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Hand-kissing is a gesture indicating courtesy, politeness, respect, admiration or even devotion by one person toward another. A hand-kiss is initiated by the person receiving the greeting by holding out their hand with the palm facing downward; or by the person giving the greeting, by extending a hand to grasp the recipient's hand. The person kissing bows towards the offered hand and (often symbolically) touches the knuckles with their lips, while lightly holding the offered hand. However, the lips do not actually touch the hand in modern tradition, especially in a formal environment where any intimate or romantic undertones could be vastly inappropriate. The gesture is short, lasting less than a second. Hand-kissing has become rare and is mostly restricted to the conservative upper class or diplomats. In Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei, hand-kissing is a common way to greet elder people of both genders, primarily the closest relatives (both parents, grandparents, and uncles or aunts) and teachers. Occasionally, after kissing the hand, the greeter will draw the hand to his own forehead. In the Philippines, the gesture evolved into just touching the hand to the forehead. The hand-kiss is used quite prominently in The Godfather series, as a way to indicate the person who is the Don. It also features in epoch films, such as Dangerous Liaisons. Chivalrous gesture [ edit ] A hand-kiss was considered a respectful way for gentleman to greet a lady. The practice originated in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Spanish courts of the 17th and 18th centuries. The gesture is still at times observed in Central and Eastern Europe, namely, Poland, Austria, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and Russia. Traditionally, the hand-kiss was initiated by a woman, who offered her hand to a man to kiss. The lady offering her hand was expected to be of the same or higher social status than the man. It was a gesture of courtesy and extreme politeness, and it was considered impolite and even rude to refuse an offered hand. Today, the practice is very uncommon in Northern European countries, and has been largely replaced by a kiss on the cheek or a handshake. Today, the hand-kiss is sometimes used as a romantic gesture, usually in parting and usually initiated by a man. It could be used to convey a feeling of a more traditional and emotional attraction, rather than a superficial one that has become a stereotype of the 21st century. The gesture could be misconstrued as a parody or mockery of the original gesture, and indeed at times it may be used as such, but this is not always the sole intention. For example, it would not be mockery for a man saying goodnight to his girlfriend to kiss her hand, but a person who greatly exaggerated the practice would be clearly seen as mocking it as well as the person whose hand is being kissed. Kissing the ring [ edit ] Bulgarian woman kissing the hand of Emperor Ferdinand in 1916 Kissing the hand, or particularly a ring on the hand was also a gesture of formal submission or pledge of allegiance of man to man, or as a diplomatic gesture. The gesture would indicate submission by kissing the signet ring (a form of seal worn as a jewelry ring), the person's symbol of authority. The gesture was common in the European upper class throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. It started to disappear in the 20th century, to be replaced by the egalitarian hand shake. However, former French president Jacques Chirac made hand-kissing his trademark and the gesture is still encountered in diplomatic situations.[1] Religious usage [ edit ] In the Roman Catholic Church, a Catholic meeting the Pope or a Cardinal, or even a lower-ranking prelate, will kiss the ring on his hand. This has become uncommon in circles not used to formal protocol, even often dispensed with amongst clergy. Sometimes, the devout Catholic combines the hand kissing with kneeling on the left knee as an even stronger expression of filial respect for the clerically high-ranking father. The cleric may then in a fatherly way lay his other hand on the kisser's head or even bless him/her by a manual cross sign. In the Catholic Church, it is also traditional for the laity to kiss the hands of a newly-ordained priest after his inaugural mass, in veneration of the Body of Christ, which is held in the priest's hands during the Holy Eucharist. In the Eastern Orthodox Church, and Oriental Orthodox Churches, it is appropriate and common for laity to greet clergy, whether priests or bishops, by making a profound bow and saying, "Father, bless" (to a priest) or "Master, bless" (to a bishop) while placing their right hand, palm up, in front of their bodies. The priest then blesses them with the sign of the cross and then places his hand in theirs, offering the opportunity to kiss his hand. Orthodox Christians kiss their priest's hands not only to honor their spiritual father confessor, but in veneration of the Body of Christ which the priest handles during the Divine Liturgy as he prepares Holy Communion. It is also a common practice when writing a letter to a priest to begin with the words "Father Bless" rather than "Dear Father" and end the letter with the words "Kissing your right hand" rather than "Sincerely." During liturgical services, altar servers and lower clergy will kiss the hand of a priest when handing him something in the course of their duties, such as a censer, when he receives it in his right hand, and a bishop when he receives it in either hand since a bishop bestows blessings with both hands. There are records of hand-kissing in the Islamic Caliphate as early as the 7th century.[2] The Bahá’í Faith forbids the practice of hand-kissing. See also [ edit ]
PALMDALE – A 27-year-old woman accused of brutally beating her boyfriend’s 2-year-old son near a Palmdale bus stop was sentenced to two years in prison after accepting a plea deal. Michelle Fletcher pleaded no contest July 30 to one count of child abuse, according to Ricardo Santiago of the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office. In exchange for the plea, the prosecution dismissed one felony count of corporal injury on a child, according to court records. The conviction stems from an incident that occurred on the afternoon of February 21 near 10th Street East and Avenue Q-4 in Palmdale. Fletcher was pushing a baby carriage while scolding and striking a crying toddler walking beside her, according to an eyewitness who testified at the preliminary court hearing. Fletcher kneed the toddler twice in the buttocks and then wrapped a belt around the child’s neck and raised him off the ground, the witness said. When deputies were called to the scene a short time later, the two-year-old appeared extremely lethargic and a chunk of his hair was missing, according to Palmdale Sheriff’s deputy Mario Villalobos. Deputies found a belt and a chunk of the child’s hair in Fletcher’s diaper bag, Villalobos testified. The child was airlifted to the hospital, where he remained for nearly two weeks. Hospital staff told investigators that the toddler was extremely dehydrated, and he had numerous superficial wounds and bruises, lots of scabbing, and strangulation marks on his neck, according to court testimony by Special Victim’s Bureau Detective Laura Bruner. Fletcher was sentenced July 30 to two years in state prison, and she was ordered to stay at least 100 yards away from the child, according to court records. Fletcher, who has been jailed since the incident, was given total credit for 320 days in custody – 160 days actual custody and 160 days credit for good time/work time, court records show. – Previous related stories: Palmdale woman to stand trial in toddler beating Palmdale woman arrested for beating 2-year-old
NASA’s efforts to find life in the far reaches of the universe draw significant attention. Less known is a recent agency program to prevent asteroids from ending life here on Earth. Three teams of researchers using GPU-powered deep learning spent the summer tackling asteroid-related challenges at NASA’s Frontier Development Lab, in partnership with the SETI Institute, a nonprofit organization devoted to researching life in the universe. The FDL’s work was made possible by an “applied research accelerator” — a GPU-powered platform that helps researchers accomplish work that used to take six months or more in just six weeks. The FDL itself is a response to the White House’s Asteroid Grand Challenge, an ongoing program that aims to get researchers to “find all asteroid threats to human populations and know what to do about them.” The emergence of GPU computing has enabled organizations like NASA and SETI to analyze large datasets that are critical to the space program. FDL Director James Parr says the lab’s goal was to approach the challenge in two ways: apply machine learning techniques and technologies to planetary defense, and demonstrate the viability of the applied research accelerator to industrialize significant breakthroughs quickly. A group of 12 standout graduate students was chosen for the internship, during which they were housed at NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, and worked on their respective projects at a nearby SETI facility. Machine Learning to the Rescue To do this, the FDL broke the group into three teams. Each took on a component of asteroid defense deemed suitable for a machine learning approach: assessing deflection technologies, modeling shapes from radar data and locating fallen meteors to determine their composition. Their overall aim: answer three questions that will be critical to contending with a potentially hazardous asteroid: What Is It Made of? The students tackling this question designed an autonomous drone to find meteorites in the field. They used GPU-powered deep learning models to build an automated meteorite detection system, drawing from a database of 25,000 training images of meteorites along with a 15-million-image library. Parr said that while the 0.7-percent false positive rate that resulted is still too high, the path toward a meteor-finding drone is now clear. What Shape Is It, and What Is Its Center of Mass? Knowing the shape of an asteroid is critical to assessing potential deflection efforts. But generating a single asteroid’s shape has traditionally required long computer runs using 50,000 lines of legacy code, plus about four weeks of human-guided iterations, said Parr. The FDL team applied GPUs and machine learning techniques to reduce the search for an asteroid’s spin axis to a few hours of computing. They then applied what Parr would only call “a cutting-edge method” to bypass legacy code until the final iterations. Parr called the initial results promising, with weeks of computing requirements reduced to milliseconds. What Is the Best Way to Deflect It? Previous efforts to analyze proposed asteroid deflection techniques only accommodated about four possible orbits. The FDL team used GPUs and machine learning techniques to build an analysis model that could be applied to 800,000 simulated orbits — an astounding improvement to preparedness efforts. GPUs Fuel Space Program Parr stressed that none of this progress would have been possible without the four TITAN X and eight Pascal architecture-based GPUs NVIDIA provided to the FDL. These enabled each team to tap large data sets using deep learning approaches. “(GPUs) may be as significant as the microprocessor was to Apollo in the late ‘60s,” said Parr. As much as GPU-powered advances may one day help to save us from celestial annihilation, a lot of work remains to be done. Said Parr: “There are still many unanswered questions that have to be resolved before we can successfully stop an asteroid on collision with a highly populated region on Earth.”
CANNES, France -- In the new series "Designated Survivor," Kiefer Sutherland plays the American president Jack Bauer always wanted to serve. "That's a great way of putting it," says Sutherland, looking lean and crisply dressed during an interview on the balcony of a posh beachfront hotel overlooking this Mediterranean festival town. He has flown over from Toronto to be a keynote speaker at MIPCOM, the international TV marketplace. Sutherland, who turns 50 this December, still has Jack Bauer stamina. He spent ten years on "24" and is proud of that character and the series that changed his life. Busy launching a music career with an album ("Down in a Hole") and a tour, he wasn't looking to get back into another series. He read the "Designated Survivor" script as a favour to a friend, executive producer Mark Gordon. He was instantly hooked on this story of a decent, ordinary guy suddenly vaulted into a job that was way over his head: leader of the free world. He also, at first, saw Tom Kirkwood as the opposite of Jack Bauer. "I don't think Tom Kirkwood knows how to load a gun," says Sutherland. Which makes him a very Canadian American president? "Yes he is!" says Sutherland. "But what they both have is this dynamic, this desire, this need to serve. And both of them, in the context of both those shows, took on a fight they knew they couldn't win. They took it on anyway, and I have a lot of respect for those people." They remind him of his famous grandfather, Tommy Douglas. Considered the father of universal health care in Canada, Douglas turned a grassroots crusade into what eventually became the New Democratic Party. He was voted the "Greatest Canadian" a few years ago in a CBC series. "He was also the featherweight boxing champion of Saskatchewan," Sutherland points out, "so he was a fighter. He took on a fight no one thought he could win or even survive -- and I think Tom Kirkwood has risked the one thing he truly loves, which is his family. He's put them in real jeopardy." Sutherland is well aware of the real-life political drama taking place this fall in the United States. He sees "Designated Survivor" as well-placed to comment on what he deems, "the most bizarre election cycle I've seen in my lifetime -- and I remember Watergate." Sutherland, who is not eligible to vote in the upcoming U.S. election, has never met either of the presidential candidates. He did once meet former president Bill Clinton and also enjoyed a few memorable encounters with President Barack Obama. "The last one was really amazing," says Sutherland, who was invited to lunch with the president on a fundraising stop in California. Sutherland asked Obama what he thought about Donald Trump entering the race. "This was three days after he announced," says Sutherland. The president looked at the actor and said, "Now that's the gift that just keeps on giving." Shooting "Designated Survivor" in Toronto has been a major plus for Sutherland. Much of his youth was spent in the city. "I know Toronto like the back of my hand. I can take the subway to work and avoid all the traffic." Or he could until Torontonians started posting "I saw Jack Bauer on the subway!" shots on social media. "Yeah, well, that just started," he says. "I've been doing it for four months." Being close to family members has been the biggest plus. His mother Shirley Douglas and twin sister Rachel both live in the city, "so I get to spend a lot more time with them than I normally would." Sutherland has fond memories of playing hockey for the East York Bulldogs while growing up in Toronto. He still goes for the odd skate and even brought his hockey gear with him while working on "Designated Survivor." He misses the Sunday night skates he had playing in a Hollywood league created by "CSI" producer Jerry Bruckheimer. "First of all, he had the best ice time, 6 p.m., not four-in-the-morning," says Sutherland. Plus, in the off-season, actual NHLers would sometimes lace up with the usual mix of actors and friends. Sutherland's hockey interests, however, have shifted to another member of his family. "My grandson has just started playing," he says. "It's kinda awesome." The lad is 10 years old. "I'm so looking forward to being able to bring him up to Toronto and skate at city hall." "Designated Survivor" airs Wednesdays at 10/9C on CTV
Posted 03 February 2012 - 11:00 AM • Destroying an enemy unit. • Detecting an enemy unit. • Assisting a friendly unit. • Disabling an enemy unit. • Accomplishing a command order. • Radar Range Increase – Increases radar range by 2% up to 5 times • Ghost Signature – Increases length of time before a signal fades by 2% up to 3 times • Vision Mode 1 - Zoom Vision – Allows the pilot to zoom 7x • HUD Detail 1 – Enemy Damage Level – LOD detail in terms of damage • HUD Detail 2 – Enemy Component State – Overall component criticality • Null Signature System – Allows the pilot to appear shut down for 5 seconds • Multi-Targeting – Allows the pilot to target multiple enemies up to 4 at a time. • IDF Accuracy – Narrows the AOE of IDF fire. • Critical Shot Indicator – Shares with nearby friendly BattleMechs the critical components of an enemy BattleMech • Charging – A special attack that allows the pilot to drive their BattleMech into an enemy BattleMech without sustaining too much damage • Vision Mode 2 – Night Vision – Allows the player to see in dark areas/night • Vision Mode 3 – Thermal – Allows the pilot to see heat signatures through solid objects • Vision Mode 4 – Magnetometer – Allows the pilot to see metal through solid objects • DFA Damage Reduction – Reduces the amount of damage caused by performing a Death From Above attack • Power Up/Power Down Speed Increase – The power up and power down sequences are sped up by 20% • AMS Range Increase – Increases the effective range of AMS by 2% up to 5 times • Cognizance – Automatically lets the pilot know of any nearby friendly BattleMech taking fire • Critical Shot Receiver – Allows the pilot to receive the critical shot information from nearby scout Mechs • Order View – Allows the pilot to right click and request friendly BattleMechs to attack or defend areas/objectives on the BattleGrid • Command View – Provides a layer of information over the BattleGrid including objectives and any intelligence information passed back by scout Mechs on the front line • Call Air Strike – Calls in an air strike that does AOE damage in a straight line • Call Artillery – Calls in a land based artillery bombardment on to a target area • Call Naval Bombardment – Calls in Naval artillery bombardment that has a larger and more powerful result than regular artillery • Call UAV – Calls a UAV that passes overhead of the battlefield and relays ALL enemy positions to the command pilot • Call Predator Drone – Drops a heavy explosive device on a targeted area • Call Satellite Sweep – Full detail information is passed to the command pilot including enemy location/direction/speed • Danger Close – A short range radar detection system that lets the command pilot know of any nearby enemy BattleMechs Let’s dive right into some details! Everything listed here is more of a guideline to demonstrate the concepts. The final list of efficiencies and modules are still being examined.XP is a cumulative point system used to unlock BattleMech Efficiencies by performing in game actions correctly. All earned XP is divided by a percentage between General XP and BattleMech Chassis XP.General XP can be spent on any BattleMech efficiency, while BattleMech Chassis XP can only be earned on the current active player BattleMech.This is the basic layout of the tree for any of the ’Mechs or variants that we launch with (or when we initially introduce the base model and chassis of any brand new ’Mech). Players need to spend XP to unlock all of the upgrades on each tier in order to be able to access the next tier. The jump jet related upgrades on tier 4 would be removed for any ’Mech that doesn’t have jump jets. In order to access Elite I, the player needs to not only unlock all upgrades on tiers 1-4 of this model, but they have to do the same for every initial variant. After they access and spend XP to unlock Elite I, tier 5 is then accessible for all initial variants. Elite II is accessed in a manner similar to Elite I. The player must have unlocked tier 8 on each of the initial variants.Each BattleMech chassis has a set number of slots available for modules. Players can fit whichever modules they want or deem necessary for their upcoming matches. The number of applied modules cannot exceed the available slots on a BattleMech and each module is unique in that multiples of the same module cannot be used.A Module is unlocked by gaining efficiencies in a particular BattleMech’s Mech-XP Tree. When a single Tier for a given chassis is complete, the player earns 1 Player Point. Once a Module on the Pilot Skill Tree has been unlocked it produces modules. These modules are purchased as an item from the Store using C-Bills. If the player wishes to use the same module across multiple BattleMechs, they will have to purchase one for each.All of this is subject to change, but we wanted you all to see what we have currently. Percentages may shift, abilities will be added or removed, however this is the layout we are currently working with.
Tonight was Part 3 of The Real Housewives of Atlanta Reunion and in honor of an event that perfectly embraces the spirit of “I scream, you scream, we all scream…” I thought I might put together a list of potential Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavors in honor of the ladies (and their gentlemen) of the ATL! Here they are in no particular order: PHAEDRA’S MR. CHOCOLATE Everybody knows chocolate is the best ice cream ingredient ever! There are lots of mystery chocolate hunks in this special flavor that will make you go from “Mmmm hmmm” to “Mmmmm Mmmmm!!” KENYA MOORE’S CINNAMON BUNS TWIRL I like big buns, hon! And there are LOTS of big buns (in the form of chucks of doughy sweet cinnamon buns) twirled into this delicious flavor! Ben & Jerry’s believes like Sir Mix-A-Lot in that Moore buns is better! KANDI BAR NONE Kandi Burruss and Peter Brown team up to bring you this exclusive flavor that pays homage to Peter’s infamous night club business venture with tons of Bar None candy bars mixed with a splash of liquor from behind the bar to give it that extra kick and to help you get your freak number up! But hurry, this flavor, like Peter’s night clubs, will only be here for a limited time! BANENE SPLIT Could there be a more classic combo than NeNe Leakes and a banana split? This flavor adds a splash of strawberries to the traditional banana split recipe and combines it with vanilla ice cream that is so creamy you’ll be declaring out loud, “It’s rich b!tch!” NE-APOLLO-TAN Pink white and brown are the new black! We used our finest strawberry, vanilla and chocolate ice creams to create this trio-riffic take on the Neapolitan blend. And for a new twist, we’ve added extra yumminess by tossing in chunks of chocolate chip cookie dough (Crookie D’oh!) that will most certainly sentence you to the most pleasurable of snacking experiences! If you enjoyed our Real Housewives of Atlanta themed Ben and Jerry’s ice cream flavors, then be sure to check out our line of B&J flavors we made for The Real Housewives of New York City! (How could you resist a scoop of Sonja S’moregan?!?)
This puppet is apparently intended for the Afghan version of Sesame Street, “Baghch-e-Simsim,” and thus represents yet another naive and well-intentioned but foredoomed effort to improve the situation of women there. The plight of women in Afghanistan stems from Islam, and so isn’t going to be changed by a TV show. And if Zari is introduced on the U.S. version of Sesame Street, she will without any doubt direct her energies to dispelling “Islamophobia.” “Sesame Street unveils Afghan puppet to empower girls amid Muslim rape epidemic,” by Samantha Chang, Examiner, April 8, 2016 (thanks to Thomas): Sesame Street has unveiled a new puppet, an Afghan girl named Zari, to empower girls in an oppressive Muslim nation where women’s rights are almost nonexistent. Zari, age 6, will be featured in Sesame Street segments about health and exercise as she aspires to become a doctor. The Afghan version of Sesame Street, called “Baghch-e-Simsim” (Sesame Garden), is the most popular children’s TV show in Afghanistan. Sesame Street executives say they hope Zari will open people’s minds about the importance of encouraging schooling for girls in a country where many women are excluded from education. “Debuting a confident, inquisitive, and sweet Afghan girl character is a perfect opportunity to engage both boys and girls with lessons supporting girls’ empowerment,” Sesame Street executive VP Sherrie Westin said in a press release. Zari will wear a hijab (the traditional Muslim headscarf) during some segments, and casual clothes in others. In reality, Zari could be beaten or killed for not wearing a headscarf at all times, so Sesame Street is taking some creative license with this move. Over 83% of Afghan women are illiterate due to the cultural norm of not allowing women to attend school. According to UNICEF, most Afghan girls are married off by age 15, which means Sesame Street’s new character Zari has only 9 more years left before she becomes a child bride. The introduction of Zari on Sesame Street occurs against the backdrop of a Muslim rape epidemic sweeping across Europe. Islamic law and tradition condones rape of “infidel” women; in fact, it’s encouraged to help them “convert” to Islam. Rape is considered the “woman’s fault,” because she would not have been raped if she had dressed modestly, or if she had stayed home like a “good Muslim woman.”…
Story highlights A witness speaks to CNN for a second time, offering new details of the shooting She says she is certain it was a younger voice yelling for help Members of Zimmerman's legal team question the witness' recollection As outrage over the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin continues to grip the nation, key questions remain unanswered over what happened the night of February 26 as conflicting accounts are given by witnesses and attorneys for both sides. What is known is that Martin, wearing a hoodie, ventured out from his father's fiancee's home in Sanford, Florida, to get a snack at a nearby convenience store. As he trekked back to the home with a bag of Skittles and an Arizona iced tea, he was shot and killed by George Zimmerman, a 28-year-old neighborhood watch volunteer. Martin was unarmed. Zimmerman has said he acted in self-defense. CNN spoke to a witness to the shooting for a second time Friday, who offered new details about what she saw. Zimmerman's attorneys, for their part, were quick to knock down her statements. Here's what they said: Who yelled for help? A recording of a 911 call made the night of the shooting captured someone pleading for help. Zimmerman has said he was yelling for help, according to his family members and his account to authorities. Martin's relatives have said they are certain the voice heard on the 911 call is Martin's. JUST WATCHED Enhanced audio refutes Zimmerman slur Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Enhanced audio refutes Zimmerman slur 00:55 JUST WATCHED Crump: Trayvon had right to defend self Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Crump: Trayvon had right to defend self 01:10 JUST WATCHED Nugent: Trayvon case a tragedy Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Nugent: Trayvon case a tragedy 01:22 "From the very beginning and I still do feel that it was the young boy," the witness, who wants to remain anonymous, told CNN Friday. The witness lives in the apartment complex where the shooting occurred and saw the incident through her window. She described the cries for help as "devastating, desperate," and something "that will really always stay with me." When pressed if she could determine who was yelling, the witness said "it was the younger, youthful voice (rather) than it was the deep voice I heard when they were arguing." Zimmerman's attorneys jumped on the witness' characterization of Martin as "the young boy." "I'm not sure when she came to that conclusion," said attorney Hal Uhrig, noting that when news of the shooting first broke, pictures of Martin as a 12-year-old were the first to circulate. "The pictures you've put up tonight show a 6 foot 3 boy who was 17 years old," Uhrig said, pointing out that teenage boys can have voices that range from high to as low as a grown man. A police report listed Martin's height at six feet. Audio experts Tom Owen and Ed Primeau, who analyzed the 911 recordings for the Orlando Sentinel, said they don't believe it is Zimmerman who is heard yelling in the background of one 911 call. They compared those screams with Zimmerman's voice, as recorded in a 911 call he made minutes earlier. In that call, in response to the 911 operator's question, Zimmerman described a "suspicious" black male, who ended up being Martin. In describing her questioning by investigators, the witness remembered expressing that she should have done something more, in retrospect, after hearing the cries for help. "The lead investigator said to me kindly, 'Well, if it makes you feel any better, the person that was yelling for help is alive,'" she recalled. Who was on top of whom during the scuffle? Zimmerman says he killed Martin in self-defense after the teen punched him and slammed his head on the sidewalk, according to an Orlando Sentinel report that was later confirmed by Sanford police. One of the responding officers saw a wound on the back of Zimmerman's head and a bloody nose, and noted that his back was wet, indicating he had been lying in the grass, according to the police report. Martin's family and supporters say Zimmerman, who is Hispanic, racially profiled the teen, who was black, and ignored a police dispatcher's directive not to follow him. Zimmerman's attorneys interpret the call differently, and say the operator did not order Zimmerman not to follow. "I know it was very dark, but I really would have to say that I thought it was the larger person on top," the witness said, referring to the heavier build of Zimmerman. Craig Sonner, another Zimmerman attorney, questioned how the witness could determine the identities of those on the ground at that time of night and from her vantage point. "I think it was dark, and I don't think she's sure what she saw," Sonner said. The police investigation: The Sanford police department has come under intense scrutiny for its actions following the shooting, and protesters have called for the firing of police Chief Bill Lee, who stepped aside temporarily last month amid criticism. The witness declined to characterize her questioning by investigators as "in depth," instead saying "I just kind of told what I saw and heard." She noted that when she offered to show the investigators where she saw the scuffle occur, she was told, "Nah, we don't need to see it." She added that two phone calls to the lead detective have gone unanswered. Her attorney, Derek Brett, said a follow-up visit on behalf of the state attorney's investigation on Wednesday yielded only 15 minutes of questioning. "It was very general," Brett said, adding that had he been in the investigators' position, he would have had her recount her story again. The state attorney's office declined to comment Friday, citing the ongoing investigation. Sanford police did not respond to requests for comment Friday. What will happen next? A grand jury is expected to convene next week and could take up the case. Whether a grand jury will choose to indict, Sonner said: "we don't know." Until now, only friends and relatives of Zimmerman's have come forward to offer his side of the story. Uhrig said Zimmerman "would love to be able to do that right now," but due to threats to his safety and the possibility of charges, he can't. "There's going to be a time, hopefully in the fairly near future, where he'll have an opportunity to tell the public exactly what happened," Uhrig said. Until then, Sonner cautions against jumping to conclusions. "Everybody wants to know what happened, but we need to take a step back and let the evidence come out," he said.
On a posh sofa in the BFI Southbank bar before the gala press screening of his new BBC Two series Peaky Blinders, we chatted to Birmingham-born writer Steven Knight (Eastern Promises, Dirty Pretty Things, Hummingbird) about the most unfashionable city in the UK, glamour, violence, anti-heroes, and telling a very different kind of working class story... I’ve just seen episode one and two, so my first question has to be, when can I see the next ones? Great cast, great characters, great style, I really enjoyed it. Ah, that’s great, thanks. And it gets better. Because in the early episodes you have to do so many introductions, after that’s all established it really gets going. You’ve assembled quite a remarkable cast of actors. When Cillian Murphy and Sam Neill are first on screen together in episode two, it just fizzes doesn’t it? Oh they’re just fantastic. How did you come by Sam Neill for the role of Chief Inspector Campbell? Pretty much our first choice in virtually every role said yes, and Sam was our first choice for that. We got him the script and he came back and said, ‘I’ll do it’, which was amazing. I think it was just episode one we sent him, but he was on board immediately. You’re under a fair amount of pressure with the accents. Just a quick look on Twitter shows people saying, ‘Birmingham? They’d better get the accents right, it can’t just be broad black country accents’… With Sam [Neill], the fact that he’s from Belfast and he said that he was doing his dad’s accent means he’s on home ground really. Is it true he had to tone the Belfast accent down to make sure it would be comprehensible to a US audience? I don’t think so. I think the concern always is for broadcasters is that American audiences don’t always get English regional accents, but I think with Irish they get it and I know Belfast is a particular type, but usually Irish is okay, whereas Welsh can cause trouble. The problematic one was always going to be the Birmingham accent because I’m from Birmingham and you never hear it done correctly. For some reason, they don’t use people from Birmingham. So it was one of the stipulations that we’ve got to get this right. Birmingham in 1919 - it still is - was even more of a melting pot with people coming from the provinces, from Ireland, Scotland, Wales, so the accent was still being formed at the time. When I took Cillian [Murphy] up to the real Garrison, which is in Small Heath, to meet some of the people I know from round there, we spent quite a drunken Saturday just talking, and he recorded it on something like that [points to my Dictaphone], and just got into the accent. The trick with it - which he spotted and the other actors spotted - was that it’s fast. Everybody does it slow for some reason, but the actual town accent is really fast and if you do it quick, you’re doing it. It’s like riding a bike, as long as you keep going, you’ll be alright. And they did it. Audiences aren’t used to hearing that kind of accent in a gangster setting are they? In comedy yes – you worked with Jasper Carrot on The Detectives of course, and his is probably what a lot of us think of when we think of that voice – but hard men with Brummie accents aren’t all that common. Of course, yeah. Part of the reason for doing Peaky Blinders, apart from the fact that it was a personal story and I’ve always wanted to do it, was what was great I felt is that Birmingham is probably the least fashionable city in Britain. It’s almost invisible in terms of media. People just don’t do it, which is great, because it’s a blank canvas. I think if you did London, you’d have a lot of baggage, Liverpool, Manchester… With Birmingham, you can say ‘Have a look at this’ and say to people ‘This is real. This really happened’. Being from there, I know people from the Black Country and Birmingham who live there and in a certain part of that culture, it is the Wild West, it still is. There’s a lot of madness and guns and all sorts of stuff going on that just goes under the radar. On the subject of the Wild West, let’s talk about Cillian’s horseback entrance as Tommy Shelby, riding through the slums. You were going for a Western feel then? Oh yeah. Deadwood perhaps? Well, not so much Deadwood, but definitely Western. The great thing about America is that people take its history and mythologise it. I mean, if you said you were making a film about nineteenth century agricultural labourers, that’s a cowboy film, but it’s just looking at it a different way. What Westerns did was to take a world and mythologise it. What I wanted to do was to really look at what really happened in Birmingham – and in other cities – in the twenties and see it for what it was. Very bizarre, very glamorous, very unexpected, very un-English, not un-English but working class English. I think there’s a tendency in England, when you look at the past, to either have upper middle class period drama with its own rules, or if you’re going to look at working class people, you have to do that in a particular ‘Isn’t it a shame, aren’t they oppressed’ way, or it’s treated comically. When I was a kid though, my dad wasn’t a comedy figure, he was a hero, so do it like that, do it as it really is. It’s based on your dad’s uncles isn’t it? Yes. You’ve talked in the past about “the authority of truth” in storytelling. Is that what you were looking to present by telling this particular story? Yeah. I think people don’t realise that this all went on. The race-track gangs and the wars to do with illegal betting in England are incredibly evocative, they’re quite violent, and there were real gangs with real characters, they almost sound like fictionalised names, but they were real people who fought battles and wars and had guns and knives. In England we buried that completely. All it is is finding what’s really there, pretty much sticking to what really happened, and then making it look good. And you’ve achieved that. Your directors and cinematographer [Otto Bathurst, Tom Harper and George Steel] certainly make it look good. You used the word ‘glamorous’ just then, which is interesting, because Peaky Blinders is a stylised portrayal of not, as you say, oppressed mill workers trudging around, but there’s a rock star, glamorous element. Of course. If you look at photographs of working class people at that time and talk to people - there’s not many people left alive now - about men in the twenties, women as well but particularly men, they were incredibly clothes-conscious and very conscious of how they looked, especially people who were in the underworld. Shoes were polished so that they shone. Lots of money was spent on clothes. There was a sense that, because life was so hard and so crap, anyone who escaped, escaped immediately into this really glamorous, theatrical world. So pubs were like huge theatres, which is why the old-fashioned Victorian pubs and gin palaces were beautiful, because this environment was a contrast to what they’ve come from. So the glamour was there, and especially in the twenties when everybody was so sick of the First World War. Everybody went a bit mad for about six years. The idea of glamour becomes problematic though when you’re depicting violence doesn’t it? You’ve talked in the past about having to walk a tightrope in your films between making violence look good but not making it seem too enjoyable? The thing I always think, in anything that I do, is that violence always has consequences, so make sure you show the consequences. It’s not casual, it doesn’t just go away. If somebody gets cut, they stay cut and they will be cut for the rest of time. These things don’t just come and go. You don’t see people being casually shot in Peaky Blinders. Any violence is earned in the sense that it does make you feel quite squeamish, and that’s the idea. Continuing with the rock star tone, you’ve chosen some anachronistic music for the soundtrack that really works. Jack White, The Black Keys… and you use a fantastic Nick Cave song for the theme… Oh he loves it as well, he loves the show. Nick Cave does? How did that come about? Did you show him it without the music first and ask permission? We showed him - I think it was episode one - with the music on and said ‘Is it okay?’ and he loved it, he loves the show. I’m not surprised, it’s up his street. He’s brilliant, Nick Cave. The idea of the soundtrack is that the emotion of music is timeless so at that time, that music is appropriate to use. That’s the other thing about writing period stuff. What I’ve tried to do is make the characters modern, because there’s no such thing as non-modern characters. People are people and maybe they have a different culture, but they are as modern in their jealousy and anger and spite and all of those things, they don’t change. So with the music, in order to reflect what’s in the characters’ heads for a modern audience, you need to give them a modern reflection. Did you ask Jack White directly for permission to use his stuff too? He loved it as well. I think his suggestion was "Can it be called The Jack White show?". Ha! This is eventually going to be broadcast in the US. Did you make allowances for that in any way? No, absolutely lot. I think that’s always a mistake. You do what you do and if people like it, good and if they don’t, well… With the BBC’s recent The White Queen, the version they saw on Starz in the US apparently had more nudity and longer sex scenes. More nudity? Yeah, I can see that. American telly is a bit more… I think it’s because they can segregate their audience because of cable. Let’s talk about the politics in Peaky Blinders. You show the threat of Communist revolution through Freddie’s character. Is that something you particularly wanted to put on screen? Well at the time, obviously after the First World War, the soldiers came back and the Russian Revolution happened and there was a great deal of paranoia that there was going to be a revolution in England, and people were particularly concerned that gangsters and revolutionaries would come together because gangsters had guns and a lot of our soldiers had brought their own guns back. Winston Churchill was particularly paranoid, to the extent that in the end, people were questioning his sanity because he was so worried about Bolsheviks. I’ve sort of toned that down a bit, he’s not frothing at the mouth in this, but he was very strident. Of course, you also had the Irish thing going on, so that idea of revolution and rebellion was very close, which also features. Some very good people have made political dramas about the times, and I didn’t really want to make a political drama at all, because the politics are there, but the main character doesn’t want anything to do with it, he sort of sees through it, and that’s how I wanted to play it. It’s another element in the mixture. On the subject of Tommy. We’ve already mentioned Deadwood, so you have Al Swearington in that, Tony Soprano, Stringer Bell from The Wire, maybe Nucky Thompson from Boardwalk Empire, … is Tommy Shelby the next name in that list? Do you know - and I’m not just saying this - but I’ve never watched them. I’ve never seen The Wire, I’ve never seen Boardwalk Empire, I’ve never seen any of them. You’ve deliberately avoided them? It’s sort of deliberate in that I don’t really want to be looking at other people’s work because it does affect what you do inevitably, but I don’t really watch them, so I don’t know. He probably is [laughs] but I don’t know. Is it just TV drama you avoid watching? And film as well. I try not to watch them. I know, it’s very weird. Previously, I’ve always pretended, especially in Hollywood when you go in and they say ‘It’s a film a bit like so and so’ and you go ‘Oh yeah, yeah, yeah’ and I’m thinking, ‘I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about’. I suppose it’s understandable that you might avoid things that could influence or draw your work in a certain direction… It’s sort of because I also find it hard work. To watch other people’s stuff? Yeah, because you end up going ‘Oh right, okay they did that’ and it’s not relaxing at all, it’s really horrible actually [laughs]. Do you find yourself constantly thinking about how you would have done it differently rather than being absorbed in the story? Yeah, and usually it’s really good as well, especially American stuff, and you think ‘Fuck!’ But no, I don’t watch it. I haven’t seen an episode of any of those. Well Tommy does fit with the current trend for antihero protagonists. I suppose people like me love seeing patterns in things and putting things in groups, which no doubt really annoys people like you… No, no, not at all. I think when you look at anything, when you look at literature or film or television or whatever, there are seasons, or types of era, which I think are born more from what’s going on in the world than what’s going on in the media. At a certain time of hardship, certain sorts of heroes appear and when it gets really hard, fantasy starts breaking out all over the place. Do you know what I mean? There’s been plenty of that lately, with the popularity of superhero films. Yeah, which I hope is coming to an end [laughs]. So what’s happening in the world today that’s made this type of Tommy Shelby anti-hero, or anti-establishment hero at least, appear? I think that a while ago, audiences stopped believing in complete heroes. The sort of lantern-jawed Captain America type? Yeah. I think that, for a long time, that was fine, but people stopped believing in it. I think now there’s a tendency to say ‘Right, our hero has got to be really flawed’, and the flawedness of the hero is getting worse and worse. If you take a look at real people and see when they’re good and when they’re bad, it’s fifty fifty, or fifty-five, forty-five. In the end, people are more concerned with whether someone’s doing something for the right reason. Are they doing a bad thing for a good reason? The Robin Hood thing Yeah Which you sort of had in Hummingbird [Knight’s recent Jason Statham feature]… Yeah, bless him! Tommy Shelby’s a charismatic lead, thanks to Cillian and the way you’ve written him. He’s clever, and we like seeing clever people be clever. We’re on his side. But then, we also see him blind people… Yes, I know. Well, that’s the thing. I hope people don’t think that the intention is to make an unequivocal hero out of somebody who does bad things. It’s just like, look at yourself being on the side of this person because see what else he’s done, and then make people think about that. Tommy’s in a very violent era, and everything has to be put into the context that he’s just come back from a place where a General would order sixty thousand people to be killed in a single morning routinely. That had sent a lot of those men mad, hadn’t it? There was little understanding of it in those days of course, no PTSD or what have you, no treatment. No. It was, ‘just get on with it.’ And let the community sort it out. It was such an epidemic, a really fascinating time. I’m going to deal with it a bit more in the second series, the way that it sort of got worse before it got better. People just didn’t give a shit, they didn’t care, there was a lot of drugs, a lot of alcohol, real hedonism, and the violence came with it. Just people who just really didn’t care about life, because they’d got through the First World War and they were so damaged. Those at home just had no idea either, in the First World War, of what conditions were like with trench warfare and so on… No. And they didn’t talk about it, that was the thing. It was a point of principle that the soldiers never spoke about it. Was it deliberate then, that your industrial backdrops in this are bursting with flames and all this black and orange, to reflect that sort of infernal, hellish sense of the war? Well it is sort of hell. I mean, Birmingham at the time manufactured more goods than Detroit and Chicago; it was the centre of the world in terms of making things and it’s twenty-four hours. The men who worked there worked in unbelievably hard conditions so they would come out and just drink and drink and drink and drink, just to get the crap out of their systems. So we were trying, within the budget we have, to suggest this landscape of constant industry. How did you go about recreating 1919 Birmingham? Was that a lot of CGI work down by the docks and in the skylines? We were lucky, a bit of it was CGI but we were lucky to have Stanley Dock in Liverpool, which is this gigantic abandoned dock with loads of empty warehouse space, so it was like a playground to be honest. The skylines have to be done in CGI. I’m sure it’s going to get cheaper, CGI, but it’s very expensive. You mentioned the second series, that’s all been confirmed then? Yeah, I mean as far as the BBC ever do, but yeah, we’re pretty safe. I’ve started writing it and it’ll start in 1922 and take us through that year and see Tommy make his next steps. How far do you see the series running? You’re a busy man, but what’s your long-term aim? My hope would be to go to the Second World War, that’s long-term. Three series would be great. But I just want to see Tommy become this huge, respectable businessman and see if he can ever escape. Because it’s also about, if you’re born in that environment, can you get out, ever? Can you actually ever escape? And we’ll see. In terms of social class, can he ever be accepted? Obviously racing is one of those places where you’ll see the aristocracy, will he ever be able to break into that world? You have to look at history, it’s very difficult. Because of your time period - I know you said you don’t watch much television, but you must be aware of Downton Abbey, which takes place at the same time - it’s a facile comparison to make between that and Peaky Blinders, but that won’t stop people from making it. I’ve never seen it, but I am aware of it. I’m sure Downton Abbey’s really good, because I mean, look how popular it is, people love it. They love it for its escapism I think. Do you see any escapism in Peaky Blinders? Maybe. I think a bit like a Western, I think that when you watch Peakies, you get the feeling of a bit of liberty, freedom. I think the reason people like Westerns is that people can do things, then ride off into the sunset with the freedom to do something else, you don’t get the feeling you’re being looked at. In that society, you get the feeling that men can make a decision and do it - women, not so much because of the period - but people can make things happen in their own little worlds. Mentioning women, Helen McCrory is great as your Shelby family matriarch, Aunt Polly. She’s so good. Tell me about her character. It was a very common thing for there to be a strong woman in any illegal organisation. My dad had an Aunt Pol, so she’s sort of based on a real character. It was also to reflect the fact that when the soldiers came back from the First World War, they found that things were being run quite nicely by women, and it was a real source of trouble. Somebody like Polly, who ran the business perfectly well – probably better – is an interesting character. Polly will come into her own in the second series because as you’ll see later in this first series, she’s got a back story about children who were taken away from her. With an actress like Helen, it’s easy, she’s so good. For series two and onwards then, is your cast locked down? Yeah. All the main players are down for it and really enthusiastic and Sam is like, tweeting all over the place in New Zealand about how he can’t wait. Without giving too much away, there’s going to be two new villains in the second series, we’re going to have some good names, good actors to play those. And you already have those actors in mind? In my mind. But not yet on paper? Yeah, getting there. Getting there. Anyone you’ve worked with before? I don’t know yet, we’ll find out. I’d like to work with Tom Hardy again [Knight recently directed Hardy in Locke], he’s fantastic. You’ve been quite tight-lipped about details on Locke so far, though I understand you went about filming it in a different way to usual, filming it as a play ten times then cutting the best parts of those together? Yeah, we shot it as a play with Tom, who’s brilliant, he’s fantastic and it works so well. It’s having an astonishing effect on audiences. What was the thinking behind doing it that way? I don’t know, it was taking a look at film-making and thinking well, what is the task here? The task is to get a load of people into a room and turn the lights off and make them look at the screen for ninety minutes; what other ways are there of doing it? How can you get them engrossed? This one’s a particular thing when the lights go up, everybody’s crying, which is really good. I have to ask. Could there be a part for Jason Statham in Peaky Blinders? We wanted him in the first series. As which character? I can’t say, but it was difficult because obviously he’s so committed elsewhere. I’d love him to be in the second series, he’s such a great, great guy. You don’t have to tell us that on Den of Geek! He’s such a good bloke and such a nice bloke, as well as all the stuff that goes with it, he’s a really nice bloke. And a potential for the second series? Yeah, if he’s not busy. Finally, tell me about the title, Peaky Blinders. It’s such an odd phrase to get used to, but perfect really because it’s so attention-grabbing and strange, because people haven’t necessarily heard of the gang. I certainly hadn’t. No of course, even in Birmingham people haven’t heard of them but they were called Peaky Blinders. First of all, at the turn of the century, young tearaways used to put these razor-blades in their hats and they were called Peaky Blinders. The gang had a particular uniform didn’t it, with the haircuts and scarves. Yeah, they had all sorts of things. They were immaculately dressed. After the war, these young kids that were causing trouble became more organised and this particular gang were known as the Peaky Blinders. Was that always going to be your title? Yes. There was some question about should we change it because nobody knows what it is, but that’s a good thing. That’s the hook. Steven Knight, thank you very much! Peaky Blinders is available to order on DVD from the BBC Shop here, and Blu-ray here. Peaky Blinders starts on BBC Two on Thursday the 12th of September at 9pm. Read our spoiler-free review of episode one, here. Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.
Ahead of a controversial Senate debate on digital privacy this week, the battle over warrantless cell-phone and Internet searches is beginning to take shape — even as law-enforcement agencies continue to carry out the searches anyway. Judges across the country have thrown out cases that used tracked digital American lives without warrants, but others haven't, reports The New York Times's Somini Sengupta. A DC court, for example, compared text messages to voicemail messages, which because they can be overheard are not protected by state privacy laws, argued one judge. A Louisiana court is deciding if cell-phone records are like business records. Another court ruled that GPS cell phone tracking without a warrant was fine, too. Others, however, argue that cell phones are more than just a paper trail. One judge called cell phones "raw, unvarnished and immediate, revealing the most intimate of thoughts and emotions," as in something that is subject to higher privacy standards. Meanwhile, we see the same inconsistencies with Internet protections, reports The Wall Street Journal's Joe Pallazolo. A federal court recently ruled that people who use their neighbors' WiFi without permission forfeit privacy, opening up government officials to warrantless searches. The same ruling other courts have made for IP addresses. However, the law isn't that clear-cut, either, argues George Washington University professor Oren Kerr. Without clear rules, government agencies have continued investigations with warrantless searches. As people have started using cell phones more often and for more than just calling, law enforcement agency requests for cell-phone information have increased, reported The New York Times's Eric Lichtblau earlier this year. AT&T gets more than 700 requests a day from various agencies, triple what it got in 2007, he notes. Last year, the total number of requests came in at at least 1.3 million. At the same time, the application for wiretapping warrants declined 14 percent last year to 2,732, according to the Administrative Office of the United States Courts. A curious pattern considering the requests for information have gone up. Though these wireless carriers say they require a search warrant, a court order or a formal subpoena to release information, "in cases that law enforcement officials deem an emergency, a less formal request is often enough," writes Lichtblau. Or, it's possible that law enforcement has opted for other forms of tracking that don't require warrants, at least not according to some judges. Read more at The Atlantic Wire. (Image via michaeljung/Shutterstock.com)
Alan Rusbridger's cinematic description of how, back in July, two GCHQ security experts oversaw the destruction of hard drives in the basement of the Guardian's offices was symbolic of many things. Amnesty called it "sinister". It made me think of the Luddites. We're almost halfway through the bicentennial of the Luddite uprisings (1811-1817). Part of a wave of working class discontent emerging in the wake of the harsh economic climate of the Napoleonic wars, the Luddites are best known for smashing looms and the word Luddite is now commonly used to denote someone opposed to, possibly fearful of, technological progress. But Luddite activism was really more about who got to control technology than being opposed to any technology itself. As a 2011 Guardian editorial noted, Huddersfield Luddite, George Mellor directed his followers to "leave the machines, shoot the masters". A cynic might argue that the traditional painting of Luddites as somewhat ignorant and simply scared of progress is a version of history perpetuated by those who would rather we didn't question the machines of our masters. I'd have some sympathy with that cynic, because the Luddites were not anti-technology in general, and the word is all too often used to close down debate about what we want progress to look like. Many of us have been tempted to take hammers to one hard drive or another (tip if you do: Rusbridger et al used angle grinders). A friend who works near Silicon Roundabout can sometimes be found muttering "smash all computers" into a large glass of whisky. Martin Zaltz-Austwick – musician, podcaster and lecturer in advanced spatial analysis at UCL – recently composed a slightly dystopic song about smashing microchips to make sand for a giant fake beach (an allegory for the stupidity of much of modernity). But the Guardian-GCHQ smash was not a simple matter of being frustrated with the various limitations mass-produced technology routinely puts upon us. Nor was it a "shoot the masters" matter of dismantling instruments of oppression. If anything, it was the masters doing the smashing, or at least directing it, and that's significant. With the bicentennial, some Luddite fans have tried to rehabilitate and celebrate the movement as a symbol of people power for late modernity. A blog replays the historical events; there's an active and spiky Twitter account. You'll increasingly see Luddites referenced at anti-roads or anti-GM protests. I haven't met an anti-fracking Luddite yet, but there's probably a few knocking about. Such neo-Luddites are rarely anti-technology. They tend to apply the term to challenge dominant views of progress with a focus on questioning who benefits from particular technological choice. There are other ways we can take the Luddite story though, even without dismissing them as reactionary. David Edgerton, in his Nature essay In Praise of Luddism, invited scientists to celebrate the inner Luddite and appreciate how much of their work involves the rejection of new ideas. It's not just scientists who do this. As Edgerton's book The Shock of the Old eloquently outlines, the history of technology is much more complex than a simple march of great machines. See, for example, the 1897 electric cab currently on display at the Science Museum. An uneasy commonality runs through most approaches to the Luddite story; they tend to be used to invite us to think about the rejection of particular technologies. Rejection, that is, as opposed to the way our interactions with machines are usually a matter of compromise, negotiation, hybridisation and reinterpretation. To paraphrase Donna Haraway, I think I'd rather be a cyborg than a Luddite. There were echoes of King Ludd in some recent Socialist Worker coverage of 3D printing. The piece wanted to puncture hype surrounding 3D printing and stress that, for all that it might seem excitingly full of new possibilities for modes of production, the power of any new technology is most likely to be exploited by "the bosses". It concluded: "Unless we overthrow a system that reduces everything to the needs of profit, no technology will let us print our way to freedom." There's an attractive purity to this message, but I find it ideologically reductive. As Georgina Voss quipped, "No Raspberry Pi before the revolution." While it is undoubtedly true that the various opportunities offered by 3D printing – like smart phones, the printing press or any number of innovations – will serve the status quo long before they undo it, that doesn't mean such technologies can't also be used to fight the power too. We can use and appreciate the power of a technology while also remaining cognisant of the ways it (and the social structure it sits within) may disempower, even harm, us and people we love. It's messy and involves compromise and negotiation; but social change is messy. As Rusbridger commented under his piece on Monday evening: "Smashing up computers turns out to be quite messy." Above all, perhaps, one of the reasons the destruction of this bit of Guardian computer equipment is significant is that the materials themselves didn't really mean much; there were copies of the files in America and Brazil. In that respect, maybe it reflects the Socialist Worker's view that it's always a larger system at play. If I was feeling hyperbolic, I might be tempted to declare this moment a mirror image of the Luddites taking hammers to looms; a rather sad smash where those in power rather fitfully demanded a somewhat pointless destruction. But it's not a sign that we've finally wrested the power of technology from our masters any more than it's an example of the Guardian meekly doing GCHQ's bidding. Indeed, that information can exist in more than one place – our digital fingerprints – and, moreover, that people may be disempowered by this, sits at the basis of the whole NSA files affair. The Guardian's smashed hard drives are probably just a moment of strategic compromise in an ongoing struggle. Or maybe the initial leaking was the real smash. I don't know. Alice Bell is a research fellow at the Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex. She wonders what King Ludd would have made of Edward Snowden. Note: This post was edited after posting to remove a line saying Luddite George Mellor had left his body to medical science. According to the Luddite Bicentenary Twitter account, this is far from the truth. In fact, Mellor's dissection was actually part of his punishment. Mellor, along with William Thorpe and Thomas Smith, had no say over what happened to his remains, as they dissected to prevent trouble/ martyr status. You can read the Bicentenary's comment on the 2011 Guardian editorial about this, and I can recommend their blogposts on the sentencing and execution of Mellor, Thorpe and Smith. Dissection was formally proposed on Boxing Day 1812 (a fortnight before the trial) by the Military - "I conceive the bodies may be convey'd to the Infirmary at Leeds for dissection, it will be most acceptable to the Medical Practitioners there" - but it was actually the Treasury Solicitor's idea 12 days prior to that, concerned the bodies might be "triumphantly buried by their Friends." Thanks to the Luddite Bicentenary site for that. A cautionary tale to those who try to mess with the machines of our masters and an interesting example of military and medicine working together against dissent. Fascinating.
A little over a year ago an I Know First analyst wrote an article predicting the rebound of AMD. He explained how AMD was at an all time low, and would make a comeback. AMD has since made new products to allow themselves to better compete against Nvidia and Intel. Strong Q1 and Q2 earnings had given AMD stimulus for a stock increase. The largest stock increase, for AMD, was as a result of their licensing agreement with China, allowing them to sell many more products now and for the upcoming several years. The I Know First algorithm as well was bullish on AMD for the past year. AMD rose 330% since the article was published proving our analyst and the algorithm correct. This article , published on August 22nd, 2015, discusses the prospect of a stock increase for HIMX. HIMX being deeply imbedded in the Chinese market, thus consisting of large part of its revenue. Recently, demand had fallen for electronic products that require display drivers. The devaluation of the Yuan has also adversely affected HIMX. The analyst predicted that these problems would disappear as China has increased smartphone users year after year which will raise demand. HIMX has also released new products being used in smartphones and other mart electronics which allow the company to better compete. The I Know First algorithm was bullish on HIMX. Since last year, HIMX has risen 47% in accordance with our analyst's and the algorithm's predictions. On June 6th, 2016, an I Know First financial analyst published an article about MU. It discussed the outstanding revenue earned in May and how this will affect their earnings. Analysts had also agreed that MU would outperform the market. The analyst also maintained that earnings will be high in the second quarter of 2016. The stock as well received a bullish signal from the I Know First algorithm. The algorithm and analyst had both correctly predicted the bullish outcome for MU, and the stock had increased 25% since the article was published.
