messily devouring the snacks that Steven was supposed to be putting away.
“Hey Pearl!” Amethyst called, her voice muffled by the fistfulls of raw peanut butter she was shoveling into her mouth.
Pearl’s anger and disapproval overwhelmed her sense of purpose.
“Amethyst!” she scolded, marching over to where the two sat. “ Steven is supposed to be putting these away in their proper places, not eating through it all in a single afternoon!”
“Oh, c’mon, Pearl!” Amethyst exclaimed. “Here, try some of Steven’s marshmallow sandwiches. It’s a marshmallow between two other, larger ones!”
“No, thank you,” Pearl said sternly, pushing away the proffered sandwich.
“I’ll put them away, Pearl, I promise!” Steven said. “It’s just that... Well, it was lunchtime, and Amethyst made a pretty convincing argument in favor of eating them now, and...”
Steven trailed off sheepishly, but Pearl wasn’t listening. She’d just had a brilliant idea.
“It’s okay, Steven!” she said. “It’s fine! I guess I’ll just have to go to the store and pick up more snacks! Haha!”
“Uh, Pearl?” Amethyst said, a tinge of worry creeping into her voice. “Y’alright?”
“Hm? Oh, I’m fine, Amethyst, don’t worry! You just enjoy your crushed nut snack, and I’ll be right back!”
Pearl hurried out the door to the house, leaving Amethyst to shrug and scoop another fistful of peanut butter into her mouth.
~~~
A short time later, Pearl was standing in front of the Beach City Breadbasket, staring at the automatic doors and the humans moving through them, working up the nerve to execute the plan she’d been mulling over on the way.
Finally, she stepped through the doors into the cool, air-conditioned interior and glanced around the building. She spied three cameras: one pointing at the entrance, one pointing at the center aisles, and... one pointing at the frozen food section.
Pearl knew then that she had been caught on camera—and she knew what she had to do next.
She hurried off towards towards the back of the store, through the aisles, and into the bathrooms. Mercifully, it was unoccupied.
Pearl took a deep breath to calm herself and closed her eyes, focusing her mind. Her gem began to glow, faintly at first, and then with a brilliant light. A beam shot out and hovered in midair for a moment. Then, with a flash, a blue, slightly translucent version of Pearl stood on the bathroom tile, holding an equally blue blade in one hand.
“DO YOU WISH TO ENGAGE IN COMBAT?” it said at a near shout.
“Engage patrol mode,” Pearl said with a smile. The perfect plan.
“PATROL MODE ENGAGED,” the holographic Pearl replied. It then proceeded to march out of the bathroom, shouting “YOU’LL NEVER GET PAST ME!”
Pearl breathed a sigh of relief. With Holopearl patrolling the store, she had an alibi—a cover while she executed the next stage of her plan: destroying the evidence.
Pearl slipped out of the bathroom door and sidled along the wall, away from the entrance, trying her best to stay out of sight of any shoppers.
Finally, she made her way through the small door at the far end of the store and slipped into the back room.
The room was mostly empty, with nothing but a few pallets of packaged food, a retracting door for unloading shipments, and...
To the right of the entrance was a small alcove containing a desk and a television monitor with a feed of the three cameras.
Pearl rushed over to the monitor and, with a flourish and flash of light, pulled a long, blue-bladed spear from her gem.
“Good luck catching me now!” she shouted. She leveled her spear at the monitor and three blasts of white light shot from the tip of her spear and slammed into the monitor, which exploded into shards of metal and glass. When the smoke cleared, there was nothing left in the alcove but rubble and burning scraps of wood.
Her work complete, Pearl lept into the air and brought her spear to bear against the retracting door. With three short strokes, she cut a hole large enough for her to escape, and darted through it.
Pearl felt elated as the knot of dread and panic that had been growing in her all this time finally began to abate. Nobody could find out what she had done now, and Steven was safe again. That was what mattered—Steven was safe again.
Pearl looked to the sky to find it streaked with the colors of the setting sun and began the walk back to the beach and to the temple.
~~~
Several hours later, Peal stood atop the waterfall in the center of her room, admiring her collection of blades from all the different periods in Earth’s history. Pearl found few things more relaxing than organizing her blade by age or size, and considering how stressful her day had been, she was enjoying the task even more than usual.
Her calm evening was interrupted, however, as the door to her room slid open, revealing Amethyst.
“Pearl!” Amethyst shouted, striding into the room. “What’d you get at the store?”
Pearl raised her hands to run her temples, and at the same time, the swords quivered in midair. Pearl didn’t bother looking away from them.
“Did you check the cupboards?” she asked, without bothering to hide the exasperation in her voice. “I’m pretty sure there’s still some of that mushed-up nut gunk you like behind the breakfast cereal.”
“Oh, sweet!” Amethyst said, turning back towards the door. “I can dip the tots I found in that.”
Pearl shot a look at Amethyst, suddenly tense. She was walking back towards the door, and clutched in her hands was a now mostly-thawed, dented box of tater tots.
Pearl dove below the surface of the water and shot up in front of the door, blocking Amethyst’s path.
“Where did you get those?” Pearl asked, a twinge of hysteria creeping into her voice.
“Jeez, Peal, what’s your problem?” Amethyst said, attempting to sidestep the taller gem. “I found them in my room, okay? They’re mine.”
“They’re not!” Pearl shouted. “They’re... they’re mine!”
Amethyst froze, a look of disbelief on her face.
Then, she began to laugh.
“Yours?! Ha, everyone knows you can’t stand eating! Why on Earth would you buy food for yourself?”
“I... I changed my mind! I like tater tots!” Pearl said, shifting uneasily.
“Oh yeah?” Amethyst said, a wicked smile stretching across her face. “Let’s see you eat one!”
Amethyst tore open the box with one hand, reached inside, and tossed a tater tot to Pearl. She caught it with little effort.
“Of course I’ll eat one. Don’t be silly!” Pearl said, staring uneasily at the tater tot.
She lifted it to her mouth unsteadily, her normally practiced hands beginning to shake. She hesitated.
“I’m waiting!” said Amethyst.
“For Steven,” thought Pearl as she popped the tater tot into her mouth.
Her face distorted into a look of pure horror as she chewed the icy tater tot. Finally, after a few agonizing moments of chewing, she swallowed the mess in a gulp.
“Mmmm! My favorite!” Pearl said weakly. “Now, give me the box and get your own food.”
“Ha! Whatever,” said Amethyst, tossing the box to the other gem and ducking under her legs to exit. “I’m going to my room. Thanks for the show, Pearl!”
The temple door slid shut and Peal stared down the box in her hands, her stomach twisting and knotting from more than just the tater tot she forced down. She had to end this.
Tonight.
She stood on the surface of the water and waited until she was sure Amethyst had returned to her room, then opened the temple door. The room beyond was dark, but far from quiet: a storm had began to rage outside, blasting the side of the house with wind and rain, and shaking the shudders with thunder.
Pearl snuck through the moonlit room as slowly as she could, finally slipping out the door and into the pouring rain.
She lept off the stairwell and down onto the surface of the beach.
A hysterical laugh began forming deep in her gut, finally bursting forth and she began to dig and scrabble in the sand.
“You thought you could come between me and Steven?” Pearl shouted at the box of tater tots, now soaking wet with rain and half covered in sand. “I’ll bury you so deeply nobody will ever find you! Not if they searched for a million years! Not if they built a kindergarten over this very spot! Not if—”
“PEARL.”
Pearl froze mid-dig and looked up to see Garnet looming above her.
“Garnet! What are you doing—”
“Pearl,” Garnet repeated, cutting her off. “What exactly is it you’re doing?”
Pearl hesitated for a moment as she tried to think of a cover story, but found that, despite her best efforts, she couldn’t stop the truth from spilling from her lips.
“I was buying food for Steven, and this box of frozen potato bits fell into my bag, and I didn’t pay for it, so I went back to the store and destroyed the tapes so that the human police wouldn’t take Steven away, then Amethyst found them and I had to get rid of them, and—”
Garnet cut Pearl off by covering her mouth with her hand.
“We’re taking these back,” she said. “Now.”
~~~
Garnet rounded the corner of the street leading to the Beach City Breadbasket, soggy, completely thawed tater tots in hand. Pearl followed behind, sheepishly.
The duo entered the grocery store only to be greeted with a chaotic sight. Most of the aisles had either been tipped over or destroyed entirely, and the ground was littered with shattered glass bottles and crumbs.
Standing in the middle of it all, legs straddled over a terrified-looking clerk, was Holopearl. She was brandishing her blue blade, the tip of which was pointed directly at the clerk’s neck.
“I WON’T GO EASY ON YOU THIS TIME!” Holopearl shouted.
“Y-you can take anything you want!” the clerk said scrambling away from the hologram.
Holopearl raised her sword to thrust down, but before it could finish the movement, Pearl lept towards the hologram, pulled her spear out of her gem, and impaled the transparent copy of herself.
“MATCH SET. CHALLENGER WINS!” Holopearl declared as Pearl pulled the spear out with a strange, hollow buzzing sound. “WOULD YOU LIKE TO DUEL AGAIN?”
“I don’t think that will be necessary,” Pearl said. Her gem pulsed with a flash of blue light, and Holopearl disintegrated into fragments of light that skittered along the linoleum of the store’s floor, rejoining and splitting, before finally vanishing
Garnet helped the store clerk to his feet.
“Thank you so much! I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t shown up—we had some kind of explosion in the back, and then that thing started going crazy, destroying everything in the store, and—”
Garnet cut him off by holding up the box of tater tots.
“We’re returning these. We took them by accident.”
The clerk looked at her with confusion. “You... what?!”
“Sorry about the mess,” Pearl said. “My training dummy can get a bit overzealous.”
“But - I—”
“Thanks for understanding,” Garnet said, turning to leave. Pearl turned to follow.
Garnet and Pearl exited the store’s automatic doors into the night.
“We’re going to have to find somewhere else to shop,” Garnet said.
“Oh, I don’t know, Garnet! The clerk seemed nice. And he held his own with my training dummy for, what, six hours? That’s pretty impressive!”
“Mm, true,” Garnet said, a hint of levity creeping in to her voice.
“How did you know it would be safe to return the potatoes?” Pearl asked. “Weren’t you worried they’d call the police?”
Garnet smiled at this and tapped her shades.
“Future vision,” she said. “I knew this would lead to better outcome than letting you bury the tater tot. I do have a question for you, though.”
“What’s that?”
“If you were really that worried, why not just throw it in the lava in the room in the temple where we keep the bubbled gems?”
Pearl stopped walking.
“Throw it - the lava—” she stammered.
Garnet began to snicker.
“Let’s just go home,” Pearl said. “I’m ready for this day to be over.”
The two gems made their way through the darkened streets of Beach City, leaving the Beach City Breadbasket behind.
THE END |
Women across professions from financial specialists to podiatrists to physicians and surgeons to aircraft pilots are earning less than three-quarters of their male counterparts’ salaries. There’s no question workplace equality has made great strides over the years, still there’s something holding men and women back from earning equal pay. What could it be?
There are plenty of speculations for why the disparity persists: Women don’t ask for more money. Others believe discrimination is the cause. Still others, that employers have different promotion standards for men and women. There is also the undeniable effects that off-ramping to have kids has on women’s careers.
Having children is indeed a contributing factor to how much income men and women earn. A study of men and women in New York City published this May found that men with children had significantly higher incomes than women with children and men and women without children. Researchers from City University of New York where the study was done call this the “Mommy Tax” and the “Daddy Bonus.”
But it’s not a Great Depression era bonus-for-the-family-man mentality that leads to this discrepancy. “Its not that daddies are getting paid more,” says Harvard economist Claudia Goldin. “It’s that the same exact men receive more because they just get their act together. They say, ‘Hey, I’m a father; I have to do something about it.'”
One area in which men might not be stepping up their game quite as much is in adapting well to changes in the job market, specifically in middle-skill jobs, according to research by David Autor out of the MIT Department of Economics. When the number of men and women in middle-skill jobs dropped from 1979 to 2007, females moved upward into higher-level jobs at a rate much greater than their male counterparts.
While the percentage of women making up traditional female occupations like teaching and nursing has gone down over the years, women have also increasingly taken more steps to get the education and training they need in fields like law and medicine in order to move up in the ranks. “Looking forward, it is clear that females will be the more educated sex for many years to come,” writes Autor. |
Some activists say the president's record on environmental issues has been 'dismal.' Enviros may seek Obama challenger
Call them crazy, but a handful of environmentalists are so peeved with President Barack Obama that they are talking openly about the need for a Democratic primary challenger in 2012.
The green activists don’t have any formal organization going for a presidential campaign — or a candidate.
Story Continued Below
Yet some are ready to buck the party establishment if it means getting more attention to global warming and other environmental issues that they contend were tossed into the trash bin before the president even made it to his first midterms.
“Obama’s environmental record has been dismal, especially on climate, oil and endangered species,” said Kieran Suckling, executive director at the Tucson, Ariz.-based Center for Biological Diversity. “His early appointment of Ken Salazar as secretary of the interior showed very poor judgment. So yes, a pro-environment Democrat might find a surprising amount of support in a primary battle.”
Glenn Hurowitz, former media director at Greenpeace, aired his complaints in an article on the Huffington Post with this headline: “Environmentalists Need a New President.”
“It pains me to say it, but success will require a new president,” wrote Hurowitz, now a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy. “And that means that after the midterm elections, we need to start looking for a primary challenger who has the heart and soul required to save the planet from catastrophe and rescue American [sic] from its economic morass.”
Matt Pawa, a Newton, Mass.-based private environmental attorney, said he’s been talking to his colleagues for six to eight months about the search for a serious Democratic primary challenger.
“We are actively discussing candidates among ourselves and seeking the right person to carry the banner,” he said. “I don’t know if there is someone out there who’s willing to do it, who would be perfect in terms of fitting the bill. I think it should not be a Ralph Nader-type person. It should be someone with a significant political base and stature who could make a serious run.”
The Nader memory is a powerful one — Democrats accused some environmentalists of helping George W. Bush win the White House in 2000 by supporting Nader over Al Gore, who subsequently went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize as a climate-change advocate.
Nader was out of the country and unavailable for comment.
Pawa recently clashed with the Obama administration after it filed a brief with the Supreme Court siding with private electric utilities and coal companies in a global warming lawsuit for which he is the attorney. He also faults Obama for walking back on a campaign pledge involving key details of climate legislation, opting instead to give congressional Democrats the green light to water down the plan during negotiations with industry-state lawmakers. |
UW lands at No. 25, fourth among U.S. public institutions, in Times Higher Education world ranking
Victor Balta UW News
The University of Washington landed at No. 25 on the Times Higher Education world rankings for 2017, released this week. The UW is fourth on the list among U.S. public universities, behind UC Berkeley, UCLA, and Michigan. Great Britain’s University of Oxford is ranked No. 1, with the U.S.’s Cal Tech and Stanford ranked second and third.
“These are the world’s best universities ranked according to criteria that make a lot of sense,” said UW President Ana Mari Cauce. “It is heady company to be in, especially among our peer public universities in the U.S. It reflects the world-class work of our faculty and their students and is a telling sign of how good they really are. We’re very proud of them.”
The Times Higher Education World University Rankings judge research-intensive universities across all their core missions: teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook. The rankings 13 performance indicators to provide comprehensive and balanced comparisons that they say are trusted by students, academics, university leaders, industry and governments. The UW moved up from No. 32 in 2016’s ranking to No. 25.
The performance indicators are grouped into five areas: teaching (the learning environment, primarily based on a reputation survey); research (including the number of papers published in the academic journals); citations (research influence, including the number of times a university’s published work is cited by scholars globally); international outlook (including the university’s ability to attract students and faculty from around the world); and industry income (knowledge transfer in terms of a university’s ability to help industry with innovations, inventions and consultancy).
The THE ranking comes on the heels of the 2016 Academic Ranking of World Universities, conducted by researchers at the Center for World-Class Universities of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, which was released last month and ranked the UW No. 15. |
Following the announcement that ABC has canceled Agent Carter, an Agents of SHIELD spinoff and pushing back Agents of SHIELD to a new time slot, questions arose over the future of Marvel's collaboration with the network.
ABC's new president of entertainment, Channing Dungey, said that they still had a couple of shows in the works that they were hopefully going to be able to talk about soon, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Despite the network cancelling some of the series that weren't performing well, it didn't mean that the network was looking to end its partnership with Marvel.
In addressing the scheduling shift Agents of SHIELD will make this fall — from 9 p.m. ET to 10 p.m. ET on Tuesdays —Dungey said the change had nothing to do with the show itself. Instead, she added, it had to do with the solid two-hour block of comedies the network was looking to bring to audiences. Instead of following two comedies with the Marvel drama and then another hour of sitcoms, the network will just air two-hours of comedies straight. Agents of SHIELD would be used to end the night.
ABC announced that it would be canceling Agent Carter after two seasons last week following disappointing ratings. The network also made the move to axe an Agents of SHIELD spinoff, called Marvel's Most Wanted, before it even made it to air.
Agents of SHIELD's fourth season will premiere on the network this fall. |
Game of Fear
What if a stalker had an army? Zoe Quinn’s ex-boyfriend was obsessed with destroying her reputation—and thousands of online strangers were eager to help.
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The first thing Eron Gjoni said after sitting down across from me at Veggie Galaxy in December was that he would probably violate his gag order if he talked to me. Then he talked for the next three hours, and again and again over the next three months.
Gjoni can be relentless that way. And in others. He maintains incessant eye contact from behind a tangle of dark, wavy hair. He is intensely focused. Just ask Zoe Quinn, the object of his unwanted obsession.
