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Dozens of interpretations of quantum mechanics have been developed over the years. Most of them attempt to address what happens when an observation or measurement is made on a quantum system. The mathematical formula known as the wave function (or state vector) describing the state of a system gets reset when a measurement is made, and the multiple possibilities that the math describes appear to “collapse” into one tangible result. A quantum “interpretation” tries to explain why this collapse happens — or whether it happens at all. And some interpretations concern themselves with whether the wave function itself is physically real or merely something mathematical.
Warning: Summaries below do not reflect all the subtleties of the various interpretations, which have often been modified over time by supporters or even the original authors. I’m just conveying some of the flavor. As cosmologist Max Tegmark writes in his new book Our Mathematical Universe: “There isn’t even consensus on which ones should be called interpretations.” (Note to advocates of various views: do not be concerned about the order in which these are listed. There is some quantum randomness here. And it’s not the BCS, after all — although some kind of championship playoff competition for quantum interpretations might be fun.)
10. Bohmian Mechanics (David Bohm)
I don’t really like this one very much, but it has many fans and deserves to be mentioned. Developed in the 1950s by Bohm, based on earlier views from Louis de Broglie, Bohmian mechanics describes particles flying around as guided by “pilot waves.” Those waves tell particles where to go. Supposedly this approach turns physics back to determinism, avoiding the probabilities that Einstein condemned by saying “God does not play dice.” Since experiments have ruled out “hidden variables” for enforcing determinism, Bohmian mechanics requires a form of action at a distance (or “nonlocality”). Einstein didn’t like that either. It’s also hard to see how Bohmian mechanics would predict any experimental difference from the predictions of standard quantum mechanics. Shortly before he died, Einstein said he wasn’t impressed with the Bohmian interpretation. “That way seems too cheap to me,” Einstein wrote in a letter to physicist Max Born.
9. Stochastic evolution interpretation (many versions)
This one perhaps isn’t strictly an interpretation of quantum mechanics itself, because it changes the math. In ordinary quantum mechanics, the wave function (or state vector) “evolves,” changing over time in a perfectly predictable way. In other words, the odds of different results can change, and you can predict exactly how they will change, up until the time a measurement is made. But several physicists have suggested over the years that the evolution itself can change in a random (or stochastic) way causing it to collapse all by itself. Presumably this collapse process would occur very rapidly for large (macroscopic) objects and slowly for subatomic particles. Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg recently examined this approach in a paper available at arXiv.org.
8. Quantum Bayesianism (Christopher Fuchs, Carlton Caves, Rüdiger Schack)
This one, sometimes called “QBism,” adopts ideas from a particular school of Bayesian statistics holding that probabilities reflect a personal belief in how to bet on possible outcomes. Consequently in this view the wave function is “personal,” a measurement of an individual’s knowledge of the state of a system that can be put to use to predict its future. I blogged about it in more detail here.
7. Many Worlds Interpretation (Hugh Everett III)
Ignored for years after its appearance in 1957, the many worlds interpretation has gained in popularity in recent decades. Sometimes called the “many universes” interpretation, it postulates that every time a measurement is made, all the possible outcomes actually occur in different branches of reality, creating a multitude of parallel universes. Actually, Everett thought of it as more like the observer splitting into different clones who follow the different possible measurement outcomes. In any case, it’s weird.
6. Cosmological Interpretation (Anthony Aguirre and Max Tegmark)
A relatively new one. The original paper describing it was posted online in 2010. Basically, Aguirre and Tegmark contend that the many worlds interpretation is trivially true if the universe is infinite, since there would be an infinite number of parallel universes in which all the outcomes allowed by quantum mechanics do in fact occur. Aguirre and Tegmark calculate that the outcomes would occur in just the proportions predicted by probabilities calculated from the quantum math. So in this view, they write, “the wave function describes the actual spatial collection of identical quantum systems, and quantum uncertainty is attributable to the observer's inability to self-locate in this collection.”
5. Copenhagen interpretation (Niels Bohr)
I’m old enough to remember when few physicists challenged the Copenhagen interpretation, as articulated by Bohr in the late 1920s, during the early days of quantum mechanics (and later embellished by Werner Heisenberg). Bohr believed that measurements produced results that could be described only in the ordinary language of classical physics, so it made no sense to ask what was going in in some invisible “quantum” realm. You had to specify an experimental arrangement for asking a question of nature, and the question you asked played a role in the answer you got. This view incorporated the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle as a statement not about the limits of measurement, but about the nature of reality — simultaneous positions and velocities simply do not exist for fundamental particles before a measurement is made. Measurements select from among the many possibilities (or potential realities, in Heisenberg’s language). Bohr explained supposed paradoxes, such as particles behaving as waves and waves behaving as particles, as mutually exclusive but “complementary” aspects of nature.
4. Consistent Histories (Robert Griffiths)
First proposed by Griffiths in 1984, the consistent histories interpretation treats classical physics as a mere approximation to quantum mechanics, and the quantum math can be used to compute probabilities for large-scale phenomena as well as subatomic phenomena. Probabilities don’t refer to the results of measurements, but to physical states within a system. Griffiths emphasizes “incompatibility” of the multiple possible realities in quantum physics. You can choose to take pictures of a mountain from different sides, he points out, but the photos could be combined to make one picture completely consistent with the reality of the mountain. In quantum physics, though, you can choose which property to measure (say the velocity of a particle or its position), but you can’t combine two measurements to give a consistent picture of the particle’s premeasurement reality. There is no simultaneously real position and momentum before you made the measurement. Similarly, there is no real physical state where Schrodinger’s cat is simultaneously alive and dead. The fact that a wave function can describe such a state merely means that the wave function is simply a mathematical construct for computing probabilities of sequences of events, or histories. In real life those event sequences will tell a consistent story.
3. Quantum Darwinism (Wojciech Zurek)
Similar in some respects to consistent histories, Zurek’s quantum Darwinism emphasizes the role of decoherence. That’s the process by which multiple possible quantum realities are eliminated when a system interacts with its environment. As air molecules or photons bounce off an object, their trajectories record the object’s position; very rapidly only one position remains consistent with the information recorded in the environment. Thus natural interactions produce a sort of “natural selection” of properties that are recorded in the environment in multiple copies accessible to observers. That way observers can agree on specific locations for macroscopic objects instead of multiple locations at once.
A variation of Griffiths’ consistent histories, Gell-Mann and Hartle’s interpretation (proposed in 1989) emphasizes decoherence, as does Zurek’s quantum Darwinism. But Gell-Mann and Hartle argue that the whole universe can be considered a quantum system with no external environment. So the decoherence occurs internally, producing what they call “quasiclassical domains” — sets of consistent histories that can’t be distinguished at the level of coarse graining imposed by decoherence. I discussed it in more detail here.
1. My Interpretation (Me)
No summary available. I’m still working on it. (It would help if some publisher would like to offer a lucrative book contract.) I think I’ll call it the hermeneutical interpretation of quantum mechanics. Perhaps I’ll conclude that rather than interpreting quantum mechanics itself, it’s the interpretations of quantum mechanics that need interpreting.
Follow me on Twitter: @tom_siegfried |
Your car only uses 15 percent of the energy from its gas, but engineers are working on sucking every last drop from your gasoline.
This is the second part in an eight-part series on the future of transportation. New articles published every Monday.If you had to invent an efficient way to move a person from one place to another, you could hardly do worse than the modern automobile. After more than a century of refinement, even the most over-engineered slab of German perfection wastes 85 percent of the energy in the fuel we put into it.Most of that energy is squandered by the car's beating heart, the internal combustion engine, which alone wastes 62 percent of the energy that enters the gas tank, according to the EPA. Where does that energy go? It's radiated away into the atmosphere as heat.By comparison, the rest of the average car is relatively efficient. The stereo, air conditioner, and power windows combined eat up only 2.2 percent of the car's energy intake. Ditto air resistance (2.6 percent); friction between the wheels, their bearings and the road (4.2 percent); braking (5.8 percent); and the "driveline," which includes the transmission and all the other parts of the car that transmit the force of the crankshaft to the wheels. Idling uses up the remaining 17 percent of the energy in a car, which explains why hybrid vehicles turn themselves off at stoplights.That means that of the 130 million joules of chemical energy in the average gallon of gasoline, only 19.5 million are converted into the kind of kinetic energy that matters-forward motion of the car. The rest are literally disappearing into thin air.Only a century of cheap oil could keep all that low-hanging energy out of the hands of innovators who want to recover as much of that wastage as possible. Now that most of the developed world has finally jumped on the conservation bandwagon, their dreams are becoming a reality.There are three basic ways to recover wasted energy in a car: regenerative shocks, regenerative braking, and recovery of waste heat from engine exhaust. Other options, like the "wind-energy-capturing device for moving vehicles" described as a tiny wind turbine attached to the top of a truck-are pipe dreams, despite having been issued patents by a U.S. Patent office that apparently doesn't care whether an invention will actually work. (If this did work, pinwheels on big rigs would be the perpetual motion machines that could end our dependence on Mideast oil immediately.)Zack Anderson, the co-founder of Levant Power, a company tackling regenerative shock absorbers. When a car rolls over a bump, its hydraulic shocks absorb kinetic energy, which is then dissipated as heat. This isn't a big deal if you're driving a Camry, but if you're the world's single largest consumer of liquid fuels and your fleet of Humvees is rolling across the unpaved badlands of Afghanistan, the savings start to add up."Depending on the vehicle type and terrain, we're increasing fuel efficiency in the [U.S. military's vehicles] by up to six percent," says Anderson. That's 60 percent of the energy lost through the vehicle's suspension. Theoretically, says Anderson, they could recover 100 percent of the energy wasted by shocks, which would increase fuel efficiency in heavy vehicles on bumpy roads by up to 10 percent.Installing the same system on a passenger vehicle rolling on smooth terrain would increase its fuel efficiency by only about 2 percent, but if Levant can make its shocks cheaply enough, they could show up on a car near you soon. That's because Anderson and his team have created shocks that are exactly the same dimensions as regular automobile shocks and that function in nearly the same way. "A standard shock is a piston," says Anderson. "When the car's wheels move up and down, that piston forces a thick fluid through small hole, and that causes heat. What we're doing instead is, we're using that piston movement to turn a hydraulic motor that spins an electric generator and that produces electricity."Regenerative braking is the best-known method for recovering wasted energy from a vehicle. The same electric motors that convert electric energy into the motion of the car's wheels can operate in reverse-as generators that turn unwanted kinetic energy into electricity. It's the same principle as a wind turbine, only instead of harvesting the breeze, the car is harvesting the momentum of the wheels as you stomp on the brakes. But to maximize the regenerative brakes, you have to drive a little differently."Folks tend to be on the throttle, then brake late and hard," says Dave Lee, a product communications specialist at Toyota whose job description unofficially includes coaching obsessives on how to squeeze every last mile out of their hybrids. Typical braking overwhelms the batteries of a hybrid, which are limited in terms of how much voltage they can handle without being damaged. That's why the average hybrid vehicle driver is only getting 10 miles per gallon better than drivers in comparable non-hybrid cars. By driving 50 or 60 yards ahead of yourself and coasting as much as possible, Lee says, a Prius owner can approach the theoretical maximum Toyota's engineers estimate you can get out of a hybrid's regenerative brakes, which translates to about 30 percent better fuel economy than a non-hybrid vehicle.The white whale of automobile waste recovery is the embarrassing inefficiency of the internal combustion engine, which reached its current form at the turn of the last century and has seen only incremental improvement since. The exhaust gases flying out of the back of your car are hot enough to melt lead, so it shouldn't be too hard to use them to produce energy. Engineers have been attempting it for 50 years. The trick is doing it simply and consistently.Dan Coker, CEO of Amerigon, figures his engineers have it just about right. Their "thermoelectric" system uses solid-state electronics to convert heat directly into electricity. Amerigon's system, which is being tested by BMW and Ford, achieves more than 10 percent efficiency in converting heat into electricity, but the exact value is a trade secret."If we can get it to one thousand watts, we might even be at a level where you could consider eliminating the alternator," says Coker. The alternator provides all the electricity required by a conventional vehicle, and excommunicating it from a car would take a significant drag off the average automobile's engine. According to BMW, a 1000-watt thermoelectric converter could reduce fuel consumption by up to 10 percent. But getting 1,000 watts would require either a lot of very hot exhaust or close to 20 percent efficiency of conversion of heat to electricity, which is unheard of.In a different approach, Honda's engineers have proposed a system that uses a system in water is vaporized by exhaust gases, and that steam is run through a tiny turbine that produces electricity They report that it could reduce fuel consumption by up to 32 percent. To date, published results put the actual fuel savings at 3.8 percent.Taken together, simple addition suggests that an enterprising home mechanic with access to state-of-the-art technology could increase the fuel efficiency of his or her car by between 30 and 40 percent. It's hardly a revolutionary number, until you consider that the world consumes 85 billion barrels of oil a day, and auto manufacturers are already bumping up against the limits of what they shave off of a car in order to make it use less gas."Weight is huge," says Anderson, "and you have car companies that are desperate to take just one, two, maybe three pounds of weight off a vehicle." Making cars sleeker and lighter can only take us so far, and until we rid ourselves of the internal combustion engine, poor roads, and rush hour traffic, the 85 percent of the energy in a vehicle that's wasted remains a big, fat target for auto manufacturers the world over.Illustrations by Keith Scharwath |
Not long ago, the New Jacobin Club received this message from facebook when the band attempted to boost a post so that more of fans would see it:
“Your Post wasn’t boosted because it violates Facebook’s ad guidelines by including a sexual image that shows excessive amounts of skin or focuses unnecessarily on body parts. The post remains published, but it is not running as an ad.”
(For those of you not familiar with the business end of facebook, “boosting” is when you pay a few bucks to have your page’s post appear in more of your fans’ newsfeed. Some people are crying buckets over this, but it does make sense – how many bands do YOU “like”? Could you imagine getting posts in your newsfeed from EVERY single one EVERY day? Insanity. Just for the record, most band pages with several thousand “likes” still end up having less than 300 of those fans see their posts without the paid “boost.”)
This message smacked of the noble conservatism that has infiltrated the money-holding business class of North America. The New Jacobin Club’s experience with this form of media censorship revealed a ridiculous inconsistency in the system… ridiculous enough to be laughable.
First, to the fine folks at facebook, this lovely photo of Luminous and Candi is apparently “a sexual image that shows excessive amounts of skin or focuses unnecessarily on body parts.”
Seriously? What body parts? Sexy bedroom eyes? Too much attention drawn to their lips? You can’t mean their CHESTS? I’d put the cleavage score of this photo somewhere between elegant and risque, but it certainly does not “focus unnecessarily on body parts.”
Then we came across this piece of garbage online:
Apparently a high school in Utah caused a stir recently when the decision was made to photoshop photos of female students (without their knowledge) to ensure the were more “modest.” Obviously the girl in this photo was on her way to a photoshoot for HUSTLER. One could come to few other conclusions when observing her lack of modesty as displayed by her choice of clothing.
Is THIS the fearful attitude towards women and sexuality that is poisoning our ability to exist as public figures in the arts community? Is THIS a sign that a newer and more cleverly disguised 21st Century Patriarchy is using morality as grounds and just cause for wielding power? Oh Utah…your history does not put you in a favorable position to be harboring such seeds of abomination in your schools.
Let’s observe what DID NOT get censored by our friends at facebook around the same month the New Jacobin Club was slapped on the wrist for the lovely photo of 2 of our band members:
Female zombie creature with top half of the head removed and missing enough muscle tissue that her face appears to be a skull. Bloody dripping eyes and extremely immodest clothing – a mere gauze-like bandage covering her breasts. Chained to a wooden cross with a very obvious symbol of death and decay above her head. Jesus-like wound under her ribcage implying a biblical crucifixion. Where her reproductive organs would have been are a writhing mass of inhuman tentacles bursting forth from her body in a fashion that would suggest a sort of violent and nightmarish childbirth from which this poor “mother” could not have survived. (artwork by inappropriately dressed NJC vocalist/theremin queen Poison Candi)
Yeah, that’s all fine.
And what does this all demonstrate? That the female human form in it’s most glorious and visually enticing state is something that needs to be looked down upon as inappropriate? But a fantastic depiction of a restrained and mutilated female form, though even more inappropriately dressed, is OK?
Yes, we have found a problem.
comment and share if this hits close to home with you.
– NJC
(and if you want to support a band who has struggled for a decade and a half with censorship and artistic rights of expression in the face of incredible adversity, click on the colourful banner below and leave you name & email to get several free songs sent right to your email inbox) |
Bradley Manning, the US soldier suspected of being behind the largest leak of state secrets in history, has entered his ninth month in military detention and continues to be held in maximum security conditions that critics claim are in violation of his human rights.
Manning spends 23 hours of every day in his windowless 6.7 square metre cell, which contains nothing but a bed and blanket, sink and toilet. He is allowed no personal objects other than one book or magazine at a time and is prevented from taking any exercise other than in the one hour a day allocated to it, when he is taken to an empty room and allowed to walk around it in a figure of eight.
He also remains on what is known as "prevention of injury" or POI watch which means guards check him every five minutes and wake him at night if he is not fully visible. For two days last month, against the advice of prison psychiatrists, he was placed on full suicide watch, which involved him being stripped to his underwear and having his glasses confiscated unless reading or watching television.
On the rare occasions he has visitors, he has to be shackled by hand and foot and be accompanied by two guards at all times.
Manning was arrested in Iraq where he was working as an intelligence analyst at the Operating Base Hammer. He is alleged to have been the source of several WikiLeaks releases, including the massive trove of US diplomatic cables last November.
So far, however, he has only been charged with illegally obtaining more than 150,000 cables and transferring them to an unnamed "unauthorised person".
Since his arrest on 29 May last year, lawyers and campaign groups have protested against his treatment at the hands of his military jailers, initially in Kuwait and then, from July, at the brig at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia. Amnesty International has called on the British government to intervene in his treatment on the grounds that his Welsh mother makes him a UK citizen. It called his regime "unnecessarily harsh and punitive", pointing out that he has no record of suicidal or violent behaviour in custody.
Manning's lawyer, David Coombs, has lodged a complaint that depicts his treatment as abuse and demands that his status is downgraded from maximum security to medium custody.
One of the few people to have been allowed to visit Manning in Quantico, David House, has witnessed the soldier's deterioration over the past few months. He told the Guardian recently: "Each time I go there seems to have been a remarkable decline. That's physical too. When I first saw him he was bright-eyed and strong like he was in early photographs, but now he looks weak, he has huge bags under his eyes and his muscles have turned to fat. It's hard watching someone over the months sicken like that."
In his most recent visit, House tweeted that Manning was in a "shocked state" as a result of his confinement, "but his mood and mind soared when I mentioned the democratic uprisings in Egypt".
Further detail of the visit was given by the blogger Jane Hamsher, who reported that according to House the prisoner was starting to show signs of prolonged isolation. He was slow to respond and seemed emotionally withdrawn.
Manning's lawyer is now hoping that a change of leadership at the top of the brig section of the marine base will bring a rethink of his treatment, and a shift to a more lenient regime. His military trial is not anticipated until May at the earliest. |
Slow Scan television (SSTV) is a picture transmission method used mainly by amateur radio operators, to transmit and receive static pictures via radio in monochrome or color.
A literal term for SSTV is narrowband television. Analog broadcast television requires at least 6 MHz wide channels, because it transmits 25 or 30 picture frames per second (in the NTSC, PAL or SECAM color systems), but SSTV usually only takes up to a maximum of 3 kHz of bandwidth. It is a much slower method of still picture transmission, usually taking from about eight seconds to a couple of minutes, depending on the mode used, to transmit one image frame.
Since SSTV systems operate on voice frequencies, amateurs use it on shortwave (also known as HF by amateur radio operators), VHF and UHF radio.
History [ edit ]
Concept [ edit ]
The concept of SSTV was introduced by Copthorne Macdonald[1] in 1957–58.[2] He developed the first SSTV system using an electrostatic monitor and a vidicon tube. In those days it seemed sufficient to use 120 lines and about 120 pixels per line to transmit a black-and-white still picture within a 3 kHz phone channel. First live tests were performed on the 11 Meter ham band – which was later given to the CB service in the US. In the 1970s, two forms of paper printout receivers were invented by hams.
Early usage in space exploration [ edit ]
Astronaut Gordon Cooper, SSTV transmission from Faith 7
SSTV was used to transmit images of the far side of the Moon from Luna 3.[3]
The first space television system was called Seliger-Tral-D and was used aboard Vostok. Vostok was based on an earlier videophone project which used two cameras, with persistent LI-23 iconoscope tubes. Its output was 10 frames per second at 100 lines per frame video signal.
The Seliger system was tested during the 1960 launches of the Vostok capsule, including Sputnik 5, containing the space dogs Belka and Strelka, whose images are often mistaken for the dog Laika and the 1961 flight of Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space on Vostok 1.
Vostok 2 and thereafter used an improved 400-line television system referred to as Topaz.
A second generation system (Krechet, incorporating docking views, overlay of docking data, etc.) was introduced after 1975.
A similar concept, also named SSTV, was used on Faith 7[4] as well as on the early years of the NASA Apollo program.
The Faith 7 camera transmitted one frame every two seconds, with a resolution of 320 lines[5].
NASA slow scan image from the Moon
The Apollo TV cameras used SSTV to transmit images from inside Apollo 7, Apollo 8, and Apollo 9, as well as the Apollo 11 Lunar Module television from the Moon. NASA had taken all the original tapes and erased them for use on subsequent missions; however, the Apollo 11 Tape Search and Restoration Team formed in 2003 tracked down the highest quality footage among the converted recordings of the first broadcast, pieced together the best footage, then contracted a specialist film restoration company to enhance the degraded black-and-white film and convert it into digital format for archival records.[6]
The SSTV system used in NASA's early Apollo missions transferred ten frames per second with a resolution of 320 frame lines using less bandwidth than a normal TV transmission.
The early SSTV systems used by NASA differ significantly from the SSTV systems currently in use by amateur radio enthusiasts today.
Progression [ edit ]
Commercial systems started appearing in the United States in 1970, after the FCC had legalized the use of SSTV for advanced level amateur radio operators in 1968.
SSTV originally required quite a bit of specialized equipment. Usually there was a scanner or camera, a modem to create and receive the characteristic audio howl, and a cathode ray tube from a surplus radar set. The special cathode ray tube would have "long persistence" phosphors that would keep a picture visible for about ten seconds.
The modem would generate audio tones between 1200 and 2300 Hz from picture signals, and picture signals from received audio tones. The audio would be attached to a radio receiver and transmitter.
Current systems [ edit ]
A modern system, having gained ground since the early 1990s, uses a personal computer and special software in place of much of the custom equipment. The sound card of a PC, with special processing software, acts as a modem. The computer screen provides the output. A small digital camera or digital photos provide the input.
1 2 3 4 spectrogram of the beginning of an SSTV transmission 1 Calibration header 2 VIS code 3 RGB scanlines 4 Sync pulses
Modulation [ edit ]
Like the similar radiofax mode, SSTV is an analog signal. SSTV uses frequency modulation, in which every different value of brightness in the image gets a different audio frequency. In other words, the signal frequency shifts up or down to designate brighter or darker pixels, respectively. Color is achieved by sending the brightness of each color component (usually red, green and blue) separately. This signal can be fed into an SSB transmitter, which in part modulates the carrier signal.
There are a number of different modes of transmission, but the most common ones are Martin M1 (popular in Europe) and Scottie S1 (used mostly in the USA).[7] Using one of these, an image transfer takes 114 (M1) or 110 (S1) seconds. Some black and white modes take only 8 seconds to transfer an image.
Header [ edit ]
A calibration header is sent before the image. It consists of a 300-millisecond leader tone at 1900 Hz, a 10 ms break at 1200 Hz, another 300-millisecond leader tone at 1900 Hz, followed by a digital VIS (vertical interval signaling) code, identifying the transmission mode used. The VIS consists of bits of 30 milliseconds in length. The code starts with a start bit at 1200 Hz, followed by 7 data bits (LSB first; 1100 Hz for 1, 1300 Hz for 0). An even parity bit follows, then a stop bit at 1200 Hz. For example, the bits corresponding the decimal numbers 44 or 32 imply that the mode is Martin M1, whereas the number 60 represents Scottie S1.
Scanlines [ edit ]
Slow scan Test card
A transmission consists of horizontal lines, scanned from left to right. The color components are sent separately one line after another. The color encoding and order of transmission can vary between modes. Most modes use an RGB color model; some modes are black-and-white, with only one channel being sent; other modes use a YC color model, which consists of luminance (Y) and chrominance (R–Y and B–Y). The modulating frequency changes between 1500 and 2300 Hz, corresponding to the intensity (brightness) of the color component. The modulation is analog, so even though the horizontal resolution is often defined as 256 or 320 pixels, they can be sampled using any rate. The image aspect ratio is conventionally 4:3. Lines usually end in a 1200 Hz horizontal synchronization pulse of 5 milliseconds (after all color components of the line have been sent); in some modes, the synchronization pulse lies in the middle of the line.
Modes [ edit ]
Below is a table of some of the most common SSTV modes and their differences.[7] These modes share many properties, such as synchronization and/or frequencies and grey/color level correspondence. Their main difference is the image quality, which is proportional to the time taken to transfer the image and in the case of the AVT modes, related to synchronous data transmission methods and noise resistance conferred by the use of interlace.
Family Developer Name Color Time Lines AVT Ben Blish-Williams, AA7AS / AEA 8 BW or 1 of R, G, or B 8 s 128×128 16w BW or 1 of R, G, or B 16 s 256×128 16h BW or 1 of R, G, or B 16 s 128×256 32 BW or 1 of R, G, or B 32 s 256×256 24 RGB 24 s 128×128 48w RGB 48 s 256×128 48h RGB 48 s 128×256 104 RGB 96 s 256×256 Martin Martin Emmerson - G3OQD M1 RGB 114 s 240¹ M2 RGB 58 s 240¹ Robot Robot SSTV 8 BW or 1 of R, G or B 8 s 120 12 YUV 12 s 128 luma, 32/32 chroma × 120 24 YUV 24 s 128 luma, 64/64 chroma × 120 32 BW or 1 of R, G or B 32 s 256 × 240 36 YUV 36 s 256 luma, 64/64 chroma × 240 72 YUV 72 s 256 luma, 128/128 chroma × 240 Scottie Eddie Murphy - GM3SBC S1 RGB 110 s 240¹ S2 RGB 71 s 240¹
¹ Martin and Scottie modes actually send 256 scanlines, but the first 16 are usually grayscale.
The mode family called AVT (for Amiga Video Transceiver) was originally designed by Ben Blish-Williams (N4EJI, then AA7AS) for a custom modem attached to an Amiga computer, which was eventually marketed by AEA corporation.
The Scottie and Martin modes were originally implemented as ROM enhancements for the Robot corporation SSTV unit. The exact line timings for the Martin M1 mode are given in this reference.[8]
The Robot SSTV modes were designed by Robot corporation for their own SSTV unit.
All four sets of SSTV modes are now available in various PC-resident SSTV systems and no longer depend upon the original hardware.
AVT [ edit ]
AVT is an abbreviation of "Amiga Video Transceiver", software and hardware modem originally developed by "Black Belt Systems" (USA) around 1990 for the Amiga home computer popular all over the world before the IBM PC family gained sufficient audio quality with the help of special sound cards. These AVT modes differ radically from the other modes mentioned above, in that they are synchronous, that is, they have no per-line horizontal synchronization pulse but instead use the standard VIS vertical signal to identify the mode, followed by a frame-leading digital pulse train which pre-aligns the frame timing by counting first one way and then the other, allowing the pulse train to be locked in time at any single point out of 32 where it can be resolved or demodulated successfully, after which they send the actual image data, in a fully synchronous and typically interlaced mode.
Interlace, no dependence upon sync, and interline reconstruction gives the AVT modes a better noise resistance than any of the other SSTV modes. Full frame images can be reconstructed with reduced resolution even if as much as 1/2 of the received signal was lost in a solid block of interference or fade because of the interlace feature. For instance, first the odd lines are sent, then the even lines. If a block of odd lines are lost, the even lines remain, and a reasonable reconstruction of the odd lines can be created by a simple vertical interpolation, resulting in a full frame of lines where the even lines are unaffected, the good odd lines are present, and the bad odd lines have been replaced with an interpolation. This is a significant visual improvement over losing a non-recoverable contiguous block of lines in a non-interlaced transmission mode. Interlace is an optional mode variation, however without it, much of the noise resistance is sacrificed, although the synchronous character of the transmission ensures that intermittent signal loss does not cause loss of the entire image. The AVT modes are mainly used in Japan and the United States. There is a full set of them in terms of black and white, color, and scan line counts of 128 and 256. Color bars and greyscale bars may be optionally overlaid top and/or bottom, but the full frame is available for image data unless the operator chooses otherwise. For receiving systems where timing was not aligned with the incoming image's timing, the AVT system provided for post-receive re-timing and alignment.
Frequencies [ edit ]
Using a receiver capable of demodulating single-sideband modulation, SSTV transmissions can be heard on the following frequencies:
Media [ edit ]
External video on YouTube
Encoded image in B/W 8 system
A sample SSTV transmission An image of a sunset sent as Martin M1. Problems playing this file? See media help.
The resulting picture following decoding of the sample SSTV transmission
A Spectral Analysis of the sample SSTV transmission
In popular culture [ edit ]
The video game Portal, in an internet update of the program files three years after its original release, provided in-game radio objects, whose sound effects became part of an alternate reality game-style analysis by fans of the game hinting at a sequel of the game – some sounds were of Morse code strings that implied the restarting of a computer system, while others could be decoded as SSTV images from a grainy video. These images included further hints of a BBS phone number that when accessed, provided a large number of ASCII art-based images relating to the game and its potential sequel.[9][10][11] The sequel, Portal 2, was later confirmed.
In the aforementioned sequel, Portal 2, more SSTV images are broadcast in Rattman dens. When decoded, these images are pictures concerning elements of the game, such as the Weighted Companion Cube on the moon, and slides with bullet points on how the alternate reality game was done and what the outcome was, such as how long it took the combined internet to solve the puzzle.[12]
In another video game, Kerbal Space Program, there is a small hill in the southern hemisphere of a planet called 'Duna', which transmits a monochrome SSTV image of four astronauts standing next to what is either the Lunar Lander from the Apollo missions, or an unfinished pyramid. Above them is the game's logo and three circles. It only emits the sound if an object touches the peak of the hill.[citation needed]
Caparezza, an Italian songwriter, inserted an image on the ghost track of his album Prisoner 709.
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
Modem software: |
The governor of Maine attacked the press earlier this week and accused reporters of spreading false information that he threatened to go on vacation during a government shutdown, but a new recording of a voicemail captures him mentioning the vacation.
Gov. Paul LePage (R) accused the press of writing false news stories about him going on a 10-day vacation during the shutdown earlier this week, saying that he actually said his pen was going on vacation because he had nothing to sign.
“I said, ‘My pen’s on vacation, I have nothing to do.’ And that meant that I was on vacation,” LePage said.
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But in a voicemail that the Portland Press Harold obtained from a public records request, LePage is heard telling state Sen. Roger Katz (R) that he would be on vacation for 10 days.
“I’m heading out of town for about 10 days, and I would like to speak to you before I leave,” LePage is heard saying in the recording.
Reporters originally covered his statement about going on vacation along with his comments suggesting that he makes up fake news stories to mislead reporters.
“I just love to sit in my office and make up ways so they’ll write these stupid stories because they are just so stupid, it’s awful,” LePage said in the original interview. |
The Drug Enforcement Administration in cooperation with a patchwork of Michigan state law enforcement entities has, over the past three weeks, conducted a series of cannabis dispensary searches in the Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti areas that have been described by the press as “smash and grab” raids.
The series of raids, including two just last week, are characterized by groups of federal drug agents, sometimes supported by local or state police, swooping into cannabis pharmacies in unmarked vans and SUVs with no sirens or flashing lights. The federal agents’ flash Michigan state warrants and seize cannabis plants and cash. In a series of raids beginning on July 30, agents did not leave copies of the state warrants at the three cannabis pharmacies that were raided.
No arrests have been made in the series of ‘smash and grab’ raids, and the searches seem to end as abruptly as they begin when cash is confiscated and dispensary employees begin photographing the raiding agents. The Michigan chapter of Americans for Safe Access (ASA) issued a ‘raid alert’ after the Ann Arbor pharmacy raid.
In addition to these raids, three cannabis dispensaries in Detroit were raided in the past weeks by the Detroit Police using the same pattern of quick entry and quick exit. In these raids, the Detroit Police were accompanied by Michigan State Police, agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and a Detroit city code enforcement official.
Medical cannabis advocates in Michigan are concerned about the new tactics used in these DEA raids, especially in light of the fact that federal agents are serving state-issued warrants. Also of concern is the DEA’s reliance upon state police instead of local police to support the raids. Critics feel the federal agents are choosing to partner with statewide law enforcement entities to preclude local police from participating in the raids in locations, such as Ann Arbor, where there is broad public support for the use of cannabis for medical relief.
The DEA is a federal law enforcement organization within the US Justice Department, an agency under the executive branch. Just last week, a spokesperson for President Obama told the nation that “the president and the administration believe that targeting individual marijuana users, especially those with serious illnesses and their caregivers, is not the best allocation for federal law enforcement resources.” |
OCZ Technology recently announced a firmware update for owners of Sandforce-based SSDs, including the Vertex 2, Vertex 2 LE, and Agility 2. The firmware update addresses many issues, but unfortunately OCZ put the changelog in a dumb PDF file.
Here’s a text version for you:
Issues resolved since version 1.29
Improved the time required to wake up from sleep & standby
Further improved NAND flash end of life behavior
Fixed a rare condition that could cause the drive to reset and clear the data
Fixed a rare condition in which a drive could hang if repeatedly rebooted without sufficient time to recover between cycles
Reduced the drive boot time when it was shutdown improperly
Improved FW efficiency for performance improvements of up to 5%
Improved the File System block error handling process
Known open issues: |
This year, we spent the Christmas holidays in Central Ostrobothnia. This lies on the west coast of Finland, approximately 500km north of Helsinki. Unusual for the time of year, we could only enjoy two days of thin snow cover. Normally, there is snow cover from end of November/beginning December until mid-end April, with around 145-160 days of snow per year (see the snow cards from the Finnish Meteorological Institute). But in Finland too, weather is becoming more chaotic.
Around the winter solstice, there are around 3 hours of daylight – in the picture, you can admire the famous Finnish midday sun. If there is no cloud cover, however, it still takes quite a while before it gets properly dark, and often you get treated to hours of colourful sunset and afterglow. |
M Musical, the company behind forthcoming performance “Zorro: The Musical,” has confirmed the lead actors of SHINee’s Key, BEAST’s Yoseob, solo star Wheesung, AOA member Choa, and musical actor Kim Woo Hyung for the musical. Promotional posters of the stars have also been released to the media.
Key has already had experience in musicals, and recently performed in “The Three Musketeers” and “Bonnie and Clyde.” Yoseob has also appeared in productions, such as “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.” Kim Woo Hyung is famous for his roles in the Korean renditions of “Les Misérables” and “Ghost.”
The four male stars will take it in turns to perform the title role, that of a masked, do-gooding outlaw, whose real name is Diego. Choa, meanwhile, will play Zorro’s love interest, Luisa.
The Korean production follows a successful debut for the musical in the United Kingdom, and productions in the United States, Israel, and Russia.
M Musical representatives have explained that Korean musical fans can expect certain differences, however. A spokesperson said, “Our version is not exactly the same as the original. We are trying to make the individual characters as vivid as possible.
“Zorro: The Musical” will be performed at Seoul’s Chungmu Art Hall. The opening night is scheduled for August 27, and performances run until October 26. |
This article contains several spoilers for the fifth season of Mad Men. If you haven’t seen the season, turn back now.
Of all the gorgeous, startling, life-affirming, soul-crushing, laugh-inducing, and otherwise outstanding moments captured in Mad Men’s fifth season, the one that’s stuck with me the longest is also the season’s most unsettling. In the episode “Lady Lazarus,” Don Draper parts with his wife (and newly resigned copy writer) in the elevator banks outside the offices of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, only to punch the “Down” button moments after Megan begins her descent to street level. Jon Hamm is silent for the remainder of the scene, but his facial expressions broadcast Don’s motivations: He’s hoping to race Megan to the lobby of the Time-Life Building, maybe even persuade her to return to the agency. But when the adjacent elevator doors open, there’s no car—just a long way down and some ominous echoes. There are no words, but the image speaks volumes. “She’s allowed to get out,” the concrete void says. “You’re not.”
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And that—not Don’s co-workers parading past him in “Far Away Places,” not the multi-generational tableau of disenchantment “At The Codfish Ball,” not the sight of the former Rory Gilmore in little more than a fur coat—is the image that defines this past season of Mad Men for me. The A.V. Club’s own Todd VanDerWerff sees the past 12 episodes as a commentary on what it’s like to work in a TV writers’ room—an interpretation that certainly has legs—but I’d like to add another to the pile as we approach this Sunday’s season finale. While Matthew Weiner and his writing staff have put forth the occasional analogy about compromising your grand artistic ambitions or writing for intelligent, talented actresses often seen as nothing more than a cup size, they were also transforming the advertising agency of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce into the most terrifying monster on television.
It was a good time to do so: In the wake of big ratings for Mad Men’s AMC compatriot, The Walking Dead, television programmers went crazy for monsters. NBC ordered Bryan Fuller to cast a darker pall on The Munsters’ domesticated ghouls. On the other side of the development cycle, Ryan Murphy reflected a nation’s demons in American Horror Story’s funhouse mirror, while Paranormal Activity director Oren Peli subjected a team of documentarians to the tropical terrors of The River. Even MTV got in on the action, car-surfing on top of the slowly decelerating Twilight bandwagon with Teen Wolf. Yet only The Walking Dead’s lumbering flesh-eaters pass muster when it comes to unnerving the viewer—and even then, the hordes of undead aren’t nearly as terrifying as the thought of spending another season among the bickering humans sequestered on the Greene family farm.
Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, on the other hand, is an unstoppable force that absorbs and destroys its victims with no discernible pattern. (It is an advertising agency, after all, and the root of the word “consumerism” is “consume.”) It’s a Frankenstein-like creature: It’s both escaped the control of its creators and it’s made of pieces of previously existing entities. Like the zombie throngs of The Walking Dead or George Romero’s Dead films, SCDP is massive and difficult to evade, as Don discovered in “Lady Lazarus.” Like The Borg or the Body Snatchers, it’s a dangerously compelling hive mind, one capable of tempting a typically levelheaded person like Joan Harris into compromising herself for the good of the company and a new place at the partners’ meetings. (The Joan of “Commissions And Fees” seemed a little too happy and out-of-sorts to be the same person who watched Peggy Olson skip the Jaguar party at the end of “The Other Woman.”) “Commissions And Fees” marked another milestone for SCDP’s hideous transformation, one notched by any monster that’s haunted the collective imagination: The firm took its first life.
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The death of Lane Pryce came as a tremendous shock, with its own borrowed bits of horror-movie vocabulary: A false scare when the character couldn’t get the Jaguar to start, and a “No, don’t go in there!” moment when he stepped into his office at SCDP, never to step out again. It wasn’t scary, per se, but the monster’s stalking of its prey created sustained suspense, something its TV counterparts haven’t managed to do. That kind of thing is easy to carry off in small, scenic chunks spread across 90 minutes of a film, but incredibly difficult to stretch across multiple episodes and multiple weeks. In that way, it was in Mad Men’s DNA to bring forth such a hideous creature; as adept as the series is at changing faces and themes from week to week, it’s equally skilled at maintaining a tone throughout an entire season and using previously established information, no matter how slight, to build to definitive conclusions. Just think about how nearly everything that passes between the Sterling Cooper brass and its British overlords in season three ultimately builds to that moment in “Shut The Door. Have A Seat” where Don declares, “I’m sick of being batted around like a Ping-Pong ball.” That’s the character’s hubristic Dr. Frankenstein moment; it would take another 13 episodes or so for the beast to turn on those who gave it life. And just like Don, Frankenstein had a way with copy—what is “It’s alive!” if not the horror genre’s greatest tagline?
And it’s not like the show hadn’t been planting the seeds for some sort of calamitous event for most of season five. As Vulture’s Margaret Lyons notes, the season is fixated on death and dying. And while at least one of the cultural artifacts refracting and distilling the characters’ anxieties—The Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows”—casts the end of life in a positive light, Don’s aborted experience with side two of Revolver was preceded by hours in which mass murderers Richard Speck and Charles Whitman skulked around the corners. Speck’s was a particularly difficult presence to shake, causing “Mystery Date” to get too heavy-handed in its contemplations of everyday horrors. Don’s destructive temper was nothing new to the show; strangling a vixenish Mädchen Amick in a fever dream was just the most visceral way of displaying it.
Speck and Whitman were monsters terrorizing the show from without, but the latter apparently had a lot in common with a metallic terror sprung from the imagination of Ken “Ben Hargrove” Cosgrove. The dinner scene from “Signal 30” is many things—a showcase for an underutilized Trudy Campbell; a public emasculation of Pete Campbell—but it’s also a nice bit of foreshadowing and a brilliant misdirection. The biggest monster of season five isn’t hiding out in Chicago or Austin. It’s seated right there in the Campbells’ dining room, feeding on the choices and the visions of the men in garish sportcoats.
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As Ken tells it to the Campbells and the Drapers, his science-fiction parable “The Punishment Of X4” hinges on a choice: The titular robot either chooses to keep a bridge joining two worlds in ship-shape, or he chooses to remove a bolt and send hundreds tumbling to their demise. Don asks the all-important question: “Why does he do it?” The author’s response: “Because he’s a robot. Those people tell him what to do and he doesn’t have the power to make any decisions, except he can decide whether or not that bolt’s on or off.”
It’s a moment where the “Mad Men as writers’ room” and “Mad Men as monster movie” interpretations of the season dovetail. Weiner and company are talking directly about their own X4s, characters with set roles, purposes, and paths whose attempts to shake things up typically cause more harm than good. And what’s there, usually goading them toward making those decisions? Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. Junior partner Pete Campbell is discouraged by the lack of respect he receives in the office, so what does he do? He begins dismantling his marriage and picks a fight in the conference room. Joan Harris, her own marriage disintegrating and her mother exerting too much influence over her home life, seeks a modicum of control by allowing the company to use her as a pawn in the game of capturing a client. Lane Pryce finds shelter from a hostile homeland (and a pool of readily accessible cash) in the tiny fortress he’s constructed in the workplace—and then the fortress collapses in on him.
This is the most sinister quality of SCDP: It offers security, but delivers none. It’s a beautiful trap, a carnivorous plant whose mouth is lined with illusions of power, influence, money, and happiness. There are ways of extricating yourself, as season five’s “final girls,” Megan Draper and Peggy Olson, proved—but that requires a tremendous amount of sacrifice. And when you press the button that allows you to make your exit, there’s a one-in-four chance that beast is going to swallow you whole. You just have to watch where you step. |
AMMAN — One Syrian infiltrator was killed and another critically injured after they were spotted attempting to cross from Syria into Jordan on Tuesday morning, according to an official source from the Jordan Armed Forces-Arab Army.
Border guards immediately dealt with the situation in accordance with the rules of engagement as soon as they detected the infiltrators, the army official source pointed out.
As a result, one was killed and another was critically injured, according to the army official, who did not give any further details.
Over the past months, border surveillance troops have detected, and arrested or killed a number of infiltrators, mostly narcotics smugglers and suspected terrorists.
The army has repeatedly stressed that it would deal with any attempts that could bring harm to Jordan with the necessary force. |
Buy Photo Assemblywoman Michele Fiore, R-Las Vegas, has sponsored a bill that would allow those with concealed weapons permits to carry guns on Nevada’s university and college campuses. The bill would also allow those with concealed weapons permits to carry guns in non-secure areas of airports. (Photo: Jason Bean/RGJ)Buy Photo
Assemblywoman Michele Fiore, R-Las Vegas, is concerned her controversial "campus carry" bill -- which would allow those with concealed weapons permits to carry guns on Nevada's college and university campuses -- will not get a hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee. No hearing, of course, would effectively kill the bill for the 2015 Legislature.
Sean Whaley, a reporter from the Las Vegas Review-Journal, reported on Twitter Wednesday that Senate Judiciary Chairman Greg Brower, R-Reno, said he does not see support for the campus-carry bill in the Senate and if there is not enough support to pass it, it won't get a hearing.
Fiore saw the tweet.
"It got back to me and I'm working on it," she said about plotting her strategy to revive the bill. "It's going to take skillful surgery. It is not dead yet. It is not dead until after the session is over."
Brower was non-committal. When asked about Whaley's tweet, Brower said, "You read that stuff?"
When asked if the campus-carry bill would get a hearing, Brower said, "I have not completed the schedule for the rest of the session, so I don't know."
Senate Majority Leader Michael Roberson, R-Las Vegas, added: "There are a lot of bills right now that are out there that there's a question whether they will get a hearing or not. Ultimately, those are up to the chairs of each committee."
Fiore hinted of revenge if her bill does not get a hearing in Senate Judiciary.
"It is very unfortunate that a Republican would block a bill like that," she said. "And I believe there will be consequences if this doesn't go through, from a Republican killing it."
When asked to expand, she said: "There is always a next election."
Fiore's bill would also allow those with concealed-weapons permits to carry guns in non-secure areas of airports.
Nevada's university Chancellor Dan Klaich, who is opposed to the campus-carry bill, said late Thursday any decision about the bill won't be finalized until the end of the session.
HEARING TUESDAY: Gov. Brian Sandoval's SB 252, which is his $430 million Business License Fee tax proposal, is scheduled for a hearing in the Assembly Taxation Committee on Tuesday, May 12, said Taxation Chair Derek Armstrong, R-Las Vegas.
The bill does not enjoy exempted status, and must be passed by its second committee by Friday, May 15. It's main competition, the Armstrong-Anderson plan to expand the state's current payroll tax, has exempted status and is not subject to the May 15 deadline. The Armstrong-Anderson bill remains in the Assembly Ways and Means Committee for now, Armstrong said.