The Annual Wellness Experience Of A Lifetime MURFEST is Malaysia’s Premier Wellness, Music, Dance, Healing , Fitness and Personal Growth Festival. Entering its 5th year, MURFEST is all about Exploring And Experiencing the best practitioners, yet bringing…in a beautiful Urban and serene setting. Come and practice with the best heart centred yoga teachers in the world, dance to amazing music, play different instruments and sing with professional vocalist whilst still having time for a healthy meal and some dedicated time for therapeutic massages. MURFEST is fully about Community and giving back and we are happy to host volunteers from all around the world offering different gifts of service and gratitude. Our onsite Wellness Exhibition will bring the latest trends in health and beauty, organic and home grown merchandise all under one roof. Get your Tickets today
Renting a home in Dublin now costs just €30 less each month than it did at the height of the boom in 2007, according to the latest official figures published this morning. The Private Residential Tenancies Board (PRTB) figures show rents nationwide increasing by 8.6 per cent over the 12 months to the end of September, with an increase of 9.3 per cent recorded in the cost of houses in the capital. In financial terms, the average cost of renting a home in the State at the end of September is now €901, up from €830 at the end of the same month last year. In Dublin, the average rent for a house at the end of September was €1,408, while the cost of renting an apartment was €1,265. Just 12 months earlier, houses were commanding an average rent of €1,288, while for apartments the figure was €1,169. Additional cost The new figures represent a monthly increase in Dublin rent of €120 for a house and €96 for an apartment over the course of the 12-month period. It suggests an annual additional cost for people in rented accommodation in the capital of between €1,152 and €1,440 depending on the type of accommodation they live in. Outside of Dublin, the average rent was €707, with houses averaging €712 and apartments €698. A year earlier, these figures stood at €652, €664 and €635 respectively. This represents a monthly increase in rent outside of Dublin of €48 for a house and €63 for an apartment in the 12-month period. Looking at the private rental market and comparing the third quarter of 2015 with the second quarter of this year, the rate of growth was stronger outside Dublin.
From Atlanta ABC Donate to help us free the 3 protesters who were arrested during today’s march. Today marks the beginning of the national prison strike. Prisoners all over the country are going on strike and refusing to cooperate with the unjust prison system. They are demanding decent pay for work, decent food and living conditions, and an end to inhumane practices like solitary confinement. In Atlanta, supporters marched through Midtown and disrupted several corporations which profit from prison slavery. Wendy’s, McDonalds, Aramark, and Starbucks all got a visit. When the march got to Starbucks, police made several violent arrests, using pepper spray and slamming people to the pavement. At one point, police even tried to run marchers over with a squad car. We are working hard to make sure all the protesters get free as soon as possible, so everyone can continue doing the important work of supporting the ongoing prison strike. We can’t get them out without enough bail money though, so if you’re able to contribute, please follow the link below: Bail Out Atlanta Prison Strike Supporters
Video Resham Khan, who was left seriously injured after acid was thrown in her face, says she pities her attacker. John Tomlin, of Colman Road, Canning Town, admitted last week to causing Resham and her cousin grievous bodily harm. "The violence, in a split second, destroyed my life," Resham tells BBC 100 Women. "There's nothing to say to someone that ruined everything." Resham is one of this year's BBC 100 Women. She has been campaigning for changes to the laws controlling the sale of corrosive substances. Filmed by Efrem Gebreab, produced and edited by Reha Kansara and Georgina Pearce. What is 100 Women? BBC 100 Women names 100 influential and inspirational women around the world every year. For our 2017 season we challenged them to tackle four of the biggest problems facing women today - the glass ceiling, female illiteracy, harassment in public spaces and sexism in sport. Find us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and use #100Women
People across the UK have been waking up to frosty conditions - after a corridor of snow swept across large parts of the country. BBC News website readers have been sharing their wintry photos. Here is a selection: Image copyright Stepanie Cole Image caption Stephanie Cole took this picture of a her snowy back garden in Oxted, Surrey. Image copyright Andy Pass Image caption Andy Pass in Eastbourne was not expecting to see snow over an inch thick outside his bedroom window. "Bit of a shock," he said. Image copyright Susan Brown Image caption Susan Brown took the opportunity to have some fun sledging in the snow in Paisley, Renfrewshire. Image copyright Mark R Bannister Image caption Mark R Bannister, in Surrey, sent in this picture of a rather dapper snowman. It was the first snowman his younger son had built, he said. Image copyright Katrien Grobler / Twitter Image caption "Not a lot of snow in London, but we managed to scrape a small snowman together", said Katrien Grobler who tweeted this picture. Latest local information from the BBC Image copyright Wendy Neale Image caption Stephanie Cole took this photo of a snow covered Crystal Palace in south London. Image copyright Vipin Chadha Image caption "Absolutely fantastic, the kids had been waiting for it!" said Vipin Chadha, who took this picture in Milton Keynes. Image copyright Rob Steele Image caption "I didn't expect to wake up to that view out the window!" said Rob Steele who sent in this picture of his snow-covered road in Northampton. Image copyright James Waring Image caption "Taking the Labrador for a walk. I'm unlikely to lose her," said James Waring who took this picture in Chipping, Lancashire. Image copyright Oscar Windsor Smith Image caption Not everyone welcomes the recent snowfall. "We hope it goes away as quickly as it came. Access here is via a track that will be impassable if this stuff freezes," says Oscar Windsor Smith who captured this photo in Hertfordshire.
First, California Governor Jerry Brown signed ABx1 28, the Golden State’s Amazon Tax. That was a mere three months ago, back in those carefree June days when California seemed to say: "If we tax you, you will (still) come." California's Amazon tax was intended to “clarify” the obligations of out-of-state retailers to collect use tax on sales to California residents. The law took effect immediately, and like many “clarifications,” it charted new ground. But just as quickly, it's gone. Governor Brown has now signed AB 155 repealing it. The bill signing was expected, capping Amazon's late night deal with legislators to delete the tax like a virus. See How Amazon's California Tax Romp Will Impact Us All. The California Amazon tax had the state's own spin on what it means to be engaged in business in California’s State of Grace. But now for one more year—until September 15, 2012—Amazon and other online retailers aren't required to collect California sales or use tax. Of course, online sellers face mounting pressure to collect sales taxes across the country. If you want to click and buy in California, do it before September 15, 2012. Bricks-and-mortar retailers and state governments may act in the meantime, but at least in California, consumers seem safe for a year. Of course, Amazon is safe too, racking up sales and hoping the year turns plural or that it has another late night deal up its sleeve. After all, the compromise it struck with money-hungry California was that the tax faucet would back turn on September 15 2012 only if the federal government does not pass any federal online tax measure. If the national Main Street Fairness Act passes it would impose a national tax standard but allow states abiding by the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement to force Internet sellers to collect tax. In an odd alliance, Amazon and traditional retailers like Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and Home Depot all support the “Main Street Fairness Act”. In the current jobs crisis, some of this is about jobs, and Amazon has turned this into a debate about bringing jobs to California. One California Board of Equalization member, George Runner gave a thumbs-up to the bill signing, noting that it could: “get some California affiliates back to work and bring thousands of Amazon.com distribution jobs to California. That’s very good news. Unfortunately, this legislation is by no means a cure-all. It does nothing to solve the long-term problems created by the Legislature’s botched efforts to compel out-of-state retailers to serve as California’s tax collectors." “Absent a federal solution, which is highly unlikely in such a short time frame given all of the competing interests, we’ll be right back in the same mess in a year. The State of California will again be killing California jobs, driving away investment and inviting costly litigation." For more, see: Amazon Wins Reprieve on California Tax in Exchange For Jobs Gov. Jerry Brown to sign "Amazon Tax" into law California Lawmakers Give Amazon Tax Reprieve “Amazon Tax” Repealed Under New Law Illinois Governor Signs Amazon Internet Sales Tax Law Will California Super-Amazon Tax Bill Thwart Voters? California Taxes In Heart Of Amazon Country Amazon Tax Attacks Amazon Battles States Over Sales Tax
MORE than 800,000 front row seats to watch London’s property market collapse in April next year have already sold out. The tickets, which only went on sale on Wednesday, have proven hugely popular with provincial Britons who usually travel to the capital for West End musicals. Susan Traherne of Nottingham said: “This is the big one. They’ve been building up to it for years, and it’s going to be spectacular. “I can’t wait to see all those foreclosure signs springing up on the luxury apartments and the chorus of aggrieved homeowners crying ‘It’s worth half what we’re paying on the mortgage.’ “Apparently there’s a really moving performance of ‘This buy-to-let was meant to be my pension’ early in the second half that will have everyone in tears of delight. “And the big closing number, when the banks move to Frankfurt and the Londoners all chant ‘A two-bedroom flat worth a million pounds, were we mad, were we mad, were we mad?’ sounds epic. “It’s very far-fetched, of course. Couldn’t happen in the real world where the rest of us live.”
Question Answer In what year is Mass Effect set? What is the name of the substance that can be manipulated into a Mass Effect Field? Which player class allows the use of both Tech and Biotic abilities? In the Sole Survivor scenario, Shepard's entire unit was slaughtered on which planet? In the Earthborn scenario, Shepard was a member of which gang? In the Spacer scenario, Shepard's mother serves on which ship ? What planet is Commander Shepard heading to at the beginning of the game? What is the name of the Turian Spectre who accompanies Shepard on this mission? The beacon on the planet was thought to be an artifact of which ancient race? Which member of Shepard's squad was killed on this mission? What do the Alliance soldiers call the spikes that the Geth use to create Husks? What material can all weapons, armor and upgrades be broken down into? What is the name of Commander Shepard's ship? Who is the Chief Medical Officer aboard Shepard's ship? What disease does Joker suffer from? What is the name of the Human Ambassador on the Citadel? What is the name of the Virtual Intelligence program that provides information on the Citadel? In what area of the Citadel was the Hanar preaching about the 'Enkindlers'? Who is the head of Citadel Security? What is the name of the Asari Consort? The two individuals who were trying to scan the keepers were Jahleed and... What was the biological weapon that was used on the Krogans? What was the name of Dr. Chloe Michel's former colleague who was blackmailing her? What is the name of the Volus information dealer on the Citadel? What is the name of the club that Harkin could be found in? Who is the owner of Flux? What is the game that can be played at Flux? Question Answer According to Tali's message, what is Saren searching for? What planet was Dr. Liara T'Soni on? What is the name of the vehicle which is used to explore planetary surfaces? What creature had attacked Rear Admiral Kahoku's missing marines? What is the name of the rogue black ops organization that was formerly part of the Alliance military? Who offers to buy the information that Shepard acquired from the secret base on Nepheron? What ship was Garoth's brother Willem the captain of? What assignment must be completed to unlock Shepard's Specialization Class? Name one of the Specialization Classes that an Engineer can become. What is the capital of Noveria? Which private security corporation is employed on Noveria? Who is the captain of the security forces on Noveria? Which biotech company was Saren a major investor in? What is the name of the Internal Affairs agent who is investigating Administrator Anoleis? Lorik Qui'in is the manager of which of Noveria's major corporations? What is the name of the Hanar merchant who asks Shepard to smuggle some goods in? What is the name of the research facility on Noveria? What is the name of the Virtual Intelligence program on the research station? What was the name of the lab and habitation area on the research station? What extinct creature were the researchers breeding on Noveria? What was the name of the undercover Asari commando stationed on Noveria? Matriarch Benezia was searching for the location of which long-lost Mass Relay? Who is the leader of the biotic commune on Presrop? Who asks Shepard to place a bug in the control center of C-Sec? What is the name of the obsessed fan of Commander Shepard on the Citadel? Slavers raided which Human farming colony in the Attican Traverse? What is the largest Human colony in the Skyllian Verge?
A shiny black/gold beauty Hello, and a very good day/weekend to all our readers! Finally, I am back with a new review for the Gundam Astray Gold Frame Amatsu Mina (RG)! Building and writing this have been quite a challenge since I have been awfully sick and finding myself unable to work on the past week. Thus, the delay of the build and the review. Though being sick have taken more time away from me completing this kit, I do find that the time lost was a good thing since it gave me more time to formulate my thoughts and more time to really work on this kit. To start, I should disclose here that I was never a fan of the Gundam Astray series kits mainly because I am not a huge fan of the overall design and look of the Gundam Astray as a whole. So, imagine my excitement when I was contacted by someone to build this for their kid. Can you imagine it? no? Good, because honestly I wasn’t excited for it especially when I was told that what I would be building is the gold frame version of the Astray series to make matters even worse it is the RG version of it. The best part is when I unboxed the kit oh I remember how my head went blank during the unboxing of the kit, and in my mind, I keep telling myself what the hell I’ve gotten myself into. Looking back at the unboxing, I was really dreading the fact that I would be building something not just had shiny back parts but one that also would have a lot of gold plated parts too. I was expecting this to be a nightmare tbh, at first it wasn’t looking good. That is until I started building this. But before we get into the review lets first go into a lil’ bit of the history of this awesome Mobile Suit. History and the development of the MBF-P01-Re2 Gundam Astray Gold Frame Amatsu Mina. The MBF-P01-Re2 Gundam Astray Gold Frame Amatsu Mina is the repaired and upgraded version of the MBF-P01-REAMATU Gundam Astray Gold Frame Amatsu. After the death of Rondo Gina Shahku Rondo Mina (Rondo Gina’s twin sister) took over piloting duties for the Amatsu Mina. At first glance, it is hard to find any difference in the outward look between the Gundam Astray Amatsu and the Amatsu Mina but there are some minute changes made as you can see here in comparison picture here. can you see the differences? Can you see it? As you guys may notice the only major upgrade in between this two is really on the addition of the leg armor for the Amatsu Mina as versus the original Amatsu. This was due to the damage the leg unit sustained during an encounter with the Regenerate Gundam during an operation test for the new equipment. After the battle, the Amatsu Mina was given more armor to protect it further from sustaining major damages. The other upgrades made for the Amatsu Mina was on the weapons system, on top of the weapons that was inherited from the original Amatsu (the “Magashira no Hoko” Harpoon, “MaganoIkutachi” Energy Absorption Claw, “Igelstellung” 75mm Multi-Barrel CIWS and the “Trikeros Kai” Offensive Shield System) it was given a pair of the “Totsuka no Tsurugi” sabers, a retractable “Tsumuha no Tachi” triple claw mounted on the left forearm and later in CE73 it was given the “Okitsu no Kagami” an offence/defence beam shield system. It was also said that that the upgrades on the Amatsu Mina given it the capability to do atmospheric flight, as evidenced when it was used to defend a town that was assaulted by ZAFT forces, but it was unsure either this was a new ability that comes with the upgrades or if it was a trait that was inherited from the Gold Frame Amatsu as it was the only version of it ever made. All and all this is quite an impressive mobile suit. Reading and going through the history really does make me want to read the manga. Anyways with the history lesson done lets head to the review! The Review! Aah the gold frame, this was really my surprise build of this year. If I could go back I time to tell my past self that I would be building this kit in 2017 my past self would have laughed himself to death. Oh, how naïve he is indeed. I honestly felt that if I were to keep my old mentality of going about things I would most likely have missed this awesome kit. Yes, you read that right, this is an awesome kit overall and one that I really enjoyed myself with! There is a lot to love and talk about the Amatsu Mina but first lets us touch on the build of the kit. When I first started this, I thought there will be a lot of parts of the build that would make me cringe in pain looking at the ugly nubs on both the gold plated parts and the black shiny parts (though I was ready to paint them up), this is only true when I first started with the feet section of this kit (only on the feet section) but as I progress I find that the nub issues wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, because most of the parts were undergated and the placements of the nubs didn’t hamper the look of the overall parts at all. Towards the end you would really find yourself not using much of the paint. Though in my defense, the only reason I use the paint is just to make the gold parts look more synchronized (I hate the light gold parts). Though through the painting process I do find my handiwork still needs tons practice. Regardless, on how it looked overall, I was happy to still find that it turned out just the way I imagined it would be. Even the black shiny parts were as well surprisingly good. Though I do have a few mishaps with some of the parts and in turn, I end up with a few bad nub marks but because it was more in the inner parts of the kits, the ugly nub marks were hidden well and you really have to make an effort if you really want to take the time to really find them ugly nubs. So, even if you choose to just build the kit as is, without considering on painting the kit you are still good, well as long you can tolerate one ugly nub mark on the feet section haha. Unfortunately for my version of this kit, there is something that happened while building this kit is where I did find that the heel part of the feet section was a quite fragile. The reason for this is as I was completing the right leg section the joint that connects the heel armor and the heel’s inner frame, the inner frame join just decided to give in and break apart. In turn forcing me to glue the whole heel section up. Strangely enough, the left leg was completed with no issues or whatsoever, so I was wondering if i am the only one facing this issue or if you guys as well have faced this before, do let me know here if it has happened to you too. Now let’s talk about the articulation of this RG kit. Usually, this is something that I do dread in doing as some of the RG armor sections are usually a bitch to handle and in turn limits the articulation of some of the RG kits. Fortunately, however, the articulation of the Amatsu Mina was impressive overall. For something that carries a HUGE backpack unit, I thought that it would limit the movement of the arm as I thought that the shoulder armor would collide with the backpack unit and thus limit the movement. Fortunately, it wasn’t the case here, as there is some significant space between the backpack unit and the arm unit so because of that the arm unit has more freedom of movement. The leg as well had a lot of freedom of movement as well though it does at times feel flimsy. There is no limit to what you can do with the leg unit on the Astray Gold Frame Amatsu Mina. This is vastly different to what you get on the Shinanju (RG) that I built earlier this year where the armors of the leg do limit certain movements of the leg unit, mainly because the armors would just simply come off. You would find this isn’t the case with the Amatsu Mina. Honestly even with some of the parts feels a bit lose and annoying but overall the kit feels solid and one of those kit that you can pose to your heart’s content. The only thing that I do think that is an issue is the overall weight issue with the kit, all thanks to its big backpack system for the Amatsu Mina. Without it, the Amatsu mina is able to stand without any assistance well, up until you install the backpack unit to the kit and then it became an unbalanced mess. It’s quite annoying since if you want to fully utilize/pose the kit, you need to get a stand and take up more space then it supposed to. If you don’t mind so much about how much space it would take within your Gunpla collection or if you are having this kit for the first time do take note that it is essential that you get the RG/HG stand if you want to get it to look awesome AF. The other thing I liked with this kit is the weapon sets. Usually, you build them and that’s about it, not with this one, the weapons that it has I find really quite fun to play around with especially the harpoons on the Amatsu Mina’s backpack, that thing is dope af. Even the Shield blaster thing looks awesome but to me the real best part of the weapons system if the Amatsu Mina really is the “Okitsu no Kagami” polearm/shield hybrid thing. It is so good that it had its own action stand to use when you want to pose the weapon when its detached from its main body. That itself is quite impressive. Towards the end, I do find myself enjoying my time with this kit and thanking the commissioner for this project to me. This is really is one that I really find myself having a lot of fun with and finding myself fallen in love with towards the end of the day. I do highly recommend getting the Amatsu Mina to those that haven’t and honestly I would even say this is one of the best 2017 kits that I have built this year! With the amount of fun, I have with this I am starting to look forward to getting more Gundam Astray kits, maybe on the next build I’ll get the Astray Red Frame MG kit? Huhu that is one that we shall see in the near future. I really can’t state enough on how much this one has turned me into a believer of the Astray kits. I really wish that Bandai/sunrise would release the Gundam Seed Astray Anime already and give us more Gundam SEED kits. With that ends the review for this awesome kit, what do you guys think of the points that I brought up for this kit? Do you agree with it? What are your own experiences with the kit? Do you find the same issues with what I find with this? Or am I the only one? Haha, I do look forward to reading your thoughts of this review and of the kit! So, write away! We will be back with a new edition of let’s Talk Gunpla in this coming Wednesday and hopefully a completed written review of the MS-06-R-2 Zaku II Johnny Ridden Custom unit (MG) Ver.2.0 in this coming Sunday! Thanks again to all of you here and we hope to see you guys again soon! May you guys have an awesome weekend and as well have an awesome gunpla time! Till next time! Ciao! Advertisements
How Wall Street fraudsters ripped you off, again The LIBOR price-fixing scam has cost at least $110 million -- in the state of Oregon alone! Just as you’re struggling to finance a summer vacation, or simply to pay the freaking rent, how would you like to open your wallet and hand over a wad of cash to a gang of international con artists who commit fraud as casually as they order a five-course dinner? Really? That’s how you feel about it? Well, tell it to the U.S. Department of Justice, because that’s just what’s going down as a result of the LIBOR scandal. To recap: Bank hustlers manipulated the world’s most important set of benchmark interest rates and thereby impacted the prices of upward of $500 trillion worth of financial instruments. The LIBOR scam devastated state and municipal budgets, squeezed pension yields and ripped off bank shareholders. In a case of jaw-dropping fraud, greedy traders rigged up the benchmark so that they could cash in on bets on derivatives, while banks submitted fake numbers to make themselves look financially healthier. One Barclays official was fond of fudging numbers in exchange for champagne. “Dude…I owe you big time!” gushed a trader in an email to Barclays’ Mr. Fix-It. “Come over one day after work and I'm opening a bottle of Bollinger." Advertisement: That’s right. A bottle of bubbly for a scam that screwed your grandma on her retirement savings. Retail bank certificates of deposit, you see, are very popular with senior citizens, and they are priced based on LIBOR benchmarks. As Alexander Arapoglou and Jerri-Lynn Scofield have explained on AlterNet, that alone could cause Grandma’s income to drop by as much as 2 percent. It ain’t like she didn’t need the money! That's not even counting what happened to her pension -- or yours. LIBOR was, in the opinion of many, the con of the century. But is it a crime without punishment? About a month ago, the Wall Street Journal reported that a federal court judge had let several banks off the hook, dismissing claims that 16 banks targeted by lawsuits had broken federal antitrust laws by rigging LIBOR. As Matt Taibbi explained in his must-read article on the banking scandal, the federal judge bought the banks’ ridiculous blame-the-victim story that if cities and towns and other investors lost money over LIBOR rigging, it was their own fault. Why would they think the banks were competing, rather than, um, “collaborating”? A collaborative cheer sounded in bank boardrooms around the world, because unless the plaintiffs can win on appeal, the ruling significantly reduces what banks would potentially have to pay for wrongdoing. Some people in the state of Oregon are feeling just a bit riled by this state of affairs. New research shows that the state of Oregon alone lost at least $110 million as a result of the LIBOR scam. The research on Oregon is based on an analysis of monthly investment data provided by State Street Bank, the custodian bank for the State of Oregon. On Friday, the Oregon Working Families Party joined a coalition of labor and community leaders to call on Governor John Kitzhaber to sue the Wall Street banks responsible for the costly fraud. According to a statement from the WFP, Oregon has not filed a single lawsuit in connected to LIBOR. The governor remains mute on the issue. “Wall Street just robbed us again. When are our leaders going to stand up for Oregonians to bring some of our money back home?” said Steve Hughes, state director of the Oregon Working Families Party. “This ain’t chump change either—with $110 million Oregon could literally double its contribution to the Oregon Opportunity Grant to help more Oregon students get a college education.” Advertisement: Joe Dinkin of WFP told me in an email that despite the recent federal ruling, "other legal avenues for recovery remain open under both federal Securities Act and state law." He adds that "nearly all of Oregon's losses were in securities investments, so fraud claims pursuant to the federal Securities Act could allow state to recover losses." Oregon is hardly alone in its troubles with LIBOR. Last year, political economist Thomas Ferguson traced out how cities and states around the country had lost billions over the years on swaps, many of which also are tied to LIBOR in one way or another. According to Bloomberg, U.S. prosecutors are pursuing guilty pleas, criminal convictions and fines from banks in a global investigation of the fraud. That might be reassuring, if it weren’t for that small matter of Attorney General Eric Holder recently telling Congress that the size of financial institutions has had “an inhibiting impact” on prosecutions against them. In other words, too-big-to-fail is too-big-to-jail. In a recent article, Pam Martens asked a burning question: Is the DOJ deliberately stalling on bringing charges against U.S. banks connected to LIBOR, namely JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup? Meanwhile, the riggers continue to rig, and the regulators sit around scratching their heads. And as for you and me? That part is easy: We get fleeced. Advertisement: Perhaps you’d like to ask officials in your own state what they are doing about LIBOR. But also ask how many banks and financial companies contributed to their most recent election campaigns, and how much they accepted from national party oriented groups that help raise money from banks and their executives for state officials’ campaigns, like the Democratic Governors Association, the Democratic Attorneys General Association, and their Republican counterparts. Interestingly, Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber received large contributions from the DGA when he ran in 2010. Perhaps that has something to do with his silence on LIBOR.
The under-manned military will launch a detailed range of dolls that will go on sale this spring complete with minutely detailed weapons and clothing. Two decades after the eye-swivelling, rubber-hand-gripping Action Man figures were last deployed in toy shops the 10in doll, sold under the 'HM Armed Forces' brand name, is to step on to the commercial front line. Precisely modelled on troops fighting in Helmand province today, each Service is represented. The Army's soldier comes complete with SA80 rifle, body armour and Mark 4 Alpha helmet. His hardy glare has to compete on the shelves alongside the steely gaze of the Royal Marine looking studiedly stoic in his green beret. The RAF, who deploy their Tornado bombers to the frontline in Afghanistan this year, have a pilot in full flight gear with a pistol in case he had to eject over enemy lines. They will be launched on May 8 to coincide with VE Day by the toy makers Character Group who have designed and marketed the action figures under a licensing deal that will give a share of profits to the MoD which currently has a £2 billion hole in its budget. The company said the military range "promises to fill the significant void in the action figure market in recent years caused by the lack of authentic military-inspired toys". Originally sold in American by Hasbro the Action Man range, made in Britain by Palitoy under licence, appeared in 1966 and was discontinued in 1984. Defence sources said the project was intended to raise the services' public profile rather than to raise money. "We are rightly proud to be celebrating our Armed Forces through the production of these new action figures," an MoD spokesman said. "These toys showcase our people and equipment and this commercial recognition proves the high level support for our forces among the British public."
Republicans are gritting their teeth and bracing for the arrival of a new senator whose every utterance will sound like nails on a chalkboard to them. GOP sees Franken as top public enemy With only a longshot court appeal standing in the way of Democrat Al Franken’s election to the Senate, Republicans are gritting their teeth and bracing for the arrival of a new senator whose every utterance will sound like nails on a chalkboard to them. While Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) has filed suit to contest the results of a disputed recount process that turned his narrow lead into a 225-vote deficit, his likely defeat stands to turn Franken, the polarizing former “Saturday Night Live” writer, into the senator who launched a thousand direct mail fundraising appeals. Story Continued Below “I don’t know if we’ve ever had an opponent who is so disliked by Republicans as Al Franken,” said Minnesota Republican Party Chair Ron Carey, who cautioned that Coleman’s election challenge could still turn the results back his way. “It’s one thing to lose to an honorable opponent, but Al Franken is not considered an honorable opponent by Minnesota Republicans.” Marty Seifert, the Republican leader in the Minnesota House of Representatives, said Franken’s long record of antagonizing conservatives would make it difficult for him to connect with voters who supported Coleman. “It’s going to be hard for Franken to be very effective with any Republicans, in terms of having any credibility with us, just because he’s been so nasty in the past,” Seifert said. “He certainly has callous and very partisan behavior in the past that is beyond the pale.” According to Carleton College political scientist Steven Schier, Franken’s record as a “flamboyant and aggressive partisan” would make him ripe for criticism back home. “I think it’s impossible to overstate the hostility Minnesota Republicans feel toward Al Franken,” Schier said. “He will be a very useful fundraising tool.” Republicans outside Minnesota are equally apoplectic when it comes to Franken. Prominent conservative Rush Limbaugh, who Franken mocked in the title of one of his books, has already jabbed Franken on his radio show, telling listeners in December that Franken “won’t quit [the Senate race] because he doesn’t know how to get a real job…He’s a pathetic figure.” Democrats are hopeful that the resentment Franken faces from Republicans both within and outside of his home state will not impede his ability to win over his constituents – and his fellow members of the U.S. Senate. They believe that by leaving behind his past as a bomb-throwing entertainer and focusing on issues, he will earn the respect of colleagues and can build on the 42 percent of the vote he won in November. “Every freshman senator will have a problem fitting in with that crew, but his will be a little more difficult,” said former Minnesota Attorney General Mike Hatch, who was the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party’s nominee for governor in 2006. Hatch, who served as attorney general during the gubernatorial term of former professional wrestler Jesse Ventura, said celebrity candidates can’t take the habits of their old jobs with them into office. “There is this instinct and discipline of 20 or 30 years in the entertainment business…to draw attention,” Hatch said. “He has to have a filter.” Polling results this week confirmed Franken's precarious position: more Minnesotans have a negative impression of him than a positive one, by a 45 percent to 37 percent margin. Those would be dismal numbers under any circumstances, but for a newly-elected senator they would be particularly alarming. Matt Entenza, the former DFL Party leader in the Minnesota House, said Franken had defied expectations in the Senate race by restraining his sense of humor and campaigning as a sober workhorse. “The struggle for the campaign was always trying to communicate that he was a serious guy, and in some ways I think they toned him down almost too much, tried to be almost too serious,” he explained. “You would see local TV anchors giving him questions that were designed to give him an opportunity for a humorous response. He would give a very serious, wonkish policy response.”
Last week, the Irish High Court made a judgement on transatlantic data flows that could have far reaching implications for US tech firms and point the way towards economic disaster for the UK. Yes, it might not have received much coverage at the time, but the court’s decision was a biggie. It asked the European Union Court of Justice (CJEU) to scrutinise the mechanism by which Facebook and many other firms transfer data: standard contractual clauses (SCCs). Why? Because Austrian law student Max Schrems is still not happy that his personal data could theoretically be snooped on by the US authorities whilst residing in Facebook datacentres over there. His previous battle with Facebook over this issue led to the collapse of the Safe Harbour agreement between the EU and US. Its replacement, Privacy Shield, is the other main legal mechanism – aside from SCCs – that govern data transfers outside the US. “In simple terms, US law requires Facebook to help the NSA with mass surveillance and EU law prohibits just that,” Schrems said in a written statement following the court’s decision. “As Facebook is subject to both jurisdictions, they got themselves in a legal dilemma that they cannot possibly solve in the long run.” Emily Taylor, CEO of Oxford Innovation Labs and Chatham House associate fellow, took time out to discuss the issue with me. “The reference to the CJEU is no surprise, and the fact that the US government applied to be joined as party shows how high the stakes are on all sides – for governments, for big data platforms like Facebook, and for individuals,” she told me. “The case shows that the Snowden revelations continue to reverberate on both sides of the Atlantic. The CJEU has taken a consistently hard line against mass data collection and retention, and increasingly relies on the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. The Charter allows for ‘more extensive protection’ of fundamental rights such as privacy, compared with the more familiar European Convention.” That spells some tricky times ahead for Silicon Valley, especially with Privacy Shield also facing an uncertain future. That’s not all though. The case tells us much about what may happen to post-Brexit Britain. Our digital economy is worth around £160bn and responsible for over 1.5m jobs, by some estimates. That makes it a vital part of the overall economy, and means unhindered data transfers with the EU – our biggest trading partner and the largest trading bloc in the world – are absolutely essential. So how do we square the EU’s requirements around strong privacy protections for citizens, with the UK’s brand spanking new Investigatory Powers Act? Also known as the Snoopers’ Charter, the new law has given the UK authorities probably more power than any country on earth – save for China and North Korea – to snoop on their own citizens. “It is difficult to see how the UK’s mass data collection requirements under the Investigatory Powers Act could satisfy the EU Charter and this could have a severe impact on EU-UK data flows, potentially damaging UK business interests post-Brexit,” Taylor concluded. That should be getting people in all sorts of high places very nervous indeed.
"Separatist" redirects here. For other uses, see Separatist (disambiguation) advocacy of a state of cultural, ethnic, tribal, religious, racial, governmental or gender separation from the larger group A common definition of separatism is that it is the advocacy of a state of cultural, ethnic, tribal, religious, racial, governmental or gender separation from the larger group. While it often refers to full political secession,[1] separatist groups may seek nothing more than greater autonomy.[2] While some critics[who?] may equate separatism with religious segregation, racist segregation, or sexist segregation, most separatists[who?] argue that separation by choice may serve useful purposes and is not the same as government-enforced segregation. There is some academic debate about this definition, and in particular how it relates to secessionism, as has been discussed online.[3] Separatist groups practice a form of identity politics, or political activity and theorizing founded in the shared experiences of injustice visited upon members of certain social groups. Such groups believe attempts at integration with dominant groups compromise their identity and ability to pursue greater self-determination.[4] However, economic and political factors usually are critical in creating strong separatist movements as opposed to less ambitious identity movements.[5] Motivations [ edit ] Support for Catalan independence is based on the concept that Catalonia is a nation Groups may have one or more motivations for separation, including:[6] Emotional resentment and hatred of rival communities. Protection from genocide and ethnic cleansing. Resistance by victims of oppression, including denigration of their language, culture or religion. Influence and propaganda by those inside and outside the region who hope to gain politically from intergroup conflict and hatred. Economic and political dominance of one group that does not share power and privilege in an egalitarian fashion. Economic motivations: seeking to end economic exploitation by more powerful group or, conversely, to escape economic redistribution from a richer to a poorer group. Preservation of threatened religious, language or other cultural tradition. Destabilization from one separatist movement giving rise to others. Geopolitical power vacuum from breakup of larger states or empires. Continuing fragmentation as more and more states break up. Feeling that the perceived nation was added to the larger state by illegitimate means. The perception that the state can no longer support one's own group or has betrayed their interests. Opposition to political decisions. Governmental responses [ edit ] How far separatist demands will go toward full independence, and whether groups pursue constitutional and nonviolent or armed violence, depend on a variety of economic, political, social and cultural factors, including movement leadership[7] and the government's response.[5] Governments may respond in a number of ways, some of which are mutually exclusive. Some include:[8] accede to separatist demands improve the circumstances of disadvantaged minorities, be they religious, linguistic, territorial, economic or political adopt "asymmetric federalism" where different states have different relations to the central government depending on separatist demands or considerations Allow minorities to win in political disputes about which they feel strongly, through parliamentary voting, referendum, etc. Settle for a confederation or a commonwealth relationship where there are only limited ties among states. Some governments suppress any separatist movement in their own country, but support separatism in other countries. Ethnic separatism [ edit ] Ethnic separatism is based more on cultural and linguistic differences than religious or racial differences, which also may exist. Ethnic separatist movements include the following: Eurasia Mural for Catalan independence in Belfast Africa Americas Australasia Racial separatism [ edit ] Some separatist groups seek to separate from others along racial lines. They oppose interracial marriage and integration with other races and seek separate schools, businesses, churches and other institutions; and often separate societies, territories, countries, and governments. Territories considered for "Aztlán" Religious separatism [ edit ] Religious separatist groups and sects want to withdraw from some larger religious groups and/or believe they should interact primarily with coreligionists.[citation needed] Geographic and socioeconomic separatism [ edit ] Gender and sexist separatism [ edit ] The relationship between gender and separatism is complex and warrants more research.[41] Separatist feminism is women's choosing to separate from ostensibly male-defined, male-dominated institutions, relationships, roles and activities.[42] Lesbian separatism advocates lesbianism as the logical result of feminism. Some separatist feminists and lesbian separatists have chosen to live apart in intentional community, cooperatives, and on land trusts.[43] Queer nationalism (or "Gay separatism") seeks a community distinct and separate from other social groups.[44][45] See also [ edit ] Lists [ edit ] General [ edit ] References [ edit ]
The Obama Administration may extend beyond 2016 a federal reimbursement program for health insurance companies that lose money by participating in the newly created health care exchanges. Industry insiders told the Washington Examiner a plan to extend the Affordable Care Act’s “risk corridors” are under discussion, but that administration officials have not made a final decision. The risk corridor program was written into the 2,700-page health care bill to help the insurance companies offset losses if they enroll too few healthy customers and sign up too many people with high health care costs. Risk corridors are aimed at keeping premiums from skyrocketing by requiring the government to “share in the risk associated with the new marketplace,” according to the health care lobbying group America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP). Insurance companies pay into a pool to cover losses for companies that fare poorly but the federal government must step in if there is widespread loss, which some say could happen due to the lack of participation on the health care exchanges from young and healthy individuals. The program, however is only meant to be short term, AHIP said, to “ease the transition between the old and new marketplace.” But the disastrous rollout of the law resulted in millions of people on the individual market losing health care policies that did not include the “essential benefits” required under the new health care law, including maternity care and pediatric dentistry. The resulting public outcry prompted President Obama on Nov. 14 to announce that health insurance companies could allow customers to keep their old plans for an extra year. The Obama Administration is now weighing a plan to grant an additional three-year extension for non-complaint plans on the individual market. Such a move would prevent millions of people from losing their policies in the critical weeks and months before the 2014 election. But it would also allow people on the individual market to keep non-compliant plans beyond the risk corridor’s 2016 expiration date, leaving health insurance companies serving the exchange vulnerable to financial losses as the more healthy customers continue to stay out of the exchanges. Health insurance companies are looking for something in exchange for the three-year extension, which will make it much harder for them to sign up healthier and younger customers. Extending the risk corridor program is part of that conversation with the White House, industry sources said. “If the extension increases adverse selection, premiums will go up and taxpayers will be on the hook for more money through extending the risk corridors,” Mike Tanner, a health care policy scholar at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, said. “The question is, how much? And I don’t think anybody knows because I don’t think anybody knows how many people we are talking about.” John C. Goodman, the president and CEO of The National Center for Policy Analysis, believes insurance companies participating on the exchanges are headed for significant losses as the sickest and most medically vulnerable get dumped into the exchanges and waivers and delays are granted to the healthy. In Detroit, for example, city officials are considering pushing onto the health care exchanges municipal retirees who are too young to qualify for Medicare. “I can understand why they are talking about extending the risk corridors because I think the losses are going to be quite large,” Goodman said. Health care law supporters point out that the federal government can make money off risk corridor programs. A Congressional Budget Office report last week predicted the federal government won’t lose a dime through the risk corridor program but will end up netting $8 billion. The CBO based its estimate on the performance of risk corridors established under the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit program passed by a Republican-led Congress and signed into law by President Bush in 2003. “The risk corridor program was a good idea during the Bush administration, and it worked,” Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., said during a recent hearing on the program. “Rather than a bailout for insurance companies, the program has resulted in $7 billion in net gains to taxpayers. But now since these same mechanisms are part of the Affordable Care Act, Republicans argue that they are a bailout for insurance companies.” Critics in and out of Congress want legislation to repeal the risk corridors and warn that Obamacare won’t yield the same kind of results as Medicare Part D because of the much larger size and scope of the new health care law and the potential for a much larger pool of sick and unhealthy on the exchanges. “Medicare Part D made money, but I don’t think that’s going to be true here,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the former director of the Congressional Budget Office who now runs American Action Forum, which describes itself as a center-right policy institute. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. has introduced legislation to repeal the risk corridor provision in the health care law, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has no plans to take up the bill.
On this 75th anniversary of the German invasion of the Soviet Union the Russians will once again remind the world that the Red Army saved European civilisation as well as Russia from the Nazis Seventy-five years ago Adolf Hitler launched the biggest and most destructive military campaign in history when three million German and allied troops invaded the Soviet Union along a 1,000-mile front. Operation Barbarossa – the codename for the German invasion of Russia - was no ordinary military campaign: it was an ideological and racist war, a war of destruction and extermination that aimed to kill Jews, enslave the Slavic peoples and destroy communism. The result was a war in which 25 million Soviet citizens died, including a million Jews, executed by the SS in 1941-1942 – an action which became the template for the Nazi Holocaust of European Jewry. European Russia was devastated by the German invasion as 70,000 towns and villages were destroyed along with 98,000 collective farms, tens of thousands of factories and thousands of miles of roads and railways. During the war the USSR lost 15% of its population and 30% of its national wealth. Instead of a quick victory Germany faced a long war of attrition on the eastern front – a struggle that it was destined to lose now that Soviet Union was allied to Great Britain and the United States The attack on Russia was the climax of Hitler’s bid to establish Germany as the dominant world power. That bid had begun with the invasion of Poland in September 1939, followed by the German conquest of France in June 1940. By 1941 the German war machine had conquered most of Europe as country after country was invaded or forced to join Hitler’s Axis alliance. In the west, only Britain, protected by the English Channel and the strength of the Royal Navy and Air Force, remained defiant and undefeated. In the east, the Soviet Union was the last remaining obstacle to German domination of Europe. The Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin had concluded a non-aggression pact with Hitler in August 1939, together with a secret spheres of influence agreement dividing Poland and the Baltic States between Germany and the Soviet Union. This deal began to unravel in summer 1940 following the defeat of France and Soviet occupation of the Baltic States. In November 1940 Stalin sent his foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, to Berlin to re-negotiate the Nazi-Soviet pact. But Hitler’s offer of a junior partnership in a global coalition against Britain and the United States was rejected by Stalin. Shortly after the Berlin conference Hitler issued the directive for Operation Barbarossa. The aim of Barbarossa was to conquer Russia in the course of a single Blitzkrieg campaign. Hitler and his generals thought that it would take only a few months to destroy the Red Army, capture Leningrad and Moscow and occupy the western half of the Soviet Union along a line from Archangel to Astrakhan. “The world will hold its breath,” said Hitler as he reassured his generals that all they had to do was kick the door in and the whole rotten structure of the Soviet communist system would collapse. These ideological prejudices against the Soviet system were reinforced by German perceptions that the Red Army had performed badly in the Winter War with Finland in 1939-1940. The spur for that war was Finland’s refusal to concede territory the Soviets considered vital to safeguard the security of Leningrad. Moscow expected an easy victory, but the initial Soviet attack on Finland in December 1939 went badly wrong and the Red Army lost tens of thousands of troops. After the Red Army regrouped, a second offensive forced the Finns to accept an unfavourable peace treaty in March 1940. The German military concluded, wrongly, that the Red Army would be a pushover for the Wehrmacht. What the Germans did not appreciate was that after the Finnish war the Red Army undertook a far-reaching examination of its performance. The result was a series of military reforms, including reinstatement into the armed forces of thousands of “suspect” officers who had been purged by Stalin in the 1930s. So when Hitler attacked the Soviet Union he faced a more experienced and formidable military force than he had imagined. On the day the invasion began – June 22nd 1941 - Hitler claimed that it was a response to Russian actions and provocations. Nazi propagandists depicted Operation Barbarossa as a pre-emptive strike against an imminent Soviet attack on Germany. By invading Russia Germany was said to be protecting Christian Europe from the Asiatic barbaric hordes in the east. The myth that Germany fought a defensive war against the Soviet Union persists in ultra-right political circles but there is no evidence that Stalin contemplated starting a war with Germany in summer 1941. On the contrary, Stalin was desperate to avoid war in order to secure as much time as possible to complete Soviet defence preparations. While some Soviet generals were inclined take action to pre-empt the coming German attack that was far too adventurous for Stalin, who feared war, not least because he suspected the British were plotting to realign with Germany and take part in an anti-Bolshevik campaign against the USSR. These suspicions were reinforced by the mysterious flight to Britain of Hitler’s deputy, Rudolph Hess in May 1941, which Stalin interpreted as part of negotiations for an Anglo-German alliance. By doctrine and tradition the Red Army was offensive-oriented and it was planning to fight an offensive war against Germany but only after Hitler attacked the USSR. Soviet preparations for war revolved around plans for a counter-offensive in which the Red Army would absorb the initial German attack and then launch counter-invasions of enemy territory. There is no evidence that these plans had evolved into a more aggressive strategy by summer 1941. Soviet preparations for war before 22 June 1941 were consistent with a defensive posture. At first all went well for Hitler as the German armies advanced deep into Soviet territory, destroying everything that was thrown at them and surrounding and capturing millions of enemy troops. As early as July 3, General Franz Halder, chief of the German army general staff, noted in his diary: “On my part it would not be too bold to assert that the campaign against Russia has been won in the space of two weeks.” By September, the Germans had captured Kiev, surrounded Leningrad and were ready to advance on Moscow. Halder’s triumphalism was a little premature and by early August he was beginning to have doubts: “At the beginning of the war we calculated there would be about 200 enemy divisions against us. But already we have counted 360. If we destroy a dozen, the Russians present us with another dozen.” But it was not just inexhaustible reserves of manpower that thwarted German plans for a quick and easy victory. Soviet defences did not crumble completely. The Red Army fought back and conducted a tenacious defence once it got over the shock and awe of the initial German attack. In the Brest fortress on the border with German-occupied Poland, 3,000 Soviet soldiers fought almost to the last man. Odessa, the Soviet Navy’s main port on the Black Sea, held out for weeks against an attack by the Romanian 4th army, while its sister port of Sebastopol fought on for another year. Millions of Soviet soldiers were taken prisoner, but tens of thousands fought their way out of encirclement. The Red Army did not defend passively; in line with its offensivist ethos it launched numerous counter-attacks, often forcing German forces to retreat and regroup. The Soviet defence of Kiev held up the German advance on eastern Ukraine for nearly a month. So determined was the Soviet defence of Leningrad that Hitler decided to lay siege to the city rather than capture it by frontal assault. In the Smolensk area German and Soviet armies fought for weeks to control the approaches to Moscow. Hitler’s last chance to defeat the Soviet Union in 1941, and thereby avoid a costly war of attrition, came in the autumn when he attacked Moscow with more than a million men. By the end of November, advance units of the German army could see the spires of Moscow’s Kremlin. But in early December, the Red Army launched a counteroffensive that forced the Germans back 100 miles. For a while Stalin hoped to reverse Operation Barbarossa completely and chase the Germans out of Russia altogether, but that proved beyond the capabilities of the Red Army. Not until the end of 1942, with victory at Stalingrad, did the war turn decisively in the Soviets favour. Hitler’s inability to capture Moscow signalled the strategic failure of Operation Barbarossa. Instead of a quick victory Germany faced a long war of attrition on the eastern front – a struggle that it was destined to lose now that Soviet Union was allied to Great Britain and the United States. When Germany invaded Russia, Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister, immediately declared his solidarity with Soviet Union while US President Roosevelt authorised American aid to the USSR. The Americans did not enter the conflict officially until the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor and Hitler’s declaration of war on the United States in December 1941. This seemingly irrational decision by Hitler was not as crazy as it appears in retrospect. By this time the United States was de facto Britain’s ally and was protecting British convoys across the Atlantic, ships laden with American supplies. Crucially, Hitler was still confident of victory on the Eastern Front; the Germany army had stalled in front of Moscow but the full power of the Soviet counter-offensive had yet to be revealed. Hitler’s decision to declare war on the Americans was also intimately connected to the radicalisation of Nazi policy on the Jewish question. Massacres of Soviet Jews had begun and before the war Hitler had threatened that if there was another global conflict the Jews would all perish. The outbreak of the Pacific War presented Hitler with an opportunity to fulfil his prophecy. The European War was transformed by Hitler into a World War in which the Nazis could pursue their genocidal goals. Shortly after, at Heydrich’s Wansee conference in January 1942, it was decided to round-up Europe’s Jews. Those who were able-bodied would be worked death in the German was economy while the rest would murdered like their religious compatriots in the Soviet Union. Churchill and Roosevelt both feared the German invasion would succeed. It is important to remember that the initial German successes in Russia were not surprising given a battle-hardened army that had so easily conquered Poland and France. Also working in the German favour was the factor of surprise. In his so-called secret speech to the 20th congress of the Soviet communist party in 1956 Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin’s successor as party leader, attacked Stalin for allowing the Red Army to be surprised by the German attack – a miscalculation that cost millions of lives and brought the Soviet Union to the brink of defeat, or so it has been argued. Actually, Stalin was not surprised by the German invasion. It was self-evident that a German attack was coming. What surprised Stalin – and his generals - was the weight and effectiveness of the initial German attack. Hitler’s attack had been signalled for months by the build-up of German forces along Soviet borders. It is a myth that Stalin’s intelligence officials told the Soviet dictator what he wanted to hear i.e. that Hitler was intent on invading Britain and would not attack the Soviet Union until 1942. For the most part they provided objective reports based on frontier reconnaissance. These reports told the same story as political, diplomatic and espionage sources – that the Germans were preparing to attack the USSR and would do it very soon. Stalin was well aware the Red Army would suffer some damage if it was not fully mobilised when the Germans chose to attack. The important point to grasp was that Stalin believed that it did not matter if the Red Army was surprised because he expected Soviet defences to hold and to buy enough time for the preparation of counterattacks. Stalin’s view was perfectly understandable. Three million troops guarded strongly fortified Soviet frontiers. Soviet preparations for war were as extensive as those of the Germans and these defences gave Stalin the confidence to gamble on delaying war with Hitler, even if that meant flying in the face of mounting intelligence of an imminent German attack. Hence, Stalin held back the Red Army’s full mobilisation until the very last moment. “Mobilisation means war,” Stalin told his chief of staff, General Georgy Zhukov, reminding him that Tsar Nicholas’s mobilisation of the Russian Army during the July Crisis had precipitated war with Germany in 1914. Stalin’s illusions about the strength of Soviet defences were shared by his generals, who were as shocked as he was by the success of the initial German attack. Zhukov’s efforts to implement plans for counteroffensive action in the days after 22 June made the situation worse by making the Red Army’s forward units even more vulnerable to German encirclement. Most Soviet losses in the early weeks and months of the war were the result of massive encirclement operations by the Germans, such as those at Minsk in June 1941 and Kiev in September 1941. Importantly, the Red Army had no doctrine or training to deal with encirclement. Soviet soldiers did not know whether to stand and fight or to attempt a break out. It is the failure of military doctrine and preparation which explains the catastrophe that befell the Red Army on 22 June 1941 not the factor of surprise. To be sure, this was Stalin’s failure but it was not his alone. The Soviet generals shared the responsibility – a fact they tried to cover up by blaming Stalin for the disaster. Eventually, the Red Army learned how to defend effectively, but not before it had suffered astronomical casualties. By the end of 1941 the Red Army had lost nearly 200 divisions in battle and suffered a stunning 4.3 million casualties. The armed force constructed by the Soviets in a decade of mobilisation had all but been destroyed. The Germans suffered, too, losing nearly a million soldiers by the end of 1941 – casualties far higher than those they had suffered in Poland and France. Because of these losses Barbarossa was the Wehrmacht’s first and last multi-pronged strategic offensive in Russia. When the Wehrmacht resumed the offensive in summer 1942 it was along a single strategic axis – a southern campaign to capture the oil fields at Baku – which supplied 90% of Soviet oil.. It was Hitler’s war for oil that led to the most important battle of the Second World War – the fight for Stalingrad in the autumn of 1942. Defeat at Stalingrad was the point of no return for the Wehrmacht. With the encirclement and destruction of the 6th army in Stalingrad the Red Army seized the strategic initiative and thereafter inflicted defeat after defeat on the Germans all the way to the capture of Berlin by Zhukov in May 1945. On this 75th anniversary of the German invasion of the Soviet Union the Russians will once again remind the world that the Red Army saved European civilisation as well as Russia from the Nazis. True, the Soviets did not win the war on their own, but in alliance with Britain, the US and other allies. As the old saying goes, the British gave time, the Americans gave money and the Soviets gave their blood to defeat Hitler. But, as Churchill said, it was the Red Army which tore the guts out of Hitler’s war machine. During the war the Red Army destroyed 600 enemy divisions – Finnish, Rumanian, Hungarian, Spanish and Italian as well as German. Among the Axis losses were 48,000 tanks, 167,000 artillery pieces and 77,000 aircraft. Germany incurred 10 million military casualties including three million dead on the Eastern Front. This represented 75% of Germany’s total losses during the Second World War. After the war surviving German generals claimed they had lost to the Red Army because it had more troops and resources and was better adapted to the weather and terrain of Russia. Hitler was also a convenient scapegoat for Nazi Germany’s defeat by a supposedly barbarian and backward nation. His generals declared Hitler to be a poor supreme commander whose strategic errors had snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Conveniently, these same generals forgot the bad advice they gave to Hitler. In relation to the Wehrmacht’s role in the Holocaust they were even more forgetful. In truth, the German-led forces lost to an army that was better as well a bigger: an army with superior arms, strategy and leadership. Stalin was a far better Supreme Commander than Hitler. The Soviet dictator did not seek to dominate his generals. He did not always take their advice but he learned from their military professionalism and strove to create a coherent and effective high command. Stalin made as many mistakes as Hitler but he learned from them as did the Red Army as a whole. During the war the Red Army developed into a highly effective learning organisation. The experience and lessons of combat and command were assiduously collected, analysed and disseminated. The Soviets kept command structures, force organisation and military doctrine under constant review. Meanwhile, military technology improved steadily and the Soviets made good use of the thousands of tanks, planes and trucks supplied by their western allies. It is sometimes said that the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany was pyrrhic — a victory won at too great a cost. But much worse would have been the alternative of a triumphant Nazi empire in Europe that would have destroyed western democracy as well as Soviet socialism and completed Hitler’s genocide of the Jews. Geoffrey Roberts is Professor of History at University College Cork, Ireland. He is the author of Stalin's Wars: From World War to Cold War (2008) and Stalin’s General: The Life of Georgy Zhukov (2012)
Consoles aren’t the most portable things in the world but Ed Zarick looks to be changing that by showing off and selling the PlayBook 4 and Xbook One- laptop versions of Sony and Microsoft’s latest consoles. However, you’ll need to have a wedge of disposable income in order to afford one as they both cost close to £1000/$1500. Zarick is a self-taught engineer who was also responsible for previously creating a portable Xbox 360, the Xbook 360. Last month, he began selling the Xbook One, featuring a 22 Inch Vizio 1080p LED TV and the console itself packaged in a 3D printed and laser cut case. Zarick has run through the process of turning a console in to a laptop on his own website, Edsjunk. The process for the Playbook 4 is presumably exactly the same, featuring a 22″ Vizio 1080p LED TV and a 3D printed and laser cut case for the console. As you can see in the image above too, these laptop versions can be a bit chunky, the PS4 as we are used to seeing it is actually fairly small. Both consoles come with a HDMI out so that they can still be plugged in to a TV as a console rather than just being used as a laptop. Apparently, demand for these is actually quite high, the Xbook One goes for $1500 plus $75 extra for shipping inside of the US, international shipping will cost extra. The Playbook 4 on the other hand goes for $1400 with shipping charged as extra. Buyers are required to pay a $750.00 non-refundable upfront deposit in order to be added to the waiting list. Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE. KitGuru Says: The Xbook One and Playbook 4 actually seem pretty cool although as you would expect, they are expensive- the parts involved in building one don’t come cheap and due to the time and effort he is putting in to it, Zarick absolutely deserves to be paid for the labour too. What do you guys think of these laptop/console hybrids? If you were rich, would you consider buying one? Or do you think its rather pointless?