In September 2014, Quinn, 27, appeared in Boston Municipal Court to ask Judge Jonathan Tynes for a restraining order against Gjoni, her ex-boyfriend. In a handwritten affidavit to the court, Quinn tried to explain what had happened over the past month. After their brief romance ended, she noted, Gjoni “wrote and published a long post about my sex life and private dealings to several websites that he knew had a history of harassing me.” Quinn is a video-game designer and, like many women in the business, routinely receives misogynistic threats from strangers. Gjoni, Quinn contended, was aware that his blog post would result in her being harassed and stalked, and she claimed he had published it in order “to damage my professional reputation as an independent artist.” What’s more, she told the judge, the results had been particularly severe: Since Gjoni’s initial blog post, “I have received numerous death and rape threats from an anonymous mob that [Gjoni] had given details to,” she wrote. “My personal info like my home address, phone number, emails, passwords, and those of my family has been widely distributed, alongside nude photos of me, and several of my professional accounts and those of my colleagues have been hacked.”
Quinn understated the facts. The thousands of threats, which she continues to receive daily, terrified her. Tweets such as “Im not only a pedophile, ive raped countless teens, this zoe bitch is my next victim, im coming slut” spoke for themselves. Messages such as “could kill yourself. We don’t need cunts like you in this world” preyed on the common knowledge that Quinn struggled with depression; she’d won acclaim for creating an impressionistic video game called Depression Quest. Forced to flee her Dorchester apartment, she spent more than six months hiding in friends’ homes. In her affidavit, Quinn struggled to explain to the judge who was behind these threats: They were anonymous, faceless, and they could be anywhere. “Eron has coached this mob multiple times, made multiple social media accounts to smear my name publicly, and has stoked the fire of this on many occasions and doesn’t seem to be stopping,” Quinn told the court. “I am in fear of him.”
Judge Tynes asked if Quinn had sought help from the police. She had, in fact— numerous times. She told Boston police officers what Gjoni had done, including her allegation that he had turned violent the last time they had sex over the summer, just before their breakup, while she was at a conference in San Francisco. Judge Tynes told Quinn he wanted to help, but stumbled to find the right words as he scribbled down the conditions of a restraining order against Gjoni, barring him from posting any further information about Quinn’s personal life online or encouraging—“What’s the first adjective?” the judge asked. “Something mob—What was the mob?”
“Uh, hate,” Quinn replied.
“Hate mob—all right,” said the judge. “I’ll put that in quotations. Good luck, ma’am. So long.”
And now here Gjoni sat before me. Over the past three months, according to Quinn, he had continued to defy Tynes’s order, divulging further details about her personal life and forcing her to return to court in Boston again and again to address his repeated violations. As of April, the court had formally charged him with four.
There’s a haunting resonance to Gjoni’s choice of location for our meeting. This is where he and Quinn first hung out in person: It’s where his obsession with her began. He’s come back to the beginning, and he wants me to know that Quinn is a “hypocrite,” a “compulsive liar,” and an “asshole.”
Gjoni is a highly cerebral, 25-year-old software developer who was recently fired from Massachusetts General Hospital’s robotics lab. He chooses his words deliberately, spending much of our time together describing the month after his breakup with Quinn: how he extracted details from her Facebook, text, and email accounts; how he tracked her movements and shadowed her conversations. The process he described to me sounded as if he were gathering the pieces of a horrible machine, with each component designed to be as damaging to Quinn as possible. Eventually, the machine would have a name: “The Zoe Post,” a 9,425-word screed he published in August.
But before he emptied the contents of Quinn’s private life into the gaping maw of a bloodthirsty Internet, back before he instigated the most vicious online backlash against feminism in a generation, there was a first date. A date that began, not unlike many other 21st-century first dates, on OkCupid. The algorithms spoke: Gjoni and Quinn were a 98 percent match.
Neither Gjoni nor Quinn was particularly good at dating. He’d had a handful of flings in college and she’d had a number of short-term relationships. Both seemed stuck in adolescence—the types of young adults who tend to burn hot and flame out fast.
Their first date lasted three days. They met one December night at a dive bar in Harvard Square, snuck into Harvard Stadium, stayed over at Gjoni’s apartment in Chelsea, and got breakfast the next morning at Veggie Galaxy before continuing to hang out. Over the next few weeks, they went to karaoke bars around Boston, talked philosophy, and shared vulnerabilities. Gjoni regarded himself as a talented programmer and enjoyed cuddling and coding with Quinn late into the night. But he treated Quinn’s principled stands on gaming, social justice, and loyalty as if they were the behavior of some exotic creature.
Possessed of a boyish face despite his shaggy beard, Gjoni has brown eyes and a skeletal 6-foot-1 frame, and speaks in a matter-of-fact, deadpan monotone. His friends describe him as “extremely methodical,” “a very intellectual person with semi-decent people skills,” insular, rational, and almost preternaturally calm. Benjamin Hitov, a childhood friend and fellow programmer, told me he once beat Gjoni in the ninja fighter game Dead or Alive “100 times in a row, and he didn’t change his expression once.”
Born in Albania, Gjoni migrated to Worcester with his family when he was six to escape the Kosovo War. “Moving here was like a big reset button,” he told me. His mother, who had been an architect, became a convenience-store clerk, and his father, a former legal adviser to the deputy prime minister, worked as what Gjoni calls a “quality-assurance drone.”
Growing up, Gjoni struggled to assimilate, but with a precocious mathematical mind, he found solace in computers. School, he says, was “almost bizarrely easy,” so he dropped out of a computer science program at Worcester State when MGH poached him during his senior year. Eventually, he found a small group of buddies. Still, as his longtime friend Casey Evans told me, Gjoni remains “apprehensive about getting emotionally close to people.” So Evans was shocked by how smitten and affectionate Gjoni was with Quinn when they went on a double date in early 2014. It was one of the few times Gjoni introduced Quinn to his friends. “She came off as very charismatic,” Evans remembers.
Gjoni fell for her hard—maybe too hard, given how brief their relationship was. He began idealizing Quinn as “this perfect ethical thing,” he says, and less as a gifted and flawed woman who battled chronic depression. Quinn often traveled to speak at gaming conferences, and they saw each other at most once a week. After just five months, they broke up. But Gjoni wouldn’t let go. |
Day 2000: Going to @DisneylandToday to celebrate 2,000 Consecutive Days of #DisneyTime fun.#Disney366: 5yrs + 173 days of Magical Memories — Jeff Reitz (@Disney366) June 22, 2017
Huntington Beach resident Jeff Reitz marked a milestone of epic proportions this week at Disneyland in Southern California. Thursday morning, Jeff walked through the turnstiles for the 2,000th consecutive day.He started his "Happiest Journey" on Jan. 1, 2012.When Reitz, a Disneyland Resort Annual Passholder, began his daily visits in 2012, the resort was preparing to welcome the new Cars Land in Disney California Adventure park, which opened that summer.This month, he's visiting during the Summer of Heroes, a celebration highlighted by superhero encounters and the new Guardians of the Galaxy Mission: BREAKOUT! attraction in Disney California Adventure. Reitz said he's already experienced the ride more than a dozen times.Reitz, an Air Force veteran, credits the parks with giving him something to look forward to each day, noting that he enjoys hearing the music as he enters, interacting with the friendly park cast members, and watching the park guests having a good time. He also enjoys the shows and attractions, including one of his favorites, the Matterhorn Bobsleds adventure.Reitz says he plans to continue treating himself to daily park visits for as long as he can. |
HAMBURG (Reuters) - Leaders from the world’s top economies meet to forge a consensus on trade and climate change on Saturday after setting their staff to work through the night to find agreements that eluded them on the first day of their summit.
Leaders attend the G20 summit dinner in Hamburg, Germany July 7, 2017. REUTERS/Axel Schmidt
Germany’s Angela Merkel treated the leaders to a concert at Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie on Friday night, where they listened to Beethoven while their aides began an all night slog aimed bridging differences with the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump.
Chancellor Merkel, for whom the summit is an opportunity to show off her diplomatic skills ahead of a federal election in September, welcomed the first face-to-face meeting of Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday.
Their encounter, which began with a handshake and lasted over two hours, was one of the most eagerly anticipated meetings between two leaders in years.
The two discussed alleged Russian meddling in the U.S. election but agreed to focus on future ties rather than dwell on the past, a result that was sharply criticized by leading Democrats in Congress.
G20 leaders had a tough time reaching consensus on climate and trade policy despite a plea from Merkel to other leaders to compromise in talks that have pitted Trump against virtually every other country in the club of leading economies.
“The sherpas have a lot of work ahead of them tonight,” she said, referring to the trade dossier. “I hope they can bring us a good result tonight. But here the discussions are very difficult, I don’t want to talk around that.”
As well as resolving the differences over trade and climate change, Merkel must lead discussions on migration on Saturday - issues that have become more contentious since Trump entered the White House half a year ago promising an “America First” approach.
Last month, he pulled the United States out of a landmark international agreement aimed at combating climate change. And he is threatening to take punitive trade measures in the steel sector which would hit China, Germany, Canada and a host of other countries.
CLIMATE CONUNDRUM
Envoys have been working for weeks to bridge differences, and European sources said they came up with new language on the climate issue on Thursday which would be put to the leaders for approval.
The latest draft communique sticks with language about the Paris climate accord being “irreversible” but removes a reference from an earlier version to a “global approach” that some countries felt could suggest there was a parallel track to Paris.
It also includes a new paragraph which says the United States will “work closely with other partners to help their access to and use of fossil fuels more cleanly and efficiently”. Some experts were skeptical whether leaders would approve the reference to fossil fuels, which would be a clear nod to Washington.
As the leaders met on Friday, police said they were sending reinforcements from other parts of Germany to cope with thousands of anti-capitalist protesters who set fire to cars, rubbish bins and wooden pallets in violence that Hamburg’s interior minister called “frightening”.
Slideshow (29 Images)
Merkel chose Hamburg, the port city where she was born, to send a signal about Germany’s openness to the world, including its tolerance of peaceful protests.
The summit is being held only a few hundred meters from one of Germany’s most potent symbols of left-wing resistance, a former theater called the “Rote Flora” which was taken over by anti-capitalist squatters nearly three decades ago.
Police said 196 officers had been injured, 83 protestors temporarily detained and another 19 taken into custody. |
Mechanics Mechanics Mechanics
This blog now devolves from structured steps to making the game to a place to document all my musings on mechanics for the game.
In the last blog post I mentioned there would be a way for players to gain the “game” resources (Game,Brashness, Gall, Helpfulness) as they go. I think a good way to do this would be allow the Game Master to invoke one of the characters negative traits so that the player then roleplays that trait coming to the forefront and causing some kind of conflict before receiving something like twice as many points as the negative trait is worth. The player can also invoke their negative traits in this way. So if you have “Doesn’t play well with others -2” and another character is taking the lead through a misty forest, the GM might invoke the trait causing your character to become fed up with the other character taking the lead and deciding to go off on his own and providing you with 4 points to divide between your game resources as you choose.
I also like the idea of having a way of mechanically deciding when a particular conflict is over. Rather than going into an encounter with a wolf and the GM arbitrarily deciding the wolf has 15hp (I don’t think I’ll have hp like this, just using an example), there will be some mechanical way to determine how many times the characters have to succeed individual tasks in order to resolve the current conflict.
Here’s my current idea (specifics need to be playtested but something like this): When creating an NPC or a Place or really anything in the game world, the GM will describe it (to himself, to the players, whichever). A description is made up of a number of adjectives and a noun. Each adjective is given a bonus (from +1 to +3) based on its importance and its power. Each noun is given a bonus too (from +1 to +4), the bonus of the noun must be the highest bonus of each descriptor. This can give you something like Big Bad Wolf (Big +1, Bad +1, Wolf +2) or The Misty Wood (Misty +1, Wood +2). When a conflict arises, the GM rolls 3d6 for each bonus involved in the conflict. The GM then counts up the number of 5’s and 6’s and that is the number of times the players have to succeed, unless failures or the GM brings in new challenges. The bonus given by the noun of the place they are in is automatically added as successes without the need for a roll (as a way to provide a kind of base difficulty), alternatively if a character in the conflict is more important than the place (as in really really important) the GM can use their noun’s bonus as the base. The GM can also add things that have no bonus by rolling a single d6 for them.
eg. The player characters are trying to subdue Wicked (+1) Witch (+2) of the West (+1) who is fleeing through the Misty Wood. There are two successes already thanks to the wood. It’s misty which is going to make it harder to chase her so that’ll add 3d6 to the roll. Another 9d6 from the Wicked Witch, not adding “of the West” because she isn’t in the west right now so it’s not helping her. So the GM rolls 12d6 and counts the 5’s and 6’s +2 for a total of 7 hits. The player characters are gonna have a tough time stopping the witch from escaping!
Looks good so far, but there’s not actually a way for the Witch to escape yet, unless the player characters all get killed or injured as a result of bad rolls. What are those other dice doing? The ones that didn’t get 5’s or 6’s? They can probably represent the number of failures you are allowed before you fail the conflict entirely. A normal success (+0,+1) will remove one of the hits, a good success (+2) will remove one success and allow an additional failure, and a critical success (+3) can remove two hits or remove one and allow two additional failures. Likewise a bad failure (-2) will count as two failures and a critical failure (-3) as 3.
Of course the GM can also just choose to take all the bonuses as hits with no roll whatsoever, there will probably have to be some system governing this. You probably don’t want your final encounter to be anticlimactic because the dice came up badly.
I really like the idea of this system. The adjective+noun descriptors gives things that fairy-tale kind of feel. Instead of George you meet the Friendly Carpenter. Instead of Ekhunzil you meet The Beast. (You can of course still give them regular names as well). It also lets you ramp up the difficulty as you go along by simply introducing more dangerous places. You start in the Pleasant (+0 (1 die)) Meadow (+1), make your way through the Dark (+1) Wood(+2), hike through the Menacing(+2) Mountains (+3) before finally reaching the Forbidden (+3) Fortress (+4). When I write the game up I’ll probably include example difficulties too.
I also have a few thoughts on combat/injuries, and I think it will be handled as above. But there has to be some way for characters to be injured or negatively impacted by their failures. Every time something bad happens (-1 or below) the character gains a new negative trait. This can be either physical or mental. If a player reaches -4 (-3?) total in one of physical or mental negative traits gained this way (so not including your defining flaws) they become incapacitated. This could mean death, being swallowed hole, giving up entirely. Regardless of the specifics, theres going to have to be a conflict to get them back. Bringing them to the Kindly Wizard for resurrection, slicing them out of the monsters stomach, inspiring them with a song. Death is never the end of a character in these mysterious lands, just a temporary setback.
That brings me to the final idea for this entry. Can a character fail? In other games characters fail by dying (not necessarily player failure) or being taken out of the story somehow. I don’t think characters can really fail in my game, but there is one thing that makes it more difficult to them to succeed (succeeding being getting home, or making the choice whether or not to go home). Each setting created to play the game in will have one overarching theme. The setting or the big bad in the setting will have some kind of theme. Some way that they are trying to corrupt the player characters. This corruption comes in the form of more negative traits and can be inflicted on the characters when they act in line with the corruption or when an the setting or the big bad is involved in a conflict and they fail in it. This doesn’t count as a physical or mental negative trait but it’s own category that can cause incapacitation as well.
This theme could be anything from confusion or becoming lost to despair or fear. If a character has any of these “Corruption” traits, they cannot leave the world to go back home. They can be removed as per usual (as a side-effect of good successes or as a result of an ally successfully rolling to help remove it probably).
The theme then also gives you an idea of what things to include in the world. Is the theme confusion? Make it an absurd world like alice in wonderland. Is it becoming lost? Add in mazes and labyrinths and circular reasoning.
That’s it for now. |
As clubs begin to execute their plans for 2017, it's important to look back at how each team played over the course of the regular season to understand what their tactical identity was this season and what it may look like in the future.
Here’s a snapshot:
Chicago Fire PREFERRED FORMATION: 4-2-3-1 on road, 4-4-2 at home
STYLE: Exploit wide spaces with speed Chicago’s last place finish in the Eastern Conference might be an initial cause for pessimism, but they have a talented coach in Veljko Paunovic, and he appears to have a vision for his team going into the next season. In handing extensive minutes to rookies Jonathan Campbell and Brandon Vincent, Paunovic has given himself a base to build from in the back. Further forward, the team will need to choose (or sign) the forwards that will help increase the scoring, but David Accam is a premier MLS talent who can slot into numerous systems and numerous positions, giving Paunovic some flexibility with how he will arrange his front six next year.
Colorado Rapids PREFERRED FORMATION: 4-2-3-1
STYLE: Defend deep, fight hard Unlike many other MLS teams that played a 4-2-3-1, the Rapids often played without a traditional No. 10, using Jermaine Jones or Kevin Doyle in that spot, though Dillon Powers did a more than credible job when asked to. Colorado almost always kept five (and sometimes six) players behind the ball and rarely risked overlapping attacks from the fullbacks, particularly after their 5-1 loss at NYCFC in July. Coach Pablo Mastroeni cultivated a mentality that ensured they were one of the hardest teams to break down in the league this year, with underrated contributors like Sam Cronin, Micheal Azira and Axel Sjoberg proving formidable players in key areas of the field.
Columbus Crew SC PREFERRED FORMATION: 4-2-3-1
STYLE: Fly up the flanks, rely on brilliance in the middle The Gregg Berhalter 4-2-3-1, which often released both fullbacks and relied on individual and collective excellence from the front four, failed to replicate the highs of 2015 this season. Team chemistry issues apart, Columbus will worry that little variation in terms of system or style in the last three seasons and the aging of Federico Higuain means that the decline might not be temporary. The stagnation of Crew SC might best be summed up by their last three games, in which they faced three different Eastern Conference opponents. All three of those teams used different systems at the start of the game, and they conceded nine goals and went winless across the three matches. That said, if Ethan Finlay, Justin Meram and Higuain can all return to their 2015 form, Crew SC can be optimistic about playing the Berhalter way in 2017.