VOTE FRIDAY, MAYBE: Reno Assemblyman Pat Hickey's bill that would allow wine making and wine selling in Nevada's two urban counties -- Washoe and Clark -- could get a vote in the Senate Commerce Committee Friday. Committee Chairman James Settelmeyer, R-Minden, said when a bill has near-unanimous support, it can get moved up on the calendar. Senate Commerce gave the bill its first hearing Wednesday.
BATTLE BORN POLITICS: The next installment of the monthly political discussions -- sponsored by RGJ Media and featuring political-watchdog reporter Anjeanette Damon and myself -- is set for Tuesday, May 12, at the 1864 Tavern in Reno at 5:30 p.m.
We have been doing these talks since February and they're a lot of fun. I really enjoy talking about politics and meeting some of the people who follow the political reporting of Anjeanette and I in the Reno Gazette-Journal. By the way, Anjeanette and I just won an award for this series of political discussions from the Gannett mothership.
Read or Share this story: http://on.rgj.com/1RhBZiq |
Pulling up BJP MPs for being absent from Parliament, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told them Thursday that their attendance in the House and performance would decide their renomination, including for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
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Modi also indicated that the presence of party chief Amit Shah in Rajya Sabha — elected from Gujarat this week — would make BJP members work more diligently and, according to one MP, end their days of “mauj masti”.
The Prime Minister, addressing BJP MPs for the first time after the absence of ruling party members in Rajya Sabha delayed the passage of a politically significant legislation and left the government red-faced, said he was not going to forget it.
An MP who attended the meeting said the Prime Minister was “deeply disappointed” with members who chose to be absent from the House despite repeated appeals. Modi was said to have asked the MPs why should the party have to issue a whip to ensure attendance.
On July 31, the Opposition in Rajya Sabha, realising that the treasury benches were short of numbers, forced a crucial clause to be dropped from The Constitution (123rd Amendment) Bill, 2017 on granting constitutional status to the National Commission for Backward Classes (NCBC). Those absent included ministers.
A Lok Sabha MP said the Prime Minister has “made it clear that we could be MPs till 2019, but it will be our performance and our attendance that will decide our re-entry into Parliament”.
Welcoming Amit Shah, elected Rajya Sabha MP for the first time, Modi suggested that his presence would force members to work with greater diligence. He praised Shah, who completed three years as party chief Wednesday, saying he had brought back the culture of hard work and discipline.
One of the MPs said Modi told them that running the party while in power was much more difficult than it was in opposition.
Shah spoke on the condition of the Congress party in Gujarat. According to one present at the meeting, Shah said the Congress found it very difficult to manage 44 votes for its candidate (Ahmed Patel) in the Rajya Sabha elections.
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“The party president wondered how a party that does not get the votes of its own elected MLAs will get votes of the electorate,” the source said. |
You know as a company that you've made it when your flagship smartphone product has been unforgivingly copied by a Chinese knock-off producer - something that has recently happened to Nokia, as a cheap knock-off of the Lumia 920 has been spotted in India. Unsurprisingly this device is not actually running Windows Phone (or Android), although it does run "normal embedded software" according to the eBay listing.
The knock-off, called the Lamia R920 (or the Lumia R9, or the Lamia R9, or the Lumia R920; they can't quite make up their mind), packs an impressive 4.5-inch display, a whopping 2-megapixel rear camera, a whole 200 kB of in-built memory plus an included 4 GB microSD card, and dual-SIM capabilities as one would expect from a knock-off such as this.
Don't worry though, as the features don't end there! You also get classic MP3 player functionality, enhanced of course by the 3.5mm headset to connect to "universal headset", and there's also the possibility that the internet will work, although the manufacturer (Mhorse) doesn't seem too confident. And let's not forget that it is a "High Class Expensive" phone, according to the seller, so feel confident showing off the "smooth finish" and "fantastic look" to your mates.
The rip-off Lumia 920 is going for Rs. 4,450.00 on eBay (around US$82), so pick one up if you're interested.
Source: eBay via: PhoneArena |
Vintage Electric Cars
Antique Electric Automobiles
Argo - Babcock - Baker - Broc
Columbia - Ideal - Ohio Electric
Woods - Rauch & Lang Modern Electric Vehicles
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Plug In Hybrid Electric Morrison Electric
William Morrison Co.
Des Moines, Iowa
1887-1897 The Morrison Electric was an American Automobile produced by William Morrison in 1887. Morrison was a chemist who became interested in electricity as a young man. Some reports credit him with the first automobile in the world and others first electric automobile. William Morrison was also considered as an electric battery whiz kid that was constantly experimenting with storage batteries.
Morrison built and applied for several patents including one for an automatic regulator for electric current and on an improved method of making storage battery plates. In 1887 Morrison installed his powerful lightweight storage battery in a carriage built by the Des Moines Buggy Co. This first Morrison Electric was not very sucessful.
1890 Morrison Electric
In 1890 Morrison built a second electric automobile that was much more sucessful. The Shaver Carriage Company built the carriage for the above 1890 Morrison. A total of about 12 Morrison Electric cars were made.
1890 Morrison Electric Six Passenger Surrey
Specifactions for the 1890 Morrison Electric included 24 storage battery cells mounted under the front seat. The morrison designed and produced the batteries. The 24 batteries had an output of 112 amperes at 58 volts that took 10 hours to recharge. Each cell weighed 32 pounds. The motor developed about 4 horsepower and was mounted beneath the carriage and was then geared to the rear axle.
1890 Morrison Electric Automobile
The steering apparatus was attached to the front axle and was controlled by a hand wheel. A unique rack and pinion device patented by William Morrison moved the front wheels. The motor was energized by a switch that regulated the number of cells cut in and out. The speed of this electric car ranged from six to twelve miles per hour. A range of about 100 miles was obtained without recharging.
1890 Morrison Sturgis Electric Four Passenger Automobile
In 1891 Morrison signed a contract with the American Battery Company operated by Harold Sturgis to manufacture and promote the Morrison battery. Sturgis was furnished one of the Morrison Electric cars and demonstrate the merits of the vehicle and it's storage battery. In 1893, Sturgis exhibited his Morrison at the Columbian World's Fair in Chicago. Two years later Sturgis entered a modified Morrison (shown above) in the Chicago's first automobile race.
William Morrison became a very wealthy man from his inventions. He is credited with over 20 patents for devices connected with electric storage batteries. Morrison tested his electric vehicle but never kept one for himself nor did he purchased any other American Automobile.
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ディアトロフ峠事件（ディアトロフとうげじけん）とは、1959年2月2日の夜、当時のソ連領ウラル山脈北部でスノートレッキングをしていた男女9人が不可解な死を遂げたことで知られる事件である。事件は、ホラート・シャフイル山（Kholat Syakhl、Холат-Сяхыл、マンシ語で「死の山」の意[1]）の東斜面で起こった。事件があった峠は一行のリーダーであったイーゴリ・ディアトロフ（ディヤトロフ、ジャートロフ、ジャトロフ、Игорь Дятлов）の名前から、ディアトロフ峠（ジャートロフ峠、ジャトロフ峠、Перевал Дятлова）と呼ばれるようになった。
当時の調査では、一行は摂氏マイナス30度の極寒の中、テントを内側から引き裂いて裸足で外に飛び出したとされた。遺体には争った形跡はなかったが、2体に頭蓋骨骨折が見られ、別の2体は肋骨を損傷、1体は舌を失っていた[2]。 さらに何人かの犠牲者の衣服から、高い線量の放射性物質が検出された。
事件は人里から隔絶した山奥で発生し、生還者も存在しないため未だに全容が解明されず、不明な点が残されている[3][4]。当時のソ連の捜査当局は “抗いがたい自然の力” によって9人が死に至ったとし[3]、事件後3年間にわたって、スキー客や探検家などが事件の発生した地域へ立ち入ることを禁じた[2]。
ソ連を引き継いだロシア連邦の最高検察庁は2019年2月1日、雪崩や暴風など自然現象が原因との見解を示した[5]。
事件発生まで [ 編集 ]
一行は男性8名女性2名からなり、スヴェルドロフスク州内のウラル山脈北部においてスキーでのトレッキングを計画していた。グループの多くはウラル科学技術学校(Уральский Политехнический Институт, УПИ)、現在のウラル工科大学の生徒か卒業生だった。メンバーは次の通りである。
ディアトロフ峠事件の犠牲者の慰霊碑
イーゴリ・アレクセーエヴィチ・ディアトロフ( Игорь Алексеевич Дятлов )、一行のリーダー、1936年1月13日生まれ。 ジナイダ・アレクセーエヴナ・コルモゴロワ( Зинаида Алексеевна Колмогорова )、1937年1月12日生まれ。 リュドミラ・アレクサンドロヴナ・ドゥビニナ( Людмила Александровна Дубинина )、1938年5月12日生まれ。 アレクサンドル・セルゲーエヴィチ・コレヴァトフ ( Александр Сергеевич Колеватов )、1934年11月16日生まれ。 ルステム・ウラジーミロヴィチ・スロボディン ( Рустем Владимирович Слободин )、1936年1月11日生まれ。 ユーリー(ゲオルギー)・アレクセーエヴィチ・クリヴォニシチェンコ( Юрий (Георгий) Алексеевич Кривонищенко )、1935年2月7日生まれ。 ユーリー・ニコラエヴィチ・ドロシェンコ( Юрий Николаевич Дорошенко 、1938年1月29日生まれ。 ニコライ・ウラジーミロヴィチ・チボ＝ブリニョーリ ( Николай Владимирович Тибо-Бриньоль )、1935年7月5日生まれ。 セミョーン(アレクサンドル)・アレクサンドロヴィチ・ゾロタリョフ ( Семен (Александр) Александрович Золотарёв )、1921年2月2日生まれ。 ユーリー・エフィモヴィチ・ユーディン( Юрий Ефимович Юдин )、1937年7月19日生まれ、2013年4月27日没[6]。
一行の最終目的地は、事件発生現場から北に約10キロメートルのオトルテン（ロシア語版）山に設定されていた。そのルートは、事件当時の季節においては踏破難易度が極めて高いと推定されたが、一行の全員が長距離スキー旅行や山岳遠征の経験を有しており、この探検計画に表立って反対するものはいなかった。
1月25日、スヴェルドロフスク州北部の中心地イヴデリ（英語版）に一行の乗った列車が到着した。彼らはトラックをチャーターしてさらに奥地に入り、イヴデリから約80キロメートル北方にある最後の有人集落、ヴィジャイ（ロシア語版）に到着。そして1月27日、いよいよヴィジャイからオトルテン山へ向け出発した。しかし翌日、ユーリー・ユーディンが持病のリウマチの悪化から離脱、一行は9人になった。ユーディンと別れた後、生前の一行と遭遇した人間は現在に至るまで見つかっていない。ここから先の一行の行動は、最後のキャンプ地で発見された日記やカメラに撮影された写真などを材料に推定されたものである。
1月31日、未開の原生林を北西方向に進んできた一行はオトルテン山麓に到達し、本格的な登山準備に入る一方で、下山までに必要と思われる食料や物資を取り分け、余剰分は帰路に備えて残置した。翌2月1日、一行はオトルテン山へ続く渓谷へと分け入った。適した場所で渓谷を北に越え、そこでキャンプを張ろうとしていたようだが、悪天候と吹雪による視界の減少によって方向を見失い、西に道を逸れてオトルテン山の南側にあるホラート・シャフイル山へ登り始めてしまった。彼らはやがて誤りに気づいたが、1.5キロメートルほど下方の森林地帯に入って風雪を凌ぐのではなく、何の遮蔽物もない山の斜面にキャンプを設営することにした[2]。木々の中でのキャンプ設営は容易だが、難ルートを踏破しトレッキング第3級の条件を満たす斜面での設営に決めた、ともされている。たった1人の生存者であるユーリー・ユーディンは、「ディアトロフは、すでに登った地点から降りることを嫌ったか、この際山の斜面でのキャンプ経験を積むことに決めたのではないか」と述べている[2]。
捜索と発見 [ 編集 ]
一行が登山を終えてヴィジャイに戻り次第、ディアトロフが速やかに彼のスポーツクラブ宛に電報を送ることになっており、おそらく2月12日までには電報が送られてくるだろうと予想されていた。しかし事前にディアトロフがユーディンに、もう少し遠征が長引くかもしれないと話していたこともあり、2月12日が過ぎて連絡がなかったにも関わらず、誰もこのことに特に反応しなかった。こうした遠征では数日の遅れは付き物だったためである。2月20日になってようやく、一行の親族たちの要請で、ウラル科学技術学校はボランティアの学生や教師からなる最初の救助隊を送った[2]。その後軍と警察が腰を上げ、救助活動はヘリコプターや航空機を投入した大規模なものとなった。
2月26日、捜索隊がホラート・シャフイル山で、酷く損傷して放棄されたテントを発見した。テントを発見した学生、ミハイル・シャラヴィンは「テントは半分に引き裂かれ、雪に覆われていました。中には誰もおらず、荷物はテントに置き去りにされていました」と述べている[2]。調べによると、テントは内側から切り裂かれていた。8つないし9つの靴下の足跡、片足だけ靴を履いた足跡、そして裸足の足跡が、近くの森(谷の反対側、1.5キロメートル北東)に向かって続いていたが、500メートル進んだところで、雪に覆われて見えなくなった。捜索隊は森のはずれの大きなヒマラヤスギの下で、下着姿で靴を履いていないユーリー・クリヴォニシェンコと、ユーリー・ニコラエヴィチの遺体、そして焚き火の跡を発見した。木の枝が5メートルの高さまで折られていたことは、彼らのうちの1人が木の上に登って、何か（おそらくキャンプ）を探していたことを示すものだった。捜索隊はさらにヒマラヤスギとキャンプの間で、ディアトロフ、ジナイダ・コルモゴロワ、そしてルステム・スロボディンの3人の遺体を発見した。遺体はそれぞれ木から300メートル、480メートル、630メートル離れた位置で別々に見つかり、その姿勢は彼らがテントに戻ろうとしていた状態で亡くなったことを示唆していた。
残り4人の遺体を探すのにはさらに2ヶ月を要した。残りの遺体は、ヒマラヤスギの木からさらに森に75メートル分け入った先にある渓谷の中で、4メートルの深さの雪の下から発見された。4人は他の遺体よりまともな服装をしており、これはどうやら最初に亡くなったメンバーが、自分たちの服を残りの者たちに譲ったらしいことを示していた。ゾロタリョフはドゥビニナの人工毛皮のコートと帽子を被っており、同時にドゥビニナの足にはクリヴォニシェンコのウールのズボンの切れ端が巻かれていた。
捜査 [ 編集 ]
最初の5人の遺体が発見された直後、死因審問が始められた。検死の結果、5人は死に直接結びつく怪我は負っていなかったことがわかり、5人全員の死因が低体温症であることが判明した。スロボディンは頭蓋骨に小さな亀裂を負っていたが、これが致命傷になったとは考えられなかった。
5月に発見された4人の遺体の検死は事情が違った。彼らのうち3人が致命傷を負っていたのである。チボ＝ブリニョールの遺体は頭部に大きな怪我を負っており、ドゥビニナとゾロタリョフの両名は肋骨をひどく骨折していた。ボリス・ヴォズロジデンヌイ博士 (Dr. Boris Vozrozhdenny) は、このような損傷を引き起こす力は非常に強いものであり、交通事故の衝撃に匹敵するとしている。特筆すべきは、遺体は外傷を負っておらず、あたかも非常に高い圧力を加えられたかのようであったことと、ドゥビニナが舌を失っていたことであった[2]。当初、先住民のマンシ人が、彼らの土地に侵入した一行を襲撃して殺害したのではないかとする憶測も流れたが、現場に一行の足跡しか残っておらず、至近距離で争った形跡がないという状況から、この説は否定された[2]。
気温が摂氏マイナス25度から30度と極めて低く、嵐が吹き荒れていたにも関わらず、遺体は薄着だった。彼らの内の何人かは片方しか靴を履いておらず、同時にその他の者は靴を履いていなかったか、靴下しか履いていなかった。何人かの足は、先に亡くなった者の衣服を引き裂いたらしい衣服の切れ端で巻かれていた。低体温症による死亡のうち、20%から50％はいわゆる矛盾脱衣と関連があり[7]、これは通常、人が失見当識状態や混乱状態、好戦的な状態に陥るような中程度から重度の低体温症のときに起こる。おそらくこれが彼らが服を脱いだ理由であり、服を脱げば脱ぐほど、身体から熱を失う速度は早まっただろう[8][9]。
事件の原因 [ 編集 ]
超常現象から軍の秘密兵器実験に至るまで(後述)、事件を様々な原因と結びつけようとする説が持ち上がったが、なかでも有力な説明の一つとみなされているのが雪崩である[10]。
この説に基づくシナリオの一つは、押し寄せてきた雪が夜のうちにテントを潰し、メンバーはパニックに陥ったというものである。一行はテントを切り裂いて逃げ出したが、靴や余分な衣服を雪崩で失ってしまった。氷点下の中で湿った雪に覆われると、15分以内に極度の疲労や低体温症による意識喪失が起こり、生存に関わる危機を招く[11]。チボ＝ブリニョール、ドゥビニナ、ゾロタリョフ、そしてコレヴァトフは、自分たちが人里離れた場所に居るにも関わらず、助けを求めて移動し、渓谷に滑落した。彼らのうち3人の遺体がひどい骨折を負っており、かつ彼らが渓谷の中で4メートルの深さのところに横たわっていたのも、彼らが滑落したことの証左と見なしうる。
一方で、雪崩は傾斜30度以上で発生することが多く、この一帯は傾斜15度で雪崩の起こりやすい地域ではないという主張はある[12]、。 捜査当局がキャンプ地から続く足跡を見たことは、雪崩説を否定する根拠になる。さらに彼らから放射線が検出された謎や、遺体から眼球や舌が喪失していた点も雪崩だけでは解明できない。
ジャーナリストらは、入手可能な死因審問の資料の一部が、次のような内容であると報告している。
当局の最終的な調査結果は、全員が “抗いがたい自然の力” によって死亡したというものであった[3]。死因審問は1959年5月に公式に終了し、「犯人はいない」と結論した。資料は機密文書保管庫に送られ、1990年代になってようやくコピーが公開されるようになったが、幾つかの資料が失われていた[2]。
事件を巡る議論 [ 編集 ]
研究者の中には、捜査当局が以下のような事実を見落としたか、意図的に無視したと主張している者もいる。
後にエカテリンブルクに拠点を置くディアトロフ財団(下記参照)の理事長となる、当時12歳のユーリー・クンツェヴィチ( Юрий Кунцевич )は、一行のメンバーたちの葬式に出席しており、彼らの肌の色が「濃い茶褐色」になっていたと回想している [2] 。
)は、一行のメンバーたちの葬式に出席しており、彼らの肌の色が「濃い茶褐色」になっていたと回想している 。 幾つかのメンバーたちの衣類(ズボン2着とセーター)が高い線量の放射能で汚染されていた。
事件のあった夜、事件の発生地点から南に50キロメートル離れた場所にいた別のトレッキング客の一行が、北（おそらく、ホラート・シャフイル山の方角）の夜空に奇妙なオレンジ色の光球を目撃したと報告している [2] 。同様の“光球”は、1959年2月から3月にかけて、イヴデリとその隣接する地域で、それぞれ無関係の目撃者（気象・軍関係者を含む）によって目撃されている [2] 。これらは後に、R-7大陸間弾道ミサイルを発射した光であったことが、エフゲニー・ブヤノフ( Евгений Буянов )によって証明されている [13] 。
。同様の“光球”は、1959年2月から3月にかけて、イヴデリとその隣接する地域で、それぞれ無関係の目撃者（気象・軍関係者を含む）によって目撃されている 。これらは後に、R-7大陸間弾道ミサイルを発射した光であったことが、エフゲニー・ブヤノフ( )によって証明されている 。 一部の報告は、軍がこの地域を(何らかの目的で)密かに利用し、そのことの隠蔽に取り組んできたのではないかという憶測に繋がる大量の金属くずが、この地域に置かれていたことを示唆している。
ディアトロフ一行の最後のキャンプ地は、バイコヌール宇宙基地(ここから、R-7大陸間弾道ミサイルの試験発射が何度か行われた)から、ノヴァヤゼムリャのチェルナヤ・グバ(ソビエト連邦内の主要な核実験場だった)に直接通じる道の途上に位置していた。
テント内に残されたカメラのフィルムが現像された。彼らの姿を映したものが多数を占めたが、最後の1枚が判別不可能ながら「光体」のようなものであった。
アメリカのドキュメンタリー映画監督ドニー・アイカーは著作『死に山』において、現場のドーム状かつ左右対称の地形はヘアピン渦現象と呼ばれる特異な気象現象が起こるには理想的な環境であり、繰り返し起こった竜巻による強風と低周波音に晒されて一行がパニックに陥りキャンプを飛び出し、凍死や転落死に至ったのではないかと推測している。事件現場の近くには核実験場があり、遭難者の体から通常の二倍程度の放射線量が検出されても不自然ではなく、肌焼けについても長時間雪原で日光に晒されていれば起こり得る、としている。
その後 [ 編集 ]
1967年、スヴェルドロフスク州の著述家でジャーナリストのユーリー・ヤロヴォイ(Юрий Яровой)は、この事件にインスピレーションを受けた小説『最高次の複雑性』 (Of the highest rank of complexity,Высшей категории трудности)[14]を出版した。ヤロヴォイはディアトロフ一行の捜索活動や、捜査の初期段階において公式カメラマンとして関与しており、事件に対する見識を有していた。小説は事件の詳細が秘匿されていたソビエト時代に書かれ、ヤロヴォイは当局の公式見解以外のことや、当時すでに広く知られていた事実以外のことを書くことは避けた。小説は現実の事件と比較すると美化されており、一行のリーダーだけが死亡する結末など、よりハッピーエンドになるよう書かれている。ヤロヴォイの知人によると、彼はこの小説の別バージョンを幾つか書いたようであるが、いずれも検閲で出版を拒否された。1980年に彼が亡くなって以降、彼の持っていた写真や原稿などの資料は全て失われてしまった。
1990年になると、事件の詳細の一部が出版物やスヴェルドロフスク州の地元メディアで公にされるようになった[要出典]。そうした最初の出版物の著者の1人が、アナトリー・グシチン(Анатолий Гущин)である。グシチンは、死因審問のオリジナルの資料を調査し出版物に使うことに、警察当局が特別許可を出したと報告している[要出典]。彼は、事件の物品目録の中で言及されていた謎の「エンベロープ(envelope)」などに関する多数のページが、資料から消されていたことに気づいた。同じ頃、いくつかの資料のコピーが、他の非公式な研究者の間に出回り始めた[要出典]。グシチンは、著書『国家機密の価値は、9人の生命』(The Price of State Secrets Is Nine Lives,Цена гостайны – девять жизней)の中で、調査結果をまとめている[3]。一部の研究者は、この本の内容が「ソビエト軍の秘密兵器実験」説に入れ込み過ぎていると批判したが、本は超常現象への関心を刺激し、公の議論を沸き起こした。実際、30年間口を閉ざしていた人々が、事件に関する新たな事実を報告したのである。
そうした中の1人が、1959年に公式の死因審問を率いていた警察関係者、レフ・イヴァノフ(Лев Иванов)であった。1990年の彼の著書[15]によれば、当時の捜査チームは事件を合理的に説明することが出来なかった上、地域の高級官僚から、死因審問を中止して捜査チームが見た“飛行する球体”に関する資料を機密にするよう、直接指示を受けたというのである。イヴァノフ個人は、何らかの超常現象──具体的に言えば、UFOなど──が起きたことを信じているという。
2000年、地元テレビ局がドキュメンタリー番組『ディアトロフ峠の謎』(The Mystery of Dyatlov Pass,Тайна Перевала Дятлова)を制作した。制作にあたっては、エカテリンブルク在住の著述家で、事件をモデルにドキュメンタリー仕立てのフィクション小説[4]を執筆したアンナ・マトヴェーエワ(Анна Матвеева)が協力した。この小説の大部分は、事件の公式資料や犠牲者たちの日記、捜索に携わった者のインタビューや、映画製作者が集めた資料の引用から成っており、おおまかなあらすじは事件を解明しようと試みる現代に暮らすある女性(著者自身の分身)の、日常と考えを追うといった内容である。フィクション小説であるにもかかわらず、マトヴェーエワの著書は、公表されてきた情報源の中で最大級のものとして扱われている。また、事件の資料やその他の文書の写しが、熱心な研究者に向けてWebフォーラムで徐々に公開されはじめている[16]。
エカテリンブルクでは、ユーリー・クンツェヴィチによってディアトロフ財団が、ウラル工科大学の助けを借りて設立された。財団の目的は、ロシア当局に対して事件の再調査を開始するよう求めることと、亡くなった者たちの記憶を保存するディアトロフ記念館を維持することである。
2019年、ロシア検察が事件を再調査していることを明らかにした。今後、専門家チームが現地入りしてサンプルを採取し、事件の原因が雪崩だった可能性について気象専門家が判断することになっている[17]。現地調査前のロシア最高検察庁による説明では、事件の原因として75通りの可能性を検討して3つに絞り込んだ。犯罪などは除外され、自然現象（雪崩や暴風など）によるとする見解である[5]。
事件を扱った作品 [ 編集 ]
ノンフィクション [ 編集 ]
Donnie Eichar "Dead Mountain: The Untold True Story of the Dyatlov Pass Incident " Chronicle Books, 2014年10月 ISBN 978-1452140032 『死に山: 世界一不気味な遭難事故《ディアトロフ峠事件》の真相 』 ドニー・アイカー(著) 安原和見(訳) 河出書房新社 2018年8月 ISBN 978-4309207445
Chronicle Books, 2014年10月 ISBN 978-1452140032
小説 [ 編集 ]
アレック・ネヴァラ＝リー(Alec Nevala-Lee)の2012年の小説 City of Exiles の中では、事件が重要な位置を占めているという設定である [18] 。
の中では、事件が重要な位置を占めているという設定である 。 ギリシャの小説家Panayiotis Panagopoulosは、事件の舞台をオリンポス山の斜面に移した小説To Perasma tou Ignatiou(イグナティウス峠)を執筆した[19]。
脚注 [ 編集 ]
参考文献 [ 編集 ]
McCloskey, Keith Mountain of the Dead: The Dyatlov Pass Incident (The History Press Ltd, 1 July 2013, ISBN 978-0-7524-9148-6) |
Workers of the world are about to take their revenge. Owners of capital will have to make do with a shrinking slice of the cake. The powerful social forces that have flooded the global economy with abundant labour for the last four decades years are reversing suddenly, spelling the end of the deflationary super-cycle.
[np_storybar title=”Six reasons the world should be paying more attention to Canada” link=”https://business.financialpost.com/news/economy/six-reasons-the-world-should-be-paying-more-attention-to-canada”%5D
North of the world’s largest economy sits Canada, a wealthy, peaceful, nation that is often overlooked in discussions of the global economy and financial markets.
It’s a country that policymakers and investors ignore at their peril.
Contrary to popular belief, Canada is far more than its relationship with the U.S. In many ways, the nation runs counter to many global trends – what Canada enjoys in abundance, much of the world lacks.
Continue reading.
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“We are at a sharp inflexion point,” says Professor Charles Goodhart, a pillar of the London School of Economics and a former top official at the Bank of England.
As cheap labour dries up and savings fall, real interest rates will climb from sub-zero levels back to their historic norm of 2.75 per cent to 3 per cent.
The implications are ominous for long-term U.S. Treasuries, Gilts, or Bunds. The whole structure of the global bond market is based on false anthropology.
Prof Goodhart says the coming era of labour scarcity will shift the balance of power from employers to workers, pushing up wages. It will roll back the corrosive inequality that has built up within countries across the globe.
If he is right, events will soon discredit the sweeping neo-Marxist claims of Thomas Piketty, the French economist who vaulted to stardom last year with an unlikely best-seller: Capital in the Twenty-First Century.
He alleged that the return on capital outpaces the growth of the economy over time, leading ineluctably to greater concentrations of wealth in an unfettered market system. “Piketty was wrong,” said Prof Goodhart.
The twin effect of plummeting birth rates and longer life spans from 1970 onwards led to a demographic “sweet spot”, a one-off episode. Prof Goodhart and Manoj Pradhan argue in a paper for Morgan Stanley that this was made even sweeter by the Soviet collapse and China’s entree into the global trading system.
The working age cohort was 685 million in the developed world in 1990. China and Eastern Europe added a further 820 million. “It was the biggest “positive labour shock” the world has ever seen. It is what led to 25 years of wage stagnation,” he said.
We all know what happened. Multinationals seized on the world’s reserve army of cheap labour. Those American companies that did not relocate plant to China were able play off Chinese wages against U.S. workers, exploiting “labour arbitrage”. U.S. corporate profits after tax are now 10 per cent of GDP, twice their post-War average.
In Europe, Volkswagen threatened to shift production to Poland in 2004 unless German workers swallowed a wage freeze and longer hours. IG Metall bowed bitterly to the inevitable.
Cheap labour held down global costs and prices. China compounded the effect with a factory blitz — on subsidized credit — that pushed investment to a world-record 48 per cent of GDP, and flooded markets with cheap clothes, shoes, steel, ships, chemicals, mobiles, and solar panels.
Lulled by low inflation, central banks let rip with loose money, leading to even lower real interest rates and to asset bubbles. The rich got richer. This era is now history. Wages in China are no longer cheap after rising 16 per cent on average for a decade.
The yuan is overvalued. It has appreciated 22 per cent in trade-weighted terms since mid-2012. Panasonic is switching production of microwaves from China back to Japan.
But the underlying causes of the deflationary era run deeper. The world fertility rate has declined to 2.43 births per woman from 4.85 in 1970, with a collapse over 20 years in East Asia.
The latest estimates are: India (2.5), France (2.1), US (2.0) and UK (1.9), Brazil (1.8), Russia and Canada (1.6), China (1.55), Spain (1.5) Germany, Italy, and Japan (1.4), Poland (1.3), and Korea (1.25). As a rule of thumb, it takes 2.1 to keep the population on an even keel.
The working-age numbers rose sharply relative to the numbers of children and — for a while — the elderly. The world dependency ratio dropped from 0.75 in 1970 to 0.5 last year. This was the sweet spot.
“We are on the cusp of a complete reversal. Labour will be in increasingly short supply. Companies have been making pots of money but life isn’t going to be so cosy for them any more,” said Prof Goodhart.
The dependency ratio has already bottomed out in the rich countries. It is now rising far more quickly than it fell as baby boomers retire and people live much longer.
China will face a double hit, thanks to the legacy effects of the one-child policy. “They kept it going 15 years too long,” said Prof Goodhart. China’s workforce is already shrinking by 3 million a year.
It is often assumed that the demographic crunch will pull the world deeper into deflation, chiefly because that is what has happened to Japan — by coincidence —since it pioneered mass dotage 20 years ago.
The Goodhart paper makes the opposite case. Healthcare and ageing costs will drive fiscal expansion, while scarce labour will set off a bidding war for workers. “We are going back to an inflationary world,” he said.
China will no longer flood the world with excess savings. The elderly will have to draw down on their reserves. Companies will have to invest again in labour-saving technology, putting their stash of money to work.
We will see a reversal of the forces that have pushed the world savings rate to a record 25 per cent of GDP.
The Bank of England’s chief economist, Andrew Haldane, warned last week that we may be stuck in a zero-interest trap for as far as the eye can see, with little left to fight the next downturn — typically requiring three to five percentage points of rate cuts to right the ship. His answer is a menu of quantitative easing so exotic it trumps Corbynomics for heterodoxy.
Goodhart makes large assumptions. He doubts that robots will displace workers fast enough to offset the labour shortage, or that greying nations are culturally able to absorb enough immigrants to plug the jobs gap, or that India and Africa have the infrastructure to repeat the “China effect.”
The world has never faced an ageing epidemic before so we are in uncharted waters. What is clear is that the near vertical take-off of the dependency ratio is about to shatter our economic assumptions.
The last time Europe’s serfs suddenly found themselves in huge demand was after the Black Death in the mid-14th century. They say it ended feudalism. |
One of the two big players in the asteroid mining market, Deep Space Industries, today unveiled its plan to land a 110-pound spacecraft on a near-Earth asteroid by 2020.
The spacecraft, known as Prospector-1, would study the yet-to-be-selected asteroid to determine the value of its resources for mining. It’ll also put Deep Space Industries’ water-based propulsion system to an interplanetary test.
“Deep Space Industries has worked diligently to get to this point, and now we can say with confidence that we have the right technology, the right team and the right plan to execute this historic mission,” Rick Tumlinson, DSI’s board chairman and co-founder, said in a news release.
California-based DSI and its partners in Luxembourg say they’ll launch a precursor satellite called Prospector-X into low Earth orbit next year to test the technologies that would be used for Prospector-1.
DSI sees near-Earth asteroids as potentially valuable sources for materials ranging from plain old water ice – which can be processed into breathable oxygen and drinkable water as well as propellant – to in-space building materials and precious metals.
If DSI sticks to its schedule, Prospector-1 could become the first commercial asteroid mining exploration mission. However, Planetary Resources, which is based in Redmond, Wash., is also taking aim at asteroids.
Planetary Resources had its first precursor spacecraft, Arkyd-3R, deployed into orbit for a five-month test mission last year. A larger spacecraft, the Arkyd-6A, is being readied for launch later this year and will observe Earth in infrared wavelengths as a practice round for asteroid prospecting.
Planetary Resources says its next-generation space telescopes, known as the Arkyd 100 and Arkyd 200, could start studying the composition of near-Earth asteroids in the 2017-2019 time frame. At the same time, the company plans to create a constellation of Earth-observing satellites known as Ceres.
If suitable targets are identified, Planetary Resources could begin extracting materials from asteroids by the mid-2020s, according to the company’s president and CEO, Chris Lewicki.
Planetary Resources has raised tens of millions of dollars since its founding in 2012. Deep Space Industries was founded a year later, and has raised an undisclosed amount of seed money from investors including Metatron Global. Both companies have forged partnerships with Luxembourg’s government as part of that European nation’s SpaceResources.lu initiative.
DSI’s spacecraft will use an experimental water-based propulsion system that’s been dubbed Comet. The system is designed to generate thrust by expeling superheated water vapor.
The mission plan for Prospector-1 calls for selecting a promising asteroid and sending out the 110-pound (50-kilogram) spacecraft for a rendezvous beyond Earth orbit. The solar-powered probe would map the asteroid’s surface and subsurface composition using visual and infrared imagery as well as readings from a neutron spectrometer.
After the scientific mapping mission, the probe would touch down on the surface and conduct further measurements.
“The ability to locate, travel to and analyze potentially rick supplies of space resources is critical to our plans,” Daniel Faber, the CEO of Deep Space Industries, said in today’s release. “This means not just looking at the target, but actually making contact.”
DSI plans to have its spacecraft refuel themselves using water ice from the asteroids they study. “By learning to ‘live off the land’ in space, Deep Space Industires is ushering in a new era of unlimited economic expansion,” Tumlinson said.
In addition to its asteroid mining plan, DSI is developing small satellites for HawkEye360’s Pathfinder radio frequency mapping constellation.
Correction: The original version of this story erroneously listed Space Angels Network as an investor in Deep Space Network. Chad Anderson, the network’s managing director, says that’s not so. “We have, however, invested in Planetary Resources a number of times over the fast few years,” he told GeekWire in an email. |
THE TEXAS TEXTBOOK TRAVESTY…. After a contentious debate and international scrutiny, right-wing activists in control of Texas’ State Board of Education did exactly what they set out to do: they approved a new social studies curriculum that ignores reality, and reflects history the way they wish it happened.
The State Board of Education Board, ending nearly two years of politically divisive deliberations, approved new social studies curriculum standards for the state’s 4.7 million students despite vigorous objections from the board’s five minority members. The revisions have drawn national attention amid complaints that conservative Republicans on the board are attempting to alter history and trying to inject their political beliefs into the curriculum. […] The curriculum, which will be used in classrooms beginning with the 2011-12 school year, will also serve as a template for new textbooks. They will remain in effect for more than a decade…. With one member absent, the board voted 9-5 to accept the new curriculum for kindergarten, elementary school and high school.
As we’ve been reporting for months, the board’s version of history is a fairly ridiculous one, which will now be imposed on public school students.
The new standards say that the McCarthyism of the 1950s was later vindicated — something most historians deny — draw an equivalency between Jefferson Davis’s and Abraham Lincoln’s inaugural addresses, say that international institutions such as the United Nations imperil American sovereignty, and include a long list of Confederate officials about whom students must learn.
Of particular interest, the new standards dictate that students must “describe the causes and key organizations and individuals of the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schafly, the Contract with America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority, and the National Rifle Association.”
A majority of the state board took an especially hostile view of the separation of church and state — which, of course, has been removed from the curriculum — and board member Cynthia Dunbar (R) spoke for her cohorts when she insisted the nation’s origins were “a Christian land governed by Christian principles,” all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.
At its core, this is not just a travesty for academic integrity and students in Texas, but it’s also a reminder of what’s gone horribly wrong with the twisted right-wing worldview. These state officials have decided they simply don’t care for reality, so they’ve replaced it with a version of events that makes them feel better. The result is an American history in which every era has been distorted to satisfy the far-right ego.
Of course, the concern outside of Texas has been that the state-mandated ignorance might spread — Texas is the nation’s second-largest customer for textbooks, and “publishers craft their standard textbooks based on the specs of the biggest buyers.” This week, however, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan told CNN that he does not believe there will be a “ripple effect” that undermines education elsewhere.
Texas school kids, however, will be punished by the right-wing agenda, and there’s not much anyone can do about it. |
A lot has changed in the past year. We’ve renewed our focus on the core of Evernote to deliver major updates on every platform, from a redesigned Windows application to faster note-switching on Mac, new camera features on Android to sketching on iOS. We’ve begun rolling out improvements to the note editing experience, with more updates coming later this year. And new integrations with Google Drive and Outlook make it easier to manage work across apps. These changes are exciting, but we still have a long way to go to deliver the Evernote we envision.
Two things that won’t ever change are our commitment to making you as productive as you can be and running our business in as transparent a way as possible. No ads. No data selling. Just a great product at a fair price. So when it’s time to adjust our pricing, we want you to know what we’re doing, why, and what it means for you.
Beginning today, the prices for our Plus and Premium tiers will change for new subscriptions, and access from Evernote Basic accounts will be limited to two devices. Current subscribers and Basic users who are using more than two devices will have some time to adjust before the changes take effect. If you are impacted, look for a message from us in the coming days.
For more information about these changes, See our FAQ »
Building the Evernote of tomorrow
We don’t take any change to our pricing model lightly, and we never take you for granted. Our goal is to continue improving Evernote for the long-term, investing in our core products to make them more powerful and intuitive while also delivering often-requested new features. But that requires a significant investment of energy, time, and money. We’re asking those people who get the most value from Evernote to help us make that investment and, in return, to reap the benefits that result.
Evernote isn’t a vast corporation, and note-taking isn’t a sideline for us. It’s what we do, and we strive to do it better than anyone else. We hope you’ll continue to capture your thoughts and develop your ideas with us.
Here’s how Evernote’s pricing model will look moving forward (prices shown are in USD; regional pricing may vary):
Evernote Basic
Free
The easiest way to get started with Evernote, Basic has been and will remain free of charge. Evernote Basic supports web clipping and note sharing, so you can capture memories, ideas, and inspiration and save them forever.
On Basic, you can access notes on up to two devices, such as a computer and phone, two computers, or a phone and a tablet, as well as on the web, so you can continue to take your notes with you throughout your day. Passcode lock on the mobile app, formerly a paid feature, is now available on Basic as well.
Evernote Plus
$3.99/month or $34.99/year (save 27%)
To stay in sync across all your devices, consider Evernote Plus. You’ll also enjoy the ability to take notebooks offline on a mobile device, so your notes will be with you wherever you go, even when there’s no Internet connection. You can forward emails into Evernote and keep them alongside related notes, complete with attachments, and 1 GB of upload space each month means you can keep all your projects together.
Evernote Premium
$7.99/month or $69.99/year (save 27%)
Get the full power of Evernote with Evernote Premium, a set of tools designed to help you go paperless and take ideas into action across all your devices. Find text buried inside Office docs. Annotate PDFs. Discover connections between notes, turn business cards into phone contacts, or present your work with one click. Premium includes 10 GB of monthly upload space, and you have all the benefits of Plus and Basic, too.
UPDATE:
Many people have asked whether Evernote Web, accessed from a desktop browser, counts as a “device” for Evernote Basic. It does not. You can access Evernote via the web browser from as many computers as you like, even on a Basic account. For more information about how devices are counted, please refer to our Devices FAQ.
If you would like to discuss these changes, please visit our forum. |
By Arif Qurbany
In their oft-repeated statements Kurdish leaders say their claim on Kirkuk is not about its oil but rather its Kurdish identity. But this is not true. The heart of the problem is indeed its oil and that very oil is now about to burn the Kurds themselves.
It was oil that attached Kirkuk as part of Mosul to the state of Iraq after the First World War and since then oil in Kirkuk has been a major factor in all disputes between the Kurds and Iraq’s successive regimes. If we look back at the past several decades we will see that oil has been one reason that no negotiation ever yielded any results. The Kurds have always tried to annex Kirkuk to the rest of Kurdistan and Baghdad has tried to keep it outside that geography and treat it as a non-Kurdish issue. In all negotiations Iraqis have been ready to meet all Kurdish demands except Kirkuk.
Negotiations of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in the early 1970s, negotiations between the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Baath regime in the mid 1980s and the efforts of the Kurdistan Front after 1991 with Baghdad all failed over Kirkuk. Even after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime and during the writing of Iraq’s constitutions disputes between the Kurds and Arabs were always about Kirkuk. No Arab leader has ever been willing to let go of Kirkuk. And for them too, it is about oil.
More than the size of Kirkuk province of Kurdish land elsewhere, especially in the Garmiyan south, have lost their Kurdish identity and features. But where is the concern about that? More than the population of Kirkuk of Kurds are fading away in Baghdad and yet the Kurds haven’t shown the slightest concern. All that we have done in the past, now and in the future for Kirkuk has all to do with its oil.
In fact much of the suffering and hardship between the Kurds and Baghdad has been caused by neither side being willing to let go of Kirkuk. If Iraq had in the March 1970 deal with the Kurds had acknowledged Kirkuk as part of the autonomous Kurdish area it would not have had to cede any part of its territory and waters to Iran in the Algiers Agreement five years later for Tehran to withdraw support from the Kurdish fight. Iraq renegading on that Agreement later on caused it a costly and devastating eight-year war with Iran and later the invasion of Kuwait in order to repay its international debt. The outcome of that invasion was the allied invasion of Iraq and the removal of the regime two decades later and so on and so forth. So, like the rings of a chain these events have been connected to each other and to Kirkuk.
For the Kurds too, had they solved the Kirkuk issue in the 1970 deal with Baghdad they would not have had to restart the revolution which later led to its collapse. If in the mid 1980s the talks between the PUK and Saddam’s regime had solved Kirkuk there would not have been the war that resulted in the Anfal campaign and chemical attack on Halabja. All Kurdish sacrifice has been connected to Kirkuk and its oil.
We should not shy away from the fact that Kirkuk’s oil is a decisive issue. Whoever controls the oil of Kirkuk holds the solution for Kirkuk. Baghdad ran Kirkuk’s oil for ninety years and now if the Kurds can have full control of its oil they will have taken Kirkuk from Iraq.
The situation after the emergence of ISIS was a golden opportunity for the Kurds and what the Kurds have done in a few stages was seizing that very opportunity. Kirkuk cannot be taken from Baghdad with military force only. Its economy has to be taken, too. The Kurds have so far done this successfully and if they manage to make it a de facto in the post-ISIS era Baghdad will then have no much hope for Kirkuk and will hand it completely over to the Kurds. The Shiites largely looked away when Kurds gained strength in Kirkuk, arguing that if its oil is not for the Shiites, it had better be for the Kurds than a source of income for the Sunnis.
The Shiites may well take the same stance in the future and be lenient towards the Kurds’ control of Kirkuk. Therefore what the Kurds need to do is tread carefully and correctly read and analyze the situations which could make it possible for a complete possession of Kirkuk.
But Baghdad’s leniency so far not only has not led the Kurds to some visionary and strategic planning, the oil has in fact turned into a powder keg that is about to explode among the Kurds themselves which, unfortunately, obliges us to revisit and redefine our whole history of revolutions and Peshmerga wars as well as all the claims of the PUK and KDP leaders on that disputed city.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw. |
Jason Kander is an army veteran from Kansas City, Missouri and the first millennial elected to statewide office in the United States. He's traveling the country to help the 54% of us who didn't vote for Donald Trump talk to those of us who did about the most divisive issues in our country.
This is a special episode of Majority 54.
Usually this show focuses on a single divisive issue by talking to a single individual experiencing it in their everyday life. But from the beginning, I wanted to conclude this year with a different kind of conversation – one specifically about activism.
2017 has been a year of progressive activism. It’s drawn people out of their homes in so many inspiring ways, and from the women’s march to the #MeToo movement, the resistance has been especially fueled by women, so it’s appropriate that this special episode is a conversation with my friend Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood.
Cecile has been an activist her entire life – from protesting the Vietnam War as a seventh grader to organizing union workers across several states in her twenties to running one of the most important healthcare organizations in the country today.
We actually sat down to talk about the subject of women’s equality a couple months ago – before the #MeToo movement had even begun. The conversation about women’s equality really became – because I find Cecile so inspiring – one about a life of activism and what she sees for the future.
Listen to this episode to cap off 2017 and go inspired into 2018. At the end of the conversation, I'll share my thoughts about the state of the progressive movement in America and what your role and my role should be in 2018.