Solar energy has made it possible for those in developing countries to turn on lights and power devices at their convenience. They no longer have to rely on the limited resources they have, and it’s also reaped the same benefits for homeless people. Camps in Berkeley, California, have installed donated solar panels to provide easy access to power for those in need. Back on November 4th, Bay Area Rapid Transit evicted numerous homeless people from their camp along Adeline Street. It’s another eviction in a long string of them between the city of Berkeley and the “First They Came for the Homeless” group. Most of them transferred over to Old City Hall while a smaller group established just north of the old one. A third camp is now located at the edge of Aquatic Park.
by Lisa Bodell Labor revolutions, the extinction of shipping companies, and the ability to age in place are a few examples of disruptions on the not-so-distant horizon. As a futurist and CEO of an innovation firm, I study the implications of emerging trends through research and dialog with experts, scientists, and academics in diverse fields. As the first month of 2016 comes to a close, here are seven forces of the future poised to shift the way we live, work, bank, and vote. 1. The Gig Economy will disrupt labor laws. With its low barriers to entry and scheduling flexibility, the Gig Economy will expand its ranks beyond Gen X and Y to include nontraditional workers like senior citizens, stay-at-home parents, and empty nesters. As employers across all sectors use the contractor model to scale back benefits, freelance will become the dominant mode of work. Government will lose major payroll taxes, which, along with increasing influence of independent contractors, will trigger policy change and a labor revolution. Corporations will lobby for universal healthcare to shift the fiscal responsibility of health insurance to the state, and freelance unions will lobby for tax breaks, paid vacation, and retirement benefits. 2. Networked social-structing will disrupt the elder-care industry. As the Internet of Things expands, the power of individuals to social-struct—i.e. connect and share resources—will make aging in place more accessible. The networked family of the future will use more peer-to-peer platforms to organize and share the cost of caring for aging parents. Apps with two- and three-way rating systems will provide transparency for individual home-care workers, their patients, and the adults who hire them. Smart medicine bottles, toilet seats, and appliances will enable caregivers to remotely monitor the wellness of aging relatives. As networked social-structuring breeds new services for the aging population, assisted living will no longer be the default for aging adults with progressive, condition-based needs. 3. National security concerns will disrupt right to privacy. The U.S. government will make the case for becoming guardians of Americans’ personal data in the name of protecting national assets. Stolen identities will increasingly be viewed as a powerful cloak for terrorists vs. merely a frustrating hassle affecting the accounts and future credit of individuals. Hacks will be treated as the work of foreign spies who use information like social security numbers to fake their way into secure systems or leverage personal information for follow-on espionage. New bodies of government— Department of Database Security, anyone?—will be created to combat information warfare. 4. Digital natives will disrupt the financial-services sector. Millennials and their successors will force banks to evolve beyond money-holding institutions. Financial services of the future will use real-time prescriptive analytics to serve as financial coaches for users. Along the full span of the consumer decision journey, an intelligent assistant will remind us of regular monthly expenses, saving goals, and safe-to-spend amounts. Tomorrow’s banks will focus on behavior and outcomes, and leverage data to create new services that manage customers’ digital wallets beyond payment transactions. 5. M-Health will disrupt grocery and restaurant industries. The explosion of big data and mobile-health technologies will provide partnership opportunities for companies beyond health care. As integration of self-monitoring through wearables and apps deepen, grocery stores and restaurants will partner with health-insurance companies to manage the wellness of users. Upon entering the grocery store or restaurant of tomorrow, an intelligent assistant will summarize the user’s current health stats as well as his wellness goals. Food choices will be suggested, purchases recorded, and this data will be shared with his health-insurance provider. Users will be incentivized to share this data with third parties by lower-cost insurance premiums that are behavior-based. 6. Blockchain technology will disrupt voting fraud. Using blockchain database platforms, each registered voter will have her own digital key—a combination of biometrics and an encrypted code—that enables him to cast a vote using a decentralized and automated secure protocol. Instead of recording votes on paper or proprietary computer systems in a polling place, votes will be cast online and recorded on the blockchain, a secure electronic ledger. Because data cannot be manipulated once it’s been recorded on the ledger, blockchain is superior to state-sponsored alternatives, especially in countries with a history of corruption. Voting via blockchain removes the need to count paper ballots and prevents opportunities for mass tampering with electronic voting machines. While blockchain makes it impossible for unregistered individuals to vote, concerns about fair access to digital keys, bribery, or selling votes to the highest bidder will arise. 7. Localization will disrupt shipping. As adoption of high-grade 3-D printers increases, production and design will be localized, which reduces the need for shipping from a central location. The restaurant chef of the future won’t need to wait for an oven replacement part to arrive: she’ll visit her local additive manufacturer, who will download the specs from the appliance manufacturer and print the part on-demand. Unless today’s shipping giants prepare to become tomorrow’s manufacturers, they will risk marginalization or extinction. Whether these predictions seem dystopian, utopian, or something in between, early signs of each disruption are already happening. Monitor these spaces and talk to experts and players within, adjacent, and beyond your industry segment for innovation and partnership opportunities. Conduct frequent innovation training and scenario-planning exercises so your business is prepared today for the disruptions of tomorrow. image credit: tbwa.com Wait! Before you go… Choose how you want the latest innovation content delivered to you: Lisa Bodell, CEO of futurethink is on a mission to create space for change and innovation in organizations using the power of simplicity. Lisa invites to check out more insider resources for forward thinking. Email her at innovate@futurethink.com and request a complimentary copy of futurethink’s “Futurist Sources,” or connect via Twitter and LinkedIn
Greece is one step closer to stumbling out of the eurozone after talks with its European creditors collapsed on Monday. The Eurozone meeting finished early after Greek officials rejected a proposal from the rest of the bloc to extend current bailout program -- for the second time in just five days. Greece was hoping to negotiate a new deal that would keep the country in the eurozone without having to maintain austerity reforms, and called the Eurogroup's offer "absurd." "This program is part of the problem," Greece's finance minister Yanis Varoufakis said. "Our government was elected to challenge the philosophy of the program, not to get cosmetic changes." The country's 240 billion euros bailout program is set to expire at the end of February. Without agreement, Greek banks could lose access to cash from the European Central Bank, and Greece could be ultimately forced out of the eurozone. "In terms of timelines, we have this week and that is it," said Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Eurogroup president. He said there could be a special meeting of the group later this week -- but insisted the next step must come from Athens. Related: Will China or Russia rescue Greece? Probably not Greece's new government, led by anti-austerity party Syriza, wanted to tear up the existing program and replace it with six months of bridge financing to give it breathing space to negotiate a longer term solution. But Europe is standing firm: Greece must honor the terms of the package, before it can talk about ways to ease the burden and boost growth. German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said he was skeptical about any agreement on Monday. Speaking to a German radio station ahead of the meeting, Schauble said Greece has been living beyond its means for a long time and cannot expect others to pay it more. Schauble and other European leaders are trying to protect eurozone taxpayers, who have poured nearly 200 billion euros into Greek bailouts. Several countries, such as Germany and Finland, would have to seek their parliaments' approval on any new bailout package. The Greek government has a strong mandate from its voters -- dozens of support rallies took place across the country on Sunday. But the economic reality is biting. GDP figures published Friday showed Greece's economy shrank in the fourth quarter of 2014 after growing for the first nine months of the year. The government's tax revenues fell almost one billion euros below target in January, as Greeks held off paying taxes before the election, hoping Syriza would scrap unpopular levies. The euro was trading 0.5% down against the dollar after the talks collapsed.
Arsenal prepare to use first-option clause to bring £25m Fabregas back to London Arsenal are manoeuvring themselves into a position to bring Cesc Fabregas back to north London this summer. The former Gunners skipper is currently on his summer holidays following Spain's Confederations Cup campaign and is pondering his future after a frustrating season at Barcelona. Publicly, the Spaniard maintains he wants to stay at the Nou Camp, but doubts over how he fits into manager Tito Vilanova's plans after being regularly overlooked for big games last season has left Fabregas in two minds. Unhappy? Cesc Fabregas' time at Barcelona hasn't gone as planned And the Gunners are poised to strike should the midfielder decide his future lies elsewhere with the Emirates Stadium club being kept updated on developments regarding the 26-year-old's future as the summer progresses. A deal to re-sign Fabregas will be relatively straightforward to conclude. As part of the deal that took Fabregas back to Spain, Arsenal secured a £25million first-option clause as part of the transfer. Should Barca decide to sell Fabregas, the Gunners would have first refusal on the midfielder at a fixed price of £25million. Unconvinced? Barca boss Tito Vilanova has overlooked Fabregas for many key games Even if Fabregas decides he wants to return to London, Barca will be hesitant to let him leave given the work the Catalan club put in to bringing him back to Spain - but Arsenal will be at the front of the queue should that eventuality occur. Meanwhile, the Gunners are stepping up their interest in Swansea defender Ashley Williams following Thomas Vermaelen's back injury. The Wales international is a key target for Arsene Wenger this summer, but Arsenal have baulked at the central-defender's £10million asking price. But as Sportsmail revealed on Tuesday, captain Vermaelen is likely to miss the start of the season due to the recurrence of a lower back problem, leaving the Gunners with just two fit senior centre-halves; Laurent Koscielny and Per Mertesacker. Short at the back? Thomas Vermaelen's injury could tempt the Gunners to bid for Ashley Williams Vermaelen will not travel with the rest of the squad to the Far East on Thursday, instead staying behind to continue with his rehabilitation. It is not yet clear how long the Belgium international will spend on the sidelines, with the next seven days understood to be critical in diagnosing the full extent of the problem.
Buddhism shouldn’t be stereotyped as a New Age fad or reduced to a mere technique, says Scott Mitchell. We miss so much by not acknowledging what it really is. In the American imagination, Buddhism has long been associated with counterculture drop-outs—Beat generation iconoclasts, Age of Aquarius hippies, woo-woo New Agers. This unfortunate stereotype identifies Western Buddhism with the 1960s-era and later converts who popularized it, and ignores the actual people who brought Buddhism to the West—Asian immigrants. It reinforces the idea that Buddhism is not to be taken seriously. At best, Buddhism is seen as something esoteric and disconnected from the world, and at worst, as something flighty and faddish. On the other side of the coin, proponents of mindfulness meditation and other Buddhist-inspired practices have positioned themselves as level-headed advocates of practices whose benefits, they claim, are proven by science. It’s not hard to imagine that this secular–scientific turn is in part an attempt not to be tarred by the popular stereotype of Buddhism as cultish and downright weird. Both perspectives are incomplete. In reality, Buddhism is a religion, complete with all the aspects and depth that implies and the respect a great world religion deserves. To acknowledge Buddhism as a religion is to appreciate its long history and endless cultural manifestations. Depending on how you slice it, Buddhists account for up to ten percent of the world’s population (and at least one percent of North Americans). People were practicing Buddhism nearly five hundred years before the birth of Jesus. Before the modern period, Buddhism spread across virtually the entirety of Asia, and in the modern period you can find Buddhism on every continent. Across all this space and time, Buddhists developed a wealth of approaches, practices, art, and literature in service to the religion’s central claim—that there is suffering and a path toward the alleviation of suffering in nirvana. To reduce all of this history, all of these cultures, all of these perspectives, to a hippy caricature or a single secular-scientific technique is to overlook the fullness of one of humanity’s great religions. To acknowledge Buddhism as a religion is to appreciate its long history and endless cultural manifestations (including our own). “But isn’t Buddhism really a way of life? A philosophy?” some ask. Yes, of course. Like all religions, it has a philosophy. Like all religions, it becomes a way of life when it is practiced. As scholars such as Jay Garfield and Dennis Hirota have long argued, Buddhist philosophers from Nagarjuna to Dignaga, Zhiyi to Fazang, Dogen to Shinran, have been wrestling with philosophical concepts for centuries, long before the likes of Kierkegaard, Heidegger, or Derrida befuddled American liberal arts majors. To say that Buddhism is a religion is to take seriously not only its philosophy and its practices (its “way of life”-ness, if you will) but also its art, its literature and mythology, and its rituals. Ritual is not a bad thing. To paraphrase the late anthropologist Roy Rappaport, ritual (and religion) make humanity possible. The ritual marking of transitional life events is as old as homo sapiens itself, so let’s not discount the various ways that Buddhists, both at home and abroad, have responded to this deep need for ritual with their own ceremonies for marking births, marriages, and deaths. (If you doubt the importance of ritual, ask yourself why you keep celebrating birthdays. Or, better yet, stop celebrating birthdays and watch what happens.) A purely New Age perspective of Buddhism might take all the mythic aspects of the religion a little too seriously; it might assume that devotional rituals refer to some literal truth or some “unseen” cosmic reality (no doubt related to the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, thus losing half the audience in the room). Perhaps this association motivates some to make the secular turn: to treat Buddhist practices as just that—practices—in service to non-religious ends, such as stress reduction, anxiety reduction, increased focus at work or home, weight loss, and so on. All of this might be of value, but a purely secular–scientific perspective rejects Buddhist literature and mythology as pure fiction, on the assumption that none of it can be “proven”—that none of it can be literally true and therefore should not be believed. This perspective, that religious myths must either be believed literally or rejected, overlooks the function of myths—not as a literal telling of events but as narratives, morality plays, and inspirational stories meant to convey not actual facts but how to live. Don’t get hung up on belief. One doesn’t need to believe in some literal sense that the Buddha taught the dharma to the demon Alavaka in the Alavaka Sutta to be a Buddhist or benefit from the dharma. One doesn’t need to debate the veracity of this story or, like a good academic or philologist, debate its authorship or why it was included in the Pali canon. If you leave all of that aside, you can read the Alavaka Sutta as a story about how to live, how to respond to difficulty, and how to be virtuous, truthful, and giving—whether the story is “true” or not. The ability of a not-true story to be inspirational should not be controversial. I’m quite certain you (or someone you know) has taken inspiration from the phrase “Do or not, there is no try,” despite the fact that no one in their right mind believes that Dagobah is a real planet in a galaxy far, far away. That is how narratives and myths function. Don’t get hung up on belief. When we reduce the totality of Buddhism down to one thing—whether New Age stereotype or cure-all for the modern world’s ills—we engage in the practice of reductionism. Reductionism flattens difference and complexity. Reductionism always forces us to focus on one thing while overlooking others. The world today is complicated, and simplistic solutions will not cure its complexities. There is no magic pill that will erase suffering for all persons in all places. This is why Buddhists talk about boundless dharma doors and the eighty-four thousand paths to awakening. For Buddhism to be a vigorous voice for positive change in our world, it will need to engage the world from multiple places—from philosophy to politics to art to myth to ritual and, yes, from the Age of Aquarius to secular science. Fortunately, Buddhism as religion is already well equipped for the job. It’s been doing it for over two thousand years, after all.
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — A group of saffron-robed monks chanted as officials crushed more than 300 elephant tusks in a seaside ceremony on Tuesday, as the new government of President Maithripala Sirisena sought to differentiate itself from its predecessor by sending a powerful message of intolerance for elephant poaching. Sri Lanka is the first South Asian nation to publicly destroy ivory obtained through elephant poaching and the 16th country in the world to destroy confiscated elephant tusks so that they cannot be traded in the black market. The previous Sri Lankan government, led by Mahinda Rajapaksa, had planned to distribute the tusks to Buddhist temples around the island, including the Sacred Temple of the Tooth, the country’s most revered. That spurred an outcry from Sri Lankan environmentalists and international wildlife agencies, who argued that the ivory would later be traded. The crushed ivory weighed 1.5 tons, far less than some caches that have been destroyed. But the action was significant because Sri Lanka is a transit hub for trading in illegal ivory, which is popular in Asia as a symbol of prosperity and for use in Buddhist religious ceremonies. More than 100 tons of poached ivory have been destroyed since 1989, according to the World Wildlife Fund.
Jill Holtzman Vogel, left, and Justin Fairfax, right, are facing off in the lieutenant governor’s race in Virginia. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post and Linda Davidson/The Washington Post) Democrat Justin Fairfax used an infamous Virginia antiabortion bill to go after Republican Jill Holtzman Vogel on Wednesday, when the two rivals for lieutenant governor faced off at a candidate forum. Vogel, a state senator from Fauquier County, sponsored a 2012 bill that would have required most women who get abortions to first undergo a vaginal ultrasound. “Senator Vogel wants to take government out of everybody’s life [but] Senator Vogel sponsored the invasive ultrasound bill that forces women to have invasive ultrasounds,” said Fairfax, a former federal prosecutor. “I can’t think of a more intrusive thing that a government can do. . . . That made Virginia a laughingstock with late-night shows.” The comment set off one of the sharpest exchanges of their 90-minute appearance at Piedmont Virginia Community College, with Vogel declaring, “The attacks that he just levied are 100 percent false.” Fairfax, who also criticized Vogel’s conduct in a mudslinging GOP primary, shot back: “Facts are not attacks.” [The GOP race for lieutenant governor got ugly] Fairfax and Vogel are fighting for a part-time, low-profile post with just two constitutionally mandated duties: presiding over the state Senate (and breaking certain tie votes) and taking over if the governor is incapacitated or leaves office. Moderator Bob Gibson, communications director of the University of Virginia’s Cooper Center for Public Service, listed a third duty: “Running for governor. They all do, and the winner will.” Virginia’s lieutenant governorship often serves as a steppingstone in a state in which the governor’s mansion turns over every four years. Almost every lieutenant governor in modern history has run for governor, including the Democratic incumbent, Ralph Northam. He faces former Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie in November. The lieutenant governor’s office has become more powerful in its own right in recent years, with a closely divided Senate producing more ties to break. The GOP has a 21-to-19 edge in the chamber. A Virginia Commonwealth University poll released this week had Fairfax up, 43 to 38. But Vogel had the advantage in the latest campaign finance reports, raising $1.8 million to Fairfax’s $1.3 million. [Poll shows Northam with slight edge over Gillespie in Virginia governor’s race] Fairfax and Vogel came face-to-face at the forum — sponsored by the college and by the public affairs nonprofit Senior Statesmen of Virginia — that was not technically a debate but still allowed them to tangle. Vogel opposed new restrictions on guns, while Fairfax called for universal background checks. Vogel said she opposed changing Virginia’s no-limits campaign finance rules, saying caps would restrict speech. Fairfax noted a $600,000 donation Vogel received from a relative. That relative was her father, William B. Holtzman, founder of Holtzman Oil Corp. Fairfax said he supports limits so that wealthy interests “do not drown out other people’s voices.” Vogel said cities and towns should not be allowed to “erase history” by removing Confederate monuments. Fairfax said localities should have the option. Both agreed that climate change is real, that Virginia needs nonpartisan redistricting and that employers should have to check workers’ immigration status. Fairfax, who narrowly lost the 2013 primary for attorney general to Mark R. Herring, said he would focus on the economy. He repeatedly credited the state’s high job growth and low unemployment rate to outgoing Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), Northam and Herring, who is seeking reelection. Vogel billed herself as an experienced legislator who has crossed party lines to fight for nonpartisan issues, such as helping families with autism. She noted that she has bucked her party on a number of issues — by opposing uranium mining, for instance, and by supporting gay rights, medical marijuana and nonpartisan redistricting. She indicated that she would not support further restrictions on abortion rights. “I am not running to take anybody’s rights away,” she said while discussing women’s health care. When Fairfax invoked her 2012 abortion bill to attack that notion, Vogel pushed back hard. “There was nothing in that bill that forced them to do anything against their will,” she said, a claim she based on the fact that abortion providers typically perform ultrasounds with or without a government mandate. “It was simply an informed consent bill.” [Nitty-gritty knocked abortion bill off fast track] As originally proposed, Vogel’s bill would have required that women undergoing abortions first submit to an ultrasound and that they be offered an opportunity to view the image. The bill did not specifically mandate a vaginal ultrasound, but that would have been the effect in most cases because most abortions occur early in pregnancy, when the fetus is too small to be seen via abdominal ultrasound. “Saturday Night Live” and late-night comics lampooned the measure, and Vogel eventually withdrew it. A House version was eventually passed but was amended to require an abdominal ultrasound — although in most cases, the test will not produce an image. Then-Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) signed it into law.
The federal government has launched its new immigration policy aimed at fast-tracking low-risk, highly skilled workers into vacant jobs here in Canada. But some technology industry advocates say it's just a start, and are looking for much more from the government's promised innovation agenda. The new program, called Global Talent Stream, sets a two-week turnaround for processing visas and short-term work permits. Some technology firms in Ottawa are desperately seeking software designers, computer programmers and engineers, and are eager to recruit skilled immigrants. Year-long wait for talent CEOs of Canadian startups have long complained about waiting up to a year to bring in highly specialized workers from abroad. It's hoped the new program will help Canadian firms better attract workers experienced in scaling up companies, according to Benjamin Bergen, executive director of the Council of Canadian Innovators. "We know there's a massive labour shortage for highly skilled talent workers in high growth firms and being able to bring in those one or two people will really help them scale growth, but it will also allow them to hire more people domestically as well," said Bergen. He noted that with border and immigration restrictions tightening south of the border, some workers will look to Canada rather than the U.S. for new opportunities. Lacking metrics While John Reid, CEO of the Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance, is glad to finally see the new skills policy in place, he said there's still a lot of work to be done to make Canada a truly competitive "innovation nation." Reid said Canada still needs to update its policies concerning intellectual property, and better manage its many acceleration and incentive initiatives such as the Scientific Research and Experimental Development Tax Incentive Program. "We lack a single agency to manage the 147 innovation programs. We have no metrics to access the outcome and benefits of these programs," said Reid. "It's positive steps, but it's steps that don't have the sort compelling context and political messaging that should be there," Reid said.
Transcript for U.S. launches military strike on Syria This is an ABC news special report. Strike Owens Syria. Now reporting George Stephanopoulos. Good evening we're coming and they are right now because president trump has just ordered a military strike on Syria. He comes just two days after that horrific chemical attack by the thought regime that killed almost a hundred people including women and children. President trump called in an affront to all humanity now we have retaliated. And who have achieved global affairs anchor Martha Raddatz Martha all through this campaign just three days ago the president saying this is not our fight and as soon as he saw those pictures as soon as he saw those images from that chemical attack. He wondered action. I think this is the single fastest punishing strike I have ever seen. Just a couple of days he made his decision I also have to say. That secretary mabus who was cent com commander in 2013 when President Obama decided not to take action against Syria. This is something. He was frustrated by in 2013 he's now the secretary of defense they have plans in place and they've gone ahead with cruise missiles from navy ships in the letter to wanting our military consultant Steve dinner in Washington Steve you've flown military missions over. Iraq this appears to be tomahawk cruise missiles against air fields what does that say to you. George it says that the president wanted me to not risk any US slides into punish facade as quickly as possible so. We think the cruise missiles were launched by two US navy ships Arlene Burke class destroyers USS Ross in the USS Porter in the eastern Mediterranean. It would've flown likely over Levin on low altitude in coming back door. And hit targets within Syria into aside held terrain when that our chief White House correspondent John college on the president down in morrow lively your there as well for that summit with president Sheikh. A China surrounded by his entire brain trust. He sure is and I'm told we will hear from the president shortly a senior official confirming that these were tomahawk cruise missiles aimed. At Syrian regime held airfields George quite a turnaround for this. As a candidate repeatedly said if he was an America first candidate that Syria was not the United States problem. It we shouldn't focus on the United States. But now after seeing that chemical weapons attack he was very blunt yesterday speaking in the Rose Garden. It that changed his views on Syria and now he is ordered military action. I want to our chief foreign correspondent Terry Moran has won Terry last year you embedded with those Russian troops are also in Syria. Fighting with the United States again sites this one of the factors that complicates the US mission here. And we know that the the Russians were warning the United States against military action in the Security Council today. That's right George this action by president trump puts his administration squarely at odds with Vladimir Putin's Russia. In Syria those Russian troops are embedded with they change the war they saved Bashar Al Assad regime in Syria. And they are fighting not just ice is but fighting to protect a long time Russian strategic interest. They've got a base on the Mediterranean Sea there they project power throughout the men of Middle East. From there influence in Syria but. They aren't. Really committed to Bashar Al Assad the president of Syria they they they want to do a deal but this will make it harder. Okay Terry Moran and our entire team thank you very much for what we're waiting to hear from president from right now no word yet from the Russians are the Syrians the president trump. Has ordered and completed a military strike against Syria but much we need all the latest anytime an abcnews.com. And stay tuned for an update of world news tonight with even more I'm George Stephanopoulos in New York. This has been a special report. From ABC news. This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.
More than a thousand released IDF soldiers visited the homes of about 500 Holocaust Survivors in Israel to celebrate the first night of Hanukkah with them as part of a broader initiative by the Foundation for the Benefit of Holocaust Victims and the Impact scholarship program funded by the Friends of the IDF organization. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter About a dozen released IDF soldiers arrived at the Gil Oz retirement home in Petah Tikva to light the first candle with holocaust survivors. Released IDF soldiers light first candle of Hanukkah at the Gil Oz retirement home in Petah Tikva. (Photo: Yaron Brenner) Bila Lutstein, a 97-year-old Holocaust survivor, said: "I'm happy about the new friends that came to celebrate the holiday with us. It's fun to get out of a routine and hold an event to light the candles. It still excites me very year anew, to celebrate the holiday in Israel and to feel the sense of Zionism and belonging." Holocaust survivors at the Gil Oz retirement home in Petah Tikva. (Photo: Yaron Brenner) Shkolnik Z'non, a 79-year-old Holocaust survivor from Poland who survived the Holocaust by first escaping to Siberia and later hid in a forest in Ukraine, said: "I feel amazing and proud to light the first candle of Hanukkah. It is an amazing opportunity to be happy together and it is very comforting to see this young group and feel the holiday spirit that they bring with them." Holocaust survivors eating traditional sufganyot at Gil Oz retirement home in Petah Tikva. (Photo: Yaron Brenner) "It's very emotional to celebrate here with the survivors," said Elchi Malichi, 25, a civil engineering student. "I feel the need to donate to them as much as possible and give them the respect that they deserve. At the end of the day we are here thanks to them and are continuing their path." Candel-lighting at the Gil Oz Retirement home. (Photo: Yaron Brenner) Malichi, who served as a fighter and commander in the Shimshon Battalion of the Kfir Brigade, said that "On a day-to-day basis I don't get to meet these people and unfortunately for us it will become rarer as more and more survivors pass away. I'm happy to have been given this opportunity to light the first candle of Hanukah with survivors, to provide them with love and warmth and to recognize them for what they went through and persevered in the name of the Jewish nation. It is an empowering experience and something I will never forget." The released IDF soldiers brought Menorahs, candles, and sufganyot (jelly doughnuts) to the homes of the survivors, with at least two scholarship recipients arriving at each home. The released soldiers who are a part of the scholarship fund also conducted Hanukkah parties at about 50 retirement homes all over Israel that house Holocaust survivors. Orit Margolis, 26, who served in the combat support of the Engineering Corps, said that she feels a sense of duty. "It's a special opportunity to meet with people who survived despite the impossible reality they experienced and it warms my heart to visit survivors and to learn from them," said Margolis, who is an accounting student. Margolis added that the younger generation bears the responsibility to "remember and pass on the stories of the survivors to the next generation, who will not have the honor to meet the generation of holocaust survivors personally." The CEO of the Foundation for the Benefit of Holocaust Victims, Rony Kalinsky, explained that "several Holocaust survivors have suffered feelings of loneliness and hardship for many years, feelings that are likely to heighten during holiday season. The initiative enables the survivors to experience and celebrate the holiday of miracles with a big group."
Liberals and conservatives alike are gearing up for battles over campaign financing rules in anticipation of the 2012 election, which will decide control of the White House and Congress. Liberal groups want to impose disclosure rules on shadowy political advocacy groups that raised and spent tens of millions of dollars in corporate contributions on the 2010 midterm elections. ADVERTISEMENT House Majority Leader(R-Va.) wants to repeal the public financing system that Democratic presidential candidates — prior to President Obama — relied on to keep pace with their Republican opponents. He says it would save taxpayers $520 million over 10 years.Politicians and special-interest groups have scrambled to adapt to the new campaign spending rules ushered in by the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in, which lifted restrictions on corporations and labor unions spending general treasury funds to influence elections.Congressional Democrats will push a pared-down version of the Disclose Act to limit the fallout from thedecision.The plan is to strip out restrictions on government contractors and foreign-owned domestic corporations from spending to influence elections, according to a source familiar with negotiations.The legislation would focus narrowly on greater transparency and require groups that spend heavily on elections to disclose their donors. It would also require the top five donors of non-restricted funds to be listed on the screen at the end of a television advertisement.Proponents of these new disclosure rules believe they can win Republican support if the limits on contractors and foreign-owned subsidiaries are set aside.“We’re finding a number of Republicans, including freshman Republicans who believe in openness and disclosure,” said Craig Holman, the government-affairs lobbyist at Public Citizen, a group that favors stronger regulation of campaign fundraising.Democrats are also pushing legislation that would give corporate shareholders greater say over how companies spend to influence elections.The legislation would require that corporations accurately represent their shareholders' political interests. It would also require an authorizing vote by a majority of shareholders before general treasury funds can be spent on political activities, and for shareholders to receive quarterly notification of corporate political spending.The bill’s author, Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Mass.), is looking for a Republican co-sponsor.Republican leaders plan to bring to the floor next week legislation that would eliminate federal funding of presidential elections and nominating conventions.The legislation is sponsored by Sen. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), former chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. It is one of a series of cost-saving measures Republicans plan to send to the Senate in the weeks ahead.Liberal groups are also moving to limit the influence of corporate political spending at the state level. They are extremely concerned about the new power corporations wield in Washington in the wake of the November election, which Obama described as a “shellacking” for Democrats.“Our focus is going to be state work, campaign finance reform and public financing at the state level,” said Mary Boyle, vice president of communications at Common Cause, a group that favors greater regulation of campaign fundraising.Obama on Friday announced the establishment of the Council on Jobs and Economic Competitiveness, a revamped version of the Economic Recovery Board that advised the president on economic matters during the first two years of his term.Obama tapped Jeffrey Immelt, the chairman and CEO of General Electric, to head the board, raising the concerns of labor leaders. Immelt was quoted by thelast year blasting Obama as anti-business during a dinner with Italian executives.Obama showed increased deference to corporate America earlier this month when he named William Daley, a senior executive at JPMorgan Chase, as his White House chief of staff.An array of liberal policy experts decried the impact ofin a series of events organized Friday to mark the one-year anniversary of the ruling.“One year and one election after the decision, we know thatremade the electoral landscape,” said Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen. “Not only did it enable corporations to write large checks to affect who would and would not be elected, but it also established that Wild West rules would prevail for campaign 2010.”Weissman said elected officials are now more leery to support policies that powerful corporations oppose, because it could cost them reelection.“They face the prospect of an unaccountable, outside campaign to defeat them in the next election," Weissman said.
You could jump into your wookie onesie, pull the armchair right up close to your TV and put all eight films on repeat, but you're still going to be light years away from really feeling like you're living in the Star Wars universe. Disney thinks it can go better than cosplaying in front of a projector – it's signed a deal to bring an all-new Star Wars VR experience to its theme parks before the end of the year. Called Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire, it's set to be a large scale multiplayer VR adventure, put together by The Void – the company also responsible for the Madame Tussauds Ghostbusters experience – and ILMxLab, Lucasfilm's immersive entertainment arm. Bringing a galaxy far, far away to Disneyland “We want people to step inside the worlds of our stories,” said ILMxLab’s exec Vicki Dobbs Beck. “Through our collaboration with The Void, we can make this happen as guests become active participants in an unfolding ‘Star Wars’ adventure.” The Disneyland Resorts in Southern California and Orlando Florida will house the new VR centers. It's a growing area for amusement destinations, particularly cinemas who are seeing a slump in 3D movie interest, and are looking to sure up their profits. If you can't make it to the US theme parks, you can still bring a slice of Star Wars VR magic home – PC virtual reality enthusiasts can jump into the 'Trials on Tatooine' app, while PlayStation 4 PSVR players can fly an X-Wing in Battlefront's virtual reality segment.
If you want to really take Linux to the edge of what's possible, you run Red Hat's community Linux distribution, Fedora. And, for those who like to live dangerously, you can always run Fedora betas. The latest, Fedora 24 Beta, is out now. Fedora Fedora 24 Beta, comes in three separate editions: Fedora 24 Cloud Beta, Fedora 24 Server Beta, and Fedora 24 Workstation Beta. All three versions are built from the same set of base packages. These include glibc 2.23 and the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) 6. All the base packages have been with the new compiler for better code optimization. Fedora Cloud 24 Fedora Cloud 24 now includes OpenShift Origin for Fedora. This is a Kubernetes-based cloud distribution. It's optimized for application development, automating deployment, operations, and containerized applications scaling. Fedora 24 is also the foundation for Fedora Atomic Host. This is a lightweight platform, which is designed with the sole purpose of running containerized Docker applications. It includes package enhancements and bug fixes and a new "developer mode". When run this way, the host is downloaded and automatically starts Cockpit along with a tmux, a terminal multiplexer, session. Put it together and it makes it much easier to work via the developer console and obtain key information for the session, including the IP address and root password. Since cloud jobs are going better for Linux professionals, getting started with Fedora cloud today is a great idea for your job hunt tomorrow. Fedora 24 Server The server doesn't include a lot of new features. The most noteworthy of them, at first glance, is it now uses rolekit more to help simplify setting up server roles. It also includes FreeIPA 4.3. This is an excellent, open-source identity management program. This version has an improved Domain Controller which will help streamline replica installation, segment creation, and replica topology visualization. Finally, the overall footprint of Fedora Server has been made smaller by removing unneeded packages. Fedora 24 Workstation And, now for the part that most of you want to know about: The desktop. OK, so maybe there never will be a "Year of the Linux desktop," but Linux desktops are still great for power users and developers. This latest version includes numerous package and component tweaks. The most interesting addition is a preview of GNOME 3.20, Dehli. While I'm not a GNOME 3 fan, this latest iteration of the GNOME 3 desktop environment looks interesting. It also comes with Wayland, a next-generation X display server. But, alas, Wayland is now not ready for prime time. Fedora developers still plan to fully implement it as the default graphics server for future versions of Fedora. I'm not going to be holding my breath. You can check Fedora out today. All three Fedora versions can be downloaded from the main website. Not ready to put your computer's fate in the hands of a beta release? The final version of Fedora is scheduled to arrive on June 14. Related Stories:
"Those Were the Days" is a song credited to Gene Raskin, who put a new English lyric to the Russian romance song "Dorogoi dlinnoyu" ("Дорогой длинною", literally "By the long road"), composed by Boris Fomin (1900–1948) with words by the poet Konstantin Podrevsky. It deals with reminiscence upon youth and romantic idealism. Mary Hopkin's 1968 debut single of "Those Were the Days" (producer, Paul McCartney) became a number one hit on the UK Singles Chart. The song also reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100. It was number one in the very first edition of the foreign singles sales chart launched by the Centre d'Information et de Documentation du Disque.[3] Early history [ edit ] Georgian singer Tamara Tsereteli (1900–1968) and Russian singer Alexander Vertinsky made what were probably the earliest recordings of the song, in 1925[4] and in 1926[5] respectively. The song appears in the 1953 British/French movie Innocents in Paris, in which it was sung with its original Russian lyrics by the Russian Tzigane chanteuse Ludmila Lopato. Mary Hopkin's 1968 recording of it with Gene Raskin's lyric was a chart-topping hit in much of the Northern Hemisphere. On most recordings of the song, Raskin is credited as the sole writer, even though he wrote only the later English lyrics (which are not an English translation of the Russian lyrics) and not the music. Later history [ edit ] In the early 1960s Raskin, with his wife Francesca, played folk music around Greenwich Village in New York, including White Horse Tavern. Raskin, who had grown up hearing the song, wrote with his wife[6] new English lyrics to the old Russian music and then copyrighted both music and lyrics in his own name.[7] The Limeliters subsequently released a recording of the song on their 1962 LP Folk Matinee.[8] The Raskins were international performers and had played London's "Blue Angel" every year, always closing their show with the song. Paul McCartney frequented the club and being quite taken with the song he attempted to get several singers or groups (including the early Moody Blues) to record it.[9] Failing at that, after the formation of the Beatles' own Apple Records label, McCartney immediately recorded Mary Hopkin performing the song. The song was eventually recorded in over twenty languages and by many different artists, including Gene and Francesca, and Raskin was able to live very well on the royalties, buying a home in Pollensa, Mallorca, a Porsche Spyder and a sail boat. Hopkin's recording was produced by Paul McCartney with an arrangement by Richard Hewson (per the label of the record)[10] and became a number-one hit on the UK Singles Chart. In the United States, Hopkin's recording reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100 (held out of the top spot for three weeks by "Hey Jude" by the Beatles) and topped the Billboard Easy Listening charts for six weeks.[11] In the Netherlands, it topped the charts for two consecutive weeks.[12] The Russian origin of the melody was accentuated by an instrumentation that was unusual for a top-ten pop record, including balalaika, clarinet, hammered dulcimer, tenor banjo and children's chorus, giving a klezmer feel to the song. Mary Hopkin played acoustic guitar on the recording, and Paul McCartney also played acoustic guitar and possibly percussion. The hammered dulcimer, or cimbalom, was played by Gilbert Webster.[13] It is unknown who played the banjo though McCartney is known to be a banjoist. McCartney also recorded Hopkin singing "Those Were The Days" in five other languages for release in their respective countries: In Spain, Qué tiempo tan feliz , by Rosa Morena (instead of Aquellos Fueron Los Días or En Aquellos Días ) , by Rosa Morena (instead of or ) In West Germany, An jenem Tag In Italy, Quelli erano giorni In France, Le temps des fleurs In Afghanistan Farsi, "Deegar Ashkam Mariz" by legendary singer Ahmad Zahir (1972). In Iran, "Dashteh Bi Payan" by Elaheh. All five non-English sets of lyrics were also recorded by Dalida and Sandie Shaw, with Shaw recording the English lyrics as well. The UK and United States recording's B-side was Pete Seeger's "Turn! Turn! Turn!", which had been a United States number-one hit for The Byrds in 1965. "Those Were the Days" was catalogue number APPLE 2 (the APPLE 1 number had been given to an unreleased version of "The Lady Is a Tramp" by Frank Sinatra, recorded specially in 1968, for Maureen Starkey's 22nd birthday, as a gift from Ringo Starr, under the name of "The Lady is a Champ"). It was the second single to be released on the Apple label, the first — "Hey Jude" by the Beatles —had retained the sequential catalogue numbers used by Parlophone (in the UK) and Capitol (in the US). Hopkin's version was released on the back of her success on the television talent show Opportunity Knocks, and around the time of its release popular singer Sandie Shaw was also asked to record the song by her management, feeling that it should be done by a "real" singer. Shaw's version was released as a single, but did not match the success of Hopkin's version. At the peak of the song's success, a New York company used the melody in a commercial for Rokeach gefilte fish, arguing that the tune was an old Russian folk-tune and thus in the public domain. (The commercial included the line "The perfect dish, Rokeach Gefilte Fish" where the English-language song would go "Those were the days, oh yes, those were the days.") Raskin successfully sued and won a settlement, since he had slightly altered the tune to fit his lyrics and had taken out the valid new copyright.[citation needed] In the mid-1970s, after Hopkin's contract with Apple ended, "Those Were the Days" and "Goodbye" were re-recorded with producer Tony Visconti, whom she had married in 1971. These re-recorded versions can be found on music compilations. On 25 October 2010, Apple Records released Come and Get It: The Best of Apple Records, which included the original recordings of "Those Were the Days" and "Goodbye". The greatest hits compilation album contained songs by artists signed to the Beatles' Apple record label between 1968 and 1973, the first such multi-artist Apple compilation. On Christmas 1975, the President of Equatorial Guinea, Francisco Macías Nguema, had 150 alleged coup plotters executed in the national stadium while a band played "Those Were the Days".[14] Recordings [ edit ] Chart performance (Mary Hopkin version) [ edit ] See also [ edit ]
Judy Battista highlights the storylines and factors to pay attention to in Week 8, beginning with a surprising strength for Indianapolis and continuing below with 10 more things to watch. On a snowy January afternoon nearly three years ago, a week before Indianapolis was to host Super Bowl XLVI, Colts owner Jim Irsay was in his office, contemplating the miserable season his team had just endured even as he planned the parties his fellow owners would attend. Irsay was already privately leaning toward making many transformative decisions: that Peyton Manning, whom Irsay was not sure could ever play again, would be released; that Andrew Luck would be drafted. And then, while a reporter was sitting in his office with him, the phone rang, and Irsay asked for a minute of privacy. That, it turned out, was the moment that might have changed the face of the Colts as much as Manning and Irsay's teary farewell and Luck's selection with the No. 1 overall pick later that year. On the other end of that call was Ravens defensive coordinator Chuck Pagano. He was accepting Irsay's offer to become his next coach, and he was bringing with him an understanding. That the Colts would become a more balanced team. That the days of relying only on a quarterback -- even another transcendent one -- were over. That the team often described, sometimes derisively, as a finesse squad would now be physical. That the Colts would have ... a defense. And now, after years of paying lip service to that idea, it has finally become a reality. After a stunning shutout of the Cincinnati Bengals last Sunday, the Colts' D ranks third -- third -- in total defense, a level it reached just once (in 2007) in the previous era, forming a staggering partnership with the league's top-ranked offense. Heading into Week 8, Indianapolis also boasts the league's best defense on third down (opponents are converting little more than 1 of 4 attempts), is tied for third in sacks (21) and is ninth against the run. Even Luck, in the midst of an MVP-caliber season, was overshadowed by the defense last week. "I just love the fact that this is the vision Chuck had the day we came over from Baltimore," said defensive lineman Cory Redding, who arrived in Indianapolis along with Pagano in 2012. "The vision of building a defense that is very physical, a defense that doesn't get mad whenever the offense makes a fumble. We get happy, because that gives us more face time. "Regardless of what it was in the past, this is a new era, the new vision of our offense, to march the ball up and down, and a stingy defense that don't want to give you even a piece of candy on Halloween when they've got the whole bag." That wasn't the first time the Colts desired a defense -- former coach Tony Dungy, after all, was a defensive mastermind in Tampa Bay. But the squads Manning led had been constructed to tilt so heavily toward the offense that there was often a shortage of money or will to build a comparable unit on the other side of the ball. Instead, the defense served as a complement -- but not an equal companion -- to the offense. It was small and fast and predicated on rushing the passer, with the knowledge that the Colts would almost always be playing with a lead furnished by Manning, and that their opponents would almost always be throwing to catch up. The strategy worked, sometimes spectacularly well. In Manning's 13 years playing (he missed his 14th and final season in Indianapolis while he dealt with his neck injury), the Colts won one Super Bowl, played in another and went to the playoffs nine other times. But while Manning had year after year of regular-season superlatives, the defense was often blamed for Indianapolis' inability to capture more than one Lombardi Trophy. Redding knew immediately what Pagano wanted when he saw that the coach planned to change the defense from the 4-3 the Colts had run in the past to the 3-4. But as the transition began, the team simply did not have the appropriate players to fit the scheme in Year 1. Indianapolis still had smaller players than are ideal for the 3-4, and in that first year under Pagano, the defense ranked 26th in yards allowed and 21st in points allowed. Last season, things improved, but in two playoff games, the Colts allowed 87 points, losing to the Patriots in the divisional round. The Colts added safety Mike Adams and linebacker D'Qwell Jackson in the offseason, but a potentially huge problem soon presented itself: The loss of premier pass rusher Robert Mathis to an Achilles injury. With Mathis, the defense's biggest star, out for the year, the unit was left almost faceless, an issue that seemingly would have been exacerbated by an ankle injury that has kept Arthur Jones -- perhaps the biggest offseason signing -- out of the past five games. Redding and Pagano came from a star-laden defense in Baltimore -- think of Ray Lewis, Ed Reed, Terrell Suggs, Haloti Ngata -- but if this Colts unit is relatively unknown, it has also been liberated by coordinator Greg Manusky. With two lockdown corners in Vontae Davis and Greg Toler, who have shown they can take on receivers man to man, Manusky has been free to use a variety of blitzes, bringing pressure from all angles. Six players have at least two sacks. The formula worked particularly well against Bengals quarterback Andy Dalton, who entered last Sunday's game having taken a league-low two sacks and left with three more. "Now we've got pieces that we want, the big boys up front to take on double teams, the linebackers that can flow from left to right, corners saying, 'I will take him man to man'; that is the kind of defense that Chuck wanted," Redding said. "We don't need a bunch of big names. We don't need a bunch of guys on the cover of magazines. At the end of the day, there will be enough to go around for everybody. We've got a bunch of guys on the field nobody knows about. They'll know us at the end of the season." The Steelers might get to know them much sooner, specifically on Sunday. Indianapolis will focus first on limiting Le'Veon Bell, the league's third-leading rusher. Redding said coaches give defensive players just enough information for them to understand, then drill them on it, to ensure that everybody knows their assignments perfectly, which will allow them to play fast. "Then we can pin our ears back, because they are in second-and-17," Redding said. Pittsburgh quarterback Ben Roethlisberger will provide a classic test case. He has a passer rating of 134.2 on passes of at least 20 yards in the air, the highest in the NFL among quarterbacks with at least 15 such attempts. But the Colts' defense has allowed opposing quarterbacks to complete just 19.4 percent of passes that travel that distance in the air, the lowest completion percentage in the NFL. Roethlisberger, of course, is also known for holding onto the ball a little too long on occasion, making him an inviting target for a swarming and confident pass rush that, Redding said, is playing not only for itself, but for players, like Mathis, who can't be on the field with their teammates. "There's nothing nice or soft about being a defensive player," Redding said. "We're very aggressive. We don't want to be vanilla. We want to dial it up, bring a safety, a linebacker; put two defensive linemen out there. There are so many different things to do with so many different guys. Our mindset is, Hit first and ask questions later." Here are 10 more things to watch as the rest of the Week 8 schedule plays out: 1) A rumbling in Dallas. It might be time to embrace the idea that the Cowboys are not a mirage -- and that it doesn't matter who Washington starts at quarterback on Monday. Washington's defense is decent against the run (103.3 yards per game, 12th in the league), but DeMarco Murray has rushed for at least 100 yards in all seven games this season -- and that production is giving the Cowboys lots of third-and-short chances. Their 57.4 percent third-down conversion rate is the best since at least 1972. Harvin's ability to stretch the field might not be on immediate display against the Bills . Consider that he does not have a reception on a pass thrown 20 or more yards this season, and his last 100-yard receiving game came in 2012. Over the past four weeks, Geno Smith has completed just two of 16 passes of at least 15 yards in the air. The Jets average a league-low 4.94 yards per pass play, while the Bills are allowing 5.08 yards on all plays, fourth-best in the NFL -- 3) Will the Packers test the shaky Saints' dominance at home? The Packers have won four in a row, and Aaron Rodgers is on pace to throw 41 touchdowns and two interceptions this season -- a ratio no quarterback in history has achieved. The Saints' offense is as potent as ever (it ranks second in yardage), but the defense is allowing 27.5 points per game (28th) and has just four takeaways (tied for 30th). Harrison: Week 8 predictions Will the Elliot Harrison makes his picks. Will the Seahawks snap a two-game skid -- or will the Panthers end a bum streak of their own?makes his picks. READ 4) Which wilting defense rights itself in Carolina? The Seahawks are allowing nine more points per game than they did last season, and they're getting fewer takeaways (none on the road) and sacks. Opposing passers have a rating of 103.7 (12 touchdowns, two interceptions), which ranks 28th in the NFL. Carolina is allowing 12.8 more points per game this year than it did in 2013, and it's given up at least 37 points in four of its past five games. The Seahawks wouldn't make the playoffs right now, while the Panthers are the only NFC South team that isn't below .500. 5) A matchup of strength against strength in the desert. The Eagles have the third-best scoring offense and the Cardinals have the fifth-best scoring defense, begging this question: Can Arizona score enough to keep up with Philly? The Eagles have averaged 174.0 rushing yards in their past two games, while the Cardinals entered this week with the best rushing defense in the NFL (allowing 72.5 yards per game). Arizona has the 14th-best scoring offense, but Carson Palmer is 3-0 and completing 66.1 percent of his passes for an average of 269 yards per game, with six total touchdowns and one interception. 6) Can the Bears get right against a hurting Patriots D? New England has the best passing defense this season, but the team is entering a stretch of games against top-notch quarterbacks without top pass rusher Chandler Jones. Will Jones' absence help Jay Cutler, who denied reports that Brandon Marshall called him out in frustration after Chicago's loss last week, get the ball to his No. 1 receiver? Marshall has had at least 135 receiving yards in each of his past two games against the Patriots (both of which came in 2011, when he was with the Dolphins). But Marshall has just 31 receptions for 349 yards and five touchdowns this season. 7) A Bengals offense struggling at a bad time. Coming off a shutout loss, Cincinnati faces the Baltimore Ravens, the only NFL team to not allow more than 23 points in a single game this season. The Bengals are averaging 8.7 fewer points in their past three games (the last two without receiver A.J. Green) than they did in their first three games -- and they've gone 0-2-1 in that stretch. The Ravens have scored on a league-best 47.4 percent of their drives this season, and have gone three-and-out on just 11.8 percent of their drives, second-best in the league. 8) Can Brian Hoyer keep a secure hold on the Browns' starting QB job? In last week's loss to the Jaguars, the Browns scored just six points, and Hoyer completed just 16 of 41 passes. He might not have to do much better to beat the winless Raiders this week, though. Oakland's defense is worst in the league on third down, while the Raiders have scored 14 points or fewer in five of six games and have gone three-and-out on 30.8 percent of their drives, most in the NFL. The Falcons have lost four straight games by at least 10 points (they have lost 18 of their last 24 games overall), and opposing passers have a rating of 97.5 against them. An ailing Calvin Johnson is causing a dip in Detroit's offensive numbers, but in last week's win over the Saints Matthew Stafford brought Detroit back from a 13-point deficit with less than four minutes to play. Golden Tate had 10 receptions for 154 yards and one touchdown; his 73-yard score on a short pass and long run pulled the Lions to within six points. Tate has 48 receptions this season, the most through seven games by a Lion since Herman Moore in 1997. 10) The battle for Missouri. After an upset of the Chargers, can the Chiefs keep pace by topping the Rams? St. Louis has allowed at least 100 yards rushing in five of its six games this season, so Jamaal Charles -- who has at least 80 yards rushing in each of the Chiefs' past three games -- could have a big impact. The Rams' defense got three sacks last week against the Seahawks, upping their total to four this season. But the Chiefs rely heavily on short passes from Alex Smith. Smith is averaging just 6.2 air yards per pass attempt this season -- lowest in the NFL among quarterbacks with at least 75 attempts. Follow Judy Battista on Twitter @judybattista.