D.C. United PREFERRED FORMATION: 4-1-4-1
STYLE: Adaptation... After acquisitions 2016 saw a flurry of midseason acquisitions increase DC’s attack tremendously. In the 11 regular season games Patrick Mullins and Lloyd Sam started together, D.C. averaged 2.7 goals and 2.0 points per game (1.0 goals and 1.3 points per game in the 23 matches that one or both did not start in). Ben Olsen has long had a reputation for betting on battlers over technicians but the growing influence (and permanent acquisition) of Luciano Acosta indicates Olsen evolved with the D.C. roster this year. Although United listed their system as a 4-1-4-1, the average positioning of their midfielders often indicated that Acosta was deployed as a No. 10 in front of two more defensive-minded midfielders. Regardless of the numbers used to describe how D.C. played in the latter half of the year, it was attractive soccer, and an impressive display of flexible coaching from Olsen.
Houston Dynamo PREFERRED FORMATION: 4-2-3-1
STYLE: Conservative in the back, careful up front The Dynamo opened the season under Owen Coyle looking like they were going to be a high-scoring, high-conceding thrill ride. Then the goals started to dry up and, after Coyle left, interim boss Wade Barrett was in charge of a much different team. Down the stretch, the Dynamo played with a back four and a lone forward, often emerging star Mauro Manotas. The midfield configuration appeared to depend on the context of the opposition and the game conditions. After the switch to Barrett, the Dynamo conceded the fifth-fewest goals per game in the regular season, underlining Barrett’s priority of making Houston “difficult to play against.”
LA Galaxy PREFERRED FORMATION: 4-2-3-1
STYLE: Set the table for dos Santos Bruce Arena, in his own unmistakable style, did a very underrated job juggling a revolving cast of players, and big names who might have been a little past their sell-by date. By the end of the year, Arena had settled on building the team around Giovani dos Santos, in a 4-2-3-1 formation. Given that the Galaxy picked up Nigel de Jong and Jeff Larentowicz in the offseason to go with Steven Gerrard, who would’ve thought that Sebastien Lletget would be one of the best deep-lying midfielders in the Western Conference down the stretch?
New England Revolution PREFERRED FORMATION: 4-4-2
STYLE: Diamond takes hold in disappointing season The Revs' season is defined by the gamble they took to add Kei Kamara to their young and talented squad, in a bid to turn around a slow start and help take the group over the hump. This caused problems for head coach Jay Heaps in selection and system, as he struggled to get the most out of Kamara and Lee Nguyen, whose games appear to contrast a little bit. In the end, he settled on a 4-4-2 system that sometimes took a diamond shape. New England conceded the sixth-most goals and scored the sixth-fewest, but Heaps’ decision to switch off the 4-2-3-1 that had served them so well in previous years also saw the renaissance of Juan Agudelo, pairing with Kamara.
New York City FC PREFERRED FORMATION: 4-3-3
STYLE: Build out of the back... At all costs NYCFC built a contending team out of the ashes of the 7-0 loss to the Red Bulls that featured Andoni Iraola surprisingly recast as a No. 6, a patient possession game, and a 4-3-3 that relied on exciting young players for width and David Villa for goals. Some of Patrick Vieira’s consistency in selection went out the window in the last couple of weeks as he tinkered with a back three and changed goalkeepers. Regardless, as long as Andrea Pirlo is on board, expect Vieira to try and play out of the back and give the Italian as much time on the ball as possible, while minimizing the defensive expectations for him. Vieira guided NYCFC to within six points of the Supporters' Shield in his first year, and all indications are that MLS is witnessing the emergence of a coaching force.
New York Red Bulls PREFERRED FORMATION: 4-2-3-1
STYLE: High press, high octane The Red Bulls opened the season in crisis, struggling to replace Matt Miazga before setting a franchise-record unbeaten streak. Through it all, they stuck by their high pressure, 4-2-3-1 system that allows for superior numbers in midfield and lots of combination play, but also leaves the team susceptible to breaks, particularly down the flanks. The next phase of the Jesse Marsch and Ali Curtis era appears to be integrating even more of academy players into a first team that appears poised to be MLS contenders for the foreseeable future. If they want to return to the top of the Supporters' Shield standings next year, they will need to figure out how to keep their well-earned leads.
Orlando City SC PREFERRED FORMATION: 4-2-3-1
STYLE: Change the only constant for Lions Following the coaching switch to Jason Kreis, Orlando City appeared to use the rest of the season as a chance to test a myriad of personnel combinations and systems to see what he had to work with. Kreis seemed to prefer a 4-2-3-1 with an attacking midfield trio of Kaká, Kevin Molino and Matias Perez Garcia, but Orlando only had six players make 25 or more appearances this year, tied for the fewest of any team in the league. By the end of the year, Kreis indicated that he had an idea of what he wants going forward, which should probably frighten the rest of the league.
Philadelphia Union PREFERRED FORMATION: 4-2-3-1
STYLE: Deep-lying mids the focal point in 4-2-3-1 The Union were a pleasant surprise in 2016, reaching the playoffs despite Maurice Edu failing to make a single appearance. They used a 4-2-3-1 that saw Vincent Nogueira and Alejandro Bedoya as key players in the deep-lying midfield role, though never together. The Union’s hot start was based on C.J. Sapong providing a platform for a plethora of creative players in the line of three, but that seemed to break down towards the end of the year as the Union went from averaging 1.75 goals in their first 24 games to only one goal per game in their last 11. Head coach Jim Curtin is a big believer in the character of his squad, and the Union will be even more formidable next season if they can pair Edu and Bedoya together in midfield.
Portland Timbers PREFERRED FORMATION: 4-2-3-1
STYLE: Nagbe out wide, injuries in back derail defending champs The Timbers became the third MLS Cup Champions to fail to make the playoffs the year after winning the title. The goalkeeper and center back trio of Liam Ridgewell, Nat Borchers and Adam Kwarasey that was so impressive last year played together for all of one game this year, and the Timbers conceded the second-most goals in the franchise's MLS history. Further forward, Caleb Porter employed the same 4-2-3-1 system as last year’s championship team used, but played Darlington Nagbe out wide and Jack Jewsbury in the heart of midfield, despite Nagbe emerging as an elite player in last year’s playoffs in a central role. The writing was on the wall early this year, as Porter lamented a lack of pressing and possession.
Real Salt Lake PREFERRED FORMATION: 4-2-3-1
STYLE: Front four reliant 4-2-3-1 RSL started the season looking like one of the best teams in the league playing a front six that included Javier Morales, Sunny, Joao Plata, Yura Movsisyan and "Burrito" Martinez. In their first 15 games, RSL averaged 1.8 goals per outing, while their last 20 matches saw that number halved down to 0.9. Jeff Cassar used a 4-2-3-1 system this year, and when the front four weren’t firing, it was tough for the Claret and Cobalt. Cassar will have another year to lead the team, and if he can get the attack back on track, RSL should contend again in the West.
San Jose Earthquakes PREFERRED FORMATION: 4-4-2
STYLE: Defensive identity hampers attack Dom Kinnear’s second season in charge of the Quakes did not quite go as planned. Regardless of whatever system San Jose used, they did not get enough production out of their attacking players ,and the team averaged 12.0 shots per game, the third-lowest total in the league. San Jose’s decision to ship out creative force Matias Perez Garcia for defensive midfielder Darwin Ceren despite already having Fatai Alashe and Anibal Godoy available sums up the lack of attacking intent in the Bay Area this year.
Seattle Sounders PREFERRED FORMATION: 4-2-3-1
STYLE: Alonso disrupts, Lodeiro delivers The Sounders season is firmly divided into the time before the arrival Nicolas Lodeiro and after. They employed a 4-2-3-1 system with Lodeiro primarily playing as the No. 10, but occasionally drifting wide. Either way, the team played through him, and he led the squad with 88.5 touches per 90 minutes after his arrival. Further back, Osvaldo Alonso’s consistent competitiveness allowed the fullbacks to get forward and down the stretch the triumvirate of the Alonso, Chad Marshall and Roman Torres at center back became very hard to break down. With Jordan Morris proving to be a consistent goalscorer, and Brian Schmetzer’s steady hand proving very effective, the Sounders were able to overcome Clint Dempsey’s absence and qualify for their first MLS Cup.
Sporting KC PREFERRED FORMATION: 4-3-3
STYLE: Long on pressure, short on goals Sporting struggled to score early on, averaging just 0.88 goals through their first 16 games, but were able to correct the problem, averaging 1.47 the rest of the way. However they were blanked in two of their final three matches of 2016, including their playoff loss to Seattle. Sporting’s high energy 4-3-3 saw them tie for the league lead in shots but score only 42 goals, the fourth-lowest total in MLS. With selection issues further back in the team, Sporting’s third consecutive Knockout Round exit could lead to large-scale changes going into 2017.
Toronto FC PREFERRED FORMATION: 3-5-2
STYLE: Wing backs, center mids free up DP attackers Toronto appears to play the way they do to get the most out of their star assets in Sebastian Giovinco, Michael Bradley and Jozy Altidore. Back threes are coming back en vogue in the global game and the Reds putting five players in the midfield gives Altidore and Giovinco unpredictable support in attack, while three center backs also negates the fact that they don’t have a standout partner at the heart of their defense for Drew Moor. Head coach Greg Vanney has engineered a fantastic turnaround in Toronto, and on top of great big-picture management, his ability to recognize that Toronto’s personnel were a great fit for a back three means that this might only be the beginning north of the border.
Vancouver Whitecaps PREFERRED FORMATION: 4-2-3-1
STYLE: No Number 9 dooms 'Caps The Whitecaps' failure to make the playoffs and progress with their young squad was one of the major disappointments of the 2016 season. They employed the same 4-2-3-1 formation they had in years past, and the failures appeared to stem from a lack of goals from the No. 9 position, as no striker scored more than two goals. The regression of key players through the spine, such as Pedro Morales and Kendall Waston, did not help either. The system is not broken, but figuring out a way to get more numbers forward might be on the offseason agenda.
Matt Pavlich is a youth soccer coach in the New York City area who holds a NSCAA Advanced National badge. He is currently working with Asphalt Green Soccer Club on the girls side, and Martin Luther King high school on the boys side. He has worked for Opta since 2011, primarily focusing on MLS. He also played varsity soccer for Vassar College. |
There were clefts in the room. One day the clefts were to become cricket bats injected with latex. It was a moneymaking endeavour to help fund cricket's first school. The room to dry bats was small, using a hose that pumped in carbon monoxide. If someone was in the room, they would usually have the doors and windows open.
This day, in September 1930, while the carbon monoxide pumped in, the doors and windows were shut. Inside that small room, there were clefts, gas and the greatest cricketer South Africa had ever known.
Archie MacLaren had a big mouth and was a pompous amateur who was, on occasion, a very fine batsman. He was famous for his captaincy, despite the fact that his record never really backed it up (four wins and 11 Test losses). But like most players of his time, or any time, he still believed he was the sole expert on how cricket should be played.
Warwick Armstrong's Australian team beat England 5-0 at home straight after World War I, and then, in their next encounter, in the summer of 1921, went 3-0 up in England. They were unbeaten in 34 games (a run that includes Tests, first-class and other games), and seen as, for want of a better word, invincible. MacLaren said Australia were beatable and proclaimed he could pick a team of Gentlemen (former players mixed with university players) to beat them.
Mostly people laughed. But down in Eastbourne, organisers realised this was an opportunity to make a lot of money and they offered to host an Archie MacLaren England XI against the Australians. One of the Gentlemen was a 39-year-old South African cricketer who had fought in two wars, struggled with bouts of malaria, was out of shape and hadn't played a Test in nine years.
MacLaren's dream team managed 43 in the first innings. The old South African, who opened, was bowled by Armstrong. Australia passed the total one wicket down, but ended on 174. Here the old South African found some form and took three of the top four and four in total. After all these years, people still had trouble picking which way he was spinning it.
In the second innings, with his side 71 runs behind and four wickets down, the old man came out to bat. When he stumbled in, all nervous energy and flawed technique, even Armstrong, who had played against this man at his very best, wouldn't have worried. This wasn't the same man, that Adonis, the world's greatest allrounder. This was a broken ol' fella talking to himself. After every ball this old man would head to square leg and talk through what he did wrong. He was coaching himself on the field. Maybe if they had known how good a coach he was, they would have taken him more seriously. Instead the Australians laughed at him; Neville Cardus, as he would write in his autobiography later, made plans to leave the ground early and return to London.
No official time is given for when the laughter stopped. Maybe it was his fifty, or his hundred, or even when he was done for 153. It was one of three 50-plus scores in the match. It was chanceless, a self-commentated innings that took down a bowling attack of Arthur Mailey, Jack Gregory, Warwick Armstrong and Ted McDonald; a brilliant attack humiliated by an old man, an old man who had, in his own words, a "will to achieve".
They said that Faulkner was so good-looking, women came to the ground just to watch him play
When he was out the lead was 195.
Australia came out to chase and the old man was given a rest, MacLaren preferring to use only his two opening bowlers. But with Australia seven down, Tommy Andrews set and Armstrong in, MacLaren brought the old man in. Soon after, he dismissed Andrews.
He then studied Armstrong for a while. Here was cricket's most arrogant man, a bully, the prototype for what Australian cricket would become. Armstrong and the old man had previous. The story goes that once, in a match before the war, the old man was bowling to Victor Trumper, and Armstrong had told him that Trumper's weakness was the quick yorker. The old man delivered one. Trumper smashed it away. The old man looked back at Armstrong who gave no reaction. So the old man bowled two more, and both were hit to the boundary. After the third, Armstrong had a massive grin across his face. Like many before him, the old man had been grifted by Armstrong.
This time, Armstrong was not grinning. His amazing summer was about to be ruined by the blowhard MacLaren and this old man. The old man saw Armstrong purse his lips as if about to whistle. But no noise resulted. The old man had shut up the most loudmouthed Australian. Shortly after, he dismissed Armstrong, his sixth wicket of the match. MacLaren's Gentlemen had beaten this vicious Australian machine.
This old man, Aubrey Faulkner, had beaten them.
One day, a young Aubrey Faulkner came home. He was coming home to his family, a privileged one, that owned an impressive home in Port Elizabeth, and was able to send Faulkner to the prestigious Wynberg Boys' High School in Cape Town. His father was a wealthy man, but also a drunk and a wife-beater.
Faulkner had seen it so many times before, but this time he lost control. Attacking his father would have consequences. It would mean foregoing an easy life; he would have the name, the status, but not the money and security. It would mean working hard his whole life, unlike other men born into privilege.
Faulkner didn't think about this. He snapped and beat his father, stopping only when he realised his father had turned limp. Years later he would tell his protégé Ian Peebles that he "nearly killed him".
The South African touring party in England in 1907. Faulkner is standing second from right, with fellow spin wizards Reggie Schwarz (second from left, middle row), Bert Vogler (second from right, middle row) and Gordon White (second from left, bottom row) © PA Photos
There was nothing left for Faulkner at home. He would live in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Nottingham, the Gardens of Salonica, Jerusalem, Maidenhead and London. But he would never truly be at home. No matter where he went, who he met, what his will achieved, his darkness would stay with him.
Faulkner was 19 when he left home. He left his family, became independent, and joined the Imperial Light Horse, an old South African regiment, in Johannesburg as an officer during the Second Boer War. Sat upon his horse, he must have been a magnificent sight, two finely tuned, powerful animals in harmony. Faulkner was the very definition of the broad-shouldered young South African man: brown hair, brown eyes, and thick through the trunk. Women were drawn to him, even the married ones.
When the war ended in 1902, Faulkner moved to Cape Town. He began his working life as a clerk for H Ekstein & Co, a gold-mining company. This sort of work wasn't for Faulkner. He was a man of pedigree, a man of action. So he made his way down to Newlands for a net session, and there, according to Christopher Martin-Jenkins' Complete Who's Who of Test Cricketers, was spotted by Walter Richards.
Richards was a former cricketer-turned-umpire who had been a great batsman for Warwickshire before they became a first-class team. Richards started coaching Faulkner, but he was no chosen one, just a young man working on his game, willing himself to improve.
Transvaal gave him a chance, Faulkner making his debut in a Currie Cup game in April 1903 against Border. He batted at nine - unbeaten twice for 16 and 17 - and didn't bowl. His second game began a day after his first ended and he bowled five wicketless overs, batting at nine again. He didn't play a first-class game the following season. He was popular with his team-mates, no one had a bad word to say about him, but he seemed to just be an average cricketer, a clerk, with a big smile.
Bernard Bosanquet also came from a wealthy family, very much a Gentleman, not a Player. His career would have been unremarkable had it not been for a game he played on a table-tennis table, which he called "Twisti-Twosti", the object being to spin the ball away from a person trying to catch it on the other side. Somewhere in this gladiatorial battle, the wrong'un was born.
As coach Faulkner didn't discriminate on talent or status, as thorough with a village duffer as he was with the son of the Chinese ambassador
South Africa had been playing Test cricket for less than a decade when Bosanquet discovered the googly. They had yet to win a Test. England would send second-rate, sometimes fourth-rate, sides, with players who were barely good enough for first-class level. In 1904, a South African side toured England, but not as a Test side because they weren't thought to be good enough. One of the tourists, Reggie Schwarz, was a handy batsman and rugby international for South Africa. In 1901 and 1902, Schwarz played for Middlesex. He was good friends with Bosanquet, and travelled on the tour of the US with Bosanquet's side when they played the "Gentlemen of Philadelphia".