Important Links:
@CecileRichards
@Majority54
@JasonKander
hellomajority54@gmail.com |
Internet Raises $65k For Orphanage And Man Who Protected It During Machete Fight
And people think the internet is evil.. pshhh..
Meet Omari (above, obvs). His mother cares for 25 orphans at an orphanage in Kenya.
When a gang of thugs decided to creep on up to attack the place, Omari acted as their white knight, protecting them from the evils of the world.
Unfortunately, he got a boo boo in the fight. They sliced his face open with a machete. As you can see in the photo though, he is well on his way to recovery thanks to some awesome doctors with stitches.
Even more unfortunate is the fact that gang attacks are very common, and Omari feared it wouldn’t be his last.
So what does the internet do? It posts a pic of Omari and the story to ask for donations. If they can just build a strong enough wall around the land, they could live in peace.
They needed $2,000. They got $65,000.
Wow. We are in awe. It’s so wonderful knowing how compassionate the power of the internet can be.
Omari and the children will use the extra money for food and supplies. We think they might just be the richest orphanage in Kenya now,
Wouldn’t it be cool if they bought walls for other orphanages too??
[Image via IMGUR.] |
by Arrakis » 22 Dec 2017, 18:40
holly, jolly
the hollier and jollier the better!
least
Hey, Feudalists!First of all, we would like to wish you a Merry Christmas! We’ve prepared a fun contest for you:Create apostcard in-game using whatever you think shows off a Medieval holiday scene the most; from the beautiful, harsh environment, blood-soaked battlegrounds to the picturesque towns amidst the barren wastes and intimidating forests. What to use - screenshots from the game or real Medieval manuscripts? You decide.But remember:Send them our way via FB messenger or email: contest@lifeisfeudal.com (#) Winners will be announced on 2nd January 2018RecommendedLess than 1200x1200 px.PNG preferredYou can read the full rules of the contest here Yet do remember that Life is Feudal, after all - there may be no place for Christmas here...The Judgment Hour schedule is still in place for every Saturday (no JH on Epleland). There is a chance that we might reach out to some of you for help with testing the Instanced Battle mechanics.You can also expect another patch on Saturday morning/day European time. We plan to release a fix for client-side FPS degradation and a vassal-alignment fix that will allow guilds to fight and raid enemy vassals that are at war during JH, without the alignment loss that has occurred in the past.Oh, last but not, there are a number of users that have exploited the lack of Steam release and vulnerability of the current “Free ticket for LiF:YO on the Steam account” system. We want to warn such users that we are aware of their existence and are are giving them one week to relink their Steam accounts to their lifeisfeudal.com account and make sure that LiF:YO is purchased in their library. After the one week grace period, we will run a procedure to detect any remaining unverified accounts and will deduct the full price of the Ticket to Abella from their premium account. If there is no GF in the account, we have no choice but to take certain actions against these accounts.Don't worry too much though, since it's (kinda) Christmas and we're feeling ever-so-slightly less medieval than usual. Just be sure to relink your account before the week is up!Merry Christmas! … or not.— The team |
This may come across as self-serving and more than a little high-and-mighty, but… why are wrestling fans some of the worst people you've never met?
John Cena is the WWE Champion for the 15th time after winning a ladder match at Sunday's Money in the Bank PPV. I expressed an opinion on Twitter – and a pretty mild one at that – stating that John's win made sense, given the current situation WWE finds themselves in.
What situation is that? If you're not watching the week-to-week, the basic scenario is this: Daniel Bryan won the WWE title at WrestleMania 30 after the company sunk half a year building him into the one of the biggest underdog success stories in wrestling history – whether they wanted him to be or not – only for him to vacate the belt a month later because of a real-life injury. CM Punk left the company in January when he showed up for work, and couldn't find the motivation to keep putting his body through hell. Both Randy Orton and Batista have been phased out of the main event role, because thousands of fans at every arena have decided its their moral obligation to raise hell because A) Punk left, and B) Batista is not Daniel Bryan.
So when Bryan gets injured, Punk takes his ball home, and neither Randy Orton nor Batista can go near the world title, WHAT DOES THAT LEAVE YOU?
You can build new stars – something WWE is in the process of doing with Bray Wyatt, Cesaro, Roman Reigns, Seth Rollins, Dean Ambrose, etc. But every single one of you complaining about John Cena winning the title are EXACTLY the same people who complain that WWE rushes the title to stars before they are ready, inevitably resulting in their fall from grace into mid-card irrelevance.
So what options are they really left with? Kane was a placeholder for Daniel Bryan – and my original pick, before the news that Bryan wasn't returning soon. In a lot of ways, the people complaining are the ones responsible for John Cena's 15th title reign – you left them with literally ZERO options in a pinch situation. They know you hate him too, but he's the evil you're used to, and the evil they can get away with using, because they know it'll still result in the same old "let's go Cena – Cena sucks!" chant in every major city that isn't Chicago, New York, or Philadelphia.
Plus, let's not forget that in 2013 John Cena was WWE Champion, and had a surprisingly good PPV match with Ryback, told a great story with Mark Henry, and sacrificially PUT OVER Daniel Bryan clean, in the middle of the ring, at Summerslam. He then went on to elevate Randy Orton as a champion – despite the fans' best attempts to sabotage an otherwise good series of matches – before taking Bray Wyatt and the Wyatt Family to a main event level.
So seriously, what are you complaining about?
ANYWAYS – my point of this editorial was to rant about how terrible certain wrestling fans are, NOT to talk about John Cena for the 9,001 time.
I voiced my opinion on Twitter, and immediately my timeline was filled with people cursing at me, "calling me out", threatening me – there was even one guy who personally attacked me, and my mother for raising me to be – and this is a DIRECT QUOTE – a "John Cena loving faggot."
My first instinct was that I now understand what Vince Russo goes through on a daily basis. There's a guy who is passionate about the wrestling business, started from the very bottom and worked his way to the very top of his profession, and has nothing but respect for the industry. And yet people threaten him, and curse him out on the daily. WHY!?
I once stated on Twitter that I'd like to see LeBron James and the Miami Heat score their third NBA Finals win in as many years. I grew up in Chicago during the '90s, and I like dynasty teams. Plus, my Portland Trailblazers and Chicago Bulls had already been eliminated, so I really had nothing else to cheer for. THE WORST I got in retaliation – and mind you the Heat are basically the John Cena of professional basketball – is two people unfollowing me, and one person telling me "go back to talking about wrestling". That's it.
So why is it that I make one statement about John Cena on Twitter, and I have to block FOURTEEN PEOPLE, and even report one individual because he personally threatened to KILL ME?? That's a personal opinion about a guy who does choreographed fighting for a living, folks.
Guys, I've been overweight most of my life. If you honestly think calling me "fat" in the comments section or on Twitter is going to ruin my day, you live a sad life. And really, if you're taking cheap shots at a person you don't even know – a person you've NEVER EVEN MET – you live a sad life anyways.
This isn't OK. This internet wrestling sub-culture of people who blast each other for opinions, slinging mountains of hate and vitriol at a complete stranger – IS. NOT. OK. You're not a "troll" – you're just a bad person who's living in ignorance of how awful they are on the inside. At some point in your childhood, your parents messed up. If I had repeated even 5% of the things said to me tonight on Twitter, in front of my mother growing up, I would have been forced to consume an entire box of soap bars.
I tried to keep this wrestling related, because that's my job and I genuinely don't want to abuse my platform by broadcasting an after-school special on the most trafficked wrestling news website on the planet. But even if all this accomplished is me having to block another dozen people, at least somebody said something. I think a lot of people on the internet – especially wrestling fans – need to take a long, hard look at themselves in the mirror, and honestly figure out if what's looking back is good, or bad.
Now, shut up and enjoy this amazing picture from last night's PPV: |
Ever since the Silent Hills video game project was canceled, fans wondered what the ninth “Silent Hill” installment could have looked like. Fortunately, they don’t need to wonder anymore as the early pitch that Climax Studios made for Konami has now been leaked, and it gives fans of the defunct franchise access to the game that could have been.
Just last Saturday, PtoPOnline uploaded the lost pitch of the “Silent Hill” project that was supposed to be released exclusively for the PlayStation 3 console a decade ago. The video was reportedly made by Climax — known for “Silent Hill: Origins” and “Silent Hill: Shattered Memories” — in its attempt to realize a new entry for the horror series that was under the tutelage of Komani then, as per CGMagazine Online.
The gameplay clip is almost nine minutes long, and it shows the player roaming around an abandoned structure. The leaked clip looks unpolished, but GamesRadar explains that this is because the clip is a “vertical slice” or an unfinished demo that was made with the intent of pitching the product to publishers. The gaming site also noted that despite its unpolished design, the vertical slice of the canceled “Silent Hill” game still manages to present the essentials for the survival horror game, such as the maze-like levels, enemies, puzzles and other gimmicks.
The ninth “Silent Hill” installment was supposed to center on a priest protagonist called Father Hector Santos, who finds his way to a spooky town in Arizona after leaving his home in El Paso, Texas to find his niece, Anna, who has called him for help, VG 24/7 has learned. Santos was supposed to combat longtime series antagonist Alessa, who has apparently spread Silent Hill to other towns.
Since the pitch did not progress into becoming the next-in-line “Silent Hill” game while the series was still alive, Climax reportedly dropped the “Silent Hill” name and pitched it to publishers under a new name, “Broken Covenant.” But even with the name change, the team’s work still failed to come to fruition.
The Silent Hills project was canceled in April 2015, with Konami confirming that it has terminated the planned ninth installment for the franchise. Konami also emphasized back then that it was “committed” to bringing new “Silent Hill” titles, but the one it was developing with Guillermo del Toro that was supposed to star the likeness of Norman Reedus was discontinued, as reported by GameSpot at the time.
The cancellation was announced amid rumors that the project’s director, Hideo Kojima, was planning on leaving the Japanese publisher. The rumors then turned out to be true when Kojima officially left Konami in December that year when his non-compete clause officially ended, according to Polygon. |
Slasher Profile Joined September 2007 United States 1059 Posts #1 http://www.gamespot.com/news/starcraft-ii-player-innovation-to-sign-with-team-acer-6413684
Professional Korean StarCraft player Lee "INnoVation" Shin Hyung, currently signed to Korean team STX Soul under the Korean eSports Association (KeSPA), is expected to join Team Acer on September 1 when his current contract runs out, sources close to the situation tell GameSpot.
Team Acer has declined comment. KeSPA has not returned comment as of this posting (it is 4:30 AM in Korea), but I have requested comment on both Innovation's contract with STX in relation to Acer's signing, as well as the proposed financial problems of STX Soul.
Barring any unforeseen consequences from the announcement of the announcement by Acer, Innovation will continue to join the team when his STX Soul contract runs out.
Sources do not include Reddit, Fomos, or Acer's own teasers. My sources, for all my news/articles, come from informed individuals close to whatever situation is currently at hand, never second hand sources. If I were to take news from Reddit itself, I would cite so in the piece, and never claim that to be my 'source' as it's ridiculous. While Acer's teasers may have been pretty blatant, there was still some wiggle room for it to be another player, and also did not impact my story as a source.
I was writing this up as of last night (before all hell broke loose this morning). They did prompt me to get this out today (though KeSPA totally owned me). Professional Korean StarCraft player Lee "INnoVation" Shin Hyung, currently signed to Korean team STX Soul under the Korean eSports Association (KeSPA), is expected to join Team Acer on September 1 when his current contract runs out, sources close to the situation tell GameSpot.Team Acer has declined comment. KeSPA has not returned comment as of this posting (it is 4:30 AM in Korea), but I have requested comment on both Innovation's contract with STX in relation to Acer's signing, as well as the proposed financial problems of STX Soul.Barring any unforeseen consequences from the announcement of the announcement by Acer, Innovation will continue to join the team when his STX Soul contract runs out.Sources do not include Reddit, Fomos, or Acer's own teasers. My sources, for all my news/articles, come from informed individuals close to whatever situation is currently at hand, never second hand sources. If I were to take news from Reddit itself, I would cite so in the piece, and never claim that to be my 'source' as it's ridiculous. While Acer's teasers may have been pretty blatant, there was still some wiggle room for it to be another player, and also did not impact my story as a source.I was writing this up as of last night (before all hell broke loose this morning). They did prompt me to get this out today (though KeSPA totally owned me).
Cokefreak Profile Joined June 2011 Finland 8042 Posts #2 Never saw it coming
Duggibobo Profile Joined August 2011 Sweden 111 Posts #3 Acer is all of a sudden the best foreign team
Zealously Profile Blog Joined October 2011 East Gorteau 21066 Posts #4 That was disappointingly slow, Slasher Administrator Daniel Olsson
Srontgorrth Profile Joined August 2012 United States 204 Posts #5 wow. saw the speculation in the other thread but still wasn't really expecting it. what a pickup by acer. let's hope he's able to stay sharp without the kespa training regiment! "i think that message boards were created so that shy people could be assholes"
grs Profile Blog Joined April 2011 Germany 2212 Posts Last Edited: 2013-08-26 19:58:25 #6 What is the difference between this post and the thread we already have? This is no news because it is posted on gamespot, is it?
Tobblish Profile Joined August 2011 Sweden 6312 Posts #7 On August 27 2013 04:58 grs wrote:
What is the difference between this post and the thread we already have? This is no news because it is posted on gamespot, is it?
The other thread is a announcement of a announcement basically.
Slasher get a interview with Innovation asap! The other thread is a announcement of a announcement basically.Slasher get a interview with Innovation asap! The curse is real
lolfail9001 Profile Joined August 2013 Russian Federation 11893 Posts #8 On August 27 2013 04:56 Zealously wrote:
That was disappointingly slow, Slasher That was disappointingly slow, Slasher
Way too slow i would say. Way too slow i would say. DeMoN pulls off a Miracle and Flies to the Moon
Canucklehead Profile Joined March 2011 Canada 4922 Posts Last Edited: 2013-08-26 20:07:39 #9 Based slasher with the confirmation! Lock up the other thread now! I'm glad acer's announcement got spoiled. I hate announcements of announcements. Announce that shit right away or not at all. Happy whenever an announcement of an announcement gets leaked. Top 10 favourite pros: MKP, MVP, MC, Nestea, DRG, Jaedong, Flash, Life, Creator, Leenock
Sefer Profile Joined August 2013 47 Posts #10 I wonder what kind of player he will be in the future.
Go make Scarlett's TvZ even scarier, Innovation!
StarStruck Profile Joined April 2010 24047 Posts #11 On August 27 2013 04:56 Zealously wrote:
That was disappointingly slow, Slasher That was disappointingly slow, Slasher
He wanted to confirm it with his sources, hue. Needs more Bogus topics. He wanted to confirm it with his sources, hue. Needs more Bogus topics.
FrostedMiniWheats Profile Joined August 2010 United States 30311 Posts #12 crazy...
I mean given all the info fed to us by Scarlett and the silhouette by Acer it was like 98% going to be Bogus. The only thing that was blocking me was imagining that arguably the best player in the world would be joining Acer o.O
wow. Guess this will mean we'll be seeing him more at foreign events. I wonder how he'll fare. NesTea | Mvp | MC | Leenock | Losira | Gumiho | DRG | Taeja | Jinro | Stephano | Thorzain | Sen | Idra |Polt | Bomber | Symbol | Squirtle | Fantasy | Jaedong | Maru | sOs | Seed | ByuN | ByuL | Neeb| Scarlett | Rogue | IM forever
Zealously Profile Blog Joined October 2011 East Gorteau 21066 Posts #13 On August 27 2013 05:01 FrostedMiniWheats wrote:
crazy...
I mean given all the info fed to us by Scarlett and the silhouette by Acer it was like 98% going to be Bogus. The only thing that was blocking me was imagining that arguably the best player in the world would be joining Acer o.O
wow. Guess this will mean we'll be seeing him more at foreign events. I wonder how he'll fare.
Based Naniwa ready for more ez wins Based Naniwa ready for more ez wins Administrator Daniel Olsson
Elroi Profile Joined August 2009 Sweden 5080 Posts #14 "To all eSports fans, I want to be remembered as a progamer who can make something out of nothing, and someone who always does his best. I think that is the right way of living, and I'm always doing my best to follow that." - Jaedong. /watch?v=jfghAzJqAp0
Pandain Profile Blog Joined May 2010 United States 10313 Posts #15 Anddddddd it's Cure
FrostedMiniWheats Profile Joined August 2010 United States 30311 Posts #16 On August 27 2013 04:56 Duggibobo wrote:
Acer is all of a sudden the best foreign team
Probably, but EG and TL make it pretty arguable I think. Probably, but EG and TL make it pretty arguable I think. NesTea | Mvp | MC | Leenock | Losira | Gumiho | DRG | Taeja | Jinro | Stephano | Thorzain | Sen | Idra |Polt | Bomber | Symbol | Squirtle | Fantasy | Jaedong | Maru | sOs | Seed | ByuN | ByuL | Neeb| Scarlett | Rogue | IM forever
Gamegene Profile Blog Joined June 2011 United States 8300 Posts #17 MMA's paycheck is about to get a lot smaller Throw on your favorite jacket and you're good to roll. Stroll through the trees and let your miseries go.
75 Profile Joined December 2012 Germany 3600 Posts #18 i hope that he wont play in wcs eu ^^ yo twitch, as long as I can watch 480p lagfree I'm happy
MrVideo Profile Joined June 2012 Ireland 132 Posts #19 Kinda worried what this will mean for his level of skill. I mean, to go from the intense KeSPA regime to a less stressful schedule and an arguably easier set of opponents has to have an effect. On the other hand, INno did say that he mostly practiced ladder, and even if he moved to Europe, playing on the KR ladder isn't impossible.
Micro_Jackson Profile Joined August 2011 Germany 1963 Posts Last Edited: 2013-08-26 20:08:56 #20
And i am a bit worried for Innovation wether he is able to maintain his level without a full teamhouse environment.
The big question is in which WCS region he will play. Acer is a EU team and MMA is playing on EU despite living in korea(i think?).
And, on a side note i think that Acer is the next Team that is really pissed about Slasher I don´t know what to think about that. It´s kind of cool but as i think about it i question how many foreign talents could have been payed with this.And i am a bit worried for Innovation wether he is able to maintain his level without a full teamhouse environment.The big question is in which WCS region he will play. Acer is a EU team and MMA is playing on EU despite living in korea(i think?).And, on a side note i think that Acer is the next Team that is really pissed about Slasher
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Fraser Smith is a psychology research assistant and seminar tutor who is also working toward his doctorate in counseling psychology. Fraser took time out of his busy schedule to speak with us about his love for psychology, his ongoing projects and his desire to encourage collaboration in the psychology field.
Smith credits his mother for inspiring his career in psychology, as she was the first person in his family to receive a degree in the field. Fraser knew he wanted to emulate his mother and go on to college after high school. He also noted, “I have always been fascinated by people and the way they behave, both individually and in group settings. I think this played a part in my passion for psychology as well.”
Even with this inspiration, Fraser took a unique path to end up in his current role. His first exposure to counseling came when he began an evening job working behind the reception desk of a relationship counseling center. The company then offered to send him on a free therapy training course, which sparked a love for the direct practice aspects of psychology. This led him to pursue a psychology degree while working as a research assistant and after graduation to continue on toward a doctorate degree.
Currently, Smith is working as a qualitative researcher in a lab investigating antimicrobial resistance. Participants are interviewed about their perceptions of antibiotics and their behaviors about taking them. The hope is to increase the knowledge surrounding how people think about antibiotics to better educate them about taking them. The research is still in its early stages, but Smith is excited to see results and gain a deeper understanding of human behavior.
When working in the lab, Fraser spends a lot of time analyzing interview transcripts and conducting thematic analyses of these transcripts. He also works with a team to conduct interviews and to bring their findings together to create publishable results. Smith uses printed transcripts and a highlighter when analyzing, as he finds this helps him with his analysis. He then uploads his results into an online program to ensure his data is secure. One of the program’s current flaws is that it is difficult to communicate his results with fellow researchers. Fraser likes the features of Conseris because it safely stores data while also making it easy to identify patterns and share those trends with fellow researchers. Smith emphasized the importance of collaboration in this area of research.
When not in the lab, Fraser is working on the early stages of his doctorate in counseling psychology. He will soon begin practical training and will recieve his placement for direct practice later this year. Smith hopes to learn more about the power of therapy so he can enact his passion for helping people. In the future, he would like to start his own private practice working in mental health counseling, specifically targeting men and youth.
Finally, in his leisure time, Fraser writes a blog, Frasersmithcounsellingpsy.com and makes videos for his YouTube channel, “GetPsyched.” With these projects, Smith aims to network in the field of psychology and encourage collaboration among others in this discipline. He also hopes his YouTube videos can be educational and helpful to psychology students. Finally, Fraser would like his future clients to view his videos and his blog to gain insight into his work, making them feel more comfortable entering therapy.
Smith remains dedicated the field of psychology and plans to continue working to expand his knowledge of human behavior. He is also doing important work to encourage collaboration and discussion within the psychology field, which he hopes will provide better results for all. Researchers, keep your data secure and make collaboration effortless with Conseris. Sign up for a free 30-day trial today. |
OTTAWA — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has put himself in a position where he can’t avoid a “massive” setback to his political standing in at least one of three provinces: B.C., Alberta and Quebec, according to a University of B.C. professor presenting a paper on the matter in Calgary Thursday.
“He’s boxed himself in politically and now he can’t avoid expending massive political capital by offending one or more important political allies,” George Hoberg said in an interview.
Hoberg, in a paper devoted to Kinder Morgan’s $6.8-billion expansion of its pipeline from northern Alberta to Burnaby, said Trudeau’s new parallel review process for major projects gives the government an excuse to reverse the National Energy Board’s conditional approval.
The NEB recommended approval last month of the Texas company’s proposal, which will triple the pipeline’s capacity to 890,000 barrels a day, subject to 157 conditions. The government has said it will make a decision by December.
Meanwhile, the government has launched a new review process that includes a three-person panel to consult the public over the summer. Ottawa has also conducted a broader technical analysis of climate change issues and says it will conduct additional consultations with First Nations.
This review, which according to Hoberg falls short of what the Liberals promised during the 2015 election campaign, “might provide him the rationale to depart from the NEB recommendation,” according to the paper.
But that “won’t make the core political choice any easier.”
The new Liberal government, while flying high in popularity polls, can’t avoid alienating at least one part of the country as it weighs the political costs and risks of helping Alberta move its bitumen to overseas markets.
TransCanada’s Keystone XL project to the U.S. has been given a thumbs down by the Obama administration, while Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline to Kitimat “is widely thought to be dead as a result of First Nations opposition,” Hoberg writes.
That leaves Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain project and TransCanada’s Energy East pipeline to Quebec and New Brunswick.
“If Trudeau turns west, he will alienate many B.C. voters critical to his majority status,” Hoberg argues in the paper, which cites a poll suggesting Quebeckers are even more hostile to pipelines than British Columbians.
“If he turns east and alienates Quebec voters, the electoral damage would be even higher. If he rejects them both, he breaks the commitment he made to Alberta to atone for the energy policy sins of his father.”
The paper includes an analysis of media coverage of the four projects. It concludes that during 2012-2015, the predominant issue mentioned in relation to the Kinder Morgan project was the oil spill risk. For Northern Gateway, the most frequent issue cited was aboriginal opposition, while for Energy East and Keystone XL, job creation dominated.
Public concern about spills in relation to Kinder Morgan was likely linked to the expected seven-fold increase, from five to 34 a month, in the number of tankers arriving at the Westridge Terminal in Burnaby, according to Hoberg.
The data shows that public focus on spills, referenced in close to 50 per cent of news items in 2012 and at around 40 per cent in 2013, declined to below 30 per cent — slightly below climate and First Nations — by 2015.
This reflects the environmental movements’ focus on pipeline and tanker accidents leading into the 2013 B.C. election and their shift to climate issues during the 2015 federal campaign, Hoberg speculated.
poneil@postmedia.com
Twitter: poneilinottawa |
As we posted on Monday, Junichi Masuda is going to make a big announcement on Pokemon Smash today pertaining to a Black and White sequel. Masuda reaffirmed a big announcement yesterday on his Twitter, stating, “Pokemon Smash on Sunday the 26th! Masuda will make an appearance. There will be a very important announcement, so do not miss it! Everyone please Tweet and blog this! Hope you watch it!”
Pokemon Smash airs in Japan on Sundays from 7:30 am to 8:30 am, which is Saturday afternoon from 2:30 to 3:30 pm in California (California’s time is at the top left of this page, so compare it to your own time to see when to expect the announcement). It probably won’t be announced right away, but within the hour of the show’s run. We’ll of course have full coverage of the announcement the second it airs, so stay tuned! |
Std_logic_arith vs. Numeric_std
Have you ever tried to do math operations inside of an FPGA? If so, you probably have realized that you need to include a special package file to accomplish this task. If you are using std_logic_arith, you are using an unsupported package file. You should be using numeric_std.
Although it might appear that std_logic_arith is an IEEE supported package file, it is not. IEEE created the numeric_std package file and it is the official package file for performing mathematical operations in FPGAs. Std_logic_arith was created by Synopsis before IEEE created numeric_std. Since Synopsis had the first package file to do math, they gained a large user base. Unfortunately their package file is easy to use incorrectly, especially when doing unsigned and signed math. There are two main reasons for this:
Synopsis' std_logic_arith file does not force you to be explicit in whether your signals are signed or unsigned. When doing both signed and unsigned math in one file, you will have conflicts with overloaded operators.
Let's look at the first issue. Std_logic_arith lets you do math operations on std_logic_vectors. So if I have an 8 bit std_logic_vector count and I want to add 1 to it I can do that. The problem is that the tools don't force you to be explicit. Is count unsigned or is it signed? This can create problems and you can design code that performs differently than you intended. When using numeric_std, you are not allowed to perform any mathematical operations on signals unless you have first declared them as either type signed or unsigned. Therefore in the example above, if count is always a positive number, you should declare it as unsigned.
Issue #2 can occur when you need to do math operations on both signed and unsigned types in the same file. Std_logic_arith uses overloaded functions to perform these tasks and they can conflict! This causes headaches, since now you might need to duplicate and separate code that belongs together.
For these reasons, always use numeric_std for mathematical operations. It might seem more tedious, but it prevents you from making mistakes and it forces you to be explicit with your intentions.
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New Delhi: In a veiled attack on Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal for his defence of khap panchayats, Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Wednesday described them as retrograde organisations which cannot be part of India`s culture.
"What is a khap panchayat? A khap panchayat is a retrograde organisation. It is not part of India`s culture and I am appalled to see somebody say it`s part of India`s culture. How can it be part of India`s culture?" he said while addressing students of Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC) here.
His comments come against the backdrop of Kejriwal, who had in a recent interview, said he does not see the need for banning khap panchayats or unelected all-male village councils because they serve a "cultural purpose."
Attacking Kejriwal`s Aam Admi Party (AAP) for defending khap panchayats, Chidambaram said, "(it`s) rubbish. Must have the courage to stand up and say these retrograde practices are not part of India`s culture...These are simply (organisations of) self serving individuals who propagate this poisonous culture".
"How can you tell a boy or a girl what you should wear and what you should not wear, who you should marry, who you should not marry.
"Each one knows what the rules of normal behaviour are and each one will adopt those rules of normal behaviour. I can`t go and argue a case in a court wearing a swim suit. I know if I have to go to a court, I have to dress like a lawyer. But I can`t go to a swimming pool wearing my lawyer`s robe...
"I think people know what they are expected to do...Who is this khap panchayat to tell do this or do that," the Finance Minister said.
He further said likewise, there are many forces in the country which spread `poison`, sow seeds of distrust and differences and call this part of India`s culture. |
VICTORIA — If British Columbians are suddenly struck with an overwhelming need to eat brains, the province has cobbled together advice on how the living can fend off the zombies.
The B.C. government is hoping its fictional advice will generate interest in a set of social media tools that aim to help the public in real emergencies.
[np-related]
A blog tapping into the popular horror genre was launched this week on the Emergency Info BC website, and it’s penned from the perspective of a citizen who finds her town infected with a strange virus.
She says she’s able to remain “cool, calm and collected” by reading the government’s emergency Twitter feed and blog.
The campaign is meant to get the public watching for real alerts and updates using the online tools, including Amber Alerts, earthquakes, avalanches, wildfires, floods and tsunamis.
All such disasters are indeed potential threats to the province, with the campaign launched during Emergency Preparedness Week to inform people on how to survive in almost any emergency situation. |
As you may have heard, Google Tag Manager has a new interface. You can read the official announcement, but we’ve got 6 of the most important takeaways below.
1. Don’t Panic: Only for New Accounts (so far)
Google Tag Manager Version 2 is still in beta, but you can start using it now for new Accounts. To access the new UI, simply bookmark this new URL, http://tagmanager.google.com/. Already created containers will be available, but will continue to load the old user interface.
According to Google:
The old interface will continue to be available at google.com/tagmanager. You can create new accounts and containers with the new interface, but you’ll use the old interface to work with existing accounts and containers. Soon you’ll be able to migrate old accounts and containers to the new interface.
In January 2015, all users will have their accounts and containers migrated to the new interface, after which the old interface will no longer be available.
2. The New Hotness
The new GTM has a clearer layout (mostly, though we’re still getting used to it here and opinions are divided on specific aspects). It’s also way more colorful (on which opinions are also divided).
One thing you’ll notice is that the navigation structure is much more unified in appearance with Google Analytics now than before: the top navigation and Admin areas are similar to GA’s, and the Admin area has especially gained clarity from this reorganization for account and container level settings. (This is also where you can Import/Export containers!)
The new Overview also provides a clearer indication of the published version and how the current draft differs from it, as well as more apparent indications of preview mode.
3. Rules Are Now Triggers
What used to be called Rules (to define when a tag should fire) are now called Triggers. This isn’t just a terminology change, however; the criteria for setting up a rule (er, I mean trigger) are now presented differently (and probably in a clearer way if you’re new to GTM).
In the past, rules were just defined by a set of criteria, which could include a mix of comparisons such as “url contains X” and “event contains Y”. Now with triggers, first you select what type of interaction (i.e., a pageview, a form submission, a click, etc.), and then you can add additional criteria to limit which pages, forms, clicked elements, and so on that the trigger should apply to. It takes a more functional perspective to the purpose of triggers, although all the same criteria are available as before.
4. Listener Tags No Longer Needed
The new trigger structure also has an effect on listener tags. Previously on GTM, you saw that we created listener tags to trigger on events like clicks, form submissions, etc. We had to specifically tell GTM what to listen for by creating a tag.
Now, the listeners are implicit in the triggers you set up. If we create a trigger to listen for clicks on a specific kind of link or form, GTM just listens for those (without our needing to explicitly create a tag to do that).
This simplifies the learning curve with GTM, so especially if you’re just starting out, this will be a welcome change.
5. Macros are now Variables, Hide Built-In Variables
There’s another name change in GTM: Macros are now Variables. We’re OK with that, because “macro” never described what these things did very well anyway, and “variable” is a much better label.
You may remember that there are a number of built-in macros (er, variables) in GTM. In the new interface, we have the ability to only show those that are useful to you (so that you can declutter your list of variables to only those that you need). GTM’s interface separates out the list of built-in variables from those that we create.
6. There’s an API for that!
Along with the new interface, Google Tag Manager has officially announced an API which will make programmatic changes to your account easier than ever before!
Now you can manage user access, create master containers, and add remove Tags/Triggers/Variables. For an agency like us, we love this!
Just the Beginning
As usual, we’ll continue to write about GTM on this blog and we’ll have updates as they continue to come out. If you’re attending one of our GTM workshops, we’ll also be covering the differences between new and old and what you can expect if you’re migrating.
The news is just coming out, so we’ll keep this post updated with links to some other folk’s takes on the new GTM interface as they come out. |
I know it’s been a long time since I’ve last posted anything. I don’t know why.. My problem have always been that I get into stuff really fast and then get bored really fast. So I end up with a lot of things that I do at the same time and then it just gets too much and I stop. But I’m back with some favourites that I’ve been making all the time and one of them is PIZZA!
Another funny side story is that I never even liked pizza before but now.. now I LOVE IT! We make this recipe at least every month and I always try to change out my toppings but it always comes down to the dough. I think this is the best dough I’ve ever tried, ever!
I got the recipe from one of my favourite Swedish blogs Nillas kitchen. Go to her blog here.
For this recipe you will need:
15 g of fresh yeast ( I’ve never worked with dry yeast before but perhaps it works in this recipe, but I would not know )
400 g of finger warm water (37 C )
1 table spoon of olive oil
1 egg
1 teaspoon of salt
60 g of corn flour
60 g of rice flour
100 g of buckwheat flour
50 g of potato flour
15 g of psyllium husk
How to:
The first thing your will need to do is preheat your oven too 250 C or 392 degrees Fahrenheit. I always add a tin upside down in the oven and use is as a pizza stone!
Start by adding your fresh yeast to a big bowl. Pour 400 g of water in a saucepan and heat it up to 37 (finger warm). Do not heat the water any further or the yeast will die. After that you pour a bit of your water of the yeast to dissolve it. Then add the rest of the water in. Whisk in an egg and add the oil. Do not whish too much. That will create too much air bubbles in the dough.
Add all your dry ingredients too another bowl. I use a scale to measure everything out. After you have mixed all your dry ingredients together. Add them too the wet mixture. I use a hand mixer with dough hooks. This makes it so much easier for me. Do not treat this dough as your regular dough. You have to treat it with love. You can’t take it out on the bench and slap it around. You need to combine everything so it has no lumps but do not overwork it. Around 5 minutes is more then enough with my handier. When mixed, let it rest for 45-50 minutes.
When the dough is rested the dough will have grown a lot. Take the dough out on a well-floured area and gently make it less sticky. Do not kned the dough. Gently gently add a little more flour if needed. Now get a parchment paper and grab some olive oil. Smear some oil over the parchment paper to make the dough not stick. You can now start rolling your pizza out on the parchment paper. I always roll it to a shape that I like and then I add my tomato sauce. When the sauce is added I always roll the edges up so there’s tomato sauce under the edges. Now just add your toppings and bake it 12-18 minutes. I always keep looking under the pizza as well because I want it crisp underneath.
Now just take out your pizza and VOLIA!
ENJOY!
Honestly is one of the best pizzas I ever eaten. On my pizza I added tomato sauce, mushrooms, basil, ham, prosciutto and vegan mozzarella. I do not eat any dairy but if you do please add cheese! When I take the pizza out I usually add more basil and prosciutto. Yum yum yum!
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Joliet Iron and Steel Works, once the second largest steel mill in the United States, is now a vast network of crumbling ruins.When I finished admiring the towering industrial ruins of Lehigh Portland Cement Company in Oglesby, Illinois, I continued toward Joliet, the westernmost city of the Rust Belt.Along the way, I took a quick detour in the city of Morris to check out a complex of beautiful old brick buildings that once housed Gebhard Brewery.Louis Gebhard, a German immigrant, founded Gebhard Brewery in 1866. His son William eventually took over and greatly expanded the business. Before long, their brew was known and loved throughout the state. He added a bottling plant in 1888, the seven-story brew house in 1896, and a stock house in 1904. William's son Fred joined the business in 1912, carrying his grandfather's legacy into a third generation of Gebhards.The business was forced to close in January of 1920 when prohibition went into effect. The brew house was later converted into a flour mill. Morris Milling Company operated there from 1935 to 1958.In 1946 the bottling plant building became the home of Lindsay Light and Mantel Company, which produced mantels for lamps and lanterns. The business thrived for nearly half a century before finally closing in the early 1990s.The beautiful old brick buildings now sit vacant. I hoped to take a peek inside, but was disappointed to find them fenced off with a No Trespassing sign. I snapped a few photos of the exterior and got back on the road.On my way through Plainfield, Illinois, I stopped to photograph a neat old Public Service Company building.I rolled into Joliet, Illinois on Day 9 of the Epic Rust Belt Road Trip . I had finally reached America's infamous Rust Belt.Since leaving Los Angeles, I had driven through the American West, the Rocky Mountains, and the Great Plains, spending a day or two in each state and exploring dozens of abandoned places along the way. I could hardly wait to catch my first glimpse of the mighty industrial ruins of the former Manufacturing Belt.Joliet Steel and Iron Works, once the second largest steel mill in the US, was a paragon of American industry. The rails produced there were instrumental in the expansion of the nation's railroad infrastructure. It was strange to realize that the tiny railroad towns I had passed through on my way across the Heartland owed their existence to this steel mill.Joliet Iron Works opened in 1869, only a few years after the end of the Civil War. Over time, ownership of the mill passed between various steel conglomerates including Illinois Steel Company, Federal Steel, and U.S. Steel.In its early years, the iron works employed many immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. The job was tough and workers had to endure hazards such as extreme heat, toxic fumes, and dangerous falls. Injuries and deaths were not uncommon.The iron works closed in 1936 due to decreased profitability, but the steel works continued to operate throughout most of the 20th century. New structures were added over the ensuing decades, including the Nail Department, the Fence and Barbed Wire Department, the Annealing and Galvanizing Department, and a massive warehouse.Various portions of the plant closed throughout the 1970s and operations ceased entirely in the early 1980s.In the 1990s, the Forest Preserve District of Will County created the Joliet Iron Works Historic Site. A mile-long walking path leads through the ruins of the iron works, marked with signs that explain the significance of the various portions of the mill and the functions of the equipment that once stood there.Across the railroad tracks from the Joliet Iron Works Historic Site, the structures of the steel works remain abandoned and rusting. Unfortunately they are off-limits to the public.Farther down the tracks the solemn guard towers of Joliet Correctional Center peek up over the tree line. The abandoned prison was my next stop. I was completely unprepared for how awesome it was. Click here to check out the article.Be sure check out my social media for more photos from Joliet Iron and Steel Works.If you enjoyed this article, please share it on Facebook . While you're at it, please subscribe to Places That Were Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/placesthatwere Google+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+JimSullivanPlacesThatWere/posts EyeEm: https://www.eyeem.com/u/placesthatwere Instagram: http://instagram.com/theplacesthatwere Twitter: https://twitter.com/placesthatwere/ Tumblr: http://placesthatwere.tumblr.com/ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/jimplicit 500px: https://500px.com/placesthatwere Thank you! |
Indian tax laws are perceived to be second most complex in the Asia Pacific region, becoming even less predictable over the last three years, a Deloitte survey has said.
India ranks only after China in having most complex jurisdiction for taxation and most complicated requirements of tax, the Asia Pacific Tax Complexity Survey conducted by Deloitte said.
Japan, Australia, Indonesia and South Korea trail India in the complexity index.
“In these two jurisdictions (China and India), well over half of the respondents believe complexity in the regime has increased in the last three years,” it said.
By complexity, it meant the perceived level of difficulty in interpreting the tax law and rules in the relevant jurisdictions.
“An overwhelming majority of over 90% respondents said that they would like to see tax reform in India along with China and Indonesia. Specifically for India, the survey respondents suggest that they look forward to reform taking place in timeliness and quality of audits and adoption of BEPS recommendations,” Deloitte said.
With regard to consistency in tax policies, a majority of the respondents felt that India has become less consistent over the last three years.
Consistency refers to the perceived uniformity and transparency of enforcement of prevailing tax laws.
The report surveyed over 300 financial and tax executives on their views of the current and anticipated tax environment of 20 jurisdictions across Asia Pacific. Of the respondents, 147 had business operations in India.
While developed markets have the most consistent tax regime, in India, China and Indonesia, it has become less predictable, the survey said.
Jurisdictions like Hong Kong and Japan offer stability that investors seek whereas China and India offer promise against a more challenging social, economic and tax environment.
“Companies can see that the largest developing economies - China, India and Indonesia - still have much progress to make before they can meet investors’ expectation in this regard,” the survey noted.
There is a general satisfaction with tax environments in the more developed jurisdictions while significant opportunities exist for emerging economies to improve their predictability and consistency of their tax environments,” it added.
Many respondents felt reforms were needed in India around administration of tax, like training for tax officers to improve understanding of taxpayers.
It said Goods and Services Tax (GST) will reduce complexity in tax environment by eliminating multiple taxes while improving trade and commerce.
In addition to GST, introduction of GAAR from April 2017 and adoption of BEPS (Base Erosion and Profit Shifting) actions will increase complexity over next 2-3 years in the field of M&A tax and indirect tax in particular, it said.
As regards tax audits, the report said in larger jurisdictions like China, India, Australia and Japan, most feel that tax audits conducted by authorities are rigorous and many are witnessing high frequency of such audits.
“India, at 45%, is the jurisdiction known to have the most rigorous tax audits,” the survey said.
First Published: May 28, 2017 20:09 IST |
The Delhi high court on Wednesday issued a notice to the Centre on a petition challenging the government’s decision to make Aadhaar mandatory for beneficiaries of subsidised foodgrains through the public distribution system (PDS).
A bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice Sangita Dhingra Sehgal issued the notice to the ministry of consumer affairs, food and public distribution and sought their response before the next date of hearing on April 24.
Read: Centre, SC may lock horns over making Aadhaar mandatory for govt schemes
The bench also sought the stand of the Delhi government on the plea which seeks disbursal of subsidised foodgrains to the beneficiaries of the National Food Security Act (NFSA), without needing Aadhaar.
The plea, a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by a social organisation — Delhi Rozi Roti Adhikar Abhiyan, said the notification violates the basic principle of law enshrined in Article 14 and 21 of the Constitution.
Aadhaar is a 12-digit unique identification number issued by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) after collecting biometric data from a person.
The Centre has given time to those people who do not have an Aadhaar number to apply for it by June 30.
The notification came into effect from February 8 in all states and UTs, except Assam, Meghalaya and Jammu and Kashmir.
Under the NFSA , which was rolled out across the country in November last year, five kg of foodgrains per person is provided each month at ₹1-3 per kg to over 80 crore people.
The plea said the Supreme Court in an interim order in October 2015 had allowed voluntary use of Aadhaar and ruled that no citizen can be denied a service or subsidy for want of it.
Read: Aadhaar payment: Forget debit and credit cards, now pay bills with your thumb
First Published: Mar 08, 2017 21:41 IST |
Fade Friday – Iron Heart 634 MINI (12 Months, 0 Washes)
This is a guest post from our forum user, Megatron1505, who sent us a denim fade like no other seven months ago – the Iron Heart 634 MINI – that his then five year old son, Tommy, had been working on.
Now that Tommy has outgrown them after a year of wear, Megatron1505 was good enough to send us an update.
In April of this year, RawrDenim.com ran a Fade Friday feature on my (then) 5 year old son’s very unique pair of Iron Hearts, the IH-MINI. Unfortunately, as children have a tendency to do, my son has grown, and we are swiftly approaching a time when we have to retire his first pair of quality, Japanese, raw denim. As you will see, however, he has made quite an impression on them.
Tommy received the jeans from the founder and owner of Iron Heart, Haraki-San, after meeting him at the Iron Heart UK party which was hosted by the company’s worldwide distribution managers, Giles and Paula Padmore.
Tommy asked Haraki for a pair of jeans just like the ones his dad wears, and Haraki was as good as his word; providing jeans which he originally made for shop displays in Japan.
We received the jeans at the beginning of December 2011 and to no surprise, they quickly became Tommy’s favourite item of clothing, wearing them wherever he went.
In May of this year, we reached a point where Tommy was becoming too tall to wear them any more. I asked Giles for his help and he hand carried the jeans back to the Iron Heart HQ (The Works) in Japan for Haraki to come up with a solution. Haraki’s solution was somewhat unique, in that we had expected him to fit a “false cuff” to the bottom of each leg or simply extend the length.
However, in typical Haraki attention-to-detail fashion, he fully deconstructed the jeans in order to add in extra pieces of denim as his reason was, “to preserve the boy’s fade pattern where it should be”. Absolute genius!
Needless to say, Tommy has really put these jeans to the test in the last 12 months. We will be sad to retire them but will be sure to give them a place of pride in a frame on his bedroom wall.
Though Tommy is not quite big enough for even a small pair of raws from anywhere else at the moment, we will begin searching for his next jeans. The bar may be set high for his next pair given the Iron Heart 634 MINI, but when the eventual pair does hits his legs, Heddels will be the first to know!
Details
Name: Iron Heart 634 MINI
Weight: 21 Oz.
Fit: Straight Cut
Denim: 100% Zimbabwean Long Fibre Cotton
Length of wear: 12 months
Number of washes: 0
Photos – Before
Photos – After |
432Hz Propagandists Act Like COINTELPRO to Debunk 528? Where is the 528/LOVE in That?
Watch thisYouTube clip to learn how spiritually-deprived, anti-528, agent provocateurs operate. Incredibly, they magically disappear 528 along with the original Solfeggio musical scale!
This is a persuasive hit against 528, and lame attempt to discredit Dr. Leonard Horowitz. Are these CIA-COINTELPRO agents and/or simply jealous frauds?
Producers Jamie Buturff and Tyler Thurmond promote 432Hz by lying and claiming 528 is not a frequency at all, because Buturff’s Pentagon cohorts would love to squelch the 528LOVERevolution.
Watch for the many Buturff/Thurmond (B&T) errors in this clip, and ask, why would these two guys be disappearing 528 in their analysis, and neglecting all the research in Dr. Horowitz' The Book of 528: Prospertiy Key of LOVE. Why, if they speak for mathematician Marko Rodin, are they attacking Horowitz, probably Rodin's greatest promoter worldwide. Why, are these guys knocking Horowitz who promtes 432Hz as a "good frequency for healing?" Are these guys really promoting Rodin's work or their own CIA/BigPharma agendas? Here are a few objections to the confusing lies they spew:
1) Rodin did not “start with 1, add 6, to get to 7,” as the liars claim, in developing Rodin's “infinity pattern.” He doubled numbers beginning with 1, 2, 4, 8, (8+8=16=1+6=) 7, (7+7=14=1+4=) 5, (5+5=10=1+0=) 1.
2) Notice B&T always neglect 528 entirely, and on purpose, when shifting numbers in their demonstrations. This is classic COINTELPRO (counter-intelligence propaganda).