Owing to the catastrophic extinction events that occurred following the Holocene arrival of alien species, extant oceanic island biotas are a mixture of recently incorporated alien fauna and remnants of the original fauna. Knowledge of the Late Quaternary pristine island faunas and a reliable chronology of the earliest presence of alien species on each archipelago are critical in understanding the magnitude and tempo of Quaternary island extinctions. Until now, two successive waves of human arrivals have been identified in the North Atlantic Macaronesian archipelagos (Azores, Madeira, Selvagens, Canary and Cape Verde Islands): ‘aboriginal’, which is limited to the Canary Islands around two millennia ago, and ‘colonial’, from the fourteenth century onwards. New surveys in Ponta de São Lourenço (Madeira Island) have allowed us to obtain and date ancient bones of mice. The date obtained (1033 ± 28 BP) documents the earliest evidence for the presence of mice on the island. This date extends the time frame in which the most significant ecological changes occurred on the island. It also suggests that humans could have reached Madeira before 1036 cal AD, around four centuries before Portugal officially took possession of the island. 1. Introduction Oceanic islands provide important insights for the study of evolution. Owing to the fact that catastrophic extinction events occurred everywhere following the Holocene arrival of alien species, extant island biotas are a mixture of the recently incorporated alien fauna and the remnants of the original fauna. Evolution and extinction have been intensively studied in island vertebrates [1–3]. The North Atlantic Macaronesian archipelagos (i.e. Azores, Madeira, Selvagens, Canary and Cape Verde Islands; figure 1), with different numbers of islands, geological ages, distances to the mainland and timing of human arrival, are ideal territories for the study of such processes. The knowledge of both Late Quaternary pristine island faunas and a reliable chronology of the early presence of aliens on each archipelago are critical to understanding the magnitude and tempo of Quaternary island extinctions. Figure 1. Location of the Macaronesian archipelagos. The fossil site where the bones of mice were collected is indicated on Madeira Island (red arrow). (Online version in colour.) Accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dating on commensal rodents has been widely used as a powerful tool to establish accurate chronologies for the early human presence on islands [4,5]. Until now, two successive waves of human colonization have been identified in Macaronesia: ‘aboriginal’ and ‘colonial’. In Macaronesia, only the Canary Islands harboured ‘aboriginal’ populations. AMS 14C dating on introduced house mouse Mus musculus domesticus [6], and on endemic fauna of sites without it, indicates that humans reached this archipelago sometime between 756 cal BC and 313 cal AD [7]. On the other hand, the ‘colonial’ colonization wave affected all the Macaronesian archipelagos and took place from the fourteenth century onwards. Current data indicate major extinction events in the Macaronesian islands subsequent to human arrivals. Among Upper Pleistocene–Holocene original faunas of the Canary Islands, two genera and three species of endemic rodents, one species of giant lizard and at least seven species of endemic birds (two shearwaters, one quail, one oystercatcher, one bunting and two finches) and five species of non-endemic birds are now extinct. Chronological data indicate that all these species became extinct after human arrival [8–13]. A recent and impressive loss of endemic species seems to have occurred in the Madeira archipelago [14]. In this small archipelago, with only two main islands (Madeira and Porto Santo) and without terrestrial native mammals (excluding bats), bones obtained from Holocene dune fossil sites indicate that at least two-thirds of the endemic birds (three species of rail, two quails, one scops owl, one thrush and one finch), plus two non-endemic species became extinct [14,15]. In electronic supplementary material, table S1, we present the list of the extinct birds and mammals from the Macaronesian archipelagos. According to historical data, in the year 1419 the Portuguese took possession of Madeira, and the island was subsequently populated. It is usually assumed that, very probably, the Madeiran extinctions took place within the past 600 years. On Madeira, two different lines of evidence point to the presence of mice previous to the Portuguese colonization: (i) the finding of four subfossil bones of mice Mus musculus s.l. in a dune deposit [16], although the lack of radiocarbon dating on these materials did not allow us to confirm an age prior to the fifteenth century; (ii) the mtDNA haplotypes from current populations of house mouse M. m. domesticus of Madeira, which show similarities with those of Scandinavia and northern Germany (but not with the Portuguese mainland). This second line of evidence suggests that northern Europe was the source area, and raises the intriguing possibility that the Vikings could have brought the house mouse to the island [17], although it should be noted that to date there are no historical references of Viking voyages to Macaronesia. The house mouse M. musculus spread from southeast Asia through Eurasia with human migrations during the Holocene. Two subspecies are currently present in Europe: the Western house mouse M. m. domesticus, in the Mediterranean and Western Europe; and the Eastern house mouse M. m. musculus, in Central and Eastern Europe [18]. The expansion of the Western house mouse in the Mediterranean began in the Eastern basin around the eighth millennium BC. It colonized the Western Mediterranean and northern Europe during the first millennium BC [19]. The Western house mouse was well settled on the Northeast coast of Spain in the second half of the first millennium BC [20]. The Eastern house mouse has been present in Eastern Europe at least since the fourth millennium BC [21]. The aim of this paper is to provide the first AMS 14C date of ancient mouse bones from Madeira, and to point out the possible consequences of this new date. 2. Material and methods (a) New ancient samples of mouse bones The new surveys on Madeira have provided two small samples of mouse bones from a dune site in Ponta de São Lourenço (red arrow in figure 1). In May 2010, a first sample (a single right mandible of 0.04 g) was collected. In November of 2011, at the same place, a second sample was collected. It included a fragmented skull (figure 2b), two fragmented jaws, three tibia, one complete femur, one fragmented femur, two fragmented humeri, two fragmented pelvises, three isolated incisors and one caudal vertebra (total weight = 0.42 g). Other taxa present at this site are shearwaters (Puffinus sp.), petrels (Pterodroma sp.), pigeons (Columba sp.), an undescribed species of quail (Coturnix), the Madeiran scops owl (Otus mauli), the barn owl (Tyto alba) and several undescribed species of passerines (at least Turdidae and Fringillidae) [14,15]. Figure 2. (a) Radiocarbon calibrated age range for the ancient mice from Madeira (upper and lower limits of 2σ confidence interval), Viking Age [22], proposed colonization time interval from mitochondrial D-loop sequences of current house mouse population of Madeira [23], and the date for Portuguese presence on the island. (b) Skull of ancient mouse (ventral view) in Ponta de São Lourenço (Madeira Island). (Online version in colour.) (b) Radiometric dating and isotopic methods Samples were dated through AMS at the Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit of the University of Oxford. AMS determinations were made on extracts of ultrafiltered bone gelatin [24]. Additionally, a fragment of barn owl humerus and three bones (a complete femur and tibiotarsus and a fragmented tarsometatarsus) of a new, still undescribed, species of quail from the same locality were AMS dated using an improved collagen extraction [25] by modified Longin method [26] at the Koninklijk Instituut voor Het Kunstpatrimonium (Brussels). No difficulties in obtaining the 14C date were reported from either laboratory. Isotope ratio for C are presented as δ values, where δ = 1000[(R sample /R standard ) – 1], and R = 13C/12C. The isotopic reference standard is Vienna–PeeDee Belemnite. (c) Conventions used for radiometric ages The AMS radiocarbon dates given in years BP are conventional radiocarbon ages with standard error, where BP is before present (the year 1950), following standard reporting procedures. Radiocarbon calibration was calculated using the software OxCal v. 4.2 [27] and the IntCal13 dataset [28]. Dates calculated from calibration are expressed as 2σ intervals (95.4% confidence) and given as ‘cal AD’ or ‘cal BC’, AD being, Annus Domini and BC, Before Christ. 3. Results Owing to their fragmentary condition and to the absence of any other rodent of Quaternary age in the island, we have cautiously attributed these new mouse bones to M. musculus s.l. The first sample submitted for AMS-dating turned out to be too small to furnish a 14C age. The second sample (Lab-Code: OxA-26216) delivered the earliest testimony of the presence of mice on the island known so far: 1033 ± 28 BP, with a 2σ confidence interval of 903–1036 cal AD (figure 2a). A barn owl bone from the same site offers a similar age (Lab-Code KIA-48920: 1060 ± 30 BP; 897–1024 cal AD), whereas a quail turned out to be older (Lab-Code KIA-47430: 2755 ± 55 BP; 1021–806 cal BC). The δ13C value for the dated mouse sample (−17.66‰) falls within the range of the two bones of terrestrial birds from the same site (−15.53‰ for the barn owl and −18.6‰ for the quail), and within the range of dated rodent samples from the Canary Islands obtained at several sites located far inland from the shore (−16.99 to −20.12‰ for house mouse and −15.98 to −18.62‰ for lava mouse Malpaisomys insularis in the Canary Islands) [7]. Samples of animals with a marine diet (i.e. shearwaters) from the Canary Islands display higher δ13C values (−11.51 to −13.61‰) [12,13]. See list of δ13C data of Holocene bird and mammal bones from the Macaronesian islands in the electronic supplementary material, table S2. Our data indicate that it is highly unlikely that the mouse bones from Madeira that have been dated reflect a marine component in the diet. It is consequently improbable that the calibrated age of this sample was affected by the 14C marine reservoir effect. 4. Conclusion Although a natural colonization by mice–via natural rafts, like those suggested for the presence of endemic rodents on the Canary Islands, which are located around 100 km from the African coast [29]–cannot be totally excluded, it appears to be highly improbable. It should be mentioned here that the Western Mediterranean islands, despite being closer to the mainland than Madeira, were not colonized by mice until the commercial and demographic spread of Phoenicians and Greeks during the last millennium BC [30]. Also, because of the island's isolation, it is highly unlikely that the ancient mouse sample reached Madeira transported by a bird (i.e. inside a pellet). If we assume that humans transported mice to Madeira, the new date presented herein suggests that humans could have reached the island before 1036 cal AD, thus around four centuries before Portugal officially took possession of the island. The 2σ confidence interval of OxA-26216 (900–1036 cal AD) falls within Viking Age (eighth to eleventh centuries) [22], and agrees with one of the two proposed colonization time intervals obtained from mitochondrial D-loop sequences of current house mouse populations of Madeira (the mismatch distribution of pairwise genetic differences approach: 910–1185 AD) [23]. mtDNA haplotypes from current mouse populations of Madeira show similarities with those of Scandinavia and northern Germany [17], and it has been reported that Vikings transported house mice to the places they reached [31,32]. All these data suggest, but do not prove, a relationship between the Viking voyages and the presence of Mus on Madeira. Once settled, the mouse population could have reached very high densities owing to its high reproductive potential, particularly in the absence of rats (Rattus spp.), which limit their number. In this case, a wide range of native biota could have been impacted, and the magnitude of the impact could have been huge, as occurred on islands without rats [33,34]. Nevertheless, more radiocarbon, genetic and morphometric data [6,19–21] are necessary to establish the precise evolutionary history of mice on Madeira (including the subspecific diagnosis of the ancient mice), the precise extent of the impact of the arrival of mouse on the island, and the causes and precise chronologies of bird extinctions on Madeira. The new date provided herein demonstrates the early presence of mice on Madeira and provides a longer time span in which the most severe ecological changes during the Late Holocene occurred on the island after the arrival of mice (i.e. at least ca one millennium ago). Acknowledgements We thank Thomas Highman (Oxford), Mark Van Strydonck and Mathieu Boudin (Brussels) for their comments and information on dating procedures. We thank Hannah Bonner, Juan Carlos Illera, Paulo Oliveira, Dilia Meneses and Manuel Biscoito for their assistance with several aspects of this paper. The authors declare they have no competing interests. Funding statement This work was partially supported by DGICYT Research Project CGL2012-38089 . Footnotes
Comedians Kate McLennan and Kate McCartney have brought their own recipe to the cooking show world, and if you're among the thousands who have spent far too much of their weekend watching it, you're probably still laughing. The pair, who are actors, comedians and writers with credits including Offspring, House Husbands, Hamish and Andy and their own web series, Bleak, have created a six-part YouTube series entitled The Katering Show. In it, they have a laugh at food intolerances, food fads and social traditions like the Christmas meal, and the internet is catching on to their brand of humour. Kate McCartney and Kate McLennan star in The Katering Show. Credit:Ben Timony Billed as the journey of a food intolerant and an intolerable foodie, McLennan declares: "This show is all about me, and how I can cook delicious recipes that won't make McCartney (who is gluten, fructose and lactose intolerant) shit her pants." They've already covered two of the biggest current food phenomenons:
TOLEDO, Ohio — Pileups on the Ohio Turnpike involving at least 50 vehicles killed three people and seriously injured a state trooper on Wednesday as a late-winter storm swept through the Midwest and the Northeast, ending a fleeting spring-like thaw. Emergency workers on the busy toll road struggled to reach accidents and stuck vehicles because of snowy conditions and traffic backups. Pileups stretched across a two-mile section in the eastbound lanes of the turnpike between Toledo and Cleveland. Another series of pileups about 10 miles to the east shut down the turnpike's westbound lanes near Sandusky. Drivers sat for hours, a few braving the cold to stretch their legs, said Mike Ramella, a salesman from the Cleveland suburb of Westlake. "I'm just sending emails, still working," said Ramella, who was in the middle of a seven-mile backup. According to WKYC Channel 3, Those who died in the crash, which involved many vehicles include Hannah Matheny, 20, of Parma; Grzegorz Piwowarczyk, 42, of Palatine, Illinois; and Janice Robb, 66, of Schereville, Indiana. Matheny was a passenger in a Ford Focus, Piwowarczyk was driving a tractor-trailer and Robb was a passenger in a Chevy Venture. A trooper responding to an accident was pinned between vehicles, said the Ohio State Highway Patrol, which confirmed the deaths of the three other people but didn't immediately have further details. One vehicle lane opened about four hours after the first accident. Trooper Andrew Clouser, 29, was in serious but stable condition at a Toledo hospital Wednesday night, said Ohio patrol Staff Lt. Anne Ralston. Jason Keyser and John Seewer, Associated Press. Video from WKYC: Victims of crash identified
On Thursday December 10th, at the finale of the Winter Meetings, the Rangers made a small splash, reaching agreement with right handed reliever Tony Barnette. The deal became official a week later. But other than that, little do we know about the right-hander. Born in Anchorage, Barnette was elected out of Arizona State University by the Diamondbacks in the tenth round of the 2006 Draft, one spot before former Ranger Craig Gentry. In his first go-around in stateside ball, he only topped out at AAA, where he struggled to a sub-optimal 5.79 ERA, striking out 121 while walking 62 in 164.2 innings in 2009 before signing with the Yakult Swallows in Japan. His misfortune would continue as his first campaign as a Swallow was even worse than AAA – getting lit up to a 5.99 ERA in 79.2 innings that spanned over sixteen games, fifteen of which were as a starter. His career turned a corner when he was converted to a reliever in 2011, as he posted a respectable 2.68 ERA, punched out fifty-four while issuing a mere thirteen free passes. Though the league as a whole scored just 3.15 runs that season, thanks to the newly introduced dead ball that contributed to the plummeted offense. From that point on, the resurrected Barnette started performing well, striking out 27.5%, walking 7.6% of the 966 batters he faced while racking up ninety-seven saves in five years as the Swallows closer. He did have one disastrous campaign in 2013, where he got torched up to a 6.02 ERA. But even that season, he struck out a staggering 13.8 per nine innings. In fact, his FIP in 2013 was a solid 2.45, more than 350 points lower than his ERA. What caused it was tough luck, as you can see in his stratospheric .372 BABIP. Now take a look at his splits. In his five years in the bullpen, Barnette recorded a 32.3 K% and 7.5 BB% in 492 plate appearances against right-handed batsmen. Those figures are a bit worse against lefties, 22.6% and 7.6% in 474 plate appearances, respectively. Although he surrendered just two long balls to lefties, as opposed to thirteen to their right-handed counterparts. One can only learn so much from inspecting numbers. So let’s put the thirty-two-year old’s stuff under the microscope. Here’s a footage from a game this past October, in which the Swallows clinched their first Japan Series berth in fourteen years. Barnette’s outing starts around 2:15 mark and concludes around 9:40, but stay tuned for the awesome Japanese-style celebration if you want to. And here’s a behind-the-plate footage. Note that the first hitter Barnette faces in this video is former Ranger (well, sort of) Nate Schierholtz. As you can see in the videos, he has quite a few pitches. According to this website, Barnette showed a four-seam fastball, which he threw 32.2% of the time, two-seamer/shuuto (13.6%), sinker (9.1%), cutter (28.2%), slider (11.5%), and curve (5.3%) in 2015. The four-seamer sits in low-nineties and tops out at ninety-seven miles-per-hour. He misses bats at a fair-to-above-average rate with each of his pitches, ranging from 9.1% (four-seamer) to 22.6% (sinker and slider each). His biggest problem appears to be maintaining health, as he had been sidelined for some amount of time over the course of his NPB career due to various injuries. None of them however were related to the elbow or shoulder. If Barnette manages to stay healthy, he should at least be capable of filling the vacant long man role that Anthony Bass left behind. Moreover, he seems to be a very passionate guy, assuming from his post-win body language. He might bring the enthusiasm the Rangers have lacked since Koji Uehara‘s departure. Like this: Like Loading... Related
A Louisiana newspaper has printed a right-wing extremist group’s ad depicting a Catholic priest being murdered in 1920s Mexico and accusing President Obama of conspiring with Democrats to do the exact same thing to Catholics and Christians here in America. The Daily Advertiser claims to have a strict policy about which ads it chooses to run, saying that false, overly offensive, and other inappropriate content is kept out of the paper. But apparently the ad pictured below is completely fine. The ad features a photo of Father Francisco Vera standing in front of a firing squad, preparing to be killed for celebrating mass. Underneath the photo is a letter to Louisiana and America that states, “AMERICA is under siege by the same evil (Democrats, President Obama, etc..) as history shows over and over…We must learn from it or we are doomed to repeat it. We must be triumphant over terror.” The ad goes on to claim that we must stop Agenda 21, which right-wing groups such as the John Birch Society claim is a United Nations conspiracy to conquer America. The RNC even claims that Agenda 21 is “a comprehensive plan of extreme environmentalism, social engineering, and global political control,” that apparently requires the mass murder of Christians and Catholics. In reality, Agenda 21 is a plan to end poverty, promote better health, protect the environment, control pollution, conserve resources, and uplift women and children in society by using technology, science and financial mechanisms to achieve a more fair, more peaceful, and better world. That doesn’t sound like a conspiracy to me. It sounds like the United Nations is simply proposing to make people’s lives better, and Republicans are whining about it. This ad sounds suspiciously like a claim Rick Santorum made in February when he told a Texas crowd that President Obama would guillotine Christians if elected to a second term. Conservatives have been making this crazy claim for years now in an effort to paint President Obama as anti-American and anti-Christian even though Obama is neither. This newspaper ad is clearly an attempt to scare Americans into voting for Republicans this November and casts serious doubts upon the credibility of the Gannett owned paper. For any newspaper to print such an ad is outrageous, and what’s worse is that The Daily Advertiser plans to run yet another ad from the right-wing group in tomorrow’s edition. Ads and claims like these create the hate and fear that conservatives have plagued American politics with for many years. And for some reason, people actually believe these claims even though they are complete fabrications. Republicans are using an innocent United Nations plan to claim that religious people will be slaughtered by the Democrats. Republicans have only tightened their ties to the Christian Right since President Obama rightly ordered insurance companies to cover contraception for the female employees of religious organizations, and for years, they have attempted to convince Americans that every policy Democrats fight for is anti-Christian. That includes every goal in Agenda 21. Apparently, it’s un-Christian to be responsible stewards of the environment, help people escape poverty, heal the sick, and respect women and children as valuable members of society. The problem of course, is that all of these things are actually Christian values. Among real Christians that is. This ad shows how vicious the right-wing intends to become as Election Day approaches. Ads like this should never appear in a newspaper and The Daily Advertiser should be boycotted by level-headed citizens until it stops giving crazy right-wing extremists a platform from which to preach their hate and scare the American people.
Next Game: California 11/12/2015 \| 6:00 PM SEATTLE, Wash. – Sam Werner crushed his first career goal past Ryan Herman in the 15th minute to give his team an early lead, but Washington held the Cardinal in check the final 75 minutes while scoring two of its own to hand No. 4 Stanford a 2-1 loss in Seattle on Monday night. The defeat snapped Stanford's 15-match unbeaten streak, the second-longest run in program history. The Cardinal hadn't lost since a season-opening setback at UC Santa Barbara on August 28, a span of 66 days. It also kept alive Washington's hopes to share the Pac-12 title with Stanford, which clinched at least a co-championship on Friday. The Huskies must win their final three matches at San Diego State, UCLA and Oregon State and hope for a Cardinal loss to California in its season finale. Stanford is off for 10 days until it celebrates Senior Day and hosts the Golden Bears on The Farm on Thursday, Nov. 12 at 6 p.m. in a game televised on the Pac-12 Networks. TURNING POINT » With Stanford dominating play and possession for the majority of the first half and holding a 1-0 lead, UW's Beau Blanchard made a run a went down in the box. The Cardinal was whistled for a foul and the Huskies' Steven Wright beat Andrew Epstein to the left to level things heading into the break. JEREMY GUNN » We were absolutely magnificent in the first half, passed and moved the ball so well and were very much bossing the game. Obviously one play changes things completely and it gave UW a little bit more belief. THE WINNER » A quick re-start following a Cardinal foul just across the midline freed up Kyle Coffee in the 64th minute. The redshirt freshman dribbled centrally and slid his attempt through to the back of the net to put Stanford in a hole. JEREMY GUNN II » The second half was wonderfully poised for both teams, but they scored a goal and we lost our way for a few minutes. We were disappointed with how that was given up. It was a very good performance and we're happy with how we played, but disappointed with how the contest was decided. LASER BEAM » Sam Werner, starting for the second consecutive match in place of an injured Ty Thompson, sent a rocket into goal for his first career strike. A Corey Baird free kick from the near side was headed out to the waiting boot of Stanford's redshirt freshman, who used his right foot to fire a missile from the top of the box. Herman didn't even have a chance to move as Stanford enjoyed an early lead. JEREMY GUNN III » That was an absolutely fantastic strike. Sam is a natural left-footed player, but unleashed a right-footed strike that any player with a right would have been proud of. It was an emphatic finish and a deserved lead to the game. CHANCES » Stanford put five shots on frame and had a number just miss the target. Its best chance to equalize came in the 83rd minute when Jordan Morris worked himself free and scooted ahead of his defender. The junior's far-post shot from his left foot was out of the reach of Herman and inches wide of the post. STREAK SNAPPED » The loss not only ended Stanford's 15-match unbeaten streak in 2015, but also snapped the program's 16-match unbeaten streak in conference play dating back to last season, a run which is tied for 17th in NCAA history. The Cardinal's last league loss also came at UW on Oct. 5, 2014. Since then, Stanford had gone 11-0-5 until tonight. JEREMY GUNN IV » With the players, all we can ever do is look at how we perform. We always want to perform at our best and I thought we performed very well today. Everyone looks philosophically and says sometimes it's good to take a loss. I don't think it will hurt us, but make us a little bit hungrier. WHAT'S NEXT » Stanford is off until Nov. 12, when it hosts Cal to close out the regular season. Washington plays at San Diego State on Nov. 6, at UCLA on Nov. 8 and at Oregon State on Nov. 12. It must win all three to challenge the Cardinal for the league crown. If that happens, Stanford will need a win or draw against the Golden Bears to claim the title outright. The Huskies play at OSU at 2 p.m. on the 12th while Stanford hosts Cal at 6 p.m. so the Cardinal will know where it stands heading into its regular season finale.
0:36 Intro. [Recording date: December 21, 2011.] Broad topic, my ignorance: I have trouble figuring out what's going on in the area of money and monetary policy. You seem to understand it, so I'm coming back to you to ask some of the same questions I've been asking for a while to see if I can get a little bit smarter. Let's start with a little bit of a review. In your perspective, what does monetary policy have to do with the mess that we are in right now? Basically, I see monetary policy as driving nominal spending in the economy, nominal income. By nominal you mean just the dollar value, rather than corrected for inflation? Right. So, if your listeners were to imagine their own income, and then add up everyone else's income in the entire United States, that would be total nominal income. And so that's the variable that I think is the key to the business cycle. Now, I don't think it's a key to long term economic growth. In fact, I don't think it really even matters much in that area. But in terms of the business cycle, I think fluctuations in nominal income or spending are really the key. I want to stop you there again. So, when you said it doesn't matter in the long run--you mean, for example, if we doubled nominal income, our wages doubling, but we didn't produce anything more, we'd have twice as much measured income, but we wouldn't be any richer. Right. Prices double, and then your real power of purchasing would be unchanged. So, that's an example of where the government could affect, say, nominal income as a whole, but in that example, we wouldn't be any better off. I think in most people's minds, this is one of the great sources of confusion in macroeconomics. "Well, but I'd have to double the income." Famous Mark Twain passage. People have trouble perceiving that your income--it depends what it can buy. If you can't buy any more, you are not any richer. Right. And I think one of the big confusions in macro is that people confuse two issues, the real and the nominal. So, some people talk about what can the Federal Reserve (Fed) do? There's one question which is: Can the Fed boost nominal spending or nominal income? And there's the second question, which is: Would more nominal income boost real output? And those are two very distinct questions. I think most economists believe that at least in the long run, monetary policy can target nominal variables or control them in some sense by controlling the quantity of money. There's somewhat more disagreement about how that plays out in terms of real variables--whether they are affected in the short run or not at all or over a fairly extensive period of time. But, when you see a lot of the debates about Fed policy, you see people mixing and confusing the two issues. What does it mean to say the Fed is out of ammunition or not able to do anything? Are you talking about nominal spending or are you talking about real output? Two very different questions. A good example would be Zimbabwe, which produced spectacular growth in nominal spending, but almost all through inflation, so there was no growth in real output. To the point where inflation was sufficiently high that real output would fall because the normal channels of exchange were so uncertain. Exactly. And of course, they had other supply side problems, too. So, that's one issue. My view is that there really should not be a serious debate about whether monetary policy can drive nominal variables. It's just a question of how determined the Central Bank is. They can print almost unlimited amounts of money. I think the real debate, in my mind, is: What is the proper path of nominal spending or inflation or whatever nominal variable you wish to target--could be the money supply, as Milton Friedman proposed. There's going to be some nominal variable that's going to be the anchor for the monetary system. Another example is the gold standard, where it was anchored to a fixed nominal price of gold for many years. So, you have a monetary policy that in some sense determines nominal aggregates--and I happen to think nominal income is the best one to stabilize. And then the second question is: If you do that, what sort of real outcomes in the economy do you get? And that's where I distinguish between the business cycle and long-run growth. I think monetary policy can help smooth out the business cycle by having a stable path of nominal income growth, but it can't speed up the real growth in the economy. That's due to structural factors, government policies, incentives, all sorts of productivity, etc. 5:47 So, what went wrong, do you believe--there's two parts to this question. What went wrong to get us into the mess, and what has gone wrong with getting us out with respect to monetary policy? We debate in the policy sphere about every aspect of policy. We debate fiscal policy, we debate monetary policy, the structural things, side-issues about what to do with the housing market. But basically you focus a lot on monetary policy. So, what went wrong with monetary policy, both to get us here and to fail to get us out? First of all, if you just look at the path of nominal GDP over the last 5 years and knew nothing about the rest of the economy--you didn't know there was subprime bubble and crash and banking crisis and all that stuff, you didn't know who was elected President in 2008--you would predict a fairly severe recession, just based on the path of nominal GDP. In 2009 it fell at the fastest rate since the Great Depression, and it's grown very slowly since, much more slowly than in a normal recovery. So, that's one level of causation. But then of course people will say: But that doesn't really explain anything. Why did that happen? When we have a recession, isn't nominal income going to go down? No. For instance, in 1974 we had a very severe recession, and nominal income rose fairly briskly because we had high inflation. That was the famous oil shock case. So, real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) falling is actually the definition of a recession. So, if I were talking about real GDP I would have just stated a tautology. But nominal GDP, I do think there is a causal relationship between a fall in nominal GDP, which as I say I think is controllable by the Fed, and the impact on real output. And then the next question is: What caused GDP to fall? Certainly the Fed probably didn't want this to happen. There I think it's kind of a complicated story where parts of it have to do with the financial crisis sort of unintentionally made monetary policy more contractionary than the Fed wished or desired. And second, in late 2008 the financial crisis was a big distraction, so I think the Fed wasn't really focusing on the fact that its monetary policy stance was inadequate to promote nominal growth. And another thing is I think there is a tendency to confuse symptoms and causes. When you have a severe crisis, all sorts of things happen to an economy that look like causes that might very well be symptoms. For instance, almost every crash in nominal spending is associated with a financial crisis of one sort or another, throughout history. And there is a tendency at the time for people to blame the problems on the financial crisis because that's much more visible than the fall in nominal spending. So, that was the original view of the Great Depression--that it was caused by financial problems. Later, Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz started to convince economists that it was actually monetary policy failure. I could point to examples like Argentina about 10 years ago where their deflation and all of nominal GDP led to the severe financial crisis. And then of course more recently--well, what's interesting about the current situation is you had, in both the United States and Europe, very real problems that had nothing to do with monetary policy. In the United States, it was our subprime fiasco. And in Europe it was fiscal policies, especially in places like Greece. So, those are outside of the story I'm telling. But what happened was that when nominal GDP fell in both places, each of those crises spread and became much larger than the original problem. So, you so of started with some bad loans made for a variety of reasons, and then you had this fall in nominal GDP. And instead of just having a subprime crisis in America, we had a huge debt crisis that spread into commercial loans, and municipal loans, and sorts of other things. And then in Europe instead of there being a Greek debt crisis, there became a Eurozone debt crisis because of the fall in nominal GDP. So people view the financial crisis as the problem, whereas I see it more as a symptom of a deeper problem, which is inadequate nominal income, which makes it tougher to repay loans. After all, most loans are nominal loans. They are not indexed to inflation. So, when nominal spending falls, it's much harder for people or governments to repay loans. 10:44 Let's digress about that for a minute. My presumption remains, after many conversations, some on this program, that the real danger of deflation is a simple danger. It's not as frightening in and of itself as people make it out to be. The reason it's dangerous is that it's rare. It's often unexpected. And if I have made a promise to repay you $1000, which is as you say a nominal promise--meaning it's just a certain amount of money, that's all we mean by "nominal," it just means dollars, some absolute numbers--so if I promised to repay you $1000, if there is a deflation and I have trouble and my wages fall for example, all of a sudden my ability to repay that has changed. And you are expecting to get that money and do something with it. I might not be able to keep that promise. However, if we had expected deflation then we would have had a different interest rate implicit in that loan and things would have been very different. So, it's unexpected deflation that can lead to contractionary problems as people struggle. I think that's right. But let me just make one little addendum there. A good example was in the late 1920s when we had a little bit of deflation--maybe 1% or something per year. I'm not sure the exact number. But real GDP was growing strongly, so people's nominal incomes were going up maybe 3% a year, something like that. Because monetary policy was relatively neutral, you are saying. Relatively neutral. So, people sort of expected back in those days that there might be a little bit of deflation. So that didn't really create any problems for the economy. It did very well in the late 1920s, until the end of 1929. But what tends to happen is that when you get a severe deflation, it's almost always unanticipated. So, in the 1930s, we had this big drop in prices. And the reason why it's almost always unanticipated is: It's hard to have anticipated deflation at a rapid rate, because that would do is make the real return from holding cash become very high; and that's not like just an equilibrium solution to an economy. It's sometimes called a liquidity trap. So, if you had 10%/year deflation, people holding cash would earn a real rate of return of 10% on just sitting on cash in their wallets. And the economy isn't really capable of generating that kind of real rate of return on a safe asset like cash. So, instead you get a liquidity trap developed. What do you mean by that? I don't really mean "trap" in the sense most people use it. I don't think it's a barrier to expansionary monetary policy. All I mean is that you get a situation where people sort of hoard currency, and interest rates on other assets, like government bonds, fall close to zero. But that sort of environment--because that's not an equilibrium condition for the economy, to have that sort of real interest rate on cash, what would tend to happen is if you tried to run a deflation that was very rapid, you'd probably end up in a depression, for various reasons. But mild deflation which still allows for a positive interest rate is still a feasible solution, and we saw that in the late 1920s. Now, in our modern world unfortunately we are expecting not a 1920s situation but a positive rate of inflation and also positive real GDP growth. So, most people are probably expecting about 5% nominal growth, and they made their plans on that basis. They made wage contracts, signed debt contracts on those expectations, and when they didn't pan out--nominal income fell about 4% from mid-2008 to mid-2009, that fall was 9% below what people expected based on trends. So that really made it a lot harder to repay debt, and it pushed a lot of marginal debts over the line into problem debts. It still is true that much of the debt problem was bad decisions, but the amount of actual distress you have depends also on the ability of people to service those debts, which is national income basically. 15:12 I want to come back to this parallel between our subprime crisis and the European crisis and how people see them as two different things, and you see them both being exacerbated, made worst dramatically by a failure of monetary policy. We'll come back to that. Let's stick with your observation a few minutes ago. You said the Fed, very focused in 2008 on the financial crisis, for whatever reason failed to note or failed to respond to this drop in nominal income and dropped the ball, made things worse. So, as a casual observer, I would be puzzled by that; and here's the obvious question. Help me understand it. Around that time, the Fed was doing some of the most aggressive monetary interventions of our lifetime. They were injecting a trillion, two trillion--I don't remember the numbers, you probably do--trillions of dollars in what's called high-powered money. That is not like literally printing money and dropping it from a helicopter, but entering it into its books; buying up assets from various banks and entering it into the books of those banks. Reserves, which they would now be free to lend. So, you are suggesting that the Fed was being negligent in being insufficiently aggressive and having too tight a monetary policy. But on the surface, it's the most aggressive, expansionary monetary policy in recent history--maybe ever. So, reconcile those two broad points. Let's be clear what we are talking about here. You are presenting what would be the liquidity trap view, that they pushed all this money out there and it didn't do anything. I'm not presenting anything. All I know is you look at the balance sheet. I have a mild horse in this race; we'll get to my horses later. Let me put it this way: I'm characterizing your view . In other words, there are two issues here. One is, would more nominal spending boost real spending; and the other is, would expansionary monetary policy boost nominal spending. And we just know from the data that we haven't gotten a lot of nominal spending in the last three years. So, the real question is why haven't we gotten much nominal spending given this big increase in the monetary base. And I think there are several reasons for that--probably three reasons I could cite. One reason is when they started doing this in late 2008, they simultaneously instituted a program called Interest on Reserves. They'd never done this before--paying banks interest on the reserves the banks held. And so what actually happened is almost all of this new money the Fed injected into the economy went into the banking system and sort of sat there as what's called excess reserves. Meaning cash that sits on the bank balance sheet but they are not doing anything with it other than collecting interest from the Fed. The Fed requires that they keep a certain minimum amount, and they are well above that minimum. Most banks. Usually what happens is required reserves would be like $50 billion, say, and excess reserves might be $1-2 billion. Now we have required reserves still being around $50-60 billion, across the whole system, but the excess reserves have gone into the trillions. Or maybe between $1-2 trillion. And that's from $1 billion or $2 billion. So, we're seeing an increase of a thousand fold, order of magnitude increase in excess reserves. It's almost all gone into the excess reserves category. I think there are two reasons for that. One is that the Fed started paying interest on reserves. Now, this might really surprise you, because people don't really remember it this way, but during the big crash in nominal GDP, which basically took place in the second half of 2008, the Fed's interest rate target was not yet at 0. It was running around 1-2%. And the Fed decided they wanted to put a lot of money into the banking system, a lot of liquidity to sort of bail out the banks, prevent the system from freezing up; but they didn't want a highly expansionary monetary policy. So, the reason they started paying interest on reserves, surprisingly, was to prevent interest rates from falling to zero sooner than they actually did. Now, in the end, in the middle of December, interest rates were finally cut close to zero. But during that big injection of money in the middle of 2008, the Fed specifically wanted it to stay in excess reserves and paid banks interest on that in the hopes that it would stay there and prevent interest rates from falling too fast. In other words, the policy was basically contractionary in its intent. And that's pretty generally accepted. Now, it was offset by the fact that a lot of money went in there. It didn't do anything. A term we use in monetary economics is that it was sterilized. It was made so that it didn't really have any effect. They paid banks to just sit on the money. Hang on. We are getting close to getting rid of some of my ignorance, because this is one of the deepest and strangest parts of this whole episode. Currently, banks are earning about a quarter of a percent on those excess reserves. Yes. And those who sneer at the implications of paying interest on those reserves say, well, a quarter of a percent on $2 trillion. Say, between $1 trillion and $2 trillion. People say that's such a small amount of money. But of course it was higher initially, as you point out. It was close to 1% initially. They changed it several times in late 2008, but it was somewhere around 1%. The other thing you have to look at. I'm not sure that right now that's a big problem, but even a quarter point is more than banks can earn on, say, Treasury Bills or certain alternative investments. You have to look not just at the amount that is paid but also at the banks' alternatives for other safe investments. 22:20 All right, but so here's the question. You state it as if it were fact when you say why the Fed did this. We don't really know what's going on in the mind of the decision makers at the Fed. Ben Bernanke's the most prominent, but there are other people with influence. It's somewhat of an emergent decision. It's deeply puzzling, why at a time when the American economy, when unemployment stinks, when the economy is recovering at a tepid pace, very disappointing to everybody across the political spectrum--why would the Federal Reserve discourage its activity from having an impact? It does nothing. Let me state it in a way that's not at all controversial, and give you something that's in the public record. Two days after Lehman Brothers failed in September, the economy was clearly worsening. The Fed had a meeting and they decided not to cut interest rates. They left their target at 2%. Here's my question. If in the fall of 2008, the Fed was doing all it can to revive the economy, why would it not have cut the Fed target from 2% to say, 1.75%, 1.5%, 1.25%, 1%, .75%? This is certainly what I favored at the time. I think we compress history in our minds, and we remember the Fed getting more aggressive in early 2009 when it started the first quantitative easing program. But I think we tend to forget that in the last half of 2008, when the actual collapse in nominal GDP occurred, the Fed was actually pretty passive. After Lehman Brothers failed they issued a statement saying that "we see the risks of inflation and recession as being equally balanced." In other words, from their point of view, the economy was right on target, but there was some risk that there would be too much spending in 2009, and some risk that there would be too little spending in 2009. Those risks were balanced, so they said: On balance, we're not going to cut interest rates. At the same time they wanted to push a lot of money into the banking system. Other things equal, that's clearly expansionary. My point about interest on reserves is that it essentially neutralized that injection. The injection of all the money was expansionary; then the decision to pay interest on reserves sort of tied up the money and made it non-expansionary. So, if you net the two out, it's simply a passive stance by the Fed. So, I've suggested--it's a depressing suggestion--that the policy of paying interest on those reserves was simply a back door subsidy to the banking system. Again, people say: Well, it's only $5 billion at the current rate--$2 trillion in reserves at a quarter percent is about $5 billion. At 1% it's about $20 billion. And you can argue whether $20 billion is a lot or a little bit of money. I think for some banks it was a great deal of money. You can't just look at the entire system and say: Well, for the overall system it's a trivial subsidy. I think for certain banks it may have been the difference between survival or not. That's certainly possible. That's the empirical question I'd want to investigate. It's possible they had these twin objectives--they wanted to put money in there to help the banks, and they wanted to not have interest rates fall to zero. As you probably know, if you inject a lot of money into the system, the free market interest rate will tend to fall, normally, because you are increasing the supply of money, so that depresses interest rates through the liquidity effect. That's how monetary policy normally operates. So, this huge injection, late 2008, normally would have pushed interest rates immediately to zero if the Fed had not done the interest on reserves. So, why did--let's give the Fed the benefit of the doubt--why was that an unattractive outcome for them? To push interest rates to zero right away? Yes. As I said, believe it or not, they said that the risks of inflation and recession were equally balanced. They were sort of looking through the rear view mirror. Inflation had been high in the previous 12 months, but the futures markets, or more specifically what's called the TIPs spreads, which is the difference between interest rates on regular bonds and indexed bonds, those financial market indicators showed that investors expected about 1.2% inflation per year over the next 5 years. Very low. That's below the Fed's implicit 2% target. So, I've argued that actually the Fed should have worried about inflation being too low, not too high. But they were sort of like driving a car by looking in the rear view mirror, and trying to notice when it was going off the road; and they weren't looking at the market indicators, looking down the line to see where the economy was headed. And if they had done so, they would have seen that inflation was probably going to come in below target. Now, let me hasten to add--these are just futures indicators. They are often incorrect. It just so happens that the one I cited the day after the meeting the day that Lehman failed did turn out to be fairly accurate--we've run about 1.2% inflation on average since that meeting. Although it's been highly volatile. Deflation in 2009 and much higher inflation in 2011. But on average we've had about 1.2% inflation over the last 3 years. That was one of their mistakes, to have a backward looking policy and not take market indicators into account. I think if they'd done so they would have been more aggressive. I think if they could go back in a time machine, seeing what's happened I think they now realize they made a mistake in late 2008; and some of the aggressive moves they've done which have not had much effect, which I'll get to in a moment, would have been more helpful back then. The problem we are in now is once interest rates get near zero, even eliminating interest on reserves may not be enough to get the money circulating in the economy. Because with interest rates near zero there is almost no opportunity cost for banks to just sit on money. What you really need then is a more aggressive policy of targeting some variable, like inflation or nominal GDP, at a level that will raise expectations of future nominal growth and make the price of assets go up and the demand for credit go up and boost spending in the economy. And the Fed is unwilling to do that. So, they've missed their chance to play around with conventional policies like cutting interest rates, which they could have done after Lehman failed. Now they are in a more difficult, unconventional world where they can't cut interest rates any more because they are near zero; and they are simply afraid of using, for whatever reason, unconventional policies that would be effective. Although they've tried some ineffective unconventional policies. Let me be more precise--not completely ineffective, but not effective enough. I would say that all the things they've done probably have prevented the economy from being in a deeper depression right now--I'll concede that--but not enough to promote a rapid recovery like we saw from the 1980s recession, for example. Which was also a fairly large one. Another deep recession. And that one had a very fast recovery, along with very fast nominal GDP growth. Again, to me in a way there's no mystery about the weak recovery. If people say: Where are the jobs? There's no jobs because GDP growth is slow in real terms. Why is real GDP growth slow? No mystery there either--nominal GDP growth is very slow. So, in the 1983-1984 recovery, nominal GDP growth averaged about 11% annual rate for six quarters. In this recovery, it's been a little over 4, 4-4.5%. What does that mean? It means that in a world of low inflation, you are only getting about 3% real growth, which is barely above trend. And that's why we've had such a small reduction in the unemployment rate. We're growing in this recovery over the last few years just barely above trend. 31:18 But all of this presumes that somebody's in charge of nominal income and nominal spending. If we went back to that 1983-84 recession, can you point to things that the Fed did rather than things that just turned out that way? Well, they had an easier job, because all they really needed to do was just cut interest rates to promote a more rapid recovery, and they did that aggressively. They started high. Now, in our situation--and by the way, it's not just the Fed. What I found looking around the world today or looking back through history, is every single time, I believe, that countries get into this zero-rate situation, monetary policy tends to be less expansionary than expected. You tend to stay in this slow nominal growth phase for often an extended period of time, and we went to low interest rates in the early 1930s and they stayed that way almost all the way into the early 1950s. Japan went to near-zero interest rates some time around the mid-1990s and they are still there. Europe and the United States have gone into a low-interest rate environment in the last three years and are basically still there. And even more interesting is the fact that twice in Japan and twice in Europe they tried to escape from it by raising rates, and they did so prematurely; and each of those four occasions, the Central Bank had to do an embarrassing about-face very quickly and cut them right back down. It occurred in Japan in 2000, in 2006 where they raised rates--the economy slowed and they quickly had to cut them again. And in Europe, the European Central Bank raised rates in mid-2008 and then had to cut them soon after; and they did it just this year in April, I believe they raised rates from about 1 to 1.5%; and then the European economy slowed in the latter part of this year and the European Central Bank has recently cut them right back down. So, those are four very embarrassing about-faces for central banks, all because they were anxious to get out of the zero-rate trap but hadn't created the robust nominal growth that would support higher interest rates. So, they did it prematurely, essentially. But where's the cause and effect? If you ask a person, somebody running a business, and say: Interest rates are really low. This is your chance to go out there and really do some great projects. Why isn't that happening? The standard answer you hear is: Banks are uneasy about lending because the future is uncertain, and businesses are uneasy about investing, because the future is uncertain, and that's why interest rates are low. Is that true? Excuse me--that's why we don't see a lot of investment. It depends on what you mean by uncertain. There's kind of two arguments on this, the liberal argument and the conservative argument. And they are both probably true to some extent. The liberal argument is that the low interest rates haven't helped because there's not much demand in the economy. Not much spending. So companies are operating factories at, say, 75% of potential; they don't need to borrow to expand their plant, equipment because there's not much demand for their goods. Or, in the housing market, sure there are low interest rates, but since house prices keep falling why would someone want to buy a house now? So, there's not much demand for credit. And so the interest rates reflect a weak economy. The conservative argument is that a lot of bad government policies scare businesses, deter investments--taxes, regulation, and so on. And that may be true, and I think it is true to some extent. But the liberal argument here is really all you need. I don't think it's a complete explanation of the recession, and I've argued to some extent against liberals on some issues like unemployment insurance and other things that I think are increasing the structural rate of unemployment in the economy. But on balance I think that when you have very weak nominal spending, the free market interest rate will tend to fall to zero even in an economy that doesn't have a lot of structural weaknesses. It's not an assumption you need to explain what's going on here. 35:49 But then what's the implication of what we ought to be doing? The left-of-center approach is, say: We just need to spend more. We need to get nominal income up--they agree with you. Nominal income has been falling or is not rising at a fast enough rate, so something needs to fill that gap by spending more money. That's their standard argument. Why are they wrong? They are arguing for government spending, which I think first of all won't really help very much. And second, monetary stimulus. The best way and probably the only way to promote faster nominal GDP growth is to get a more expansionary monetary policy. So, I think the mistake on the left is to put too much faith in fiscal stimulus. Fiscal stimulus is relatively weak, and it also tends to be offset or neutralized by monetary policy. But let's say monetary policy stayed as it is; the President and the Congress got the Keynesian religion; they listened to Paul Krugman and they increase government spending in the United States by over a trillion dollars this year, which is what many people are advocating who are Keynesians. They argue interest rates are too low; the Fed has no bullets left. So, they can't lower the interest rate any more; so the best thing to do is have government spend. Government spending a trillion dollars--isn't that going to increase nominal income? Here's the tricky part: When you said, let's leave monetary policy as it is, you slid over a very subtle and complicated question, and that is: What is monetary policy? And I find when I talk to people, everybody I talk to seems to have a clear and definite idea in their mind about what we mean by holding monetary policy constant. But they don't equate with each other. So, for some people that means the Fed keeping the money supply constant. For others it means keeping interest rates constant. Which is a very different policy. And I think both of those are wrong because it's not what the Fed is actually doing. What the Fed is actually doing is adjusting monetary policy to conditions in the aggregate economy. So, they'll do some quantitative easing (QE), then they'll back off; they'll do some more. Or Operation Twist. Or they'll promise to keep interest rates low for two years. And these policies are not highly effective, but they are probably effective in slightly nudging the economy a little bit faster, a little bit slower. So, what the Fed is doing is these on and off policies as it reads the incoming economic data. If the data gets stronger, the Fed does less. When the data gets weaker, the Fed does more. What that means is fiscal stimulus does succeed in promoting a little bit faster growth; the Fed will react by doing less quantitative easing and other policies of that sort; and it will very likely neutralize most of the effect of the fiscal stimulus. Now, I'm not trying to stake out an extreme position here. If the Federal government did an enormous amount of fiscal stimulus, yes, I think it would boost nominal GDP. Whether it would be a good idea would be another question. But obviously, if you took it to the extreme like the spending in WWII, it would definitely boost measured GDP in the economy. But for the amounts that are politically realistic, I really don't think--let me put it this way: The original stimulus bill was originally around $800 billion, in 2009. Ended up being $825 billion. I think it was a mixture of spending and some tax rebates. About 1/3 each--1/3 tax rebate, 2/3 spending, and of that 2/3, 1/3 on payments to the states and 1/3 on various so-called expansionary activities of various kinds. And that was done in early 2009. About the same time the Fed was getting very worried about the economy. It wasn't "done" in 2009. The legislation authorizing it was enacted. It took a while to spend it; it spent out over 2 or 3 years. Right. But importantly, by the way, a lot of modern theories say the effect on demand should come with expectations; so it should start even when the program is not enacted. You've got that program, then. The standard way of looking at it is to assume the Fed is just this passive bystander. But everything we know about Ben Bernanke, throughout his career, tells us very clearly he had no intention of allowing a Great Depression II on his watch. He's a scholar of the Great Depression. He passionately believes the Fed blew it by not being more aggressive. He's also insisted all along the Fed has lots of ammunition they haven't used. He's talked about things they could do, things he recommended the Japanese do that he hasn't done yet. So, the Fed has a lot of ammunition left including the most powerful tools, which they haven't pulled out yet. Which are? Setting a higher inflation or nominal GDP target is the most powerful one probably. If they could. That would be politically controversial, especially if they did it in terms of inflation. I prefer nominal GDP. But here's my point: Suppose Obama did nothing in 2009. There's no way the Fed would have just sat back passively and watched the economy collapse. What would have happened is with less fiscal stimulus there would have been a lot more monetary stimulus. I don't know exactly what it would look like. I'm not saying it would have exactly made up for the lack of fiscal stimulus, but my point is this: Any estimate of the effects of fiscal stimulus are probably really wildly exaggerated by not taking into account the reaction function of the monetary policy makers. And that's the big flaw in the way we think about fiscal stimulus. And no matter how many times I make this point, I find it's very hard for people to absorb it. They want to think in terms of other things equal--like, okay, there's the monetary policy; now let's see what fiscal policy can do. It doesn't work that way. If fiscal policy does more, monetary policy will do less. That's how things work. 42:21 I agree with your idea--I've always felt it's an interesting psychological insight--that the greatest living scholar of the Great Depression is Ben Bernanke. Nothing could be more embarrassing than for his legacy to be that he allowed it to happen under his watch. For one thing he's a great scholar of the Great Depression. For another, there's this famous conference where he, in the presence of Milton Friedman, who is not with us any longer and who I'd argue would be the number 1 scholar of all time, but fine, Ben Bernanke's second but now he's first because Milton's gone--but at that conference while Milton was still here, Ben Bernanke said: Don't worry, Milton, we won't let it happen again. Now, as you said earlier, maybe he's achieved that level. He did enough to avoid a Great Depression. He didn't do enough to avoid a Great Recession. But why would he even get this close? Why would he, when he saw that that $787, now $825 billion of stimulus wasn't doing very much, why would he counteract it? You are suggesting he counteracted it, and that's why it had no effect. Is that what you are saying? Yes. The way I would put this is: He didn't go out and say: Aha, I'm going to go out and counteract this now. If you asked him, he would deny counteracting it. No doubt. In his own mind he would not believe that he did that. But I believe that if you really think through the logical implications of what the Fed would have done in the absence of fiscal stimulus, that in essence it was sabotaged. I know that's a very counterintuitive and controversial statement, and almost nobody agrees with me. But I think that's because they are not thinking about the issue clearly enough. It's not that the Fed would ever set out to hurt the economy intentionally or anything of that sort. I happen to believe the Fed underestimated the amount of stimulus that was needed. If there had been no fiscal stimulus, their estimate of what was needed on the monetary side would have been substantially higher, and that's the logical point I'm making. Now, if you word it in a certain way, it sounds very appalling, like the Fed is sabotaging fiscal stimulus; and that's not it at all. But that's really kind of what it amounts to when you think about it logically. Let me give you an example of how the way we're thinking about these issues is so unlike the orthodox view. Can I take one minute to read a quotation--and I bet you cannot guess who said this, in 1999. This is about Japan. What continues to amaze me is this: Japan's current strategy of massive, unsustainable deficit spending in the hopes that this will somehow generate a self-sustained recovery is currently regarded as the orthodox, sensible thing to do - even though it can be justified only by exotic stories about multiple equilibria, the sort of thing you would imagine only a professor could believe. So, this is my view, interjecting. Continuing: Meanwhile further steps on monetary policy - the sort of thing you would advocate if you believed in a more conventional, boring model, one in which the problem is simply a question of the savings-investment balance - are rejected as dangerously radical and unbecoming of a dignified economy. So, he's amazed that people are suggesting that Japan do deficit spending when they already have this big debt and asking why aren't we doing the conventional monetary stimulus. Now do you know who said this in 1999? I'm going to guess it's Ben Bernanke from the way you are talking. No. Paul Krugman. That was my second guess! So, here's Paul Krugman saying exactly what I'm saying now, and I feel like my view of monetary and fiscal policy was the standard view, and in a sense the only reason we're even having this conversation right now is that in some strange way, the conventional view became very unconventional in 2008 and 2009. As you probably know, I'm not a particularly well known economist, at least prior to getting into blogging; and so the only reason we're having this interview is once I started blogging, I found that my view, which I thought was the conventional view, was in fact a fairly radical view and it got a lot of attention. A lot of people sort of thought of it as a very provocative, unconventional view. This is what I find so strange about what is going on. We have this situation where the standard view somehow twisted around from being monetary policy as the natural way of preventing a depression, which is the story that came out of the Great Depression, supposedly, to the view that it's actually fiscal policy that needs to do this. Now, some people will say it's different now because we're in a liquidity trap; but Japan had zero interest rates in 1999, roughly, when Paul Krugman made this statement. It's not really different. I'll just read you one really quick quotation out of the number 1 textbook in money: Monetary policy can be highly effective in reviving a weak economy even if short-term interest rates are already near zero. So, that's what we are teaching our students, right out of the number 1 textbook; and I found in late 2008 almost none of my colleagues believed this. They were all saying: Monetary policy can't do anything right now; we have to use fiscal stimulus. What textbook is that? Frederic Mishkin, Money and Banking. 48:03 So, one thing that Krugman's been saying a lot lately is that people who worried--this would be me, and others--that the injection of $2 trillion or so of reserves into the banking system is going to cause inflation--look how stupid they were. They were crazy. They were wrong. It didn't happen. When people ask me why didn't it happen, I quote Allan Meltzer. He said, on this program maybe two years ago: That's because they are not spending it. Then you come to the question of it's not in the economy; of course it didn't cause inflation. They are sitting on it. So, the question I think it comes down to is I think Krugman would justify his current position by saying: It's true that in theory monetary policy could do something, but when the banks aren't going to spend the money you give them, then you are stuck and the government has to step in. And you are suggesting that that's partly because of the bad policy on the part of the Fed of paying interest on reserves, and partly because of other things. Here's one other point he would make, and where I partly agree with him. He would say: What Japan really needed to do was to set a higher inflation target. That is, create expectations on the part of folks. To lower the real interest rate. So, if the nominal interest rate is stuck at zero--let's say you have a 4% inflation. I think that's the number Krugman recommended. Then the real interest rate becomes -4%. In other words, it doesn't really cost anything to borrow money because you are paying it back with cheaper dollars in the future. This is something Ben Bernanke recommended the Japanese do as well. Do what? Raise their inflation target. To 4% rather than its current appearance of zero. I don't know that he mentioned the number 4, but to do what's called level targeting, which means make up for the deflation. So, Japan has had some mild deflation, and what Bernanke said was they should have some inflation now to sort of catch up for the previous fall in prices. I can't remember the number, but I think it may have been numbers like 3-4% mentioned in his article. This is something he wrote I think in the early 2000s. But interestingly he's rejected that for the United States and his argument is that we don't have outright deflation like Japan, so that's the reason he's able to reconcile these positions. It's hard to know. Given the way that the Department of Labor calculates housing prices into the Consumer Price Index (CPI), they've made some arbitrary choices; they might be right; it's a bizarre method; I'm sure the measurement of it is flawed. They have all kinds of problems with quality control, holding quality constant. One quick example that's really striking: According to official CPI data over the last 5 years, housing costs are up about 7.5%, total. That's a little weird. According to the Case-Shiller index, they are down like 32%. That's a 40% discrepancy between Case-Shiller and the CPI on housing, and housing is like a third of the CPI, roughly. In other words, I'm not trying to argue that we are really in deflation this year. This particular year, probably inflation is a little bit positive. But what I would argue is that in general the CPI is unreliable, and that's why I tend to focus on nominal GDP. And if you look at nominal GDP, it's just unambiguous. Instead of the normal 5% a year growth in nominal GDP, for the last 3 years it's been going up about on average I think 1-1.5% a year. And that's barely above population growth. So, basically what we are doing is we are not providing enough income, where we could have a fast recovery even if our economy was perfect. In other words, even if we had none of these flaws that you and I don't like about the regulatory system, the tax system, and everything. It's very unlikely that this amount of income will allow for a fast recovery, because to get a fast recovery we'd have to have rapid deflation, and you just don't tend to see fast recoveries during periods of rapid deflation. At least in a modern economy where probably wages are stickier than they used to be. 52:30 So, let's have a little fun. Let's suppose on December 31, Ben Bernanke writes a letter to President Obama and he says: I've always wanted to spend more time with my family, so I'm resigning. And to the surprise of many, the President, desperate for a healthy economy over the next 9 months, 10 months, for obvious reasons, puts in place Scott Sumner of Bentley University; he's approved, and on January 1st he takes control of the Fed's Chair. What would you do? What might you do? What would be your announcements and actions that you would think be the best in this situation? That's a good question. I'll give you a week if you want, but we are recording it now. You've got ten days, but let's pretend it's now. I can give you a quick answer, but it may not be a simple answer. First of all, any Fed policy has to be a strategy. It can't be just a tactic for the moment. So, I can't really know what's best for right now unless I know what the long term trajectory is. If I had to choose, I might just default to what the Fed was doing prior to the recession, which was promoting about 5% nominal GDP growth, maybe a little bit lower. Maybe 4%. That would be the long-term target. How do you get to a target like that? What would be your actions or words? Okay, but the second part is I think we need a little bit of catch up in the next two years because we are so far below trend. I don't think we should try to go all the way back up to the old trend line. I'd like to see us promote maybe 6-7% growth for the next couple of years, and then whatever we decide on. Let's say I pick 4% thereafter. Now, how do we get there? The ideal policy would be to create nominal GDP futures contracts. And peg the price of them. That is, issue enough money until the market expected nominal GDP to grow that fast. So, you would just keep injecting money until you got the nominal GDP futures contract showing the amount of growth that the goal of the policy was. How would you do that? How would you inject a sufficient amount of money given that the past injections have had no effect? First, if you want to make them more effective, you'd stop paying interest on reserves. That's a start. Now, let's suppose banks continue to sit on the money even at zero interest rates. You could always make the interest on reserves negative. You could charge them. That would be a fairly radical move. Now, I happen to think that's not necessary. That's a fairly radical option. That doesn't seem so radical. Well, it would probably for instance destroy the money market mutual fund industry, because people would be better off keeping money in safes in their house at zero interest--cash--than they would sitting in money market mutual funds at negative interest rates. I don't know if you see what I'm saying. I don't. There would be some distortions to the financial system. That would be really bad. I would prefer that instead of going to negative interest on reserves that the first option would be to simply buy as many assets as necessary. The Fed hasn't even scratched the surface for what they could buy. There's a lot of assets out there. But I think the more important point is that people tend to look at this problem backwards. What the Fed has been doing is injecting money and promising that they'll pull the money out again before we get a lot of inflation. Or anything of that sort. Mop it up. So, it's a temporary currency injection. Those are not going to boost GDP very much, or spending or inflation. To have an effect, it has to be more permanent. So, what the target does is it tells you the Fed is going to leave enough money out there permanently to try to hit this track that you've laid out, this trajectory that you are targeting for nominal income. Again, the optimal solution in my mind would be for the markets to determine how much money and what interest rates for this futures contract technique. Essentially the Fed just targets the price of the futures contract and passively adjusts the money supply as needed to make that target price stick. In other words, the analogy would be like the gold standard, except instead of pegging the price of gold, you'd be pegging the price of nominal GDP futures. In both systems the quantity of money in circulation is determined by how much the public wants to hold, given that trajectory for nominal GDP. Now, people will say: What if no amount of money gets you there? You can't really seriously argue that because in the reductio ad absurdum, the Fed would buy up all of planet Earth. And pay for it with currency. Obviously that's not an equilibrium outcome. Long before you got to that point, inflation expectations would start rising and you'd have to stop the injection. I would even go further, though. I would predict that if my policy were put into effect, the monetary base--that's the money created by the Fed--would actually go down. In other words, we have plenty of money in circulation right now. Too much to hit that target. The reason we are not having faster growth is that there is too much demand for money, partly because of the interest on reserves and partly because of the low expected nominal GDP growth. If we had a robust, more expansionary policy people and banks wouldn't want to be sitting on reserves. They would move the money into places where they could earn higher rates of return. And it would turn out we could actually need much less currency to achieve our target than we currently have in circulation. Or base money, to be precise. When I talk about the monetary base I mean including both money in the banks that they are sitting on--the so-called excess reserves--and also the cash in circulation. That you and I hold. What would happen is the banks would probably stop sitting on all those excess reserves. The public certainly doesn't want to hold $3 trillion in cash. So, what would happen is at some point the Fed would have to pull some of that money out of circulation that was injected during the emergency, because in a healthy economy you simply don't have that much demand for liquidity. So, I'm not really worried that the Fed wouldn't be able to buy enough assets to make that happen. I would expect once they started buying assets, expectations would increase sharply, and that very quickly they would have to reverse course and start pulling money out of circulation.