So when South Africa played their opening first-class match of the 1904 tour, it was his captain, friend and tour master who took nine wickets in an innings with this new creation. Schwarz asked Bosanquet about this new magic and a few weeks later tried it himself in a game that wasn't first-class. He took 5 for 27 and by the end of the tour he was the third-highest wicket-taker on tour with 65.
Instead of hogging his new-found skill, Schwarz went back to Transvaal and found three disciples: Gordon White, Ernest "Bert" Vogler and Faulkner. Faulkner was the right man, in the right place at the right time and for the second time in his young life, he found a great teacher.
The following season England toured, though with a weak team. The best players were not interested, as the challenge wasn't seen as a real test. The matches were on matting wickets, and no one considered them as important as Tests against Australia, or even county cricket. Pelham "Plum" Warner was left with what some thought of as a 2nd or 3rd XI, but one still thought of as good enough to beat South Africa.
Transvaal hosted the tourists in a first-class game before the Tests. Faulkner and Schwarz were both prominent in Transvaal's win. A week later Faulkner played in his fifth first-class match and first Test. Vogler played too, as did White and Schwarz. They took eight between them as England made 184. South Africa couldn't even make half of that, all out for 91. Faulkner took four in the second innings to stop England from making a big total, but South Africa still had to chase 284.
When Faulkner was run out, they were 105 for 6. South Africa had scored over 251 only once in Tests and now they were up against the third-highest chase in Test cricket's short history. Over 17 years and 11 Tests South Africa had never won a Test. They had drawn only once.
The England spinner Ian Peebles, Faulkner's protégé, whose progress Faulkner kept track of even during his darkest days © Getty Images
But White hung in and the legendary Dave Nourse partnered him for a couple of hours. White eventually fell and so did two more wickets before Percy Sherwell, South Africa's wicketkeeper-captain, came out. It was his first Test and South Africa still needed 45 runs.
The English lost their nerve quickly. South African fans had no real reason to believe in their side, but the chase excited them. According to news reports from the time, they roared at every run. England's bowling became ragged. Sherwell began hitting boundaries, Nourse was defending like one side of Table Mountain, and the cheering grew in voice.
Four were needed when Albert Relf strayed down the leg side and Nourse and Sherwell ran three. The scores were tied for three balls before Relf dropped one short and Sherwell smashed it. Before it even got to the boundary, South Africa had won a Test match, a 17-year streak ended by that long hop.
Faulkner was a Test winner, so were South Africa. They went on to win their first series 4-1. Faulkner was one of the XI, no star. South Africa's four legspinners of the apocalypse took 43 wickets at 18 in the series. Faulkner was just one of them, no star.
They said that Faulkner was so good-looking that women came to the ground just to watch him play. Those women were obviously not cricket purists, as, from a cricket standpoint, Faulkner was functional: handmade, a bit of rough. His kit rarely matched and was often dirty. He once played an entire Test with a piece of string holding up his trousers.
In Great Characters from Cricket's Golden Age, Jeremy Malies described his bowling like this: "For such a natural athlete his run-up was surprisingly craggy and ungainly. It included several stutters and he would arrive at the wicket with elbows pumping madly, in the manner of Bob Willis." He sounds more like a drunk uncle than a polished Test match bowler, but at the crease, all the coaching and tinkering unfurled into a very respectable legspin action. Repeatable, barely beatable.
Faulkner would land it on a length, turn the ball both ways without any hint as to which way it would go, had endless endurance for Herculean spells and also had a fast yorker that destroyed batsmen. As a batsman Faulkner was two-eyed. While most batsmen of the era were side-on, Faulkner stood very open. His bottom hand was in charge, and as the bowler came in, he flexed it aggressively over the grip. His back was always arched over, as if his bat was a bit too small and so, like with many broad-shouldered batsmen, the piece of wood often looked like a toy when he swung it. Faulkner would defend with good, if slightly eccentric, footwork, and when he hit the ball, he did so with the same sort of power his father had once borne the brunt of.
Faulkner knew a lot of people. Everyone was a good friend or a lover, but very few truly knew him
Faulkner stood in the slips most of the time, but there wasn't a position in the field he couldn't master. There wasn't a cricket skill, once taught, that he couldn't perform at the highest level. Richards and Schwarz had given him just a little coaching but the rest of it was Faulkner coaching himself, so that he was like a golden-era version of Jacques Kallis with Bob Woolmer's mind.
For 866 days, or nearly two and a half years, after scoring 42 at The Oval in 1907, Faulkner played no Test cricket. South Africa drew the first Test of that series - their first away from home - after being made to follow on. On a soft wicket at Headingley, England trudged to lunch on the first morning, but only one wicket down. After lunch, Faulkner happened.
The ball spun viciously in both directions. No one seemed to be able to tell which way, and this with a wicket slowing the ball down. Faulkner took six for 17 from 11 overs but England eventually won by 53 runs and took the series. The four legspinners combined for 228 first-class wickets on the entire tour. Some Englishmen suggested their wrong'un was unfair. When Faulkner bowled one, it was said to be virtually undetectable.
When he finally did play his next Test, also against England, at the Old Wanderers Ground, Johannesburg in January 1910, he top-scored with 78 and then bowled 33 overs, mostly unchanged. He took 5 for 120. Then he came in at No. 6, South Africa fewer than 30 runs ahead, and made 123 out of the 216 made in the rest of the innings. He dragged South Africa past 300, leaving England 244 to chase.
Vogler took most of the top order. England were eight wickets down and needed 46, but George Thompson wouldn't budge and Henry "Shrimp" Leveson Gower was well set. Inevitably, Faulkner took the wicket of Leveson Gower, and then, with England needing only 20, he dismissed Thompson as well. South Africa were 1-0 up and Faulkner was carried around the ground like a king.
South Africa won the series and in five of the 10 innings, Faulkner top-scored: 545 runs at 60 and 29 wickets at under 22. "Faulkner is an extraordinary cricketer," the England cricketer Teddy Wynward wrote in the Rand Daily Mail. "A great player this, with a great future."
Faulkner (right) walks out to bat with Jimmy Sinclair at Lord's in 1907. On that tour, Faulkner had match figures of 9 for 75 during the Headingley Test © PA Photos
Yet by this point Faulkner had already played more than half the Tests he would ever play, and never again would he play another Test at home.
In 1925, an advertisement started appearing in the Cricketer magazine: a cricket school, run by a Test cricketer. Pelham Warner and Leveson Gower were noted as directors. But the school was called the Faulkner School of Cricket. And it was the first full-time cricket school.
A young Scottish cricketer named Ian Peebles had seen the ad. When he visited London once, he made two special visits - one to Lord's, the other to Faulkner's school. When Peebles arrived, he was expecting utopia - lush green pitches, Test cricketers lined around a bar, the best cricket bats strewn around the place, wide open spaces - or at the least, as he wrote in his book Spinner's Yarn, "a beautifully kept expanse of turf with a number of nets in orderly rows".
Instead he walked into a barely reformed garage in Petersham Road, Richmond. It was so cramped, more than one batsman had hooked the ball back onto himself. The electric light bulbs were poor. The fuse box, just above the bowler's head, had once exploded as a bowler lost control when he let go of the ball.
The school was as shoddy and unorthodox as the man himself, but also as effective. Faulkner saw Peebles bowl and knew there was something special there, excitedly telling his assistant, "Look what I've found." Later Faulkner invited Peebles to lunch, a meeting Peebles recounts in his book.
"If you come to London you could be my secretary," said Faulkner.
"If I did, do you think I would ever play for a county?" asked Peebles.
"If you come to me, you'll go a damn sight further than that."
He offered Peebles a dream, and half his sandwich. Peebles moved to London.
He was like a golden-era version of Jacques Kallis with Bob Woolmer's mind
Despite the shabby location and lack of amenities, the school was a dream for young boys with aspirations of cricket. A 12-year-old could enter and walk past the renowned cricket writer Home Gordon and Warner in deep conversation. He could pad up just as Douglas Jardine was leaving for the day. This boy could then enter the nets and work under the tutelage of a soon-to-be, or current, first-class player. As he learnt his forward defence, he could have been standing next to the great Duleepsinhji fine-tuning his near perfect off-side game. That was worth far more than the 10 shillings Faulkner charged for 15 minutes' batting and 45 minutes' bowling. Faulkner could never charge enough for the magic he created there.
He didn't discriminate on talent or status, as thorough with a village duffer as he was with the son of the Chinese ambassador. He gave simple explanations: he had the Faulkner method, and he made sure everyone who came through knew what it was. If you had a weakness as a batsman, he could find it, and put every ball there until you improved. As a bowler, if you used your wrist to spin the ball, one session with Faulkner and you'd be twice the bowler you were.
He also put on the odd clinic with the ball. Jack MacBryan, a Somerset amateur who made over 10,000 first-class runs, was working on something in the nets one day, and facing up to Faulkner. MacBryan couldn't work out which way the ball was spinning. According to Peebles, he eventually threw the bat down, stormed out and said, "I can't play this bloody stuff."
They said of Faulkner that he played with all his heart and his mind. He coached the same way.
Faulkner was in the SCG nets, just about beyond the Ladies stand. He was working on his batting. But he was also listening. Listening for that noise. It wouldn't be long. It never was. Then it came, that abusive, guttural and communal shout that Australian crowds do better than other countries. Faulkner left the nets, walked straight into the middle and batted for his country. He did that all 10 innings on the 1910-11 tour of Australia. The crowd noises came at 29 for 3, 44 for 3, 34 for 1, 1 for 1, 31 for 1, 10 for 1, 7 for 1, 2 for 1, 4 for 1, and then finally 64 for 2.
Faulkner was trying to train himself to Australian conditions. These weren't matting pitches. They were alien to him, and he knew he had to be better than ever before. He shut out much of the socialising and got into the zone.
On the first day of the first Test, Australia scored 494. Albert "Tibby" Cotter then ran through South Africa. Except Faulkner, who made 62 and 43 as his team lost by an innings.
The second Test began on New Year's Eve at the MCG. Australia attacked again, this time getting bowled out for 348. Faulkner walked in early on the second day and was still in on the third morning, cracking a classic double-century. His defence was solid and when the bad ball came, the bad ball went. He played so well off the back foot, ball off the bat sounded like a pistol shot.
A batting tutorial at Faulkner's cricket school in Richmond, circa 1930, where several distinguished cricketers were to be found, despite the lack of amenities © Getty Images
He scored more than half of South Africa's runs on day two. The Melbourne Argus said it was "nothing iconoclastic… a great innings on a great occasion". No South African had scored 150 before. It took 25 years for someone to go past it. It took Kallis 150 Tests to beat it. It might not have been iconoclastic but it was iconic.
He was finally out for 204 and South Africa's first-innings lead was over 150. Faulkner had given them a great chance at their first away win. Then Victor Trumper scored a better-than-a-run-a-ball 159. The next highest was 48. No one else could have changed the match so quickly, so powerfully. Faulkner's innings had been brilliant, methodical and stoic; Trumper blew it away like it didn't even happen.
South Africa still only needed 170. Faulkner decided to drop anchor but, according to reports of the time, appeared to freeze in a defensive trance on what was still, by accounts, a good wicket. When the score was 46 he was fifth out for 8. South Africa would fall for 80. It should have been Faulkner's greatest moment. Instead he was blamed.
But the team needed help; they needed a batting coach. Faulkner was the only player on the field who could stand up to the Australians. He had by then transcended this poor team, becoming almost a godlike figure. They approached him carefully and he helped them with his Faulkner method.
Play forward in defence. Play straight. Smack the ball when it's short. Never miss a run off your pads. In his cricket coaching book Cricket: Can it be Taught? he says: "'Is it better to teach boys nothing but strokes?... or merely defence?' The correct answer to which is surely: 'Teach the young fellows all you can of both; for batting is neither wholly the one nor the other but a happy blending of the two'".
In Adelaide all Faulkner's method and his team's work paid off. South Africa scored as a team, not on his back, and his second-innings 115 gave South Africa a lead of 377. Had the ICC rankings been around then, Faulkner had just become the world's No. 1 batsman. At times, he would also have been the ranked the world's No. 2 bowler. Faulkner took a couple of wickets as well, giving South Africa their first away win.
The Australians loved him, cheering Faulkner through almost all of his 732 runs in the series. That haul was more than what the second and third-best South African batsmen made between them.
Faulkner was never officially diagnosed with bipolar disorder, but those who wrote about him often suspected he suffered from it
Peebles writes of a trip Faulkner made to Trumper's sports store in Sydney at the start of the tour. Trumper gave him a bat. Faulkner was overwhelmed. He used it, and it was a dog. The ball didn't jump off the bat, it yawned and fell asleep on impact. Trumper asked how it was, and Faulkner was honest. Trumper took the bat back, used it against him in a tour match and Faulkner stood back dumbfounded as the ball flew to the boundary, as if the bat had some hidden superpowers. Trumper handed it back, telling Faulkner it was knocked in. Faulkner used it again, but for him it was still just a plank of wood.
Faulkner made 71 more runs than Trumper in that series.
Faulkner was never officially diagnosed with bipolar disorder, but those who wrote about him often suspected he suffered from it. In social situations Faulkner often behaved as if he had hypomania (a mild form of mania marked by hyperactivity and elation): excitable, seemingly happy, the centre of attention at many parties, often mimicking famous people and making everyone laugh. Faulkner knew a lot of people. Everyone was a good friend or a lover, but very few truly knew him.
"Lurking below the surface were demons which caused moods of deep depression, exacerbated by his attacks of malaria," wrote Brian Bassano in Aubrey Faulkner (one of a series of books he wrote on prominent cricketers). "As the years passed he became more prone to what was probably manic depression… "
On the few occasions he opened up to people, he let them into a dark and painful world. Home Gordon spoke to Faulkner during his last Test and writes in his autobiography that "his own retrospect of cricket was mysteriously and unjustifiably gloomy". No matter how many women he bedded, how many parties he attended, how many wickets he took, and runs he scored, it didn't matter. "…he had confided that he felt an inward blackness that suggested the futility of his own magnificent prowess."
The blackness was there when he batted, even as he was lauded as better than any visitor to Australia. Even when they went to him for advice, they did so gently, as they could see what state he was in.
Blackness.
Julien Cahn was like Kerry Packer, or the Maharajkumar of Vizianagram, or Allen Stanford, or perhaps a weird amalgam bargain-basement Nottingham version of all three. Cahn was rich (well, his father was), loved cricket, and ran his own cricket clubs and games in Nottingham. He used his money to buy talented players and his greatest purchase was Faulkner.
The Gardens of Salonica, Greece, in 1916, where Faulkner served for a period during World War I Roger Viollet / © Getty Images
Twice Faulkner took all 10 wickets in an innings for Cahn and made double-hundreds as well. And he dominated in a way you should if you are the world's best allrounder playing against teams made up of club cricketers and wealthy team owners with delusions of competence.
Faulkner had originally moved to England to play for Surrey or Middlesex. But Cahn had offered him more money. Faulkner was not some successful businessman; cricket was his salary. He knew that the real money from cricket wasn't in South Africa but in county cricket or in teams such as those run by Cahn.
Then World War I broke out and Faulkner was one of the first to sign up for service. Just before he did, though, in June 1914, playing for a Leveson Gower XI, he made 70 and took 5 for 51 in his last first-class match against Oxford University.
Faulkner briefly served on the Western front but was moved to Thessaloniki, or what people on the front referred to as the Gardens of Salonica. It was rife with malaria, and Faulkner contracted it several times. Later in the war he moved to Jerusalem and for his involvement with the successful takeover of the city, received the Distinguished Service Order. He continued his struggles with malaria but recovered to fight in Palestine. For his efforts, he received the Order of the Nile: Major Aubrey Faulkner.
Faulkner, the fit professional athlete, returned to England a broken man physically. What should have been his best years as a Test player were instead lost to the struggle to make a living, and war. Six years after his last first-class match, he took 10 wickets in his third match after the war, but he could no longer bowl long spells. Eighteen months after the war his wife left him.
South Africa's tour of England in 1924 was their first visit to England since the disastrous 1912 Triangular. Their team was callow. They failed to beat any of the county sides in their 12 tour matches ahead of the first Test at Edgbaston. In response to England's 438, South Africa managed to last 12.3 overs. They were all out for 30, extras top-scoring with 11. They fared better the second time round but lost by an innings.
A desperate South Africa sought out Major George Aubrey Faulkner for the next Test. He was by now a games master at St Piran's Preparatory School in Maidenhead. He was 42, fatter than he had ever been, and had not played a Test in 12 years, or a first-class game since beating the Australians at Eastbourne three years earlier.
He had to be convinced to play, but in the nets before the game he batted quite well. His wrong'un consistently confused the captain, Herbie Taylor. As King George V shook hands with the South Africans, old British Pathé footage shows Faulkner appearing almost manically happy, nearly shaking with excitement at the prospect of playing.
The school was almost always full, but Faulkner never made any money from it. He was a great player and a great coach, but he had no head for business
Maybe hidden behind the demeanour were his worries? Can I still play, he might have asked himself. Will I embarrass myself, he might have fretted.
This time South Africa won the toss and batted. They made 273. Faulkner came in at No. 8, still with the bent-over, two-eyed stance and the strong, twitchy bottom-hand grip. But the granite-like defence had been replaced by a jittery old man who bounced around like a plastic bag caught in a cross breeze.
Pathé footage of his innings makes it clear how difficult it now was for Faulkner. Even a simple forward defensive was made to look an impossible task. His bat seemed worried that its owner did not know how to swing it and that he was using it like a crutch to stop from falling over. There was no delivery where he wasn't a flurry of nerves and excess movement. And there was frustration. He knew what to do, he knew how to make the adjustments, but his body could no longer deliver. The will to achieve was still there, but it was almost all that was left.