3) B&T advance a false Solfeggio on purpose, and stupidly claim the disharmony in nature’s (original 6 note) Solfeggio scale negates its creative power or importance in the mathematical matrix Rodin initially promoted.
4) 528 and 432 played together are not aversive and sound seemingly harmonic, confirmed by dividing one number into the other always getting rational numbers (i.e., 1.22222222~ and 0.818181818~)
5) 528 is disharmonic with 741 for reasons B&T also neglect, along with the reasons the original Solfeggio frequencies present non-harmonically as a natural matrix or scale.)
6) Puleo got the original Solfeggio from Jesus, not as Buturff tells it by studying the Bible. Any legitimate researcher in this field would know that by reading Dr. Horowitz's book, Healing Codes for the Biological Apocalypse.
7) Notice in their credits, B&T neglect Horowitz entirely, but credit Puleo falsely. Without Horowitz, Puleo would never have published the original Solfeggio frequencies.
8) 528 is C(5) when tuned to A=444Hz. Buturff claims 528 is not a frequency. Wow!
9) Claiming 432 is the central “frequency” for the Solgeggio, nature, and the universe, the propagandists neglect 528 vibrating at the heart of rainbows and heart chakras (greenish yellow.) It is common sense that chlorophyll's sacred geometry, electrochemistry, and biophysics, heralded by the color greenish-yellow, resonates 528nM; whereas 432 resonates dark Navy blue. Which frequency to you want for healing and opening hearts?
Buturff wrote that he is a “Spiritual Results Consultant” who applied his trade at the Pentagon. Maybe that's why the Pentagon promotes profitable wars instead of peace and love?
B&T's spirit of competition versus collaboration, making war, not love in 528, is written all over Buturff’s and Thurmond's confusing script. Their presentation is intentionally confusing, consistent with "Hegelian dialectic" mind-control propaganda.
Further exposing Buturff, who reportedly pulled out of Rodin’s project(s), while “madderthanalex” reported he smells like a rat from the CIA infiltrating Rodin’s group (as did Tyler Thurmond) to rip Rodin off, and possibly assassinate him, Madderthanalex, who knows Rodin personally, wrote March 22nd, 2011 at 9:04 pm:
“I would say that the family photo at the beginning is telling me something. Jamie could be a MK-ultra plant, to hijack Rodins discovery by gradually becoming part of the family. Then the backers of Jamie get rid of Rodin by cancer or accident or heart attack, etc., take your pick. This idea is by no means a stretch for what the Powers That Be are capable of. Jamie is such a cute part of all this now, isn’t he. Bye bye Mr. Rodin. Marko said, 'Jamie is a 'Pentagon man.'”
We at 528Tunes.com agree. Tyler Thurmond and Jamie Buturff’s propaganda is sickening and extremely suspicious. His neglect of 528 is annoying and telling of jealous psychopathology and intended malice.
Quoting Showell:
““528 is a harmonic codex of the Solfeggio tones 852 and 285Hertz.
“The major clue I got was that 528÷6 = 88, which is the ‘mercury sidereal.’ [Editor’s note: The “mercury sidereal” is a measure of movement of mercury in relation to the sun.]
“And in the entire 11, 22, 33, 44, 55, 66, 77, . . . system, as with 11 x 8; with highest value to 99 for 4-D hypercube math, only 528 does this above [that is, fits into this system] with Mercury 88.
“The 528÷6 = 88 took me to pyramid height 481 which is the planetary synod cycle value 481 x 88 = x. [i.e.,
481x88=42.328]. . . . Then x divided by Mars Jupiter synod 816.5 = 51.840~ and the slope of the Great Giza pyramid is this number, 51 .8427~
“This is NOT a coincidence!
“528÷396 = 1.333333. And that process works on various Solfeggio frequencies.
“The slope of the second pyramid at Giza is supposed to be just over 53 degrees. Arctangent 1.33333333333333 = 53.13 degrees.
“Now, look at what the sine and cosine are with that angle— 0.8 and 0.6
“528÷336, the high physics symmetry value, = aPi / 2
“528 x [the square root of 2 which is] 1.41414141414~ = 746.6666~ which flows thru the polytope chart. But when you DIVIDE 528 by ancient square root of two, or 1.4142857 142857 142857 = 373.3333333~.”
By the way, 432+528=0.8181818181~ and 528+432=1.2222222222~
So you see, 528Hz operates in the Master Matrix as a rational number harmonic of 432Hz. Try both, when you get the chance, and see if you can feel the difference in your heart.
End
Jamie Buturff responded to this article writing:
8:05am Apr 15
Dr. Leonard Horowitz has just publicly accused me of conspiring to commit murder. If he was in TRUTH and integrity with his work he would not need to spread malicious lies. I believe Dr. Horowitz's behavior is the result of repeated exposure to the 528Hz frequency. It may sound good to some at first but causes mental and physical maladies over time. It is why the government has it as the frequency of the dial tone on your phone. WAKE UP!
I'm going to delete this post at the end of the weekend and I want to be done with this topic. When I started this group I wanted to get out to the people the A=432Hz tuning and the evidence that exists. But I can't stand by and allow a deranged man lead so many people astray.
Dr. Horowitz replied:
Buturff is busted for lying, [and contradicting himself about 432 being a frequency for musical tuning, as he states on his video.] I never accused him of “murder,” just COINTELPRO against 528.
By the way, my phone dial tone is far off of 528. So who is “deranged?”
Someone signed me up for his group without my permission, I never registered to receive his group’s mail. I neglected involvement in this [432 promoting/528 bashing] group because it is obviously run by unloving liars, consistent with a CIA/COINTELPRO hit squad.
Bottom line: 432Hz and 528Hz [if used musically] are great frequencies. My preference is 528Hz for use in healing, since “LOVE is the Universal Healer,” and 528Hz, the "MIracle 6" Solfeggio frequency, vibrates at the heart of everything.
More research is needed to determine benefits of 432 and 528 frequencies. Buturff and Thurmond got their “instant karma” for attacking versus collaborating. Blessings from the author of The Book of 528: Prosperity Key of LOVE, Len Horowitz
Vic Showell responded:
"On the issue of 432.
This is a 360 multiple in the genre of ancient Egyptian 25920.
It is also perfectly suspended between these numbers:
4320 x 1.2 = 5184 = 72 squared;
4320 / 1.2 = 3600 "
Now in solfeggio terms as I have published:
396 x 1.333333333~ = 528 <-------------------------!
1.33333333333 = 4 / 3
This is the Khafre pyramid slope tangent 1.3333333333~ as the standard historic geometry model of the 3-4-5 triangle where the height is 4 the base is 3 and the hypotenuse is 5.
To attain the slope, one simply takes the arctangent of: height / by base. (That is, arctan {4 / 3} = arctan 1.33333333333 = 53.13010235 degrees.
This solfeggio set does this also:
639 x 1.33333333333 = 852
I am certain that no other sets in the 18, that is believed to be the complete Solfeggio, do this. But you should check:
528 x 1.333333333 = 704 = 8 x 88 mercury sidereal (solar orbit).
396 / 1.333333333 = 297-------> 297 x Khufu pyramid slope tangent 1.27 27 27 27 27~ = 378 day saturn synod in ancient egyptian calendar count 1.27 27 27 27 27 = (14 / 11)
I would just stick with the two solfeggio equations to be concise 396 x 1.33333333 = 528; 639 x 1.333333333 = 852
Note with 936, that 936 / 1.333333333 = 702 Mayan Dresden Codex astronomical constant.
Note also with 174, that 174 x 1.3333333 = 232 = 2 x 116
where 116 is the NASA mercury and earth synod.
714 works with ancient number 119 = 7 x 17, and that goes a long way (in math and sacred geometry).
Tthere are a plethora of cosmologic applications within the 18 Solfeggio frequencies.
Now 528 and 432 do appear together in the tetrahedral grid as a fraction in square roots within two prominent angles. (See the pdf diagtams of star of David designs in my latest monograph. CLICK HERE to review: Doc. 11. Grand Unification of Ancient and Modern Math. Includes 528 and Its Relationship to Tetrahedron Sacred Geometry: Khafre and Khufu Pyramid Geometry in Tetrahedral Hexad Geometry; and The Mars Cydonia Hexad Mounds).
I do not understand why they think 432 is a frequency of value, as it is not a Solfeggio frequency. Perhaps they have a different criteria to offer [but why mix apples and oranges?]
It would seem with number 432 ....that 360 would be a better choice of that harmonic.
I have seen this 432 promoted before, and it was by a rogue operative on a forum.
When i engaged their thread, this person literally shrank away and let the thread die. This was odd, because I didn't trash it, I merely added harmonics that he didn't expect.
Vic
Here is Vic Showell's graphic proving the square root relationship of 528, divided by 432, in sourcing hexagonal sacred geometry and more. . . .
Reply from Dr. Horowitz:
. . . Buturff and Thurmond are obviously, as you say, "rogue" operatives. They are not only claiming 432 is a frequency, but also the center of creation / universe. They have a YouTube clip up where they try to discredit me and 528 in a very shoddy way. Watching it is a study in CIA/FBI COINTELPRO (Counter-Intelligence Program)--mind-controlling/confusing PROPAGANDA. Imagine doing all this to try to discredit LOVE/528, the reason why grass is green and healing? Whose vested interests do these rogue agents serve by attacking the 528LOVERevolution?
I believe Jamie Buturff and Tyler Thurmond infiltrated Rodin with promises of money for his technology. I know Rodin personally. Everyone who knows Rodin personally, especially in Hawaii, acknowledges his mathematical genius but lacking social graces. He is highly susceptible to social and financial manipulation by liars.
Thurmond, at the forefront of this unwarranted video attack on 528, is also known to me personally. In 2008-2009, Thurmond abandoned his pledged administrative participation in LIVEH2O--Concert for the Living Water! He made me all sorts of promises, and expressed great interest in 528 to spread the message of LOVE for global healing. I was shocked to learn that he produced Buturff's script, and was behind the camera.
Aloha,
Len
Footnote:
Above is a photo of Marko Rodin, taken by Dr. Horowitz on 7/5/04 in Pahoa, HI, showing the "147, 258, and 369" special set of "family group numbers" derived from Rodin's simple "Infinity Pattern." These numbers were immediately recognized by Dr. Horowitz as including the original Solfeggio scale number set, from simple shifts that Rodin discussed. Dr. Horowitz's "Perfect Circle of Sound," that includes the orignal Solfeggio frequencies, determined independently, all source from this same set of numbers.
Reputable researchers will notice Buturff/Thurmond intentionally neglected any permutation of 528 in their videotape promoting 432. They neglected the simple fact that 528+432=1.2, and that 4320 x 1.2 = 5184 = 72 squared; and that 4320 / 1.2 = 3600--all key numbers in universal construction.
So it might be legitimately claimed that 528 and 432 are both vitally important in universal construction.
Buturff and Thurmond's negligence is obviously more than simple excusable neglect, given their extensive research and intelligence, and lame attempts to discredit 528 and Dr. Horowitz's works. One must conclude they operate with jealousy and malice, not collaboration in LOVE/528.
Reply From Vic Showell to Dr. Emoto's Request for Info:
Most people refrain from ancient cosmological numerology or modern math with square roots and such, but I join the two processes of the mathematics together as unified harmonic code. Because both numbers have deep ancient cosmological meanings and connotations, the 2 numbers 528 and 432 have unique and fun mathematical relationships.
The 2 numbers are woven together mathematically. Here is one simple and interesting association:
528 + 432 = 960
528 - 432 = 96
I made this as easy as I could, just slowly follow or peruse the progressions:
432 / 528 is:
432 divided by 528 = 0.81 81 81 81 81~ = 81 / 99
OK, the Earth sidereal year: 365.25 days
365.25 x {432 / 528} = A <----
A x {sqrt.8 / sqrt.5} = 378.0071723 ----> the Saturn - Earth synod is 378 days
This above association is perfected in the ancient math with ancient number 231 <---- The following shows quickly one example of many for derivations of the ancient number 231 relative to 528 and 432:
1.Khufu pyramid has a slope with an angle which has a geometry tangent that = 1.27 27 27 27 27~ = {14 / 11}
2.Khufu pyramid base length 756 ft
3. Khufu pyramid base 756 / by 231 = 3.27 27 27 27~ = Khufu pyr. slope tangent 1.27 27 27 27~ + 2
4. 231 is an important angle tangent multiple in Khufu pyramid apex geometry as well {too lengthy to explain}
so:
231 x {sqrt.5 / by sqrt. 2} = 365.2430698 -----> 1.25 minutes off the NASA Earth tropical year of 365.2422 days
Then if you reinstall the ancient Earth tropical year above {as found with modern square roots}, in the prior equation,
then the Saturn synod results as exactly 378 days:
231 x {sqrt.5 / sqrt. 2} = 365.2430698
365.2430698 x {432 / 528} = A <----
A x {sqrt.8 / sqrt.5} = 378 day Saturn synod.
How about those ancient apples? Ha!
Here is more number magic:
528 + 432 = 960
528 - 432 = 96
---> 432 / 528 = 0.81 81 81 81 81~
1 + {432 / 528} = 1.81 81 81 81~
528 x 1.81 81 81 81~ = 960
432 / 1.81 81 81 81~ = 237.6 ----------> x 10 = 2376 = 4 x 756 {Khufu pyramid base length in feet}
Now check out the cosmologic pyramid in the image for {432 / 528}. The number 25920: is 25920 = 72 x 360 day ancient global civic calendar, etc. {image math content deleted on numbers 216, 123, 162, and 225} see: sine of angle A
Best wishes,
Vic Showell |
It is understood Jost Capito will start work at McLaren at the end of August.
Capito was actually signed up by the Woking team to be its new chief executive in January, but he said he would only leave his role as VW's racing chief once a successor is appointed.
German Capito, 57, is in Monaco this weekend, triggering speculation he might now be ready to start work.
But team boss Eric Boullier said: "I don't know when exactly he will officially take up his duties.
"But in my view everything is simple. Ron Dennis has the highest position in the McLaren Technology Group. I am race director at all of the races.
"But McLaren Racing has more than 600 employees, and with 20-21 races each year then I'm away from them for about four months of the year. As a race team we have 80 people but more than 500 are at the factory and need to be managed," Boullier added.
"Therefore responsibilities are divided between me and Jost Capito, who will also be responsible for the development strategy of McLaren Racing," he said.
(GMM) |
Gauging the effect of Trump's presidential run on his viewership is a fairly tricky science. There are actually two distinct "Apprentice" shows -- the ordinary "Apprentice" and "Celebrity Apprentice," which is the one currently airing Sunday nights on NBC. What's more, the neither "Apprentice" series runs for a full television season. According to media experts like Feltus, in order to properly measure Trump's effect on his audience it is necessary to do an apples-to-apples comparison -- that is, to measure the current season of "Celebrity Apprentice" against the most recent season of that same show, which aired last spring. (Last fall, NBC also aired a run of the ordinary "Apprentice.")
By that measure, Trump's ratings have clearly dropped. The fall-off has been especially pronounced over the last few weeks, a period that coincides with Trump's emphasis on Obama's birth certificate. "Something is definitely going on there," another media buyer told me. "He's dropped -- and that's a big fucking dip." Given the liberal skew of Trump's viewership, that dip might not be surprising.
Feltus agreed that Trump's ratings woes might stem from his sharp turn to the right, although he pointed out that this could be intentional. "Given the downward trend of Trump's ratings among his current, liberal audience, maybe he's running as a Republican to add a little bipartisan diversity to his viewership," he said.
And then he noted one other possibility. "For all we know," Feltus said, "Trump may have a new 'Celebrity Birth Certificate' pilot in development."
We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com. |
A group of activists are fighting for your right to party—a right that you might not have realized was under attack. More specifically, they're fighting for your right to dance with three or more people, something that is currently illegal in the vast majority of NYC bars and restaurants, thanks to a Prohibition-era law that requires venues to have a cabaret license for dancing.
On Thursday night, hundreds of would-be dancers packed into Bushwick DIY venue Market Hotel to raise awareness about the ongoing effort to repeal the archaic law. Organized by the Dance Liberation Network, which has also circulated a petition denouncing the law, the event featured artists, business owners, and city council members, who took turns discussing the various ways in which they say the law hurts New Yorkers. Among them: its negative impact on businesses, its role in pushing the nightlife scene toward more dangerous underground spaces, and its racist legacy and disproportionate impact on vulnerable communities.
"We're at a point now where we have to step in as a city and figure out how we can repeal the law, because these businesses are just trying to let New Yorkers have a good time after work," said Council Member Rafael Espinal, who last year introduced a request to draft a bill that would remove the law from the books. "The request was stalled for almost a year," he told Gothamist, "but last night's event helped me restart a conversation with the bill drafters."
According to small business owners, the cabaret license required under the current law is "virtually unobtainable," and held by only 127 of the city's more than 25,000 food and beverage establishments. Yet unlike some of our city's other obsolete laws—the ban on hosting puppet shows in windows, for instance—this one plays a huge role in the lives of many New Yorkers.
"It is actively yet very arbitrarily enforced," said John Barclay, the owner of Bossa Nova Civic Club and an organizer with the Dance Liberation Network. "They can use the law as a failsafe to shut down any establishment they take issue with. The issue could be that the bar is a loud nuisance, suspected in other criminal activity, or a gay or ethnic bar in a conservative neighborhood. It could be that the officer on duty simply does not like how the clientele looks."
Neither the State Liquor Authority nor the NYPD responded to requests for comment, though a rep for the SLA told the Brooklyn Paper earlier this week that "it is a violation we see quite frequently."
Andrew Muchmore, owner of Muchmore's in Williamsburg, said that he received a citation in 2013 after cops saw people dancing to live music in his bar. "It was a rock show, people were swaying a little bit, but who knows what the line is between swaying and dancing," Muchmore said. He's since filed a federal lawsuit against the city—currently pending—which alleges that there is a racially charged element to the law's enforcement.
"Even if the current intent isn't racist, it still has a racially disparate effect," Muchmore added. "If you're trying to open a hip hop club you're going to have a lot harder time getting a cabaret license than if you're trying to open a rock club."
This discriminatory nature of the law dates is deeply rooted. Originally passed in 1926, the law was intended to address "concerns that speakeasy culture had increased the likelihood of interracial sexual relations within the unregulated and uninhibited spaces of Harlem nightlife," according to historian Michael A. Lerner, author of Dry Manhattan: Prohibition in New York City. The original legislation also banned specific instruments in unlicensed venues; string instruments and pianos were just fine, but wind, brass, and percussion instruments—the staples of jazz music—were restricted.
The controversial law has faced sporadic resistance throughout its 92 year existence, particularly in recent decades. In 2000, after Giuliani cracked down on nightclubs as part of his "quality of life" campaign, protesters took to Manhattan Park for the "Million Mambo March" to demonstrate against the Cabaret Law. Three years later, under a new mayor, the New York Times noted that Bloomberg's support for ending the "dance police" signaled that the "age-old battle between the New York of nightclubbing revelers and the New York of sleep-deprived neighbors [had] entered a new phase." Yet despite the public and political opposition, the law remained on the books.
One reason, according to Councilmember Espinal, is its use by the police to selectively target businesses that, for one reason or another, the city would like to see shut down. "The reality is that the city uses the cabaret law as an enforcement tool," said Espinal. "They're able to go after bad actors and bad businesses."
In Espinal's Brooklyn district, which includes much of Bushwick, those "bad actors" are often DIY venues, which may or may not be following the city's other, more reasonable laws. Market Hotel presents a useful example: the show space once operated illegally, then was shuttered for six years while volunteers brought it up to code, only to be targeted by the NYPD in what owner Todd P called a "gotcha raid." That dynamic—between beloved community spaces looking to follow the rules, and an outdated rule that is selectively enforced—could present an interesting challenge to the historically sticky cabaret law, especially in light of recent events.
"We believe that because of the city's current sociopolitical climate and the tragedy that occurred in Oakland, New Yorkers have been forced to examine this issue," Barclay said. "There is also more interest regarding dance culture in NYC right now than there has been in at least 15 years. We plan to mobilize these communities and we will not be letting up until this thing is finally repealed." |
Bitmain which is one of the market leaders in the Bitcoin mining hardware manufacturer space unveiled their S9 model, the world’s first Bitcoin miner using 16nm chips.
Bitcoin enthusiasts have been looking forward to the release of S9 model. A press release to newsbtc.com said that, the Antminer S9 will produce 14 TH/s of mining power per unit. Although there is a 7% variation to take into account, the power consumption of the devise sits around 1.38 kW and this makes the miner very power efficient.
The Antminer S9 is backward compatible with power supplies used in older models. The machines keep their air-cooled system, that is easy to maintain by both experienced and novice users. Also other than electricity to be paid by the consumers, there are no hidden upkeep costs.
The Bitmain company wants to address the rate at which miners discarded their hardware since it is no longer profitable. As the average lifespan of ASIC hardware is just three months, something has to be done to increase the shelf life of bitcoin mining hardware.
Bitmain will limit the number of S9 devices one user can order in total. There will be only a limited quantity available for every batch of Antminer S9 miners and placing of order is required as soon as possible from interested parties. Limiting the number of devices helps distribute these devices in a decentralized fashion over time. The company expects to launch its first batch of S9 devices quickly. The device is expected to attract a lot of interests. |
Author Zac Unger was originally drawn to the arctic circle to write a “mournful elegy” about how global warming was decimating the polar bear populations. He was surprised to find that the polar bears were not in such dire straits after all.
“There are far more polar bears alive today than there were 40 years ago,” Unger told NPR in an interview about his new book, “Never Look a Polar Bear in The Eye.” “There are about 25,000 polar bears alive today worldwide. In 1973, there was a global hunting ban. So once hunting was dramatically reduced, the population exploded.”
“This is not to say that global warming is not real or is not a problem for the polar bears,” Unger added. “But polar bear populations are large, and the truth is that we can’t look at it as a monolithic population that is all going one way or another.”
According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, there are an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 polar bears worldwide, living in Canada, Greenland, the northern Russian coast, islands of the Norwegian coast, and the northwest Alaskan coast.
Polar bears became a focal point for environmentalists after former Vice President Al Gore featured them in his 2006 global warming documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth.” The bears were classified as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act to in May 2008 because their habitat was being threatened by global warming.
Unger wanted to write the definitive book on how man-made global warming was destroying polar bear habitats and leading to their extinction. He packed up his family and moved north to Churchill, Manitoba — called the “Polar Bear Capital of the World” because of the large amounts of bears that congregate near it in the autumn.
“My humble plan was to become a hero of the environmental movement,” Unger told NPR. “I was going to go up to the Canadian Arctic, I was going to write this mournful elegy for the polar bears, at which point I’d be hailed as the next coming of John Muir and borne aloft on the shoulders of my environmental compatriots.”
“So when I got up there, I started realizing polar bears were not in as bad a shape as the conventional wisdom had led me to believe, which was actually very heartening, but didn’t fit well with the book I’d been planning to write,” he added.
In the U.S. the bears are protected from hunting by non-Alaska Natives — who can hunt some polar bears for tribal needs. There are also special importation rules for polar bears and polar bear parts and products.
Polar bears are also protected by international conservation agreements between the U.S. and other countries, such as the Russian Federation.
A federal court recently threw out a federal government plan to protect polar bears and designate a 187,000-square mile area of Alaska — larger than the state of California — as a critical habitat for polar bears. The court ruled that the plan went too far, and that the government needed to correct “substantive and procedural deficiencies.”
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Indie open-world survival-horror game The Forest will be made available on PlayStation 4 next year, Endnight Games has announced.
The console version will make use of the PS4 Share feature so players can show off the bases they have built, places encountered, and more.
Multiplayer will feature an “extra layer” of realism thanks to voices coming out of the DualShock 4 controller, similar to a walkie-talkie.
Released through Steam Early Access back in May, Endnight Games said the online community has “contributed ideas and suggestions that have massively improved the game.” The studio will “continue to [improve] the game” as it heads towards a final release.
If you would like to know what has changed since going into Early Access, you should read the most recent changelog through the official website. Note, it is a rather hefty read |
The Internal Revenue Service is significantly scaling back an investigation into customers who bought and sold bitcoins on the popular digital currency exchange Coinbase.
Instead of asking Coinbase for a long list of details about its customers who bought or sold bitcoin between 2013 and 2015, the IRS told a federal court it is now seeking information only for those accounts that engaged in transactions worth $20,000 or more.
The news will come as a relief to thousands of people who dabbled in bitcoin but faced the prospect of a tax investigation for failing to disclose they sold a small amount of the currency, or used it to purchase goods and services. The IRS launched the investigation in part because the price of bitcoin soared from $13 to over $1,100 during the years in question, and because only 802 people reported their bitcoin gains or losses in 2015 to the agency.
An IRS spokesperson declined to comment on the investigation’s new scope, which is limited—in the agency’s words—to users with “at least the equivalent of $20,000 in any one transaction type (buy, sell, send, or receive) in any one year during the 2013-15 period.”
The modified request, first reported by CoinDesk, was set out in a court filing titled “Notice of Narrowed Summons Request for Enforcement.” The filing also announced the IRS is limiting the scope of its request for the accounts. (You can see full details of those new limits below).
The news comes as the IRS is locked in a closely-watched court fight with anonymous Coinbase users who want to a judge to block a summons the agency served on the company last year.
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If Coinbase had complied with the original summons, it would have forced it to turn over personal details related to over a million accounts, and over 500,000 active customer accounts. The scope of the summons caused an outcry among digital currency owners, and led senior members of Congress to send a sharply worded letter to the IRS that warned its probe was “overly broad” and extremely burdensome.”
Perhaps in response to this pressure, a lawyer for the IRS told a judge last week that the agency would no longer seek password and security settings for the accounts.
The big question now is whether the concessions by the IRS will lead the anonymous Coinbase customers to withdraw their lawsuit, or whether they will push the court to limit the summons still further. Lawyers at the Los Angeles law firm Berns Weiss, which are representing the customers, did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Coinbase itself is not part of the lawsuit, but it has said it would join in if the IRS failed to limit the scope of the summons.
A spokesperson for the San Francisco-based company declined to comment on the agency’s decision to only seek information on the larger accounts, and referred Fortune to a blog post from March.
The IRS move did not appear to affect the price of bitcoin, which was trading around $2,400 on Monday evening.
Finally, here are the other changes the IRS made to its request. The bold phrases are my summary of the changes, while the indented text is taken from the original summons followed by the limits set out in the July 6 court filing.
Change 1: Eliminates request for payment information and security settings.
ORIGINAL REQUEST: Account/wallet/vault registration records for each account/wallet/vault owned or controlled by the user during the period stated above including, but not limited to, complete user profile, history of changes to user profile from account inception, complete user preferences, complete user security settings and history (including confirmed devices and account activity), complete user payment methods, and any other information related to the funding sources for the account/wallet/vault, regardless of date. NOW LIMITED TO: name, address, tax identification number, date of birth, account opening records, copies of passport or driver’s license, all wallet addresses, and all public keys for all accounts/wallets/vaults.
Change 2: Eliminates request for power of attorney letters and corporate minutes tied to third parties
ORIGINAL REQUEST: For any account/wallet/vault with respect to which the registered user gave any third party access, control, or transaction approval authority, all powers of attorney, letters of wishes, corporate minutes, or other agreements or instructions granting the third party such access, control, or approval authority. NOW LIMITED TO: agreements or instructions granting a third party access, control, or approval authority.
Change 3: Limits request for correspondence between Coinbase and users to portions that cover account opening and closing, and transactions |
As a Chicago-area auto mechanics strike nears its seventh week, the union involved is accusing the bargaining group for new-car dealerships of violating federal labor law.
It's the second such accusation surrounding this strike in as many weeks, with the first charge filed by the dealerships against the union, Automobile Mechanics' Local 701.
The newest charge, filed Thursday with the National Labor Relations Board, accuses the New Car Dealership Committee of bargaining in bad faith.
Nearly 2,000 mechanics at almost 140 new-car dealerships throughout the Chicago area walked off the job Aug. 1, demanding a contract that resolves sticking points such as uncompensated work time. Though the parties have come to the bargaining table multiple times, negotiations have stalled.
The dealership committee on Wednesday presented its "last, best and final" contract offer to the union.
The committee allegedly provided union members the offer before Local 701 had a chance to review it, according to a post on the union's website. Dealing directly with technicians in that instance constitutes bargaining in bad faith, the union alleges.
Dave Sloan, a spokesman for the New Car Dealership Committee, said the charge is without merit.
"We sent it to the union before we sent it to our dealers," he said. "We obviously didn't send it directly to the technicians."
The committee sent the offer to dealers so the mechanics would have an accurate portrayal of the deal, Sloan said.
The technicians have run out of time, he said.
If they don't return to work this week, according to the committee's site, many of the workers will experience a four-week gap in health coverage once they do return.
Representatives from the union did not respond to requests for comment, but the union said on its site that there is a lack of clarity surrounding the insurance issue.
Meanwhile, last week some dealerships affected by the strike broke ranks with the New Car Dealership Committee and reached separate agreements with their unionized workers.
Soon after, the committee filed a charge with the NLRB. Asking dealerships to break ranks with the bargaining committee violates fair labor practices, the charge alleges. Negotiating with the individual dealerships and entering into separate agreements with them are also violations, the charge states.
Business at the dealerships affected by the strike has suffered. Though some have continued offering basic services like oil changes or tire rotations, many had to shut down repairs completely. Some laid off nonunion employees for lack of work.
The "last, best and final" contract offer would increase base pay hours for journeyman service technicians (the highest classification) from 34 hours to 35, according to the committee's website. It also includes wage increases for all classifications of technicians and limitations on scheduling for journeyman technicians.
The base pay issue has been a major sticking point throughout negotiations. Mechanics often are paid based on billable hours set by carmakers. For example, if a manufacturer says an oil change should take one hour, the mechanic gets compensated for one hour of work, regardless of whether he or she spends longer on the job.
Under the previous contract, mechanics received base pay for 34 hours. The union has been asking for that to increase to 40.
amarotti@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @AllyMarotti |
In this case, a fictitious town that, for a while, achieved actual existence.The town of Agloe, New York was a "copyright trap" placed on Esso Maps during the 1930s. (That is, it was a nonexistent town whose purpose was to reveal if rival mapmakers were blindly copying the information on Esso maps.) The name was a scramble of the initials of Otto G. Lindberg (the company founder) and his assistant Ernest Alpers. They located the town at a dirt-road intersection north of Roscoe, NY.So when the town of Agloe later appeared on a Rand McNally map, Esso accused Rand McNally of copying their map. But it turned out that Rand McNally was innocent. The town of Agloe actually had been registered with the county administration, because someone had built a general store at that dirt intersection and had named it the Agloe General Store (because that's the name they saw on the Esso map), thus bringing the town into existence. Eventually the store went out of business, and the town of Agloe is no longer on maps. Here's the Google Map location for Roscoe, New York Kremvax was a 1984 Usenet April Fool's Day hoax, alleging that the Soviet Union was joining Usenet. The announcement purported to come from Konstantin Chernenko, who used the email address chernenko@kremvax.UUCP. Six years later, when the Soviet Union really did link up to the internet, it adopted the domain name Kremvax in honor of the hoax. The Annual Virginia City Camel Race . Began as a hoax in 1959, perpetrated by the Nevada, but other newspapers decided to take it seriously and actually began racing camels every year in the city.I'm sure there are other examples, but I can't think of them right now. (I'm not counting instances of names inspired by fiction, such as the space shuttle Enterprise being named after the USS Enterprise in Star Trek.) |
New Directions will publish Roberto Bolano’s collected nonfiction, Between Parentheses, in May. I’ve got a review of the book coming up, and as I read the book for the review, one of the most striking and enjoyable aspects of it was the sheer number of other writers Bolano exhorts you to read. You could get an entire education in Spanish-language literature just by reading the writers he recommends.
So in that spirit, here are 19 books or authors Bolano recommends in Between Parentheses, complete with rave-style quote drawn from the essays in Between Parentheses.
Ferdydurke by Witold Gombrowicz
“The key work in the Gombrowiczian oeuvre . . . one of the key novels of this century.”
Cuentos de Bloomsbury by Ana María Navales
“She’s bold enough to write in the first person, even when that first person is the voice of Virginia Woolf, and the result is first-rate and often unsettling.”
Antipoems: How to Look Better & Feel Great by Nicanor Parra
“As far as I’m concerned, Parra has long been the best living poet in the Spanish language.”
The Literary Conference by César Aira
“To begin with, it must be said that Aira has written one of the five best stories I can remember. It’s called ‘Cecil Taylor’ and it’s collected in an anthology of Argentine literature edited by Juan Forn. Aira is also the author of four memorable novels: How I Became A Nun, telling the story of his childhood; Ema, la cautiva [Emma the Captive], describing the luxury of the Indians of the pampa; El congreso de la literatura [The Literary Conference], recounting an attempt to clone Carlos Fuentes; and El llanto [The Weeping], retailing a kind of epiphany or insomnia.”
Hannibal by Thomas Harris
“He’s a craftsman, but every once in a while it’s nice to read someone who can tackle something long without boring us to death before we get to page fifty.”
The Good Cripple by Rodrigo Rey Rosa
“Miguel Ángel Asturias, Augusto Monterroso, and now Rodrigo Rey Rosa, three giant writers from a small, unhappy country.”
The Missing Piece by Antoine Bello
“In the tradition of Georges Perec . . . Antoine Bello’s novel is narrated from different points of view and through the lens of various genres, among them the epistolary novel, the detective novel, the satire, the adventure novel, the ethnographic novel, the populist novel, the symbolist novel, and the naturalist novel, not to exclude chapters in which the storytelling is based on mathematics, logic, or religion.”
Enoch Soames by Max Beerbohm (and it’s free for the Kindle!), (and collected in this NYRB Classic)
“Personally, if I had to choose the fifteen best stories I’ve read in my life, ‘Enoch Soames’ would be among them, and not in last place.”
Jonathan Swift
“And then there are those classics whose main virtue, whose elegance and validity, is symbolized by the time bomb: a bomb that not only hurtles perilously through its age but is capable of flinging itself into the future. It’s to this latter category that Jonathan Swift belongs.”
Homage to the American Indians by Ernesto Cardenal
“Superior in many ways to Neruda’s Canto General and a new, if flawed, response to Whitman.
El asco by Horacio Castellanos Moya
“So far I’ve read four of his books. The first was El asco, maybe the best of all, or at least the darkest.”
Bartleby & Co by Enrique Vila-Matas
“The answer, the only answer that occurs to me just now, is that it’s something else, something that might be a blend of all the preceding options, and we might have before us a 21st- century novel, by which I mean a hybrid novel, a gathering together of the best of fiction and journalism and history and memoir.”
Soldiers of Salamis by Javier Cercas
“The third part centers on the unknown Republican soldier who saved Sánchez Mazas’s life, and here there appears a new character, someone by the name of Bolaño, who is a writer and Chilean and lives in Blanes, but who isn’t me, in the same way that the narrator Cercas isn’t Cercas, although both characters are possible and even probable. . . . With this novel, published to critical acclaim and appearing in French and Italian translations a few days before it even landed in Spanish bookstores, Javier Cercas joins the small group at the leading edge of Spanish fiction.”
Braque: Illustrated Notebooks
“Some of his aperçus, like Duchamp’s or Satie’s, are infinitely superior to those of many writers of his day, even some writers whose main occupation was to think and reflect: ‘Every age limits its own aspirations. This is what gives rise, not without complicity, to the illusion of progress.'”
Ubik by Philip K. Dick
“Dick is the one who, in Ubik, comes closest to capturing the human consciousness or fragments of consciousness in the context of their setting; the correspondence between what he tells and the structure of what’s told is more brilliant than similar experiments conducted by Pynchon or DeLillo.”
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
“It could be said that the landscape of Blood Meridian is a landscape out of de Sade, a thirsty and indifferent landscape ruled by strange laws involving pain and anesthesia, laws by which time often manifests itself.”
Alan Pauls
“You’re one of the best living Latin American writers and there are very few of us who know it and can appreciate it.”
The Cubs by Mario Vargas Llosa
“From these four novels (if their authors had written nothing else, which isn’t the case, one could create a literature. Of the four, The Cubs is probably the most caustic, the most fiendishly paced, and the one in which the voices–the multiplicity of forms of speech–are most alive.”
The Museum of Eterna’s Novel by Macedonio Fernandez
“Everything says we should read him, but Macedonio doesn’t sell, so forget him.
And one notable dis . . .
“Norberto Fuentes, the author of Condenados de Condado [The Condemned of Condado], in a number of ways a memorable book, has sold his soul to the devil.” |
Drones are a hot topic these days — not just the ones flying over Pakistan, but the growing number of lightweight and camera-equipped devices flying through American air. These consumer drones are on the verge of transforming a range of industries, from farming to news gathering, but are also creating conflicts — like this one at the beach — as people fear for their privacy.
In response, President Obama is preparing an executive order to develop privacy guidelines for commercial drones. According to Politico, the details are still under wraps but the White House has confirmed that the National Telecommunications and Information Administration is bringing together companies and consumer groups to create a voluntary set of best practices.
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The process may give a boost to consumer drone advocates, who believe that the many positive stories about drones, such as their role in search-and-rescue operations, are drowned out by sensationalist headlines about spying.
The term “drone” itself is controversial among some advocates, who prefer terms like “UAV” or unmanned-aerial-vehicle. But it appears to have caught on as more consumers and companies launch the devices.
The executive order process also comes as the FAA continues to fumble the process of developing rules to integrate unmanned aircraft into civilian airspace. The agency has banned the use of almost any commercial drone but it appears to have no legal basis for doing so. Right now, the FAA’s authority over drones near airports is clear, but otherwise it appears the power to police drones lies with state and local authorities.
As the legal details get sorted out, companies are pushing forward with all sorts of consumer drone plans. Amazon(s amzn) is chafing to start “Air Prime,” while drone start-up Airware just raised $25 million to build out its drone software that will let the devices used in more industries. |
The Older Brother’s oldest son (a.k.a. my nephew Eric) recently annoyed his (morbidly obese) doctor by refusing to take statins after a lab test flagged his total cholesterol as “elevated.”
Some snippets from an email Eric sent me:
The nurse called last night while I was driving home and only gave me my triglycerides and cholesterol readings, followed by the doctor’s (5 feet tall and a good 275lbs) recommendation to take a statin.
After verifying that she heard me correctly that “I’m not going to take a statin” and then informing me that cholesterol can lead to heart disease and stroke, I again declined and told her I would talk further with the doctor, recommending your movie and a couple books.
I called this morning to have the full results faxed to me. After getting that fax from the machine with my greasy, McMuffin-without-the-muffin fingers (didn’t have time to make eggs this morning or a protein shake), I plugged them into excel to share.
Eric is 26 years old and (like his younger brother the Ranger) a strong, muscular guy who’s in excellent shape. Here are the cholesterol numbers that prompted the obese doctor to recommend a statin:
Total Cholesterol: 219
HDL: 61
Triglycerides: 55
LDL: 147
The LDL, of course, is a calculated figure. For those of you who don’t already know, LDL is usually calculated using something called the Freidewald Equation, which looks like this:
LDL = Total cholesterol – (HDL + (Triglycerides/5))
As Dr. Mike Eades explained in one his posts, the Freidewald equation has been shown to over-estimate LDL levels in people whose triglycerides are low. The Freidewald equation also “rewards” you for having higher triglycerides – not something you want — by producing a lower calculated LDL figure. Let’s create a couple of fictional examples to demonstrate:
Patient One
Total Cholesterol: 200
HDL: 45
Triglycerides: 150
Calculated LDL: 125
Patient Two
Total Cholesterol: 200
HDL: 50
Triglycerides: 70
Calculated LDL: 136
The most useful indicator of heart-disease risk you can extrapolate from a lipid panel is the ratio of Triglycerides/HDL. You want that ratio below 2.0, because a ratio below 2.0 is a pretty good indicator that you’re mostly producing large, fluffy LDL. At 3.0 or above, it’s more likely you’re producing small, dense LDL.
Patient One’s ratio is 3.33 — not horrible, but certainly not what I’d consider good, either. Patient Two’s ratio is 1.4 — pretty darned good. Patient Two clearly has a much better cholesterol profile. But because Patient Two’s calculated LDL (which is likely overestimated anyway) is above the supposed magic number of 130, she’s the one who’ll get a lecture from her doctor along with a recommendation to go on a low-fat diet – which will probably reduce her HDL and raise her triglycerides.
Eric’s Triglycerides/HDL ratio is 0.90 … in other words, it’s outstanding. Even if his LDL is really and truly elevated, it’s almost certainly mostly the large, fluffy LDL. That type of LDL not only isn’t dangerous, it protects us against infections and cancer, at least according to Dr. Uffe Ravnskov’s reading of the data.
And yet a doctor wants this strong, active, sports-nut of a 26-year-old man to go on statins because his total cholesterol is 219 and his calculated LDL is 147. If Eric did go on statins, the only beneficiaries would be
Pfizer
The pitchers on opposing softball teams who would no longer have to watch Eric belt their fastballs over the fences
It’s a sad situation when we have to ignore our doctors’ advice in order to stay healthy. |
My husband is a big fan of sriracha sauce. I wasn’t until I tried my friend Jennifer’s Sriracha Chicken Wings. (She also has a recipe for Crispy Baked Panko Sriracha Chicken Tenders on her blog, Savoring the Thyme.)
I made her sriracha chicken wings for the Super Bowl and loved them. Still, I was a little freaked out about eating wings due to all the fat from the chicken skin. Wanting to “health it up,” I used thigh meat in my Sriracha Chicken Skewers. You could also use chicken breast since it’s leaner and lower in Weight Watchers POINTS, calories and fat.
Serve the sriracha chicken with stir fried vegetables and brown rice or quinoa. You can also double or triple the recipe for a terrific party appetizer.
This Mama’s tips
You can prepare the marinade and chicken in the morning and then bake the chicken skewers for dinner.
Looking for a vegan version of my recipe? Try A Vegan Obsession's Hot 'n' zesty sriracha tofu!
Print
Recipe Ingredients 1/4 cup amber agave nectar
1/4 cup low sodium, gluten free soy or tamari sauce
1 tablespoon sesame seed oil
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
2 tablespoons lime juice
2 large garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons sriracha sauce
4 chicken thighs (about 1 1/2 pounds)
6-10 bamboo skewers
1 tablespoon tapioca or corn starch Directions Slice chicken thigh meat into 1 inch strips. Place into a food storage container large enough for chicken and marinade. Combine agave through sriracha ingredients in a bowl and stir until combined. Pour over chicken and place lid on container. Shake so chicken is completely covered with marinade. Place container in the refrigerator and marinate for a minimum of one hour. Overnight is ideal for maximum flavor. Soak 10 bamboo skewers in water for 10 to 20 minutes. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Prepare the baking sheet by covering it with foil for easier cleanup. Then place an oven safe cooling rack on it. (Cooking it on a rack helps to caramelize the marinade glaze.) Remove meat from marinade and thread on to skewers. Pour marinade into a small sauce pan and bring to a rolling boil. Mix one tablespoon of starch with an equal amount of water. Stir to produce a slurry. Pour slurry into boiling marinade and stir. It should immediately thicken. Once it thickens remove from heat. Take a pastry brush or spatula and brush thickened marinade sauce on to both sides of the skewered chicken. Evenly place chicken skewers on racks and put baking sheet into the oven. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until cooked through. Prep Time: 1 Hour 30 Minutes Total Time: 20 Minutes Servings: Serves 4 Serving size: 6 ounces of chicken
Calories: 341
Calories from Fat: 70
Total Fat: 7.8g
Saturated fat: 2.0g
Unsaturated fat: 5.8g
Sodium: 494mg
Total Carbohydrates: 11.1g
Protein: 53.3g
Cholesterol: 151mg
Nutritional information (using chicken breast)
1 serving is approximately 6 ounces of chicken
When using chicken breast:
Calories 341
Calories from Fat 70
Total Fat 7.8g
Saturated Fat 2.0g
Cholesterol 145mg
Sodium 494mg
Total Carbohydrates 11.1g
Protein 53.3g
Nutrition Grade B from CalorieCount
Weight Watchers POINTS = 7 |
Bernie Sanders Calls For 'Fundamental Reassessment' Of Democratic Party
Enlarge this image toggle caption Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
In Bernie Sanders' new book, Our Revolution, the Vermont senator tells the story of his life, his career and his run for the Democratic presidential nomination.
He also spells out the programs he believes the country should adopt to combat such ills as inequality, discrimination and lack of opportunity, not to mention the burdens of college and health care costs.
Sanders says he was not shocked by Donald Trump's victory. But he says the election results show it is time for the Democratic Party to undergo a fundamental reassessment.
"I think it's time for a fundamental reassessment," Sanders tells NPR's Robert Siegel, "and I think what that reassessment has got to entail is to understand that we cannot have a party that will win, if we continue to become dependent on big money interests and campaign fundraisers all over this country."
Interview Highlights
On his message to the people who are refusing to accept a Trump presidency
It's not a question of whether you refuse to accept it or you accept it. It's a reality. But what I say to those young people is we have got to stand together by the many millions and not allow this country to descend back into racism and sexism and xenophobia, to make sure that Trump is not successful in pushing an agenda which divides us up by race or the country that we were born into.
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On the other hand, Trump ran his campaign talking about he was going to be a champion of the working class. He was going to stand up to the establishment. Well, let me tell you, we are gonna hold him accountable to that.
On Trump's appointment of Breitbart executive Stephen Bannon to a senior White House role
It is a very, very bad appointment. I hope he rethinks it, and I hope that he understands that in the year 2016, we are not going back to a society rampant with racism and sexism and homophobia and xenophobia.
On how to proceed with advocacy of free higher education
Well, what we do now is rally millions of young Americans who are sick and tired of leaving school $30-, $50-, $100,000 in debt, and those who simply cannot afford to go to college, and say that in a competitive global economy, it is absolutely imperative that we make public colleges and universities' tuition free.
And no matter how you fund it, it should be funded by progressive taxation, making clear that billionaires like Mr. Trump and his friends start paying their fair share of taxes, that large corporations start paying their fair share of taxes. ...