A major pharmaceutical company lied and misrepresented its powerful opioid product for profit, putting people at risk in the worsening opioid epidemic, according to a new bombshell report by Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO). The report, which McCaskill’s office has described as the first round of an investigation into opioid companies, details the workings of Insys Therapeutics, which manufactures the fentanyl drug Subsys. According to the report, Insys misrepresented Subsys to get insurers to pay for it, letting the company sell its product to people who didn’t need and shouldn’t have access to such a powerful drug. “In the case of Subsys patient Sarah Fuller, an audio recording reveals that an Insys employee repeatedly misled representatives of Envision Pharmaceutical Services to obtain approval for her prescription,” the report found. “The result, in the case of Ms. Fuller, was death due to allegedly improper and excessive Subsys use.” McCaskill’s report provides a grim snapshot of one reason the opioid epidemic became the deadliest drug overdose crisis in US history: Driven by a quest for profit, opioid makers and distributors misled doctors, insurers, patients, and the general public about their drugs — claiming that they are safe and effective for conditions that they would turn out to be neither safe nor effective for. The drugs proliferated across the US, and tens of thousands of people have died annually for years as a result of opioid overdoses. What McCaskill’s office found In 2012, Insys found that Subsys got reimbursement approval from insurers in only about 30 percent of cases — a pretty low rate. So the company set up a special unit, known as the Insys Reimbursement Center (IRC), to try to get that number up. There was a lot of pressure to do this, according to McCaskill’s report: “Led by an Insys employee named Elizabeth Gurrieri, IRC employees reportedly received significant financial incentives and management pressure — including quotas and group and individual bonuses — to boost the rate of Subsys authorizations.” At the same time, an internal document uncovered by McCaskill’s team found that IRC failed to maintain “even basic measures” to make sure staff weren’t lying and misleading insurers so they would pay for Subsys when patients didn’t really need the drug. The unit took part in a lot of shady behavior as a result, even allegedly falsifying patients’ medical records to help them attain prescriptions. Here’s the problem: Subsys is a very powerful drug. It is highly potent and addictive. That’s why it’s meant for cancer pain patients. These patients typically need end-of-life care, meaning the risk of addiction isn’t as big of a concern, and many have already developed a tolerance to opioids from previous use. So when Insys representatives misled and in some cases flat-out lied about a patient’s needs, they helped push a dangerous drug to people who didn’t need it. The results are often misuse, addiction, and death. Insys was apparently aware of this, McCaskill’s report found: “According to a class action lawsuit, Insys management ‘was aware that only about 10% of prescriptions approved through the Prior Authorization Department were for cancer patients,’ and an Oregon Department of Justice investigation found that 78% of preauthorization forms submitted by Insys on behalf of Oregon patients were for off-label uses.” And the company allegedly knew, based on internal documents, “that the IRC lacked formal policies or monitoring procedures to ensure proper communication between Insys employees and healthcare professionals.” In short, the company allegedly knew its very dangerous product was being used for unintended purposes — yet it continued pushing more prescriptions for higher profits anyway. McCaskill’s report points to the story of Sarah Fuller as an example: Based on an audio recording, the team found that an Insys employee misrepresented herself as “with” the office of Fuller’s doctor to representatives for a pharmacy benefit manager. The Insys employee then suggested — albeit with careful wording to avoid the use of the word “cancer” — that Fuller, who did not have cancer, needed Subsys for “breakthrough pain.” The prescription was approved. Fuller later died “due to an adverse reaction to prescription medications.” Insys did not respond to a request for comment. But the company told McCaskill’s office that it had “completely transformed its employee base over the last several years,” and has “actively taken the appropriate steps to place ethical standards of conduct and patient interests at the heart of [its] business decisions.” And in June, Gurrieri, the former head of IRC, pled guilty for conspiring to defraud insurers. McCaskill’s office said it intends to “continue to evaluate whether these efforts have resulted in a true transformation of the Insys corporate culture.” And this is just one part of her office’s efforts to hold opioid makers accountable in the middle of the US’s overdose crisis. This isn’t the first report to reach these types of conclusions Perhaps no single data point makes the connection between drugmakers and the opioid epidemic clearer than the following chart from an analysis published in the Annual Review of Public Health, which shows how increases in opioid sales went hand in hand with increases in opioid overdose deaths and drug treatment admissions: Much of this was the result of misleading marketing by major drug companies. As an extensive Los Angeles Times investigation found, Purdue’s opioid OxyContin was marketed for its supposed ability to provide 12 hours of pain relief. But as Harriet Ryan, Lisa Girion, and Scott Glover reported, “Even before OxyContin went on the market, clinical trials showed many patients weren’t getting 12 hours of relief. Since the drug’s debut in 1996, the company has been confronted with additional evidence, including complaints from doctors, reports from its own sales reps and independent research.” This was critical to Purdue’s competitive advantage: If it really didn’t provide 12-hour relief, then it wasn’t more effective than other similar painkillers on the market. In the face of the evidence, though, Purdue stood by its claim for years. And it told doctors that if patients weren’t seeing the promised results, then the problem was that doses were too low. These efforts, it seems, were in the name of profit. One sales memo uncovered by the Times was literally titled “$$$$$$$$$$$$$ It's Bonus Time in the Neighborhood!” This is alarming for public health: As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned, higher doses significantly increase the risk of overdose and addiction. The Los Angeles Times investigation found, “More than half of long-term OxyContin users are on doses that public health officials consider dangerously high, according to an analysis of nationwide prescription data conducted for The Times.” Opioid makers’ claims that their drugs are an effective treatment for chronic pain are similarly faulty. There’s simply no good scientific evidence that opioid painkillers can effectively treat long-term chronic pain as patients grow tolerant of opioids’ effects — but there’s plenty of evidence that prolonged use can result in very bad complications, including a higher risk of addiction, overdose, and death. In short, the risks outweigh the benefits for most chronic pain patients. Yet opioid makers were highly influential in perpetuating the claim that their drugs can treat chronic pain. Several public health experts explained the recent history of opioid marketing in the Annual Review of Public Health, detailing Purdue Pharma’s involvement after it put OxyContin on the market in the mid-1990s: Between 1996 and 2002, Purdue Pharma funded more than 20,000 pain-related educational programs through direct sponsorship or financial grants and launched a multifaceted campaign to encourage long-term use of [opioid painkillers] for chronic non-cancer pain. As part of this campaign, Purdue provided financial support to the American Pain Society, the American Academy of Pain Medicine, the Federation of State Medical Boards, the Joint Commission, pain patient groups, and other organizations. In turn, these groups all advocated for more aggressive identification and treatment of pain, especially use of [opioid painkillers]. As a result of the misleading claims, Purdue and several of its chief executives paid more than $600 million in fines in 2007. But based on McCaskill’s report and other investigations, that kind of shoddy behavior has continued — likely making America’s deadliest drug overdose epidemic even worse. The opioid epidemic, explained In 2016, more Americans died of drug overdoses than any other year on record — more than 64,000 people in one year, based on preliminary figures from the National Center for Health Statistics. That’s higher than the number of Americans who have ever died from car crashes, gun violence, or HIV/AIDS during any single year. This latest drug epidemic, however, is not solely about illegal drugs. It began, in fact, with a legal drug. Back in the 1990s, doctors were persuaded to treat pain as a serious medical issue. There’s a good reason for that: About 100 million US adults suffer from chronic pain, according to a 2011 report from the Institute of Medicine. Pharmaceutical companies took advantage of this concern. Through a big marketing campaign, they got doctors to prescribe products like OxyContin and Percocet in droves — even though the evidence for opioids treating long-term, chronic pain is very weak (despite their effectiveness for short-term, acute pain), while the evidence that opioids cause harm in the long term is very strong. Painkillers proliferated, landing in the hands of not just patients but also teens rummaging through their parents’ medicine cabinets, other family members and friends of patients, and the black market. As a result, opioid overdose deaths trended up — sometimes involving opioids alone, other times involving drugs like alcohol and benzodiazepines (typically prescribed to relieve anxiety). By 2015, opioid overdose deaths totaled more than 33,000 — close to two-thirds of all drug overdose deaths. (The figures for 2016 aren’t added up just yet.) Seeing the rise in opioid misuse and deaths, officials have cracked down on prescriptions painkillers. Law enforcement, for instance, threatened doctors with incarceration and the loss of their medical licenses if they prescribed the drugs unscrupulously. Ideally, doctors should still be able to get painkillers to patients who truly need them (and they can work for some individual chronic pain patients) — after, for example, evaluating the patient’s history of drug addiction. But doctors, who weren’t conducting even such basic checks, are now being told to give more thought to their prescriptions. Yet many people who lost access to painkillers are still addicted. So some who could no longer legally obtain painkillers have turned to illegally obtaining the cheaper, more potent opioids: heroin and fentanyl, a powerful synthetic drug. Not all painkiller users went this way, and not all opioid users started with painkillers. But statistics suggest many did: A 2014 study in JAMA Psychiatry found 75 percent of heroin users in treatment started with painkillers, and a 2015 analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that people who are addicted to painkillers are 40 times more likely to be addicted to heroin. So other types of opioid overdoses, excluding painkillers, also rose. That doesn’t mean pulling back on the number of painkiller prescriptions was a mistake. It appeared to slow the rise in painkiller deaths, and likely prevented doctors from prescribing opioids to new generations of people with drug use disorders. But it must be paired with more access to addiction treatment. According to a 2016 report by the surgeon general, just 10 percent of Americans with a drug use disorder obtain specialty treatment. The report found that the low rate was largely explained by a shortage of treatment options. So federal and state officials have pushed for more treatment funding, including medication-assisted treatment like methadone and buprenorphine. Some states, like Florida and Indiana, have taken a "tough on crime" approach that focuses on incarcerating drug traffickers. But the incarceration approach has been around for decades — and it hasn’t stopped massive drug epidemics like the current crisis.
One of the reasons why I became motivated to begin writing again was this long debate on Foseti’s now-mothballed blog. To simplify, the arguments were split between: those who wanted neoreaction to remain a small community of amateur scholarly correspondents uninterested in general influence people who were interested in forming an influential political sect, which would require propaganda those who saw merit in both approaches The discussion was partly sparked by the style of Radish and the retirement of Moldbug from active blogging. Going back to the comments on Foseti’s post, I was more persuaded by the arguments that Contemplationist, Spandrell, Surviving Babel, and Jim put forth than the others. My general take on writing is that it is best used to provide information, to entertain, and to persuade other people. Writing for the public, which is what a blog does, necessarily means influencing members of that public. There’s an alternative to writing for the public called “writing e-mails and letters,” which is more private and more effective at persuading people one-by-one besides. Contemplationist wrote: Lets also remember that Moldbug’s mission was to convert the Brahmin young, which is absolutely possible with a hipster intellectual attitude (I’ve done it myself). The 60s counterculture was not supported by the old progressives. We can certainly create a reactionary counterculture. Culture is supreme. What would be a simple example? Formal Fridays for one. Dress old school. Behave old school. Don’t take shit from women. Be the aristocrat if you can. Also, as AnomalyUK has noted, we just need some threshold of intelligent common people to be aware that they know someone who holds the opinion for example that “the Queen would rule better than the Parliament.” I see all of this as very doable. Neovictorian recently wrote an article about how this sort of thing has impacted his attention span (with some direct reference to my work) along with some reference to the broader mass media, of which I’m a small part. He and Bruce Charlton absolutely have a point in that. To the extent that you already agree with most of what’s being said, you should refocus your attention on bringing your real life in line with your changed beliefs rather than expending too much of your attention reading entertaining neoreactionary propaganda. If you need to taper off your addiction, just skim headlines, read weekly round-ups like the ones published by Nick B. Steves or Free Northerner, or use an RSS reader to decrease the amount of time that you waste keeping up with the volume of production. I’m a propagandist. I don’t really try to dress myself up as anything else. I do get repetitious sometimes, because repetition is necessary to get the desired effect. My writing is often derivative and makes no attempt to conceal that. Part of the motivation that I have to write is also just to share what I’m reading with other people so that it doesn’t stay locked up in my head, which it otherwise would. No one is obligated to read what I write. Thousands of people do find it useful and interesting. A lot of the writers who churn out of the reactosphere burn out because: their work responsibilities become too heavy they need to earn more money, which requires more of their attention they stop enjoying it they dislike the new people coming in to the space they dislike the additional effort needed to grab reader attention they become frightened of the risk involved in participating All of these are valid reasons to stop writing. My general goal is to support the growth of that reactionary counterculture which was napkin-sketched some years ago. I can’t guarantee that it will succeed or that I will succeed. I’m not a prophet. It might turn out to be really mediocre, and it may very well be my fault if it does. And when I produce bad work, or make a bad argument, or include a factual error, I expect to be criticized for it. Achieving those goals (which some people have judged to be impossible) requires developing staying power and uneven competitive advantages compared to the dominant progressive culture. One-off efforts achieve little because sustained effort is what keeps a culture alive and growing. A lot of people who could contribute more instead prefer to invent countless reasons about why they shouldn’t contribute at length, sometimes over a period of months, or spend time explaining why what’s being contributed deserves endless scorn from critics who are themselves too frightened to contribute much of anything themselves. I’ve called this tendency the negative pose, and it’s common on the internet in which it’s easy and pleasurable to construct that kind of entertaining-but-mostly-useless persona. Not to be too self-help-y, but the only way to make sure that a difficult task actually is impossible is to declare it to be impossible before it’s even attempted. I don’t really put much stock in declarations like that, because it’s usually just an excuse to avoid discomfort or danger, unless there’s an accurate theoretical reason why something is impossible. Creating a counter-culture is doable. It’s just difficult. Share this: Twitter Reddit Email Facebook Like this: Like Loading...
Climate Progress: One of the Largest Coal Companies in the United States Just Filed For Bankruptcy Arch Coal, one of the United States’ largest coal companies, filed for bankruptcy on Monday in the hopes of eliminating more than $4.5 billion in long-term debt, according to a press release issued by the company. The news comes as several of Arch’s competitors -- Patriot Coal, Walter Energy, and Alpha Natural Resources -- have also filed for bankruptcy. Arch Coal is the second-largest supplier of coal in the United States behind Peabody Energy, and its mines represent 13 percent of America’s coal supply. Bloomberg: Would-Be Comeback Kid Tinkler Says Coal Industry Far From Doomed After watching his fortune evaporate during the coal industry meltdown, you’d think Australian electrician-turned-entrepreneur Nathan Tinkler would have walked away from the industry for good. Instead, he’s chastened and back in the game. Coal is under siege as activists pressure utilities to close aging power plants, nations take their boldest steps yet to cut pollution, and President Barack Obama imposes tougher regulations in the U.S. Even with those headwinds and prices languishing at the lowest levels since 2006, Tinkler, 39, is making deals again as chief executive officer of Australian Pacific Coal Ltd. Wired: How GM Beat Tesla to the First True Mass-Market Electric Car General Motors first unveiled the Chevy Bolt as a concept car in January 2015, billing it as a vehicle that would offer 200 miles of range for just $30,000 (after a $7,500 federal tax credit). Barring any unforeseen delays, the first Bolts will roll off the production line at GM’s Orion Assembly facility in Michigan by the end of 2016. As Pam Fletcher, GM’s executive chief engineer for electric vehicles, recently put it to me with a confident grin: “Who wants to be second?” For GM, the Bolt stands to offer a head start in a new kind of market for electric cars. But for the rest of us, there’s a broader significance to this news. MacRumors: Apple Registers 'Apple.car' and Other Auto-Related Domains Apple has registered a trio of auto-related top-level domain names, including apple.car, apple.cars and apple.auto. Whois records updated on January 8 show that Apple registered the domains through sponsoring registrar MarkMonitor Inc. in December 2015, although the addresses are not yet active. The domains could be related to CarPlay, but there will naturally be speculation about their possible relation to Apple's much-rumored electric vehicle plans. Multiple reports over the past year said Apple has a secretive team of hundreds working on an electric vehicle with a prospective 2019 or 2020 shipping date. Windpower Engineering: London Array Sets New Record for Offshore Wind Generation The world’s largest operational offshore wind farm, London Array, has set a new record for the amount of clean electricity produced by an offshore project in a single calendar month. December 2015 saw its 175 turbines generate 369,000 MWh of electricity -- considerably above target and well above the previous best of 317,000 MWh set last November. The capacity factor for the month, which saw average wind speeds of 11.9 m/s (27 mph), was 78.9%.
Washington (CNN) Top White House adviser Kellyanne Conway has apologized for citing a fake "massacre" in support of Donald Trump's travel ban, in an interview on CNN in which she acknowledged that not all of the mainstream media can fairly be characterized as "fake news". Conway said "regretted tremendously" shaming the press for not covering the "Bowling Green massacre", an event that did not happen, when she was defending Trump's immigration crackdown. During a 25-minute appearance on "The Lead with Jake Tapper" Tuesday, Conway criticized the media for sloppy reporting. But she conceded that it was unfair to label CNN as "fake news" -- as Trump has done previously. "I don't think CNN is 'fake news.' I think there are some reports everywhere, in print, on TV, on radio, in conversation, that are not well-researched and are sometimes based on falsehoods," Conway said. Trump has continually slammed major media organizations, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, as well as CNN, as "fake news." Conway said she was "trying to reach out" to the media and "put out the olive branch." At one point, Conway seemed to argue that the President offering blatant falsehoods as truth should matter less than his perceived accomplishments. "Are they (falsehoods) more important than the many things that he says that are true that are making a difference in people's lives?" Conway asked. Facts and falsehoods Tapper asked Conway about some of Trump's false claims, including his claim earlier Tuesday that the murder rate was at the highest point in 47 years -- which is wrong "Everyday there are these sprays of attack and sprays of falsehoods coming from the White House. It would be better if they were not coming from the White House, for me and for you," Tapper said, adding that it inhibits news organizations' ability to focus solely on policy. "Agreed, and let me just say it has to go both ways. I do, Jake, I sincerely don't see a lot of difference in coverage from when he was a candidate and when he became the Republican nominee, the president-elect and, indeed the President," Conway said. Conway also apologized for shaming the press for not covering the "Bowling Green Massacre," an incident which did not occur. "I regretted it tremendously," Conway said. "I felt really badly about that." JUST WATCHED Kellyanne Conway: CNN is not fake news Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Kellyanne Conway: CNN is not fake news 00:51 Terrorism coverage Tapper asked Conway to grapple with the President's claim on Monday that the press does not cover terrorism and has an unstated reason for doing so. On Monday, the White House released a list of 78 attacks saying: "Most of these attacks did not receive adequate attention from Western media sources." The list included many attacks covered extensively by CNN and other news outlets. Conway conceded that many of the attacks were indeed covered extensively, "Obviously, the very sad incidents that you've related ... frankly, CNN did amazing coverage for weeks at a time," Conway said. But she said other attacks weren't covered enough relative to Trump's candidacy or the death of the singer Prince and alleged claims that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Trump's 2016 rival, treated terrorism too lightly. Tapper responded: "Facts are stubborn things, and to say that we're not reporting something that happens not to be true -- therefore we're not to be trusted -- that's a problem." "I'm among, if not the most open press person in the White House ... I'm now being attacked by the media," Conway said. "I'm just going to keep soldiering on." On the point of attacks Trump himself has ignored, Tapper asked about a recent shooting in Quebec, where a man stands accused of murdering Muslims. Trump did not issue a tweet or other public statement in response to the event. "I know he's sympathetic to any loss of life," Conway said. "I will ask him. He doesn't tweet about everything." Putin and policy As Tapper pointed out, Trump's falsehoods and attacks on the press had dominated much of the coverage of the President, clouding out some potential policy coverage. However, the two did manage to speak about governing at the beginning of the interview. The White House adviser said she was glad the Senate had confirmed Betsy DeVos for education secretary earlier in the day. While acknowledging she respected the concerns of the two dissenting Republican voices in the Senate, she praised DeVos and indicated the newly minted education secretary would help Trump follow through on his education promises. "He wants to repeal Common Core," Conway said, adding that public education "doesn't work for everyone." The interview also generated a response from Conway about Trump's most recent comments on Russia In an interview that aired before the Super Bowl, Trump seemed to defend Russian President Vladimir Putin's human rights abuses, saying, "You think our country's so innocent?" The comment generated an outpouring of criticism from people who said Trump was brushing off crimes like occupying the territory of other countries, violently crushing dissent and propping up despots. "A lot of this stems from the fact that there just seems to be charge and accusation after charge and accusation that somehow President Trump and Vladimir Putin are BFFs. That is not true," Conway said. Conway said she did not think Trump was drawing a moral equivalence between the US and Russia, adding, "He was thinking about the war in Iraq, and in that regard, I think people should make the judgment for themselves."
I don’t know if you know this about me, but I have four kids. My oldest daughter, who’s now 17, lived off a steady diet of Disney movies during her toddler years, as I’m sure most kids do. She jumped from movie to movie, but the one she watched pretty consistently was Alice in Wonderland. She loved that movie so much, I had to buy her a second copy of the movie on VHS (yea, that’s right…VHS) because she wore the first one out. For an animated movie made in the early 50’s, Alice in Wonderland is one tripped out picture. Then again, Lewis Carrol’s novel, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (written in 1865) isn’t your average trip down the rabbit hole, either. Get it? Rabbit hole? Alice goes down the rabbit hole to Wonderland? Rabbit Hole Batman? See the connection? No? Oh. Rabbit Hole Batman pops up in Rocksteady Studio’s Arkham City video game, as a side story that becomes available after you save Vicki Vale. In this part of the story, Batman wakes up in the Mad Hatter’s lair, after taking the cure for the Titan formula, surrounded by the Hatter and rabbit-masked hoods. Jockularity then ensues. Anyway…to the topic at hand. Arkham City Rabbit Hole Batman fits right in that theme of trippiness. It has to be one of the strangest, creepiest mass-produced figures I’ve seen in a long time. Well, if you don’t account for all those zombie figures out there. Especially this one: You’ve seen the body of Rabbit Hole Batman before on any number of prior issued Arkham City Batman figures. Still…it sports a nice battle damaged deco. But, let’s be honest. What makes this figure is the sick head sculpt. I don’t know what’s creepier. The oversized toothy grin, the completely unnecessary twisted whiskers or the bugged out bug eyes. Or maybe it’s just the combination of all of those features therein. If you’re into exclusives, random figures or just a completest, then Rabbit Hole Batman is definitely one to pick up. I’ve got mine right next to my Arkham City Batman Infected figure.
Ten bystanders were rushed to hospital on Sunday after a fire safety drill went awry in Higashiomi, Shiga Prefecture. According to police, firefighters were demonstrating how to extinguish a fire for a crowd of around 150 onlookers when the incident occurred. TBS reported that a 50-year-old firefighter poured alcohol on a burning oil pan, at which point the alcohol also caught fire and sprayed onto the crowd. Police say the man, and two young girls, aged 6 and 8, sustained serious burns in the incident, while seven other people, aged between 7 and 70, sustained less serious injuries. The injured onlookers were standing about three meters from the pan, TBS said. An eyewitness said that a similar incident had occurred moments before at a rehearsal for the drill. © Japan Today
An interview with Roy Richard Grinker, Ph.D. Roy Richard Grinker, Ph.D., delivers the keynote address at the 7th Annual Promising Pathways Conference addressing autism spectrum disorders April 12 at Florida Gulf Coast University. Grinker, who is a professor at George Washington University, authored the book “Unstrange Minds: Remapping the World of Autism.” His own daughter was diagnosed with autism at 2 years old in 1994. At that time autism was believed to occur in about one in every 10,000 children compared to today when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control's Autism and Disabilities Monitoring Network estimates that about one in every 68 children is diagnosed with autism. WGCU’s John Davis spoke with Grinker about why autism seems so much more prevalent today and about what he’s discovered studying autism across cultures through the lens of an anthropologist.
Comcast's Internet Essentials program that provides $10-per-month Internet service to low-income families has been expanded to make about 1.3 million additional households eligible. Comcast created Internet Essentials in order to secure approval of its acquisition of NBCUniversal in 2011 and has decided to continue it indefinitely even though the requirement expired in 2014. Comcast says the 10Mbps plan has connected more than 600,000 low-income families since 2011, for a total of 2.4 million adults and children, and provided 47,000 subsidized computers for less than $150 each. Advocates for the poor have complained that the Internet Essentials service is too hard to sign up for, in part because of problems with the application process but also because it's usually only available to families with kids in school. That latter issue is what Comcast addressed today, announcing that "adults without a child eligible for the National School Lunch Program will be eligible to apply for Internet Essentials." Previously, pilot programs gave access to some low-income seniors and low-income community college students, but this is the first time that Internet Essentials will be available to adults without children nationwide. Comcast is partnering with the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to offer access to adults living in HUD-assisted homes even if they have no children. Comcast made this change in a few cities in March as part of a pilot and has now put it into place throughout its territory. Up to 2 million HUD-assisted homes are now eligible for Internet Essentials; as 35 percent have children and were thus already eligible, the expansion adds another 1.3 million households. Low-income adults still have to meet some eligibility requirements to qualify. Customers with unpaid bills are ineligible if the debt to Comcast is less than a year old. Comcast says that customers also can't sign up for Internet Essentials if they have subscribed to other Comcast Internet plans within the last 90 days, a roadblock for people who are already paying for pricier plans because they were ineligible for Internet Essentials or weren't aware that it exists. Comcast sometimes uses Internet Essentials as a lobbying tool. For example, Comcast pledged to expand the program to Time Warner Cable territory if it was allowed to purchase the company, but the merger was blocked by regulators over concerns about harm to online video providers. Google Fiber has started offering a similar program for residents in affordable housing, but instead of charging for the service and limiting speeds to 10Mbps, Google's low-income plan is free and has gigabit speeds. Comcast's program connects many more people due to the company's size, however. Comcast said it has expanded eligibility nine times in five years. "Comcast has expanded the number of schools where every student in the school will be deemed eligible for the program so long as a certain percentage of the kids in that school are NSLP [National School Lunch Program] eligible—from 70 percent, to 50 percent, and now to 40 percent," Comcast said. "As a result, Comcast estimates auto-enrollment now applies to about half of the 48,000 schools across its service area." About 2.6 million households with children were eligible when the program began in 2011, but Comcast hasn't provided an updated total.
As CTO at open source Business Intelligence (BI) products company Pentaho, James Dixon is responsible for the firm’s architecture and technology roadmap. He also appears to be responsible for personally authoring some of Pentaho’s technical wiki pages, which is (arguably) only right and proper isn’t it? Dixon notes on the OpenScrum/Home page section that open source as a movement in the software realm is successful and growing rapidly. Freshmeat is tasty SourceForge.net alone hosts over 450,567 open source projects and has over 1.6 million registered users (plus 678,888 developers and 125 million downloads per month) and Freshmeat (a sister site to SourceForge) has over 40,000 projects. “The Linux source code is estimated to be over 30 millions lines of code which, using conventional methods, would have taken almost 8,000 person years at a cost of over $1 trillion (Wheeler),” writes Dixon. He argues that the “productivity and momentum” of open source has been attained using a set of generally-accepted principles and philosophies that are able to produce high-quality software – and that exactly how and to what extent these principles are applied is up to the creators and administrators of each open source project. But not all open source is the same “Newcomers to the world of open source are expected to educate themselves on the general principles and etiquette of participating in each specific project. There is a high degree of variability in the tone, leadership, procedures, and development technologies across open source projects,” writes Dixon. NOT a methodology, open source is a guiding philosophy He concludes, “The principles of open source are exactly that, a set of guiding philosophies. They are not, as some represent them to be, a software development methodology. Given the tangible outputs that the open source movement has created so far it is surprising that, comprised as it is of very vocal and creative people, it has not noticeably settled on, nor even proposed, a well-defined methodology for developing open source software.” Indeed, Dixon questions the facts i.e. given its success and history why is there no accepted open source software development methodology he asks.
The StraightJacket has been vastly improved since our original article. It is lighter and has a Cerakote finish now. The threads on the Teludyne muzzle brake are now cut for standard suppressor threads as well. Note that chip in the Cerakote on the edge of the brade from a 2 foot drop onto tile of the Rock River gun. It is much superior to the old finish. The Teludyne Tech StraightJacket is a completely novel product. This is not a “heavy” or “bull” barrel rifle in the traditional sense. Teludyne press fits a 1 1/4″ sleeve over your barrel and fills it with a proprietary media alloy, then they weld a cap on, threaded to their own muzzle brake system. The StraightJacket wicks heat away from your barrel and bleeds it off the jacket, giving you not only more rigidity and accuracy, but also much less wear and tear on your barrel’s throat. Teludyne Tech StraightJacket http://www.teludynetech.com/ The concept of “accuracy” reaches far beyond a 3 or 5 shot group when you shoot your rifle in competition or varmint hunting, where 3 or 5 shots is nothing. It isn’t unusual these days to find off the shelf, inexpensive rifles that guarantee “MOA accuracy” out of the box, limited to a 3 or 5 shot string. But when you get up into 10, 20, and even 100 shot strings, it is a virtual guarantee that the accumulated heat in your barrel will throw your shots into a much bigger circle than MOA, (which is roughly an inch of dispersion at 100 yards). Back in 2010 we first examined a product called the “Straightjacket” from Teludyne Tech that was designed to cure the effects of heat in rifle barrels. The Straightjacket is a 1 1/4″ wide sleeve that is fitted around your existing barrel. It is filled with a heat-wicking media of a proprietary metal alloy, and the overall system is much less weight than would be a comparable 1 1/4″ heavy, or bull barrel. Our original look at the Straightjacket was on bolt guns, but now in its 4th generation of the Straighjacket, Teludyne has come up with a system for the AR-15 that is said to make your best 3 shot group into your average 10 shot group. What we originally called the “Ultimate Accuracy Makeover” has become the “Ultimate AR-15 Makeover,” and we got some amazing results from our two test uppers. The Straightjacket is still a niche product for people who shoot a lot of bullets, fairly quickly, at things far away, and it ain’t cheap. AR-15 upper conversions are currently $1049 and bolt guns can be converted into Straightjacket guns for $849 ($1049 titanium). From its introduction to this day the Straightjacket challenges everything we “know” about accuracy, and that alone makes it exciting to play with, and worth the investment if your budget allows it. To re-cover a bit of old ground so you don’t have to go clicking around, the Teludyne Straightjacket is a completely novel, patented product. The barrel you see in the pictures is not a “heavy barrel” or “bull barrel” at all. It is a regular barrel that has been fitted with a Straightjacket sleeve. You might ask “why would I want this instead of just a heavier barrel, like you see in a lot of long range competitions?” The answer lies in physics. A heavy barrel is just more of the same barrel. All of the particles of the single steel alloy in a normal heavy barrel are lined up with each other, so when they heated up from repeated firing, all the molecules heat up, and they all tend to exhibit the same behavior, albeit slower because there are more of them to heat up. Therefore, though a heavy barrel is more “accurate” over long shot strings than a normal thickness barrel, the improvement is only marginal. The Straightjacket uses a second, proprietary metal poured over the barrel to stiffen the overall rigidity the way a single alloy can’t. Because there are two materials, the barrel steel and the media, the heat link is not connected at the molecular level. This results in a heat resistance and improvement in rigidity that is equal to more than the sum of its parts. The media has a higher conductivity to heat than does steel alloy, so it wicks heat away from your chamber and barrel as well, preventing a lot of the throat erosion you would experience with a standard rifle barrel, heavy or not . This gives you exponentially longer barrel life and exceptional consistent accuracy over long shot strings, over the longer life of the firearm. The difficult thing about the Straightjacket is that you can’t really try it out to see if you like it. As we explained in the original article, you have to send your gun, or in the case of AR-15s, your upper, into Teludyne, where they will permanently install a Straightjacket . The outside sleeve is press-fit onto your barrel, then filled with the proprietary media, which bonds itself permanently to your barrel, and a cap is welded on top, threaded for a muzzle brake or suppressor. Teludyne has its own muzzle brake system which eliminates a good deal of felt recoil and it is now cut to standard ½” x 28 TPI suppressor threads. Look at the pictures in the first article and you will see, there is really no going back once you install a Straightjacket on a bolt action rifle. But with the AR-15 platform you can buy and send Teludyne a separate upper that will not affect the rest of your firearm. We have never actually heard of a case of someone where was unhappy with the performance of their Straightjacket rifle, so it isn’t a huge leap of faith sending your gun in. Google around on it and you’ll see that the only negative comments are from those who just don’t believe the positive results. These days people are somewhat suspect of positive reviews of new products because of the advertising payoffs that you clearly see in the print mags and on TV, but Teludyne is one of the majority of companies we review here who have never spent a dime in advertising on GunsAmerica, and have no plan to ever do so. The StraightJacket isn’t going to make you a better shooter, but it will make your gun more capable of top notch performance under heavy fire conditions, and it will make throat erosion nearly absent, no matter how many rounds you put through the barrel. Since 2010 Teludyne has installed over 1200 Straightjackets. Two major manufacturers are currently evaluating OEM Straightjacket models, and there are shooting clubs out there that have even created a “Straightjacket” class for their competitions. This is because guys were showing up with SJ equipped deer rifles at F-Class matches and scoring with the big boys, who had of course spent thousands of dollars more on their traditional heavy barrel, custom bedded rifles than did the SJ guys. The performance of the StraightJacket is so unique that several top competitors refused to let us use their name for the article in hopes that they wouldn’t lose their competitive edge. There are lots of youtubers and bloggers out there who have already used the system for years, and some of them even have a Sine Pari upper in hand for new testing. My only concern is that once the OEM guns do come out the rules bodies from shooting competitions will ban the StraightJacket, but the nice thing with ARs is that you can take the barrel off of the upper fairly easily, so it will be easy to decide if you want to shoot SJ or not. For our latest tests with the Straightjacket, we sent Teludyne two uppers from two of our favorite ARs, two guns that were made for shooting sports where a lot of rounds are fired fairly quickly at things pretty far away, varmint hunting and 3-Gun competition respectively . The first is a Rock River LAR-15 with a 24″ heavy barrel that came to us in an A4 configuration with an A2 buttstock. It had repeatedly shot sub-MOA out of the box, and those guns come with a guaranteed 3/4 MOA. The second gun is our prized STAG 3G, which was designed specifically for 3-Gun competition. It has an 18″ barrel with a rifle length gas system, and again, it is a gun that has always performed in 5 shot groups in the MOA and better range. The thing has been, with both guns, they did great in 5 shots, but when you opened them up to 10, and 20, the dispersion of the rounds downrange opened up considerably. This is important, because whether you are prairie dog hunting at 300 yards or taking long shots in 3-Gun after heating your gun up, both guns would be better if they could withstand long shot strings without a substantial loss in accuracy. So we sent them into Teludyne to see if they could do just that with the StraightJacket. Information gathering for this round of StraightJacket testing was a bit convoluted because Teludyne has been working for the last year and a half on their 4th generation “Sine Pari” system, which is available now. If you didn’t take Latin in school, Sine Pari means “without equal,” and it is the motto of the US Special Forces, dozens of whom have quietly deployed SJ equipped ARs and bolt guns in the field today. Our two uppers went out at first when Teludyne was in the 2nd generation of the Straightjacket for ARs, and we decided at the time to send them back for the 3rd generation. Rather than send them back for Gen IV now, however, we decided to just shoot them and give you the results. The main difference between Gen III and Gen IV “SIne Pari” is in full-auto fire. The Sine Pari system, which is now being made exclusively at Teludyne, is made to handle slightly more heat than Gen III, but our guns are fine for the aimed semi-auto fire they will experience. Our tests are with Gen III, and at some point we hope to get in a Gen IV SIne Pari for a followup, hopefully when ammo isn’t in such short supply. We tested the Rock River 24″ with Hornady Superformance Varmint ammunition in 5 and 20 round groups. This is a 53 grain round with a special bullet made for downrange energy retention, and it is a head and shoulders favorite for prairie dog hunters. Our 5 round group average at 100 yards was just over .5 inches with the newly StraightJacketed upper, which was a definite improvement in the gun, but the real performance boost was at 20 rounds. As you can see from the target, all but six shots went into a .5 inch hole at 100 yards, aimed from an Atlas bipod and shot in 60 seconds. We used an inexpensive Nikon .223 4-16x scope for this rifle, and we felt that it reflected the setup that an average shooter on a modest budget would bring out for dusting prairie dog towns. Likewise the setup for the 3G. The scope was a Meopta 1.5-4x and at 100 yards our average 5 shot group was just under an inch, with the 20 shot group at just under 2 inches using common Fiocchi competition .223 ammunition. Obviously, the magnification and cutting edge ammo made a difference for the Rock River, but we wanted to try to duplicate what kind of setup the average shooter would be using in the field for both guns, without cherry picking the best results. Most 3-Gun shooters don’t use more than 4x magnification due to the majority of close shots, and who can afford anything but range rounds for competition? Overall the performance of the Straightjacket was impressive, and it is no wonder that the Sine Pari system is being looked at by Rick Porter of Team Hornady in 3-Gun, as well as many other competition shooters. If you look back to our first article on the Straightjacket, a lot has changed since the early days of this technology. Our biggest complaint on the old system was the finish. It was too delicate and scuffed easily, for those of us who tend to bump into things. Our new test uppers came back with a Cerakote C-102 Graphite Black finish and it is night and day with the old dull black finish. All the new guns will come with this finish, and it is nearly scuff proof. “Nearly,” because of course the finish on the Rock River was inadvertently tested with a 2 foot vertical drop onto a tile floor ouch. But even that only chipped the Cerakote a little. The other thing that has changed some is the overall weight of the Straightjacket sleeve and media. Our first SJ guns were bolt action deer rifles and we still use them today for long distance shooting. They are noticeably front heavy, but not as heavy as they would be with a steel alloy barrel the same 1 1/4″ wide. The new Straightjackets are lighter, not completely weight neutral, but they add much less weight than our Gen I version. A 16″” Sine Pari upper weighs 48 oz. (the 12.5″ weighs 40oz.) compared to a common M-4 with all the same parts weighing 39oz. Both of our test uppers balanced nicely in the guns, and neither of them were the 16″ version. The question a lot of people ask is whether the Straightjacket kit is compatible with their existing hardware. Nearly all handguards that use a standard military barrel nut can be adapted to work with the Straightjacket, and custom versions can be made for hardware from Daniel Defense, Yankee Hill, Midwest Industries and a few others. As above, we did have to replace the Rock River handguard with a Samson, so call Teludyne and ask if you are worried about the extra cost of replacing hardware. There are no hidden or surprise costs to the Straightjacket. You won’t get calls from Teludyne that your {part} needs to be replaced like you would a mechanic or something. It is pretty much send your gun in and get it back in a month or so, Straightjacketed. Generally the word “straightjacket” is something that belongs on someone in a loony bin, and it was probably the looniest among us who originally sent those first guns to Teluydyne sight unseen. These days it isn’t so loony, and it is pretty sane to order Straightjackets for everyone who wants their gun to shoot the best it can. The newest news from Teludyne is that they are now shipping complete Sine Pari uppers, for ahem, $1,688. It comes with a whole list of high end options listed on the information page, and it looks as though it was specifically made for MIL-SPEC, full-auto fire. It also comes in a 12.5″ SBR version. You can also buy just the barrel assembly kit, with barrel nut, for $985. and this kit should be available from “two big gunsmithing suppliers” soon (probably Brownells and Midway). The delivery time on full Sine Pari uppers is 3 weeks, but it is subject to parts availability, which is still a little tight right now. If you send in a gun they can generally turn AR-15s over in 2-3 weeks, and bolt guns in 4 weeks. Keep in mind, however, that this article is being emailed to over 800,000 people this week, and the line could get pretty long pretty fast. Our first article kept Teludyne busy for several months, and even after our SHOT Show article from 2012, where we reported on the findings of H.P. White on the claims of the Straightjacket, orders piled in for a long time and continue today. Sooooo, if you want to get your gun done in time for Camp Perry, don’t stand around hemming and hawing about the thousand bucks and just do it. The Teludyne Straightjacket is a great investment in making your gun shoot better and last longer.
Image copyright Getty Images Welsh rock band Manic Street Preachers will play at the 2017 Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod to celebrate its 70th anniversary. The trio from Blackwood, in Caerphilly county, will play the final day of the annual festival on Sunday, 9 July. "It's always really special to play in Wales," said a Manics statement. "Particularly when we are playing an event for the first time. And to play on the festival's 70th anniversary will make it even better." The band, whose hits include A Design For Life, Motorcycle Emptiness and If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next, have just finished the 20th anniversary tour of their platinum album Everything Must Go. Tickets for the show at the Royal International Pavilion, which is expected sell out the 5,200 capacity, go on sale on Thursday. "This is set to be Llanfest's biggest ever show and to say we are excited about the prospect would be an understatement," said festival's musical director Eilir Owen Griffiths. "The Manics are one of the most important bands to ever emerge from Wales. "They have an extensive back catalogue of politically charged songs, which resonate as much now as when first released, as well as their powerful newer works."