Still, it was some performance by someone so far removed from Test cricket. He was on 25 when he missed a topspinner from Percy Fender. It wasn't his prettiest innings. It wasn't his best innings. But it was, in many ways, his most heroic innings.
Then England batted against what was a failed Frankenstein's monster attack, the kind that couldn't work, only gnaws off its own limbs before exploding in a pool of blood, guts and excrement. That attack managed two wickets. Patsy Hendren made an unbeaten fifty, Frank Woolley an unbeaten hundred, Herbert Sutcliffe a hundred. Jack Hobbs made a double. Had they not declared, they would still be batting.
South Africa could not have been more embarrassed, but Faulkner produced one bit of magic.
Hobbs, who had mostly played Faulkner by running down the wicket, did so again. In their glory days Faulkner and Hobbs had been a great sight. Sydney Barnes and Trumper had alien gifts, but Hobbs and Faulkner were man-made marvels. Four times in the nine Tests they played against each other, Faulkner snared Hobbs. Thrice Hobbs was between 50 and 100, and stopping Hobbs on the way to a hundred was no mean feat. On this occasion it was early in Hobbs' innings as he danced down the wicket. Faulkner floated one up and Hobbs tried to on-drive him, his favourite shot off Faulkner. The ball wasn't where he thought it would be, and it ripped past his bat.
Bernard Bosanquet, the inventor of the googly, which Faulkner learned to bowl from Reggie Schwarz and went on to master, bamboozling many even after his playing days © Getty Images
All that needed to happen next was for Tommy Ward to collect and take off the bails. That wasn't how Aubrey Faulkner's life went, though. Ward fumbled. Hobbs scored. Faulkner remained wicketless and embarrassed.
On many days at the school, Faulkner and his assistants would work from seven in the morning until late at night. Seven days a week. Sharing food. Virtually no rest. Faulkner would bowl with his right arm for the first part of the day and then, in great pain, switch to his left by day's end.
The school was almost always full, but Faulkner never made any money from it. He refused to up the price and even moved to Farm Lane, Walham Green, where there were many more nets. He should have charged more, especially the first-class players. He struggled to cover costs, working for the Westminster Gazette, the Cricketer and the BBC to supplement his wages. It wasn't enough. He had spent his whole life around wealth, and those who used his school were often London's elite, but none of it ever came his way. He was a great player and a great coach, but he had no head for business.
The one thing he refused to do was probably the simplest: open a bar. It was the ghost of his father that stopped him. Faulkner had been teetotal all his life. He didn't speak of it often, but the few who knew him beyond the smiles knew that he didn't drink or trust barflies because of his father. From beyond the grave, from inside the darkness in his head, his father was still ruining his life.
In his book Never a Cross Bat, Tom Reddick, a former county player who was on the staff at Faulkner's school, remembered a game at Chelmsford. He went with Faulkner, who was well into his 40s, in no shape for cricket, and had decided not to take his kit with him to avoid the embarrassment of playing. "I'm much too old and fat, so I shall not play," he told Reddick.
The organisers had Faulkner's name up on a marquee and wouldn't accept him not playing. Faulkner borrowed kit and walked out on the ground smiling, perhaps the same manic, nervous smiles as at Lord's in 1924.
Faulkner once wrote, "And nerves, believe me, hate the fellow who can smile!" That nervous smile, the one he used when he was in a room of dignitaries, or when he was panicking about money, was still on his face when he stood at slip, and as he came on to bowl.
But, as always, Faulkner landed the ball on a length and the nerves went away. The ball spun both ways, as always, and the batsmen were on their way. One of his seven victims was Essex's Dudley Pope. Pope played for a legspinner and was bowled by a wrong'un. Utterly confused, he walked past Faulkner saying, "I don't know who you are, sir, but my word, you bowl a bloody good wrong'un."
Faulkner and Jacques Kallis both attended Wynberg Boys' High School. These two men are the bookends of the greatest bloodline of allrounders any nation has produced: Jimmy Sinclair, Eddie Barlow, Mike Procter, Basil D'Oliveira, Tiger Lance, Tony Greig, Clive Rice, Taliep Sallie, Gesant Abed, Cecil Abrahams, Sulaiman Abed, Brian McMillan, Lance Klusener and Shaun Pollock.
Kallis wore 27 on his Test shirt, as in the eyes of Cricket South Africa he was the 27th player to represent his nation. CSA does not recognise the players before readmission in their official lists. So Faulkner, Test player No. 58, doesn't exist. When he was part of a legspin militia that beat England that first time, when he coached his entire side to win their first overseas Test in Australia, when he risked embarrassment and injury to come out of a 12-year absence to play for his country one last time, it didn't count. His career, to them, means nothing. There are no stands in his name. No one receives the Aubrey Faulkner medal. There are no glossy books about him. When you search CSA's website for "Aubrey Faulkner" there are no results.
No matter where Faulkner went, who he met, what his will achieved, his darkness would stay with him
The cricket world has done the same. Early Australian and English greats are praised, remembered and idolised. South Africans from that era may as well not exist. There is one biography of Faulkner, by Bassano, Aubrey Faulkner: His Record Innings by Innings. It is 36 pages long.
Faulkner was a white South African who played over a century ago. Who is going to fight for a man who played for a racially segregated country in an era of little success? A man who put his financial security above his country's needs? Who only played 25 Tests?
He was 48 when he died, six years after his last Test, the only man in Test cricket to ever average more than 40 with the bat and less than 30 with the ball (with a minimum of 50 wickets and 500 runs).
September, 1930: Jack Hobbs had just retired. The BBC got Faulkner to interview him. Even then, sitting opposite Hobbs, Faulkner knew his fate. He wouldn't be remembered as fondly. He wouldn't be Jack Hobbs. He hadn't achieved enough. He hadn't played for the right country. He hadn't built his legend in county cricket. He was broke. His cricket school wasn't making money. His writing jobs weren't paying enough. He was fat. He was broken. He was in darkness.
He tried to hide the darkness behind his jovial nature, but it was still there. Perhaps if you listened with half a ear, you would not pick up any of its cues. But Faulkner's laughs were hollow. Maybe he knew he only had a few days left.
"What a pity we can't stay young," he said wistfully. "You're lucky - the majority of us are not so fortunate," he started his final public words.
The interview ended with Hobbs' reply. Faulkner never said goodbye.
According to David Frith's Silence of the Heart it was colder than usual on the September morning when Faulkner's secretary turned up at the school. There he read a note.
Dear Mackenzie, I am off to another sphere via the small bat-drying room. Better call in a policeman to do investigating.
When the police officer and the secretary entered the room, the gas was overwhelming. At their feet was one of the greatest cricketers that had ever lived, lifeless, without a smile to hide behind.
He left his widow Alice £273, 16s and six dimes.
Alice went to Tom Reddick, whom Faulkner had once gifted his South African blazer, and asked for it back. Not for sentimental reasons. Not because she knew what it meant to Faulkner, but because the buttons were made of gold.
That blazer wasn't his legacy, though. Reddick was and so were all those whom Faulkner coached.
Tom Killick, for example, who personified the Faulkner method as a batsman for Middlesex. Or Doug Wright, arguably England's finest legspinner around the World War II years, who took over 100 Test wickets. Or Fred Bakewell, who made over 14,000 first-class runs. Denis Tomlinson, who played one Test for South Africa. Maurice Turnbull, Walter Robins and Bob Wyatt, who made over 70,000 first-class runs and played 68 Tests between them. Freddie Brown was another; Duleep and Jardine too.
And there was Peebles. Under Faulkner's tutelage, Peebles went further than county cricket and played 13 Tests. No matter how much the darkness was eating Faulkner, he would check the scores for how Peebles was doing. When Peebles took wickets, he would smile, not for nerves or as a front, but from pure joy.
Faulkner helped build a cricket team, he helped build cricketers and he built a cricket utopia out of a rundown garage. He never found his own utopia.
09:47:01 GMT, February 5, 2015: Line about Faulkner fighting for South African independence removed
Jarrod Kimber is the author of Test Cricket: The Unauthorised Biography and director of Death of a Gentleman. @ajarrodkimber
© ESPN Sports Media Ltd. |
One morning a few weeks ago, I was leaving the building where I live, on a quiet, historic block in Brooklyn, and found a large group of tourists outside on the sidewalk, selfie sticks in hand, led by a guide who was shepherding them around the neighborhood as he lectured. Over the past several years this has become an increasingly common scene in parts of the borough: the wondrous gazes of out-of-towners as they listen to anecdotes about the area’s literary and architectural past, turning to shock as they learn of the gargantuan sums people are willing to pay to live, in such close quarters, among the ghosts.
Around the world, the spread of urban tourism into previously uncharted residential neighborhoods, a turn of events not all neighbors have welcomed, has largely been attributed to the growth of Airbnb and its promise of a more intimate experience of hospitality than modern times have typically permitted. In reality, that blame can be distributed more widely. Trends have been moving in that direction for a long time. In New York in particular, a decline in manufacturing jobs lasting decades prompted civic leaders to regroup, turning the city into a branded product that could be marketed to tourists and real estate interests around the world, who would emerge as a driving force of the economy.
As more and more tourists obliged, the field they were given to play in became broader and more diverse, by necessity, in some sense; Manhattan’s central business district alone could hardly contain the masses. At the same time, the affluent classes (whose anxieties made them ever more intent on distinguishing themselves from those in the lower rungs) had rejected the “tourist” designation altogether — tourists go to wax museums in Times Square — and chose instead to follow the path of what the industry calls immersive travel. This could alternately take the shape of sleeping in tribal huts in Namibia, or staying in an art director’s house in Boerum Hill for 10 days, reading Jonathan Lethem novels in a Hans Wegner lounge chair.
From a financial perspective, the success of tourism is unambiguous. Close to 62 million visitors are expected to come to New York this year (approximately a million more than came in 2016), many of them during the summer months, setting a record for the seventh consecutive year. In May, NYC & Company, the city’s official destination marketing arm, announced “‘New’ New York City,” a “five borough tourism infrastructure,” to include places like, “Destination St. George,” the gentrifying neighborhood on the Staten Island waterfront near where Eric Garner was killed. It will include the city’s first outlet mall, scheduled to open next year, and a $590 million “observation wheel,” the construction of which has been beleaguered by difficulties and lawsuits. Queens now has its own tourism council, which like so much else that marks the city of today, would have been unthinkable in the 1970s, when New York was in a shambles and everyone was going somewhere else. |
You probably don’t want to be known around the office as the one who’s never willing to lend a hand to a colleague — being pals with your co-workers, after all, can make it easier to get through the day — but there’s a downside to being too giving of your energy: It can actually make you worse at your job.
It’s a fine line to walk: On the one hand, as Wharton researchers Adam Grant and Reb Rebele noted in a recent column in Harvard Business Review, research has shown that people categorized as “givers” — as opposed to “selfish ‘takers’ or quid pro quo ‘matchers’” — typically make for the most valuable employees, sharing their time and knowledge in a way that elevates the workings of the whole group. On the other hand, givers are “also at the greatest risk for burnout,” they wrote. “When they don’t protect themselves, their investments in others can cause them to feel overloaded and fatigued, fall behind on their work goals, and face more stress and conflict at home.”
But, the researchers argued, there’s a way to be a giver while simultaneously avoiding “generosity burnout” — the key lies in knowing that generosity and selflessness are not one and the same. “Being an effective giver isn’t about dropping everything every time for every person,” they wrote. “It’s about making sure that the benefits of helping others outweigh the costs to you.”
Think of it this way: Let’s say you’re crashing on a looming deadline for some super-important project when a colleague asks for your help fixing the copy machine. The selfless thing to do would be to get up from your desk and go help him out — but that would also be a foolish use of your time. In this case, the cost of your missing your deadline outweighs the cost of him having to wait a little longer to scan something.
Or, to borrow from Grant and Rebele’s example, let’s say you’ve agreed to set aside time to teach something to a colleague, and they’ve just asked if you wouldn’t mind doing the same for one of their buddies. It might be selfless to set aside another chunk of time to repeat the lesson — but, again, it would also be something other than the best use of your time. A better move would be rescheduling for a time when both people can make it, allowing you to combine two lessons into one. “Finding ways to give without depleting your time and energy,” they wrote, “is generous but not selfless.” The best way to maintain your generosity over time, in other words, is to make sure you’re a little bit selfish, too. |
Le'Veon Bell (Photo: Jared Wickerham, Getty Images)
How much will Steelers running back Le’Veon Bell be worth when he hits the free-agent market after the 2016 season?
Sounds like he’s pegging his value at $15 million a year.
Bell, the former Michigan State star who goes by his nickname “Juice” as a part-time rapper, has a new song called “Focus.” In it, Bell suggests he will command $15 million annually as a free agent when his current four-year, $4.12 million contract expires at the end of 2016:
“I’m at the top and if not I’m the closest,
“I’m a need 15 a year and they know this.”
Bell was limited to six games last season with a knee injury but rushed for 556 yards on a 4.9-yard average. In 2014, his second year in the NFL, Bell had 1,361 yards on 290 carries (4.7-yard average) with eight TD.
The Vikings’ Adrian Peterson is the NFL’s highest-paid running back with an average annual value of $14 million, followed by the Chiefs’ Jamaal Charles ($9.05 million) and the Bills’ LeSean McCoy ($8 million).
Bell was drafted by the Steelers in the second round in 2013.
More from Bell’s “Focus”:
“Be mad if you want cause I’m keeping it real,
“They want all my focus to be on the field,
“I play on hope that one day I’m the best.
“I play for respect, I can’t settle for less.” |
Since Steve Jobs’s death, in 2011, Elon Musk has emerged as the leading celebrity of Silicon Valley. Musk is the CEO of Tesla Motors, which produces electric cars; the CEO of SpaceX, which makes rockets; and the chairman of SolarCity, which provides solar power systems. A self-made billionaire, programmer, and engineer—as well as an inspiration for Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark in the Iron Man movies—he has been on the cover of Fortune and Time. In 2013, he was first on the Atlantic’s list of “today’s greatest inventors,” nominated by leaders at Yahoo, Oracle, and Google. To believers, Musk is steering the history of technology. As one profile described his mystique, his “brilliance, his vision, and the breadth of his ambition make him the one-man embodiment of the future.”
Musk’s companies have the potential to change their sectors in fundamental ways. Still, the stories around these advances—and around Musk’s role, in particular—can feel strangely outmoded.
The idea of “great men” as engines of change grew popular in the 19th century. In 1840, the Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle wrote that “the history of what man has accomplished in this world is at bottom the history of the Great Men who have worked here.” It wasn’t long, however, before critics questioned this one–dimensional view, arguing that historical change is driven by a complex mix of trends and not by any one person’s achievements. “All of those changes of which he is the proximate initiator have their chief causes in the generations he descended from,” Herbert Spencer wrote in 1873. And today, most historians of science and technology do not believe that major innovation is driven by “a lone inventor who relies only on his own imagination, drive, and intellect,” says Daniel Kevles, a historian at Yale. Scholars are “eager to identify and give due credit to significant people but also recognize that they are operating in a context which enables the work.” In other words, great leaders rely on the resources and opportunities available to them, which means they do not shape history as much as they are molded by the moments in which they live.
Musk insists on a success story that fails to acknowledge the importance of support from the government.
Musk’s success would not have been possible without, among other things, government funding for basic research and subsidies for electric cars and solar panels. Above all, he has benefited from a long series of innovations in batteries, solar cells, and space travel. He no more produced the technological landscape in which he operates than the Russians created the harsh winter that allowed them to vanquish Napoleon. Yet in the press and among venture capitalists, the great-man model of Musk persists, with headlines citing, for instance, “His Plan to Change the Way the World Uses Energy” and his own claim of “changing history.”
The problem with such portrayals is not merely that they are inaccurate and unfair to the many contributors to new technologies. By warping the popular understanding of how technologies develop, great-man myths threaten to undermine the structure that is actually necessary for future innovations.
Space cowboy
Elon Musk, the best-selling biography by business writer Ashlee Vance, describes Musk’s personal and professional trajectory—and seeks to explain how, exactly, the man’s repeated “willingness to tackle impossible things” has “turned him into a deity in Silicon Valley.”
Born in South Africa in 1971, Musk moved to Canada at age 17; he took a job cleaning the boiler room of a lumber mill and then talked his way into an internship at a bank by cold-calling a top executive. After studying physics and economics in Canada and at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, he enrolled in a PhD program at Stanford but opted out after a couple of days. Instead, in 1995, he cofounded a company called Zip2, which provided an online map of businesses—“a primitive Google maps meets Yelp,” as Vance puts it. Although he was not the most polished coder, Musk worked around the clock and slept “on a beanbag next to his desk.” This drive is “what the VCs saw—that he was willing to stake his existence on building out this platform,” an early employee told Vance. After Compaq bought Zip2, in 1999, Musk helped found an online financial services company that eventually became PayPal. This was when he “began to hone his trademark style of entering an ultracomplex business and not letting the fact that he knew very little about the industry’s nuances bother him,” Vance writes.
When eBay bought PayPal for $1.5 billion, in 2002, Musk emerged with the wherewithal to pursue two passions he believed could change the world. He founded SpaceX with the goal of building cheaper rockets that would facilitate research and space travel. Investing over $100 million of his personal fortune, he hired engineers with aeronautics experience, built a factory in Los Angeles, and began to oversee test launches from a remote island between Hawaii and Guam. At the same time, Musk cofounded Tesla Motors to develop battery technology and electric cars. Over the years, he cultivated a media persona that was “part playboy, part space cowboy,” Vance writes.