How you deal with that issue is how you deal with all issues. We are gonna have to raise public consciousness, we're gonna have to, and what the political revolution is about — we've had some really good successes. Yeah, maybe a march on Washington.
It may be bombarding your congressman and your senator with emails, with phone calls to say, "You know what, in America people have the right to get a higher education regardless of their income. And by the way, maybe there's something wrong when we are the only country on Earth not to guarantee health care to all people as a right.
"Oh yeah, and while we're on the subject, how come we're the only major country not to provide paid family and medical leave? Oh yeah, and maybe we should deal with climate change because the scientific community tells us if we're not gonna deal with that, then the future of this planet is a very sorry future indeed."
On how to understand Hillary Clinton's defeat
I'll tell you how I understand it. I understand it because there are a lot of people in this country, including people in the Democratic Party, who do not fully appreciate the kind of suffering and pain that millions of working people in this country are feeling.
You've got working mothers out there who cannot afford to pay $10-, $15,000 a year for child care. You got working couples who desperately want to be able to send their kids to college; they can't do that. You got half of the older workers in this country — do you know how much money they have set aside for retirement? Nothing. They've got nothing. They're scared to death.
And then you got a guy named Mr. Trump, who goes around saying, "I'm gonna champion you! I'm a friend of the working class! I'm gonna take on the establishment!" And the Democrats have not been as clear as they should be, which is why I think we need fundamental reform of the Democratic Party. And saying, "Yeah, no, sorry, we are the champion of working families and low-income people and the elderly and the sick and the poor. We are gonna take on the billionaire class. We want you to participate." That's what we need.
And I think a lot of people who voted for Barack Obama in 2008, voted for Barack Obama in 2012, and who like Barack Obama, said, "You know what, I'm going to go for Trump because he has been clear about feeling the pain of working families." |
shorts-brewery-taps.JPG
Short's Brewery in Bellaire is known for having many beers on tap at its pub in Antrim County. The brewery celebrated its 10th anniversary in April, 2014.
(John Gonzalez/MLive.com)
, one of the state's largest craft breweries, announced to its staff recently the immediate adoption of Michigan's 2018 minimum wage rate. According to brewery reps, Short’s is skipping the intermediate rates, which are spelled out in
. The bill gradually would raise the minimum wage from $7.40 to $9.25 per hour by 2018. In an interview with MLive, Scott Newman-Bale, president of business development and partner at Bellaire-based brewery, said not very many of the 100 employees are affected by this minimum wage increase, but added that new employees will benefit the most. "There are really just a few people in between the old minimum wage and the new minimum wage, " he said. "We generally don't pay people minimum wage. We promote people so quickly and train people so much that they deserve more money." The rate for tipped employees, which is currently $2.65, would be 38 percent of the regular minimum wage. That would amount to about $3.51 by 2018. The rates would change each year based on inflation or 3.5 percent, whichever is lower. "As we have grown over the past few years, we've made it our goal to reward the hard-working staff who have contributed significantly towards our mission," said Matt Drake, Short’s COO and HR Director on the brewery website. "By starting new employees with a competitive minimum wage, we feel that we can continue to attract and retain excellent employees." Although Short’s has adopted $9.25 as the minimum for it’s food and beverage hospitality jobs such as dishwasher, it’s average deli wage rate is above $11/hour. The last couple of years, tipped employees at Short's begin at $3.50, and many have received merit increases above that rate, he added. "Short’s goal is to make pubtending a viable career choice, because it also benefits us in the long run,” he said. Similarly, the average pack-line wage is above $11/hour at Short's Elk Rapids production brewery. Newman-Bale said Short's plans to hire about 20 additional employees over the next few months
He said the decision to increase the minimum wage was to show restaurant owners can pay a higher wage and be "economically viable." "We are hiring a lot of new people right now....and they are the ones benefiting the most," he said. Short's Brewery Co., which was founded by owner Joe Short, recently celebrated its
.
RELATED:
Short's won
in September and was named the
in the country by The Street in 2012.
John Gonzalez is a statewide entertainment writer for MLive.com. Email him at gonzo@mlive.com or follow him on Twitter, Facebook or Google+. |
Admiral Sir Eliab Harvey GCB (5 December 1758 – 20 February 1830) was an eccentric and hot-tempered officer of the Royal Navy during the French Revolutionary and the Napoleonic Wars who was as distinguished for his gambling and dueling as for his military record. Although Harvey was a significant naval figure for over twenty years, his martial reputation was largely based on his experiences at the Battle of Trafalgar, when he took his ship HMS Temeraire into the thick of the action. Harvey used Temeraire to force the surrender of two French ships of the line and later created his family motto from the names of his opponents in the engagement; "Redoutable et Fougueux".
In his civilian life, Harvey pursued political interests and spent three spells as a Member of Parliament for Maldon and later Essex. During this period he was also knighted. However, Harvey was not a peaceable man and his life both in and out of the Navy was frequently punctuated by disputes with fellow officers and politicians. One such dispute, a consequence of the Battle of Basque Roads, eventually cost Harvey his career; a bitter exchange with Lord Gambier forcing Harvey into early retirement in 1809. Although reinstated a year later, Harvey was never again employed in an official capacity and further promotions were only bestowed as a matter of seniority.
Harvey was also notable in his time for his extravagant lifestyle. The deaths of his father and elder brother while he was still a young man provided Harvey with a considerable fortune, much of which he squandered gambling in London. Harvey's exploits at the gaming tables became legendary, one story claiming that he once bet £100,000 on a single game of chance and lost, only to win most of it back on the following throw. Despite his dissolute lifestyle, Harvey was married and had numerous children; he was survived by six daughters and had three sons who predeceased him.
Early life [ edit ]
Eliab Harvey was born in Chigwell, Essex to William and Emma Harvey. His father William Harvey was a Member of Parliament for Essex, but died when Harvey was only five years old, in 1763.[1] Until 1768, Harvey was raised at the family estate of Rolls Park in Chigwell, which had passed to his elder brother William on the death of their father. Harvey then attended Westminster School for two years before moving to Harrow School in 1770.[1] At the age of thirteen in 1771, Harvey was entered onto the books of the naval schooner HMS Mary, although he did not actually serve aboard the ship. Utilising a standard legal fiction of the time, Harvey's name was entered on the ship's books without his actual presence, a ruse that would provide him with sufficient seniority to gain rapid promotion when he did enter the navy. In his summer holidays from school, Harvey served at sea, joining HMS Orpheus in 1773.[1]
Entering the Navy fully in May 1774, Harvey became a midshipman aboard the sloop HMS Lynx and spent the next two years in the West Indies. Briefly returning to Britain at the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War, Harvey returned to the eastern seaboard of North America late in 1776 aboard HMS Mermaid, before transferring to the flagship of the North America Station HMS Eagle. From there Harvey joined HMS Liverpool on temporary assignment, only to be wrecked on Long Island aboard the frigate in 1778. Harvey rejoined Eagle after the wreck and returned to Britain in her. He was promoted to lieutenant on 25 February 1779.[1]
Following his promotion, Harvey took a leave of absence from the Navy which would last three years. He took over the parliamentary seat for Maldon in Essex in 1780 on the death of Richard Savage Nassau and then won it again in the general election a few months later, holding the seat for the next four years. In 1781 Harvey briefly commanded HMS Dolphin, but took leave once again four months later. In 1782 Harvey again returned to the Navy just as peace was agreed and was promoted to commander on 21 March 1782, briefly taking over the sloop HMS Otter before rapidly making the jump to Post Captain less than a year later, on 20 January 1783.[2]
Civilian life [ edit ]
Lady Louisa Harvey with two of her children ( Thomas Lawrence
With the peace of 1783, Harvey again took leave from the navy, seeing out his parliamentary term and continuing his notorious lifestyle of gambling and debauchery. The young death of Harvey's elder brother William Harvey, MP in April 1779 had provided Harvey with a substantial fortune, which he immediately began squandering in epic nights at London's fashionable drinking and gambling establishments. Harvey gained a reputation among this crowd for playing exceptionally high stakes; one often repeated story concerns his loss, on his 21st birthday in 1779, of over £100,000 in a single game of hazard to a Mr O'Byrne. O'Byrne, recognising that such a sum would bankrupt his opponent, refused to take more than £10,000, insisting that they roll the dice again to determine the fate of the remaining £90,000. Harvey won and kept his fortune, but reportedly still failed to pay the £10,000.[1]
Despite this riotous lifestyle, Harvey married Lady Louisa Nugent in 1784. Louisa was a daughter of Robert Nugent, 1st Earl Nugent and co-heir to his substantial wealth. The couple had nine children, eight of whom survived infancy and six of whom, all daughters, outlived their father. Harvey's eldest son was killed in action serving in the British Army under the Marquess of Wellington at the Siege of Burgos in 1812. Harvey remained in semi-retirement until 1790, dividing his time between London and Rolls Park.[1]
Return to service [ edit ]
In 1790, Harvey was recalled up to the Navy during the Spanish armament and commanded the frigate HMS Hussar for six months, until the Navy returned to its peacetime complement. Three years later, Harvey was once again recalled to the Navy with the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars. Harvey would remain in service for the next 16 years, only briefly taking leave in 1802 during the Peace of Amiens. In 1793, Harvey became captain of the frigate HMS Santa Margarita in the West Indies. There he participated in the successful campaigns against the French colonies of Guadeloupe and Martinique under Admiral John Jervis.[3] In May 1794 Harvey returned to Britain and served in the squadron under Sir John Borlase Warren which raided the French coast with great success in 1794 and 1795.[4]
In August 1795, Harvey took command of the ship of the line HMS Valiant, initially in the Channel Fleet and later in the West Indies under Sir Hyde Parker. In 1797 Harvey returned to Britain due to ill-health, and was given command of the Essex sea fencibles during the next year.[2] In 1800 Harvey returned to sea in command of HMS Triumph, which he retained until the Peace of Amiens. During the peace he again dabbled in politics, becoming MP for Essex in 1802.[5] Even after returning to the Navy in 1803 as captain of the second rate HMS Temeraire, Harvey remained in parliament, serving until 1812.[6]
Trafalgar [ edit ]
With the resumption of the war against France, Temeraire was attached to the Channel Fleet and blockaded ports in eastern France until 1805, when Harvey was sent to join Horatio Nelson's blockade off Cadiz. When the Battle of Trafalgar was joined on 21 October, Harvey's Temeraire was the second ship in Nelson's division and was a faster and more agile ship than HMS Victory, Nelson's flagship. As a result, Temeraire began to pull ahead of Victory as the division closed on the Franco-Spanish fleet and Harvey was consequently reprimanded by Nelson, who hailed Temeraire: "I will thank you Captain Harvey, to keep your proper station which is astern of the Victory".[7]
During the combat that followed, Harvey was heavily engaged with the enemy, passing behind Bucentaure and astern of Redoutable.[2] The broadside fired into Redoutable reduced the French ship to a wreck and forced its surrender soon afterwards when it became tangled with Victory and Temeraire.[8] The three ships then drifted into the following French Fougueux, British fire disabling her and giving cover to a boarding party led by Temeraire's first-lieutenant, Thomas Fortescue Kennedy, which forced the surrender of Fougueux's crew.[9] In later years Harvey would use this incident for his personal motto "Redoutable et Fougueux".[9]
Once the fleet had returned to port, controversy erupted concerning Harvey's role in the battle. Although his bravery and skill were not questioned, his prominence in the dispatch sent home by Cuthbert Collingwood was. In the dispatch, Harvey was singled out over the other captains for his bravery, Collingwood writing: "I have not words in which I can sufficiently express my admiration of it". As a result of this special mention, Harvey was promoted to rear-admiral on 9 November 1805,[10] and given the honour of being one of Nelson's pallbearers at the admiral's funeral despite their short acquaintance.[11] Harvey's new motto and his penchant for "bragging" further alienated him from his fellow officers.[1]
Retirement [ edit ]
Views of the seats of noblemen and gentlemen in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, Second Series, Volume III, by Rolls Park, the Harvey family home ---- From, Second Series, Volume III, by John Preston Neale , 1826.
Returning to naval service some months after the action, Harvey was given the 80-gun HMS Tonnant as his first flagship, in which he remained until 1809. Serving under Lord Gambier in the Channel Fleet, Harvey was outraged not to be given command of the British ships in action at the Battle of Basque Roads. Harvey expressed his disgust that command had been given to the more junior Lord Cochrane in no uncertain terms to Gambier, and was dismissed from the admiral's council as a result.[1] When the operation was initially successful, Gambier refused to support Cochrane and as a result an opportunity to annihilate the French Atlantic Fleet was lost. The ensuing dispute lasted years and involved a court martial that eventually acquitted Gambier, and only ended with Cochrane's dismissal from the service five years later.[1]
Harvey was not embroiled in the political arguments surrounding the action, as he had resigned his commission on 23 May 1809, before the attack went ahead, in protest at Cochrane's preferment. Returning to the Navy a year later on 21 March 1810, Harvey was never again called to active service, Gambier blocking his efforts to obtain gainful employment. Despite his failure to return to the sea, Harvey's seniority brought more promotions; he made vice-admiral in 1810 and finally became a full admiral in 1819.[12][13] He was also made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in 1815 when the order was reformed,[14] becoming a Knight Grand Cross in 1825.[15] Harvey's retirement included a further period in politics, returning to his seat as MP for Essex between 1820 and 1830.[9]
Harvey died in 1830 at his family estate of Rolls Park and was buried in the Harvey family crypt at St Andrews Church at Hempstead in Essex, which contains the remains of over 50 family members, including his ancestor's brother, Dr. William Harvey.[1] His coffin is still in the crypt, and can be viewed on request.[7] On the wall of church is a hatchment in his honour originally placed shortly after his death and restored in 1958 after it was destroyed in the partial collapse of the church in 1884. A large wall memorial to him is also visible in the church, which also commemorates his youngest son William, who died in 1823 aged 22.[16]
The crest of the Harvey Grammar School of Folkestone bears Harvey's motto as well as his ship's name 'Temeraire'. The crest was designed by Eliab Harvey.
Ancestry [ edit ]
Ancestors of Eliab Harvey Sir Eliab/Elias Harvey of Chigwell William Harvey of Chigwell Dorothy Whitmore William Harvey of Chigwell Sir Robert Dycer Dorothy Dycer William Harvey of Chigwell Ralph Williamson of Berwick Mary Williamson Admiral Sir Eliab Harvey of Rolls Park, Chigwell Stephen Skinner/Skynner/Skymer of Walthamstow Emma Skinner/Skynner/Skymer
Notes [ edit ] |
The Former Fire Hall No. 3 is a municipal designated historic building located in the Nutana neighborhood of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.
With the University of Saskatchewan being built on the east side of the river this enhanced the need for a new fire hall on the east side. Built in 1911 with the latest equipment and both horse drawn and gasoline-powered fire fighting equipment the facility was again modernised in 1926.[1] In 1958 the fire department left the facility for a new Fire Hall #3 that was constructed on York Avenue and Taylor Street.[2]
Side View
As a result of the cold war in 1959, the building became the headquarters for the Department of Civil Defense; the basement was converted into a radiation-proof communications bunker, and an emergency food kitchen was also built to be used in the event of nuclear war. [1]
Today the building is privately owned and houses a bar and restaurant. [2] |
A recent wave of research is supporting the argument that psychedelics could be a key to improving mental health for patients who don’t respond well to conventional treatments. The controversial class of drugs, which includes LSD and MDMA, have always generated research attention (several were created in labs as potential treatments before becoming street drugs), but recent studies are revealing therapeutic benefits that can’t be denied.
The latest study focused on psilocybin, the psychoactive compound found in magic mushrooms, in the treatment of chronic depression. The results suggest that when taken in therapeutic doses, the drug “resets” brain areas associated with depression and reduces symptoms for weeks after the initial dose.
Researchers administered the drug to a small group of patients who hadn’t responded well to standard depression treatments. Two doses, 10 mg and 25 mg, were given a week apart. The patients’ brains were scanned using fMRI before and after taking psilocybin to assess changes in activity, particularly in the network of brain areas associated with symptoms of chronic depression.
The results were striking. Brain scans showed significantly less activity in the patients’ amygdala, the brain area central to our stress, fear and anxiety response, and a stabilization of activity in other brain areas.
“We have shown for the first time clear changes in brain activity in depressed people treated with psilocybin after failing to respond to conventional treatments,” said Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris, Head of Psychedelic Research at Imperial College London, who led the study.
The patients reported uplifted moods, feeling less stressed and an overall improvement in symptoms for five weeks after the treatment. The researchers report that both the brain scan results and the patients’ anecdotal responses point to a “reset” affect across the brain network associated with depression symptoms.
“Several of our patients described feeling ‘reset’ after the treatment and often used computer analogies. For example, one said he felt like his brain had been ‘defragged’ like a computer hard drive, and another said he felt ‘rebooted’,” reported Dr. Carhart-Harris in a press statement. “Psilocybin may be giving these individuals the temporary kick start they need to break out of their depressive states.”
Though the results are encouraging, this was a small study that lacked a control group. Future research will have to follow up with more participants, better controls and a check for a possible placebo effect. For now, however, the results offer preliminary support for what a growing list of studies are showing: psychedelics could eventually become an important tool for treating treatment-resistant mental health conditions, depression among them.
The study was published in the journal Scientific Reports.
You can find David DiSalvo on Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, and at his website,daviddisalvo.org. |
GENEVA (Reuters) - Atheist groups, who say millions of non-religious people face persecution in many parts of the world, accused the European Union on Friday of failing to stand up for their rights in the United Nations.
They spoke as the 47-member U.N. Human Rights Council approved a resolution drafted by the EU calling for an end to religious intolerance and violence and for all governments to observe freedom of religion and belief.
But the campaigners, who had earlier given the council a report on abuse of atheists, mainly in Muslim countries, had sought a text making clear its injunctions included them.
“The wording of this resolution shows how the world, even the secular West, ignores the plight of atheists and other non-believers in many countries,” said Sonja Eggericks, president of the International Humanist and Ethical Union.
“Many people who recognize no supernatural being are suffering and even dying for trying to exercise their right to hold and profess their views,” she said in a statement sent to Reuters from Brussels.
Elizabeth O’Casey of the U.S.-based Centre for Inquiry said the EU refusal to include a direct reference to non-believers as needing protection alongside religious minorities “fails many millions of people across the globe”.
But officials from the 27-member EU said they believed it was clear that the resolution - passed by consensus in the council where in the past there have been fierce struggles over religious freedom - covered believers and non-believers.
Introducing the non-binding resolution to the council, the EU described it as condemning “all forms of violence against, intolerance towards and discrimination of people on the basis of their religious or non-religious identity.”
Diplomats said the EU had omitted a specific reference to the need for protection for atheists, whose numbers are reported in recent surveys as growing strongly around the globe, in a deal with Islamic countries.
Under that alleged deal, member states of the 57-nation Organisation of Islamic Cooperation on the council would accept the EU resolution in return for EU approval of their own resolution condemning religious intolerance.
The Islamic bloc’s resolution is seen by some human rights and free speech campaigners as a continuation under another guise of its 10-year drive, suspended in 2011, to get a U.N. agreement banning “defamation of religion.” |
Photographs that ran in the Rodong Sinmun shows Kim surrounded by a large group of party officials, posing before the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun. Photo by Rodong Sinmun
SEOUL, Feb. 19 (UPI) -- Recent photographs of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un appeared to have been doctored, prompting speculation regarding Kim's wariness about his personal safety as tensions rise on the peninsula.
The photographs that ran on the seventh page of state newspaper Rodong Sinmun on Friday show Kim surrounded by a large group of party officials, posing before the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, South Korean newspaper JoongAng Ilbo reported.
Kumsusan is also the mausoleum of the late Kim Il Sung, North Korea's founder.
But something doesn't look quite right.
RELATED Blacklisted ship continues trips to Korean peninsula
On closer inspection, the main flag at the top of the building flutters in one direction, while a group of flags in the background flies in the opposite way, an unlikely phenomenon if wind was blowing at the time the photograph was taken.
The newspaper also ran multiple photographs of the scene, each time showing a different set of officials posing with Kim. But in each photograph, the flags appear to be identical, leading one unidentified South Korean official to say the images were falsified.
The photograph was likely taken the day prior, on Feb. 17, when the United States flew F-22 stealth fighters across South Korean airspace. Experts have said aircraft that cannot be detected by radar are the weapons Kim "fears the most," and the photographs could have been doctored in order to hide Kim's exact whereabouts, the Seoul official said.
But other aspects of the images look real, the official said, adding it's unlikely that North Korea also doctored the images of personnel at the scene.
North Korea has previously been suspected of doctoring other images of events where Kim was in attendance, including a 2013 visit to a training exercise of Pyongyang's hovercraft. North Korea also allegedly falsified images of Masikryong Ski Resort in 2014 – a lavish park reserved for the nation's elite.
Kim and Pyongyang's favored class live at the height of luxury, by North Korean standards, and their appetite for imported items continues to grow.
South Korean television network KBS reported Kim has imported 50 percent more luxury items than his father, the late Kim Jong Il, since he assumed power. Those goods are worth $2.09 billion, according to Seoul intelligence. |
FILE - In this Monday, Jan. 26, 2015, file photo, Logan Green, co-founder and chief executive officer of Lyft, displays his company's "glowstache" during a launch event in San Francisco. On Monday, Jan. 4, 2016, General Motors Co. announced it is investing $500 million in ride-sharing company Lyft Inc. GM gets a seat on Lyfts board as part of the partnership, which could speed the development of on-demand, self-driving cars. (AP Photo/Noah Berger, File) ORG XMIT: NYBZ145 less FILE - In this Monday, Jan. 26, 2015, file photo, Logan Green, co-founder and chief executive officer of Lyft, displays his company's "glowstache" during a launch event in San Francisco. On Monday, Jan. 4, ... more Photo: Noah Berger Photo: Noah Berger Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Lyft, Albany airport to negotiate ride-sharing access 1 / 3 Back to Gallery
Colonie
Lyft has reached out to the Albany County Airport Authority, seeking to begin service there now that ride-sharing is about to become legal across New York state.
One section of legislation approved last month by the state legislature gave airports the authority to enter into contracts or other agreements with ride-sharing companies, and regulate and charge fees for access.
The Albany County Airport Authority, which took the lead in lobbying for the clause, on Monday approved its own plan to issue operating permits to so-called transportation network companies such as Lyft and Uber that would charge a $2 pick-up and $2 drop-off fee per vehicle, as well as a one-time $5,000 fee to set up service.
Capitaland Taxi, which has the airport taxi concession, would see its pick-up and drop-off fee also rise to $2 per vehicle from $1.43 currently. Capitaland Taxi paid the authority $73,072 in 2016, up from $68,732 a year earlier.
Demand for airport taxis is expected to drop once Lyft, and possibly Uber, begin serving the airport, said Peter Mandle, executive vice president of InterVistas Consulting, which studied fee structures and ride-sharing impact at airports similar to Albany.
"I don't think (taxis) will drop out. They'll see a significant reduction in business," Mandle said. "There's always a number of people who for any number of reasons prefer to take a taxi."
Capitaland Taxi, which had committed to dedicating a fleet of 13 seven-passenger late-model vans to airport service in return for its exclusive taxicab concession, should see that commitment reduced, Mandle recommended.
Albany's $2 fee per vehicle would be tied with Norfolk International for lowest of the airports studied. Savannah/Hilton Head International charges $2.50, while Des Moines International charges $3 and Bradley International outside Hartford charges $3.50.
Ride-sharing services are expected to be available after July 8. |
A California court has overturned the decision to grant Hong Yen Chang the right to practice in the state 125 years after refusing him admission on grounds of race
In a sweet ending to an American dream denied, a Chinese immigrant will posthumously receive a California law license 125 years after the state bar refused to admit him because of his race.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The California Supreme Court righted what it called a “grievous wrong” on Monday, posthumously granting a law license to Hong Yen Chang, a Chinese immigrant whose application 125 years ago was denied solely because of his race. Photograph: AP
On Monday, the state’s highest court unanimously agreed to grant Hong Yen Chang admission to the state bar, overturning a 1890 court decision that denied the Columbia law school graduate the right to practice in the state.
“Even if we cannot undo history, we can acknowledge it and, in so doing, accord a full measure of recognition to Chang’s pathbreaking efforts to become the first lawyer of Chinese descent in the United States,” the unsigned ruling said.
“In granting Hong Yen Chang posthumous admission to the California Bar, we affirm his rightful place among the ranks of persons deemed qualified to serve as an attorney and counselor at law in the courts of California,” the ruling said.
In 1890, the state supreme court found that even though Chang was qualified to practice law – and was allowed to in the state of New York – he was ineligible for admission to the California bar, based on a provision of the federal Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 that denied citizenship to Chinese immigrants.
Rachelle Chong, the great-grand niece of Chang and a prominent lawyer in San Francisco, said the family has known about her great-uncle’s plight for decades but no one ever expected the case would be reversed.
“We are just so flattered and thrilled,” Chong told the Guardian.
In its ruling, the court said the “legal and policy underpinnings” of the 1890 decision had since been discredited.
In 1972, the state court found it “constitutionally indefensible” to forbid non-citizens to practice law, and one year later a US Supreme Court ruling made it the law of land. Last year, the court found Sergio Garcia, an undocumented immigrant, eligible to practice law in the state of California.
“What it’s meant for me is that I shouldn’t take for granted the right to practice law in California,” said Chong, who is one of four members of her family practicing law in the state. “When I became a lawyer in 1984, frankly, it never occurred to me that I couldn’t become a lawyer. But when I found out about great uncle Hong Yen Chang’s case, I realized it’s a privilege to become a lawyer.”
Chang emigrated from China in 1872 as part of an educational program to teach Chinese youth about the west. He went on to earn an undergraduate degree from Yale and a law degree from Columbia University in New York.
When he applied for his New York law license, the state denied him on grounds that he was not a citizen. Like many states at the time, including California, only US citizens or those eligible for citizenship could be admitted to the bar.
Rather than resign to another profession, Chang fought for his right to practice law and eventually persuaded the New York legislature to pass a law allowing him to reapply. A year later, a judge issued him a naturalization certificate, and in 1888 he became the first lawyer of Chinese descent to practice law in the US.
Chang then relocated to California, to serve the growing Chinese community in San Francisco, according to court documents. But there, the high court refused to admit him to the bar, ruling that the New York judge’s decision naturalizing Chang violated the Chinese Exclusion Act.
“Courts are expressly forbidden to issue certificates of naturalization to any native of China,” the California supreme court wrote at the time.
This may likely have been the court’s final say on the matter, had it not been for Gabriel Chin, a professor at UC Davis law school, who urged his students to try to have Chang posthumously admitted to the California bar. In 2011, student members of UC Davis law school’s Asian Pacific American Law Students Association (APALSA) began working on the case, in an effort to win Chang’s law license and “right a historic wrong”.
“The case reminds us that what we do echos through the ages,” Chin said. “The justices in 1890 made a shortsighted decision based on the passions of the moment. And, looking back at the treatment of immigrants throughout history, it reminds us that harsh, xenophobic responses to immigration almost always turn out in retrospect to have been wrong.”
Elaine Won, a second-year law student at UC Davis and the community outreach co-chair of APALSA, said she thought the case was a way to reflect on the impact exclusionary laws have had on immigrants and people of color.
“It’s a great example of how we can provide a substantial remedy for the wrongdoings that have been inflicted on the Asian community,” Won said.
In Monday’s ruling, the court said: “Understanding the significance of our two-page decision denying Chang admission to the bar requires a candid reckoning with a sordid chapter of our state and national history.” It was a chapter marked by strong anti-Chinese sentiment and xenophobia, the court expounded in its ruling. And at the time, several laws on the books were designed to “disadvantage Chinese immigrants”, who immigrated to the state during the Gold Rush in the mid-1800s.
Chong said she was moved by the court’s comprehensive recognition of the state-sanctioned discrimination against Chinese immigrants.
“For [the justices] to have made the time to write a nine-page decision that very carefully reviewed all the bad law, and the xenophobic attitudes of the time, that really means that it was important to them to make the statement that everybody is welcome to be a lawyer,” Chong said. “And that is very important in these times.”
In 2015, the California supreme court looks nothing like the court of 1890. Of the nine justices, three are Asian, one is Hispanic, one is black and four are women. Chong said she believes that a diverse bar will help protect Californians against discrimination.
Part of the significance of this case for me is that the state understands that diversity is important in the bar, and for justice,” Chong said.
“With this decision, the justices have said emphatically that no matter who you are, if you’re qualified to be a lawyer, you shouldn’t be denied that ability to practice and represent the people of California.” |
Justin Trudeau’s Canada offers a liberal, progressive face to the world, one that surely should be applauded in an era of rising bigotry and populism. If Donald Trump is elected, European democrats may increasingly turn to Canada as an important interlocutor across the Atlantic. So how is it that the European Union’s trade dealings with Canada ended up becoming such a focus of anger? Surely Canada, with its solid democracy, its tolerance and openness, stands out as a haven of decency. As Canadian trade minister Chrystia Freeland said, Canada is a “country that shares European values”.
The transatlantic trade deal TTIP may be dead, but something even worse is coming | George Monbiot Read more
But friendliness to Canada has not been readily on offer among parts of Europe’s radical left. Instead, the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (Ceta) – a 1,500-page document seven years in the making – became the target of a spectacularly hostile campaign. For those who waged it, this was a battle in which democracy itself was at stake, not just the question of whether Europe would suddenly be swamped with chlorinated chicken or hormonally altered beef (which it won’t). That Justin Trudeau called the text “progressive” mattered little.
Across social media, warnings were rife that the deal was a “Trojan horse”. Belgium’s Wallonia region (3.5 million inhabitants), which set out to oppose Ceta, was heralded as a champion defending the rights of all European citizens (508 million people). In the end, the treaty was signed, after an “interpretative” document was added to it – but without a single word of the treaty itself being changed.
Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the EU commission, stated an uncomfortable fact. “Nobody protests when we sign an agreement with Vietnam, which is a great democracy. But there are protests when we sign with the terrible Canadian dictatorship,” he said. That did little to sway Ceta critics. These days, anything that smacks of officialdom or of “the establishment” gets swiftly disqualified.
I’m not saying Ceta is perfect, nor that it shouldn’t be scrutinised. Of course, in the negotiation of free trade deals, interests can collide. Finding the right compromise is essential. The anti-Ceta movement in Wallonia and elsewhere was worried about a system of arbitration courts not being independent enough from the pressures of big business. What the objectors overlooked was that Ceta introduced more government oversight than any prior EU trade agreement.
Ceta has been maligned as a dangerous step towards TTIP, even after that deal was put on hold
Rather, I’m asking why so much wrath came down on an EU agreement with a country whose friendliness and proximity to European social-democratic principles should have inspired more trust. Ceta has been maligned as a dangerous step towards the EU-US TTIP agreement, even after that deal was put on hold, if not buried. Ceta also suffered from the Brexit vote, which made governments in Paris and Berlin worry about demands to “repatriate” powers from Brussels. As a result, Wallonia, where the ruling socialists were under pressure from the anti-globalisation radical left, got its 15 minutes of fame. It temporarily blocked the deal with Canada, making the EU look dysfunctional.
These days, the question of what triggers outrage and what doesn’t could be a good topic for academic research. There are so many daunting international issues, from mass slaughter in Syria to refugees drowning off European shores, yet these tragedies fail to produce the same kind of grassroots mobilisation that free trade agreements do.
This is not to say that holding multinationals to account isn’t important – it is. But when looking at the crowds that gather in European cities on trade issues (300,000 demonstrated in Berlin a year ago against TTIP, and other, if smaller, public protests were held against Ceta), I’m reminded of another episode of selective indignation.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau. Photograph: Chris Wattie/Reuters
This was during the 2009 Copenhagen summit on climate. Tens of thousands of activists demonstrated to exert pressure on negotiators, and rightly so. But one of their key slogans was in support of the G77 group of developing nations, which that year happened to be chaired by Sudan – a country whose government had been carrying out atrocities in Darfur, and whose president had just become the object of an international arrest warrant issued by the international criminal court. None of this awkwardness got much mention at the time from climate protesters.
There is a vision of what a progressive Britain could be. It’s called Canada | Gaby Hinsliff Read more
That said, the anti-Ceta movement has served a purpose. It has forced EU officialdom to think much harder about how it needs to convince citizens of the benefits of free trade, at a time when trade has almost become a byword for evil. It has also helped ingrain the notion that transparency and pedagogy (the task of explaining, tirelessly) are essential to the very survival of the European project. At least citizens have stopped ignoring what Brussels is up to.
Trade is a key area where the EU must act as a bloc if it is to be effective globally (if it doesn’t, then China will set the rules). But now, Ceta will likely be held hostage to 38 national and regional assemblies across Europe. This kind of local “vetocracy” is also what happened to the EU-Ukraine association agreement, blocked by a Dutch referendum that required just 300,000 signatures to go ahead. Those who think such trends are good for the anti-globalisation struggle should reflect on how they also affect efforts to forge a decent EU policy on refugees – basically, shattering them.
What’s perhaps most disturbing is that Ceta has been as much criticised by Europe’s far left as it has by the far right. This uneasy but real convergence of some progressives with constituencies that applaud Donald Trump and other nationalist populists should be scrutinised. No doubt it will have been noticed in friendly, democratic Canada.
• This article was amended on 7 November 2016. In the penultimate paragraph it originally said that the EU-Ukraine association agreement was blocked by a Dutch referendum in which 300,000 people took part, but in fact more than 4 million took part. The referendum required 300,000 signatures before it could be conducted. |
Often confused with croquet, the game is becoming ever popular with plans afoot for an international ground
It is a scene that will be familiar to cricket lovers the world over: furious running between the stumps after the smack of leather on willow, applause for a well executed cover drive, and cheers for a rare six.
Yet the shouts of encouragement from the edge of the boundary are in Japanese, and the aural backdrop is provided by countless cicadas nestling unseen in the trees.
Ninja boom: how Japan's secret warriors swapped the shadows for the spotlight Read more
Out in the middle, Japan’s batsmen are making a late attempt to close in on the 148 run target set by their opponents, West Kathmandu cricket club, in their Twenty20 match in Sano, a town of 120,000 people in Tochigi prefecture, north of Tokyo.
In a country where baseball is king, cricket was for many years a sporting curio, of interest mainly to a small number of Japanese expats who had been transferred to cricketing nations by their employers.
While the Japanese public has not taken cricket to their hearts as they have other “foreign” sports – baseball, football and rugby – the idea that Japan could one day compete in a major international tournament no longer sounds as preposterous as it would have done just a few years ago.
In November, the Sano ground – the first dedicated cricket pitch in Japan to meet international standards – will host Japan, China, South Korea and the Chinese Dragons from Hong Kong in the first ever East Asia Cup.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Cricket being played in the foreground of Mount Fuji, Japan. Photograph: Japan Cricket Association
That Japan’s youthful team – their youngest player is 15 – are aiming to reach the latter stages is proof of how quickly the sport has developed in recent years, according to Naoki Alex Miyaji, chief executive of the Japan Cricket Association.
“The gap in ability in international tournaments used to be huge,” Miyaji, 37, said. “We didn’t have what it took to build an innings. If we batted first we were lucky to make it through to lunch.”
Miyaji, whose mother is Scottish, fell in love with cricket during childhood summer holidays spent in the UK, before taking it up at Keio university in Tokyo and going on to make his debut for Japan in 2000.
Japanese cricket’s turning point came several years ago when he returned from working in England, eager to share his love of cricket with his compatriots. To his amazement, local authorities and businesses, desperate to arrest population decline and bring more visitors to the area, agreed to support his plans to turn Sano into Japan’s first “cricket town”.
The country’s cricketing roots stretch back to 1863, when British merchants and Royal Navy officers played a friendly match on a grassless patch of land in Yokohama. Over the next 150 years, though, Japan would discover a passion for baseball through commercial and diplomatic contact with the US. Cricket was limited to occasional matches between expat communities in Yokohama and another port city, Kobe.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The scorer keeps the board ticking over at the West Kathmandu vs Japan match at Sano. Photograph: Justin McCurry for the Guardian
Cricket did not register in Japan’s sporting firmament until the early 1980s, when inquisitive Japanese university students teamed up with foreign students to form an amateur league.
The formation of the national team in 1986 was the catalyst for a dramatic improvement in the game’s fortunes in a country where many people still confuse cricket with croquet. In 2000, the national team reached a milestone of sorts when they scored 100 runs for the first time in a 50-over match.
Japan, an associate member of the International Cricket Council, is now home to an estimated 3,000 players and 200 teams, including those for U15s, women and university students, in every region of the country. Kanto, where Sano is located, is considered the sport’s spiritual home, with five pitches and plans for the international ground to host 180 matches by the end of the year.
When the MCC toured in 2009, Sano’s cricketers used the opportunity to take the sport into local schools. “The schools around here weren’t that keen before, but when we told them that some important gentlemen from England were coming, they were interested,” Miyaji said.
Coaches from Australia now visit several times a year to teach children of all ages attending more than half of Sano’s 28 schools. “If you’re a kid in Sano, there’s a very good chance you’ve played cricket at least once,” he added.
Despite its roots in the British empire, cricket fits easily into the typical Japanese sports fan’s preoccupation with technique and form, and their fascination with statistics and records. “Cricket is not a sport you can understand just by watching it,” said Miyaji.
“You need to make the effort to learn about it properly, and the Japanese love that. But if you break it down to its basic components, cricket is deceptively simple. Baseball matches can be very low scoring, but in, say, a T20 cricket match, there are always lots of runs.”
As the match in Sano draws to a close, Japan’s battling middle order are struggling to close in on the Nepalese, who win by a comfortable 51 runs and take the three-match series 2-1.
“This is a renewal phase for the Japanese team,” said Chris Thurgate, the match’s Australian umpire and a board member of the Japan cricket association. “There’s genuine competition for places in the national team now that we’ve expanded the player base and there are more junior players coming through.”
Japan’s 33-year-old captain, Masaomi Kobayashi, hadn’t witnessed a single over of cricket until curiosity prompted him to start playing at university.
“This is a young side, so we have a lot to look forward to,” said Kobayashi, still kicking himself after being stumped early in his innings. “Our immediate aim is to become one of the top three or four teams in the region.
“But our dream is to one day make the qualifying rounds of the World Cup.” |
The VE-Day Arsenal of Democracy celebration over Washington, D.C., may have appeared to go off without a hitch. But what most people didn't realize is that one pilot experienced what he thought was an inflight fire during the stellar flyover.
Smoke in the cockpit appeared as the TBM Avenger pilot was flying in formation with several other airplanes. The pilot acted very quickly, reported the emergency, opened the windows to clear the smoke and made a perfect landing at the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
While the pilot thought a fire had erupted in flight, what he later described as a "1,500 psi pinhole hydraulic leak" caused the smoke to appear.
A TBM Avenger pilot released an intense video of his emergency landing at DCA and an assessment of what happened. Check out the video here. |
It’s official: We’re going to meet at least one member of Samwell Tarly’s family next year.
HBO’s Game of Thrones has cast UnREAL star Freddie Stroma in season 6.
The English actor is going to play Dickon Tarly — Samwell’s brother.
Stroma is best known for his role on Lifetime’s acclaimed dramedy UnREAL where he played the sought-after bachelor on a fictionalized The Bachelor-type reality show. He also appeared in the final two Harry Potter films and has a role in the upcoming Michael Bay movie 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi. He is likely to appear in the second season of UnREAL, as well.
There’s not much known about Dickon from George R.R. Martin’s novels upon which Thrones is based. Dickon is described as Sam’s younger and more physically capable brother. Their father, the military commander Lord Randyll Tarly, cruelly forced Sam to choose between joining the Night’s Watch or death so that Dickon could be his heir instead. When we last saw Sam in season 5, he was leaving Castle Black with Gilly for Oldtown to study to become a maester.
Previously, EW exclusively reported that Thrones cast former Deadwood star Ian McShane in a mystery role and tapped silver screen legend Max von Sydow to play a recast Three-Eyed Raven. Thrones, which is nominated for 24 Emmys this year, returns next spring.
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Our ears may not be the only reason we have more trouble understanding what people say as we age, suggests recent research published in the Journal of Neurophysiology. Certain parts of our brain are to blame too.
Researchers recruited two groups of native English speakers, young and old, to undergo a series of tests. The volunteers listened to someone talking to them while dealing with someone else in the background speaking either English or Dutch. No matter what the level of background noise and despite having clinically normal hearing, the older volunteers were less able to comprehend speech than their younger counterparts, particularly when both speakers spoke English. Additional tests found that older participants on average had greater neurological deficits in their midbrain and cortex.
Because the older volunteers were much worse at speech comprehension when listening to two English speakers, the researchers in the study concluded that “neural processing is strongly affected by the informational content of noise.” In other words, while our aging brains can still easily filter out meaningless background noise, they’re less able to tell apart similar sounding speech.
Pixabay, Public Domain
Typically, hearing loss is caused by damage to the hair cells found within our inner ear and/or to the auditory nerves that transport electronic signals (converted from sound waves) to the brain. But in recent years, more attention has been paid to subtler ways our hearing can be impaired. Earlier this September, a study published in PLOS-ONE found that damage to the synapses (the structures where signals are transmitted between nerve cells) in auditory nerve cells can contribute to reduced hearing sensitivity.
Standard hearing tests don’t detect these types of impairment, though, so there’s no way to know how many people right this moment may be suffering from so-called hidden hearing loss.
Thankfully, because hearing loss is a gradual process, there are plenty of ways we can prevent or at least slow down its appearance. That can include everything from wearing earplugs at a noisy workplace to avoiding especially loud concerts and blaring headphones. And even after some hearing loss has occurred, the use of hearing aids can prevent it from getting worse.
Indeed, while one of every twenty people worldwide has disabling hearing loss, according to the World Health Organization. fully half of these cases could have been prevented with proper precaution.
Source: Effect Of Informational Content Of Noise On Speech Representation In The Aging Midbrain And Cortex. Journal of Neurophysiology. 2016. |
Unboxing
Like its predecessor, Samsung Galaxy S6 Active ships in a white/orange retail box with AT&T branding. Inside it, you will find the handset, a charger, a microUSB cable, and quick start guide.
The retail package of Samsung Galaxy S6 Active
This year, Samsung and AT&T have opted not to include a stereo headset with the smartphone. Users will have to pick one up on their own dime.
Design, build quality, handling
You will be hard-pressed to tell Samsung Galaxy S6 Active apart from its predecessor. Save for the different placement of the heart rate sensor, the newcomer is practically identical to the SM-G870A.
Samsung Galaxy S6 Active in the flesh
Just like a year ago, Samsung Galaxy S6 Active look unmistakably like a member of the Korean giant's flagship family, but with added layers of armor. Some might argue that the device is not the best looking one around, but, after all, Samsung has not designed it to win beauty contests. That's what the regular Galaxy S6 and the Galaxy S6 edge are for.
Samsung has once again opted to offer its rugged flagship smartphones in bold color schemes. This time around, they include Camo White and Camo Blue in addition to just plain gray. We reckon that the camo patterns suit the Galaxy S6 Active much better than any conventional color.
Build quality of the Samsung Galaxy S6 Active is once again impressive. The device's polycarbonate body is just a tough as you'd expect, thus allowing you to be truly careless with its handling and not use a protective case. Furthermore, its water and dust resistance ensure that it will make it out of just about every life event unscathed.
Physical measures of the smartphone are 146.8 x 73.4 x 8.6 mm, while its weight tips the scale at 150 grams. Samsung Galaxy S6 Active has almost the same footprint as the outgoing model and (unsurprisingly), it is considerably bulkier than the regular model (6.8 mm thick and with 138 grams of weight).
Samsung Galaxy S6 Active alongside its regular sibling
The device is easy to handle, thanks to its grippy back and textured polycarbonate frame. Of course, the Galaxy S6 Active doesn't quite match the superb tactility of the regular model, but it more than makes up for it with its ruggedness.
Handling the Galaxy S6 Active
Like last year's Samsung Galaxy S5 Active, the successor has one major handling advantage over its regular sibling. Its hardware back and recent apps buttons cannot be pressed accidentally like the capacitive ones of the SM-G920.
Controls
Above the display we find the earpiece, a couple of sensors and the 5MP F/1.9 selfie camera. A trio of keys for navigating your way through Samsung's TouchWiz UX.
The view above and below the display
The volume rocker and the custom shortcut key are located on the left side of the device. The power/lock key and the nano-SIM card slot sit on the right.
The sides of the smartphone
The top of the Galaxy S5 Active features the 3.5mm audio jack, a secondary microphone and the IR port that lets the smartphone remotely control various home appliances. On the bottom, you will find the microUSB port and the mouthpiece. This time around, the microUSB port doesn't need a flap cover like in past Galaxy Active iterations.
The top and bottom of the device
The back of the handset is home to the 16MP camera lens with LED flash, the heart-rate monitor, as well as the single loudspeaker. A Samsung and an AT&T logo keep them company.
The back of the Galaxy S6 Active
Samsung Galaxy S6 Active does not feature a removable back cover like past iterations. This feature is probably the reason why the device offers higher IP rating than its predecessors. |
A social media study ‘Girls Are Ok, Are Guys,’ conducted by the online matchmaking brand Bharat Matrimony, attempted to bust some myths about what is acceptable to girls when it comes to finding a life partner.
The survey witnessed over 2100 responses. Bharat Matrimony posed 10 “Are You Ok” questions to girls including “if the guy is a mamma’s boy”, “someone who doesn’t like shopping, “someone who leaves stuff all over the house”, “someone who’s younger to you!
Some of the key insights from the survey:
# A whopping 97 percent of girls said that they were ok to marry a guy younger than them.
# 80 percent of those surveyed said that they have no problem with a mamma’s boy and it definitely does not mean they lack independence in life.
# 95 percent of the audience said that are fine with living in a joint family. Out of this, 60 percent were girls and 35 percent guys.
# 90 percent of the girls say that they would leave the room as it is until he cleans the room he has messed up!
# Lack of patience and boredom are main reasons why guys don’t like to accompany girls for shopping.
# Women say that they would emotionally blackmail a guy or cook a nice meal for him when they wish to get the TV remote in their hands!