1. KORNのUSツアーにサポートとして参加しているBABYMETAL。初日のアルバカーキ公演は活況を呈し、十分に合格点を与えられる成果を収めた。次なる場は、南カリフォルニアのビーチシティ・サンディエゴ群の南に位置するチュラビスタ。メキシコとの国境に近いため、スペイン語が飛び交う陽気な街として知られている。天候は今日も良く、見渡す限り雲一つない抜けるような青空が広がっている。今回、ライブが行われる会場はMattress Firm Amphitheatre。アルバカーキのIsleta Amphitheaterに似た造りの屋外の巨大な円形劇場である。午後、開場時刻に合わせて僕はUberで移動する。当初は交通機関を乗り継いで行く予定でいたのだが、最寄りのバス停から会場まで40分かけて歩くのはさすがに躊躇われた。日中は日差しが強く、体感温度は高いので、なるべくなら体力は温存しておきたい。ブロードウェイから右折してメインストリートに入り、オタイー川に沿って進む。ヘリテイジ・ロードを少し行くと、やがて Mattress Firm Amphitheatre が見えてくる。アルバカーキの会場周りは砂漠だったが、こちらは辺り一面、緑と丘陵に囲まれている。景色は違うが、ともに爆音を鳴らしてライブをやるには最適な場所のように思える。 BOX OFFICEでチケットを受け取り、待機列の最後方に並ぶ。周りにいるのは体躯の良い男たち。女性も大柄な人が多い。彼らが来ているTシャツは様々で、KORNやStone SourのTシャツはもちろんのこと、 IRON MAIDENやKILLSWITCH ENGAGEのTシャツ姿もちらほらと散見された。もちろんBABYMETALのTシャツを着ている人もそれなりにいる。もちろんという言葉を違和感なく使えることがまた嬉しい。アルバカーキでも同じ光景を直で目にしたのだから、そう断言してもまったく問題はない。 2. やがて開場時刻となり敷地内へ入る。既にフードコートはお祭り気分の様相を呈している。この景観は紛れもなく音楽フェスのそれである。芝生席は封鎖されていたので、僕はスタンド席後方から会場を眺めた。ふと既視感を覚えたのはその直後だった。アルバカーキとほとんど似たような光景。アメリカでは、地方都市の郊外に、このような2万人収容の円形劇場が多数あるのだろう。さすがは広大な土地を有するアメリカだと思わざるを得ない。やがて開演時刻となり、1組目の Islander がライブを始める。今日も爆音だ。音圧も凄まじく、体内にまで響いてきて心臓の鼓動とリンクしている。一昨日もそうだったが、2組目の Yelaeolf でさらに音圧は増した。僕は重低音を全身で浴びながら彼らのライブを堪能した。奇妙な光景を目を目にしたのはインターバル中のことだった。次のBABYMETALの出番を待ちわびていたところ、前方にいる外国人が20名ほど、パーティ用の帽子を被り始めたのである。それがYUIMETALに対するバースディサプライズだと理解したのは少ししてからだった。キツネたちの粋な計らいに、僕の頬と涙腺は幾ばくか緩んでしまった。 BABYMETALのバックドロップが掲げられると、一昨日のアルバカーキ公演同様、スタンディングエリアを中心に大きな歓声が沸き上がった。 BABYMETALのライブに対する強い期待感を否応なく感じる。左右にいる、BABYMETALのTシャツを身に纏った10代と思しき少女たちが、周囲に愛くるしい笑顔を振り撒いては、焦れた様子で、何度も袖の方を眺めている。瞳に憧憬の色を滲ませた彼女たちの横顔はただただまばゆく美しい。丘の麓に臨んだ木々は、初夏の日射しを受けて、鮮やかに、緑葉の陰影を濃くしている。スタンド席を見やれば、集結した観客たちの姿によって緑色の椅子は見えなくなりつつある。僕はフッと息を吐き、ぐるりと周囲を見渡してから視線をステージ中央に戻す。間違いなく今夜のライブも成功するだろう。内心でそう確信し、とても落ち着いた心持ちで僕は開演時間を待ち続けた。 3. セットリスト 01 BABYMETAL DEATH 02 ヤバッ！ 03 Catch me if you can 04 メギツネ 05 KARATE 06 ギミチョコ！！ 1曲目の「BABYMETAL DEATH」が始まると、ピットエリアから怒号のような歓声が上がった。フードタオルを被った3人が袖から歩いてくると歓声は歓喜の声へと変わっていった。懸命に首を伸ばして両手を振っている少女を視界の端で捉える。右隣にいるメタラーと思しき男性は、ヘドバンすることで、怒涛の六連符リフを歓迎している。 YUIMETALがにこりと微笑んだのは、フードを脱いで、少ししてからだった。お立ち台の上からキツネたちが被っている帽子をぐるりと嬉しそうに眺めている。 SU-METALもMOAMETALもすぐに状況を把握したようだ。 2人はクールに振りを続けながらもちらりと頬に微笑の影を浮かべていた。曲はその後「ヤバッ！」へと続いた。 3人の揃ったダンスルーティンが観衆を大いに魅了する。後方からひっきりなしに “ Wow！ BABYMETAL！” と叫ぶ声がする。その多くはアメリカ人女性によるものだった。曲が終わり、フロントの3人が袖に引っ込むと、次はお待ちかね、神バンドの出番。 4人がそれぞれ巧みな演奏を披露して大きな歓声を浴びる。他の曲もそうなのだが、特にこの「Catch me if you can」は何度観ても飽きることがない。僕はヘドバンを続けながらBABYMETALの本質を端的に表す同曲を十分に堪能した。もう一度彼女たちが袖に引っ込むと、聞こえてくるのは “ キツネ、キツネ ” のループ。「メギツネ」では前方のキツネたちが嬉々とした表情で何度も一斉にジャンプ。メギツネジャンプでひときわ盛り上がりを見せた後に続く曲は「KARATE」。ヘビーなリフが心地良いのだろう、右隣の男性は目を瞑ったまま大きく体を揺らしている。やがて間奏のC&Rのシーンとなる。しかしそこで、まったく予期していなかったことが起こった。なんとSU-METALが、途中にYUIMETALのバースディをマイクを通して祝ったのだ。彼女の声はとても随喜に満ちていて、だから観客にも伝わったのだろう、 SU-METALの声に呼応して、会場中から、YUIMETALを祝う言葉が次々と返ってきた。それはとてもスペシャルで、ベリーベリーハッピーなコール＆レスポンスだった。お立ち台の上で何度も照れ笑いをするYUIMETALは完全に水野由結の姿をさらけ出している。美しいC&Rあと、最後にSU-METALの渾身のロングトーンが場内に響く。アウトロでは終始、ステージに向けてひっきりなしに歓声が投げかけられていた。曲が終わり、次に備え、3人がくるりと後方を向く。まだ嬉し恥ずかしいのか、YUIMETALははにかんだまま体をくねらせている。そしてMOAMETALは、嗚呼、今回もまたYUIMETALのことで感極まって涙を流している。 2人はきっと魂レベルで繋がっているソウルメイトなのだろう。これまでにも何度か、彼女は、YUIMETALのことで涙ぐんでしまうことがあった。そんなMOAMETALの異変にすぐに気付いたSU-METALがそっと背中に手を添える。きっと彼女のことだから、「何泣いてんのっ」と軽口を叩く調子でからかい、それでいてしっかりと温かく「あと少し」と励ましているように見受けられた。ともに戦っている3人の強い絆を感じずにはいられない特別で感動的なシーンだった。今さらではあるが、もう少しBABYMETALの登場が遅い時間であったなら、スマホのライトの演出がYUIMETALのバースディサプライズに一役買っていたかもしれない。こちらに向き直し、MOAMETALが、指先でスッと涙を拭う。最後の「ギミチョコ」の冒頭では、彼女はもう微笑みを湛えていた。それは慈愛に満ちたいつもの彼女の笑みだった。僕は唇をギュッと噛み、眼前の微笑みの天使に内心で “ 顔笑れ ” とエールを送る。ここまでのライブの内容がかなり刺さっているのだろう。「ギミチョコ」では終始、後方から大きな歓声が何度も上がっていた。僕がいる周辺も、誰もが熱狂して声を張り上げ楽しんでいる。そうして大盛況のもと、彼女たちのライブは終了したのだった。僕は一度フードコートへ戻り、そこで一息も二息も吐く。しばらくは幸せな余韻が続いた。今、目にした光景は、ずっと心の奥底に根を張って生涯消えることはないだろう。「KARATE」の一連のあのシーンは、言葉にならない特別なシーンではあったが、だけど違う見方をすれば、BABYMETALのステージングの進化と捉えることもできる。彼女たちは、決まった煽り文句やC&Rで会場を盛り立てるだけではなく、即興のMCで観客たちの関心を引くことにも成功した。もっともそれは海外で、しかもメンバーの誕生日と重なっていたからであって、日本ではこれまでどおり、ライブではMCなしが基本路線であるのだろう。その後は STONE SOUR と KORN のライブを堪能した。ともにピット中央では激しいモッシュが発生し、僕は何度も弾き飛ばされた。その都度身体に痛みを覚えたが、それはとても心地よい痛みだった。 BABYMETALのライブ以外でも、こうやって外国人たちと騒ぐのはやはり楽しい。 KORNのライブの終盤、僕はスタンド席の最後方に移動してライブを観賞した。少しだけ会場全体を俯瞰して眺めて見たかったからだ。そうしてはたと膝を打った。屋内と屋外の差はあるけれど、なるほどこれは舞浜アンフィシアターを巨大化したものだ。あの円形劇場で、洗練されたダンスルーティンを披露したさくら学院の生徒たち。今宵、BABYMETALも、この巨大な円形劇場で、鉄壁で洗練されたパフォーマンスを披露した。そしてまた、さくら学院時代に見せていた素の表情も、何度も遺憾なく露呈したのだった。さくら学院のライブとBABYMETALのライブ。 2つの光景が脳裏で重なると自然と涙が込み上げてくる。卒業してもなお、愛して止まないさくら学院の校則を胸に刻みつけている彼女たちは、誇りを胸に、真のスーパーレディとしてこの地に立ち、観客たちを大いに魅了した。それは将来のスーパーレディを目指している現役のさくら学院の生徒たちに、確かな夢と希望を与えるに違いない。 4. 程なくして会場を後にし、帰路に就く。周囲に響く賑やかな声がサンディエゴの夜空を揺すっている。僕は車中で今夜のライブを振り返る。真っ先に思い浮かべたのはやはり「KARATE」のあのシーン。 3人のやり取りや表情を思い浮かべると自然と笑みが零れた。僕は改めて “ ハッピーバースディ YUIMETAL ” と小さく呟く。ライブパフォーマンスをフォーカスして思い返してみる。 SU-METALの声は今日も張りがあって、「KARATE」のクリアなロングトーンは、おそらくは会場の外にまで響き渡っていたのではないだろうか。否、間違いなく響いていたことだろう。過去、東京ドームの広い空間を、その類いまれな歌声で完全に支配したのだから。 YUIMETALとMOAMETALも素晴らしいパフォーマンスだった。それはダンスのキレ、シンクロ度だけではなく、観客を盛り立てる行為も含まれている。特にMOAMETALは、蜘蛛手にレスポンスしながら、小さな体全体を使って煽っていた。彼女が見せる屈託のない笑顔は間違いなく多くの外国人たちに刺さったことだろう。サプライズでは素の表情を見せて、嬉しさを隠しきれずにいたYUIMETALも、ライブ中はMOAMETALに負けじと観客たちを煽っていた。ただ彼女の場合は、一つひとつの動きに品があるから、見方によっては控え目な感じに見受けられるかもしれない。けれども、彼女のあどけない無垢な笑みは、多くの観客たちを笑顔にさせたに違いない。神バンドは、今宵もソリッドなメタルサウンドマシーンと化していた。それでいて観客たちへのアピールも忘れてはいなかった。 4人とも合間合間に観客を煽りつつ、7人のバンドとしてのライブを楽しんでいた。ラウドなのにタイトな彼らの演奏パフォーマンスはBABYMETALのライブを支える屋台骨だ。ダンスに集中している際のYUIMETALの表情がふと脳裏に浮かぶ。続いて涙ぐんでいるMOAMETALの表情、お立ち台で佇むSU-METALの表情も想起された。刹那、チュラビスタに到着した時のことをはたと思い出した。サンディエゴ湾を臨むサンセットビーチは彼女たちのようにとても美しかった。そもそもチュラビスタとはスペイン語で「美しい眺め」という意味である。 BABYMETALの3人も、きっとオフタイムにこの「美しい眺め」を目に焼き付けていることだろう。もしかしたら、ステージから見える観客席の景色もそのように感じているのかもしれない。僕たちメイトからすれば、彼女たちのステージングこそが「美しい眺め」なのだが、初見の大勢の観客たちが次第に熱狂していく様も「美しい眺め」だと思わないだろうか。誰しもが、世界が変わっていく瞬間を目にすれば、それは素晴らしいことだと思うだろう。だから彼女たちも、確かな手応えを得ると同時に、素晴らしい光景だと感じたように思う。今、目にしているものを理解し、そしてそれを素直に受け止め、驚愕から満面の笑みへと変化していく観客たちの表情は多分に多幸感に溢れ、彼女たちを称賛する拍手が鳴り響く会場はとても幸せな空間に包まれていたのだから。その「美しい眺め」をそっと胸に刻みつけ、彼女たちの METAL RESISTANCE はこれからも続いていく。 ☆☆ HAPPY BIRTHDAY YUIMETAL ☆☆ and……
NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft snapped this color image of Jupiter's moon Ganymede, the largest satellite in the solar system, on July 7, 1979 from a distance of 745,000 miles (1.2 million kilometers). Jupiter's moon Ganymede is the largest satellite in the solar system. Larger than Mercury and Pluto, and only slightly smaller than Mars, it would easily be classified as a planet if were orbiting the sun rather than Jupiter. The moon likely has a salty ocean underneath its icy surface, making it a potential location for life. The European Space Agency plans a mission to Jupiter's icy moons that in 2030, is planned to arrive and put special emphasis on observing Ganymede. Facts about Ganymede Age: Ganymede is about 4.5 billion years old, about the same age as Jupiter. Distance from Jupiter: Ganymede is the seventh moon and third Galilean satellite outward from Jupiter, orbiting at about 665,000 miles (1.070 million kilometers). It takes Ganymede about seven Earth-days to orbit Jupiter. [Photos of Ganymede, Jupiter's Largest Moon] Size: Ganymede's mean radius is 1,635 miles (2,631.2 km). Although Ganymede is larger than Mercury it only has half its mass, classifying it as low density. Temperature: Daytime temperatures on the surface average minus 171 degrees Fahrenheit to minus 297 F, and night temperatures drop to -193C. In 1996, astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope found evidence of a thin oxygen atmosphere. However, it is too thin to support life as we know it; it is unlikely that any living organisms inhabit Ganymede. Magnetosphere: Ganymede is the only satellite in the solar system to have a magnetosphere. Typically found in planets, including Earth and Jupiter, a magnetosphere is a comet-shaped region in which charged particles are trapped or deflected. Ganymede's magnetosphere is entirely embedded within the magnetosphere of Jupiter. This montage compares New Horizons' best views of Ganymede, Jupiter's largest moon, gathered with the spacecraft's Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) and its infrared spectrometer, the Linear Etalon Imaging Spectral Array (LEISA). (Image: © NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute) Discovery and exploration of Ganymede Ganymede was discovered by Galileo Galilei on Jan. 7, 1610. The discovery, along with three other Jovian moons, was the first time a moon was discovered orbiting a planet other than Earth. Galileo's discovery eventually led to the understanding that planets orbit the sun, instead of our solar system revolving around Earth. Galileo called this moon Jupiter III. When the numerical naming system was abandoned in the mid-1800s, the moon was named after Ganymede, a Trojan prince in Greek mythology. Zeus, a counterpart of Jupiter in Roman mythology, carried Ganymede, who had taken the form of an eagle, to Olympus, where he became a cupbearer to the Olympian gods and one of Zeus' lovers. Several spacecraft have flown by Jupiter and its moons. Pioneer 10 arrived first, in 1973, followed by Pioneer 11 in 1974. Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 returned striking photos during their flybys. The Galileo spacecraft passed as low as 162 miles (261 km) over the surfaces of the Galilean moons and produced detailed images. The European Space Agency plans a mission called JUICE (JUpiter ICy moons Explorer) that would launch from Earth in 2022 for arrival at Jupiter in 2030. While the mission will look at three moons (Ganymede, Callisto and Europa), Ganymede will be the focus because it shows how icy worlds evolve and could be habitable in general, ESA said on its website. Scientists will try to figure out more about its ocean and icy crust, map its surface in detail, learn about the interior, probe the atmosphere and study the magnetic field. Ganymede sound and signal illustration Characteristics of Ganymede Ganymede has a core of metallic iron, which is followed by a layer of rock that is topped off by a crust of mostly ice that is very thick. There are also a number of bumps on Ganymede's surface, which may be rock formations. In February 2014, NASA and the United States Geological Survey unveiled the first detailed map of Ganymede in images and a video animation created using observations from NASA's Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft, as well as the dedicated Jupiter-orbiting Galileo spacecraft. Ganymede's surface is made up of primarily two types of terrain: about 40 percent is dark with numerous craters, and 60 percent is lighter in color with grooves that form intricate patterns to give the satellite its distinctive appearance. The grooves, which were likely formed as a result of tectonic activity or water being released from beneath the surface, are as high as 2,000 feet and stretch for thousands of miles. A global image mosaic of Jupiter's moon, Ganymede created with images from the Voyager and Galileo missions. (Image: © Wes Patterson) It is believed that Ganymede has a saltwater ocean below its surface. In 2015, a study by the Hubble Space Telescope looked at Ganymede's auroras and how they change between Ganymede's and Jupiter's magnetic fields. The “rocking” seen by the auroras gives evidence that the probable ocean underneath is salty, more salty than oceans of Earth, scientists said at the time. Some scientists are skeptical that Ganymede could host life, however. Due to its internal structure, it is believed that the pressure at the base of the ocean is so high that any water down there would turn to ice. This would make it difficult for any hot-water vents to bring nutrients into the ocean, which is one scenario under which scientists believe extraterrestrial life would occur. Additional reporting by contributor Elizabeth Howell. Additional resource
The ventilation shaft at City Hall Park, 1912 On the eighth of February 1912, a small group of officials arrived at City Hall Park on Manhattan’s Broadway street. The men gathered at one grassy corner of the park grounds, where a long-neglected iron grating protected the entrance to a seemingly unremarkable ventilation shaft. The heavy, rust-encrusted grille was pried from its resting place, and with lanterns in hand the men descended one by one into the cavity. About twenty feet below the pavement the group emerged into an eight-foot-wide brickwork tube, the end of which was beyond the immediate reach of the lights. The sturdily-constructed tunnel was a relic from the years following the American Civil War, and it had remained virtually forgotten beneath the streets of New York since its main entrance was sealed sometime around 1880. As the men explored, they found the tunnel in remarkably good condition in spite of its age. When they reached the end of the tube, the men happened upon the wrecked remains of a unique mechanism for transport: a pair of carriages from America’s first subway, the experimental and ill-fated Pneumatic Transit System. In the early 1800s, the city of Manhattan was infested with an overabundance of humans. When the Erie Canal opened in 1825 to link the Great Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean, New York’s populace quadrupled within a span of a few decades. The metropolis was served by hundreds of horse-drawn public transportation vehicles such as street trolleys and omnibus carts, nevertheless its avenues and boulevards were engorged with carriages and pedestrians. Primitive steam-powered locomotives were put to use in certain areas, but the massive and ungainly contraptions were not yet widely adopted. Many enterprising individuals concocted mass-transit ideas to address the traffic woes. Due to the scarcity of horizontal space, most inventions involved elevated platforms or underground tunnels. Among the proponents of subterranean transportation was one Alfred Ely Beach, the well-known inventor of a typewriter for the blind, the founder of a school for freed slaves, and the editor of a new publication known as Scientific American. Traffic on Broadway, 1860 In 1849 he wrote an article in his magazine proposing a network of underground tunnels for horse-drawn trolleys, but that fancy passed once he discovered the great strides being made in England in the field of pneumatics. Although the basic principle of pneumatic tubes was first explored in ancient times, it was not until the turn of the 19th century that practical applications began to appear. It was around that time that the Scottish inventor William Murdoch demonstrated his pneumatic apparatus, a device which used compressed air to whisk notes through a length of pipe to a distant recipient. Among the first to appreciate the potential of such systems was a London tinkerer named George Medhurst, who described some practical large-scale applications in his 1812 pamphlet concisely entitled, “Calculations and Remarks, Tending to Prove the Practicability, Effects and Advantages of a Plan for the Rapid Conveyance of Goods and Passengers Upon an Iron Road Through a Tube of 30 Feet in Area, by the Power and Velocity of Air.” Therein, he described a hypothetical pneumatic vehicle: “…an hollow tube or archway must be constructed the whole distance, or iron, brick, timber, or any other material that will confine the air, and of such dimensions as to admit a four-wheeled carriage to run through it … The tube must be made air tight, and of the same form and dimensions throughout, having a pair of cast iron wheel-tracks securely laid all along the bottom … and the carriage must be nearly the size and form of the tube, so as to prevent any considerable quantity of Air from passing by it. “If the Air is forced into the mouth of the tube behind the carriage, by an engine of sufficient power, it will be driven forward by the pressure of Air against it.” Medhurst went on to describe how a large, stationary steam powerplant could produce enough pressure to propel a carriage to an average swiftness of 50 miles per hour, with a fuel efficiency of 4.2 miles per coal-bushel. At a time when the most common form of propulsion was feet— either human or horse— it was exciting to consider the prospect of a feasible high-speed transportation system using combinations of existing technology. Medhurst was aware that travelers might be averse to spending long journeys sealed within dark tunnels, so he also described a claustrophobia-friendly alternative which later came to be known as the atmospheric railway. He theorized that a twelve-inch-wide iron pipe with a sealable slot along its length could be laid parallel to ordinary surface tracks, and that trains could be connected to a pneumatic piston inside the tube using an arm protruding from the slot. A section of atmospheric railway at the Didcot Railway Centre Several such atmospheric railways were constructed in Europe during the 1840s, most notably by the innovative British engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel. One of these peculiar trains achieved an unheard-of 70 miles per hour during trial runs, however due to chronic problems with the leather slot-seals, the technology was quickly abandoned in favor of steam locomotives. In the meantime, smaller pneumatic tubes proved their usefulness in shuttling telegraph transcriptions betwixt London’s central telegraph offices and the Stock Exchange. The newly-formed London Pneumatic Dispatch Company also began installing iron pipes in the earth for the transportation of postal freight. These pressure tubes carried coffin-sized carts between the post offices of London at speeds up to a mile a minute. Eventually a group of investors arranged for a pneumatic-powered passenger-carriage to be installed as a demonstration at the Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1864 at Sydenham, south London. This working prototype aroused much public interest, but its promoters lollygagged too long, and failed to bring the technology to fruition. Upon learning of the strides being made by the London boffins, Alfred Beach became one of pneumatics’ most enthusiastic stateside advocates. To increase public awareness of pneumatic technology, he financed the construction of a 100-foot-long wooden tube to cross the ceiling of the American Institute Fair in 1867. The steam-powered fan installed at the end of this tunnel created enough vacuum pressure to suck carriagefuls of attendees through the tube’s length in mere seconds. It then reversed thrust, gently blowing the delighted passengers back to the portal from whence they entered. In his 1868 treatise on the subject entitled “The Pneumatic Dispatch, with Illustrations,” Alfred Beach expounded the advantages of pneumatic locomotion: “A tube, a car, a revolving fan! Little more is required. The ponderous locomotive, with its various appurtenances, is dispensed with, and the light aerial fluid that we breathe is the substituted motor […] Hence, the roadway and cars may be very light. The whole pneumatic way being under cover, the road-bed is preserved from damage by the elements, and the transit of the cars is not impeded by snow, ice, floods, or falling rocks. […] The tube forms the bridge over small streams, dives under broad waters, and rests securely upon marshes. No screeching whistles or jangling bells disturb the community, no turnpikes require to be guarded; Alfred Beach's demonstration pneumatic carriage at the American Institute Exhibition of 1867 there is no running down of the helpless, no mangling of passengers, no burnings from sparks; no fearful dangers of any kind attend the use of the Pneumatic Dispatch. […] No dust or cinders are encountered by the passenger, and he reaches his journey’s end without injury to his apparel from these causes, and without having the complexion smutted with smoke.” Like most designers of rapid-transit contraptions, Beach hoped to establish a route along Broadway, as it was Manhattan’s main thoroughfare. For over twenty years, however, a long succession of such plans had been undone at the hands of Alexander T. Stewart, the richest merchant in the United States. His grandiose Marble Palace was located on the intersection of Broadway and Chambers Street, and he was unwilling to allow any unsightly construction to inconvenience his ultra-wealthy patrons. He and his fellow landowners also worried that any large tunnels would undermine the street’s structures. To sidestep this hindrance, Beach’s newly-established Beach Pneumatic Transit Company sought a franchise to install a pair of smaller postal tubes below Broadway, thereby avoiding the ire of the street’s mighty merchants. Upon approval of the bill, the company successfully amended it to allow the excavation of a single large tunnel wherein the smaller tubes could reside. In late 1868, the Beach Pneumatic Transit Company acquired a five-year lease on the basement of Devlin’s clothing store on Broadway, and began their conspicuous construction. The details of the endeavor were kept quite secret, but the scale of the operation was evident from the large equipment outside of the building and the cavalcade of horsecarts hauling away mounds of dirt each night. Twenty feet beneath Broadway, a unique machine designed by Alfred Beach himself slowly gnawed a nine-foot-wide passage into the Earth. The business end of the disk-shaped tunneling shield was arrayed with sharp horizontal shelves which masticated the earth until it fell into the tunnel through a number of openings. Using an array of eighteen hydraulic rams, workers forced the shield forward sixteen inches, used wheelbarrows to haul away the loosened earth, erected masonry around the new inches of tunnel, and then repeated the process. Entry into the construction area was strictly limited to Beach Pneumatic Transit employees and the officials from the Croton Aqueduct Department— the agency responsible for supervising construction of the “postal tube.” The Beach Tunneling Shield The mayor of New York City attempted to gain access to perform an inspection of the site, but even he was refused. The public and the press expressed great curiosity regarding the tunnel-making, but Beach and Dixon were determined to forestall the discovery of their true intentions. On the twenty-sixth of February 1870, Alfred Beach finally exposed his secret tunnel for the inspection of the public. The event was described by one silver-tongued newspaperman as a “Fashionable reception held in the bowels of the Earth.” Visitors entered the basement of Devlin’s clothing store by way of a vestibule which had special linked doors on either end; the inner door would not open until the outer door was closed, providing a rudimentary airlock for the pneumatic pressure. Therefrom they emerged into an ornate lobby encrusted with the stuff of high society, including wood trimmings; chandeliers; an ornate, goldfish-filled fountain; and a grand piano. Although electrical service was still a thing of the future, the underground lobby was brilliantly illuminated by a collection of new zircon oxygen/hydrogen gas lamps. At the far end of the waiting area was the portal to America’s first subway, installed “for the purpose of temporarily illustrating, by an actual demonstration, the feasibility of placing a railway under Broadway.” The tunnel was framed in handsome brickwork, and two stately bronze effigies of Mercury stood alongside. On a placard above the tunnel hung the words, “Pneumatic / 1870 / Transit.” For a fare of two bits per passenger— all of which was donated to a charity for soldiers’ orphans— twenty guests at a time could take a ride on the pneumatic carriage. The custom-built, fifty-ton blower was situated in an adjacent chamber, separated from the waiting area by a long corridor. The Æolor blower was twenty-one feet high, sixteen feet long, and thirteen feet wide, and it contained two colossal lengthwise paddles which rotated to draw air in through the rear and thrust it out from the front. The magnificent blower was also outfitted with a special set of adjustable baffles which allowed her to switch from suck to blow without reversing rotation. By tapping a telegraph wire, the conductor signaled the boiler engineer to engage the 100 horsepower steam engine. Atmospheric pressure increased by “a few grains per inch,” pressing the carriage into the tunnel as the air rushed to escape through the vent at the far end. As quoted in a company booklet, a visitor described her experience on the Pneumatic Transit: “We took our seats in the pretty car, the gayest company of twenty that ever entered a vehicle; the conductor touched a telegraph wire on the wall of the tunnel; and before we knew it, so gentle was the start, we were in motion, moving from Warren street down Broadway. In a few moments the conductor opened the door, and called out, Murray street! with a business-like air that made us all shout with laughter. The car came to a rest in the gentlest possible style, and immediately began to move back to Warren street, where it had no sooner arrived, than in the same gentle and mysterious manner it moved back again to Murray street […] Our atmospheric ride was most delightful, and our party left the car satisfied by actual experience that the pneumatic system of traveling is one of the greatest improvements of the day.” A sketch of the pneumatic carriage and lobby With a sufficiently powerful blower, it was theoretically possible to accelerate a pneumatic carriage up to almost 700 miles per hour, a far cry faster than the horse-drawn rattletraps of the surface-travelers. In another anecdote, a visitor described a harrowing encounter with the blower: “After we had had our ride, it was only natural of course, that we should wish to explore the source from whence came the pneumatic pressure that had so mysteriously carried us along under Broadway. Accordingly, under the guidance of one of the polite officials of the company, provided with lanterns, we entered the air-passage, or duct, which opens into the waiting-room near the mouth of the tunnel. […] As we went in, we felt a gentle breeze; but after we arrived at the mouth of the great blower, and while we were gazing in wonder at the motions of the gigantic blowing-wings, the engineer put on more steam and increased the speed, so that the blast instantly became a hurricane of frightful power. Hats, bonnets, shawls, handkerchiefs, and every loose thing, were snatched away from our hands and swept into the tunnel; while all of us, unable to stand against the tornado, hastily retreated from the machine to a corner of the air-box, where we were slightly sheltered. At this juncture the speed of the Æolor was reduced, the storm was over, and only a gentle summer’s breeze issued from its enormous throat.” During its first two weeks of operation, the Beach Pneumatic Transit sold over 11,000 rides, and enjoyed lavish praise from the public and the press. With the help of Senator William M. Tweed, Beach began lobbying for the expansion of the Broadway line, as well as the construction of other pneumatic tubes throughout the city. Legislators were troubled by the broad authority the bill granted to Beach’s organization, and consequently it did not come to pass. In 1872, after “Boss” Tweed was arrested for massive corruption and embezzlement, Alfred Beach attempted to rewrite history to capitalize on the public’s scorn. He claimed that Tweed had not been a supporter of the project, rather he had undermined the pneumatic underdog in favor of the competing elevated railroads. Cutaway diagram of the pneumatic blower The public accepted this fabrication with such enthusiasm that the distorted facts still taint many modern retellings. But after three long years of grappling with the law, this manipulation of public sentiment helped Beach to gain approval for a modified bill in 1873, awarding his company with the legal franchise to bore beneath New York city’s streets. The company engineers began drawing up plans and making surveys, estimating a relatively low cost of one million dollars per mile to install a double track. Mere months later, however, the air was let out of their pneumatic ambitions. Excessive speculation in post-Civil-War railroads had created an investment bubble which burst in 1873, triggering a severe economic depression in the US. In the wake of this calamity, investors in rapid-transit projects were nowhere to be found. In the years that followed, Beach Pneumatic Transit lost their lease on the Devlin building basement, and the tunnel’s entrance was sealed with a wall of brick. In September 1878, Alfred E Beach resigned as president of the company and moved on to other endeavors, having invested over $200,000 of his own money in the ill-fated project. He died in 1896. Two years later, the Devlin’s building was destroyed by a spectacular fire, along with whatever was left of the ornate trappings of the abandoned lobby. When the building was rebuilt in 1900, the hastily-assembled brick wall was replaced with one of concrete, leaving the ventilation shaft in City Hall Park as the only means of ingress to the prototype pneumatic tunnel. Beach’s experimental subway lay virtually forgotten beneath the busy street until the officials from the Public Service Commission paid it a visit in 1912. Their task was to organize the disassembly of the tunnel to clear the way for a new electric subway line; Beach’s vision for subterranean transit below Broadway was finally becoming a reality. Aside from the rusted rails, the tube was found in excellent repair. Beach’s pneumatic carriages were also found inside, and though they had somewhat disintegrated due to age and neglect, there was still evidence of their once-opulent decor and upholstery. Additionally, at the end of the tunnel, Beach’s innovative tunneling shield remained, its wooden teeth still sunk into the earth. Beach’s original proposal for a network of pneumatic postal tubes also became a reality after he disembarked from the realm of the living. Around the turn of the century, New York City began installing hundreds of miles of medium-sized pneumatic tunnels to ferry freight between post offices, and some of these lines remained in operation until 1953. Ultimately, however, trucks proved more efficient at information-moving than the series of tubes. Many miles of these decommissioned iron transportation tunnels still linger beneath the streets of New York. Today, the City Hall Station of the New York Subway encompasses the entire area once occupied by the Pneumatic Subway. During the new station’s excavation, the Beach Tunneling Shield and one of the passenger carriages were disassembled and removed with the intent to preserve them; but neither can be accounted for after 1918. Also, according to newspaper reports from 1932, the New York Historical Society commissioned a plaque honoring Alfred E Beach to be placed in the City Hall station, however there is no evidence of such a memorial there today. Essentially there are no physical remains of Beach’s experimental and ambitious subway project; it exists only in the fickle aether of history. The notion of pneumatic transit was revisited in the 1960s by Lockheed and MIT, with the assistance of the United States Department of Commerce. Together the organizations conducted feasibility studies on a system of magnetically levitated tube-trains powered by ambient atmospheric pressure and “gravitational pendulum assist.” Such pneumatic vactrain technology was demonstrated to be a superior mode of transportation in many ways, not the least of which was speed— the study indicated a typical line could achieve an average velocity of 390 miles per hour. The system was never built due to the enormous expense of such an undertaking, although research into related technologies continues even today. Perhaps in the distant future mankind will traverse the countryside in a pnetwork of pneumatic tubes; and if that fine day ever comes, Mr Alfred E Beach and his extraordinary 138-year-old experiment will finally be vindicated.
A solemn vigil for victims of downed Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 turned to protest in Ottawa Saturday morning as mourners marched with black flags from the Dutch embassy to the Russian embassy. Mourners gathered outside the Dutch embassy for the victims of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17. (CBC) Nearly 200 of the 298 passengers on the Kuala Lumpur-bound flight that departed from Amsterdam were from the Netherlands. Everyone on Thursday's flight is presumed dead. American intelligence suggests the plane was hit by a surface-to-air missile launched from eastern Ukraine — an area controlled by Russian-backed separatists. The Ukrainian government and pro-Russia separatists have both denied being responsible for shooting down the plane. In Ottawa, protesters pinned the blame on Russian President Vladimir Putin for his continued support of separatists in Ukraine. About 30 people gathered outside the Dutch embassy on Albert Street Saturday morning, and later marched to Russian embassy on Charlotte Street where a protest was already underway. "This is a global issue that deserves the world's attention and help," said Inna Platonova, a Ukrainian-Canadian who helped organize the protest at the Russian embassy. "Anybody could have been on that plane — us, our children. We are grieving together with the families that lost their loved ones. We are crying together with them. We are heartbroken." Meanwhile, investigators tasked with analyzing the wreckage have the additional challenge of doing so in a war zone. The crash site is about 40 kilometres from the Russian border.
Book cover art by William Powhida As with all empires, the art world is driven by money. What differentiates it, at least in some cases, is its very particular set of values. Constantly in flux, beholden to the zeitgeist, the outwardly glamorous business of contemporary art can occasionally elude even the most experienced players. Rare are success stories borne from talent and ideas alone. Aside from a handful, even artists with successful careers earn modestly, or, at the very least, have suffered the indignity of “misplaced” payments and contract betrayals, with scant resources to protect themselves. Few people actually buy art; those who do often make decisions informed by facile trends, egged on by art dealers and gallery owners who need to turn a profit. Many creators compromise their visions to sell. Curators, art writers, and others have elaborated on these problems loudly, in the media and elsewhere, but rather than shifting the paradigm, their voices have become part of the chorus. Much of the new work on display bewilders and infuriates the general public. Talk of change is exhausting. Complaining about money is embarrassing. Yet, at the heart of it all is genuine work, and true discourse, kept alive by dogged creators and supporters who believe in the transformative power of art. In 2010, Ben Davis, a young art critic and regular contributor to Art Papers, ArtReview, Adbusters, The Brooklyn Rail, Slate, and the Village Voice, produced a pamphlet, “9.5 Theses on Art and Class,” that pointed out that the discussion of artist economics had stagnated. In it, he boldly outlines the paradoxes and struggles inherent in the art world through the lens of class. Last year, he published his first book, 9.5 Theses on Art and Class, named for and containing the original pamphlet, alongside a collection of essays on politics, inequality, commerce, and hipster aesthetics in art. He posits that artists are middle-class creative laborers, only mildly distinct from their non-artist peers in that their autonomy stems from a singular, individual talent. Davis is a self-proclaimed Marxist, and his perspective is rooted in equality, simplicity, and realism. He writes, “Art’s self-satisfied pluralism is also a guarantee of the inequality surrounding art,” and, “The art system only functions by maintaining some legitimate claim on artistic ‘quality,’ a concept that is elastic enough to include some degree of snobbishness and blind imitation of fashion as well as some representation of legitimate human aspirations.” His research is extensive and his tone is frank and buoyant: “If you are going to have any way to interact with contemporary art positively, you need some theory that is more nuanced than that on offer.” Previously the executive editor of Blouin Artinfo and now senior writer at artnet, Davis is also a human rights activist, which he believes makes his art criticism stronger. He regularly attends marches for immigrant rights, same-sex marriage, and Occupy Wall street, and was among the throng at the recent New York City Climate March. In recent months, he has protested the police killings of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, and Israel’s actions in Gaza. He has also been organizing for the Howie Hawkins/Brian Jones Green Party run for governor. Davis’s book has affirmed his position as one of the most exciting and well-respected art critics writing today. I corresponded with him over email in early September. —Alex Zafiris for Guernica Image by Micah Schmidt Guernica: The ongoing, central tension of the art empire is that between creativity and money. The parameters of this conflict vary wildly, depending on whom you speak to. Can you define it from your personal point of view? Ben Davis: I guess I’d challenge the premise of the question. I don’t think that the ongoing tension of the “art empire”—if by this we mean the top tier of the international “art world,” museums, galleries, and auction houses—is actually between money and creativity, in the sense that there is a hard choice between what sells and artists getting to express themselves in some authentic creative way. That certainly happens, and the very rich control the art market, which means a minority taste—often a pretty stupid and crass taste—has a disproportionate amount of influence over what succeeds. But throughout history, the very rich have also patronized, funded, and wanted to associate themselves with creative things. If things were as simple as the equation “success = corruption” then you wouldn’t need criticism. I happen to like Jasper Johns. He was one of the first artists to sell out a gallery show of new work, setting that pattern for art stardom. I still like his work. I don’t know if there even is a central contradiction of the art world, because I don’t think that the “art world,” if we are going to use that term, has a center. I think Lawrence Alloway is still right [in saying] that it is more like a network: overlapping and competing institutions that constitute a common space but with no common end. But here’s one interesting thing you could say about art’s contradictory relationship to money: there’s a contradiction between how universal or important contemporary art thinks it is to society, and how small it actually is. The massive sale numbers at auction disguise the fact that, relatively speaking, tiny numbers of people care about art, even with all the talk about a new breakthrough of art into pop culture. I am pro-ideas; in fact, pro-difficult ideas. There’s no reason why any one work of art has to be legible to all people. Guernica: The contemporary art dialogue is obtuse and enraging for the uninitiated or uninvited. While education and money are surer ways of becoming involved, they are not a guarantee. Ben Davis: Educational attainment is the single biggest predictor of whether someone enjoys going to museums and art galleries. More than money. That’s worth just saying, because it explains the perception that it cuts across barriers and the very real limits to this. I actually think we are in a pretty disorienting time. Yes, art writing is often kind of abstract, and people often write about art as if their real audience is a professional society of Deleuze scholars, or the keepers of some kind of Skull-and-Bones-like secret faith of “true painting.” That’s not purely innocent: this stuff sells for big money because wealthy and often very unsavory people think it buys them into the smart set, so a certain level of vague seriousness suits that agenda. On the other hand, I am pro-ideas; in fact, pro-difficult ideas. There’s no reason why any one work of art has to be legible to all people. In the best-case scenario, art that is not of your own time or culture is going to require some difficulty in order to truly unlock. The problem with a lot of art theory is not that it’s difficult but that it doesn’t really justify the effort; it’s just common wisdom disguised in big words. One major contemporary trend in art is away from difficulty, toward really big objects, toward fashion: splashy gestures that go down easy. The old charge that museums are “elitist” doesn’t really feel totally right to me. MoMA’s doing a Björk show. The big institutions have found that buzz and long lines can replace intellectual cachet at a certain level, for the purpose of pleasing funders. The anthropologist Matti Bunzl was embedded at the MCA Chicago as they were planning their Jeff Koons retrospective a few years ago, and the takeaway is that critics who accuse institutions of selling out miss the dynamic of what is actually going on. From the inside, he said, it looks very much like the curators are fighting for difficult ideas, but that this is a difficult and a rearguard battle, because they are under huge pressure to deliver crowds and please the patrons, because art funding is going away. But I think both poles exist and there’s no one tendency. You have to be critical of the obscurity and stuffiness in a way that isn’t also a sop to corporate populism, and vice versa. I think that’s one of the things that a real political criticism might do. Guernica: Artistic practice is most often defined as a privileged activity, whereas “creative expression” is something that transcends social, political, and economic barriers. What kind of traction does exceptional individual power—charisma, talent, skill, unusual perspective—really have? Who/what is the authority? Ben Davis: I mean, this only becomes an issue because some people actually make their living off of their creativity, and what’s more, some people who make their living off their creativity, contemporary artists, seem to get a particularly good deal. Otherwise, it would be enough to say that, well, we all are creative in our own ways, what’s wrong with that? But that having been said, there’s a whole interesting debate right now about whether creative labor actually is a “privileged” activity. There’s very much this sense that the “privilege” of art is being used to seduce people into doing work for free, to get away with not paying people who are creating something of value, and who have to survive. So you have designers protesting and ridiculing the trend of turning everything into a contest, where you make work for free for the chance of getting a job, essentially formalizing the lottery odds of the creative economy into an actual lottery. You have a book like Astra Taylor’s The People’s Platform catching fire, which talks about how the Internet has eroded the basis for creative people to support themselves as professionals, by turning creative content into “free culture.” And there is a flourishing of artist activism around the issue of getting paid, and of building solidarity with other kinds of workers as well, which you saw with the Teamsters lockout at Sotheby’s during Occupy. You have even A.O. Scott writing in the New York Times about “The Paradox of Art as Work.” That having been said, I agree with Julia Bryan-Wilson that the attempt to reclaim the term “art worker,” and reframe being an artist as just like any other type of work, is a move that conceals as much as it illuminates. In fact, Bryan-Wilson’s work, in her book Art Workers and elsewhere, can be looked at as a way to document how things go wrong when you produce such a false identification. So, I think my own theory about artistic labor in 9.5 Theses on Art and Class, that we can think of the artist in a certain classical Marxist sense as occupying a position different than a normal worker, but still different than a boss—artists as being a traditional example of the “middle class”—offers a very clear and concrete way to think about what is unique about being a contemporary artist, how it is distinct from other kinds of things people do, while still thinking about it as a form of labor. It’s a way of approaching the problem without reducing the conversation to some kind of spiritual or mystical theory of creativity, or thinking of the notion of “art as work” as an unsolvable “paradox.” If you can have a theory that does that, you have a sober basis to analyze the political situation and build up real solidarity. If you try and argue with people on the street about labor exploitation as a central driver of the economy, eventually they will bring up art, how labor exploitation doesn’t explain the sale price of a Picasso. Guernica: The contemporary art world is heavily entangled with, and dependent upon, the capitalist world, and yet retains an aura of mystery and allure that is also central to its machinations. How does this persist, and how is it problematic? Ben Davis: I can think of a couple of ways to interpret this question. One is about the market. I think there is a lot of hyperventilating about art being taken over by finance. But art is not actually a very good investment commodity, as far as any empirical data goes. You can make a lot of money on individual bets, and those are what get the attention, but overall it’s a huge gamble, and people lose more than win. It seems to me that the art market has a kind of secondary status in relation to the whole economy. It’s a playground for rich people, people who have extracted massive amounts of surplus cash through old-fashioned exploitation and want respectability and diversion. They have huge wads of cash, more than they can ever do anything with because inequality is at record highs, so they can spend amazing amounts on luxury goods. If you try and argue with people on the street about labor exploitation as a central driver of the economy, eventually they will bring up art, how labor exploitation doesn’t explain the sale price of a Picasso. The example of what aristocrats would pay for paintings is one of the oldest objections to the idea that labor creates value, before Marx, going back to Adam Smith. In the art market, value seems to come out of nowhere, paintings zooming from nothing to millions of dollars for no apparent reason but whim, with no clear-cut exploitation (although, if you look at the Sotheby’s lockout, that shows there’s real, old-fashioned labor that goes into presenting this stuff too). And I think that’s actually an interesting ideological role the art market plays, as an exception: it is a sub-part of the economy that seems to be purely formed by ego and marketing. That is how, ideally, economic pundits would like to pretend the whole world works: if you have a good creative idea, value just magically accrues. So the art market’s very existence serves a kind of function as a representation that value is a kind of magical thing. But of course, it’s an illusion: this particular market only works in the presence of very rich people who have massive amounts to bid against each other competitively. And their money comes from somewhere, it’s extracted from workers, or through monopoly and all kinds of shady things. So, in that way it is, as you say, both entangled with and somehow autonomous from the ordinary, grubby life of capitalism; it reflects it and refracts it. The second thing this question makes me think of comes back to my own definition of the professional artist as a “middle-class creative laborer.” Most working people just don’t have any say in the creative content of their own labor; that’s part of the definition of being a worker, you trade your labor to someone else and they get to tell you what to do. So, the idea that there is a category of person in society who both gets to do, to a certain extent, what they want and make money doing it takes on some kind of special aura because it is an exception: precisely because most people are alienated in their work, the dream of being an “artist” takes on some exaggerated societal importance as an image—even though the reality for most “working artists” is more complex, and most people who call themselves “artists” actually make money somewhere else. In truth, the fact that people present themselves as “actually” an artist and only temporarily or incidentally an office worker or whatever shows the powerful ideological function this idea of the “artist” holds on people, as this kind of imaginary escape. From that angle, the “aura of mystery” is not a pure illusion. There is something really mysterious about contemporary art that makes it seem like this carnival of individualisms; the conditions of being a professional artist are just not the same as the conditions faced elsewhere, even elsewhere in the creative economy. The art-school industry in some ways sells a highly commodified version of the idea of escaping normal labor. Guernica: You outline the problems of political art, namely, the self-serving artist/patron/institution and the issues of aesthetics and context in such work. You conclude that actual engagement must come first. Ben Davis: I’m not the only one to point out the problem with “political art,” in the way that it has become a brand. In my book, I quote other people who’ve had this critique. What I consider semi-unique in my theory is the attempt to come up with a critique of “political art” that doesn’t reject either “politics” or “art.” I do object to the attempt to create a single political formula for the “engaged artist.” I would object to saying to anyone, “Your duty as an artist who cares about political things is X.” That’s part of why I deliberately don’t develop a positive theory about how to be a political artist in my book. Art can serve so many different functions, and there’s value—even political value—in art that doesn’t serve any direct propaganda purpose. In some ways, if you are an anti-capitalist, that’s what you are fighting for, a world where you don’t have to have all your labor subordinated to some immediate goal. Guernica: Jeff Koons is currently the most visible figure in contemporary art; he has become a symbol of the worst characteristics of the art world, namely, elitism and power-mongering just for the sake of it. Your recent article in artnet, “Jeff Koons as the Art World’s Great White Hope,” points out previously undiscussed problems relating to race that occur in his work. Why do you think these things escape notice so easily? Or are they just ignored? Ben Davis: I disagree with the characterization of Koons as “elitist.” I mean, they are big, shiny, mirrored things. He has a pop-culture following. In some ways, he embodies the weird moment that we are living in that I mentioned earlier, where the art world is both kind of cut off from the rest of the world and also increasingly freeing itself of a need to have anything really to say besides providing a mirrored surface to take a selfie in. Critically, the conversation is more or less frozen: the critique of Koons is always pretty much that the work is brainless, rich-guy populism, and it gets tiresome to repeat that over and over. In the essay you mention, I talk about a particular text at the current Whitney Museum about Koons’s famous sculpture of Michael Jackson and Bubbles. The wall label quotes Koons as saying that he loves how Jackson lightened his skin to appeal to “more middle-class white audiences.” And that’s just such a weird, tone-deaf statement—and particularly because the Whitney had just passed through this controversy about how white the Whitney Biennial was, with artists in the show even protesting, it is stunning that the museum let that through without even seeming to be critical at all. People are only willing to read the kinds of simple pleasures you are into as universal if you are coded as universal yourself. It just makes a point that there is a subtext to the universalizing of Koons’s message about turning off the critical mind and just embracing what makes you happy. You really realize that you can only get away with it as a white guy, because people are only willing to read the kinds of simple pleasures you are into as universal if you are coded as universal yourself. And you particularly realize that fact because you see that some of the early work, “Equilibrium” and “Luxury and Degradation,” actually has a subtext about race. The “Equilibrium” works, the basketballs in the tanks, are presented all the time without the accompanying posters of black athletes, or Koons’s confused statements critiquing how basketball culture seduces inner-city black youth. I give the Whitney credit for bringing that material back to the discussion, although they’ve clearly swallowed his shtick too much; the way it is presented amounts to restating the wisdom of his Koonisms with a slightly more serious tone. As for your other question, about why these matters are overlooked: I just think that there is a tremendous drive to present artists as heroes, to flatten out any contradiction, and to downplay any criticisms, because of all the commercial pressures to deliver an easy product. With historical shows, this means that a lot of history is bracketed out, so you get a kind of “parade of treasures” effect. With contemporary shows, this means that the default presentational mode is preemptive hagiography, which in Koons’s case means trying, absurdly in my mind, to find a kernel of secret critical resistance in his later works. In the catalog for the show, the curator celebrates Koons’s ability to defy notions of taste, positing that his sculptures look “aggressive and out of place” in the home of rich collectors even though they have become accessories that every tycoon must have, and saying that “Koons’s art rarely feels chic” at the very same moment that the Whitney is promoting H&M’s Koons bag. Guernica: At the end of your chapter “White Walls, Glass Ceiling,” about female underrepresentation in the art world, you include a coda, saying, “the connections made in this essay point to how the fight for equality can be waged on the basis of genuine solidarity, in the name of a world where art’s value escapes the deformities imposed upon it by an unequal society.” Have you encountered opposition to your optimistic outlook? Ben Davis: [It’s] more that people find the book depressing, actually. I think people very much want a simple formula, simple positive examples to model themselves on. And in one way, the point of the book is that you can’t solve art’s problems through art alone, so there is no simple art formula I offer. For people who are still wholly within that world or want to define themselves only in relation to artistic practice, that can be frustrating. You actually need to be involved with solving problems that are not artistic ones. That’s the main kind of resistance I get. People are very willing to talk radical. But, with artists, I find that the conversation has this inevitable drift, where we start out talking about structural and political problems, and pretty soon people want to talk about their own practice as an artist, and pretty soon you are not talking about politics at all. Guernica: It has been a year since your book was published. Have you changed your mind about anything? Ben Davis: As I’ve toured outside of New York for the book, I’ve found it interesting how the conversation is the same and different. You really feel how the illusion of money distorts everything in New York, how that orients how people think about themselves as professional creative people, because there’s this image of a hungry market that defines what that role looks like. Where there’s not a market, people don’t have those illusions. But it’s a different version of the same question. Instead, the “social practice” conversation is huge, artists making the case for creativity as something useful to the community. So people still see themselves ideally as “middle-class creative laborers” in this way I define it, as bringing together something they want to do, something they have creative control over, with a living. But instead of looking to the market and galleries, they are looking to nonprofits and grants and different kinds of community organizations. It’s a different, in some ways richer, conversation, though still with all the unresolved contradictions I talk about encoded into the identity of “artist.” The other thing I think about is that, increasingly, I feel how small the “art world” is. We live in such an interesting time of cultural change, and I actually don’t think the crucial conversations about those things are taking place within art, which is so insular, so cozy, so secure in its own importance that it is hard to see how fast the way people consume images is changing. I believe in contemporary art, I think interesting conversations can be had within it, conversations that matter more broadly. But to get to them, I think you have to step outside of art, and increasingly, I’d like to find a way to start from that perspective, a broader perspective, and then see if art has anything relevant to say about them. I don’t know if I can write the kinds of things I think need to be written just with art as a starting point. Art criticism can’t really be just about art and be critical. Book cover art by William Powhida To contact Guernica or Alex Zafiris, please write here.
We’re sad to report that former Umphrey’s McGee drummerpassed away today at the way-too-young age of 36. Mirro was a founding member of the band and was part of the group until he left in 2002 to begin medical school. Mike went on to sit in with his old band mates numerous times over the years. The cause of death has not been made public as of press time. Mirro was born in Crown Point, IN. He attended Notre Dame University from 1996 to 2000, where he was a member of Stomper Bob in the days before Umphrey’s McGee was formed in late 1997. The proud Chicago Bears fan handled vocals on an array of covers during his time in UM which showed off his diverse musical background including Sade’s “No Ordinary Love,” “Freedom” by George Michael and “Garbage Man” by Ike Turner. Mike sat in with Umphrey’s on “Garbage Man” twice after he left the band, most recently on October 8, 2004. The band issued the following statement: It is with heavy hearts that we have learned of our good friend & former drummer Mike Mirro’s passing. As many of you know, Mike’s love for music & unique sense of humor are still present today in the music that we create. Umphrey’s McGee wouldn’t be who we are without all of the passion & musicality Mike added to the music for the first 5 years of our career. There are no words that can convey the feeling of loss we are collectively feeling, we have lost a friend, a brother & a man without whom there would be no Umphrey’s McGee. Mikey, we’ll always love you for the amazing person that you were and we’ll carry your spirit with us through the music. We’ll miss you. Watch Umphrey’s featuring Mike Mirro on drums perform at Schuba’s in Chicago on May 16, 2002: Here’s a clip of Mike guesting on “Headphones & Snowcones” at Chicago’s Aragon Ballroom on December 31, 2009: Our thoughts and prayers are with the Mirro family. Umphrey’s plays the Tennessee Theatre in Knoxville this evening, where they performed “Uncle Wally,” a song co-written by Mikey, early in the first set. UPDATE 1/31 6:30 a.m. PT: Last night Umphrey’s performed through their grief in Knoxville as they played a number of songs from Mirro’s tenure in the band. In the second set UM dusted off a cover of Bob Marley’s “Trenchtown Rock” for the first time in 86 shows with its fitting refrain of “one good thing about music, when it hits you feel no pain.” Love you Mike…. You were with us out there tonight. — Joel Cummins (@goldlikejoel) January 31, 2014 Here’s last night’s setlist via All Things Umphreys: Set 1: Jekyll & Hyde > Room to Breathe, Uncle Wally, All In Time > The Floor, Conduit, Bridgeless, The Pequod > All In Time Set 2: Nothing Too Fancy[1] > Booth Love[2], Kimble, White Man’s Moccasins[3], Prowler[4] > 2nd Self, Trenchtown Rock Encore: Divisions [1] with Garbage Man (Ike Turner and the Family Vibes) teases [2] with Xxplosive (Dr. Dre) teases [3] with Ocean Billy and Puppet String teases [4] with Cantina Band (John Williams) jam
The San Francisco 49ers finally got on the board in the second half against the Denver Broncos, and it come on a heck of an impressive drive by C.J. Beathard. It came against second and third string Broncos defenders, but Beathard can only perform against what’s in front of him, and boy did he. Beathard came on for the final drive of the second quarter, and while he connected with Kendrick Bourne for 17 yards, the drive ended with a failed Hail Mary attempt. However, Beathard & Co. came out swinging in the third quarter. After a four-yard Kapri Bibbs run, Beathard connected on a pair of big catch-and-run plays with wide receiver Aldrick Robinson and rookie tight end George Kittle. Robinson 39-yard reception Robinson ran an in pattern and caught a 13-yard pass. He then turned on the jets and added 26 yards to it. Robinson was not viewed as an overly impressive signing, but he’s got some speed when he gets the ball in his hands. Beathard to Aldrick Robinson on the play before to set up the Kittle TD. pic.twitter.com/9d2RhEiRsY — Dylan DeSimone (@DylanADeSimone) August 20, 2017 Kittle 29-yard touchdown reception That was followed by this Kittle catch-and-run. The 49ers ran a play-action naked bootleg, with Kittle running a little out pattern. The catch was a few yards past the line of scrimmage, and Kittle then went to work. He bulldozed one defender and brushed off a second defender to turn the short catch into a 29-yard touchdown. The 49ers' new starting TE. pic.twitter.com/CKmLqoELFM — Dylan DeSimone (@DylanADeSimone) August 20, 2017 Most of the yards on both plays came after the catch. That being said, Beathard put the balls right on the spot to put his receivers in position to get the extra yards. They were the kind of plays Kyle Shanahan’s offense can do some serious damage with, particularly given the talent deficiencies on the 49ers roster. And plenty of credit to Kittle for the huge play in his on-field NFL debut. He missed last week’s game with a hamstring injury, but is making his presence felt in his debut. He was already going to make the roster, but the question now is how significant a role he can earn as a rookie.