Musk sells himself as a singular mover of mountains and does not like to share credit for his success. At SpaceX, in particular, the engineers “flew into a collective rage every time they caught Musk in the press claiming to have designed the Falcon rocket more or less by himself,” Vance writes, referring to one of the company’s early models. In fact, Musk depends heavily on people with more technical expertise in rockets and cars, more experience with aeronautics and energy, and perhaps more social grace in managing an organization. Those who survive under Musk tend to be workhorses willing to forgo public acclaim. At SpaceX, there is Gwynne Shotwell, the company president, who manages operations and oversees complex negotiations. At Tesla, there is JB Straubel, the chief technology officer, responsible for major technical advances. Shotwell and Straubel are among “the steady hands that will forever be expected to stay in the shadows,” writes Vance. (Martin Eberhard, one of the founders of Tesla and its first CEO, arguably contributed far more to its engineering achievements. He had a bitter feud with Musk and left the company years ago.)
Musk’s companies also rely on public-sector support and good timing, a reality that Musk tries to obscure. When he bristles at NASA’s rules or fails to acknowledge SpaceX’s interdependence with the agency, he can seem delusional: “SpaceX is surfing on years and years of government-funded technology and public-sector support,” as Mariana Mazzucato, an economist at the University of Sussex and author of The Entrepreneurial State, points out.
In 2008, after three failed tries, SpaceX launched its first rocket—enough to earn it a $1.6 billion contract from NASA for flights to the International Space Station. Years later, most of the company’s work and plans involve flights to the ISS, which itself exists only as the result of public investment. The core technology of space travel depends heavily on NASA-funded work. This is not to negate the company’s innovations—in particular, lowering the cost of rocket launches and perhaps fanning visions of space exploration cheap enough for non-billionaires. But SpaceX is not driving the future of space exploration. It is capitalizing on a deep pool of technology and highly trained people that already existed, and it is doing so at a moment when national support for NASA has diminished and the government is privatizing key aspects of space travel.
We should determine technological priorities without giving excessive weight to the visions of a few tech celebrities.
Likewise, Musk’s success at Tesla is undergirded by public-sector investment and political support for clean tech. For starters, Tesla relies on lithium-ion batteries pioneered in the late 1980s with major funding from the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation. Tesla has benefited significantly from guaranteed loans and state and federal subsidies. In 2010, the company reached a loan agreement with the Department of Energy worth $465 million. (Under this arrangement, Tesla agreed to produce battery packs that other companies could benefit from and promised to manufacture electric cars in the United States.) In addition, Tesla has received $1.29 billion in tax incentives from Nevada, where it is building a “gigafactory” to produce batteries for cars and consumers. It has won an array of other loans and tax credits, plus rebates for its consumers, totaling another $1 billion, according to a recent series by the Los Angeles Times.
It is striking, then, that Musk insists on a success story that fails to acknowledge the importance of public-sector support. (He called the L.A. Times series “misleading and deceptive,” for instance, and told CNBC that “none of the government subsidies are necessary,” though he did admit they are “helpful.”)
If Musk’s unwillingness to look beyond himself sounds familiar, Steve Jobs provides a recent antecedent. Like Musk, who obsessed over Tesla cars’ door handles and touch screens and the layout of the SpaceX factory, Jobs brought a fierce intensity to product design, even if he did not envision the key features of the Mac, the iPod, or the iPhone. An accurate version of Apple’s story would give more acknowledgment not only to the work of other individuals, from designer Jonathan Ive on down, but also to the specific historical context in which Apple’s innovation occurred. “There is not a single key technology behind the iPhone that has not been state funded,” says economist Mazzucato. This includes the wireless networks, “the Internet, GPS, a touch-screen display, and … the voice-activated personal assistant Siri.” Apple has recombined these technologies impressively. But its achievements rest on many years of public-sector investment. To put it another way, do we really think that if Jobs and Musk had never come along, there would have been no smartphone revolution, no surge of interest in electric vehicles?
This matters because the great-man narrative carries costs. First, it has helped to corrode the culture of Silicon Valley. Great-man lore helps excuse (or enable) some truly terrible behavior. Musk is known, after all, for humiliating engineers and firing employees on a whim. In 2014, when his assistant, who had devoted her life to Tesla and SpaceX for 12 years, asked for a raise, he summarily let her go. Nor can Musk’s rough edges be justified as good for business. Rather, they have the potential to jeopardize crucial relationships with government agencies, according to a former official interviewed by Vance: Musk’s “biggest enemy will be himself and the way he treats people.” Similarly, Jobs was known for entitled behavior and brutishness to employees. Yet as Walter Isaacson has written in his biography, Steve Jobs: “Nasty was not necessary. It hindered him more than it helped him.” If Silicon Valley, with its well-documented problems with diversity, is to attract a broader pool of talented people, encouraging more supportive managerial practices and telling more inclusive stories about who matters would surely help.
Hero myths like the ones surrounding Musk and Jobs are damaging in other ways, too. If tech leaders are seen primarily as singular, lone achievers, it is easier for them to extract disproportionate wealth. It is also harder to get their companies to accept that they should return some of their profits to agencies like NASA and the National Science Foundation through higher taxes or simply less tax dodging.
And finally, technology hero worship tends to distort our visions of the future. Why should governments do the hard work of fixing and expanding California’s mass transit system when Musk says we could zip people across the state at 760 miles per hour in a “hyperloop”? Is trying to colonize Mars, at a cost in the billions of dollars, actually the right direction for future space exploration and scientific research? We should be able to determine long-term technology priorities without giving excessive weight to the particular visions of a few tech celebrities.
Rather than placing tech leaders on a pedestal, we should put their successes in context, acknowledging the role of government not only as a supporter of basic science but as a partner for new ventures. Otherwise, it is all too easy to denigrate public-sector investment, eroding support for government agencies and training programs and ultimately putting future innovation at risk. As Mazzucato puts it, “It’s precisely because we admire Musk and think his contributions are important that we need to get real about where his success actually comes from.” |
A clothing company has drummed up controversy for emblazoning the swastika on its merchandise. The shirts, created by KA Designs, were sold on the popular website Teespring, and featured rainbow-colored swastikas with the words “Peace,” “Zen”and “Love.”
KA Designs claims that their intention behind using the symbol commonly associated with the Nazi party was to reclaim the symbol to represent the LGBTQ community.
In their original description of the product, KA Design wrote, “Here at KA we explore boundaries. We push them forward. Let's make the Swastika a symbol of love and peace. Together, we can succeed.”
In a promotional video for the product, the company stated, “They [the Nazis] stigmatized the swastika. They won. They limited our freedom. Or maybe not? The swastika is coming back together with love, peace, respect and freedom.”
Despite their stated intentions, KA Designs has experienced significant pushback for using a symbol associated with a party and ideology responsible for the murders of millions of people including members of the Jewish and LGBTQ communities.
"I am outraged and shocked that any company would seek to profit from selling such reprehensible items,” Dr. Dvir Abramovich, the chair of the Anti-Defamation Commission in Australia told Pink News. “The swastika does not represent the LGBTI community, whose members were the victims of Hitler’s evil regime. And no, it cannot be rebranded as a symbol of peace. KA’s naïve, and in many ways, selfish attitude shows a staggering lack of concern for the feelings of those who survived the Holocaust and those who lost relatives to the monstrous deeds of the Third Reich.”
In a statement to Mic, KA Designs wrote, “We really enjoy the swastika. Not because of any of the meanings associated with it, but because of the shape and of how it looks. However, the strong bond between the swastika and Nazi values was unbreakable. We didn’t feel free. For the right reason. So we ended up using this symbol with the aim of sharing its opposite values: love, peace and freedom. Our project wants to express the victory of love and humanity against hatred and Nazism in general.”
As of Monday, the T-shirts have been removed from the Teespring website. |
To understand Dylann Roof’s thinking, he tells us, we have to go back to 2012. To Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman. That was the moment, Roof writes in his manifesto, when he was reborn as a white nationalist. Roof’s inspirations are clear in a way that his psychology is not. They go back further than the Martin case into centuries of American history and, along another path, less clearly marked, to the peak years of a now widespread Internet culture, when a new kind of reactionary sensibility was hatched.
A reactionary, defiantly anti-social politics has been emerging for the last decade. It was well known under the auspices of “trolling” and well hidden by its pretense of trickstersism. It was actually juvenile fascism and vitriolic racism but, because it grinned and operated in cyberspace, it was a sensation when it first appeared less than a decade ago. Excitable theorists, bored journalists and naive political activists looked at its strange, adolescent face and pronounced on its revolutionary potential.
According to the accepted wisdom, trolls were fiercely apolitical pranksters up until they put on Guy Fawkes masks and became the radical progressives known as “Anonymous.” But Anonymous doesn’t have a monopoly on trolling’s political legacy. They are only its nominally left-wing manifestation. Something else has been growing in the online ferment they came out of—something that Anonymous and its supporters want to disown—a politics that is temperamentally of the right, not quite coherent, though Anonymous isn’t always either, but unified by certain passions, a conspiratorial bigotry and anti-black racism above all.
This is another legacy of 4chan, the infamous online message board that spawned trolling culture. It is a different branch of politics than the hackitivism associated with Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring, but its roots are the same. While Anonymous has gotten most of the attention, the trolls they left behind on 4chan have seen their influence spread as well, though without a catch-all name or striking avatar to easily refer to them. You can see this other side of trolling’s inheritance spreading on popular sites like Reddit and in the widespread adoption of the rhetorical style they developed: using bombast and absurdism to hide racist tropes in conceptual riddles.
If Roof was not directly shaped by that Internet culture, he nonetheless moved in the world it helped create.
We know that Dylann Roof had a history of taking drugs and that friends say he had expressed interest in committing a mass shooting, but little else about his psychological state leading up to his massacre. We know from what he told the woman he left alive to explain what he’d done, since he apparently intended to kill himself, and from his manifesto that he believed he had no choice but to murder defenseless black people—he specified defenseless; he wanted a slaughter, not a fight—in service to his white nationalist ideology. And we know where the ideas in Dylann Roof’s manifesto first appeared: almost verbatim on a neo-fascist website inspired by 4chan’s politics.
Back to Trayvon Martin. If there is a single event that sparked the current period of social unrest, the national controversy around race and policing, and the largest protest movement of President Obama’s second term, it is the night in February 2012 when a mixed-race Florida man, alarmed by the presence of an unarmed black teenager in his community, confronted and killed him after a struggle.
The fault line exposed by the killing of Martin is still sending out aftershocks. It inspired the Black Lives Matter movement and its more radical offshoots, including a group that named itself after Martin, despite objections from his family, and became notorious after leading a chant calling for “Dead cops” in New York.
The Martin case, and the mainstream media’s handling of it—marred by both casual slanders of Martin and outright distortions about Zimmerman—reverberated in the Internet’s ideological echo chambers, the former inspiring the nascent protest movement that reemerged in Ferguson, the latter inspiring a right-wing counter-movement online.
A story that had started on Twitter before it was picked up by news continued to spread on the populist Internet.
The racial and political divisions revealed by perceptions of Martin’s death and the media’s handling of it attracted activists to the cause. Some organized protests. One anonymous Internet user hacked Martin’s email and social media accounts and posted the results online in an effort to depict him as a thug and drug user, and justify his shooting death. The hacker, who went by the name Klanklannon, posted an edited, slideshow version of the messages stolen from Martin’s accounts. Klanklannon, as the name suggested, was a white supremacist, and a member of 4chan’s political message board, "/pol/," which is where the hacks were first posted.
“The event that truly awakened me,” Dylann Roof wrote before walking into a church in South Carolina and killing nine of the black parishioners who had invited him into their Bible study group, “was the Trayvon Martin case.”
It’s not all that far from the mainstream of American discourse to the places where Roof dwelled online, but the distances get skewed by perspective.
The organized political groups that inspired Roof, like the Council of Conservative Citizens, have, while courting influence, been considered disreputable for decades. That’s a far cry from the kind of ambivalent, if not adulatory treatment, offered to the avatars of 4chan’s bleeding-edge web culture, who were fêted by academics and journalists even as their much pondered trolling cleared out a space online for a new breed of fascist websites, like the one Roof appears to have visited online.
There’s something immediately familiar about The Daily Stormer, where whole passages from Roof’s manifesto first appeared. Its name is taken from Hitler’s paper of record, the Nazi propaganda organ Der Stürmer. The site owes as much, perhaps more, to the style and mode of political rhetoric developed on the 4chan message board as it does to any tract published by the KKK or American Nazi party.
The parallels between Roof’s manifesto and the comments on The Daily Stormer, written under the name aryanblood88, suggest that either Roof was the commenter or he visited the site often enough to have plagiarized from it for his manifesto. In response to the connection, the site’s proprietor, Andrew Anglin, has repudiated Roof’s crime and publicly disavowed violence, while endorsing many of Roof’s views. Anglin did not respond to multiple requests for an interview.
Before running The Daily Stormer, the 30-year-old Anglin ran a site called Total Fascism. Like many other Americans his age, he is fluent in digital culture and its unique approach to racial hatred. His popularity—the site’s traffic has grown continually since 2013, the L.A. Times reported—comes as much from knowing his audience as from his ideas.
“A lot of people on the Internet prefer to write long essays, which a lot of people don’t read, which have a limited audience,” he told the L.A. Times about the founding of The Daily Stormer, sounding like any other online editor. “I wanted something punchy and funny and enjoyable to read.”
Then he added: “I believe white people deserve their own country.”
Anglin, who occasionally writes the white nationalist version of media criticism, and devotes much of his coverage to what he sees as the Jewish-controlled liberal establishment’s cover-up of black-on-white crime, has studied the digital landscape. He cites 4chan as a touchstone and looks to Reddit as the natural arena in which to expand his neo-fascist enterprise. His site exists in a feedback loop with both of them, exchanging ideas and members alike.
“Daily Stormer is a perfect example for me of the influence 4chan has had on the rest of the messaging machine for white supremacy,” Keegan Hankes of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, tells me. Hankes has written about Reddit’s emergence as the single largest gathering place for racists online and how he first sussed out the connection between Roof and The Daily Stormer. He sees the style of racism originally perfected on 4Chan’s message boards—where the racism is only as effective as the meme that spreads it—as a template for Anglin’s site. “A lot of the same images, a lot of the same rhetorical styles are being emulated on Daily Stormer and it’s pretty successful. The website has taken off.”
The Daily Stormer has succeeded by marketing itself to younger people who prefer droll commentary to the stern politics of an older generation of racist sites—and, crucially, by hitching its fascism to a wider reaction against political correctness and left-wing activism. Even the most rabid Gamergaters, men’s rights activists and anti-social justice warriors tend not to think of themselves as fascists. Anglin and others like him want to change that by radicalizing the center and moving the discourse on to their own grounds. That effort has been aided invaluably by the anonymous shock troops on Internet message boards.
***
Like an incantation, the word “trolling” has been used for years to put observers in a trance where they can’t see what’s in front of them. Trolls, meanwhile, have been remarkably predictable creatures. A staple of the form is the over-the-top embrace of racial epithets and old blood libels. Nominally, the trolls, like punk rockers, Dadaists, and countless others before them, were reveling in breaking taboos. It was never clear to what end. Were those bad words and old slanders being bandied around as a kind of satire, demystifying ingrained prejudices, or were they the sharp points at the edge of free speech, a way of insisting that no idea could be off limits? No one was quite sure, perhaps not even the trolls.
From that brew of sincerity and irony, 4chan members, under the watchful eye of the press and the Internet’s self-appointed experts, figured out how to make ancient blood hatreds feel like something new again. Redditors, as the cycle goes, then took those ideas and helped popularize them.
4chan and Reddit are not the only places that have incubated and helped normalize racism online. Nor are these two vast and varied communities reducible to their most vile members or their worst innovations. Reddit contains exponentially more posts that helpfully explain scientific concepts than racist screeds. 4chan, which loves to be hated only up to the point where it squirms away and insists it was just joking, has a board devoted to literature that has produced some of the sharpest and most inventive literary criticism I’ve read online, in threads that improvised their brilliance then disappeared. But they are also, as fascists and white nationalists clearly understand, powerful laboratories for inseminating and spreading darker ideas.
It’s hard to talk about the Internet at all without talking about 4chan and Reddit. They are two of its largest communities, and exert an outsized influence in their respective roles as the Web’s myth and mall. Both are welcoming to bigots. Frothing-at-the-mouth racists, calm racists who just want to make endless posts about black-on-white violence and genetic inferiority, and every variety of bigotry in between.
Reddit defends the existence of communities like r/gasthekikes, r/watchniggersdie, and r/rapingwomen on free-speech grounds. That atmosphere has attracted right-wing extremists who left or were booted from other more established sites like Stormfront, where moderators, aware of scrutiny from law enforcement, have stricter posting rules.
When I ask Brad Griffin, who runs the website Occidental Dissent and whose father-in-law formerly ran the Council of Conservative Citizens that Roof cited in his manifesto, about white nationalism, he tells me, “I consider myself more of a southern nationalist but I wouldn’t get too picky about the distinction.”
“By 2001,” Griffin says, “the [white nationalist] movement was already mostly online and it’s been that way ever since … People who are more extreme have a harder time posting and commenting on Stormfront so they migrate to other websites.” Those sites include Reddit and 4chan, according to Griffin.
The atmosphere on the newer sites is “more guttural,” Griffin says. “It’s not so much white nationalist as it becomes anti-Black. People who are just interested in the complete dehumanization of black people tend to migrate to sites like Reddit, which is less controlled.”
“I believe 4chan is more of a troll forum,” Griffin says, using the indeterminate language shared by its enemies and defenders. “I’m a lot less familiar with it.”
4chan, insofar as anyone can speak for its anonymous, double-talking membership, has long maintained that much of its racism is really just performance designed to rattle the mainstream.
Which brings us back to the troll, the totemic figure of the last great Internet epoch that peaked five or so years ago.