# Attitude and understanding are more important than looks while choosing a life partner.
# Guys don’t need to sacrifice their hobbies and can continue to play cricket or pursue other games and arts even after marriage.
# Most girls feel that their individuality needs to be respected and that they should not be compared with the guy’s mother.
# 85 percent girls prefer to find a life partner who lives close to their hometown since they can continue to spend time with their parents even after marriage.
Kaushik Tiwari, VP - head of marketing at Matrimony.com said, “Our social media campaign was to dispel myths about what girls are okay with when it comes to marriage. The campaign offered a platform to build conversations around this and the results were surprising. It helps girls and guys understand each other better.”
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First Published: Jun 08, 2017 15:36 IST |
The Mariners have talked to the Padres about acquiring a right-handed reliever, with Nick Vincent, Kevin Quackenbush and Jon Edwards all being mentioned in discussions, Bob Dutton of the Tacoma News Tribune reports. The M’s are looking to add some depth to a pen that has been thinned out by injuries to Charlie Furbush, Evan Scribner and Ryan Cook, while the Padres have a bit of a surplus in their own relief corps.
As A.J. Cassavell of MLB.com notes, Fernando Rodney, Carlos Villanueva and Brandon Maurer are locked into spots in San Diego’s bullpen, leaving Vincent, Quackenbush and Edwards and others vying for the three open spots. Drew Pomeranz is a key figure in this race since he’ll make the roster as either a starter or a reliever, so the number of available bullpen spots could shrink if Pomeranz doesn’t make the rotation.
Padres manager Andy Green noted early in camp that Vincent and Quackenbush were favorites to win jobs, which makes sense given how impressive both righties have been during their time in San Diego. Vincent has a 2.63 ERA, 9.6 K/9 and 4.13 K/BB rate over 150 2/3 relief innings since 2012, while Quackenbush has a 3.28 ERA, 9.1 K/9 and 3.00 K/BB rate over 112 1/2 career innings.
Edwards has the least MLB experience of the three though he has the longest pro career, having been picked by the Cardinals as an outfielder in the 14th round of the 2006 draft. He converted to pitching in 2011 and has consistently missed bats and struggled with his control at both the minor and Major League levels. Edwards has a 4.32 ERA, 11.2 K/9 and 7.6 BB/9 over 25 big league innings.
Vincent is the only one of the trio who is out of options and his numbers did dip a bit last season (lower K/9, higher walk rate, 3.90 SIERA and 4.26 xFIP that belied his 2.53 ERA), so it’s possible San Diego could be exploring its options even though on paper, Vincent is the most established of the three. Quackenbush has been mentioned as a possible closer of the future for the Padres, especially when Craig Kimbrel was dealt, though Rodney’s acquisition would seem to imply that “the Duck” will remain in a setup role for now.
As Dutton notes, the Mariners are planning to use a seven-man bullpen, though there’s a lot of uncertainty about who those seven pitchers will be in the wake of the injuries. Steve Cishek, Joaquin Benoit, Joel Peralta and Tony Zych all have a grasp on right-handed roles with Mike Montgomery and Vidal Nuno serving as the two southpaws. If a new righty reliever is added, the M’s would send Donn Roach, Mayckol Guaipe and Blake Parker to Triple-A. |
Amazon S3, the cloud-based file storage system used by over 100,000 websites, suffered an outage that affected large swaths of the internet, highlighting the web’s “centralization” issue.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world’s largest provider of internet-based computing services, and their simple storage service, known as S3, is widely relied upon. Amazon S3 hosts images and files for over one hundred thousand websites and apps. That’s why a recent four-hour outage nearly brought the web to a halt.
The average webpage’s content is hosted from different services and locations, so when a particular service goes down, parts of that webpage often become unavailable. But when so many webpages rely on one service to host integral parts of their operation, and that service goes down, myriad issues can start cropping up.
That’s what happened when S3 went down yesterday. Many websites use S3 to host their images and data, and as such, many websites and apps, like Netflix, Medium, and Slack, found their images weren’t loading, among other problems. Back in October 2016, a botnet attacked the domain name service (DNS) provider Dyn, and effectively shut down a large chunk of the East Coast internet for several hours. This was because, like with S3, hundreds of thousands of websites relied solely on Dyn’s services.
As of this writing, it is unknown whether the S3 issue was caused by an attack, with Amazon only stating that they were experiencing “high error rates.” So even when things are running “normally” (bugs are an unavoidable aspect of running any software, like the recent Cloudbleed incident), there is still a need for more decentralization. S3 isn’t entirely centralized, with all their files hosted on a massive hard drive or anything; other parts of the world had no issue accessing their S3 content. But when the service to entire regions of a country can go down, that’s still too big a single point of failure.
When S3 was experiencing errors, the AWS Service Health Dashboard showed green checkmark images across the board, indicating everything was running smoothly, even though it certainly wasn’t. This is because the Service Health Dashboard hosts the red X images (meant to replace the green checkmarks when everything is NOT fine) on S3, the same service that went down. Since S3 hosts its own health report, it obviously couldn’t let anyone know it wasn’t working properly. It’s this exact type of centralized redundancy that can be solved through decentralization.
Events like these recent service availability issues are practically advertisements for competing decentralized services like InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) and Swarm. IPFS is designed to replace HTTP, the Hypertext Transfer Protocol that powers the World Wide Web. With IPFS, instead of your computer searching for a specific server that hosts the content you’re looking for, it just searches for the content directly. Due to IPFS’s decentralized manner of storing data, a server could go down without affecting a user’s ability to retrieve a file stored on IPFS. This reliability is what makes a decentralized content delivery network (CDN) so ideal.
Swarm is Ethereum’s version of IPFS, acting as a decentralized CDN, but with a built in rewards system as well. While IPFS has Filecoin to incentivize data storage, Swarm will use Ether. Swarm is not only a CDN, but a distributed storage platform as well. Swarm plans to do this by breaking up files into small chunks of data, and then distributing those chunks across its network of nodes. Those chunks will be recompiled back into a file via the Ethereum Name Service, which will act as a DNS for Ethereum. By linking human-readable file names to their cryptographically secured, decentralized chunks of data, a file is safely stored in the cloud until it is called upon.
The more the web becomes decentralized, the more reliable it will be. Centralization generally leads to a single point of failure, which is not ideal for any system that requires high availability. Decentralization will help to make online services more resilient against issues or attacks. It will be the way of the future, as Web 3.0 pushes away from centralization and embraces a more distribution-based approach to offering services. |
A Japanese biologist, Susumu Ohno, first recognized X-chromosome inactivation in the late 1950s. In every female cell that he and his colleagues studied, they found that one of the two X chromosomes had shriveled into a dormant clump. Scientists would later find that almost no proteins were being produced from the clump, indicating that it had been shut down.
The British geneticist Mary F. Lyon realized that she could learn more about X-chromosome inactivation by breeding mice, because some color genes sit on the X. In 1961 she reported that female mice sported patches of hair with their mother’s color and others with their father’s.
Getting a deeper look at how females shut down their X chromosomes has remained a challenge in the decades since Dr. Lyon’s discovery. In recent years, Dr. Jeremy Nathans, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Johns Hopkins University, and colleagues have developed a way to make X chromosomes from different parents light up. They inserted a set of genes into the X chromosomes of mice. The genes produced a green fluorescent protein, but only if their X chromosome was active and they were exposed to a particular chemical trigger.
Dr. Nathans and his colleagues engineered other mice to produce a red protein from active X chromosomes in response to a different chemical. The researchers bred the altered mice to produce female pups. The pups inherited a green X from one parent and a red one from the other.
The scientists then added both of their color-triggering chemicals to the mouse cells. The cells lit up in a dazzling mosaic of reds and greens. One cell might shut down the mother’s X, while its neighbor shut down the father’s.
In recent years, scientists have increasingly appreciated that our cells can vary genetically — a phenomenon called mosaicism. And X-chromosome inactivation, Dr. Nathans’s pictures show, creates a genetic diversity that’s particularly dramatic. Two cells side by side may be using different versions of many different genes. “But there is also much larger-scale diversity,” Dr. Nathans said.
In some brains, for example, a mother’s X chromosome was seen dominating the left side, while the father’s dominated the right. Entire organs can be skewed toward one parent. Dr. Nathans and his colleagues found that in some mice, one eye was dominated by the father and the other by the mother. The diversity even extended to the entire mouse. In some animals, almost all the X chromosomes from one parent were shut; in others, the opposite was true. |
Q. What does it feel like to be a Democrat in a conservative state?
A. Well, it’s pretty lonely. I wouldn’t classify the state as conservative. It’s just the fact that people who are getting elected to a lot of the positions profess to be conservative, but I would think the state is much more broad-minded than that. It’s frustrating, too. I’ve never regretted changing over to being a Democrat. Right now we just don’t have any statewide leadership to turn to. The days of Bob Bullock and Ann Richards and Pete Laney and those guys, who were all great leaders, they’ve either retired or passed away.
Q. Why did you switch parties?
A. The Republican Party just basically got taken over by the Tea Party. To me, conservative is a term that is not realistic in today’s world. Nobody goes to a hospital and says bring out the conservative doctor. Nobody’s company says we’re going to put out the most conservative product we can. To me, if you’re not progressive then you’re regressive.
[Our photographer, Tamir Kalifa, enters. After some small talk, in which Judge Myers learns Mr. Kalifa is from Maryland, he points out the flags draped in front of his bookcases, including the state flags of Maryland and California, where I grew up.]
A friend of mine had a flag store, and I’ve always kind of liked cotton flags. And so he let me have all the cotton flags because everything is going over to some kind of synthetic fabric. And then I went to the University of Virginia for law school, so I’ve spent some time up that way, and I’ve always thought the Maryland flag was kind of cool. Manny, I got your California flag, and obviously Old Glory. This is a flag of England. And this is a flag that the colonists flew at Bunker Hill, so it’s a colonial flag. I think I brought in Ray Charles to decorate this place here.
Q. What do you do if you need a lawbook behind one of the flags?
A. All that stuff’s online now. If I need a badminton racket or a duck decoy, I’ve got all that stuff. And if you guys want to shoot a few free throws, we’ll do that. I apologize. I’ve been in this location for about 20 years, and it’s just accumulated. |
(Reuters) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc said it is tripling the number of U.S. stores in a pilot program that lets shoppers scan items with their iPhones and pay at self-checkout counters.
A view shows the Walmart logo at an opened Walmart store on Thanksgiving day in North Bergan, New Jersey November 22, 2012. REUTERS/Eric Thayer
Walmart’s “Scan & Go” program will soon be in more than 200 stores, up from about 70. The pilot began near its home office in Bentonville, Arkansas in late 2012, then expanded to Atlanta.
While the program is tripling in size, for now it will be in only a small fraction of Walmart’s more than 4,000 U.S. stores.
“We want our customer feedback to dictate the experience,” Gibu Thomas, senior vice president of mobile and digital at Walmart Global eCommerce, said this week. “You’ll see this roll out to more markets.”
For now, “Scan & Go” only works on Apple Inc devices. An Android version should be out soon, Walmart said.
With more than half of its shoppers using smartphones, Walmart is trying to make shopping more convenient for shoppers who embrace mobile technology. More than half of the customers who have tried the “Scan & Go” feature have used it more than once, Thomas said.
Shoppers scan bar codes on items they want to buy, using the Walmart app on their iPhone, iPod touch or iPad to keep track of the planned purchases and the total cost. Then they pay at a self-checkout screen, bypassing the typical registers.
As it expands the pilot test of “Scan & Go,” Walmart is also adding self-checkout lanes to many more stores. Right now, about 1,500 stores have self-checkout lanes, and another 1,000 to 1,500 stores should get them this year, said Jeff McAllister, senior vice president of Walmart U.S. Innovations.
DIGITAL COUPONS MAY BE COMING
Walmart is bringing “Scan & Go” into a dozen more markets: Denver, Colorado; Phoenix, Arizona; Omaha, Nebraska; Dallas and Austin, Texas; Oklahoma City and Tulsa, Oklahoma; Wyoming; Bozeman, Montana; Seattle, Washington; San Jose, California; and Portland, Oregon.
Users can get an electronic receipt along with a paper one. Walmart has hinted digital coupons may be coming soon.
Scan & Go users pay in the traditional way, not via apps on their devices. The company declined to comment further on mobile payment possibilities.
Last year, Wal-Mart and other retailers joined together to develop Merchant Customer Exchange, a mobile payment network to try to match similar services from Google Inc and eBay Inc, among others. No details have emerged on the project. |
Fujitsu has developed image-processing technology that can be used to track people in security camera footage, even when the images are heavily blurred to protect their privacy.
Fujitsu Laboratories said its technology is the first of its kind that can detect people from low-resolution imagery in which faces are indistinguishable.
Detecting the movements of people could be useful for retail design, reducing pedestrian congestion in crowded urban areas or improving evacuation routes for emergencies, it said.
Fujitsu used computer-vision algorithms to analyze the imagery and identify the rough shapes, such as heads and torsos, that remain even if the image is heavily pixelated. The system can pick out multiple people in a frame, even if they overlap.
Using multiple camera sources, it can then determine if two given targets are the same person by focusing on the distinctive colors of a person’s clothing.
An indoor test of the system was able to track the paths of 80 percent of test subjects, according to the company. Further details of the trial were not immediately available.
“The technology could be used by a business owner when planning the layout of their next restaurant/shop,” a Fujitsu spokesman said via email. “It would also be used by the operators of a large sporting event during times of heavy foot traffic.”
People-tracking know-how has raised privacy concerns in Japan. Last year, the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) was forced to delay and scale down a large, long-term face-recognition study it was planning to carry out at Osaka Station, one of the country’s busiest rail hubs.
The Fujitsu research is being presented to a conference of the Information Processing Society of Japan being held at Tohoku University in northern Japan. The company hopes to improve the accuracy of the system with an aim to commercializing it in the year ending March 31, 2016.
Fujitsu has also been developing retail-oriented technology such as sensors that follow a person’s gaze as he or she looks over merchandise as well as LED lights that can beam product information for smartphones. |
In the spirit of science fictional experimentation, I decided to write my initial review of A Good Day to Die Hard about two hours before seeing the film. I figured, why not? With a movie like this, there are a limited number of directions it could take, so why not test out the theory (or at least the suspicion) that all action films are really the same movie? How much of the review would I have to change after actually seeing the film?
Not a lot, as it turns out. Below is the review I wrote before seeing the movie. Comments in bold are me after seeing the movie
In Japan, there is a giant chocolate statue of Bruce Willis’s John McClane. Two things are unclear: has it been eaten? And if so, by whom? The film that the chocolate Bruce Willis promotes—A Good Day to Die Hard— is a lot like a chocolate statue. It’s a nice idea, but ultimately impractical and not very sturdy. A Good Day to Die Hard does ultimately suck, but not profoundly so. Its lack of charm isn’t exactly offensive, just a little embarrassing. We never thought John McClane would end up being the weird uncle at Thanksgiving who no one wants to talk to, but at this point, that’s the unfortunate (but unavoidable) vibe at play in this latest installment of the franchise.
(Update, post-viewing: I’m right so far.)
Whereas the last Die Hard film focused on McClane’s daughter, this installment gives us a bromance between McClane and his son Jack (Jai Courtney). Personally, I found this young guy/old guy pairing more interesting and fun than that of Willis with Joseph Gordon Levitt in Looper. (But then again, Looper wasn’t supposed to be fun.) Die Hard movies are supposed to be fun. As long as the viewer is having a good time, we don’t really have to worry if the film is “quality,” right? Well, yes and no. One could adopt a pure pleasure- over-substance attitude toward film criticism, but the resulting reviews would inevitably end up sounding like they were written by somebody’s grandparents who only watch movies on Pay-Per-View when they’re very, very bored.
(Update, post-viewing: I’m still correct, and also, you should watch this movie on Pay-Per-View. In a hotel room. Alone. And sad.)
The original Die Hard didn’t exactly break new ground for action movies, per se, but it did, I think, introduce a certain permissive element into the zeitgeist in terms of how we can feel about explosions. In the grand scheme of American action movies, Die Hard was one of the first films that told us “it’s okay to laugh at explosions.” John McClane is a quintessentially American character, not just because he swears and is from New York City, but because Bruce Willis himself was probably produced by a mass hallucination we’ve all been having about what a “cool regular guy” is like. From all of our American psyche Bruce Willis came, and he’s here to stay until the day he dies.
Or is he? A Good Day to Die Hard, while totally entertaining, certainly shows the cracks in character/franchise. What is the premise of ANY Die Hard movie? Easy: John McClane accidentally finds himself in a situation where he has to thwart a plot being perpetrated by a group of terrorists in spite of being outnumbered and operating with limited resources.
(Update, post-viewing: this turned out to be slightly wrong. John McClane intentionally goes to Russia in the film to save his son from being thrown in jail. Or something. Still. Only one word wrong out of hundreds, so far.)
Essentially, John McClane is a more hardcore, gun-toting, and (now) bald MacGyver. Working with what he has, he figures out how to win. This time out, he’s got his good-looking, somewhat charming son with him, who does at one point, get to utter the infamous “Yippee ki-yay, motherfucker” line.
(I was totally wrong about this. Jack does not do the line. Instead, the famous “Yippee ki-yay, motherfucker” is uttered only once, by Bruce Willis, as he drives a truck out of a helicopter, to which he has affixed a chain, pulling the truck and helicopter down. Also, Jack is not that charming.)
Jack is a nice kid, but as with Shia LaBeouf and Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Crystal Skull, his presence is a sad reminder of how much older Bruce Willis is now, compared to when he started on this whole Die Hard odyssey. All Die Hard movies are Bruce Willis films, but all Bruce Willis films are not Die Hard films. I’m not sure why this isn’t true, because even when Bruce Willis is in other movies, it still sometimes feels like he’s John McClane (for example, the previously mentioned Looper, The Fifth Element, and the forthcoming G.I. Joe). So, when we’ve got the real deal, and he really is John McClane, it should be an extra-special occasion, right?
Well, this is where the movie sort of falls apart, and it’s down to one simple problem: Bruce Willis can’t actually carry a Die Hard movie on his own. In the first movie the sheer novelty factor can’t be underestimated, plus he has ALAN FUCKING RICKMAN to play off of. Die Hard 2: Die Harder doesn’t have many other awesome actors in it, but it does have a pre-NYPD Blue Dennis Franz, so there’s that. And again, a certain amount of novelty was still holding everything together, combined with the sheer audacity of the sequel’s title. Then came Die Hard 3: With A Vengeance, which arguably has the best actors opposite Willis in any of these flicks. Who is cooler AND swears more than Bruce Willis? Samuel L. Jackson! Who would can play a villain to rival even Alan Rickman? Jeremy Irons! And while for some reason I have a faulty memory of Cillian Murphy being the baddie in Live Free or Die Hard, it was actually Timothy Olyphant, and he was a damn fine evil hacker. Not to mention that Mary Elizabeth Winstead was fantastic as McClane’s daughter.
But this time around? Willis is hanging out with a bunch of C-listers, leaving him all alone with nothing to work with. And even with all the gunfire and explosions, the drag of Bruce Willis having no one cool to play with is there, in nearly every scene. The explosions aren’t funny anymore, and Bruce Willis looks tired.
(Spot on. This is why the movie is bad. Plus, there is a really terrible scene of dialogue between McClane and McClane Jr. while they’re driving to Chernobyl. Further, the bad guy in the movie reminds me a lot of Sybok from Star Trek V. Except he doesn’t feel my pain.)
Is today a good day to see a new Die Hard? Well as one of the bad guys in the movie declares, “this isn’t 1986!” And if it were, then maybe this movie would be fun. But for now, it’s just a little dull.
Final post-viewing update: I swear to all of you, the “this isn’t 1986” line is actually in the movie. I really thought I was going to have to cut that!
As it turns out, I was right about A Good Day to Die Hard in almost every single way. I can’t say I’m offended by the extreme predictability, really, but instead just faintly nostalgic and sad. Like Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the correct response to A Good Day to Die Hard is to declare oneself to be a little bummed out, and then move on and watch the first one again. “Yippee ki-yay to the 80s!”
Ryan Britt is a staff writer for Tor.com. |
As many of you know, I’m currently on a 16-city tour to promote my new book, Your Personal Paleo Code (published in paperback as The Paleo Cure in December 2014). I’m a little over a week in, and I have about two and a half weeks to go. Needless to say, the travel schedule is pretty hectic, but I’m happy to report that I’m feeling great and continuing to enjoy myself. (We’ll see how I feel at the end of January!)
With an itinerary this grueling, self-care becomes even more crucial than it is in my day-to-day life. Here are my top tips for staying healthy and sane while on the road.
#1: Stay active
Staying active can be difficult while on the road, since travel often involves long periods of sitting (whether in airplanes, trains, or cars). Yet I’ve found that it’s one of the most important things to make sure doesn’t slip while I’m away from home. Exercise stimulates the immune system, releases endorphins (feel-good chemicals), and keeps your brain sharp. Here’s how I stay active during my travel:
Head to the hotel fitness center . Whenever I book a hotel, I make sure it has a good fitness center—or at least a connection to a nearby fitness center if there isn’t one in the hotel itself.
. Whenever I book a hotel, I make sure it has a good fitness center—or at least a connection to a nearby fitness center if there isn’t one in the hotel itself. Walk as much as possible . When you’re in a walkable city or town, walk to appointments, restaurants, etc. rather than taking a cab.
. When you’re in a walkable city or town, walk to appointments, restaurants, etc. rather than taking a cab. Do chair squats. If I have a long flight I will often do some chair squats to give my muscles some stimulation. (Hat tip to Dan Pardi for this one!)
#2: Wash your hands!
One of the biggest challenges of air travel during the winter is protecting against colds and flus. Being on an airplane with a bunch of people coughing and sneezing is a great way to get sick. But frequent hand washing (or use of hand sanitizer) can make a real difference and help keep you well. I keep some hand sanitizer in my bag for those times when a faucet and soap aren’t available.
#3: Eat well
This can be a real challenge when you’re staying in hotels and don’t have much time to cook. But there are a few things that can make it a little easier:
Bring snacks . I travel with a LunchBots stainless steel food container. I load this up with Paleo-friendly snacks like beef jerky, macadamia nuts, berries, olives, and dark chocolate. When I’m running low, I head to the local health food store to replenish.
. I travel with a LunchBots stainless steel food container. I load this up with Paleo-friendly snacks like beef jerky, macadamia nuts, berries, olives, and dark chocolate. When I’m running low, I head to the local health food store to replenish. Eat a big meal before you travel . If I have a long travel day, I’ll make sure to have a hearty breakfast and/or lunch before getting on the plane. Then I’ll just eat the snacks in my LunchBots container while traveling. This saves me from terrible airport food (which is, admittedly, getting better in many places).
. If I have a long travel day, I’ll make sure to have a hearty breakfast and/or lunch before getting on the plane. Then I’ll just eat the snacks in my LunchBots container while traveling. This saves me from terrible airport food (which is, admittedly, getting better in many places). Don’t be afraid to fast . Sometimes if there’s nothing I want to eat available I’ll simply fast. Occasional fasting was certainly built into our Paleo ancestors’ lives, and I think travel is one of the best opportunities to give it a shot.
. Sometimes if there’s nothing I want to eat available I’ll simply fast. Occasional fasting was certainly built into our Paleo ancestors’ lives, and I think travel is one of the best opportunities to give it a shot. Plan in advance. I typically choose hotels that have at least a kitchenette, and preferably full kitchens. While I may not have time to shop and prepare full meals, this allows me to at least have hot tea and pick up some kombucha or kefir that I can keep cold. I will also choose hotels based on the menu of their restaurant, or the proximity of other restaurants I’ve checked out nearby. That way I don’t get myself into a situation where I’m starving and the only thing available to eat is something that won’t make me feel well.
#4: Meditate
Meditation is a great way to reduce stress, sharpen your mind, and increase your awareness. I’ve had a sitting mediation practice for more than 20 years now, and it’s an essential part of my daily routine. Whenever I’m on a plane, I designate the first 25-30 minutes of the flight to meditation. I can’t quite remember when I developed this habit, but it has stuck and it serves me well.
#5: Rest and sleep
Just as exercise is especially crucial while traveling, so is rest. Travel is inherently stressful, and it can be difficult to find downtime especially when you’re traveling for work. What works for me is scheduling periods of rest into my day, just as I would schedule any other appointment or commitment. That way, when things get busy and I would otherwise forget to rest, I get a little reminder on my computer or phone that tells me it’s time to take a break.
Along the same lines, I do my best to get at least 7 to 8 hours of sleep on the road—just as I do at home. This isn’t always possible, but it makes a big difference in keeping me healthy.
#6: Get TSA Pre-Check
TSA Pre-Check makes air travel like it was before 9/11. After signing up and getting approved, you get a “known traveler ID” that you provide the airline with when buying your ticket. You can then use a special TSA Pre-Check security line (which is almost always completely empty), and pass through the security process without taking off your shoes, belt or jacket, or removing your laptop or liquids from your bag. This was hands-down the smartest thing I did in preparing for my tour. I regularly passed through security at large airports like O’Hare, SFO, Denver, etc. in less than one minute. (I am not exaggerating.) Seriously, it’s the best thing ever.
One tip for the sign up process. After you fill out the application, you’ll have to visit a TSA office at an airport to get fingerprinted and complete the application. The first appointment time I was offered was four months away! I was devastated because my book tour was only four weeks away. But I found out that if you go to the TSA website to reschedule your appointment, you can usually find cancelations that are much closer. I was able to find an appointment only a week away from when I completed my application.
#7: Be flexible and adaptable
Let’s face it, things don’t always go the way we want them to when we’re traveling. From delayed or canceled flights to mixups at the hotel to bad food experiences, travel can be a real drag. But rather than struggle against things that are beyond your control, why not use these unpredicted events as opportunities? Flight delayed? Maybe it’s time to catch up on those phone calls you’ve been putting off, or write that email or blog post you’ve been procrastinating on.
And don’t forget the 80/20 rule—it’s especially important while traveling. If you’re starving and feel shaky and agitated because you haven’t eaten, but there’s no 100% Paleo-friendly food available, sometimes it’s better to go ahead and eat anyways so you’re not miserable for the next several hours on your flight. In most airports you can at least get a salad with some chicken on top or perhaps a burger with no bun and some lettuce and tomato. Not particularly appetizing, but it will tide you over. Along the same lines, while you may not have time for your full exercise routine, even doing 15–20 minutes of activity in the gym will often make a big difference in how you feel that day.
I hope this helps you to stay sane and healthy during your next trip. Now I’d like to hear from you. What are your top travel tips? |
They're bound to terrorize all tech support personnel sooner or later -- the call from hell. These are calls from people without a clue in their heads. They call tech support lines and refuse to get off until the tech support staff members on the other end have lost all remnants of their sanity. The callers invariably exhibit both incompetence and belligerence, either of which is fully capable of driving even the strongest to the height of frustration or the brink of frenzied hysteria. The content of these calls is a conglomeration of computer stupidities of every variety, glued together with so thick a haze of idiocy, it will cause instant and complete gray hair to anyone remotely associated. Be forewarned.
Tech Support: "Sir, Click Start, then Run, and type the letters C, M, and D."
"Sir, Click Start, then Run, and type the letters C, M, and D." Customer: "Wait a minute, don't run off the end of the earth away from me now. I can only go so fast with this thing."
"Wait a minute, don't run off the end of the earth away from me now. I can only go so fast with this thing." Tech Support: "Sorry, sir. Did you click Start?"
"Sorry, sir. Did you click Start?" Customer: "Where is that start button? Oh, here is is. Now what?"
"Where is that start button? Oh, here is is. Now what?" Tech Support: "Um, did you click it?"
"Um, did you click it?" Customer: "Dammit, no, do that now?"
"Dammit, no, do that now?" Tech Support: "Yes, then click on the word Run."
"Yes, then click on the word Run." Customer: "Dammit, slow down!!! Run, run, run, where the hell is run?"
"Dammit, slow down!!! Run, run, run, where the hell is run?" Tech Support: "Should be a the very bottom of the Start Menu that came up on the screen."
"Should be a the very bottom of the Start Menu that came up on the screen." Customer: "I already clicked Start. Click it again?"
"I already clicked Start. Click it again?" Tech Support: "No, it should be there in the lower left corner."
"No, it should be there in the lower left corner." Customer: "Hey, I found the word Run. You want that instead?"
"Hey, I found the word Run. You want that instead?" Tech Support: "Sure, why not? We'll see if that works. Did you click it?"
"Sure, why not? We'll see if that works. Did you click it?" Customer: "Yes."
"Yes." Tech Support: "Ok, type the letters C, M, and then D."
"Ok, type the letters C, M, and then D." Customer: "Slow down, dammit!! I'm not a programmer!!! I told you I'm only a car dealer!!"
"Slow down, dammit!! I'm not a programmer!!! I told you I'm only a car dealer!!" Tech Support: "Sorry, again, sir, what do you have there?"
"Sorry, again, sir, what do you have there?" Customer: "Z."
"Z." Tech Support: "No, we need 'C' like 'Charlie.'"
"No, we need 'C' like 'Charlie.'" Customer: "C-H-A-R--"
"C-H-A-R--" Tech Support: "Not the whole word 'Charlie,' sir, just the 'C,' please."
"Not the whole word 'Charlie,' sir, just the 'C,' please." Customer: "If you don't want a Charlie, why tell me to type it?"
"If you don't want a Charlie, why tell me to type it?" Tech Support: "Um, what's in the box now?"
"Um, what's in the box now?" Customer: "I'm trying to find the eraser here."
"I'm trying to find the eraser here." Tech Support: "Just hit the backspace key."
"Just hit the backspace key." Customer: "That just moves it further to the right without typing anything."
"That just moves it further to the right without typing anything." Tech Support: "Which backspace key did you press?"
"Which backspace key did you press?" Customer: "The long one in the middle. I pressed it on the back side."
Eventually, we "found" the correct backspace key and got that Z replaced with a C.
Tech Support: "Now that we just have a 'C' there, type an 'M,' like 'Mary,' but just the 'M,' ok?"
"Now that we just have a 'C' there, type an 'M,' like 'Mary,' but just the 'M,' ok?" Customer: "M-O-K."
"M-O-K." Tech Support: "Remember that backspace key?"
"Remember that backspace key?" Customer: "Yes."
"Yes." Tech Support: "Press it twice."
"Press it twice." Customer: "All right, but it took off the 'O' and 'K' you wanted."
"All right, but it took off the 'O' and 'K' you wanted." Tech Support: "Never mind that, I'll live. Now type a 'D,' just the letter D."
"Never mind that, I'll live. Now type a 'D,' just the letter D." Customer: "D. Now what?"
"D. Now what?" Tech Support: "Now press the enter key."
"Now press the enter key." Customer: "E-N-T-E-R."
"E-N-T-E-R." Tech Support: "Is there anyone else around the lot that is maybe a little more familiar with computers than you are?"
"Is there anyone else around the lot that is maybe a little more familiar with computers than you are?" Customer: "Well, my wife uses one at her work and might be a little more familiar. She comes in in an hour. You want to talk to her?"
"Well, my wife uses one at her work and might be a little more familiar. She comes in in an hour. You want to talk to her?" Tech Support: "Yes, please."
Customer: "I have just received your software, but I have these plastic things, what are they?"
"I have just received your software, but I have these plastic things, what are they?" Tech Support: "Could you describe them please?"
"Could you describe them please?" Customer: "They are black plastic, thin, and square."
"They are black plastic, thin, and square." Tech Support: "Anything else?"
"Anything else?" Customer: "They have a metal bit on one edge."
"They have a metal bit on one edge." Tech Support: "Disks?"
"Disks?" Customer: "Well, I don't know, do I? I just brought your package. What do I do with them?"
I see a horrible call ahead, and the customer is quite irate already.
Tech Support: "Put the disks in the drive."
"Put the disks in the drive." Customer: "What's a drive?"
"What's a drive?" Tech Support: "The slot in your machine that looks just the right size for the disk."
"The slot in your machine that looks just the right size for the disk." Customer: "Which machine?"
"Which machine?" Tech Support: "Do you have a hard drive?"
"Do you have a hard drive?" Customer: "I have two boxes. One has a picture on it."
"I have two boxes. One has a picture on it." Tech Support: "Put the first disk in, metal side first."
"Put the first disk in, metal side first." Customer: "Ok. It's gone in."
"Ok. It's gone in." Tech Support: "Go to the 'start' button, then run, then type 'setup'."
"Go to the 'start' button, then run, then type 'setup'." Customer: "My computer isn't on. How do I turn it on?"
"My computer isn't on. How do I turn it on?" Tech Support: "Push the button by the drive to eject the disk, and press the button that says 'power' on the machine without the pictures on it."
"Push the button by the drive to eject the disk, and press the button that says 'power' on the machine without the pictures on it." Customer: "Ok. Done."
"Ok. Done." Tech Support: "Now put in the disk, go to start, run, and type 'setup'."
"Now put in the disk, go to start, run, and type 'setup'." Customer: "Oh, it's all working now. Thanks, but your software isn't very easy to use, is it?"
Tech Support: "Do you have the icon on your desktop?"
"Do you have the icon on your desktop?" Customer: "No. It's a thingy with buttons on the shelf. Um, a modem."
"No. It's a thingy with buttons on the shelf. Um, a modem." Tech Support: "Yes. I need you to look at the software you are using though. What do you click on?"
"Yes. I need you to look at the software you are using though. What do you click on?" Customer: "Oh. Ok."
"Oh. Ok." Tech Support: "What's the name of the icon you use to click on?"
"What's the name of the icon you use to click on?" Customer: "The mouse?"
One time I got really frustrated with a caller who had claimed that "the Internet had changed the color to black." Eventually I worked out that her computer had switched off.
Me: "For the last time, could you please turn the computer on?"
"For the last time, could you please turn the computer on?" Her: "But I don't have the file!"
"But I don't have the file!" Me: "What file!?"
"What file!?" Her: "You know, the file."
"You know, the file." Me: "Could you please press the button with the circle and the line on it, please?"
"Could you please press the button with the circle and the line on it, please?" Her: "Don't you talk like that! I still need to download the file! I know what to do. I have friends who are computer experts!"
"Don't you talk like that! I still need to download the file! I know what to do. I have friends who are computer experts!" Me: "Just press the button even if the file still hasn't 'downloaded' yet."
"Just press the button even if the file still hasn't 'downloaded' yet." Her: "Ok. Well, nothing's happ-- oh, it's got some gibberish written over it now. It's blue, and there is one thingie that says my name! Wow! My husband taught the computer my name!"
"Ok. Well, nothing's happ-- oh, it's got some gibberish written over it now. It's blue, and there is one thingie that says my name! Wow! My husband taught the computer my name!" Me: "Yes, that's what happens when you turn it on. Ok, I'm happy the problem's fixed. Bye!"
"Yes, that's what happens when you turn it on. Ok, I'm happy the problem's fixed. Bye!" Her: "But--"
Click.
Customer: "Right! I demand satisfaction!"
"Right! I demand satisfaction!" Tech Support: "I see. Well, I'm here to try and help you. What kind of problem are you having?"
"I see. Well, I'm here to try and help you. What kind of problem are you having?" Customer: "It's not my problem! The 'commuter' I bought six weeks ago just won't work! I can't do a damned thing with it!"
"It's not my problem! The 'commuter' I bought six weeks ago just won't work! I can't do a damned thing with it!" Tech Support: "I see. Do you mean it won't even switch on, or is it something else?"
"I see. Do you mean it won't even switch on, or is it something else?" Customer: "Don't try to sandbag me! I know my rights!"
"Don't try to sandbag me! I know my rights!" Tech Support: "Sir, could you explain the problem you are having so I can better help you with it?"
"Sir, could you explain the problem you are having so I can better help you with it?" Customer: "I've called them all, AOL, Nildram, Tiscali, and none of them are any good."
"I've called them all, AOL, Nildram, Tiscali, and none of them are any good." Tech Support: "Ok, so are you saying that you're having problems getting on-line?"
"Ok, so are you saying that you're having problems getting on-line?" Customer: "Look, it doesn't work! I want satisfaction!"
"Look, it doesn't work! I want satisfaction!" Tech Support: "Ok, well I need to ask you some questions to help you with the problem."
"Ok, well I need to ask you some questions to help you with the problem." Customer: "Fine, but I doubt you're going to fix it."
"Fine, but I doubt you're going to fix it." Tech Support: "Is your modem installed and plugged into the phone line?"
"Is your modem installed and plugged into the phone line?" Customer: "How would I know if it's plugged in?"
"How would I know if it's plugged in?" Tech Support: (describes how the back of the machine looks and where the modem is)
(describes how the back of the machine looks and where the modem is) Customer: "Yes, that's just how mine looks, and it doesn't work, so just accept that it's broken!"
"Yes, that's just how mine looks, and it doesn't work, so just accept that it's broken!" Tech Support: "Which cable did you connect the modem to the phone line with, sir?"
"Which cable did you connect the modem to the phone line with, sir?" Customer: "I have to wire the stupid thing in?"
I used to work for the computer helpdesk for a police force in northwest England, and it was there that I became infected with "Typistophobia," as a result of a typist from a particular police station who suffered from a lack of any of the social graces. She would regularly ring us with real or imagined problems, all of which were, of course, the computer's fault.
My first experience with this lady was as follows:
Customer: "Me machine's broke."
"Me machine's broke." Me: "Ok, what wrong with it?"
"Ok, what wrong with it?" Customer: "I've just tole yer -- IT'S BROKE!"
"I've just tole yer -- IT'S BROKE!" Me: "Ok, so what's it doing wrong?"
"Ok, so what's it doing wrong?" Customer: "Nothing."
...
Me: "Is there anything on the screen?"
"Is there anything on the screen?" Customer: "Yeh, garbage."
"Yeh, garbage." Me: "What sort of garbage?"
"What sort of garbage?" Customer: "I've tole yer -- garbage."
...
Me: "Can you read out the garbage to me?"
"Can you read out the garbage to me?" Customer: "P-L-E-A-S-E P-R-E-S-S E-N-T-E ...... !" (click)
Gateway color codes their connectors as well as their ports. Yet:
Customer: "I'm looking at the back of the system, and I don't know where to plug in the mouse. There are two holes that are the same size as the mouse."
"I'm looking at the back of the system, and I don't know where to plug in the mouse. There are two holes that are the same size as the mouse." Tech Support: "Ok, what color is the tip of the mouse plug?"
"Ok, what color is the tip of the mouse plug?" Customer: "Orange."
"Orange." Tech Support: "Do you see the orange 'hole' on the back of the computer?"
"Do you see the orange 'hole' on the back of the computer?" Customer: "Yes."
"Yes." Tech Support: "That is where the mouse plugs into."
"That is where the mouse plugs into." Customer: "Oh. How about the keyboard?"
"Oh. How about the keyboard?" Tech Support: "What color is the plug on the keyboard?"
"What color is the plug on the keyboard?" Customer: "Purple."
"Purple." Tech Support: "And do you see the purple 'hole' on the back of the computer?"
"And do you see the purple 'hole' on the back of the computer?" Customer: "Yes."
"Yes." Tech Support: "That is where the keyboard plugs in. The tips are color coded."
"That is where the keyboard plugs in. The tips are color coded." Customer: "I see. How about the speakers?"
I had this conversation recently with a lady who swore she had been using computers since forever.
Tech Support: "All right. Now click 'OK'."
"All right. Now click 'OK'." Customer: "Click 'OK'?"
"Click 'OK'?" Tech Support: "Yes, click 'OK'."
"Yes, click 'OK'." Customer: "Click 'OK'?"
"Click 'OK'?" Tech Support: "That's right. Click 'OK'."
"That's right. Click 'OK'." Customer: "So I click 'OK', right?"
"So I click 'OK', right?" Tech Support: "Right. Click 'OK'."
Pause.
Customer: "I clicked 'Cancel'."
"I clicked 'Cancel'." Tech Support: "YOU CLICKED 'CANCEL'???"
"YOU CLICKED 'CANCEL'???" Customer: "That's what I was supposed to do, right?"
"That's what I was supposed to do, right?" Tech Support: "No, you were supposed to click 'OK'."
"No, you were supposed to click 'OK'." Customer: "I thought you said to click 'Cancel'."
"I thought you said to click 'Cancel'." Tech Support: "NO. I said to click 'OK'."
"NO. I said to click 'OK'." Customer: "Oh."
"Oh." Tech Support: "Now we have to start over."
"Now we have to start over." Customer: "Why?"
"Why?" Tech Support: "Because you clicked 'Cancel'."
"Because you clicked 'Cancel'." Customer: "Wasn't I supposed to click 'Cancel'?"
"Wasn't I supposed to click 'Cancel'?" Tech Support: "No. Forget that. Let's start from the top."
"No. Forget that. Let's start from the top." Customer: "Ok."
I spent the next fifteen minutes re-constructing the carefully crafted setup for this lady's unique computer.
Tech Support: "All right. Now, are you ready to click 'OK'?"
"All right. Now, are you ready to click 'OK'?" Customer: "Yes."
"Yes." Tech Support: "Great. Now click 'OK'."
Pause.
Customer: "I clicked 'Cancel'."
And people wonder why my mouse pad has a target on it labeled "BANG HEAD HERE."
Tech Support: "Thank you for calling customer service, and how may I help you?"
"Thank you for calling customer service, and how may I help you?" Customer: "I can't get it to do."
"I can't get it to do." Tech Support: "Excuse me, ma'am?"
"Excuse me, ma'am?" Customer: "I can't get my Internet to do."
"I can't get my Internet to do." Tech Support: "Let's check your setup."
"Let's check your setup." Customer: "Okey dokey."
"Okey dokey." Tech Support: "Are you at your desktop?"
"Are you at your desktop?" Customer: "Yes."
"Yes." Tech Support: "Do a double click on the 'My Computer' icon."
"Do a double click on the 'My Computer' icon." Customer: "I don't see that one."
"I don't see that one." Tech Support: "What screen are you on, and what does you desktop look like?"
"What screen are you on, and what does you desktop look like?" Customer: "Wood."
"Wood." Tech Support: "What's on your screen, ma'am?"
"What's on your screen, ma'am?" Customer: "A bunch of names."
"A bunch of names." Tech Support: "Like what?"
"Like what?" Customer: "Bill, George, Larry, Jim."
"Bill, George, Larry, Jim." Tech Support: "What screen are you on?"
"What screen are you on?" Customer: "I am on the one I'm on. I need to go get my daughter. She's the computer guru of the family."
"I am on the one I'm on. I need to go get my daughter. She's the computer guru of the family." Tech Support: "Great, thank you."
"Great, thank you." April: "Hi, I'm April, and you are?"
"Hi, I'm April, and you are?" Tech Support: "Mike."
"Mike." April: "Mike. Cool, dude."
"Mike. Cool, dude." Tech Support: "Are you at your desktop?"
"Are you at your desktop?" April: "You will have to excuse my mother. She's a little dense."
"You will have to excuse my mother. She's a little dense." Tech Support: "No problem."
"No problem." April: "How old are you?"
"How old are you?" Tech Support: "300 years old. I'm the 'Highlander.' Um, would you do a double click on the 'My Computer' icon?"
"300 years old. I'm the 'Highlander.' Um, would you do a double click on the 'My Computer' icon?" April: "Sorry, I don't see that one."
"Sorry, I don't see that one." Tech Support: "What do you see?"
"What do you see?" April: "Bill, George, Larry, and Jim."
"Bill, George, Larry, and Jim." Tech Support: "What version of Windows are you using?"
"What version of Windows are you using?" April: "Ninety-something I guess."
"Ninety-something I guess." Tech Support: "Erm. Shut down the computer and reboot."
"Erm. Shut down the computer and reboot." April: "Ok...." (pause) "Done."
"Ok...." (pause) "Done." Tech Support: "What does your screen say?
"What does your screen say? April: "Bill, Larry, Jim, Barbie, and Wimper."
"Bill, Larry, Jim, Barbie, and Wimper." Tech Support: "Just for kicks, do a double click on 'Bill,' and see what happens."
"Just for kicks, do a double click on 'Bill,' and see what happens." April: "What is this?"
"What is this?" Tech Support: "What did it do?"
"What did it do?" April: "It now has little folders: modems, devices, etc."
"It now has little folders: modems, devices, etc." Tech Support: "Why was your 'My Computer' icon named Bill?"
"Why was your 'My Computer' icon named Bill?" April: "I wanted to name it something cute. Did I screw up?"
My company develops an online education product for which we provide email and phone support. A large amount of our users are first-year college students, many of which have little or no computer experience. Our product requires that you use IE or Netscape and is not compatible with AOL's browser. This often causes some problems with our users as many of them subscribe to AOL. This phone call had me laughing for a good half hour and most of the other support staff in tears.
Tech Support: "Good evening, how can I help you?"
"Good evening, how can I help you?" Customer: "Uhh, yeah, I'm tryin' t' use this here program t' take a course online, and it ain't workin'."
"Uhh, yeah, I'm tryin' t' use this here program t' take a course online, and it ain't workin'." Tech Support: "All right, what kind of computer do you have? I want to make sure it's ok to run our software."
"All right, what kind of computer do you have? I want to make sure it's ok to run our software." Customer: "Uhh, well, it's my dad's computer, and I don't know what it is. It jus' says COMPAQ on the front."
"Uhh, well, it's my dad's computer, and I don't know what it is. It jus' says COMPAQ on the front." Tech Support: "Ok, and you can connect to the Internet, right?"
"Ok, and you can connect to the Internet, right?" Customer: "Yup, that's not the problem though. I can't take muh course."
"Yup, that's not the problem though. I can't take muh course." Tech Support: "All right, what browser and version do you use?"
"All right, what browser and version do you use?" Customer: "Whut's a browser?"
"Whut's a browser?" Tech Support: "It's the program you use to see things on the Internet. Do you use Internet Explorer or Netscape?"