WAM, in effect, got super powers within Twitter’s moderating environment. After submitting an abuse report to Twitter, users can now also submit one to WAM. WAM will make sure the users’s claims are credible, then “escalate” the report in Twitter’s system, flagging it for immediate handling by the company’s moderators. While WAM hopes to bring all expedited reports to a “speedy resolution” within 24 hours of receiving them, it cautions, “we’re not Twitter, and we can't make decisions for them.” It instead will advocate for users within the moderation system. WAM will also be keeping track of whose reports get handled and whose don’t. Using its access to Twitter’s moderation system, WAM will be collecting data on how poorly gendered abuse is handled across the site. WAM won’t have these super powers forever, nor does it want them. Its executive director Jaclyn Friedman told me that she thought the program’s initial test period would run for only about a month. Even only a few weeks, she hopes, will give it a sense of how well or poorly abuse reports are handled across the site. It will also let WAM figure out what Twitter’s moderators consider okay. “We’ll be escalating [harassment reports] even if they don’t fit Twitter’s exact abuse guidelines,” Friedman said. WAM intends to “cast a wider net” and see what Twitter’s moderators address. WAM is a small nonprofit outside of Boston with a staff of two. Those two employees will be doing all the work: Friedman and WAM’s community manager, Mina Farzad, will personally read and vet every harassment report that WAM receives. In other words, it’s understood to be a major improvement to the current situation, that two people will now be devoting serious time and attention to Twitter’s harassment problem—even though they work for a small nonprofit that’s effectively donating that time and attention to Twitter, a for-profit and publicly owned corporation. Twitter held its initial public offering a year ago. In its third-quarter results, issued in late October, it reported increased revenue but a net operating loss of $175 million. Friedman communicated as much in her interview with me. “I’m frustrated. For all the money they make off their users, not to be able to spend a little more to make this safer...” seems wrong. Though she said she was excited and encouraged by the project, she lamented in no weak terms that it had to be done at all. “I don’t think we should have to do this work,” she said. “I think it’s a scandal that a tiny, under-resourced nonprofit with two staff members is having to do free labor for them.” Twitter hasn't issued a press release on the initiative, but did send a short statement saying, “We’re always trying to improve the way we handle abuse issues, and WAM! is one of many organizations we work with around the world on best practices for user safety.”
Bitcoin Price Key Highlights Bitcoin price broke past the $2800 handle to establish new all-time highs again. Price made a quick drop upon reaching these heights as bulls likely booked some profits. This opens the opportunity for a short-term pullback play as more buyers join in the action. Bitcoin price is back to its highs and is making a small correction to allow more bulls to join the bandwagon. Technical Indicators Signals The 100 SMA is above the longer-term 200 SMA so the path of least resistance is to the upside. In addition, the 100 SMA is close to the rising trend line connecting the lows since the last few days of May, adding to its strength as a floor. Applying the Fibonacci retracement tool on the latest swing low and high on the 1-hour chart reveals that the 61.8% level coincides with the trend line and the $2600 support. A break below this area could lead to a move towards the 200 SMA dynamic inflection point, but a break below the $2400 mark could mean a reversal. Stochastic is still pointing down to show that sellers are regaining control after the latest rally. RSI is also pointing down so bitcoin price might follow suit. However, once both oscillators indicate oversold conditions and turn higher, buying pressure could resume and bring bitcoin back up to the swing high and beyond. Market Factors There are a few factors dragging the dollar lower across the board lately and boosting bitcoin price. For one, there’s the testimony by former FBI head Comey in front of Senate on Thursday, and any evidence of wrongdoing by the administration could spur more dollar losses on weaker expectations of fiscal reform. There’s also the dismal NFP report released last Friday that led traders to doubt that there will be any tightening moves beyond June. Also, reports that China will be buying US bonds has dragged yields down, along with the currency. In contrast, bitcoin price is being supported by persistent geopolitical risks, particularly the upcoming UK elections and tensions among the Gulf states.
Days before the infamous Trump Tower meeting in June 2016, a low-profile real estate figure with ties to powerful Russians alerted a meeting participant that the topic of “dirt” on Hillary Clinton could come up, The Daily Beast has learned. That figure, Roman Beniaminov, didn’t attend the meeting himself. But he had close ties to several figures in and around it, including Emin Agalarov, the Azeri-Russian pop star who helped set up that Trump Tower confab and whose father is an ally of Vladimir Putin. Ike Kaveladze was one of the participants in the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, Donald Trump Jr., and Kremlin-connected attorney Natalia Vesilnitskaya. Kaveladze told congressional investigators that when he was first invited to participate, he was under the impression that he would just be there as a translator and that the meeting would involve discussion of Magnitsky Act sanctions. Scott Balber, Kaveladze’s attorney, told The Daily Beast that before Kaveladze headed from Los Angeles to New York for the meeting, he saw an email noting that Kushner, Manafort, and Trump Jr. would all be involved. He thought it would be odd for them to attend the meeting, so he called Beniaminov before heading to New York. Both Beniaminov and Kaveladze have worked with the Agalarov’s real estate development company, the Crocus Group. Balber said that Beniaminov told Kaveladze that he heard Rob Goldstone— Emin Agalarov’s music manager—discuss “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. It’s never become completely clear what kind of “dirt” the Russians were talking about. According to Balber, Beniaminov was the only person to give Kaveladze any information about the meeting’s purpose. “That was the only data point Ike had, which was inconsistent with everything else he had heard, which was that the meeting was about the Magnitsky Act,” Balber said. In all of the discussion about the infamous Trump Tower meeting, Beniaminov’s name has rarely, if ever, come up. So his alleged role in informing Kaveladze about the plans suggests he may be yet another important player who could have relevant information for the various, ongoing investigations. Beniaminov could not be reached for comment. Beniaminov went to Tenafly High School in Bergen County, New Jersey, with Emin Agalarov, according to NorthJersey.com. Emin posted a picture of the two together in high school on Facebook last December. In the years since then, he was Emin’s close associate. He worked with Emin to promote his music, as he detailed in numerous tweets. And this past May, Emin thanked him on Instagram for helping arrange a concert at the Lincoln Center. Beniaminov’s Facebook page is private, but The Daily Beast reviewed screenshots from this summer where he said he used to be Emin’s general manager. The same screenshot showed he listed the Crocus Group as his most recent employer. Aras Agalarov—Emin’s billionaire father—helms the company. Balber said it appears Beniaminov is still working with Emin to promote his music career, and that he was doing so at the time of the Trump Tower meeting. Trump’s connections to the Agalarovs and to Crocus Group are well-documented. When Trump held the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow in 2013, it was hosted at the Crocus City Hall, which Aras Agalarov owns. Olivia Culpo, who was Miss Universe in 2012, appeared with Aras and Emin Agalarov—as well as Donald Trump—at the 2013 Miss USA pageant in Las Vegas, as a Getty photo documents. She also attended the U.S. premiere of one of Emin’s pop songs, along with Trump. Culpo’s representative did not respond to a request for comment. The Agalarovs have made no secret of their fondness for Trump. In an interview on the Crocus Group website, published Nov. 13, 2013, Aras Agalarov said he was considering going into business with the future U.S. president. “We discussed our joint projects right before our interview,” he said. “We have just shared our views on such projects and he said they were quite interesting.” “We will complete one project and then go down to the next one,” Emin added. “We may theoretically consider a possibility of building a Trump Tower as one of our sky-scrapers.”
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has criticized the PA's former prime minister, Salam Fayyad, over a plan he presented to end the split between the rival Palestinian factions of Fatah and Hamas, the Times of Israel reported Thursday. Fayyad on Tuesday unveiled his plan aimed at breaking the political stalemate in the Palestinian Authority and also coming up with a way to end Israeli control of the West Bank, the report said. The former prime minister's plan includes an interim deal bringing together all the Palestinian factions, under which a new Palestinian leadership would be formed from representatives of all factions, according to the Times of Israel. He also suggested the Palestinian factions would commit to a prolonged ceasefire with Israel. After Fayyad presented his plan to a group of Palestinian officials and academics, the official Palestinian Authority news agency criticized him and described his plan as a "failed attempt to destroy decades of Palestinian struggle,” the Times of Israel reported. The Wafa news agency ran an editorial attacking the plan, saying that entering a diplomatic process with the Israelis under a ceasefire agreement was against the position of the Palestinian leadership, which rejects agreeing to the establishment of a Palestinian state on temporary borders and instead seeks a direct move to a full and permanent agreement. Rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas, which respectively govern the West Bank and Gaza Strip, reportedly met in Qater last month for reconciliation talks. Fatah and Hamas officials met in Qatar in March, with the Times of Israel reporting that the factions had agreed to hold elections within six months and form a national unity government. A senior official, Fatah Central Committee member Mohammed Ashtiya, said that the reconciliation talks had started in February in Doha, Qatar, where some of Hamas' leadership is based. The Palestine Liberation Organization guidelines would be the basis for the functioning of the unity government, according to the report. The planned meeting is the latest round in an ongoing series of attempts to reconcile the two factions since after they clashed violently in 2007 in the wake of Hamas's election victory in Gaza.
Email Share +1 56 Shares President Trump’s nomination of an Army secretary who as a Tennessee state legislator spearheaded legislation allowing businesses to discriminate against LGBT people has inspired LGBT advocates to launch a campaign to thwart his confirmation. LGBT rights supporters announced their opposition to Mark Green on Friday after the White House officially announced Trump’s intent to nominate him as civilian head of the U.S. Army. Green is the CEO of Align MD, an emergency department staffing company. As a West Point graduate and Iraq war veteran, he had a distinguished career as a military officer, according to the bio provided by the White House. His military awards include the Bronze Star, the Air Medal, the Air Medal with “V” device for valor under heavy enemy fire, and numerous other medals for service. During Operation Red Dawn, the military operation that captured Saddam Hussein, Green served as flight surgeon for special operations, sitting with the Iraqi leader for 24 hours and interrogating him for six hours after his capture. Green recounted this experience in a book titled “A Night With Saddam.” But as a state legislator, Green spearheaded anti-transgender bathroom legislation. Last month, the Tennessee Senate approved the legislation by a 25-5 vote, sending it to the House, where it remains under consideration. Other anti-LGBT measures Green has supported include a bill that would bar transgender students from using public restrooms in schools and colleges consistent with their gender identity and a “religious freedom” bill that would allow teachers to opt out of teaching anything that’s not “consistent with the educator’s own conscience.” Green also backed a “religious freedom” measure, signed into law last year by Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam, that would allow mental health practitioners to refuse treatment for LGBT patients out of religious objections. Amid media reports Trump would tap Green as Army secretary, the LGBT military group known as the American Military Partners Association issued a statement condemning the choice based on his anti-trans actions. “We are deeply concerned over reports that Mark Green will be nominated as Secretary of the Army,” said AMPA President Ashley Broadway-Mack. “Green has made a shameful political career out of targeting LGBT people for discrimination. All soldiers and their families, including those who are LGBT, should have confidence that the Secretary of the Army has their back and is working for their best interest. Unfortunately, based on his vicious, anti-LGBT record, Mark Green cannot be trusted to ensure all those who serve have the support they need and deserve.” In an article for Slate, Nathaniel Frank, a bisexual writer whose research helped pave the way for “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal and open transgender service in the U.S. military, called Green “a dangerous figure both because his policies are extreme and because he is shrewd at portraying them as moderate.” “He works in lockstep with social conservatives who have learned in recent years to avoid both the wrath of the public and the jaws of justice using Orwellian word games to invert their bigotry by casting themselves as victims instead of discriminators,” Frank said. During a town hall event in Tennessee before the Chattanooga Tea Party last year, Green responded to concerns about the perceived institution of a social agenda on the U.S. military by equating being transgender to a medical disorder. “If you poll the psychiatrists, they’re going to tell you that transgender is a disease,” Green said. “It is a part of the DSM-6, I think it is, the book of diagnostic psychological procedures or diagnoses.” Referencing the questioner’s concerns about going back in the U.S. military, Green said to applause it would constitute “me being the salt and the light to the people around me.” “If you really want to bring this back to who’s at fault, I mean, we got to look a little bit inwardly,” Green said. “I mean, we’ve tolerated immorality, and we’re not reflecting light.” Green during the same event railed against the Obama-era guidance assuring transgender kids have access to the restroom consistent with their gender identity, which the Trump administration has since repealed, calling it “absurd” and an example of “over-reaching government.” A letter Green co-signed urging the Tennessee governor to sue the Obama administration over this guidance compares transgender people to rapists and pedophiles. Contrary to Green’s remarks, being transgender is not a disease. In 2012, the American Psychological Association removed gender identity disorder from DSM-5’s list of mental disorders, replacing it with gender dysphoria. There is no DSM-6. Also during the event, Green said he’d encourage state officials to disregard through acts of civil disobedience the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in favor of same-sex marriage nationwide. “The governor can do stuff like that, no we’re not going to issue marriage licenses to gay people because our state voted differently,” Green said. “OK, Supreme Court, you said it. I don’t care. I’ll back you up.” Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement the confirmation of Green as Army secretary would be “a danger to every LGBTQ soldier bravely serving our country.” “Mark Green has called for states to refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples and appallingly said that being transgender is a ‘disease,’” Griffin said. “He has used his office in Tennessee to push ‘license to discriminate’ legislation and undermine the basic civil rights of LGBTQ people at every turn. It would be unconscionable to put this man in charge of our Army. We call on every U.S. senator to stand up for LGBTQ service members and reject this nomination.” Also condemning the nomination was Stephen Peters, press secretary for the Human Rights Campaign, who said as a Marine discharged under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” he’s “appalled that Donald Trump would seek to put this man in charge of the U.S. Army.” “Under President Obama’s leadership, we finally ended policies that forced service members, their partners, and families to hide who they are and treated them as second class citizens,” Peters said. “There are thousands upon thousands of us who fought this injustice so that we could serve openly today — and who are now threatened by the appointment of a man who has spent his career working to undermine our rights.” In contrast to Green, his predecessor for the position during the Obama administration, Eric Fanning, was the first openly gay person confirmed as head of a military service and the first senior defense official to come out in support of lifting the now-terminated ban on openly transgender people in the U.S. armed forces. Aaron Belkin, director of the San Francisco-based Palm Center, predicted in a statement that the confirmation of Green would lead to the restoration of the ban on openly gay personnel in the U.S. military. “Mark Green is a perfect nominee for the people around President Trump who want to start a culture war in the United States military, and who would bring back ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’” Belkin said. “The priorities Green has made a career on in Tennessee directly contradict the core military value of treating everyone according to the same standard. They have the potential of sowing confusion and undermining good order and discipline.” It should be noted that Defense Secretary Gen. Jim Mattis said during testimony prior to his confirmation as Pentagon chief that he has no intention of restoring bans on open military service for LGBT people and “never cared much about two consenting adults and who they go to bed with.” The defeat of Green would send a strong signal that supporting initiatives aimed at undermining transgender rights would derail the future of those seeking to advance their political careers, potentially discouraging anti-trans proposals like the Tennessee bathroom bill. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has signaled concerns with Green based on his anti-LGBT record and called on the Senate Armed Services Committee to rigorously question him during his confirmation hearing. “Sen. Schumer has concerns with nominee Mark Green, particularly regarding his history on issues that affect the LGBTQ community,” said Schumer spokesperson Justin Goodman. “The Senate minority leader is strongly urging the Armed Services Committee to ask the nominee tough questions during his hearing and take a very close look at his history.” Thwarting the confirmation of Green will be an uphill battle. Assuming the Democratic caucus is united in opposition to him, which seems unlikely given Sen. Joe Manchin’s (W.Va.) general willingness to accept nominees, at least three Republicans would have to vote against his confirmation to derail it. The most likely Republicans would be supporters of LGBT rights like Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio). The White House didn’t respond to the Washington Blade’s request to comment on concerns from LGBT rights supporters about the Green nomination.
WASILLA, Alaska -- The mother of Bristol Palin's boyfriend sent text messages discussing drug transactions less than a month after the young woman's mother, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, was nominated as the Republican vice presidential candidate, according to court documents filed this week. An affidavit from an Alaska state trooper, filed Monday, states that Sherry L. Johnston referred in her messages to two police informants to "coffee" as a code for the drug OxyContin. Johnston, 42, was arrested on felony drug charges last week after state troopers served a search warrant at her Wasilla home. She allegedly sold OxyContin tablets to the informants on three occasions this fall, the affidavit states. Police said two of the meetings were recorded by a hidden camera and a microphone. Johnston is the mother of Levi Johnston, 18. Sarah Palin announced in September that her daughter Bristol, also 18, was pregnant and that Johnston was the father. Their child was due to be born Dec. 18, her grandfather Chuck Heath told the Anchorage Daily News recently. Authorities say the case against Sherry Johnston began in the second week of September, when drug investigators intercepted a package containing 179 OxyContin pills. That led to the arrest of the suspects, who agreed to be informants. According to the affidavit, Johnston sent a text message to one informant Oct. 1, writing: "Hey, my phones are tapped and reporters and god knows who else is always following me and the family so no privacy. I will let u no when I can go for cof."
An envelope shortage in Northampton County, Pennsylvania could cause delays in trials. The man who usually prints the envelopes just retired, leaving the courts scrambling for a replacement. (Published Thursday, Jan. 22, 2015) The wheels of justice could grind to a halt in one Pennsylvania county thanks to some envelopes -- or lack thereof. A Northampton County judge said that the county may need to cancel criminal court for a week in February because of staffing issues that left the county short envelopes it uses to notify everyone from victims to witnesses to police about upcoming court dates. District Attorney John Morganelli tells NBC10 that due to the recent retirement of a print shop specialist, the county was short thousands of the needed envelopes. Volunteers were hand stamping the envelopes — including postal regulations — and using typewriters to address the envelopes in an attempt to keep things moving. County Executive John Brown told The Express-Times that a new solution would be used to address the issue. "The IT solution for the district attorney's office will be up and running by end of the day,” Brown told the paper. “This will solve the current situation in the DA's office."
As a hungry but not quite ravenous artist and filmmaker, I circumvent notions of decency and decadence. I ache for the presumed romantic, free-flowing lifestyle of the bohemian artiste. However, that same painful sensation is often only my need for basic dental or health care. As the film industry in New Mexico grows, mutates or erodes, we must watch it closely to avoid the pitfalls of world cinema’s past, present and likely future. Mexico, our neighbor to the south, like many countries, has had a long and estranged relationship with tax incentives (and Hollywood). Each time a political shift caused incentives or subsidies to be pulled, it made little difference how many studios and trained personnel were left behind. There was simply no money and infrastructure to support them. Industry failed and often for decades; it has only recently recovered. For Hollywood, this meant and still does, simply going to the next country or state that is less expensive to film in. Big industry will not do you any favors. It will not memorialize the failing production houses and studios it leaves behind. Don’t get me wrong, tax breaks are a fantastic way to supercharge an industry, but we must take additional steps to create local infrastructure. Right now there are several states with tax incentives for film; Michigan currently offers up to a 42% tax rebate, opposed to New Mexico’s 25%. This is capitalism 101: we are battling for the most cost-effective production. New Mexico has over one-hundred years of film history, but little significance outside of the Hollywood narrative. As filmmakers, we often think that working on a big production is the only way to make ends meet. We end up working on films that misrepresent our culture outside of a beautiful landscape or character eating Olo frozen yogurt (Breaking Bad). At least we had a New Mexican cast and story in Herbert Beberman’s Salt of the Earth. However there was also The Milagro Bean field War: a New Mexican novel adapted to film, but performed with New York accents. Is it possible to become as unique as our food culture? Can we reach a compromise that mirrors the red and green chile conundrum? Can we balance capitalism and art culture? Can we have our Christmas and eat it too? There is a trend riding atop the westerly winds: dramatic increases in workshops for filmmakers, panel discussions and Q&A’s. The positive side of this is that people are being exposed to ideas and experiences previously unavailable. On the downside, there is a steady increase in the cost of such opportunities. Don’t get me wrong, there are several recent notable events, such as the free Q&A with Breaking Bad’s Stewart Lyons. There are also many great panels at the Albuquerque Media and Film Experience. However, I have been paying close attention to many ‘locals’ who are charging two to three-hundred dollars for a short workshop. Some of whom are following the ‘if you can’t do, teach’ model, judging by their lack of credits and experience. Now listen, I know we all need to eat, but expensive workshops are not helping your fellow Nuevo Mexicanos. We should be working together to survive, instead of scraping the insides of each other’s pockets. There is blood in the sand, but that doesn’t mean you need to be the proverbial land shark. I suggest that we instead create a solid foundation and challenge the way infrastructure meets our needs for survival. In the tradition of Mexico and the Latin Americas, we create our own movement. We will call it, nuevo-mexicanidad, and let it represent our unique art and culture. We will join forces and make films full of slang and cultural zing! We will shout phrases at the Capitol building like “Orale, let us keep our tax rebates and create better programs you pinche bastards.” We do not have the millions that Hollywood does, but we have something more interesting, cultural capitol. Please share the wealth Mr. or Mrs. Taxperson and invest in us. As a filmmaker, I don’t ask for a lot in life. I have a cost effective DSLR camera and a few key pieces of equipment that have not yet broken. Generally, I’m concerned with content over quality of film, and though it works for me as an artist, I cannot afford location shooting or to pay anyone a dime. Recently, we have begun to see funding options being commercialized, such as Kickstarter, highlighted by the recent stir caused by Zach Braff and Kristen Bell raising millions of dollars apiece. No matter where you stand on this issue, it is bound to become more difficult to compete with well-run studio or celebrity campaigns to raise money through crowd sourcing. This is just another reason we need a more local approach to securing funding. It is frustrating to live in Albuquerque, a city that wants to be different, but demands insurance for non-budgeted productions on public property. Now, let me be clear here, permits for filming are free throughout the city, assuming you do not block any streets. However, the insurance to get them is pricey. This seems to equate for filmmakers as see no evil, hear no evil tactics. That is to say, everyone goes rogue and shoots wherever they want and without insurance. The upside is that you can use private property and not worry about either of these things (that’s something). As a film student, I had no idea such laws existed. I knew that I was insured on campus and on private property – but the rest – no idea. I see this as a failure on the University of New Mexico’s part, as well as the cities’. I hope they will remedy this for future students and youths alike. There might not be a perfect way to handout funding to local filmmakers, but there are several options. It could even be something as simple as taking tax revenue (free money) from big-budget films and creating very small grants for insurance for needy filmmakers. We could also create an arm of the NM Film Office to screen and setup parameters for would-be projects for funding (competition is positive). If that is too complex, we can create a volunteer unit of experienced filmmakers to culture writing talent and help develop independent projects (see Poland’s Zespoły Filmowe). Donations and state grants could easily get something like that going. Creating simple and very small packages is the best way to start, thus protecting the state and city from liability (what they want). We are happy to put a sign up on my living-room wall that says “Santa Fe plaza” or the “Sandia Mountains,” but unless it is a comedy I’m making, no film distributor is likely to take us seriously. It is important that there is some kind of local infrastructure setup for young filmmakers and students, so they stay instead of leaving to L.A. or N.Y.C. Let’s change the face of New Mexico film from images of the remote west and Meth cooking school teachers to something as warm and unique as the people and rich cultural heritage of our state. Let us eat Navajo Tacos on camera and recreate scenes from Jerry Zucker’s Ghost with help from La Llorona. Nuevo Mexico, you are my “Unchained Melody” and I can’t wait to capture more of you on film.
ESA expands space weather services Solar loops after eruption A major expansion in the space weather information and services provided by ESA will help satellites in space and networks like power grids on Earth to cope with solar eruptions. Scientists, engineers and researchers across Europe are working with ESA to develop a space weather warning system as part of the Agency’s Space Situational Awareness programme. ‘Space weather’ refers to physical conditions at the Sun, in the solar wind and in near-Earth space that can influence the operation of spaceborne and ground systems and affect human health. The Sun causes ‘storms’ within Earth’s magnetic shield when giant eruptions from its outer atmosphere wash across our planet. The last period of major storms ended with the Halloween storm of October 2003. A very large solar event in 2012 missed Earth. Smaller eruptions happen regularly and do reach our planet, affecting infrastructure like power grids and networks and interfering with economic activities. New tools help manage solar effects Affected by space weather In October, ESA’s Space Weather Service Network boosted its portfolio of products – including high-quality data and expert analysis – to more than 100. It released the first versions of 17 new Space Weather Services, each a combination of products, software tools, technical reports and associated expert support, tailored to a given type of affected customer. “Each of our space weather services is tailored to provide a valuable space weather assessment capability for specific customers,” says ESA’s Juha-Pekka Luntama. “These span European governments, institutional and commercial users, including satellite designers and operators, those involved in human spaceflight, communication and data network operators and a number of economically important industries, like aviation, oil drilling and navigation.” Protecting power grids One of the new services will assist power-grid operators to address a major challenge caused by space weather: magnetically induced currents. These are caused by rapid variations in Earth’s magnetic field during solar eruptions. In the worst case, they can damage transformers in high-voltage power grids, leading to blackouts. Realtime predictions of the changes in Earth’s magnetic field will help to reduce the impact of such events. Coordinating European efforts Aurora over Icelandic lake In the past 18 months, ESA has coordinated the development of five new Expert Service Centres, each dedicated to bringing together European expertise in a given area of space weather physics, such as space radiation and ionospheric weather, with a focus on service development and provision. These groups are now providing their data and products to space weather users via a dedicated space weather web portal, with support from ESA’s Space Weather Coordination Centre, hosted at the Space Pole in Brussels. The Expert Service Centres are teams consisting of a growing network of more than two dozen European and international institutes and research organisations, working with data from a wide range of sources, including satellites such as ESA’s Proba-2, Proba-V and Swarm and the ESA–NASA SOHO solar observatory. “Expert Service Centres are located across Europe serving as centres of expertise focused on a specific topic within the space weather field. They hold the detailed scientific and technical expertise and assets required for data processing and provision of our services,” says Alexi Glover, ESA’s space weather service development coordinator. The network also includes a data centre at ESA’s Redu Centre. A recent analysis of ESA’s Space Situational Awareness programme concluded that space weather hazard-warning and risk-assessment activities would provide a benefit to cost ratio of 6.25 over 16 years. The benefits from industrial investments, technology development and avoided effects on civil infrastructure and society were estimated at €2635 million. These and other developments related to space weather activities will be highlighted at the European Space Weather Week, 14–18 November, in Oostende, Belgium. The annual event is Europe’s top forum for space weather scientists and experts and is coordinated by the Belgian Solar–Terrestrial Centre of Excellence, ESA and the Space Weather Working Team.
New boss excited by Fratton challenge Portsmouth Football Club are delighted to announce the appointment of Kenny Jackett as first team manager. The former Watford, Swansea, Millwall, Wolves and Rotherham boss has signed a two-year deal at Fratton Park. The club are in advanced talks with Joe Gallen – who has worked with Jackett at QPR, Millwall and Wolves – about becoming assistant manager. Jackett said: “This is a fantastic opportunity for me and I’m looking forward to getting started. It’s an exciting challenge. “This club has a passionate fan-base and they can be a 12th man for us. Hopefully we can build on the momentum of last season and continue to progress. “I can promise that I’ll work as hard as I possibly can to make sure that we can bring success to Portsmouth.” Blues chief executive Mark Catlin added: “We’re delighted to announce Kenny as our new manager – he ticks so many boxes for us. “He’s managed big clubs with big expectations in the past and has plenty of experience of getting sides out of League One. “Kenny also has a history of implementing strong structures to move clubs forward and this was key in our decision-making process. We’re excited about him bringing his philosophy of development to Pompey.” Jackett spent his entire playing career with Watford and later enjoyed promotion success as a manager with Swansea, Millwall and Wolves.
Have you purchased something at Walgreens lately? Every time I go there and buy something, a cashier will end the transaction by saying, “Be well.” This is really starting to annoy me. For starters, I don’t even know what I’m supposed to say back to them. Telling someone to “be well” is not a normal way to end a transaction or conversation. I’ve tried my own slogans to say back to them, but it just winds up making everything more awkward: “Be well to you, too.” “Thanks. Be well, yourself.” “May you also be well.” I usually just nod and say, “OK.” Most of the time, when I go to Walgreens, I’m already well. How can I get more well? I guess “be well” implies that they want me to continue on my path of wellness, but it puts a lot of pressure on me not to pick up a cold on my walk back home. What about if I go to Walgreens and I’m already really sick? If I walk into the store with bleary eyes and a hacking cough and I’m clutching a pack of Tylenol Cold? Will a cashier tell me to “be well” then? It would be more appropriate to say, “Be well soon.” Or maybe, “Have you seen a doctor?” When a company makes its employees say certain things, being an individual—and responding to the needs of the customer—gets lost. As it turns out, this is indicative of the Walgreens PR department. I called and emailed them with my questions about the phrase. I wanted to know how long the “be well” phrase has been in place, whether there’s a penalty for employees who forget to say it, and when they were doing the “be well” phrase in focus groups, what were the alternative phrases that didn’t get picked? Maybe, “Watch your step on the way out,” or, “That’s a lovely brooch,” or perhaps, “Sorry about your haircut.” Unfortunately, Walgreens PR didn’t answer these questions. Instead, I got this response back: “‘Thank you and Be Well'” has been used in select markets and is expected to go chain wide this year. Our branded salutations further align our team members to our purpose of helping people get, stay and live well. In general, we’ve found that customer satisfaction increases through such positive interactions, which help make their shopping experience a bit more memorable. “As Walgreens works to become the first choice for health and daily living, we aim to own the strategic territory of Well. Walgreens delivers the Well Experience throughout everything we do—from our store format and offerings to our customer service and employee engagement.” Is it any surprise the closing line of the email was, “Be Well”? Telling someone to “be well” is just not natural. It’s the company’s tagline. I know we’re all being marketed to like crazy, but I’d rather hear a commercial or read an advertisement with the company’s line—not having it said by a human being like a robot. If I go to McDonald’s and buy a hamburger, I don’t want the cashier to take my money and say, “I’m lovin’ it.” Jessica Levco is co-editor of PR Daily’s sibling website Health Care Communication News.
0 of 5 Clearly, Tom Brady is frustrated with his lack of available weapons on the New England Patriots offense. The losses of Wes Welker and Brandon Lloyd still haunt this drastically underachieving unit. It certainly has not helped that All-Pro tight end Rob Gronkowski and versatile running back Shane Vereen are missing due to injuries. However, the injury of wide receiver Danny Amendola is the most concerning of all. With Amendola unable to play against the New York Jets on Thursday Night Football, the aerial attack of the Patriots struggled greatly. Rookie wide receivers Aaron Dobson and Kenbrell Thompkins seemed lost at times and never fully jelled with their quarterback. It is also doubtful that New England will hang its hat on Julian Edelman going forward. Even upon the return of these injured players, the Patriots will need some insurance. After all, Gronkowski and Amendola do not have favorable injury histories. The team needs another veteran wide receiver's presence in the lineup. The easy fix would have been re-signing Lloyd, but it was revealed by Pro Football Talk that he does not have the desire to continue his career. So, which veteran wide receivers should receive a call from the Patriots?
On the Linux kernel mailing list, Willy Tarreau has announced that there will be no more releases for version 2.4 of the Linux kernel. Tarreau, who is responsible for maintaining the Linux 2.4 kernel, said that "few people" still use this version. According to him, these users are better served by a central Git repository that collects bug fixes and that he has now created such a repository for them. Linux 2.4.0 was released over eleven years ago and was superseded by the next stable version (2.6.0) more than eight years ago. With Tarreau's announcement, maintenance of Linux 2.4.0 has effectively stopped, which makes version 2.4.37.11 from December the latest release of the 2.4 series. Linux 2.4 is mainly used in embedded systems – desktop and server use should be minimal these days. Tarreau will now maintain the long-term support kernel versions 2.6.27 and 2.6.32 while Greg Kroah-Hartman is maintaining the 3.0 long-term kernel while simultaneously working on fixes for the Linux mainline. (fab)
In this article, Laura Zimmermann, Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Georgia, provides an overview of the research on the impact of the initial phase of MNREGA on rural labour markets in India. The evidence suggests that the programme has served as an important short- and long-term safety net, and has had some employment generation effects during the agricultural off-season. However, the effect on rural casual wages is less clear. Tweet using #MNREGA10yrs Since the introduction of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) in the first districts about 10 years ago, the assessment of its economic impacts has been at the heart of the debate about programme benefits1.As the world’s largest public-works programme and due to a couple of ambitious features (such as the legal guarantee of employment and the absence of detailed eligibility criteria), there has been considerable interest in how MNREGA has affected rural labour markets in a variety of areas2. These include employment generation, wage increases, and the provision of a safety net3. Employment generation and wage increases As a public works programme, one of the main intended benefits of MNREGA is the creation of additional employment: workers are hired to perform manual work on local public sector projects and paid the minimum wage. This means that the employment guarantee scheme should be especially attractive during times when there is little alternative employment available, such as during the agricultural off-season. MNREGA is also set up to be attractive for women, who get paid the same wage as men, whereas there is a substantial gender wage gap in private employment4. Since MNREGA is meant to be a demand-driven programme that workers can take advantage of at any time of the year, the scheme also has the potential to affect rural labour markets when alternative job opportunities are available. Especially in areas where the minimum wage laws are not well enforced, the programme could lead to wage increases in private casual employment if the availability of MNREGA jobs increases workers’ bargaining power. At the same time, this could lead to a crowding out of private sector jobs and counteract the overall employment creation effects. The net benefits of the programme are therefore unclear without a data-driven analysis. Short- and long-term safety net In addition to the potential impacts during normal times, MNREGA can also be used as a short- and long-term safety net. The programme can be taken up for short periods after adverse economic shocks such as a bad harvest season, and can help households to smooth consumption more effectively. The programme may also be helpful in the long term: Since households know that MNREGA work is available should they fall on hard times, the existence of this safety net may allow them to re-optimise time allocation and to spend more time on rewarding but more risky forms of employment such as self-employment. How important these different effects are in practice is an empirical question. Poor implementation quality, for example in the form of job rationing or corruption, will attenuate all of these effects5. Empirical evidence on labour market effects Over the last couple of years, a number of research papers have analysed the labour market effects of MNREGA using different datasets, empirical estimation strategies and outcome variables. What they have in common is a focus on the first years of MNREGA when the programme was rolled out in phases. This is driven by research design motives. In order to causally estimate the impact of the programme on the rural labour market, researchers need to be able to compare employment and wages in MNREGA districts to what the situation would have been if they had not received the programme. In practice, this is usually done by comparing MNREGA districts to similar districts without access to the scheme. Hence, researchers take advantage of the phasing-in of MNREGA between 2006 and 2008. Some of my own work uses this phasing-in of the programme to study the labour-market impacts of MNREGA by exploiting the government algorithm that was used to allocate districts to implementation phases (Zimmermann 2014a)6. According to the government algorithm, the 200 “most backward” rural districts in India received MNREGA in 2006, the next 130 in 2007, and the remaining districts in 20087. This means that during the first two years of the programme, it is possible to compare similar districts in terms of socioeconomic characteristics which received or did not receive the programme.In my research, I find no evidence of substantial employment-generation effects, wage increases or crowding out of private-sector employment, although the effects are a bit larger during the agricultural off-season. There is also no significant variation across gender in the results. Instead, MNREGA seems to be much more effective as a safety net: MNREGA employment increases substantially after a negative rainfall shock, and workers move from casual private employment into self-employment, which is consistent with long-term safety net considerations8. A number of other papers in the literature use different empirical estimation approaches that do not fully exploit the existence of the algorithm but find results that also support many of these empirical patterns: They find higher MNREGA take-up in the agricultural off-season, after negative rainfall shocks, or among particularly vulnerable subgroups, for example (Azam 2012, Johnson 2009, Imbert and Papp 2015). The main differences occur in the analysis of the wage effects, where some papers find substantial wage increases for men and especially for women (Azam 2012, Berg et al. 2012, Imbert and Papp 2015). In addition to different estimation strategies, one potential explanation for this discrepancy is the time needed for MNREGA to have an influence on private sector wages, since Berg et al. (2012) find that it takes 6-11 months (as well as a high level of implementation quality) for the wage effects to materialise9. What we know and future research questi ons Overall, the existing literature on the rural labour market impacts of MNREGA suggests that the programme has generated important short- and long-term safety net benefits along with some employment generation effects during the agricultural off-season. There is no evidence of a large crowding-out effect of private sector employment. These are important benefits of the employment guarantee scheme despite widespread implementation quality challenges especially in the early days of the programme. However, it is less clear how exactly the programme has influenced rural casual wages. What is needed now is a long-term assessment of the programme in order to estimate how the labour market effects of MNREGA have developed since 2008 once districts had time to learn how to implement the programme. There have also been government initiatives aimed at improving the effectiveness of the scheme which may have influenced employment and wage impacts: for example, biometric smartcards in Andhra Pradesh allow direct transfers to workers’ bank accounts and thereby reduce the scope for corruption (Muralidharan et al. 2015). Notes: Implemented in 2005, MNREGA guarantees each rural household in India 100 days of manual public-sector employment at the minimum wage. In contrast to almost all other anti-poverty programmes in developing countries, MNREGA is based on a law, which makes the scheme enforceable in court and increases the hurdles for discontinuing the programme. MNREGA does not specify any eligibility criteria other than rural residency and allows households to self-select into the programme. This is supposed to improve the targeting of the programme to households in need who are willing to work in public works projects to receive the minimum wage. In contrast to almost all other anti-poverty programmes in developing countries, MNREGA is based on a law, which makes the scheme enforceable in court and increases the hurdles for discontinuing the programme. MNREGA does not specify any eligibility criteria other than rural residency and allows households to self-select into the programme. This is supposed to improve the targeting of the programme to households in need who are willing to work in public works projects to receive the minimum wage. See, for example, Ravallion (1991) and Subbarao et al. (2013) for a comprehensive overview of the potential impacts of public works programmes and evidence from developing countries worldwide. In Zimmermann (2014b), I provide a short overview of the recent empirical evidence on public works programmes in developing countries. MNREGA is also supposed to provide childcare at the worksite, although in practice it is rarely available. During the agricultural year 2004-05, before the introduction of MNREGA in any district, the daily private casual wage was about Rs. 53 for men and Rs. 38 for women in Phase 2 MNREGA districts (Zimmermann 2014a). Phase 2 districts received MNREGA in 2007. Job rationing refers to the phenomenon of excess demand for MNREGA work. In theory, the programme is meant to be completely demand-driven, which means that every worker applying for work will receive a MNREGA job. In practice, rationing of jobs to a subset of people desiring employment is widespread. See also Planning Commission (2003) and Planning Commission (2009). The government algorithm ranked districts within states on a ‘backwardness index’ created in Planning Commission (2003), which uses district-level information on agricultural wages, agricultural productivity, and the proportion of Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe individuals from early to mid-1990s. There is some discrepancy between the districts that should have received MNREGA in a given implementation phase and the districts that actually received the programme in practice: 84% of predicted districts in Phase 1 and 82% of predicted districts in Phase 2 actually received MNREGA in the respective implementation phase. Hari and Raghunathan (2015) find that when there is access to MNREGA, households move towards growing riskier crops. This is consistent with the idea that the existence of a long-term safety net allows households to take on rewarding but riskier employment strategies. My empirical estimation strategy is limited to comparing adjacent implementation phases (example, Phase 2 and Phase 3) for districts that are similar to each other (the last few districts to be eligible for MNREGA are compared to the first few ineligible districts based on the government algorithm). Since MNREGA was rolled out to the next group of districts after a year, this method will have problems with picking up wage effects if these take a couple of months to materialise (especially if it takes 11 months). Some of the other papers are able to look at a longer time frame by comparing Phase 1 and Phase 3 districts, which gives them about two years for the analysis, so wage effects can be observed over a longer time period. But this comes at the (considerable) cost of no longer being able to compare similar districts, since the Phase 1 districts are substantially poorer than the Phase 3 districts by design. Further Reading
Something’s Brewing Over the Hudson: In Jersey City with Rime, Post, Li Hill, Sean Lugo, SP.One, Mata Ruda, LNY, Enoe and more to come On my recent visit to Jersey City, Gregory D. Edgell aka the Green Villain gave me a tour of some of the city’s first-rate graffiti murals, including a number of recent ones that he had facilitated. Upon further exploration, I came upon some amazing street art walls. What follows are samples of both and a brief conversation with Greg: What brought you to Jersey City? And when did you first come here? I moved here in 2009. My best friend – at the time – had moved into a huge warehouse that seemed like the ideal venue for artistic expression. And that’s what brought me here. What changes have you observed since moving here? Jersey City is increasingly attracting more artists and is slowly developing a street art culture, but there are still far too many blank walls. Where do you think it’s all going? Jersey City has the potential to be just as creative as any neighborhood in NYC. It could even be more so, as it’s not as expensive. Within the next five years, this will happen! Mana Contemporary has certainly enhanced Jersey City with its studios, exhibition spaces and more. And soon it will be launching the Mana Museum of Urban Arts, the world’s first permanent space dedicated to street art and graffiti. Any thoughts about that? I think it’s amazing and particularly wonderful for the global street art and graffiti community, as Mana Contemporary has the backing to create a first-rate educational platform for this art form. And what’s ahead for you? I am currently facilitating a series of murals by some first-rate artists. Among them are: Sheryo & the Yok, Rubin, Jerkface, Mr. Mustart and Distort & Then One. That sounds great! We’re looking forward to seeing them — as Jersey City is just minutes away from Manhattan! Interview and photos by Lois Stavsky 1. Rime aka Jersey Joe 2. Post 3. Li Hill 4. Mata Ruda and LNY 5. Sean Lugo 6. SP.One 7. Enoe
In the Autumn of 2012, Disney bought Lucasfilm and all the things that come along with it. With the announcement of a potential Star Wars: Episode VII, I decided to sit down and rewatch all the Star Wars movies with one goal in mind. That goal was to actually quantify what made the original Star Wars trilogy so much better than the prequel trilogy. Some of the things that I looked at were basic, like the number of characters presented in each of the movies: From the first post comparing Ep IV and Ep I Which over time became more and more complex: From the third post comparing Ep VI and Ep III Throughout the posts I also started to think up new things to look at, like breaking down the differences in the love story between the two trilogies: Comparison of relationships in Ep V and Ep II Or the predominant mood present in the different scenes of the movies: Comparison of moods between Ep VI and Ep III The hope was that if Disney ever stumbled across the analysis they might take even a small part of it to heart and make Episode VII that much better. What followed were these series of posts on my stats blog (The Skeptical Statistician) which compared the movies one by one. It ended up being quite a bit more in-depth than I had originally anticipated. The main text alone came in at almost 22,000 words (or around 60 pages with figures and graphs in MS Word). The questions at the end of each post add another 7,000 words, or about 10 pages. [By the way, the posts can be found here:] Part 1: http://theskepticalstatistician.blogspot.com/2012/11/quantifying-star-wars-part-one-episodes.html Part 2: http://theskepticalstatistician.blogspot.com/2012/11/quantifying-star-wars-part-21-episodes.html Part 3: http://theskepticalstatistician.blogspot.com/2012/11/quantifying-star-wars-part-25-empires.html Part 4: http://theskepticalstatistician.blogspot.com/2012/11/quantifying-star-wars-part-3-episodes.html Since then, I have planned to sit down and write a capstone to these posts comparing the trilogies to each other as wholes. Given how much I already have written, such a capstone easily pushes this into the realm of an actual coherent book. I'd like to do this right, and put together something cool. I keep putting it off because I want to spend the time to make it good - to go back and improve a lot of the graphs and things already made to be more presentable. I'm not looking to print this thing (unless people push me - see rewards), but figured that e-book technology gives me a great opportunity. If all (or even just some) of you are interested, I can make this book a reality. The end goal would be to put the finished product into Amazon's self-publishing area as an e-book to sit as long as Amazon tolerates. Those who help out through kickstarter can actually get this thing off the ground and get some cool stuff in the process. I don't know what level I'll eventually price this in a marketplace like Amazon. In full disclosure, if this succeeds I might put it up there for lower than you might pay here for it. The trick is that on Amazon you'll only ever get the e-book. Here on Kickstarter you're able to influence the process itself. I've designed the rewards here so that you'll be able to get things out of it that simply won't be options once this Kickstarter is over. You'll also get an opportunity to make the final product better by pushing us into different stretch goals (outlined below). The basic costs raised by this Kickstarter will go into things like all the paperwork and costs of putting together an actual book: copyright, copy editing, formatting, proofreading, etc. Hopefully you've enjoyed the original posts about Star Wars, and hopefully this Kickstarter helps us put together something as good or better. Take a look at the stretch goals - that's where the fun really is. Some of them may seem pretty crazy, but every once in a while Kickstarter gets pretty crazy, too. No matter where this project finishes I'll be happy, but I just thought I'd make sure we set the ceiling nice and high. For instance, if you guys are able to put together enough money to force me to do an in depth analysis of the Twilight Saga, so be it. If we don't get to those numbers, well, let's just say I won't be sitting around feeling sad about it. Stretch Goals $250 - Project funded. I'll write up the final capstone piece to link the posts so far, and go back and watch Episode I & IV again to incorporate some of the things that I only started looking at later in the posts. $500 - I will re-watch all the movies so that I can code things down to the second instead of simply to the minute. That means I have to sit through all the prequels yet again, but I'll do it for you guys. $1,000 - I will watch the...special editions, and do the same sort of coding for those parts which are...special. I will write another section of the book detailing how those special parts make me (e)specially sad. $1,500 - I will try to take the questions I've asked so far and combine them into a chapter of analysis on some of the inconsistencies and problems that plagued the prequels. $2,500 - I will write a chapter on how to "special edition" the prequels to make them potentially more coherent and better movies. $5,000 - I will do this same sort of analysis for The Lord of the Rings and write a series of posts about it. Extended editions, but excluding the Hobbit films. $10,000 - I will take the Lord of the Rings posts and make an e-book out of it as well. I'll put it up on Amazon e-book store, and also send copies to all backers $20 and up (delivery date for this will not match with delivery dates for the Star Wars e-book). $15,000 - I'll do the Hobbit films, too, though this will be delayed by the fact that they're not all out. So, once they're all out, I'll work the Hobbit films back into the LOTR stuff. $20,000 - I will do this same sort of analysis for the Indiana Jones films and write a series of posts about it. $25,000 - I will take the Indiana Jones posts and make an e-book out of it as well. I'll put it up on Amazon e-book store, and also send copies to all backers $20 and up (delivery date for this will not match with delivery dates for the Star Wars e-book). $35,000 - I will do this same sort of analysis for the 10 original Star Trek films and write a series of posts about it. $40,000 - I will take the Star Trek posts and make an e-book out of it as well. I'll put it up on Amazon e-book store, and also send copies to all backers $20 and up (delivery date for this will not match with delivery dates for the Star Wars e-book). $50,000 - I will do this same sort of analysis for the 'main' Miyazaki films (Nausicaa, Castle in the Sky, Totoro, Kiki, Porco Rosso, Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl, Ponyo, and Arrietty) and write a series of posts about it. $55,000 - I will take the Miyazaki posts and make an e-book out of it as well. I'll put it up on Amazon e-book store, and also send copies to all backers $20 and up (delivery date for this will not match with delivery dates for the Star Wars e-book). $65,000 - I will do this same sort of analysis for the main Halo games single player story line (CE, Halo 2, Halo 3, ODST, Reach, Halo 4) and write a series of posts about it. $70,000 - I will take the Halo posts and make an e-book out of it as well. I'll put it up on Amazon e-book store, and also send copies to all backers $20 and up (delivery date for this will not match with delivery dates for the Star Wars e-book). $80,000 - I will do this same sort of analysis for the Harry Potter films and write a series of posts about it. $85,000 - I will take the Harry Potter posts and make an e-book out of it as well. I'll put it up on Amazon e-book store, and also send copies to all backers $20 and up (delivery date for this will not match with delivery dates for the Star Wars e-book). $90,000 - I will do this same sort of analysis for the Twilight films and write a series of posts about it. $95,000 - I will take the Twilight posts and make an e-book out of it as well. I'll put it up on Amazon e-book store, and also send copies to all backers $20 and up (delivery date for this will not match with delivery dates for the Star Wars e-book). $100,000+ - I'll come up with some other stretch goals! They'll probably be pretty crazy.
The 2014 Hall of Fame ballot was released Tuesday, and J.T. Snow is on it. Want Snow in the Hall of Fame? Make your case as eloquently as possible, and he'll get at least one vote. Be sure to mention the jawline. There are a six ex-Giants on the ballot. In order of career wins above replacement: 1. Barry Bonds (162.5) 2. Jeff Kent (55.2) 3. Moises Alou (39.7) 4. Ray Durham (33.7) 5. Armando Benitez (17.4) 6. J.T. Snow (11.0) Sorry, impressionable young Giants fans. Turns out that Snow might have been less valuable over his career than Armando Benitez. It also turns out that if Brandon Belt has one more season like last year, he'll blow by Snow in career WAR. Of course, defensive stats always hated Snow, which I still can't believe. It's not like there was a Jeter gap between his stats and the eyeball test -- Snow looked like a first baseman who should win the Gold Glove every year. I never understood the defensive stats when it came to him and spits I don't reckon I can trust them no how. The main point of this, though, wasn't to discuss Snow's relative worth, but to point out that Barry Bonds was worth more than the other five ex-Giants combined. And those guys were all thought of as having pretty lengthy, respected careers. It's why they made the final ballot in the first place. Here's a list of the ex-Giants who will make the Hall of Fame this ballot: There you go. Kent will get in eventually, I'm guessing, but not this year. Especially not while there's a faction of morality-soaked twits who refuse to vote in anyone from the Steroid Era because making everyone guilty until proven innocent is the only way to keep the cheaters out for sure. That way we get the Hall of Players Lucky Enough to Avoid This Specific Era, which is what baseball is about. I have notes scribbled for an idea called "The Real Hall of Fame," which would be our version of those weird creationist museums. It would be an ideological alternative to the mainstream, and it would have "The Goddamned Barry Bonds Roller Coaster" running around the entire perimeter. So far the notes read only "sign up for kickstarter" and "barry bonds rollie coaster," but I'm sure I can flesh that out. Six Giants, two of whom could conceivably get a vote, and one of whom should have the building named after him. None of them are getting in, though. Not this time.