The troll was a creature largely born out of 4chan’s /b/ board. 4chan’s many boards have spawned countless memes, like rickrolling and lolcats, which came to define a dominant online sensibility. The /b/ board, intended for random posts that didn’t fit anywhere else, became known as the “anything goes” forum and the home of the trolls.
In its wider use on the web, trolling was a kind of cruel prank enabled by the Internet’s anonymity. On 4chan, because trolling was central to members’ identities, an ethos of one-upmanship evolved with pranksters always looking for more boundaries to transgress and new nerve endings to poke to maintain their edge and capacity for amusement.
Early on, after 4chan formed in 2003, its users swarmed an online video game. The largely teenaged players of Habbo Hotel watched 4channers fill their screens with racist invective while they marched their characters into a swastika in the middle of the game. The Habbo Hotel raid, as it’s known by 4chan members and the countless websites dedicated to chronicling their exploits, became a key event in the site’s lore. That was one kind of trolling. Another version involved gang stalking an 11-year-old girl online, posting her name and address online, and turning her ritual abuse into a popular meme.
As reports of the trolls bubbled up into the mainstream news, it inspired two dominant reactions. The first was tabloid alarmism about the Internet’s unfathomable cruelty. 4chan members mocked the sensationalism, implicitly for exaggerating their power—a running gag on the site is that all of its members are hopeless losers—but were also flattered by it and took to calling themselves the “Internet Hate Machine.”
The second kind of reaction to the trolls developed when a faction of 4chan took on its first real cause, the Church of Scientology.
In 2008 when The Church of Scientology began suing websites, forcing them to remove videos the Church considered private or defamatory, 4chan turned its attention to trolling the Scientologists. Eventually that produced a schism on 4chan. Some members, inspired by their success going after Scientology and the attention it brought, wanted to take a more activist role. The dedicated trolls rebelled. The activists splintered off and became the collective represented by a Guy Fawkes mask, known as Anonymous.
The question—what is trolling?—was muddied after Anonymous split off and began operating in the political realm. Diffuse by nature, Anonymous has spread globally, and while its impact is debatable, the group has staked out a place for itself as an heir to Wikileaks’ transparency and anti-state activism and as an advocate for rape victims and political dissidents.
Anonymous is one face of trolling’s political legacy. The other is preserved on /pol/, or politically incorrect, the 4chan message board devoted to politics. /Pol/ started after 4chan’s original news board became a shouting match between anonymous racists and Nazis trying to outdo each other. After a ban, the board returned as /pol/.
Most days, /pol/ resembles nothing so much as The Daily Stormer with the signal to noise dial turned only slightly.
***
On June 22, days after Dylann Roof’s arrest, the South Carolina murders still dominated the conversation on /pol/. One thread asked, “what made you racist?” In it, the top commenter wrote, “I became racist because my wife was killed by a nigger in an urban area while coming home from work. I was left to raise my only son by myself. I am not that well off financially. It caused a great deal of hardship. I was already pretty racist though.”
Below that appeared a number of in-jokes, a popular meme showing a crying frog meant to mock self-pity, at least one person saying they weren’t a racist, one identifying as Asian before explaining how he or she became a racist, and a litany of racism coming-out stories.
“/Pol/ played a big part in it” one poster wrote about his own racist beginnings. “I came here and just lurked for months. I was astonished at all these terrible racists but they kept referring to things I had no idea about (black on white crime, Zionists, WW2, etc.)…long story short you destroyed my perception of the world.”
It continued, “I’m reading a lot, thinking about starting a garden, arming myself, and looking for a woman who I can make my wife and move off into the country with.” It’s a bit on the nose, but maybe it’s trolling. And this, the last line: “Or I’ll go out in a streak of violence.” It ends, “Haven’t decided.”
If that’s a joke, it’s awfully dry for one joke being told anonymously in a cloistered room among one’s peers.
How would Roof have been received as a poster on /pol/? He would have been mocked and encouraged, the mockery making the encouragement that much easier to offer.
The most famous troll was Andrew Auernheimer, a hacker who called himself Weev and became something of a celebrity before he was imprisoned for identity fraud and conspiracy to access a computer without authorization. The thing to know about Weev is that throughout his trolling, as he was being fêted by academics and members of the press, he was also spouting off often and publicly about the evils of Jews and blacks.
Now that he’s had his 41-month sentence vacated and he’s out of prison, Aurenheimer is sporting a swastika tattoo. The image of the swastika is tilted, one of his friends told me, to suggest that maybe it’s just a troll; that it doesn’t mean what it means. That same friend, Gregg Housh, a former regular on 4chan who left to help start Anonymous, also told me that away from any audience, Auernheimer fulminates about the dangers of Jewish power in private chat rooms they both use.
And last October, after he got out of prison, Aurenheimer wrote an article for The Daily Stormer. That piece prompted a confession from a former troll lamenting trolling’s transformation into a festival of reactionary hatred. And that in turn produced a response from The Daily Stormer’s Anglin entitled “Weev and the Nazi Troll Army.”
“Trolling, as a concept, was always a form of social commentary, intended to expose the weakness and hypocrisy of our age,” Anglin writes. The language is markedly similar to the description of trolling offered by the academic Gabriella Coleman, whose recent book about Anonymous made her the group’s most prominent theorist and advocate.
“Any presumption of our world’s inviolability becomes a weapon,” Coleman wrote. “Trolls invalidate that world by gesturing toward the possibility for Internet geeks to destroy it—to pull the carpet from under us whenever they feel the urge.”
Anglin’s own reverie for trolling continues:
“The fact that it has been refined into a hardcore right-wing system of Jew-hatred and the mockery of self-righteous feminists merely demonstrates that we now know our enemy much better than we did a decade ago. And presumably, that we know ourselves a lot better too.
It was a natural evolution of a medium and a community which surrounded it.”
So we’ve come full circle, and it’s getting harder to pretend that the trolling culture that 4chan created, whatever else it has led to, hasn’t also provided a template for neo-fascists. “You can’t understate 4chan’s role,” says the SPLC’s Keegan Hankes. “I constantly see 4chan being mentioned by the more Internet- and tech-savvy guys in the white nationalist movement. They’re getting their content from 4chan.”
Users there created a large and influential body of work online, ur-texts of anonymous racism for other anonymous racists to parse and develop. Maybe the early users meant to skewer the thought police when they screamed racial epithets over and over and made “Jews did 9/11” a punch line. But for the people who came after them, those influential trolls—and their high-toned defenders—made it that much easier to use those same words and ideas without even the pretense of trolling.
Eventually people showed up, on /pol/ and the racist subreddits, who never knew or cared whether there was a joke to begin with. They came for the racism and have built on that enterprise.
Whitney Phillips, an academic who has studied 4chan and wrote a book about trolling, contends that the commonly applied idea of trolling is misleading, as it focuses on intention rather than impact. Phillips argues that trolls, despite their reputation as innovators, have never invented anything. “Trolls are cultural scavengers,” she wrote. Trolls “engage in a process I describe as cultural digestion: They take in, regurgitate, and subsequently weaponize existing tropes and cultural sensitivities.”
The Daily Stormer’s approach is to scavenge the culture while incorporating satire as both a skewer and a defense in service of an explicitly racist political program.
Meanwhile, Reddit, the self-declared front page on the Internet, now hosts what might be the web’s largest network of racist forums. Members on those sites spent days cheering Roof’s crime, while others debated whether or not the killings were a good thing for the racist cause.
That’s one reason Anglin called Reddit “fertile ground for recruitment,” in a post about how to draw more of its users into the white nationalist orbit. In it, he wrote: “We brought 4chan over to our side long ago. Now we need to focus on redpilling Reddit.” Redpilling in this context means awakening the users to racist beliefs. Reddit and 4chan both come up repeatedly on Anglin’s site as sources of inspiration.
Where Reddit is “fertile ground for recruitment,” 4chan is treated as a kindred spirit to The Daily Stormer.
On 4chan’s /pol/ there have been a number of startling posts straightforwardly backing Roof’s worldview and advocating white nationalism. Not startling for the racism, which has defined the board since it began, but for their earnestness. A lot of them don’t seem to be bothering much with anarchic tricksterism. Many users are indistinguishable from doctrinaire cultural conservatives of the racist variety—they just happen to curse more.
“At the beginning, Anonymous was just about lashing out at everything,” Northwestern Professor Peter Ludlow was quoted in January 2014 telling the writer of an Esquire article about the group’s future and Aurenheimer’s imminent imprisonment. “Now, they’ve grown up, politically,” he continued. “They’re starting to understand the real priorities. It’s not about lulz and pranks anymore.”
Lashing out at everything brings to mind another word that came up often when people discussed Anonymous: nihilism. That by itself should have set off alarms. There are no packs of nihilists. There might be a few scattered in the wild but never in a group. Any social order committed to the total renunciation of every belief wouldn’t be around long enough to tell its story, let alone gather day after day to chat on the Internet. People who say they want to burn down everything invariably choose where to set their fires.
The fact that 4chan and its trolls staked their expressive rights and aesthetic identity to tormenting women and black people is perhaps not surprising. Bright young things who felt smarter than a society that marginalized them, they used the Internet’s emancipatory anonymity to abuse people who at once scared them and whom they took to be weaker. How that was ever taken to be something new or revolutionary is another story.
What’s long been clear to the fascists has eluded the rest of us for a few reasons. The self-serving deceptions embedded in the idea of trolling, for one. And our persistent difficulty in grasping, despite all evidence to the contrary offered by governments and Silicon Valley plutocrats, that the Internet was not built to liberate us. And lastly, there was the underling fear and excitement of all of us looking in on 4chan, watching something become aware of itself, afraid we didn’t get it and that it might turn on us. Much of it was easy enough to appreciate and not really all that new and if we didn’t call it what it was, maybe it’s because we fell for an old trap, that to take it too seriously was to make yourself the punch line.
In his essay for The Nation, Adrian Chen makes the case for why progressives ought to be wary of Anonymous. There is reason for people elsewhere in the political sphere to practice their own skepticism. Strange bedfellows are made in times like this when people fear that the center can’t hold. A new round of battles in the culture war over gamer gate, policing, and rape culture are also about the country’s changing demographics and shifts in political influence and cultural values, and have opened up fault lines that are useful to people like Andrew Anglin.
“Right now,” Anglin wrote, “a divide is happening. And there are only going to be two sides. Either you are with the SJWs [social justice warriors] or you are with the Fascists.” That’s the gambit. We’ll see who falls for it. |
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Some of the first investors in Mitt Romney’s firm Bain Capital, according to a report on the Los Angeles Times, were Salvadoran families living in Miami with members accused by the US government of funding death squads in the brutal civil war in El Salvador. Ad Policy
When Bain Capital was founded in 1984, Romney and his partners had trouble raising funds for their initial investments. “$9 million came from rich Latin Americans,” the Times reports, “including powerful Salvadoran families living in Miami.… At the time, U.S. officials were publicly accusing some exiles in Miami of funding right-wing death squads in El Salvador. Some family members of the first Bain Capital investors were later linked to groups responsible for killings.”
The civil war in El Salvador lasted from 1980 to 1992 and killed more than 70,000 Salvadorans. It started after Archbishop Óscar Romero was assassinated while giving a mass shortly after he published an open letter to President Carter asking him to cut off US military aid to the Salvadoran military regime.
The Times reporters found no direct evidence that the accused Salvadorans themselves “invested in Bain or benefited from it”—it was “family members” of Bain investors who were linked to the killings.
Romney himself made a trip to Miami in 1984 to raise money for Bain from the Salvadorans. “The group included some of El Salvador’s wealthiest people,” the Times reports, including coffee exporters Francisco R.R. de Sola and his cousin Herbert Arturo de Sola. His brother, Orlando de Sola, according to the Times, was “suspected by State Department officials and the CIA of backing the right-wing death squads, according to now-declassified documents.”
Orlando de Sola has denied supporting the death squads. He is now serving a four-year prison term for “unrelated fraud charges.” Reporters from the LA Times interviewed him at the prison in Metapan, El Salvador. He told them he “did not benefit from the family investment in Bain Capital.” He added that his family’s “relationship with Bain Capital was a step to diversify into foreign investments. But I insist to you, I was not part of it.”
The other Latin American investors declined or did not respond to requests from the Times for comment.
The Salvadorans hid their investment in Bain by working through shell companies set up in Panama, “then known for tax advantages and unusual banking secrecy.” The Times quoted Steven H. Hagen, a Miami lawyer who provides tax advice to offshore companies and international investors, describing Panama in the 1980s as “the country of choice for foreigners wanting to make investments on a confidential basis.”
The reporters on the story, Joseph Tanfani, Melanie Mason and Matea Gold, relied on Bain documents in Massachusetts corporate filings and other public records. The documents show that Bain Capital was “enmeshed in the largely opaque world of international high finance from its very inception.” The reporters added that “the documents don’t indicate any wrongdoing” by Bain or Romney.
For more, see Justin Elliot’s January report at Salon.com. |
PYNQ is an open-source project that makes it easy for you to design embedded systems using the Xilinx Zynq-7000 SoC using the Python language, associated libraries, and the Jupyter Notebook, which is a pretty nice, collaborative learning and development environment for many programming languages including Python. PYNQ allows you to exploit the benefits of programmable logic used together with microprocessors to build more capable embedded systems with superior performance when performing embedded tasks such as:
High frame-rate video processing
Hardware-accelerated algorithms
Real-time signal processing
High-bandwidth I/O
Low-latency control
Nearly every embedded system needs to run one or more such tasks. The programmable hardware on the Zynq SoC just makes this job a lot easier.
The PYNQ-Z1 based on the Xilinx Zynq Z-7020 SoC is the first dev board to support PYNQ and it just showed up on the Digilent Web site, listing for $229. (Digilent’s academic price for the PYNQ-Z1 is only $65!)
Digilent PYNQ-Z1 Dev Board
Here’s what’s on the PYNQ-Z1 board:
Xilinx Zynq Z-7020 SoC with a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore processor running at 650MHz
512Mbytes of DDR3 SDRAM running at 1050MHz
16Mbytes of Quad-SPI Flash memory
A MicroSD slot for the PYNQ environment
USB OTG host port
USB programming port
Gigabit Ethernet port
Microphone
Mono audio output jack
HDMI input port
HDMI output port
Two Digilent PMOD ports
Arduino-format header for Arduino shields
Pushbuttons, switches, and LEDs
That’s a lot of board for $229—and it’s pink!
Here’s what PYNQ is, really: It’s for software developers and students who want to take advantage of the improved embedded performance made possible by the Zynq SoC’s programmable hardware without having to use ASIC-style (HDL) design tools to design hardware.
For even better performance, you can also program the PYNQ-Z1 with C or C++ using the Xilinx SDK software development environment, available in the no-cost Xilinx Vivado HL Design Suite WebPACK.
The PYNQ-Z1 and the PYNQ project make it possible to create a lot of really interesting systems, so just what are you waiting for?
Please contact Digilent directly for more information about the PYNQ-Z1 dev board. |
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The Rams aren’t giving up on offensive lineman Greg Robinson, new coach Sean McVay told reporters on Friday.
Robinson, the No. 2 overall pick in the 2014 NFL Draft, was benched multiple times last season and was made inactive for two games. But he’s getting a fresh start with a new coaching staff, and McVay essentially said his staff will attempt to maximize Robinson’s talents rather than dismiss him.
“When you see some of the things he’s able to do, you see the athleticism in space when he’s pulling around and using some of those perimeter schemes that they did offensively last year,” McVay said, per ESPN.com. “He’s a guy that we’re excited to get around. That’s why it’s frustrating that we have to wait so long to get these guys in the building, see them on the grass.”
McVay did not say that Robinson would remain at left tackle, where he’s spent almost his entire career. That could depend on how the Rams use free agency and the draft to address their offensive line and how Robinson adjusts to the team’s new schemes and the teachings of new offensive line coach Aaron Kromer.
“He’s shown flashes of skills,” Kromer said of Robinson. “Now, why it’s not consistent, I can’t answer that (yet). I don’t know.”
Robinson played both guard and tackle as a rookie and has started every game for which he’s been active over the last two seasons. He’s entering the final year of his rookie contract. |
Members of the Federal Reserve's rate-setting committee voiced rising uncertainty around economic growth in late January, as a worldwide stock market rout threw a wrench in the Fed's expectations of smooth sailing in 2016.
Fed officials raised concerns over "the potential drag on the U.S. economy from the broader effects of a greater-than-expected slowdown in China," among other worrying economic and financial trends, according to minutes from the Jan. 26-27 Federal Open Markets Committee meeting released Wednesday.
"The downside risks to the forecast of economic activity were seen as more pronounced than in December, mainly reflecting the greater uncertainty about global economic prospects and the financial market turbulence in the United States and abroad," the minutes read, reflecting the wait-and-see approach that Fed Chair Janet Yellen advocated in her testimony to Congress last week.
When Fed officials opted in December to raise interest rates for the first time since 2006, they expected the economy to continue slowly improving, warranting a "gradual" pace of further rate increases. At the time, the median estimate from Fed officials was for four rate hikes in 2016.
But by January Fed officials had watched as market turmoil stemming from economic disappointments in emerging markets sent equity markets tumbling from Japan to Europe to the United States. In January, the Federal Open Markets Committee, which meets eight times a year to set monetary policy, opted to hold rates at the relatively low levels set in December.
In light of the shuddering global markets, as well as lackluster U.S. data, analysts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch said Wednesday the Fed had tempered its expectations of four rate hikes in 2016. “‘Gradual’ now means two rather than three or four hikes this year," the analysts wrote in their note to clients Wednesday.