"It's the program you use to see things on the Internet. Do you use Internet Explorer or Netscape?" Customer: "Uh, I dunno." (agitated) "I don't know much 'bout this computer stuff. The school just said I hafta do sum' muh courses on it."
"Uh, I dunno." (agitated) "I don't know much 'bout this computer stuff. The school just said I hafta do sum' muh courses on it." Tech Support: "Ok, well, when you connect to the Internet and see information, is there a fancy 'N' in a box on the upper right hand corner of the screen, or is it a blue 'e' with a stripe across it?"
"Ok, well, when you connect to the Internet and see information, is there a fancy 'N' in a box on the upper right hand corner of the screen, or is it a blue 'e' with a stripe across it?" Customer: "Uh, I don't see none of that."
"Uh, I don't see none of that." Tech Support: "Ok sir, do you know if you use America Online to get on the Internet?"
"Ok sir, do you know if you use America Online to get on the Internet?" Customer: "Uh, no, ah use AOL."
One thing that really got to me before I was removed from phone support for sanity reasons, was customers who wouldn't read instructions, no matter how conspicuous you made them. You could print directions on red paper and paste it on the software itself with 300 point type saying, "IMPORTANT: READ THIS!" and people would still not read it.
We packaged our software with a piece of paper with "SOFTWARE INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS" printed on the top, and one day a customer called me to ask how to install the software.
Me: "Sir, do you have the original packaging?"
"Sir, do you have the original packaging?" Customer: "Yeah, it's here."
"Yeah, it's here." Me: "Can you find a piece of paper that says, 'Software Installation Instructions'?"
"Can you find a piece of paper that says, 'Software Installation Instructions'?" Customer: "Yup, here it is."
"Yup, here it is." Me: "So, what did you do so far?"
"So, what did you do so far?" Customer: "Well I booted from the disk and followed the prompts until it rebooted."
"Well I booted from the disk and followed the prompts until it rebooted." Me: "Ok, so I'm looking at these instructions too, and it looks like you've gotten through steps 1-5, but there are still four more steps on the installation sheet."
"Ok, so I'm looking at these instructions too, and it looks like you've gotten through steps 1-5, but there are still four more steps on the installation sheet." Customer: "Ok, so what do I do next?"
"Ok, so what do I do next?" Me: "Sir, do you see the number 6?"
"Sir, do you see the number 6?" Customer: "Yup."
"Yup." Me: "What does it say?"
"What does it say?" Customer: "It says to reinsert the disk and click on [filename]."
"It says to reinsert the disk and click on [filename]." Me: "Ok, so I'd go ahead and do that."
"Ok, so I'd go ahead and do that." Customer: "Ok, so now what, do I click on 'OK'?"
"Ok, so now what, do I click on 'OK'?" Me: "Sir, in step 6, does it then say to click on 'OK'!?"
"Sir, in step 6, does it then say to click on 'OK'!?" Customer: "Yup."
"Yup." Me: "Then I'd go ahead and do that."
"Then I'd go ahead and do that." Customer: "Ok...so, what do I do next?"
"Ok...so, what do I do next?" Me: "Sir, do you see the number 7!?!?!?"
I worked for a company that provided billing and office management software to physicians' offices. Most of our users had dumb terminals with dial-up or dedicated lines that connected them to a stack of Unix systems at our facility. One day, we received a call transferred from the front-line help desk. The user was saying her enter key wasn't working.
My co-worker and I were the support techs for the organization. We took the call and found that when the user hit the enter key, the information wasn't accepted, and the cursor simply moved one column to the right. Now, the terminal hardware in the offices was rather old and prone to bizarre failure behavior. Keyboards and logic controllers would die in very odd ways.
We went through our hardware troubleshooting procedures. We confirmed that it was just this one key that was malfunctioning, and that the problem persisted when the keyboard was swapped out with another.
We tried checking keyboard mapping settings in the terminal and in the software she was using, but nothing worked. Finally we monitored the serial data stream by hooking another terminal up to the inbound port on the multiplexer and placing it into "dump" mode. As the user hit the troubled enter key, we saw a continuous line of hex 0x20's -- the ASCII space character.
At this point we were resolved to having to replace the whole terminal. As we had no spares and were waiting on a shipment, we couldn't do it for at least three days. The user expressed concern at being without a functional terminal for that period. We asked her to use the second enter key until we could fix the problem permanently. The following dialog ensued:
Her: "What second enter key?"
"What second enter key?" Me: "Over on the right hand side of the keyboard, there's a number pad. There should be an enter key over there that you can use."
"Over on the right hand side of the keyboard, there's a number pad. There should be an enter key over there that you can use." Her: "Which one?"
"Which one?" Me: "It should say 'Enter' or have a crooked arrow pointing to the left, depending on the keyboard model. It should look identical to the broken enter key."
"It should say 'Enter' or have a crooked arrow pointing to the left, depending on the keyboard model. It should look identical to the broken enter key." Her: "There's no key over there that looks the same."
"There's no key over there that looks the same." Me: "Well, what does the broken key say on it?"
"Well, what does the broken key say on it?" Her: "It doesn't say anything."
"It doesn't say anything." Me: "What does the broken enter key look like, exactly?"
"What does the broken enter key look like, exactly?" Her: "It's big and long, and it doesn't have anything on it."
"It's big and long, and it doesn't have anything on it." Me: "... And it's the one at the bottom of the keyboard?"
"... And it's the one at the bottom of the keyboard?" Her: "Yes, that's it!"
"Yes, that's it!" Me: "And you say that every time you hit it, it just puts a space on the screen?"
"And you say that every time you hit it, it just puts a space on the screen?" Her: "Yeah!"
"Yeah!" Me: "That's because you're hitting the space bar."
We heard a swift intake of breath, and then the user hung up.
Somehow, one day after years of working on the same software, with the same terminal, performing the same procedure, she decided that the space bar was the enter key. We stared at each other for about five minutes after she hung up, utterly disbelieving that we didn't even think about checking to make sure the user was hitting the right key and even more disbelieving that in the nearly 45 minutes she was on the phone, it never occurred to her that the key marked 'enter' might be the one she wanted.
Co-Worker: "I have a customer here who say's he cannot access a specific record and gets kicked out of the program."
"I have a customer here who say's he cannot access a specific record and gets kicked out of the program." Me: "Ask him if he had any network problems lately."
"Ask him if he had any network problems lately." Co-Worker: "I already asked the usual questions, but nothing works."
During this conversation I found all the symptoms pointed to a server crash. But my co-worker assured me that they have had no server problems whatsoever. So I asked him to ask the customer to send a copy of the database for further examination. Surely all the tell tale symptoms of a server crash would be there, and I joined my co-worker at his desk for the remainder of the conversation.
Co-Worker: "Sir, we believe you had a server crash that resulted in the database getting corrupted. We'll need the working database to correct the problem."
"Sir, we believe you had a server crash that resulted in the database getting corrupted. We'll need the working database to correct the problem." Customer: "We didn't have a server crash. It must be a fault in your program. I want a patch to fix this problem."
"We didn't have a server crash. It must be a fault in your program. I want a patch to fix this problem." Co-Worker: "The program is running fine, but we have a strong indication that you did have a problem with your server, and we'll need your database to repair this problem."
"The program is running fine, but we have a strong indication that you did have a problem with your server, and we'll need your database to repair this problem." Customer: "Look, we did not have a server problem."
"Look, we did not have a server problem." Co-Worker: "Sir, we know that you had a server crash. And to avoid further problems we have to repair your database as soon as possible."
"Sir, we know that you had a server crash. And to avoid further problems we have to repair your database as soon as possible." Customer: "What is wrong with you people? I told you, WE DID NOT HAVE A SERVER CRASH. I want a patch for the program."
"What is wrong with you people? I told you, WE DID NOT HAVE A SERVER CRASH. I want a patch for the program." Co-Worker: (reading from the database log file) "On [date] at [time], [customer] -- that is your login name, right? -- booted up. And halfway through the login procedure the the system stopped logging. Now--"
(reading from the database log file) "On [date] at [time], [customer] -- that is your login name, right? -- booted up. And halfway through the login procedure the the system stopped logging. Now--" Customer: "I KNOW THAT! That's why I'm complaining. Your software did this."
"I KNOW THAT! That's why I'm complaining. Your software did this." Co-Worker: "Sir, we have no indication that the program wrote any faulty data to the database. Are you sure you have had no problems with the server? Anything suspicious? Even trivial thoughts?"
"Sir, we have no indication that the program wrote any faulty data to the database. Are you sure you have had no problems with the server? Anything suspicious? Even trivial thoughts?" Customer: "No, nothing.........ehm......I don't think it is relevant but......someone turned the server switch off by mistake this morning, but he turned it back on really quickly so that can't have been the problem.... Right...?"
A gentleman with a western accent called up saying that he was not satisfied with our service and wished to cancel. After telling him that he would need to call back during business hours and speak with customer service, I asked if there was anything I could do to make the service more satisfactory.
Customer: "Well, I've had ya guys for months now, and still I can't get connected."
"Well, I've had ya guys for months now, and still I can't get connected." Tech Support: "Have you called us about this before?"
"Have you called us about this before?" Customer: "Well, yes, a couple of times."
So I got his username and looked him up. Sure enough, there were two tech logs under his name, so I read them briefly. Virtually everything that could be checked had been checked. Something about the way he was talking to me made me a little curious, so I continued to ask questions.
Tech Support: "From what I can tell, the techs have helped you double-check your settings and everything should be perfectly fine. Do you use Netscape or Internet Explorer to connect?"
"From what I can tell, the techs have helped you double-check your settings and everything should be perfectly fine. Do you use Netscape or Internet Explorer to connect?" Customer: "Well, now, I dunno. I just use the stuff ya gave me. When I wanna get online, I click this here."
"Well, now, I dunno. I just use the stuff ya gave me. When I wanna get online, I click this here." Tech Support: "Can you be a little more specific?"
"Can you be a little more specific?" Customer: "I move the little arrow here and click."
"I move the little arrow here and click." Tech Support: "Can you tell me what icons are on your desktop?"
"Can you tell me what icons are on your desktop?" Customer: "I ain't got no icons."
"I ain't got no icons." Tech Support: (blink) "You don't? None at all?"
(blink) "You don't? None at all?" Customer: "Nope."
"Nope." Tech Support: "Well, ok. Do you have something on your desktop that says, 'Shortcut to [our Internet service]'?"
"Well, ok. Do you have something on your desktop that says, 'Shortcut to [our Internet service]'?" Customer: "No, I ain't got nothin' written like that on my desktop."
"No, I ain't got nothin' written like that on my desktop." Tech Support: "Ok, um...can you tell me what's on your desktop, then?"
"Ok, um...can you tell me what's on your desktop, then?" Customer: "Well, I gots me here a pencil, the computer, and my coffee."
"Well, I gots me here a pencil, the computer, and my coffee." Tech Support: "Um, all right...can you tell me what you see on the TV part of your computer?"
"Um, all right...can you tell me what you see on the TV part of your computer?" Customer: "On one side there's a buncha pictures, and across the top there's words."
"On one side there's a buncha pictures, and across the top there's words." Tech Support: "Good, sir, that's what I hoped you would say. The little pictures are called 'icons,' and the whole screen area that the little pictures are on is called the 'desktop.'"
"Good, sir, that's what I hoped you would say. The little pictures are called 'icons,' and the whole screen area that the little pictures are on is called the 'desktop.'" Customer: "Oh. Hell, is that what you meant? I ain't the religious type, so don't keep no Marys or nothin' around."
"Oh. Hell, is that what you meant? I ain't the religious type, so don't keep no Marys or nothin' around." Tech Support: "Um, yes, that's what I was meaning, sir. Now, on your screen, the desktop, do you see anything that says 'Shortcut to the Internet' or '[our Internet service]'?"
"Um, yes, that's what I was meaning, sir. Now, on your screen, the desktop, do you see anything that says 'Shortcut to the Internet' or '[our Internet service]'?" Customer: "Why, yes I do. In fact, that's what I click on when I try to connect."
"Why, yes I do. In fact, that's what I click on when I try to connect." Tech Support: "And then what happens sir?"
"And then what happens sir?" Customer: "Well, the computer makes all kinds of annoying sounds, then pops up a little thing sayin' I'm connected."
"Well, the computer makes all kinds of annoying sounds, then pops up a little thing sayin' I'm connected." Tech Support: "Go--"
"Go--" Customer: (interrupting) "Now before ya say anythin', I wantcha ta know it lies."
(interrupting) "Now before ya say anythin', I wantcha ta know it lies." Tech Support: "It what?"
"It what?" Customer: "The little thing sayin' I'm connected. It ain't talkin' the truth."
"The little thing sayin' I'm connected. It ain't talkin' the truth." Tech Support: "Um...ok...what makes you say that?"
"Um...ok...what makes you say that?" Customer: "Well, because after that nothin' happens. Nothin' at all."
"Well, because after that nothin' happens. Nothin' at all." Tech Support: "Excuse me?"
"Excuse me?" Customer: "Well, it says I'm connected, but nothin' else happens. I'm a patient man, but after about half an hour, my computer finally gives up the truth an' says I'm not connected no more."
"Well, it says I'm connected, but nothin' else happens. I'm a patient man, but after about half an hour, my computer finally gives up the truth an' says I'm not connected no more." Tech Support: "Have you tried using a web browser, sir? Do you get any kind of errors when you try opening a web page?"
"Have you tried using a web browser, sir? Do you get any kind of errors when you try opening a web page?" Customer: "I'm tellin' you, nothin' happens."
"I'm tellin' you, nothin' happens." Tech Support: "All right. What do you use for a web browser?"
"All right. What do you use for a web browser?" Customer: "I'm not quite sure whatcha mean."
"I'm not quite sure whatcha mean." Tech Support: "Netscape Navigator? Internet Explorer? Do you use any programs like those?"
"Netscape Navigator? Internet Explorer? Do you use any programs like those?" Customer: "Now why would I need anything like that? All I want to do is get connected."
"Now why would I need anything like that? All I want to do is get connected." Tech Support: "Right sir, you are getting conn--"
"Right sir, you are getting conn--" Customer: "Now listen here, I just done told ya that I'm not. I think I'd know if anything happened after I tried to connect. By now I'm getting rather frustrated, but still I press on."
"Now listen here, I just done told ya that I'm not. I think I'd know if anything happened after I tried to connect. By now I'm getting rather frustrated, but still I press on." Tech Support: "Ok, let me try to explain a couple of things. First of all, when most people talk about 'surfing the web' and 'getting on the Internet' they're usually talking about viewing web pages on the Internet."
"Ok, let me try to explain a couple of things. First of all, when most people talk about 'surfing the web' and 'getting on the Internet' they're usually talking about viewing web pages on the Internet." Customer: "I follow ya."
"I follow ya." Tech Support: "In order to view these pages, the person needs to run a web browsing program -- typically Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer. These turn the information on a web site into a format that is understandable by an ordinary person."
"In order to view these pages, the person needs to run a web browsing program -- typically Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer. These turn the information on a web site into a format that is understandable by an ordinary person." Customer: "So I need one of them ta get connected?"
"So I need one of them ta get connected?" Tech Support: "Actually, sir, you are already getting connected. Once you get that 'connected' message, you need to open up a web browser."
"Actually, sir, you are already getting connected. Once you get that 'connected' message, you need to open up a web browser." Customer: "I do?"
"I do?" Tech Support: "Yes, sir. On your screen, do you have a 'little picture' that looks like a big 'N' or do you have one that looks like an 'e'?"
"Yes, sir. On your screen, do you have a 'little picture' that looks like a big 'N' or do you have one that looks like an 'e'?" Customer: "I got one what looks like an 'N'."
"I got one what looks like an 'N'." Tech Support: "All right, sir, here's what I want you to do: After hanging up with me, I want you to connect like you usually do. Once you get that 'connected' box to appear on your screen, I want you to click on the picture of an 'N'. If things still aren't happening after that, go ahead and call us back."
"All right, sir, here's what I want you to do: After hanging up with me, I want you to connect like you usually do. Once you get that 'connected' box to appear on your screen, I want you to click on the picture of an 'N'. If things still aren't happening after that, go ahead and call us back." Customer: "All right, I'll try that, but I tell ya: ain't nothin' gonna happen."
The customer never called back. He also did not cancel his service the next day. The whole call took just over an hour and a half and I was ready to pull my hair out at several points. After the call, though, we were laughing over it for hours.
Tech Support: "Ok you should now see a small dialog box on your desktop."
"Ok you should now see a small dialog box on your desktop." Customer: "I don't see any box on my desktop."
"I don't see any box on my desktop." Tech Support: "Hmmm, are you sure? It looks like a small window with an 'OK' button in the middle of it."
"Hmmm, are you sure? It looks like a small window with an 'OK' button in the middle of it." Customer: "How can a window be in my desktop?"
"How can a window be in my desktop?" Tech Support: "Sir, what are you looking at?"
"Sir, what are you looking at?" Customer: "My desktop like you asked. There's no box on it, just the computer. However I do have a small window at the top of my wall, but I don't see anything that says 'ok'...."
Thinking quickly, I decided to palm the call off to one of our younger support technicians, deciding this would be the perfect "field trip" for him. I told the customer we would have a technician drop by on site that afternoon to help him.
The following is what the unsuspecting young technician experienced.
The customer's house appeared to be in the middle of nowhere: there was nothing but barren land for miles in all directions. As he approached the house, he noticed a ring of cows, dogs, chickens, and pigs running loose and circling the house making an awful noise.
As he approached the house, he noticed a dead, half eaten animal near the front of the house. Later, he learned, whenever the customer needed to feed his dogs, he would step outside and shoot a calf.
Entering the house, the young technician noticed a very large pet door in the door. This was so the dogs and pigs could come and go as they pleased.
Inside the house was absolute filth. Mud and grime covered the floor and the walls, pigs lay on the couch, and dogs sat on the recliner chairs. The stench of filth was unbearable.
The customer took the technician to the back room, where the computer had been set up. A chicken was nesting on top of the monitor and droppings were running down the side.
It was too much. He ran, terrified out of his wits, and never looked back. Later the tech called me from his home, where he was still trying to wash the stench from his clothes. He hadn't been in our ex-customer's house for even five minutes, and his clothes were ruined.
I work for Microsoft as a certified Word Professional. One day I received a call from a woman who had much difficulty explaining herself and even more difficulty understanding what I was asking of her.
Tech Support: "Ok, what version of word do you have?"
"Ok, what version of word do you have?" Customer: "Virgin!?"
"Virgin!?" Tech Support: "No, no...what VERSION do you have?"
"No, no...what VERSION do you have?" Customer: "Huh?"
"Huh?" Tech Support: "You know what? I don't care. Let's move on."
Pointless bickering and senseless rambling about her problem.
Tech Support: "And how often does this happen?"
"And how often does this happen?" Customer: "Well, it doesn't happen all the time, but when it happens, it happens constantly."
"Well, it doesn't happen all the time, but when it happens, it happens constantly." Tech Support: "Uh huh."
I had to hit the mute button to avoid letting her hear my agitated laughter.
The call lasted forty five minutes. I began to think that she didn't really know what I was saying, nor had the intelligence to question why I hadn't begun troubleshooting. Then I had an idea.
Tech Support: "Well everything seems to be in good standing on your system. Nice talking with you."
"Well everything seems to be in good standing on your system. Nice talking with you." Customer: "Oh, THANK YOU!! Thank you very much!" (click)
I never really found out what her issue was.
Tech Support: "Ok sir, we'll do a file search to find it. Can you please click on Start, then Find, then--"
"Ok sir, we'll do a file search to find it. Can you please click on Start, then Find, then--" Customer: "Don't talk down to me like that! I'm not an idiot -- I know what I'm doing!"
"Don't talk down to me like that! I'm not an idiot -- I know what I'm doing!" Tech Support: "Ok sir, please Start, then Find to do a file search."
"Ok sir, please Start, then Find to do a file search." Customer: "How do I do that?"
A former professor of mine was receiving a Javascript error when trying to view a particular web page. In trying to determine why he was having the trouble I asked what browser he was using.
Me: "You may have an older browser. What browser are you using?"
"You may have an older browser. What browser are you using?" Him: "Well, I don't have a brand new computer, but it's not obsolete. I have Pentium 233 with 64 of the big ones."
"Well, I don't have a brand new computer, but it's not obsolete. I have Pentium 233 with 64 of the big ones." Me: "You mean 64 megs of RAM?"
"You mean 64 megs of RAM?" Him: "Yeah, RAM."
"Yeah, RAM." Me: "Ok, but what browser are you using? Internet Explorer or Netscape?"
"Ok, but what browser are you using? Internet Explorer or Netscape?" Him: "I have Windows 95."
"I have Windows 95." Me: "Ok, that's the operating system. What do you use to look at a web site?"
"Ok, that's the operating system. What do you use to look at a web site?" Him: "Oh, I'm using Office 97."
"Oh, I'm using Office 97." Me: "Yes, but what browser? When you look at a web site, what program do you use?"
"Yes, but what browser? When you look at a web site, what program do you use?" Him: "Office 97."
"Office 97." Me: "Office 97 isn't a browser though. When you double click on the icon to connect to the Internet, it opens a program that lets you look at web sites on the Internet. What program opens? Internet Explorer or Netscape?"
"Office 97 isn't a browser though. When you double click on the icon to connect to the Internet, it opens a program that lets you look at web sites on the Internet. What program opens? Internet Explorer or Netscape?" Him: "My computer is not obsolete. I have Pentium 233."
I never did find out what browser he uses.
Tech Support: "Hold down the F2 key."
"Hold down the F2 key." Customer: "Where is that?"
"Where is that?" Tech Support: "On the left side of your keyboard, above the two -- just right of the Escape key."
"On the left side of your keyboard, above the two -- just right of the Escape key." Customer: "Ok."
"Ok." Tech Support: "So now we are in the System Setup screen?"
"So now we are in the System Setup screen?" Customer: "No."
"No." Tech Support: "All right. Hit your Ctrl-Alt-Delete keys. Then your F2 key."
"All right. Hit your Ctrl-Alt-Delete keys. Then your F2 key." Customer: "Ok."
"Ok." Tech Support: "Now we are in the System Setup?"
"Now we are in the System Setup?" Customer: "No."
"No." Tech Support: "Does it say, 'Loading Windows 95'?"
"Does it say, 'Loading Windows 95'?" Customer: "No."
"No." Tech Support: "Can you describe what is on your screen?"
"Can you describe what is on your screen?" Customer: "It's gray."
"It's gray." Tech Support: "Just gray? It does not say anything?"
"Just gray? It does not say anything?" Customer: "No. Just gray...with blue and white."
"No. Just gray...with blue and white." Tech Support: "Are there letters on your screen?"
"Are there letters on your screen?" Customer: "Yes."
Aargh.
Tech Support: "Read them to me."
"Read them to me." Customer: "C-o-p-y-r-i--"
"C-o-p-y-r-i--" Tech Support: "Do they form words? Do the words form phrases? Do the phrases form sentences?"
"Do they form words? Do the words form phrases? Do the phrases form sentences?" Customer: "I suppose."
Customer: "I'll have you know, I've never even seen a computer before yesterday."
Great. Great start to a call. He wanted to install the Internet connection software we have, so I had him insert the CD. "It ain't workin'!" was all I heard for about two minutes of trying the drive and checking to see if it was really there.
Tech Support: "Sir, could you eject your CD for a moment? We need to check if it's scratched."
"Sir, could you eject your CD for a moment? We need to check if it's scratched." Customer: "Ok."
"Ok." Tech Support: "Look on the bottom of the CD, and see if there are any scratches on it."
"Look on the bottom of the CD, and see if there are any scratches on it." Customer: "On the bottom? Shouldn't we check the top?"
"On the bottom? Shouldn't we check the top?" Tech Support: "Is the shiny side of the CD on the top?"
"Is the shiny side of the CD on the top?" Customer: "Of course."
"Of course." Tech Support: "Ok, could you flip it over so the shiny side is down and then insert it into the drive?"
"Ok, could you flip it over so the shiny side is down and then insert it into the drive?" Customer: "Won't it scratch if I put it in like that?"
"Won't it scratch if I put it in like that?" Tech Support: "No, it won't scratch."
"No, it won't scratch." Customer: "Well, ok...."
He inserted the CD in the drive correctly, and then his computer froze.
Customer: "My computer froze! I told you it would scratch the CD!"
"My computer froze! I told you it would scratch the CD!" Tech Support: "I'm sure that's not the problem--"
"I'm sure that's not the problem--" Customer: "I can't believe you scratched the CD."
"I can't believe you scratched the CD." Tech Support: "Ok, sir, could you hold down 'ctrl' and 'alt', and then-- (clunking sounds) Hello? Hello, sir?"
There was no one on the line for a moment. Then he spoke up again.
Customer: "I've been holding 'ctrl' and 'alt' for the past two minutes, and nothing is happening at all on my whole damn computer, because you made me scratch the software."
Customer: "My program doesn't work."
"My program doesn't work." Tech Support: "Which program are you using?"
"Which program are you using?" Customer: "The one I use to get my work done."
"The one I use to get my work done." Tech Support: "Ma'am, we support many different programs, what's the name of the program you use?"
"Ma'am, we support many different programs, what's the name of the program you use?" Customer: "I don't know; it's the one that comes up when I start my computer."
"I don't know; it's the one that comes up when I start my computer." Tech Support: "Can you tell me what you see on the screen after you start your computer?"
"Can you tell me what you see on the screen after you start your computer?" Customer: "No, I can't get the program to come up so I can't tell you what's on the screen."
"No, I can't get the program to come up so I can't tell you what's on the screen." Tech Support: "Is your computer on?"
"Is your computer on?" Customer: "Of course it's on! I know how to turn on my computer!"
"Of course it's on! I know how to turn on my computer!" Tech Support: "What kind of computer do you have? Is it a PC, a Macintosh, an Xterminal, or a VT420?"
"What kind of computer do you have? Is it a PC, a Macintosh, an Xterminal, or a VT420?" Customer: "I don't know. You're the help desk -- you're supposed to know that."
"I don't know. You're the help desk -- you're supposed to know that." Tech Support: "Uh. Have you tried rebooting your machine?"
"Uh. Have you tried rebooting your machine?" Customer: (angrily) "I just told you I can't get the program to run. What kind of help desk is this? I don't think you're very helpful, and I'll have you know that I personally know one of the programmers, and I'm going to call her since I know she'll be able to help me!"
This woman calls in, having a problem with her video card. Her initial rundown on the situation seems like she would know what she was talking about. But no.
Customer: "So when I go to boot my computer, it just does nothing."
"So when I go to boot my computer, it just does nothing." Tech Support: "It just does nothing? So, when you turn on your computer you just get a blank screen?"
"It just does nothing? So, when you turn on your computer you just get a blank screen?" Customer: "Oh no, It comes up and counts my memory, detects hard drives, etc."
"Oh no, It comes up and counts my memory, detects hard drives, etc." Tech Support: "Ok, then what happens?"
"Ok, then what happens?" Customer: "It doesn't do nothing."
"It doesn't do nothing." Tech Support: "It doesn't do nothing? I am not sure I understand. Does it lock up at this point?"
"It doesn't do nothing? I am not sure I understand. Does it lock up at this point?" Customer: "Oh no, after that I get the screen with the clouds that says 'Windows' on it."
"Oh no, after that I get the screen with the clouds that says 'Windows' on it." Tech Support: "Ok, so you turn it on, it starts to boot up, then it goes to the splash screen with the clouds, and this is where you are having problems? What happens here?"
"Ok, so you turn it on, it starts to boot up, then it goes to the splash screen with the clouds, and this is where you are having problems? What happens here?" Customer: "It doesn't do nothing."
"It doesn't do nothing." Tech Support: "Ok, so can you even get in to Windows? Will the system boot to your desktop?"
"Ok, so can you even get in to Windows? Will the system boot to your desktop?" Customer: "Oh yes."
"Oh yes." Tech Support: "All right, so, you turn on your system, it counts your RAM, detects your drives, loads the splash screen, boots into Windows, and then what?"
"All right, so, you turn on your system, it counts your RAM, detects your drives, loads the splash screen, boots into Windows, and then what?" Customer: "Nothing."
"Nothing." Tech Support: "So what is the problem?"
"So what is the problem?" Customer: "The computer doesn't do nothing."
"The computer doesn't do nothing." Tech Support: "Ok, I need you to be a little more specific here because that so far, this is quite normal."
"Ok, I need you to be a little more specific here because that so far, this is quite normal." Customer: "Oh yeah, all that stuff is normal."
"Oh yeah, all that stuff is normal." Tech Support: "So again, what is the problem anyway?"
"So again, what is the problem anyway?" Customer: "My desktop is all washed out looking."
I sent a JPEG from my recent vacation to my mother as an email attachment. I then telephoned her to see if she was able to view it. After attempting to get her to use the 'File/Open' command in Netscape, I realized that my 'Open' dialog was different from hers, and so I couldn't talk her through it. But I tried to determine which OS she was running.
Me: "Do you know what operating system you're running? Is it Windows 95 or Windows 3.1?"
"Do you know what operating system you're running? Is it Windows 95 or Windows 3.1?" My Mother: "I don't know, but it must be Windows 95."
"I don't know, but it must be Windows 95." Me: "Ok, do you see a 'My Computer' icon on your screen?"
"Ok, do you see a 'My Computer' icon on your screen?" My Mother: "'My Computer'? What's that?"
"'My Computer'? What's that?" Me: "It's a picture of a computer with the words 'My Computer' underneath it."
"It's a picture of a computer with the words 'My Computer' underneath it." My Mother: "I don't have that."
"I don't have that." Me: "It would be on the desktop."
"It would be on the desktop." My Mother: (getting irate) "I don't know what you're talking about."
(getting irate) "I don't know what you're talking about." Me: "Mom, tell me what you see when you turn your computer on."
"Mom, tell me what you see when you turn your computer on." My Mother: "Nothing."
"Nothing." Me: "You don't see anything? No words appear on the screen? Nothing? Well, what do you see on your screen right now?"
"You don't see anything? No words appear on the screen? Nothing? Well, what do you see on your screen right now?" My Mother: "I don't see anything."
"I don't see anything." Me: (getting frustrated) "You're staring at a black screen? There's nothing there at all?"
(getting frustrated) "You're staring at a black screen? There's nothing there at all?" My Mother: "I'm not technical. I don't know these things."
"I'm not technical. I don't know these things." Me: "I just want you to describe what you see."
"I just want you to describe what you see." My Mother: "I don't see anything. I just get on here and clickity-click."
"I don't see anything. I just get on here and clickity-click." Me: "I gotta go, Mom."
We have one customer who is notorious in the tech support department. We all dread getting a call from her. She is truly stupid when it comes to a computer.
Tech Support: "Ok, you are in C:\WINDOWS . We need to get to the A: drive. So type 'A' colon and press enter."
"Ok, you are in . We need to get to the A: drive. So type 'A' colon and press enter." Customer: "'A'? What's an 'A'?"
"'A'? What's an 'A'?" Tech Support: "It's the first letter of the alphabet. 'A' like apple."
"It's the first letter of the alphabet. 'A' like apple." Customer: "Ummm...what's an 'A'? I don't know what it is."
"Ummm...what's an 'A'? I don't know what it is." Tech Support: "Grade school, remember? The letter 'A'?"
"Grade school, remember? The letter 'A'?" Customer: "Oh, ok. Where is that?"
"Oh, ok. Where is that?" Tech Support: "Left side of the keyboard. Next to the 'S'."
"Left side of the keyboard. Next to the 'S'." Customer: "Ok...I think I found it. What do I do?"
"Ok...I think I found it. What do I do?" Tech Support: "Press it. See what happens."
"Press it. See what happens." Customer: "Ok, I've got an 'A' now."
"Ok, I've got an 'A' now." Tech Support: "Now press the colon. It's next to the 'L' key."
"Now press the colon. It's next to the 'L' key." Customer: "How do I get it?"
"How do I get it?" Tech Support: "Hold down the 'shift' key."
"Hold down the 'shift' key." Customer: "How to you spell that?"
"How to you spell that?" Tech Support: "S-H-I-F-T. You have two of them. Near the space bar. Hold that down and press the colon."
"S-H-I-F-T. You have two of them. Near the space bar. Hold that down and press the colon." Customer: "I can't find the colon."
"I can't find the colon." Tech Support: "It's to the right of the 'L'."
"It's to the right of the 'L'." Customer: "How do I get it?"
"How do I get it?" Tech Support: "Hold the shift key and press the colon key."
"Hold the shift key and press the colon key." Customer: "Oh, ok...I think I've got it."
"Oh, ok...I think I've got it." Tech Support: "Good, now hit 'enter'."
"Good, now hit 'enter'." Customer: "Where's that?"
This whole conversation of two commands took almost an hour. I have no idea how this lady ever made enough money to buy a computer. It amazes me how someone can forget the alphabet. She's nice, but she's amazingly dumb.
A customer wanted to set up his computer to download something from the Internet. So I spent a nice chunk of time walking him through downloading Netscape and the Plugin Pack and rebooting.
Customer: "So are we done yet?"
"So are we done yet?" Tech Support: "Not yet."
I spent still more time configuring TCP/IP for the LAN for him.
Customer: "So are we done yet?"
"So are we done yet?" Tech Support: "Not yet."
I spent still more time with him configuring access through the firewall and setting his preferences. Netscape started fine at this point.
Customer: "So are we done yet?"
"So are we done yet?" Tech Support: "Yes. Try accessing the site now."
"Yes. Try accessing the site now." Customer: "How do I do that?"
I spent still more time with him explaining how to enter a URL.
Customer: "It's not working!"
"It's not working!" Tech Support: "Where are you trying to go?"
He gave me the address. I tried nslookup and whois on it, but they came up empty.
Tech Support: "I'm sorry, that site doesn't exist. Are you sure you wrote it down correctly?"
"I'm sorry, that site doesn't exist. Are you sure you wrote it down correctly?" Customer: "Well! All this was a waste of time! We've accomplished nothing!" (click)
A customer called complaining that his display wasn't working. (It turned out to be that his monitor was out of sync.)
Customer: "I installed the video drivers and all I see is a postage stamp in the center of the screen."
"I installed the video drivers and all I see is a postage stamp in the center of the screen." Tech Support: "Can you describe what you see?"
"Can you describe what you see?" Customer: "I just told you, a postage stamp!!"
"I just told you, a postage stamp!!" Tech Support: "Does it look like your desktop?"
"Does it look like your desktop?" Customer: "Nope. Aren't you listening?? It looks like a postage stamp."
"Nope. Aren't you listening?? It looks like a postage stamp." Tech Support: "Ok,let's reset the system back to VGA."
"Ok,let's reset the system back to VGA." Customer: "What's that??"
"What's that??" Tech Support: "The default video settings...please hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete."
"The default video settings...please hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete." Customer: "What is that???"
"What is that???" Tech Support: "The three keys. 'Control' and 'Alt' and 'Delete' pressed at the same time."
"The three keys. 'Control' and 'Alt' and 'Delete' pressed at the same time." Customer: "Oh, ok. Oh no!! My screen went blank!"
"Oh, ok. Oh no!! My screen went blank!" Tech Support: "That's ok. When you see OS/2 in the upper left hit 'Alt' and 'F1'."
"That's ok. When you see OS/2 in the upper left hit 'Alt' and 'F1'." Customer: "'Alt'? 'F1'? Can you speak English?"
"'Alt'? 'F1'? Can you speak English?" Tech Support: "Sir, these are keys on your keyboard."
"Sir, these are keys on your keyboard." Customer: "Oh."
"Oh." Tech Support: (waits a minute for the system to finish booting) "Do you see the OS/2 logo yet?"
(waits a minute for the system to finish booting) "Do you see the OS/2 logo yet?" Customer: "Nope."
"Nope." Tech Support: (waits another minute or two) "Anything yet?"
(waits another minute or two) "Anything yet?" Customer: "Nope. Can I release the keys?"
Twenty minutes later I found out he had a monitor that was only capable of VGA, and then I spent another ten minutes trying to explain why he needed a better monitor to display higher resolutions.
Tech Support: "Double click on 'My Computer', then on the 'Dial-up Networking' folder."
"Double click on 'My Computer', then on the 'Dial-up Networking' folder." Customer: "Where is it?"
"Where is it?" Tech Support: "Excuse me?"
"Excuse me?" Customer: "Where is 'My Computer'?"
"Where is 'My Computer'?" Tech Support: "In the upper left corner of your screen."
"In the upper left corner of your screen." Customer: "Oh! Hey! That's pretty good!!"
Twenty five minutes later....
Tech Support: "Ok, now go to 'Options' and then 'Mail and News Preferences'."
"Ok, now go to 'Options' and then 'Mail and News Preferences'." Customer: "Got it."
"Got it." Tech Support: "Now click on the tab that says 'Servers'."
"Now click on the tab that says 'Servers'." Customer: "I don't see it."
"I don't see it." Tech Support: "What do you see on your screen?"
"What do you see on your screen?" Customer: "Oh! There it is. I was looking on the keyboard."
"Oh! There it is. I was looking on the keyboard." Tech Support: "Ok, now read to me what's in the SMTP field."
"Ok, now read to me what's in the SMTP field." Customer: "There's nothing there."
"There's nothing there." Tech Support: "Now we know why you can't get your mail. Type in 'mailhost.worldnet.att.net'."
"Now we know why you can't get your mail. Type in 'mailhost.worldnet.att.net'." Customer: "M-A-L-E-H-O-S-T..."
"M-A-L-E-H-O-S-T..." Tech Support: "No sir. It's spelled M-A-I-L-H-O-S-T."
"No sir. It's spelled M-A-I-L-H-O-S-T." Customer: "Ok...where's the dot?"
I wanted to cry.
Husband: "Hi. I'm having a problem connecting to the Internet."
"Hi. I'm having a problem connecting to the Internet." Tech Support: "Ok sir, what operating system are you using?"
"Ok sir, what operating system are you using?" Husband: "Oh...I'm really not sure...I'm not the computer expert. My wife is. She's sitting at the computer. I'm going to dictate this to her." (pause) "She says we use Windows 95."
"Oh...I'm really not sure...I'm not the computer expert. My wife is. She's sitting at the computer. I'm going to dictate this to her." (pause) "She says we use Windows 95." Tech Support: "Ok. What exactly is the problem?"
"Ok. What exactly is the problem?" Husband: "I can't connect."
"I can't connect." Wife: (in the background) "We can't even get on -- the software is buggy!"
(in the background) "We can't even get on -- the software is buggy!" Tech Support: "Ok, what happens when you try to connect?"
"Ok, what happens when you try to connect?" Husband: "Ok, the Connect To: screen pops up, and it asks for my password."
"Ok, the Connect To: screen pops up, and it asks for my password." Tech Support: "Did you put your password in?"
"Did you put your password in?" Husband: "Yes, and it keeps asking for it afterwards."
"Yes, and it keeps asking for it afterwards." Tech Support: "Do you have your caps lock key on?"
"Do you have your caps lock key on?" Husband: "Yes, but that shouldn't make any difference."
"Yes, but that shouldn't make any difference." Tech Support: "Uhm...go ahead and hit the caps lock key until the light goes away."
"Uhm...go ahead and hit the caps lock key until the light goes away." Husband: "Are you sure? We've always got on with the caps lock key on."
"Are you sure? We've always got on with the caps lock key on." Tech Support: "Yes, I'm sure."
"Yes, I'm sure." Husband: "Oh, ok. It took my password."
"Oh, ok. It took my password." Wife: (in the background) "I told you!" (They start arguing. She takes the phone from him.) "HELLO?"
(in the background) "I told you!" (They start arguing. She takes the phone from him.) "HELLO?" Tech Support: "Yes, hello, you should be all set from here."
"Yes, hello, you should be all set from here." Wife: "YES HI, I'VE BEEN USING YOUR DAMN SOFTWARE FOR I DON'T EVEN KNOW HOW LONG, AND I STILL CAN'T GET EMAIL FROM MY SON IN THE NAVY!"
"YES HI, I'VE BEEN USING YOUR DAMN SOFTWARE FOR I DON'T EVEN KNOW HOW LONG, AND I STILL CAN'T GET EMAIL FROM MY SON IN THE NAVY!" Tech Support: "What program do you use for email, ma'am?"
"What program do you use for email, ma'am?" Wife: "I use Windows 95! We already told you that!"
"I use Windows 95! We already told you that!" Husband: (in the background) "We already told her that, didn't we?"
(in the background) "We already told her that, didn't we?" Tech Support: "No, what mail application...such as Eudora, Netscape, Internet Explorer..."
"No, what mail application...such as Eudora, Netscape, Internet Explorer..." Wife: "Microsoft Netscape."
"Microsoft Netscape." Tech Support: "Netscape?"
"Netscape?" Wife: "Yes, Microsoft Netscape."
"Yes, Microsoft Netscape." Tech Support: "Ok, open that up and go to Options, and then Mail and News Preferences--"
"Ok, open that up and go to Options, and then Mail and News Preferences--" Wife: "No, I want email! I don't want to surf the net!"
"No, I want email! I don't want to surf the net!" Tech Support: "Netscape comes with an email program, and we're going to set it up now."
"Netscape comes with an email program, and we're going to set it up now." Wife: "Ugh. Fine. Whatever. We'll do it YOUR way."
"Ugh. Fine. Whatever. We'll do it YOUR way." Tech Support: "Ok." (explains how to set up popmail)
"Ok." (explains how to set up popmail) Wife: "I'm not getting mail."
"I'm not getting mail." Tech Support: "Do you have two phone lines?"
Suddenly I hear the modem attempting to dial in.
Tech Support: (over the roar of the modem) "MA'AM? YOU ONLY HAVE ONE PHONE LINE. DON'T TRY TO DIAL IN."
(beep click click)
Tech Support: "You can't dial up with this line. It's already in use."
"You can't dial up with this line. It's already in use." Wife: "I was always able to use it before YOU changed my settings!"
"I was always able to use it before YOU changed my settings!" Tech Support: "No, you will just have to disconn--"
"No, you will just have to disconn--" Wife: "You tech support people always mess up my settings, and then I have to bring my computer back to [retailer] to get it fixed! You know, you cost me so much money!"
"You tech support people always mess up my settings, and then I have to bring my computer back to [retailer] to get it fixed! You know, you cost me so much money!" Tech Support: "Ma'am, I didn't change any of your Internet settings."
"Ma'am, I didn't change any of your Internet settings." Wife: "Yes you did, we just went through a NUMBER of things."
"Yes you did, we just went through a NUMBER of things." Tech Support: "All we did was--"
"All we did was--" Wife: "I've had ENOUGH of your service. I'm going back to AOL." (click)
I got a call from an older lady who stated that after installing our software, her mouse would not work. After further questioning, I learned that she got a message when booting the system that a device was not found. I had her power off the PC, disconnect, and then reconnect the mouse. After rebooting, the mouse functioned fine. But instead of thanking me, she asked me sourly, "Why did your software unplug my mouse?" I attempted to explain to the lady that that was not possible and that all it was was a loose connection. It wasn't good enough for her. She put her husband on, who asked, "Why did your software decide my computer didn't need a mouse?" Again, trying to explain the loose connection was of little use, and he wanted another number to call to return the software.
Tech Support: "So the mouse won't move?"
"So the mouse won't move?" Customer: "No."
"No." Tech Support: "Does the numlock or capslock work?"
"Does the numlock or capslock work?" Customer: "No."
"No." Tech Support: "Ok, you'll need to hit the reset button."
"Ok, you'll need to hit the reset button." Customer: "Ok."
"Ok." Tech Support: "Is the system booting back up yet?"
"Is the system booting back up yet?" Customer: "Ummm..." (pause)
"Ummm..." (pause) Tech Support: "Is it rebooting?"
"Is it rebooting?" Customer: "I see a return button. Is that the one you want?"
"I see a return button. Is that the one you want?" Tech Support: "No, the reset button. It's on the front of the computer. You're looking at the keyboard."
"No, the reset button. It's on the front of the computer. You're looking at the keyboard." Customer: "Oh, umm...there's just one button, and it says 'power'."
"Oh, umm...there's just one button, and it says 'power'." Tech Support: "That's the monitor. The computer is that box that all those things plug into."
"That's the monitor. The computer is that box that all those things plug into." Customer: "Umm...ohh! I see it now -- how silly of me. Ok, I pressed it."
"Umm...ohh! I see it now -- how silly of me. Ok, I pressed it." Tech Support: "Is the system rebooting now?"
"Is the system rebooting now?" Customer: "No, it's still locked up."
"No, it's still locked up." Tech Support: "You're sure you pressed the button marked 'reset'?"
"You're sure you pressed the button marked 'reset'?" Customer: "Yes, it's right here next to the one labeled 'Form Feed'."
"Yes, it's right here next to the one labeled 'Form Feed'." Tech Support: "Ma'am, that's the printer."
"Ma'am, that's the printer." Customer: "Maybe you just need to come here and fix it."
"Maybe you just need to come here and fix it." Tech Support: "Ma'am, do you use any floppy disks?"
"Ma'am, do you use any floppy disks?" Customer: "Yes, I save all my letters on them."
"Yes, I save all my letters on them." Tech Support: "The computer is the thing you stick the disks into."
"The computer is the thing you stick the disks into." Customer: "OHHH!!!! It's under the desk...hang on. Well! Look at that; there's a reset button. I pressed it, now my computer is acting like I just turned it on."
"OHHH!!!! It's under the desk...hang on. Well! Look at that; there's a reset button. I pressed it, now my computer is acting like I just turned it on." Tech Support: "Ok, good."
"Ok, good." Customer: "Wait, what's this button that says 'Turbo'?"
"Wait, what's this button that says 'Turbo'?" Tech Support: "That's there so you can slow the system down to run older software and games."
"That's there so you can slow the system down to run older software and games." Customer: "Is that why my system is so slow?"
"Is that why my system is so slow?" Tech Support: "Is the yellow light on?"
"Is the yellow light on?" Customer: "No."
"No." Tech Support: "Press that button."
"Press that button." Customer: "WOW!!!"
"WOW!!!" Tech Support: "What?"