I can't believe, that is really over...something that began as redraw of really old (and really ugly) pictures, over my friends pushing "draw me a Sirius, draw me a Sirius" to a crazy plan to draw entire order...well it's nothing extra, but it's the biggest thing I've ever done(Well and I found that I'm lame at shadowingThank you for your amazing supportRecently I started new project -Harry Potter New Generation - please let me know If you would like to upload them separately (or more precisely in small groups) like I've done with this project, or You think that Internet is overfilled with me, and want only final work aidinera.deviantart.com/galler… From left to right: Emmeline Vance; Molly and Arthur Weasleys; Sturgis Podmore; Severus Snape; Minerva McGonagall; Albus Dumbledore; Sirius Black; Remus Lupin; Tonks; Alastor Moody; Kingsley Shacklebolt; Hestia Jones; Dedalus Diggle; Fleur Delacour; Bill Weasley; Elphias Doge and Mundungus Fletcher(Hagrid is on his way to giants, so he got portrait of his own: fav.me/d8yyky8
Twilight had quite the problem with the Changeling she was supposed to watch over. The reason for this problem was because this Changeling who was disguised as her, wasn’t a master in magic like her or had a personality similar to her at all. But rather, it was simply because it was the commander of the infiltration team. This Changeling took everything really seriously and seemed to not open it mind to her ever. It always made itself look tough and stoic around her.It's true that it worked hard on anything she requested and did much charity work without any complaints. But she really wishes it would be friendlier to her, just like other Changelings who started to be friendly with her friends.So she started to investigate and see how her friends were able to make their Changelings open their minds and be friendlier with them. It seemed like each of her friends used each of their reputable elements to win their Changeling's heart. Laughter, Generosity, Loyalty, Honesty and kindness…But what about her? Her element was magic, but she did not think using magic to make Changeling be her friend was the right thing to do. But then she remembered her second title. She was the Princess of Friendship too. Maybe she can used friendship to win this Changeling's heart.Therefore, she started to talk with her Changeling more often, even if it did not need to talk back or when talk was necessary. She made the room it lived in more comfortable for it to rest each day and made sure to not over work it. She wanted to make her place feel like a home for it, more than its prison and show that it was thought of as a roommate, rather than a prisoner. In the meantime, she started to investigate Changelings as well, to understand more about it's personalities and everything else she needed to know.After investigating for a while, Twilight finally noticed something. It was true that this Changeling seemed able to do everything she requested without complaining. But somehow when it came to helping her sort books in the library, it always had trouble to do it and sorted books in the wrong places from time to time. So she asked if it had some trouble with reading or something, it did not want to tell the truth at first. But eventually, with every nice thing Twilight did for it, one day, it finally showed the result she wanted…It finally opened up to her.Changeling said it didn’t have much knowledge in languages and other things, as Changelings don't have a school like ponies do…They never went to school at all. They only knew how to talk properly and read simple words. But the books in this library were filled with words that it didn’t understand. Twilight asked it why it didn't tell her in the first place. It said it didn't want to show its weaknesses, especially to the enemy. A Commander Changeling like itself is supposed to be smart and strong. It is supposed to able to do everything it can, on its own...Twilight smiled and said that everyone always had something they weren’t good at and its okay for them to ask for help from someone, because that isn't a sign of weakness at all. She asked it if it wanted her to be a teacher and teach it everything it wanted to know. Changeling hesitated at first to accept help from a pony that was supposed to be its enemy. But then it realised that it doesn't have anything to lose from accepting this and everything to gain. So it accepted her invitation to learn and became Twilight's student.Once it opened itself, this Changeling really surprised Twilight in every way. It’s curiosity and hunger for knowledge really reminded her of her younger self. The Changeling's commander who was always serious in everything was gone, leaving only a bookworm Changeling who was not only Twilight's student, but a faithful reading partner as well. Twilight was really happy that her friendship plan was finally working.She can finally be friends with this Changeling, and in turn, that Changeling was happy to be friends with her as well. Because this pony gave her love to it so freely now, pure and delicious love, it didn’t need to steal scraps of love from Twilight anymore, when Twilight was not aware of it doing so like it always did in the past...---------------------------------------------This is a Changeling Selfcest Series that comes from the result of this vote:Poll : i.imgur.com/UZJ0S3W.png Result : i.imgur.com/KAUvhjp.png The design of Changeling's Mane6 coming from : heilos.deviantart.com/art/Dece… Synopsis of Story:"In the end of Season 6, the Mane 6 returned to their home and found that their imposters (Black Changeling) were all still here. After hearing about how their queen had lost and that a new king had ascended, they surrendered to the Mane 6 and they were forced to do charity work to atone for their crimes while under the Mane6’s supervision. However, they refused to give up the love they currently had in order to become colorful Changelings and join Thorax's hive, saying they will find their old queen once they had atoned from all their crimes.The Mane6 let these Changelings turn into Changeling versions of themselves, to better identify which pony each Changeling belonged to."---------------------------------------------7 Naughty Continues (Female Alicorn Pony X Futa Changeling) can be found early on Patreon www.patreon.com/vavacung
WELCOME TO BBQLINUX You've reached the website for BBQLinux, a user-friendly Linux distribution made for Android developers. It has everything on board to build AOSP or AOSP-based distributions like LineageOS or OmniROM. BBQLinux is based on Arch Linux and is using a rolling release development model which means it is getting continually updated and upgraded. It will never be necessary to re-install a later release of BBQLinux. It is fully compatible with Arch Linux and is using the Arch package repos plus a BBQLinux specific one. The default desktop environment is "CINNAMON" but we're also providing images with "MATE", "GNOME", "PLASMA" and "XFCE4". You can test BBQLinux without doing any modifications to your computer using our live media. Username: bbqlinux Password: bbqlinux In case you're creating a bootable USB-Stick, don't forget to label it "BBQLINUX".
Pour yourself a beer, kick off your shoes and read a campaign! Who are we? Hey everyone! We're Jason Zink, Elliott Abel and the rest of the gang. All old pals and collaborators. Jason directs, Elliott is gonna shoot and all our friends help on set and corral all of our acting talent. As 20-something year old college students in 2011, we set out to make our first feature horror anthology... It's called Night Terrors. We're here now to raise funds for an ambitious follow up, but this time around -- we need you guys to make it bigger, better and something you wouldn't be embarrassed to wake up next to after a blackout! What is Night Terrors? A low-budget comedy/ horror anthology about a killer Santa, a mad scientist and a sexually transmitted flesh eating virus. The movie was shot for only $5,000 and took over two years to finish. When the dust had settled, we garnered some notoriety, found ourselves in some fests and received worldwide distribution through Camp Motion Pictures. Not too bad for that scratch, huh? What's in our drink? ... we mean movie. Straight Edge Kegger is a movie inspired by the punk scene that most of us grew up in as well as the GRINDHOUSE flicks that have continued to inspire us well into our late-20's. But don't fret, boys and ghouls. The aesthetic will be much less destroyed on the feature than in the trailer -- we'll probably just keep the destroyed version to watch by ourselves 'cause we're cool like that. AND ON THAT NOTE: The proof-of-concept trailer was meant to be just that. The actors in the trailer are NOT who we have planned for the feature -- including Jason Zink who would prefer to stay behind the lens. So make sure we get enough money so that you don't have to sit through an hour and some change staring at his ugly mug! Punk is something that we've always tried to incorporate in our flicks, here at Weird on Top Pictures. From our Mohawk logo to our soundtracks, the DIY ethos and DAMN THE MAN mentality permeate all that we do. This film intends to be a culmination of all of those tendencies and we hope to do justice for both straight edgers and partiers alike! Who're the guilty parties? Over the years, we've been lucky enough to meet a lot of really talented people. Putting those connections to good use, we've assembled a dream team of brilliant minds and funny peeps to be a part of our project. Here's some of our lineup: With your help, Tim Gick plans to create the best damn Carpenter inspired synth score that you could ask for! Try to imagine if Disasterpiece had a baby with Goblin! If you check out the original trailer, you'll hear what we're talkin' about! A very special thanks to Craig Tribble of Low Class Gallery who designed these killer buttons for us! Craig is a process artist with a sick sense of humor and a love for horror flicks. Naturally -- we get along just fine. Check out his Online Store to see some of the cool stuff he's servin' up! When we released the mock trailer, our new friends over at The Hard Times dug the idea and plugged us on their antisocial media. Within a week, the trailer had right around 40,000 views and a whole bunch of shares and positive feedback. Just to be clear, they don't have anything to do with this Kickstarter. They just thought our idea was cool... so you should too! Our theory is that IF every one of those 40k viewers donates only $1, all our dreams can come true. Well maybe not ALL our dreams... sometimes I dream that Matt Pinfield and I are best friends but we always cutely argue about music. Wait... what? Check out some of our favorite comments. Maybe you'll be one on here! And last but not least, our favorite... We've come to recoup, John. Of course, they can't all be winners: We're sorry to hear that you didn't dig the title Nickolys, but we'll cut you a deal. If you contribute at the AUTOGRAPHED DVD level, we'll send you a personalized cover with whatever title you'd like! But just one 'cuz it's gonna be a big pain in our ass. Our close friends UGLYBoNES (and a good band as well) are more than happy to get bloody with us. They'll be one of the bands playing in the show and will definitely be featured on the OST (original soundtrack). Check out their bandcamp if you don't believe us! Bandcamp Facebook Almost-Guaranteed Distribution 100 million homes... here we come! Because of the success of Night Terrors and our relationship with our previous distributor as well as some new friends, we're fortunate enough to already have distributors interested in purchasing the flick! That is a HUGE motivator for us this time around and all-the-more reason to make it a film that they can't say no to... or to which they can't say no? "Damn it Bork!" The plan is to be released on VOD (Video-On-Demand) in the fall of 2018 around that special holiday that we all love... HALLOWEEN! Platforms you'll see the flick on (hopefully): Netflix Hulu Shudder iTunes & more! We're aiming for a limited theatrical run as well. There's a chance the exclusive Kickstarter autographed DVD (which you get by pledging just 50 smackers) may be the only hard copy released... potentially making it very rare. That means you can sell it later and make your own movie! We'd be so proud. What will your money go towards? Movie makin'! Every cent goes directly towards the flick and the pledge perks... and mostly the flick. That covers everything from insurance, cast and crew wages, location fees, mustache grooming, costumes, props, camera and lens rentals, production design, grip and electric package, post-production, marketing, and distribution. As a backer of even just 1 buck, you'll have a direct hand in getting a movie made! 100 PROOF Concept We've been lucky enough to have been garnered some success on the festival circuit from our proof-of-concept trailer alone. Check out some of the honors below -- A FEW EXTRA SHOTS At Weird on Top Pictures, we pride ourselves on being different. With that in mind, we've got a couple extra things up our sleeves. If we reach our goal of $14,995, Jason Zink will get this number tattooed on his body and photographic evidence will be sent out to the backers. If we make more than our goal, the remaining balance will continue to get you perks at your tier level (minus physical goods) on the next project! So what does that mean? Basically, you're getting two for one. We can't supply all the posters, DVDs, etc. BUT if we make extra money that doesn't get spent on this particular project, then on the next project you will continue to get THANKS, PRODUCER CREDIT, etc. on the film! We know... pretty cool, huh? Thanks for givin' our page a read and double thanks for all of your support! Without friends, family and fans like you-- this film would not be possible. We like to be a one-stop shop at Weird on Top Pictures so if you go to our site or follow us on our social media, you'll be able to check out all of our future projects. AND if you're somebody that missed out on the campaign but still want to lend a hand, submit music or give us some cash for a project-- feel free to reach out to us at weirdontoppictures@gmail.com Again-- THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH!!!
If you’re completely landlocked like I am, you may dream of ocean waves lapping at the shore, but you probably don’t think much about the tides. The movement of the ocean tides is actually quite important to many groups of people, from fishermen to surfers to coastal zone engineers. The behavior of the tides over time is helpful data for those who study world climate change. Early tide prediction was based on observed changes in relation to the phases of the Moon. These days, tide-predicting is done quickly and with digital computers. But the first purpose-built machines were slow yet accurate analog computation devices that, as they were developed, could account for increasing numbers of tidal constituents, which represent the changes in the positions of tide-generating astronomical bodies. One of these calculating marvels even saved the Allies’ invasion of Normandy—or D-Day— in World War II. What Are Tides, Exactly? In Sir Isaac Newton’s classic scientific trilogy Principia, he lays out the idea that the glue of the universe is in the gravitational pull of the bodies that comprise it. Newton proposes that the ocean tides of Earth are governed by the gravitational pull of the Moon, and to a lesser extent due to distance, the Sun. The Moon’s gravitational pull causes a peak in the ocean water nearest it. There is a peak of equal magnitude on the opposite side of the globe because inertia counteracts gravity. These peaks in the ocean bodies are called tidal bulges. What Newton didn’t account for is the effect of the continents on tidal behavior. The distance between the low and high tide marks of any given shore is called the tidal range. Underneath every shoreline, there is a range of ocean floor where the ocean crust meets the continental crust. This graduation is called the continental margin. Wherever wide continental margins are found, the tidal bulges tend to produce higher tides. In contrast, islands located far from these continental margins tend to have small tides. Shallow water estuaries can distort the tide and cause it to rise faster. Tidal behavior is influenced by many other factors, including local weather patterns. Winds out at sea can pull the tide out further, while inland winds can exaggerate tidal heights. A shore’s proximity to the Earth’s poles increases the tidal range. Seaside Obstacle Course Planning the invasion of Normandy was no walk in the park for the Allied forces. The tidal range in this area of Nazi-occupied France exceeded six meters, and the tide rose at a rate of over one meter per hour. This meant there was a whole lot of beach to cross if the Allies made landfall at low tide. The Germans were well aware of the value of tide tables, and they were sure the Allies would arrive at high tide. Under the command of German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, they constructed thousands of large obstacles along the beach. They built the obstacles about halfway up the tidal range so that they would be obscured at mid-tide and covered completely by high tide. The intent of this part of what Hitler dubbed the “Atlantic wall” was to destroy the undercarriages of Allied boats, should they arrive at high tide as expected. Here’s the thing about building millions of obstacles on the beach, though: they can be seen quite plainly when the tide is out, especially from the sky. In fact, the Allies watched them multiply like rabbits over a couple of months in the early spring of 1944. Rommel was sure the boats would arrive at high tide, but the Allies now knew that it was out of the question. Hand-Cranked Tidal Calculators French mathematician and physicist Pierre-Simon Laplace built upon Newton’s tidal theories. He derived equations that described the way the oceans move in accordance with the gravitational pull of the Moon and Sun, and figured out that all tidal energy is focused at a small number of frequencies. Laplace’s equations, which are built on the conservation principles of mass and momentum, calculate the energy at each of these astronomical frequencies. He believed that these calculations were the best way to accurately predict the tides. Laplace’s hydrodynamic approach to tide prediction was first put into use by William Thomson, who would later become Lord Kelvin. The thrust of Thomson’s harmonic method was to collect tidal data and analyze the frequencies using Laplace’s equations. While effective, this method involved a great deal of laborious calculations that could be performed far more quickly by mechanical means. Thomson created an analog computer to plot the tidal motions on a continuous graph that illustrates tidal heights over a period of time. The device was operated by hand crank. Turning the crank drove pairs of toothed disks, each representing a tidal constituent such as the lunar semi-diurnal period of twelve hours and twenty-five minutes. The ratio of a given disk pair determined the speed at which the upper disk moved. This movement was transferred to a wheel through a rod connected to both. At the disk end, the rod is connected to one of a number of pins. The position of the pin determines the phase and amplitude of the tidal component. All of the components are tied together by a common band that sums them together, and this system converts the rotary motion of the disks into the sinusoidal motion exhibited by the pen on the graph. Later known as Kelvin’s tide machine (you just have to love that name), this device could predict a year’s worth of tidal data in about four hours. His first iteration could sum ten tidal components. Kelvin ultimately made three versions of increasing complexity, the last of which summed 24 components. At about the same time, William Ferrel was constructing a similar machine for the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey. Ferrel’s tide predictor accounted for 19 different tidal components. It worked a bit differently from Thomson’s machine, though. Instead of graphing a curve, a series of dials and scales displayed the times and heights of successive periods of high and low water. The operator cranked it with one hand from the left side and took down the results. These numbers were copied to forms and used to create tide tables for general marine navigation. Ferrel’s machine was in use from the early 1880s until 1910. It was replaced by the U.S. Tide Predicting Machine No. 2, which was capable of summing 37 tidal components. This machine, a.k.a. “Old Brass Brains” (again, amazing name for a computing device) spent 55 years in service before being replaced by a computer. D-Day While it’s true that these machines could predict a year’s worth of tidal activity in an afternoon, harmonic analysis of the data took several weeks to complete. After entering WWII the U.S. military made several successful amphibious landings in the Pacific and elsewhere based on the news from Old Brass Brains. In England, tide prediction was handled by Arthur Thomas Doodson from the Liverpool Tidal Institute. It was Doodson who made the tidal predictions for the Allied invasion at Normandy. Doodson needed access to local tide data, but the British only had information for the nearby ports. Factors like the shallow water effect and local weather impact on tidal behavior made it impossible to interpolate for the landing sites based on the port data. The shallow water effect could really throw off the schedule for demolishing the obstacles if the tide rose too quickly. Secret British reconnaissance teams covertly collected shallow water data at the enemy beaches and sent it to Doodson for analysis. To further complicate things, the operatives couldn’t just tell Doodson that the invasion was planned for the beaches of Normandy. So he had to figure it out from the harmonic constants sent to him by William Ian Farquharson, superintendent of tides at the Hydrographic Office of the Royal Navy. He did so using the third iteration of Kelvin’s predictor along with another machine. These were kept in separate rooms lest they be taken out by the same bomb. After the Allies discovered the Atlantic wall obstacles in the early spring of 1944, the mission had to be re-evaluated. The new plan? Make landfall just after low tide, and send demolition teams to blow up obstacles, creating safe channels. This way, the larger crafts could come in as the tide rose, drop troops off, and get back out to sea. The plan was further complicated by the beach locations along the English Channel, which they pretty much had to cross at night. The Allies needed to figure out when low tide would line up with first light and a late-rising Moon. Three days in June 1944 fit the bill perfectly: the 5th, 6th, and 7th. Under the Weather Although General Eisenhower chose June 5th for D-Day, the weather just wasn’t cooperating. It was simply too windy to make the landing work. Fortunately, his staff predicted a break in the weather that made June 6th a real possibility. Rommel figured the weather and unfavorable tides would deter the Allies completely, so he greatly reduced his forces with the exception of Omaha Beach and left his post. The rest, as they say, is history. [Main image: U.S. Tide-Predicting Machine No. 2 via NOAA]
Abdul-Malik Ryan is the Islamic chaplain of Chicago’s DePaul University and also serves as Assistant Director of Religious Diversity at the college’s Loop campus. He also goes by the alias “Abu Noor al-Irlandee” (“al-Irlandee” is Arabic for “the Irishman”). Ryan is not only an open supporter of Muslim terrorist groups such as ISIS and al-Qaeda, he has ties to traitor and convicted terrorist John Walker Lindh. Meet Abdul-Malik Ryan Abdul-Malik Ryan is an American of Irish descent who obtained his bachelor’s degree from DePaul and also attended Georgetown Law School. Prior to becoming DePaul’s Islamic chaplain, he worked as an attorney in the Cook County child protection system. Ryan converted to Islam in 1994 when he was a student at DePaul, initially joining the Nation of Islam, the radical black nationalist organization led by Louis Farrakhan; he would later become an Orthodox Muslim. According to my contacts, prior to his conversion, Ryan also served as the president of DePaul’s Communist club, though I haven’t turned up any evidence of this so far. Some of Abdul-Malik Ryan’s radical left-wing beliefs are well-known: according to Breitbart’s Tom Ciccotta, he has cheered on the declining white majority in America, supports cop killers, and believes that it is immoral for the U.S. to refuse to accept Syrian refugees. However, at his blog Abu Noor al-Irlandee, he has openly expressed support for Muslim terrorists who kill Americans and Europeans. Abdul-Malik Ryan’s Terrorist Problem On his blog, Abdul-Malik Ryan refers to himself as an “unrepentant Fenian Islamist” and posts articles supportive of Islamic terrorism. In a deleted post from 2008, he praises Anwar al-Awlaki, the leader of al-Qaeda in Yemen. Al-Awlaki was the mastermind behind the 2009 Fort Hood massacre by Nidal Hasan and the attempted Christmas day bombing of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 by “underwear bomber” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Ryan writes: …Shaykh al-Awlaki is one of those rare speakers that combines articulateness with being blunt and clear and fearless in his analysis. Most people who are articulate and can speak well use those skills in order to make less clear what they are actually saying or in order to speak to multiple audiences at once, or to create “plausible deniability” in the future if someone wants to come after them for what they “seem to be saying.” There may be reasons for all of this, but when someone speaks clear and directly (as Allaah (swt) says speak clearly and directly to the point Surah Ahzab Ayah 70) then it naturally appeals to people, even when people don’t agree with everything you say. This is why someone like Al Hajj Malik Shabazz became beloved even by people who did not agree with some of his message, because they knew where he stood, knew he was on their side, and loved how he spoke the truth. All of which makes Shaykh Anwar al-Awlaki and his thought a perfect topic for my “Alternative Visions” series! Ryan also heaps praise on the “Mujahideen” (guerrilla terrorists) killing American soldiers in Iraq and affirms his support for establishing an “Islamic State”: But despite all of that, the plans of the United States are not working. The Islamic revival is continuing. The evil nature of U.S. plans are clear to most Muslims, especially the youth and especially the active practicing Muslim youth living in the U.S. itself. They plot and plan, but Allaah is the Best of Planners. In fact, the popularity and understanding of the true message of Islam continues to grow in the Muslim world and the concept of re-establishing the Islamic State, or re-establishing the Khilafah is everywhere seen as much more realistic and likely than it was even 15 years ago. [Text bolded by me – ed.] At the end of the post, Ryan states that there are only a “few minor areas” where he “perhaps disagree[s]” with al-Awlaki and prays that Allah “protect and preserve him and keep him free!” He also prays for the release of several other Muslim terrorists and captured enemy combatants, including John Walker Lindh, and advocates that Muslims use “mass civil disobedience” to resist Islamic terrorist groups from being designated as such by the U.S. government: The next recommendation is that stories of corruption, immorality, etc. should be promoted about the “extremist” Muslims. This of course means, that if these Muslims, have not committed any crimes you simply make things up or take basic Islamic beliefs and actions and criminalize them. Shaykh al-Awlaki specifically cites what the govenrment did with Imam Jamil Al-Amin (May Allaah free him!) in this context. One can also look to examples like Shaykh Ali al-Timimi (May Allaah free him!), John Walker Lindh (May Allaah free him!), or Muhammad Salah (May Allaah free him!). The only notion of criminalizing any aid or support for a “designated terrorist” organization and then being able to designate whomever you wish as a terrorist organization is nothing less than the criminalization of being a Muslim and daring to support any cause not approved by the U.S. government. (I continue to believe that the only response to this that will be effective at the end of the day is to demonstrate the pure injustice of such laws by mass civil disobedience in which the Muslims in hundreds of thousands publicly and openly support these groups in ways which are clearly moral and right, daring the government to punish us for it. Until then, it will continue to pick off the truly strong among us, but those seen to be weak because they are not supported by the community). [Text bolded by me – ed.] In another post from 2008, Abdul-Malik Ryan posts a “rebel nasheed” called “Ghurabaa.” A nasheed is a jihadist chant, and this particular one was written by the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood when he was in prison. It includes the lyrics “Let us make Jihad together” and “Do not bow your foreheads to anyone besides Allah”: In another post, Ryan pays homage to Sayyid Qutb, a Wahabbist theologian, leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood and the spiritual father of al-Qaeda and ISIS: May Allaah (swt) accept Sayyid Qutb as a martyr forgive him any mistakes, sins and shortcomings. May Allaah (swt) show his mercy to all the Muslims and to all of the oppressed during the blessed month of Ramadan. [Text bolded by me – ed.] Finally, Ryan is a friend of Musa Maguire, another Muslim convert and the cousin of convicted terrorist John Walker Lindh. As shown here, Maguire frequently comments on Ryan’s blog and the two have a regular correspondence: Given his support for Islamic terrorism and association with known terrorists, Abdul-Malik Ryan is unfit to be employed at DePaul or any other university. DePaul needs to fire Ryan immediately, and given his proven connection to Lindh, the FBI needs to investigate him as well. You can find out more about Abdul Malik-Ryan via the following links: Thanks to UygurLeaks for providing me with much of this information. Any journalists investigating leftist corruption at DePaul need to get into contact with him. P.S. Independent reporting costs money. If you enjoy my work and want to see more of it, click here to donate. I greatly appreciate any and all support you can provide. Read Next: Katie O’Reilly, DePaul Student, Assaulted Me at Milo Yiannopoulos’ Chicago Speech Share this: Print Email Facebook Reddit Tumblr Twitter More LinkedIn Pinterest Pocket Skype Telegram WhatsApp
Studies have shown that potential iPhone buyers can’t wait for a bigger iPhone 6 to arrive, with the screen size being a major factor when deciding on their next smartphone purchase. But a new report seems to indicate that the iPhone 6’s display won’t just be bigger — it’ll also be better. G for Games has picked up a report from the Chinese media based on Innolux supply chain sources that says the next iPhone 6 will feature a “touch-on display” panel, which features an “on-cell” technology, rather than “in-cell” tech, which is the type of display touch sensor technology found in current iPhones. “The main difference between on-cell and in-cell is the fact that the former technology allows manufacturers to move the touch layer into the outer glass (such as the protective Gorilla Glass / Sapphire layer),” the publication writes. “According to the source, this allows manufacturers to create higher quality displays (faster screen response, no smear, no jitter, better color reproduction and so on).” By moving to an “on-cell” display, Apple will be able to significantly reduce the thickness of the iPhone 6’s screen and thus the overall size of the handset, while also improving the touch sensor’s responsiveness, the screen’s visual performance and reducing manufacturing costs. Many distinct iPhone 6 mockups have been featured in a variety of reports, showing that the 4.7-inch handset would be significantly thinner than its predecessors. When it comes to display providers, Apple has reportedly partnered up with LG, JDI and Innolux, while ignoring Samsung and Sharp. Of those three companies, JDI already has a display that appears to feature such “on-cell” touch sensor technology, the Full HD 5.5-inch screen used in the OnePlus One. “Complementing those three features will be a beautiful 5.5” 1080p JDI display with 400+ PPI. JDI is Japan Display Inc., a joint venture by Sony, Toshiba and Hitachi that’s known for their great displays,” OnePlus wrote on its forums teasing the One handset in March. “In addition, it will feature TOL (Touch On Lens) modules which eliminates the distance between the touch sensor and display panel, while also being 300% more shatterproof than the competing OGS technology.” “The screen is equipped with both CABC and DRAM technology. This new and innovative technologies sense when the contents on your screen are dynamic, and consume less energy when the image is static, allowing the vivid 5.5” display to consume even less power than normal 5.0” displays with the same brightness,” the company said. That doesn’t mean though that the iPhone 6 will have the same display as the OnePlus One. But Apple’s second 2014 iPhone is rumored to have a 5.5-inch display. The screen technology Apple will use in the 4.7-inch model will likely be found in the 5.5-inch model as well. Even more interestingly, in late March JDI announced an even more advanced 5.5-inch screen than the one found in the OnePlus One, which will feature 2K resolution and is available to handset device makers. Similarly, LG confirmed it has its own 5.5-inch 2K display ready for the LG G3.
by The humanitarian crisis in Yemen rivals the crisis in Syria. After six months of war and the imposition of a naval blockade designed to starve the country into submission, 90% of Yemen’s population of more than 24 million are in urgent need of humanitarian aid. More than 6000 people, nearly 90% of which are civilians, are dead and most of Yemen’s already limited infrastructure is in ruins. Sana’a, the capital of Yemen and home to 3 million, is under continuous aerial bombardment by Saudi Arabia and its partners who have targeted schools, hospitals, and homes in densely populated urban areas. The US, along with the UK, is providing intelligence and logistical support to Saudi Arabia and its partners. Both countries are also supplying Saudi Arabia with weapons. The US is equipping the Saudis with internationally banned cluster munitions which now litter large swaths of the Yemeni countryside where they will kill and maim for years to come. Beyond arms manufacturers, the only real beneficiary of this bloody war are takfiri groups like al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and the Islamic State (IS) which is making inroads in Yemen. So why is the US supporting a war that has achieved little beyond further empowering groups like AQAP and IS? Yemen and its people are being offered up as a kind of sacrifice for Saudi Arabia’s and the Gulf Cooperation Council’s support for the nuclear arms deal with Iran. Most importantly US support for Saudi Arabia’s war has ensured a steady stream of new weapons orders. US-based arms manufacturers have sold 8 billion USD worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia since it launched ‘Operation Decisive Storm’ six months ago. This is a figure that adds almost ten percent to the 90.4 billion USD worth of weapons that US arms manufacturers have sold to Saudi Arabia since President Obama was elected. In exchange for tepid Saudi support for the nuclear arms deal with Iran—support that the US does not need given that both Russia and China back the deal—and billions of dollars in weapons sales, the US has turned a blind eye to what can only be called state sanctioned genocide in Yemen. US support for Saudi Arabia’s disastrous war in Yemen is likely to have profound and lasting consequences for not only Yemen but also for the region, and in particular for Saudi Arabia. The Saudi led war in Yemen was launched on the pretense of re-installing the exiled government of Yemeni President Hadi. The real aim of the war is to destroy Yemen’s Houthi Shi’a rebels which Saudi Arabia views as Iranian proxies. The Houthis are Zaidi Shi’a, a sect which is doctrinally closer to Sunnis than Iran’s Twelver Shi’a. The Houthi movement is deeply rooted in the socio-cultural context of north-west Yemen and while it undoubtedly has a relationship with Iran, it has never been—and likely never will be—an Iranian proxy. The Houthi movement and its leadership are fiercely independent. Saudi Arabia’s fears about growing Iranian influence in the region have led it and its partners into a war that will consume their blood and treasure for years to come thereby guaranteeing years of healthy profits for US and British arms manufacturers. Yemen’s mountainous terrain and complex political landscape rival those of Afghanistan. The Houthis, while at the other end of the religious spectrum, are comparable to Afghanistan’s Taliban in terms of their capabilities as guerilla fighters. In many respects, they are superior. The Houthis will not be defeated by an aerial campaign and a limited number of ground troops. Neither Saudi Arabia nor its partners have the capability to deploy and sustain the thousands of troops that it will take to defeat the Houthis and their allies. Nor do they have enough political capital to absorb what would be an extremely high casualty rate for their soldiers. In 1962, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser sent troops into Yemen for what he thought would be a quick victory over Royalist forces fighting for the Zaidi Imam who ruled north Yemen. By 1967, at least fifteen thousand Egyptian soldiers had been killed in Yemen. By enabling Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, the US is not only ensuring the destruction of Yemen and the empowerment of AQAP and IS, it could also be inadvertently further tipping the balance of power in the Middle East in favor of Iran. The government of Iran can only be delighted as it watches Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates plunge ever deeper into the quagmire that is Yemen. The war, which, if negotiations are not pursued, could go on for years, will only weaken the governments of Saudi Arabia and the UAE. During a period in which oil prices are low and may head lower, both governments will be forced to pour billions of dollars into a war that will have no victors beyond groups like AQAP and IS—both of which will—and have—targeted the Gulf monarchies that now view them as useful proxies. In the case of Saudi Arabia, the war has already spread across its long, rugged, and largely unguarded border with Yemen. Houthi fighters and Yemeni Army units allied with them have launched numerous successful attacks on Saudi border posts. For short periods, Saudi Armed Forces have lost control of towns and villages in the Saudi provinces of Jizan and Najran due to Houthi incursions. Most seriously for Saudi Arabia, there are rumblings of discontent in the House of Saud with King Salman and his son and defense minister Muhammad bin Salman. Muhammad bin Salman—who at age 30 is the youngest and least experienced defense minister in the world—has broken with a foreign policy that has long been cautious and careful. The young defense minister who is also second in line to the throne is viewed by many members of the House of Saud as reckless. As Saudi Arabia is drawn deeper into what could well be its Vietnam, discontent with the current leadership will undoubtedly increase. US support for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen has led to the deaths of thousands of civilians and helped erase fifty years of progress in Yemen. As the war grinds on for what could be years, it will produce blowback as significant as that generated by the US’ own ill-conceived invasion of Iraq which altered the balance of power in the Middle East and ultimately spawned the Islamic State. This is undoubtedly welcome news for arms manufacturers.
Mario Ice Statue Needs the episode/map/chapter/etc... Needs more detail to be effective Needs more or better pictures Needs a video Finished The Mario ice statue is a known easter egg found on the Angel Light: Midnight City level. Description A large ice statue of Mario is shown multiple times during the Angel Light: Midnight City level and is depicted as being currently under construction by a team of 4 ice sculptors seen actively working during the cut scene when it’s shown. The ice statue depicts Mario in his famous victory pose with one fist in the air and a big smile on his face. And while his outfit is all white and blue it’s clear he’s wearing his famous coveralls as well. Location The Mario ice statue appears twice on the Angel Light: Midnight City level. The first time it appears is during the opening cut-scene where it’s most visible, having the camera rotate around it. The second time is once you’ve crossed the finish line and your points are being tallied up. The statue is now covered by the “Results” boxes, but is still visible through the boxes. Pictures and Videos YouTube Advanced: please specify correct url Rate This Easter Egg: Rate this item: 1.00 2.00 3.00 4.00 5.00 6.00 7.00 8.00 9.00 10.00 Submit Rating Rating: 7.8/10. From 8 votes. Please wait... Related Easter Eggs
Investigate Police Shooting of Pet Dog by: Concerned Citizens recipient: New Mexico State Police When Victoria Baca called the police to report that she had fallen victim to an internet scam, New Mexico State Police said they would come by her house. Baca asked the police to call before they came; instead, an officer arrived unannounced while Baca was out, ignored Baca's "Beware of Dog" sign, and hopped the fence to her property. When Baca's dog, Jilly, approached the officer, he shot and killed her pet. Baca and her 4-year-old son arrived home to find Jilly dead on their front porch. Though a spokesperson for the New Mexico State Police has apologized to Baca, the State Police claims "the officer was only acting in self defense" and that there is "no cause for disciplinary action." Act now to tell the New Mexico State Police to conduct a full, impartial investigation into the shooting of Victoria Baca's dog, Jilly, and to appropriately discipline the officer in accordance with the findings of the investigation. read petition letter ▾ When Baca called the police, she instructed them to call before coming to her house; instead, an officer arrived unannounced while Baca was out, ignored Baca's "Beware of Dog" sign, and hopped the fence to her property. Even if Baca's dog, Jilly, did attack the officer, the officer had already taken several actions that unnecessarily put him at risk. We are particularly concerned that Lt. Robert McDonald has already stated that "the officer was only acting in self defense" and that there is "no cause for disciplinary action," both of which suggest that the investigation will not be impartial. We therefore urge you to conduct a full, impartial investigation into the shooting of Baca's dog. Thank you for your attention to this matter. We the undersigned call on you to conduct a full, impartial investigation in the shooting of Victoria Baca's dog, Jilly, and to take appropriate action to discipline the officer involved, in accordance with the findings of the investigation.When Baca called the police, she instructed them to call before coming to her house; instead, an officer arrived unannounced while Baca was out, ignored Baca's "Beware of Dog" sign, and hopped the fence to her property. Even if Baca's dog, Jilly, did attack the officer, the officer had already taken several actions that unnecessarily put him at risk.We are particularly concerned that Lt. Robert McDonald has already stated that "the officer was only acting in self defense" and that there is "no cause for disciplinary action," both of which suggest that the investigation will not be impartial.We therefore urge you to conduct a full, impartial investigation into the shooting of Baca's dog. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
The World Health Organization warned that health workers in West Africa can't keep up with the Ebola outbreak. In countries hardest hit, the economic damage is coming into focus, too. (Reuters) With Ebola's death toll surging and a top United Nations official declaring that "the rate of acceleration is now picking up dramatically," Liberian officials have been making dire pronouncements about the deepening crisis in their country. At a news conference Thursday, finance minister Amara Konneh said Liberia is at "war with an enemy we don't see." Two days earlier, the Ebola-ravaged country's defense minister, Brownie Samukai, delivered a harrowing warning of his own. "Liberia is facing a serious threat to its national existence," Samukai told the U.N. Security Council. "The deadly Ebola virus has caused a disruption of the normal functioning of our state." Ebola, he added, "is now spreading like wildfire, devouring everything in its path. The already weak health infrastructure of the country has been overwhelmed." Although the minister's assertion was unusual in its severity, the deadliest Ebola outbreak in history has indeed created a dire situation for the current government of Liberia. But is it truly a serious threat to the the country's existence? The U.N. special envoy to Liberia, Karin Landgren, seems to agree with Samukai, at least to an extent. Landgren told the U.N. Security Council this week that "Liberians are facing their gravest threat since war," referring to two civil wars between 1989 and 2003 that left more than 250,000 dead. Those bloody conflicts completely destabilized the country, and Liberia was still recovering when the current Ebola outbreak began. Landgren warned the Security Council "that the Ebola crisis has become complex, with political, security, economic and social implications that will continue to affect the country well beyond the current medical emergency," according to Global Post. On Thursday, the International Monetary Fund said Ebola has crippled the mining, agriculture and services sectors Liberia and neighboring Sierra Leone, Reuters reported. Despite the increasingly dismal headlines, Christopher Blattman, a Columbia University professor who focuses on economics, politics and policy in developing countries, said it's unlikely that outbreak will bring about the end of Liberia. "The risk that Liberia as a nation state ends is close to zero," Blattman said in an e-mail. It's not likely to be absorbed by a neighbor or broken up into parts, he said. "This is true for almost any nation, unless (it seems) they share a border with Russia." There is, however, "a risk that the current regime falls, to be sure," he said. "The defense minister is a politician and so might mix up the welfare of the country with [his] political party." Blattman said there is also "an ever-present risk in almost any new democracy that the constitutional order dissolves, through a coup or a civil war." As the worst Ebola outbreak in history unfolds in West Africa, The Post's Joel Achenbach explains how the deadly virus wreaks havoc on the human body. (Davin Coburn/The Washington Post) Liberia's recent history of war makes such a theoretical possibility unlikely, he noted. "The opposition is not very well organized in Liberia, and I don't perceive a lot of popular support for military leadership." It's possible that the worst-case scenario for Liberia could change, depending on how the epidemic spreads and how effective efforts to control it -- or at least slow it -- are in the coming weeks. "If a disease outbreak were large enough (which is definitely a risk in Liberia) all bets are off," Blattman said, adding, "This is true in any country." Liberia is home to more than half of the epidemic's deaths (1,224) and nearly half of all cases (2,046) -- and it's getting worse: On Monday, the World Health Organization declared that cases are "increasing exponentially" in the Ebola-ravaged West African country, which is home to more than 4 million people. "The demands of the Ebola outbreak have completely outstripped the government’s and partners’ capacity to respond," the WHO warned. The outbreak and Liberia's efforts to contain it have angered many in the impoverished West African country. As Reuters reported, news of an escaped patient who wandered the streets looking for food after a hospital couldn't feed him prompted bystanders to blame President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and her government. "The patients are hungry, they are starving. No food, no water," a "terrified woman" told Reuters. "The government needs to do more. Let Ellen Johnson Sirleaf do more!" To make things even more difficult for the country, the collective Ebola caseload is soaring, meaning that what exists of Liberia's national effort to combat the outbreak will face an even heavier burden as the virus infects even more people. And it can't keep up: The WHO found that the county containing Liberia’s capital, Monrovia, needs 1,000 beds for Ebola patients urgently. But just 240 beds were available, with 260 coming soon. Officials have acknowledged that they probably aren't even seeing the full extent of Ebola's present spread in Liberia, either: "As soon as a new Ebola treatment facility is opened, it immediately fills to overflowing with patients, pointing to a large but previously invisible caseload," according to the WHO. Compounding the problem are the infections and deaths of scores of medical workers in a country whose health-care system was already stretched thin. Before the Ebola outbreak began, Liberia -- a country with a population roughly equal to Kentucky's, about 4.4 million -- had just one doctor per 100,000 people. In Kentucky, as of 2007, there were about 232 doctors per each 100,000 people, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. With projections of the disease's spread unreliable and inconsistent (the WHO has said the total number of infections in West Africa could reach 20,000; at least one long-term model put the number north of 100,000), it's hard to tell exactly just how big the threat is to Liberia. But a London epidemiologist who is studying Ebola's spread in Monrovia has said that the rapidly spreading virus has the potential to infect the majority of Liberia's population, according to Britain's Channel 4 News. "We are overwhelmed," Sophie Jane, a spokeswoman for Doctors Without Borders, told AFP on Wednesday at an Ebola unit in Monrovia. "The patients keep coming in (huge) numbers." Although the dire predictions remain just that -- predictions -- the fact that the WHO and Liberia's own government are sounding the alarm so loudly is doing little to calm people in the country. Residents in Monrovia, according to AFP, "described an atmosphere of fear paralyzing daily life" there, particularly after the WHO's prediction of a spike in Ebola infections. "I am afraid," 45-year-old Kluboh Johnson said, according to AFP. "I don't know what to do now actually. Where are we going? Are we all going to die? If WHO can say this kind of thing it means we are finished." RELATED READING: This is how people are being warned about the Ebola epidemic in West Africa Global response to Ebola marked by lack of coordination and leadership, experts say Oxford study predicts 15 more countries are at risk of Ebola exposure 20,000 cases or 100,000? How researchers predict Ebola’s spread. Official: U.S. military’s response to Ebola hampered by lack of expertise with virus
The price of bitcoin slid over 1,200 Yuan in heavy trading in China, crashing nearly 20%, and down more than $100 under $800 on comparable US markets Wednesday, after China's central bank said it had launched "spot investigations" on bitcoin exchanges in Beijing and Shanghai in order to fend off market risks. The investigation of exchanges, including BTCC, Huobi and OKCoin, was to look into "possible market manipulation, money laundering, unauthorized financing and other issues", according to the statements posted on the People's Bank of China's website. To regular readers this should come as no surprise: precisely one week ago, when Bitcoin hit record highs in China, we explicitly warned: for those buying into bitcoin here on the momentum, most of which originates in China, we urge readers to be cautious as by now the PBOC has certainly noticed that the digital currency remains one of the final, and most successful, means of bypassing capital controls in China. Should Beijing mandate that bitcoin no longer be a means to illegally transfer capital offshore, there is risk of a dramatic, and sharp, drop in its price. Well, Beijing noticed, and the "dramatic, sharp" drop in price has taken place as expected; worse with China now openly aggressive against bitcoin "manipulation" it is difficult to see where the next burst of buying momentum will come from, if only in the near term. However, one possibility is that Chinese capital control-evaders will now gravitate to other alternative digital currencies, such as Ethereum, which have so far been far less prominent among Chinese bubble chasers. ETH up as BTC down. How soon until Chinese bubble shifts to Ethereum — zerohedge (@zerohedge) January 9, 2017 As Reuters further adds on the Chinese crackdown, authorities have been ratcheting up efforts to stop capital outflows and relieve pressure on the yuan to depreciate. The currency lost more than 6.5 percent against the U.S. dollar last year. With bitcoin's soaring price and the relative anonymity it affords, some believe the digital currency has become an attractive option for tech-savvy Chinese to hedge against the yuan and circumvent rules that limit the amount of foreign exchange individuals can buy each year. "Some"... such as this site, which said to buy bitcoin precisely on that catalyst back in September 2015 when it was $230. However, after surging five-fold it was inevitable that China would notice, and the time to take profit had come. More: The Shanghai arm of the PBOC said it visited BTCC on Wednesday. "The checks focused on whether the firm was operating out of its business scope, whether it was launching unauthorized financing, payment, forex business or other related businesses, whether it was involved in market manipulation, anti-money laundering or (carried) fund security risks," it said. In a separate statement, the PBOC in Beijing, where officers visited the offices of OKCoin and Huobi, said "the spot checks were focused on how the exchanges implement policies including forex management and anti-money laundering". A Huobi executive who declined to be named confirmed the PBOC visited their office on Wednesday, but declined to provide details. A spokeswoman for OKCoin told Reuters its platform was operating normally, and it was working with the authorities. Last week, PBOC officials meet with the three exchanges, and the central bank publicly urged investors to take a rational and cautious approach to investing in bitcoin. Shanghai-based BTCC's CEO Bobby Lee confirmed the visit, but said he believed the company was not out of line. "We're definitely vigilant. We think we are in compliance with all the current rules and regulations of running a bitcoin exchange in China," he told Reuters by phone. "I wouldn't call it an investigation. I think they are working closely with us to learn more about our business model and the bitcoin exchange industry. We had a very fruitful meeting today," Lee said. Judging by today's plunge in the price of bitcoin, which has taken it back to levels just before last December's blast off, the market disagrees.
Calling all Runners Five! Dig your way out of that pile of roses, fish the novelty chocolates from your favourite sports bras and step away from the zombiefied love-heart teddy bear. It’s time for the February Community and Press Roundup and this one is a doozy. Wonderful Sam Yao Valentine by muterunner5 No Morality in Exercise by Naomi Alderman Not content with breaking all our hearts, forcing us to weep buckets while running and generally creating the best post-apocalypse storyline the world has ever seen, ZR lead writer and co-creator Naomi Alderman has released a wonderful, insightful article on her experience of exercise and her relationship to her body this week. It’s received tons of well-deserved attention and has sparked a heart-warming and essential discussion on the nature of exercise. This is a must-read for ZR fans if you haven’t already devoured it. Podcasts: Daft Souls and Brew / Drink / Run This month, Zombies, Run! has featured on a couple of great podcasts. We know you’re all big fans of audio storytelling, so go check them out! Firstly, the excellent video gaming podcast Daft Souls made everyone here at Six to Start feel very warm and fuzzy with their glowing discussion of Zombies, Run! and fitness gaming in general. Thanks guys! Secondly, ZR was discussed on a podcast that has possibly the best combination of subject matter ever: craft beer and running. Brew / Drink / Run is a must listen if you you like either of those things, and we’re super glad to have featured. Alright, that’s enough about us! Let’s get on with the main show: all you amazing fans. There’s a ton of great stuff this month, so hit the read more to unleash the wonder. Valentine’s Day at Abel Township Say what you like about the holiday itself, if there’s one thing Valentine’s Day is great for, it’s inspiring an absolute Runner-Five’s-backpack-full of amazing art, stories and discussions from our wonderful fandom. First up, runn3rfive went above and beyond the call of duty to spread love and good wishes to the fandom at large with their “Abel Township Valentines”. Just another sign that we do have the nicest most wonderful fandom in history. I’m going to pretend it didn’t break my heart not to receive one. SOB. Raise the Gates to my Heart by runn3rfive There was also plenty of chat in the lead-up to the holiday about favourite pairings and ships. I’m going to my grave with “Phil / Lem” tattooed on my chest and there’s nothing you can do about it. They would absolutely destroy the Guardian cryptic every day and you know it. Next, what discussion of love would be complete without an in-depth examination of our favourite radio operator mr Sam Yao? Thankfully, the excellent folks at Podcast Detected have us covered with their very special 20th episode. Go listen! Finally, I couldn’t let Valentine’s day go by without highlighting this adorable picture of messrs Holden and Woods doing what they do best: breaking hearts and taking names. Utterly lovely work by get-out-of-the-rescue-closet! Jack and Eugene by get-out-of-the-rescue-closet Fic Roundup Fantastic artwork and being completely excellent to one another aren’t the only things that define the ZR fandom, of course. You’re all also bloody fantastic writers, and this selection of fic makes that point loud and clear. There is, as always, far too much great stuff to cover all of it, but here are just a few I’ve picked out. SoullessDaze has begun a really exciting serialised work over on their wordpress. I love this because it takes the form of diaries from a number of original characters, all of whom have really vivid voices. There’s a lot of imagination and dedication here, and it’s regularly updated which means you’ll never run out of great stuff to read! Start reading from the first update and make plans to get hooked! Over at ArchiveOfOurOwn, debtdoctor has written this fabulous fic which is really insightful about a big part of why we all might love Sam Yao so much. I’ll let you go read the piece in full yourselves, but I loved this quote especially: Sam is there when you feel too young for this too. So true. Really great stuff. If these pieces haven’t tugged at your heartstrings enough, Zalia’s got you covered this month. True to form, the writing is evocative, powerful and really gets to the emotional core of the relationship between the characters. Massive warning: it’s a Janine / Simon fic, so there are spoilers right the way up to the current day, and there is some “disturbing imagery and general weirdness” (Zalia’s words). Here it is. Go read it! Finally in our fic round up for the month, MaryFlanner has released the final chapter in the now-complete and totally amazing story of how Jack and Eugene came to be at Abel. It’s really great to read fiction that expands the world of ZR outside the canon timeline and yet feels so true to the characters. Great work! Phew! That’s a lot of excellent writing this month, everyone! If there’s anything I’ve missed that you think I should be reading, please do drop me a line: matt at sixtostart.com. More Art! I said this would be a doozy and boy, has it proved to be. I hope you’ve enjoyed all this as much as I have. But I couldn’t leave without highlighting a few of the other amazing pieces of fan art we’ve seen this month. As usual, there’s just way way way too much to highlight everything, but here’s a small taste. Just look at these: Pier by pekasairroc Admin Alright, there we go! Another mammoth community update post. We love seeing all the great work you guys make, so please do drop us a line if there’s anything we’re missing, or anything you want to point out to us especially. We’ve had some trouble picking up these suggestions in the past, so we’re now asking that you send any recommendations for the community roundup to matt at sixtostart.com. I can’t wait to see what you guys send in! Stay safe out there!
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist who helped shape modern free market economics, died Thursday in San Francisco. He was 94. A spokesman for the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation confirmed the news to CNN. The cause was heart failure, according to Reuters. Friedman, who won the Nobel Prize in 1976, helped interpret and popularize so-called supply-side economics, which came to dominate much of U.S. public policy in the second half of the 20th century. Supply-side economics holds that minimally regulated markets offer the most efficiency in the distribution of goods and services. The theory was prevalent until it fell out of favor during the Great Depression, when Keynesian economics became popular. Friedman won the Nobel in 1976 for "his achievements in the fields of consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization policy," according to the Nobel Prize Web site. Friedman's theories, which included tight fiscal discipline and deregulation of markets, grew influential in the United States after Ronald Reagan became president. Friedman's ideas were embraced by President Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s and lauded by many in the business world. But they were also controversial because of the deep cuts in government spending and the more restricted role they entailed for government in buffering citizens from economic forces. Friedman was regarded as the leader of the Chicago School of monetary economics and the leading proponent of free market theory. The Chicago School regarded the quantity of money as a key instrument of government policy, capable of influencing inflation and business cycles, according to his biography at the Hoover Institution, where Friedman served as a research fellow. The changes brought about by Friedman's economic work represented a departure from Keynesian economic philosophy, which included generous provisions for the unemployed and wage and price controls. John Maynard Keynes was an English economist influential in the first half of the 20th century. Overseas, Friedman's work helped shape policies used in Chile in the 1970s. His influence raised eyebrows among critics because of the repressive political situation in the country in that period. "Milton Friedman revived the economics of liberty, when it had been all but forgotten. He was an intellectual freedom fighter. Never was there a less dismal practitioner of 'the dismal science' [economics]," Thatcher said in a statement published by Reuters. Other notable figures, including former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, lamented the news of Friedman's death. "I am deeply saddened at the passing of Milton Friedman," Greenspan told Reuters. "He had been a fixture in my life both professionally and personally for a half century. My world will not be the same." Current Fed chief Ben Bernanke said Friedman had "no peer" among economic scholars. "The direct and indirect influences of his thinking on contemporary monetary economics would be difficult to overstate," Bernanke said in a statement. "Milton conveyed to millions an understanding of the economic benefits of free, competitive markets, as well as the close connection that economic freedoms bear to other types of liberty. He will be sorely missed." Edward Crane, founder and president of the libertarian Cato Institute, said, "Milton was in my mind the greatest champion of freedom in the 20th century. He was a warm, intelligent, wonderful human being and will be deeply missed." "Milton changed the direction of the world," observed Crane, who recalled attending a conference with Friedman in China in 1988 where Friedman was received "like a rock star" for his reputation as champion of free markets and a free society. "His first policy concern was freeing people from government influence in their lives," said Crane. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said in a statement: "Milton was one of the great thinkers and economists of the 20th century, and when I was first exposed to his powerful writings about money, free markets and individual freedom, it was like getting hit by a thunderbolt." Even economists who didn't always agree with Friedman concurred on his wide influence. Friedman "had an enormous impact on the shape of most economies in the world in the last 25 to 35 years," said Mark Weisbrot, economist at the progressive Center for Economic and Policy Research. "If you go back to his book Capitalism and Freedom [published in 1962], it wasn't even reviewed by major reviewers like [the] New York Times. By the end of Reagan's last term, most of his policies were implemented," Weisbrot said. "Friedman fought a counterrevolution in the 1950s against Keynesianism," said Weisbrot. "He succeeded in that policy moved to the right and the concerns of workers took a back seat compared to those of creditors and bankers." Crane said that Friedman "never demeaned the motives of his opponents, although they did him. Milton was always willing to talk to anyone. He was respectful of a questions asked him." Friedman was born in Brooklyn in 1912 to immigrant parents from a province of what was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He received a B.A. from Rutgers University in 1932, an M.A. from the University of Chicago the next year and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Revolt of the fairly rich Fortune Portraits of Power

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