But market gyrations still may not be enough to push the Fed to reverse course. "While it has been a very rocky start to the new year, the Fed is a long way from capitulation," the Bank of America analysts wrote, arguing that the Fed's most likely course of action is to simply delay further rate hikes rather than pivot back to monetary easing.
The headwinds from abroad were balanced by positive jobs numbers and housing demand, Fed officials noted, though consumer spending and manufacturing data remained "disappointing." Regarding the timing of future interest rate moves, the minutes noted that, as always, "adjustments will depend on future economic and financial-market developments."
But given the dampened pace of inflation, held down by a strong dollar and weak oil prices, some on the committee pushed for an even more dovish approach to raising rates.
"A couple of members emphasized that direct evidence that inflation was rising toward 2 percent would be an important element of their assessments of the appropriate timing of further policy firming," the minutes read, referring to the Fed's target of 2 percent core inflation — a mark the economy has missed for more than 40 months running.
The notes also touched on a matter that perturbed members of Congress during Yellen's testimony last week: negative interest rates. Participants questioned "whether the band around the federal funds rate path should extend below zero," the minutes said.
Investors have grown increasingly curious whether the Fed would follow the lead of central banks in Europe and Asia and push interest rates negative in the event of a sharp economic downturn. Along these lines, members of the House and Senate grilled Yellen over whether the Fed has the ammunition to respond to a recession, given the near-zero level of current benchmark interest rates.
Yellen has consistently noted that monetary policy is "by no means on a preset course," refusing to place odds on whether a recession is imminent. Although that lack of certainty has grated against investors, Fed policymakers seemed eager to reiterate that they are following the data, not market expectations. "A couple of participants questioned whether some financial market participants fully appreciated that monetary policy is data-dependent," the minutes read. |
With the general managers’ meetings having wrapped up Thursday, and with the vast majority of the Hot Stove season still ahead of us, let’s do our annual rankings of the top 10 GMs.
Well, almost annual. From the 2013 list, two have since lost their jobs — the Tigers dismissed Dave Dombrowski this past August, and the Braves did the same to Frank Wren following the 2014 season. Now Wren works for Dombrowski in Boston. A third, Andrew Friedman, switched employers from the Rays to the Dodgers in the fall of 2014.
Last year, I didn’t do the list because the GM meetings were held in Phoenix, and I spent a good amount of time profiling local Arizona Fall League players — one of whom, Greg Bird, proceeded to make a significant impact in the major leagues and the other three (Aaron Judge, L.J. Mazzilli and Brandon Nimmo) not so much.
So the list is back, and in light of baseball’s “title inflation” trend, there are more specific guidelines than in the past:
1. For the purposes of these rankings, each team has only one candidate, and it is the person — regardless of title — who has the final say in the baseball operations department. For many organizations, that now is the president of baseball operations. For many others, it’s still the GM.
A team president whose background happens to be in baseball operations — I’m thinking specifically of Philadelphia’s Andy MacPhail and Toronto’s Mark Shapiro — are not the candidate, because those two also are involved in business matters. Neither man attended the GM meetings this past week.
(By the way, no GM or president of baseball operations has sheer “autonomy.” Ownership, be it through the president or the owner himself, always has the final say and often drives the bus when it comes to a strategic course of action or a specific large transaction.)
2. I grade on total body of work, with an emphasis on the recent and how the team looks going forward; team payrolls factor into this, as you score higher for getting more bang for your buck. Reaching the playoffs is the most important accomplishment; advancement in the playoffs is more of a tiebreaker. There’s just too much randomness in October to derive huge conclusions from what happens.
Going back to the first point regarding autonomy, I try to grade the GM only for those things he controls. Many large decisions are made by owners.
3. Two years ago, I invented a rule by which a GM had to serve a minimum of three years to qualify for this list. I should’ve called it “The Cherington Rule” because I couldn’t figure out what to do about then-Red Sox GM Ben Cherington after Boston bombed out in 2012 and won the World Series in 2013, giving him quite the spectrum in two seasons. We’ll retain The Cherington Rule, though it really doesn’t affect any of this year’s candidates.
OK? This explanation long enough for you yet? Here we go:
1. John Mozeliak, Cardinals
St. Louis is the only team to qualify for the playoffs each of the past five seasons, and that’s primarily because arguably no team drafts and develops as well as the Cards, who consistently integrate high-impact homegrown talent despite selecting annually in the lower half of the first round as a result of their winning records.
Furthermore, Mozeliak, who succeeded Walt Jocketty as the club’s GM after the 2007 season, found a worthy successor to retired manager Tony La Russa (who subsequently gained induction into the Hall of Fame) in unlikely candidate Mike Matheny, who has kept the winning culture going. Other teams have followed this trend of hiring managers without substantive experience of either managing in the minors or coaching in the big leagues. None of those teams has come close to the Cardinals’ success with Matheny.
2. Jon Daniels, Rangers
Placing Mozeliak atop the list felt easy. Sorting out the rest felt quite challenging. Daniels gets this spot because, in his 10 years on the job, he has taken a licking and kept on ticking like quite no one else. He has worked for two different ownership groups and has reported to more people than that; he even outlasted Texas legend Nolan Ryan, who now helps out the Astros.
But office politics alone won’t keep you on the job. Daniels now has four playoff appearances plus a 2013 near-miss on his resume, and he has pulled this off by dramatically remaking the team throughout the years. Drafts, trades and free agency all have been Daniels’ allies, and the Rangers rebounded from an injury-fest, last-place 2014 with an American League West title in 2015 behind first-year manager Jeff Banisters, who looks like a strong hire.
3. Theo Epstein, Cubs
As we’ll get into more with other people on this list, it sure is nice to have the luxury of a full teardown. If you make your intentions clear to fans at the outset, as Epstein did with the Cubs, you can go about your business with less pressure and reap the benefits — July trades of veterans and high draft picks — that come with being terrible.
You have to nail those trades and those picks, though, and that’s what Epstein and his crew (including Cubs general manager Jed Hoyer — Epstein is the president of baseball operations) accomplished in getting the Cubs back to the National League Championship Series after overseeing four straight fifth-place finishes. The Cubs appear to be very well-positioned for a long run, and it would be surprising if they didn’t sign at least one big-time free agent this winter to supplement their core. Throw in Epstein’s previous success with the Red Sox, and here he is.
4. Brian Sabean, San Francisco
He’s an interesting one to rank for two reasons. First of all, Sabean is now the Giants’ executive vice president of baseball operations, with his longtime protégé Bobby Evans the general manager, and it’s not as simple a hierarchy as the Cubs’, in which Epstein and Hoyer conduct themselves quite similarly to when they were Boston’s GM and assistant GM. Sabean now spends less time in the office and more time scouting. I spoke with Evans this past week at the meetings in Boca Raton about the Giants’ structure. He called it a gradual, organic transition in which he is increasingly becoming San Francisco’s baseball operations quarterback with Sabean serving as a Yoda of sorts.
But Sabean attended the GM meetings, so I’m still counting him as the guy. And that makes him the guy with seven appearances and three World Series titles in 19 years running the show.
And that gets us to our second area of intrigue with Sabean: How much extra credit does he get for winning it all three times (2010, 2012 and 2014) in the past six years? Does the fact the Giants have missed the playoffs altogether in each season following the titles, including 2015, count against him?
The answers are: Some, and not much. Three playoff appearances in the six years is quite good. That the Giants went all the way each of those seasons speaks well of their organizational culture and of the clubhouse stability instituted by Sabean’s longtime manager Bruce Bochy and a coaching staff that has largely stayed intact.
5. Brian Cashman, Yankees
Ah, yes. Mr. Cashman. The mere refusal to advocate for his immediate firing draws venom from many fan corners. The Yankees haven’t won a playoff game since 2012, for crying out loud!
Look at the other names on this list. Only Mozeliak can relate to Cashman on one very important career track: In 18 years on the job, not once has Cashman made a “sell” trade, nor has he picked in the top half of the draft. Every other man ranked here has benefited greatly from playing the long game. Never has Cashman enjoyed an opportunity to do that. The decision to go crazy two winters ago, bringing aboard Carlos Beltran, Jacoby Ellsbury, Brian McCann and Masahiro Tanaka — as opposed to ramping it down upon the retirement of the Core Four — was driven by ownership, and it also reinforces the considerable financial room for error that Cashman possesses.
What Cashman re-established last winter, though, is he has a pretty good feel for what he’s doing as he tries to balance the Yankees’ short-term and long-term ambitions. The acquisitions of Nathan Eovaldi and Didi Gregorius both look strong, as does the call to let David Robertson go to the White Sox, get the compensation draft pick and sign Andrew Miller for less money; the Yankees now have 15 postseason appearances in Cashman’s reign. And the farm system is producing again after its notable drought. The Yankees probably will never replicate their 1996-2000 postseason success; the Core Four will go down as the best quartet to debut in the same season in the history of professional sports, and the other teams have gotten smarter and richer. Yet Cashman has the Yankees on a track to be back in the mix every season.
6. Dave Dombrowski, Red Sox
The most seasoned baseball operations guy on this list, in terms of years running baseball operations, and it’s preposterous he’s no longer with the Tigers just because they never made it to a parade; owner Mike Ilitch is the same one who pushed for overaggressive free-agent signings such as getting Prince Fielder and re-signing Victor Martinez. Kudos to the Red Sox for pouncing on Dombrowski, who lasted about two weeks in unemployment.
Dombrowski’s trademark attribute is his aggressiveness. He regularly boosted his Tigers teams with July moves of prospects for veterans, and he put together the champion 1997 Marlins with a hyperactive winter (before being ordered to disassemble the club the very next winter). Right before Ilitch let him go from the Tigers, he was aggressive one last time; on the bubble of contention in late July, he pushed to trade assets Yoenis Cespedes (to the Mets), David Price (to Toronto) and Joakim Soria (to Pittsburgh) in order to reload the farm system. So the Tigers are in decent shape moving forward with Dombrowski’s successor Al Avila, while the Red Sox figure to benefit from Dombrowski’s scouting acumen and fearlessness.
7. Andrew Friedman, Dodgers
He was No. 1 the last time I did this. In my mind, at least, Friedman didn’t drop as much as others have risen. However, the Rays’ lack of draft success in Friedman’s final years in Tampa Bay — once the playoff appearances begat lower picks — led the cash-strapped club to finish under .500 in Friedman’s final season there. Now he enters his second season with the un-strapped Dodgers (he’s president of baseball operations, with Farhan Zaidi as his GM), who must find some starting pitching plus a manager this offseason.
Friedman and his lieutenants managed to clear the future payroll commitment to Matt Kemp (traded to the Padres), but they also dealt Dee Gordon to the Marlins, a move that seemed reasonable at the time, only to backfire. With his own manager soon to be in place, and what figures to be another active winter, we’ll see if Friedman’s Dodgers can get an even higher return for their considerable investment.
8. Billy Beane, Athletics
Beane should be a serious Hall of Fame candidate down the line. He has done remarkable work with shoestring budgets and with the worst stadium by far in Major League Baseball. The A’s have qualified for the postseason eight times in Beane’s 18 years, and that they haven’t advanced to the World Series says more about small sample sizes than anything Beane has done wrong.
He isn’t higher on this list because 1) again, the competition is fierce, and 2) he has endured a rough eight months or so. Whether you belong to the “He never should’ve traded Cespedes for Jon Lester!” or the “They wouldn’t have even made the playoffs if not for Lester!” camp, the bottom line is the tough A’s finish to 2014 was followed by their brutal 2015, during which they saw their old pal Josh Donaldson put up a season with Toronto that might get him the AL Most Valuable Player award.
The run differential of the 2015 A’s (694-729) shows they weren’t as bad as advertised, though, and Beane made some in-season trades (Tyler Clippard to the Mets, Ben Zobrist to the Royals) that could pay dividends soon enough. Only a fool would count out Beane — now the A’s president of baseball operations with David Forst the GM — from rising again.
9. (tie) Sandy Alderson, Mets; Neal Huntington, Pirates; Dayton Moore, Kansas City
Yep, this is one big copout. I’m including 11 GMs in my top 10 rankings. I wouldn’t be a bigger copout even if I changed my name to Coppy Copoutoff.
What can I say? I wouldn’t know whom to leave out of this trio, or from the group of 11 as a whole. I felt bad leaving out Baltimore’s Dan Duquette and Houston’s Jeff Luhnow; Washington’s Mike Rizzo has a chance to get right back in the conversation if he can rebound in 2016; and veterans John Hart of Atlanta and Terry Ryan of Minnesota seem to have their franchises headed in the right direction.
Anyway, as for these final three: Alderson is older than Dombrowski, yet his baseball journey features long gaps without running baseball operations. I doubt any sport has featured an executive winning pennants 25 years apart, as has Alderson, without reaching the promised land in between.
We know all about how much talent Alderson inherited from Omar Minaya, and for my money, Minaya should’ve been invited to throw out a ceremonial first pitch at a postseason game. He would’ve received huge applause. Yet Alderson and his people developed all of that talent, traded it properly (most notably Carlos Beltran and R.A. Dickey) and made decisions on whom to retain (Lucas Duda over Ike Davis) and built up a stockpile of young talent they used as trade chips when the club finally was ready to contend again. Needless to say, the Mets, with their studly starting rotation, look very well-positioned for the future.
Huntington has directed the Pirates to three straight wild-card berths on the foundation of strong, mid- to low-market acquisitions via trade and free agency to support homegrown stars Gerrit Cole and Andrew McCutchen. Look how much Francisco Cervelli, J.A. Happ and Jung Ho Kang helped in 2015, and A.J. Burnett gave Pittsburgh his last bullets, good ones, because of how much he enjoyed his 2012-13 stay. Huntington and his staff seem to have an excellent feel for who will fit into their system.
Moore is on a roll for the World Series champions. Two superb trades, sending Zack Greinke to Milwaukee and getting James Shields from Tampa Bay — both of which I ripped at the time, naturally —laid the groundwork for two straight pennants, and enough high draft picks have worked. Two of those, Eric Hosmer and Mike Moustakas, have two years remaining before free agency, at which point the small-market Royals probably will struggle to retain them. So Moore has to keep it going. His outstanding work, including the institution of a strong organizational culture, should give Royals fans optimism he can do just that. |
Lake Tahoe’s average surface temperature last year was the warmest ever recorded, the latest evidence that climate change is altering California’s iconic Sierra Nevada landmark.
In a report released Thursday by UC Davis, scientists said that the lake’s waters in the past four years have been warming at 15 times their historic average.
The air temperature at the lake is becoming steadily hotter too. The winter of 2014-15 saw just 24 days where the average temperature dropped below freezing at the lake, according to the report, and only 6 percent of last year’s precipitation fell as snow — both all-time lows.
The ominous evidence threatens efforts in recent years to improve Lake Tahoe’s famed blue clarity by reducing pollution. That’s because the warming water will likely result in more algae growth, silt and invasive species, researchers said.
“The lake is changing, and it is changing at an increasing rate,” said Geoffrey Schladow, director of the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center.
The picture of a steadily warming lake — and a vacation wonderland with a relentless trend toward hotter weather, more rain and less snow — emerged from the 2016 “State of the Lake” report, a document the center publishes every year.
Straddling the California-Nevada border, Lake Tahoe is the second deepest lake in America. It’s 1,645 feet at its deepest point, behind only Crater Lake in Oregon. If the Empire State Building were submerged in Lake Tahoe, the top of its spire would still be below 200 feet of water. Roughly 3 million people visit each year.
“This year’s report is definitely a warning,” said Darcie Goodman Collins, executive director of the League to Save Lake Tahoe, an environmental group. “We need to improve our efforts.”
Last year, the lake’s average clarity was 73.1 feet, the UC Davis scientists reported. That’s a 4.8-foot decrease from the previous year.
The worst recorded average clarity was 64.1 feet in 1997, and the best was 102 feet, in 1968, the year measurements began. As the lake’s crystal clarity began to suffer in the 1970s and ’80s from fertilizer, polluted runoff and erosion, environmentalists launched a Keep Tahoe Blue effort. Federal officials and scientists began devoting more money and attention to the lake.
Local rules were tightened and education campaigns launched to reduce erosion and the amount of nitrogen and phosphorus — chemicals that can cause algae to increase in the lake — from fertilizer and old septic systems and air pollution from vehicles. Homeowners were required to capture stormwater from their properties — channeling water from gutters into filters in gardens, for example, to keep it from running into the lake.
The work paid off: Lake clarity has generally improved over the past decade.
But now the warmer water and weather are presenting a new challenge.
Colder water, from the melting of snow, is dense, so it sinks in the lake, Schladow said. But when precipitation comes mostly from rain, it’s warmer, and the silt and other tiny debris it washes into the lake stay near the surface.
Also, UC Davis scientists in recent years have noticed that the lake isn’t mixing as thoroughly as it did when they began studying it nearly five decades ago. That means oxygen isn’t cycling to the bottom as much, increasing the risk of “dead zones.”
The 10 hottest years globally since 1880, when modern records began, have all occurred since 1998, with 2015 the hottest. Humans burning coal, gasoline and other fossil fuels have sent carbon dioxide concentrations worldwide to the highest level in at least 400,000 years, according to NASA. And that carbon traps heat in the atmosphere.
The impacts at Lake Tahoe have been dramatic, measured by exhaustive UC Davis research.
Consider:
In 2015, the average surface temperature of the lake was 53.3 degrees, up from 50.3 in 1968. That was the warmest recorded since consistent measurements began that year.
Daily readings taken since 1911 at Tahoe City show that the daily minimum air temperature has increased 4.3 degrees Fahrenheit, and the daily maximum is up 2 degrees since then.
The winter of 2014-15 had only 24 days where the average daily temperature was below freezing. That’s the fewest in 105 years of measurements. From 1910 to 1930, every year had more than 55 days below freezing. |
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