"What?" Customer: "My report didn't freeze up this time."
That turned out to be the cause of her system locking up. It wasn't really locking up, it was just going so slow it seemed that way, and she never waited long enough for it to finish processing her reports.
Customer: "When I dial your service, the system asks me some questions and then it kicks me off."
"When I dial your service, the system asks me some questions and then it kicks me off." Tech Support: "What were the questions that it asked you?"
"What were the questions that it asked you?" Customer: "I don't remember."
"I don't remember." Tech Support: "Well, sir, if you don't remember what they were, I don't know what the problem is and I can't help you."
"Well, sir, if you don't remember what they were, I don't know what the problem is and I can't help you." Customer: "So I need to call you and go through this again after seeing the questions again?"
"So I need to call you and go through this again after seeing the questions again?" Tech Support: "Yes."
"Yes." Customer: "Can't I just keep you on while I call?"
"Can't I just keep you on while I call?" Tech Support: "Is your modem on another line?"
"Is your modem on another line?" Customer: "No, same line."
"No, same line." Tech Support: "Well, sir, you can't do it...it's like someone picking up the phone now and dialing while we are talking."
"Well, sir, you can't do it...it's like someone picking up the phone now and dialing while we are talking." Customer: "Can I at least try?"
He tried. Twice. Ugh.
Customer: "My Internet doesn't work!"
"My Internet doesn't work!" Tech Support: "Ok, do you have an icon for Internet on your desktop?"
"Ok, do you have an icon for Internet on your desktop?" Customer: "An icon? Desktop??"
"An icon? Desktop??" Tech Support: "Are you using Windows 95?"
"Are you using Windows 95?" Customer: "Don't know. You said Windows??? By the way, how do you type a capital 'e' instead of a lower case 'e'?"
"Don't know. You said Windows??? By the way, how do you type a capital 'e' instead of a lower case 'e'?" Tech Support: (crying) "Hold 'shift' while pressing 'e'."
(crying) "Hold 'shift' while pressing 'e'." Customer: "What is 'shift'??"
Customer: "My modem is not working."
"My modem is not working." Tech Support: "Ok. Let's start simply. Do you have a phone line running from the back of the computer to the wall?"
"Ok. Let's start simply. Do you have a phone line running from the back of the computer to the wall?" Customer: "I have no dial tone when I pick up the phone."
"I have no dial tone when I pick up the phone." Tech Support: "Do you have a phone line running from the back of the computer to the wall?"
"Do you have a phone line running from the back of the computer to the wall?" Customer: "I bought this new computer, it's got (reads from store receipt) and 32 megs of RAM. But it won't work."
"I bought this new computer, it's got (reads from store receipt) and 32 megs of RAM. But it won't work." Tech Support: "Ok. Tell me how you have it set up right now."
"Ok. Tell me how you have it set up right now." Customer: "Well, I have it setting next to the phone, and the phone line is hooked into it."
"Well, I have it setting next to the phone, and the phone line is hooked into it." Tech Support: "Is anything running into the wall?"
"Is anything running into the wall?" Customer: "No."
"No." Tech Support: "So you have the computer sitting next to the phone, the phone line running into the computer, and that's it?"
"So you have the computer sitting next to the phone, the phone line running into the computer, and that's it?" Customer: "Yes. Am I supposed to plug the computer in?"
"Yes. Am I supposed to plug the computer in?" Tech Support: "Yes, it needs to be plugged in so the modem can dial."
"Yes, it needs to be plugged in so the modem can dial." Customer: "What's a modem?"
My boss sent an update of our current program via modem to all of our online customers, with instructions to call in and be walked through the upgrade if they needed it. He had to leave the office for a few hours, so he gave me instructions on how to start the upgrade once they had downloaded it.
I got a call while he was away. Details you should know: the lady who called me for instructions was not the person who was operating the computer. That person was on the other side of the room, and everything had to be relayed through the lady on the phone. For reasons of brevity, I won't bother typing out every sentence being repeated several times back and forth.
Customer: "We got your program, along with a note that we were supposed to call...?"
"We got your program, along with a note that we were supposed to call...?" Tech Support: "Ok, I can help you with that. Type [the command] and press Return."
"Ok, I can help you with that. Type [the command] and press Return." Customer: "It says that file doesn't exist."
"It says that file doesn't exist." Tech Support: "Huh? Ok...are you in the [directory] directory?"
"Huh? Ok...are you in the [directory] directory?" Customer: "Yes."
"Yes." Tech Support: "Hmmm. Let's try this again, just to be sure."
I spelled out the command exactly and got her to read it back to me before she hit Return. But she got the same error.
Tech Support: "All right, let's make sure the program is installed in the right directory. Could you take a look in the directory tree and let me know what you find in--"
"All right, let's make sure the program is installed in the right directory. Could you take a look in the directory tree and let me know what you find in--" Customer: "Tree? TREE?? There's no trees anywhere near my computer! Whaddaya mean a tree might have caused the problem???"
Needless to say, that took a while to straighten out. Anyway, it turned out the upgrade wasn't in the directory at all.
Tech Support: "Did you receive the program OK? No error messages or anything popped up during the transmission?"
"Did you receive the program OK? No error messages or anything popped up during the transmission?" Customer: "Oh no, everything went fine. I've got it right here in my hand."
Sigh. Someone had transferred the download to disk in order to install it on a second computer, handed it to her, and told her to call us. Apparently it never occurred to her to get the program on the computer somehow before calling.
Tech Support: "What do you have connected to the back of your computer?"
"What do you have connected to the back of your computer?" Customer: "I have a printer, a modem and the System 7 module."
"I have a printer, a modem and the System 7 module." Tech Support: "Excuse me, but could you repeat the last item?"
"Excuse me, but could you repeat the last item?" Customer: "The System 7 module."
"The System 7 module." Tech Support: "The System 7 what?"
"The System 7 what?" Customer: "It's the module to upgrade the system to 7.5."
"It's the module to upgrade the system to 7.5." Tech Support: "...and it plugs into the back of your computer?"
"...and it plugs into the back of your computer?" Customer: "Yes."
"Yes." Tech Support: "Does this 'module' plug into anything else?"
"Does this 'module' plug into anything else?" Customer: "It plugs into the wall outlet."
"It plugs into the wall outlet." Tech Support: "Ma'am, that's the power cord."
"Ma'am, that's the power cord." Customer: "No, I can see the power cord, and this module is plugged in right next to it."
"No, I can see the power cord, and this module is plugged in right next to it." Tech Support: "Ma'am, there is no such thing as a System 7 module."
"Ma'am, there is no such thing as a System 7 module." Customer: "Oh my goodness, I'm sorry, I forgot. It's the power supply to the HyperCard."
"Oh my goodness, I'm sorry, I forgot. It's the power supply to the HyperCard." Tech Support: "Ma'am, HyperCard does not have a separate power supply. Would you mind following the cord from the outlet until you find what it plugs into?"
"Ma'am, HyperCard does not have a separate power supply. Would you mind following the cord from the outlet until you find what it plugs into?" Customer: "Ok."
Ten minutes later...
Customer: "It hooks into the printer."
This call took more than 45 minutes, in case you wanted to know why there are hold times on support numbers.
Customer: "I haven't had sound for about a month."
"I haven't had sound for about a month." Tech Support: "What kind of speakers do you have?"
"What kind of speakers do you have?" Customer: "They are stereo."
"They are stereo." Tech Support: "Ok, do they plug into the wall?"
"Ok, do they plug into the wall?" Customer: "No."
"No." Tech Support: "So they are the little boxes that don't attach to the monitor?"
"So they are the little boxes that don't attach to the monitor?" Customer: [angrily] "Yes."
[angrily] "Yes." Tech Support: "Ok, let's see if maybe the speakers are the problem. Do you have a music CD?"
"Ok, let's see if maybe the speakers are the problem. Do you have a music CD?" Customer: "Yes."
"Yes." Tech Support: "Would you go get it?"
"Would you go get it?" Customer: "Sure." [clunk clunk clunk] "Do you want one that came with the computer?"
"Sure." [clunk clunk clunk] "Do you want one that came with the computer?" Tech Support: "No, I need a music CD."
"No, I need a music CD." Customer: "I think 'The Animals' has music."
"I think 'The Animals' has music." Tech Support: "Ok, maybe I am being unclear, I need a regular CD not a cdrom -- one you buy at a music store."
"Ok, maybe I am being unclear, I need a regular CD not a cdrom -- one you buy at a music store." Customer: "I have a Garth Brooks CD, but I bought it at a swap meet."
"I have a Garth Brooks CD, but I bought it at a swap meet." Tech Support: "That's great; that CD will work."
"That's great; that CD will work." Customer: "I go to swap meets all the time to get great deals on stuff. We don't ever go to the music stores."
We get the CD playing with AudioStation, but there's no sound.
Tech Support: "Ok, let's check the volume."
"Ok, let's check the volume." Customer: "I already checked the damn volume when it stopped making sound a month ago!"
"I already checked the damn volume when it stopped making sound a month ago!" Tech Support: "I understand. Let's just double check it real quick."
The volume level turns out ok, and the sound's not muted.
Customer: "I'll just turn it all the way up.... Nope, can't hear a damn thing."
"I'll just turn it all the way up.... Nope, can't hear a damn thing." Tech Support: "It looks like you are ok there, now let's check those speakers."
"It looks like you are ok there, now let's check those speakers." Customer: "Ok, but you might as well replace the whole damn thing right now."
"Ok, but you might as well replace the whole damn thing right now." Tech Support: "I'll be happy to replace anything that needs replacing. I just want to make sure we get everything working for you."
"I'll be happy to replace anything that needs replacing. I just want to make sure we get everything working for you." Customer: "All right."
"All right." Tech Support: "Now those speakers...they are all hooked up? The left connects to the right and then the right connects to the computer?"
"Now those speakers...they are all hooked up? The left connects to the right and then the right connects to the computer?" Customer: [obviously without checking] "Yup."
[obviously without checking] "Yup." Tech Support: "Ok. And they are turned off right?"
"Ok. And they are turned off right?" Customer: "...Listen to me you little..."
I endure a three minute profanity/threat combo.
Customer: "...Of course they are turned on!! Now you--"
"...Of course they are turned on!! Now you--" Tech Support: "Whoa, slow down a sec...I want you to turn them to the off position, please."
Country music blares. The rest of the conversation takes place shouting over it.
Customer: "Heck son, I don't believe it! What was the problem?"
"Heck son, I don't believe it! What was the problem?" Tech Support: "The batteries must be dead."
I used to work as a salesman for a computer wholesaler a number of years ago. I got a call from a woman who was fit to be tied. She found out that the person who sold her the computer bought it from our company and called us to complain.
Customer: "I need help with this computer!"
"I need help with this computer!" Tech Support: "Well what do you need to know?"
"Well what do you need to know?" Customer: (screaming) "Well I bought this damn computer from this guy who says he bought it from you and he came to my house and hooked it up. Now while he's explaining to my daughter how to use it, she's telling him 'yeah, yeah,' she knows what he's talking about. I'm in the kitchen cooking peppers and onions while my daughter is going 'yeah, yeah,' then this guy leaves, and I ask my daughter if she knows how to use the computer, and she says she was too embarrassed to tell him she didn't understand and just told him 'yeah, yeah.' Now I paid over $1000 for this thing and I don't even know how to use it!"
(screaming) "Well I bought this damn computer from this guy who says he bought it from you and he came to my house and hooked it up. Now while he's explaining to my daughter how to use it, she's telling him 'yeah, yeah,' she knows what he's talking about. I'm in the kitchen cooking peppers and onions while my daughter is going 'yeah, yeah,' then this guy leaves, and I ask my daughter if she knows how to use the computer, and she says she was too embarrassed to tell him she didn't understand and just told him 'yeah, yeah.' Now I paid over $1000 for this thing and I don't even know how to use it!" Tech Support: "Uh, well is there anything in particular you want to know how to do?"
I never anticipated her answer.
Customer: "I wanna make a tennis game."
"I wanna make a tennis game." Tech Support: "A what!?"
"A what!?" Customer: "A tennis game with the paddles."
"A tennis game with the paddles." Tech Support: "What, you mean like pong?"
"What, you mean like pong?" Customer: "No, tennis!"
"No, tennis!" Tech Support: "You mean with graphics?"
"You mean with graphics?" Customer: "I wanna make a tennis game with the, you know, rackets and the ball."
"I wanna make a tennis game with the, you know, rackets and the ball." Tech Support: (in shock, I start blurting nonsense) "Well, do you know Windows?"
(in shock, I start blurting nonsense) "Well, do you know Windows?" Customer: "I don't know anything about computers, I was frying sausages in the kitchen..."
She tells me the whole story again.
Tech Support: "Well, you would need to lean how to program in a computer language like C++ and that takes many years of experience. I'd suggest you first start slowly and learn DOS and Windows."
After that, I spent twenty minutes talking her down from a seething boil to a cool simmer and finally got her off the phone. I imagine this woman aggravated the poor slob who sold her the computer until he caved in and gave her our number. Nice guy.
Customer: "Look, look!!!!! Look what it's doing!!! Can you BELIEVE this?? Why is it doing that??"
"Look, look!!!!! Look what it's doing!!! Can you BELIEVE this?? Why is it doing that??" Tech Support: "Sir, I can't see your computer, what is it doing?"
"Sir, I can't see your computer, what is it doing?" Customer: "WHAT??? Can't you figure it out?? LOOK AT MY COMPUTER SCREEN!!!!! You can see it, can't you?!"
This was my slowest caller ever:
Tech Support: "Thank you for calling; how may I help you?"
"Thank you for calling; how may I help you?" Customer: "Ummm...it doesn't work."
Direct and to the point, but just a touch vague. So I prodded him for more information about his problem.
Tech Support: "What does not work?"
"What does not work?" Customer: "Ummm...the program doesn't work."
"Ummm...the program doesn't work." Tech Support: "Could you please be more specific? Was there an error message?"
"Could you please be more specific? Was there an error message?" Customer: "Yes."
I waited a moment, thinking that he would continue on his own. But he didn't.
Tech Support: "And the message was?"
"And the message was?" Customer: "Something about a GPF."
"Something about a GPF." Tech Support: "Are you in front of the computer now?"
"Are you in front of the computer now?" Customer: "No."
"No." Tech Support: "Can you get in front of the computer?"
"Can you get in front of the computer?" Customer: "I guess; let me get out of bed."
Shuffling. Stepping down stairs.
Tech Support: "Are you still there?"
"Are you still there?" Customer: "Yeah, I have to go downstairs and turn on the computer."
This guy has a 386-25 with 2 megs of RAM loading Windows. It takes about five minutes to boot up his machine.
Tech Support: "Ok, are you in Windows?"
"Ok, are you in Windows?" Customer: "Uhhhh...almost...."
Pause.
Tech Support: "Ok, are you in Windows?"
"Ok, are you in Windows?" Customer: "Uhhhh...almost...."
Pause.
Customer: "Ok."
"Ok." Tech Support: "Ok, you are in Windows, can you get into the program for me please?"
"Ok, you are in Windows, can you get into the program for me please?" Customer: "How do I do that?"
"How do I do that?" Tech Support: "Just the way you normally do."
"Just the way you normally do." Customer: "I don't remember. It's late, and I'm tired. Step me through it."
"I don't remember. It's late, and I'm tired. Step me through it." Tech Support: "Double click on the icon for the program please."
"Double click on the icon for the program please." Customer: "Where is that?"
I slowly drop my head to the desk. Finally, I get him to start our application and wait three minutes for the software to load. I'm now fifteen minutes into this call, and I normally average three and a half.
Tech Support: "Ok, can you duplicate the problem for me?"
"Ok, can you duplicate the problem for me?" Customer: "Uhhhhhhhhhmmmmmmm.........no."
"Uhhhhhhhhhmmmmmmm.........no." Tech Support: "Why not?"
"Why not?" Customer: "I don't remember where it happened."
"I don't remember where it happened." Tech Support: "I'm afraid I really won't able to help unless I know the error message and where it occured. You will need to recreate the message and call us back with that information."
"I'm afraid I really won't able to help unless I know the error message and where it occured. You will need to recreate the message and call us back with that information." Customer: "But I waited so long to talk to you, you people really need to be faster if you expect people to use your service. It takes too long to talk to you. You will lose customers unless you speed it up."
"But I waited so long to talk to you, you people really need to be faster if you expect people to use your service. It takes too long to talk to you. You will lose customers unless you speed it up." Tech Support: "Thanks for calling, bye-bye."
Customer: "It was working last night, but it's not working any longer. And I haven't changed anything."
"It was working last night, but it's not working any longer. And I haven't changed anything." Tech Support: "You sure you haven't changed anything? Nobody's gone near the machine?"
"You sure you haven't changed anything? Nobody's gone near the machine?" Customer: "Yeah, yeah, nobody touched it."
"Yeah, yeah, nobody touched it." Tech Support: "What's not working?"
"What's not working?" Customer: "I can't get into my POP account."
Alarm bells go off in my head. The user doesn't have a POP account.
Tech Support: "Oh. All right. Do you have the letter we sent you with your POP account details?"
"Oh. All right. Do you have the letter we sent you with your POP account details?" Customer: "Yeah, uh, it's...around here somewhere." [scrabbling sounds]
"Yeah, uh, it's...around here somewhere." [scrabbling sounds] Tech Support: "Ok, let's forget the POP account for a moment. Can you tell me exactly what happened?"
"Ok, let's forget the POP account for a moment. Can you tell me exactly what happened?" Customer: "Well, I moved everything onto my new machine this morning, and it's not working."
"Well, I moved everything onto my new machine this morning, and it's not working." Tech Support: "I thought you said that you didn't change anything???"
"I thought you said that you didn't change anything???" Customer: "But I didn't!"
Tech Support: "Ok, type 'cd windows.'"
"Ok, type 'cd windows.'" Customer: "Right."
"Right." Tech Support: "What does it say?"
"What does it say?" Customer: "It says 'see colon slash greater-than see dee windows.'"
"It says 'see colon slash greater-than see dee windows.'" Tech Support: [sigh] "Press return."
[sigh] "Press return." Customer: "Ok, it says 'see colon slash windows slash greater-than.'"
"Ok, it says 'see colon slash windows slash greater-than.'" Tech Support: "Right, do a dir."
"Right, do a dir." Customer: "Uh...how?"
"Uh...how?" Tech Support: "Type 'dir'."
"Type 'dir'." Customer: "It says 'see colon slash windows slash greater-than dir.'"
"It says 'see colon slash windows slash greater-than dir.'" Tech Support: [adding teethmarks to the phone] "Press return!"
[adding teethmarks to the phone] "Press return!" Customer: "Ok, it says lots of different things, and then, 'see colon slash windows slash greater-than.' Oh, and there's always a flashy line after the greater-than; did I mention that?"
A user calls from Chicago. (We are in central Illinois.) She wants to register for classes via our online registration system. In the course of the discussion I discover that:
She is definitely "Not A Computer Person" (tm). She is at her friend's house, but her friend is not there. Her friend has a computer, but she doesn't know what kind. She has never turned it on. She thinks it has a modem, but she is not sure. She has never logged on to any of her university accounts. She has never used any terminal software and doesn't know what type her friend has.
She was deeply upset that "no one will help her." Sadly, I was also unable to do so. I mean, what do you do?
I once received a call from a woman with a heavy, throaty, not-real-educated-or-bright voice from New York. She asked if the...
Customer: "...new tape, ya know, the plasticky thingie I got in the mail...does that work even if I don't put it in my compoota??"
"...new tape, ya know, the plasticky thingie I got in the mail...does that work even if I don't put it in my compoota??" Tech Support: "No, ma'am, the software does not work unless it is installed on to your hard drive."
"No, ma'am, the software does not work unless it is installed on to your hard drive." Customer: "But this isn't soft...this is a small hard plastic square..."
"But this isn't soft...this is a small hard plastic square..." Tech Support: "Yes, ma'am, that's called software, and you need to insert it into the disk drive to use it."
"Yes, ma'am, that's called software, and you need to insert it into the disk drive to use it." Customer: "Look, lady, I'm not stupid -- this isn't soft -- and I don't appreciate you making fun of me." [click]
Tech Support: "Now, do you see the words '[etc etc etc]'."
"Now, do you see the words '[etc etc etc]'." Customer: "Um, no."
"Um, no." Tech Support: "Scroll down, there should be the words '[etc etc etc]' enclosed in brackets."
"Scroll down, there should be the words '[etc etc etc]' enclosed in brackets." Customer: "They're not here."
"They're not here." Tech Support: [loading up the same file in EDIT on my machine] "Ok, starting from the top, you'll see '[this]', '[that]', and '[the other]'. The next section will have '[etc etc etc]' in brackets."
[loading up the same file in EDIT on my machine] "Ok, starting from the top, you'll see '[this]', '[that]', and '[the other]'. The next section will have '[etc etc etc]' in brackets." Customer: "Oh, you mean '[etc etc etc]'!"
"Oh, you mean '[etc etc etc]'!" Tech Support: "Yes. Now, under that is a blank line."
"Yes. Now, under that is a blank line." Customer: "Ok."
"Ok." Tech Support: "Now, move the cursor to that blank line."
"Now, move the cursor to that blank line." Customer: "I don't understand what you mean."
I spent about ten minutes trying to navigate him to the beginning of the blank line so that he can type in a single line of text. He seemed to completely lack comprehension. The man understood English, but there was something he seemed to be failing to grasp.
Tech Support: [getting frustrated and barely keeping calm] "Now, right below the words '[etc etc etc]' is a blank line."
[getting frustrated and barely keeping calm] "Now, right below the words '[etc etc etc]' is a blank line." Customer: "Oh! You mean the line that doesn't have anything on it!"
"Oh! You mean the line that doesn't have anything on it!" Tech Support: "YES!"
Tech Support: "Sir, open up your System Folder and find the Launcher Items folder."
"Sir, open up your System Folder and find the Launcher Items folder." Customer: "I don't have a Systems Folder."
My patience with such customers was wearing thin. After a short pause:
Tech Support: "It's in your hard disk, sir. You must have one, or else your computer wouldn't start properly."
"It's in your hard disk, sir. You must have one, or else your computer wouldn't start properly." Customer: "Hard disk, hard disk...hmmm -- is that little rectangle in the top right?"
"Hard disk, hard disk...hmmm -- is that little rectangle in the top right?" Tech Support: "Yes."
"Yes." Customer: "Ok, but mine doesn't say 'Hard Disk.' It's just labeled with a period. How did that happen?"
"Ok, but mine doesn't say 'Hard Disk.' It's just labeled with a period. How did that happen?" Tech Support: "Well, you can name it anything you want, perhaps yours was named accidentally."
"Well, you can name it anything you want, perhaps yours was named accidentally." Customer: "Oh. What now?"
"Oh. What now?" Tech Support: "Open your System Folder."
"Open your System Folder." Customer: "I don't have a systems folder. Oh, oh, here it is! Ok, ok, I'm opening the Systems Envelope now."
And after an excruciating 30 minutes of how to make an alias and reminding him that he truly did have a System Folder (or, as he called it, an "Envelope") and where it was, we got his new software on the Launcher.
Ten minutes later he called me back and told me how he had written down my directions to the "Systems Envelope" so he could put more programs on his Launcher. One of the programs didn't work, however, and after another 45 minutes of sheer hell, I told him we needed to send him some new floppies.
Customer: "Hey, can you send me a dozen apples too? My wife would like to make a pie. Ha ha! Apples. Get it? Macintoshes? Ha ha. Don't you get it?"
If I had a button on my phone to administer electro-shock to this man, I would have.
Tech Support: "Yes sir, I do."
Customer: "I get garbage when I log onto IndyNet."
"I get garbage when I log onto IndyNet." Tech Support: "Ok, what software are you using?"
"Ok, what software are you using?" Customer: "Internet."
"Inte |
A quick visit to Wikipedia shows that the classic definition of socialism is:
… an economic and political theory advocating public or common ownership and cooperative management of the means of production and allocation of resources.
This means that government controls key industries, which is why some were calling out the government bailout of G.M. as evidence of socialism. Except that the U.S. government wasn’t really calling the shots, they just put up a huge sum of money. (That all started under George W. Bush, by the way.)
Now, bear with me, we’re going to get a bit technical for a moment. On the Wikipedia page for socialism is the definition of the “social democracy” movement:
Traditional Social democrats advocated the creation of socialism through political reforms by operating within the existing political system of capitalism. The Social democratic movement sought to elect socialists to political office to implement reforms. The modern social democratic movement has abandoned the goal of achieving a socialist economy, and instead advocates for social reforms to improve capitalism, such as a welfare state and unemployment benefits.
Social democracy should not be confused with democratic socialism:
Since the rise in popularity of the New Right and neoliberalism, a number of prominent social democratic parties have abandoned the goal of the gradual evolution of capitalism to socialism and instead support welfare state capitalism.[6] Social democracy as such has arisen as a distinct ideology from democratic socialism.
So, while the social democracy movement did, in fact, grow out of the idea of creating a socialist economy democratically and within the political system of capitalism, today the idea of social democracy falls squarely into both the political and economic spheres of capitalism.
I think it is fair to label programs such as Medicare and Social Security as ”reforms to improve capitalism” that were driven by the Democratic Party. So, then, as a capitalist country with some limited social programs, could the U.S. be called a social democracy? Certainly. Are Canada, Australia and the countries of Western Europe better examples of social democracies? Certainly. Have we taken different routes to end up at roughly the same place? Yes.
But, forget all of this for a second. What’s important here is that the Democratic Party does not have its roots in socialism, democratic socialism, or even social democracy. (Contrast the U.S. to European countries where there are actual social democratic parties that play a real role in politics.) Social Security was first created as part of the New Deal, the creators of which specifically did not include any members of the Socialist Party. Medicare and Medicaid were created under the Social Security Act of 1965, during the height of the Cold War. Only in the most paranoid conservative circles (tea, anyone?) could anyone claim that these programs stemmed from the desire of Democrats to try to implement socialism.
Bottom line: The U.S. can be called a social democracy and its limited social programs are not manifestations of socialism.
Why does this matter?
I think it’s fair to say that most North Americans still cringe when they think of the word “socialism.” In the U.S. at least, that word is generally associated with ideas of non-competitveness, taking money away from the wealthy and giving it away (without merit!) to the poor. But, “democracy” is a term that seems to be universally embraced in our society. (Wasn’t that why George W. Bush wanted us to invade Iraq? Snark.) When people on the “left” call programs such as Social Security “socialist,” even with the best of intentions, they’re using the definition of their political foes and are letting them frame the debate.
Linguist George Lakoff explains this in his most recent blog post at the HuffPo:
Using conservative language activates the conservative view, not only of the given issue, but the conservative worldview in general, which in turn strengthens the conservative worldview in the brains of those listening. That leads to more people thinking conservative thoughts, and hence supporting conservative positions on issues and conservative candidates.
Somehow, I don’t think this is what Larry and Bill would like to do.
I think it is most appropriate to end with this quote from FDR as he spoke about the New Deal:
Some people will try to give you new and strange names for what we are doing. Sometimes they will call it ‘Fascism,’ sometimes ‘Communism,’ sometimes ‘Regimentation,’ sometimes ‘Socialism.’ But, in so doing, they are trying to make very complex and theoretical something that is really very simple and very practical…. Plausible self-seekers and theoretical die-hards will tell you of the loss of individual liberty. Answer this question out of the facts of your own life. Have you lost any of your rights or liberty or constitutional freedom of action and choice?
(Note: This diary is cross-posted from my blog. Also, Wikipedia is used as a source not because it is the gospel of political science, but because it is an easily available source that is created and edited by consensus.) |
Sheriff John Isom in uniform and Herb Bryant in the suit in 1992. (Public Domain).
U.S. District Court Judge Henry Hudson who is one of several individuals being considered for the position of FBI Director, came under scrutiny by the Department of Justice in 1992 when he was Director of the US Marshals Service.
The DOJ at the time was investigating the Marshals Service’s ties to a wealthy Virginia man who had Special Deputy U.S. Marshal status.
J.C. Herbert Bryant, Jr. of Middleburg, had been a Special Deputy U.S. Marshal for seven years because of his affiliation with a private police group called ARGUS, an acronym for The Armored Response Group United States, according to court records.
Bryant and then Sheriff of Loudoun County John Isom founded the organization.
The group was formed to reportedly provide armored vehicles to law enforcement agencies. Although Bryant, a private citizen was a Special Deputy U.S. Marshal he operated without any federal oversight, which is contrary to the federal law governing the Director of the Marshals Service’s authority to grant that status.
Bryant also was the president of the Marshals Foundation, a nonprofit corporation based in Virginia that promoted the Marshals Service. Bryant financed the foundation.
ARGUS was registered as a nonprofit corporation with the Virginia Secretary of State.
Bryant also was a heavy financial contributor to the campaigns of Sheriff Isom. He also pumped more than $230,000 of family money into ARGUS to purchase several pieces of police equipment including an armored personnel carrier called a “ferret,” that was purchased with help from then Sen. John W. Warner (R-VA), according to court records.
Bryant, who at various times called himself a colonel and a general paraded around Loudoun County, Virginia for years sporting a sidearm on his hip and drove around in an unmarked police vehicle with Mississippi Sheriff license plates, that had a police radio with Loudoun County, Virginia Sheriff’s Department frequencies.
With his status as a Special Deputy United States Marshal, Bryant then designed his own police uniform complete with a badge and shoulder patch that read “POLICE ARGUS.”
Bryant went even further with his status as a Special Deputy Marshal when a female showed up in Loudoun County wearing the same uniform as Bryant, with the exception that she had sergeant stripes on her arm. Whether she too had any status with the Marshals Service was never known, but then the question was if not, then how could she wear the police uniform of ARGUS, and carry a weapon.
ARGUS at the time had an office on the second floor of the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Substation in Sterling, Va.
Never having enough toys to parade around with, the self-proclaimed “General Bryant” purchased a Harley Davidson police motorcycle and adorned it with the police insignia of ARGUS. He drove it in uniform to a funeral for a fallen Alexandria, Va. police officer. I know that because I was there as a member of the Sheriff’s Motor Squad.
In 1992 Brett Phillips, then founder and editor of the Leesburg Today newspaper started asking questions about who was Bryant, what was ARGUS and why he had been driving around for years in Virginia in an unmarked police vehicle that bore Mississippi Sheriff license plates.
Leesburg Today published some stories on ARGUS that sparked the local Washington Post reporter assigned to Loudoun County to get involved.
The Virginia State Police were also inquiring about Bryant. Several troopers had encounters with Bryant over the years and Bryant would identify himself as a US Marshal.
As for Bryant’s unmarked police cruiser, Bryant got his hands on a new police car by putting up the cash so the sheriff of Warren County, Mississippi where Bryant’s family had a large estate, could purchase the car and then title it over to Bryant, who had told the sheriff he was a Special Deputy Marshal. Bryant told the sheriff he needed the car to patrol the family estate. Instead Bryant brought the car to Loudoun County, Virginia, and in effect it became the first vehicle in the ARGUS fleet.
With the onslaught of inquiry from the Leesburg Today and Washington Post and their subsequent stories, officials were getting nervous.
Because of the embarrassment that this was causing, the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors in June 1992 told Loudoun Sheriff John Isom to sever the County ties with ARGUS.
It was also causing embarrassment for the US Marshals Service whom Henry Hudson had served as Director from 1992 to 1993.
According to court documents, then Director of the US Marshals Service, Henry Hudson wrote to Bryant advising him to send Hudson a letter asking not to be reappointed, which Bryant did. Bryant’s appointment expired on June 30, 1992.
However, that was not the end of the story of Bryant, or problems for Hudson.
On Sept. 2, 1992, Bryant, a Virginia resident, drove his truck into the District of Columbia and parked it near the entrance to the Mayflower Hotel, which was hosting at the time, an Israeli diplomatic delegation. In the front window of the truck was a placard bearing the words, “United States Marshal.” In the rear compartment, clearly visible from the outside, were six firearms: three 9mm Beretta pistols, a .44 caliber magnum revolver and a .22 caliber derringer.
According to court records, the truck caught the attention of several government officials, including two US Diplomatic Security Service Agents and two officers of the Metropolitan Police Department.
When Bryant returned to his truck, he was questioned about the weapons and his identity. Bryant stated he had left the firearms in his truck after target practice at a Northern Virginia firing range. According to the officers at the scene Bryant identified himself as a Warren County, Mississippi deputy sheriff, and reportedly produced a badge and identification card.
In later testimony in court, DSS Agent Mark Concord, stated that Bryant also identified himself as a “Special Deputy United States Marshal.”
The MPD officers on the scene contacted the District of Columbia U.S. Marshal’s office to ascertain Bryant’s status. Robert Williamson, a supervisory Deputy U.S. Marshal arrived at the scene. Williamson later testified in court that he also heard Bryant identify himself as a “Special Deputy U.S. Marshal.” In addition, both Williamson and MPD Officer Anthony Suarez testified that Bryant claimed he had left his Marshals Service credentials in a briefcase at home.
While Bryant was being detained outside the Mayflower Hotel, Herbert M. Rutherford who was the U.S. Marshal for the District of Columbia, contacted the U.S. Marshals headquarters in Virginia and attempted to ascertain Bryant’s status, with negative results.
As a result, Rutherford arranged with the consent of the MPD officers, for Bryant and his truck to be brought to the District of Columbia Marshals Service office. Bryant was interviewed and subsequently released, but they retained his truck and weapons.
Rutherford would later testify that from the moment he found out that Bryant was being detained he thought the, “situation would prove to be sticky for the United States Marshals Service” and that fear of press coverage was one reason he did not go to the scene himself.
According to court records when Rutherford called headquarters to find out Bryant’s status so as to decide how to handle the situation at the Mayflower, he initially did not try to reach then Deputy Director of the U.S. Marshals Service, John Twomey, whom he knew to be in charge of the Special Deputy program, but instead tried to reach then Director Hudson directly because he did not think Twomey looked out for the “best interest” of Hudson. Only after his unsuccessful attempt to talk to Hudson, did Rutherford call Twomey, who supposedly told him that he didn’t know Bryant’s status.
Hudson would later testify that no one at the time of the incident reported to him that Bryant had represented himself to be a Special Deputy or Deputy U.S. Marshal.
It was later determined that Bryant had no official position with the U.S. Marshals Service at the time of the incident.
Deputy Director John Twomey later told the MPD that Bryant was allowed to go free because he “was neither a criminal nor a terrorist.”
After the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department found out that Bryant had no status with the U.S. Marshals Service at the time of the incident and that they were told that Bryant was released by the Marshals Service they went to the US Attorney’s Office.
Bryant at one time was given an award by the Marshals’ Association at a dinner in Los Angeles that was attended by Hudson.
On June 14, 1994 Bryant was indicted on three counts: (1) did falsely assume and pretend to be a Special Deputy United States Marshal and in such pretended character, demanded and obtained that he not be arrested by the Metropolitan Police Department for possessing and carrying weapons in the District of Columbia; (2) did carry, openly, and concealed on or about his person, pistols, without a license issued as provided by law; (3) in a matter within the jurisdiction of a department and agency of the United States, to wit, the US Marshals Service, did knowingly make a false and fraudulent statement.”
In October 1994 Bryant was convicted on counts 1 and 3 and acquitted on count 2. Bryant filed an appeal in 1997 however the court upheld the convictions.
After completing their investigation in 1992 the Justice Department concluded that the U.S. Marshals Service did not have sufficient reason to grant special deputy status to Bryant, stating that Marshals Service officials had made “serious misjudgments” when they gave Bryant a badge and arrest authority.
On Dec. 2,1992, a senior Marshals service official stated that the USMS was embarrassed by its ties to Bryant and the role that they played in the Mayflower incident.
Hudson also came under scrutiny for his involvement in the Ruby Ridge Incident that began in August 1992. According to an ESPN article, “His leadership of the Marshals Service included early decisions in the attempt to arrest Randy Weaver at Ruby Ridge, the greatest disaster in the history of federal law enforcement, a fiasco that led to a grand jury investigation in which Hudson was called to testify and led to misconduct charges against 12 federal agents.”
According to a Congressional report on the Ruby Ridge incident, “based on his desire to avoid creating discoverable documents that might be used by the defense in the Weaver/Harris trial and his understanding that the FBI would conduct a comprehensive investigation of the incident, Hudson decided to conduct no formal review of Marshal Service activities connected with the Weaver case and the Ruby Ridge incident.”
Hudson also is the judge who ruled Obamacare to be unconstitutional and owns a piece of a GOP consulting firm – Campaign Solutions, which lobbied hard against health care reform.
If President Trump nominates Hudson to be next FBI director, Congress will have a lot of questions that the judge might have a hard time answering. |
Philippines president threatens to jettison corrupt officials – ‘I have done this before,’ he says in speech to typhoon victims
President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines has threatened corrupt government officials with the prospect of being thrown out of a helicopter, warning he has done it himself before.
The former prosecutor said he once hurled a Chinese man suspected of rape and murder out of a helicopter.
The global rise of populist political movements – Project podcast Read more
“If you are corrupt I will fetch you using a helicopter to Manila and I will throw you out. I have done this before, why would I not do it again?” Duterte said during a speech to victims of a typhoon on Tuesday, a clip of which was posted on a video feed of the president’s office.
He later appeared to attempt to row back on the claim, telling CNN: “We had no helicopter. We don’t use that”. He described the incident as “just the creative imagination of this Tulfo,” without explaining what a Tulfo was.
It comes a few weeks after he admitted killing people during his 22 years as a mayor of Davao city, sometimes riding a motorcycle looking for “encounters to kill”. He said those killings were part of legitimate police operations, including a hostage incident. Some senators have warned Duterte he risks impeachment over his comments.
Duterte also said six people arrested last week during a seizure in the capital of more than half a tonne of methamphetamine, known locally as “shabu”, were fortunate he was out of town. “They were lucky I was not in Manila that time. If I had known there were that much shabu inside a house, I would definitely kill you,” he said. “Let’s not make any drama, I will personally gun you down if nobody else will do it.”
It was not immediately clear when or where the helicopter incident Duterte spoke of took place. His spokesman, Ernesto Abella, also suggested it may not have actually happened. “Let’s just say, urban legend,” Abella said, without elaborating.
The United Nations’ top human rights envoy has called for an investigation into Duterte’s claims of killing people, to which Duterte last week responded by calling him “stupid”, an “idiot” and a “son of a bitch” who should go back to school. |
On 30 August, the International Day of the Disappeared will once again be observed.
In Lebanon, where an estimated 17,000 persons are still missing on account of the “civil” war that ravaged the country - with plenty of outside help - from 1975 until 1990, it will mark yet another year of unanswered questions for family members of the victims.
Earlier this year, I spoke with one such family member: a silver-haired man named Abed, whose younger brother, Ahmad, joined the PLO in 1983 at the age of 17 and then promptly disappeared.
Over pineapple juice in the garden of his home in the tiny south Lebanese village of Maaroub, Abed recounted the decades of futile searches for Ahmad.
During one period, the family was strung along by an enterprising fellow involved in a missing persons scam industry; in exchange for several hefty payments, he produced what he claimed was an official paper from a prison in Aleppo, Syria, confirming that Ahmad was being held there.
An eventual visit to the jail by a Lebanese politician destroyed that myth. Reports that Ahmad had been spotted at Lebanon’s notorious Roumieh Prison also proved unfounded and the family continued to allow for the possibility that he had been delivered into the hands of either the Syrians or the Israelis by some sympathetic Lebanese formation.
The school day that never comes
Throughout Lebanon itself, mass graves from the civil war era have yet to be excavated - for various reasons. Most obviously, there is no mechanism in place to allow for their excavation, a willful oversight of sorts that illustrates the profound political-sectarian obstacles to coming to terms with recent Lebanese history.
Thanks in part to a post-civil war amnesty that essentially translated into an enthusiastic embrace of impunity, Lebanese civil warlords and militiamen were able to recycle themselves - with minimal difficulties - into the postwar political landscape. To this day, many of them continue to lord their powers over respective communities with divisive and fearmongering rhetoric.
But just how sustainable is a landscape forged atop unmarked mass graves and other superficially interred crimes?
In my recent travelogue on south Lebanon, Martyrs Never Die, I note that politicians with large quantities of blood on their hands aren’t in any hurry to go tracking down - or digging up - the disappeared. As part of the state’s refusal to engage in any sort of meaningful reckoning with the dark past, the civil war is not even taught in Lebanese schools.
But as many surviving relatives of civil war victims can attest, the past is the present. Forcibly denied information regarding their loved ones’ fates, family members are condemned to a sort of psychological limbo that often amounts to emotional torture.
Human beings are designed to grieve, when faced with personal tragedy, in order to process and eventually overcome the pain. In the case of disappearance, however, there is nothing concrete to process; it’s impossible to grieve the unknown.
The lack of closure can be linked to various manifestations of psychological and physical suffering and trauma. There are elderly Lebanese women who haven’t left the house in years, in heartbreaking anticipation of their missing sons showing up on the doorstep at any minute.
A 2013 report on Lebanon’s disappeared by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) quotes the brother of a missing person, who recalls their mother’s conduct following the disappearance: “I remember that whenever she cooked for us, we ate her tears with the food, because she never stopped crying.”
In another example of time coming to a torturous standstill, a Lebanese humanitarian worker in Beirut told me of a Palestinian mother he had interviewed whose four children had gone missing during the civil war in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. The woman still kept her youngest son’s schoolbag in its spot behind the door in her house, in preparation for another school day that would never come.
Race against time
While time may continue to stand still for some, representatives of the ICRC in Lebanon are warning of a “race against time”: as aging relatives die, the likelihood of being able to one day identify exhumed remains is greatly jeopardised.
In July, I attended an ICRC press conference in Beirut where Fabrizio Carboni, head of the ICRC’s delegation in Lebanon, officially announced an initiative to collect Biological Reference Samples (i.e., saliva) from family members of the disappeared in order to assist in the future identification of any remains that are found.
Two samples will be collected from each person; one will be given to Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces and the other will be stored at ICRC headquarters in Switzerland.
At the press conference, while an older woman cried inconsolably in the front row, Carboni stressed that “answers” were still quite far off, and that - as much as the ICRC was doing to assist in the whole process - the organisation could not act as a substitute for the state.
An ICRC press release confirmed that “the samples will be used to extract DNA in order to identify human remains once a national mechanism is formed by the [Lebanese] government with the mandate to uncover the fate of the disappeared”.
Unfortunately, the “government” in question happens to consist of an illegitimate parliament that since May 2014 has not managed to elect a president, leaving the country without one. And while members of the contemporary Lebanese political class have not generally been known for any sort of commitment to the alleviation of popular suffering, the current government hold-up is a convenient excuse for inertia on the disappeared front, as well.
Compounding the inertia are claims that numerous people were disappeared from Lebanon to Syria - claims that now stand an ever-diminishing chance of being investigated given the ongoing brutal destruction of that country.
Meanwhile, regular attacks on Lebanon by the state of Israel and other murderous entities might perpetuate the narrative that the Lebanese don’t have time to deal with history.
But as Abed commented to me in his south Lebanese garden regarding the fate of his brother Ahmad and the other 17,000 disappeared: “We need closure.” The paramount need for a personal psychological ceasefire - the truth about what happened to Ahmad - hadn’t subsided even as Abed was forced over the years to endure Israeli bombardments and other shameless affronts to justice and human decency.
Another International Day of the Disappeared, another eternity of impunity. In Lebanon, the war is far from over.
- Belen Fernandez is the author of The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work, published by Verso. She is a contributing editor at Jacobin magazine.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
Photo: A photo of a poster from the Fushat Amal organisation on a wall in Beirut's Ashrafiyeh neighbourhood (MEE/Belen Fernandez) |
UBS's new head of investment banking Andrea Orcel admitted to MPs and peers that banks had become 'too arrogant, too self-convinced' in the runup to the banking crisis
Banks are "too arrogant" and must undergo sweeping cultural changes, a top banker at UBS said on Wednesday as the Swiss bank was described by the incoming archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, as a "corrupted organisation".
At a hearing of the banking standards commission, UBS's new head of investment banking, Andrea Orcel, admitted to MPs and peers that banks had become "too arrogant, too self-convinced" before the banking crisis that helped to expose the rigging of interbank lending rates. UBS was hit with a record £940m fine as a result of the scandal last month.
"I think the industry has to change," said Orcel, who joined UBS in July and was dubbed the "Ronaldo of banking" by a commission member, while another called him a "deal junkie".
Chaired by the Conservative MP Andrew Tyrie, the commission was surprised by the bank's admission that it had fired only 18 of the 40 individuals who regulators said knew about the Libor rigging. Tyrie told Orcel that Libor rigging was "a shocker of enormous proportions".
Orcel – who at Merrill Lynch in 2007 advised Royal Bank of Scotland on its ill-fated takeover of ABN Amro, for which he is said to have received a £7.5m fee – insisted that the staff involved in manipulating Libor had been "dismissed, penalised or reprimanded". UBS said 22 people still employed by the bank had been disciplined.
One of those who left before the fine was imposed was named before the commission as Tom Hayes, who had been based in Japan. Andrew Williams, UBS's global head of compliance, said Hayes had been headhunted by Citigroup before his actions had been exposed – prompting laughter at the start of the lengthy hearing. "Clearly his conduct was reprehensible and we are all disgusted by it," Williams said.
The UBS bankers were unable to disclose the size of any bonuses paid to Hayes, who made $260m (£160m) in revenues for UBS during his tenure at the bank between 2006 and 2009. Williams said that it had not been possible to claw back any payments to him as he had forfeited them when lured to Citi.
Lord Lawson, the former Conservative chancellor and member of the commission, who named Hayes, was among those unconvinced by the bank's assertion that top management did not know about the rigging, which was discussed on electronic chat boards viewed by as many as 70 people. Lawson also expressed incredulity that only 18 people had been fired.
Hayes is facing extradition to the US on charges of conspiracy, wire fraud and an antitrust violation. Lawson said the regulatory investigation had shown him to be a "crook of the first order", to which the UBS executives declined to comment, citing the legal proceedings in the US.
Orcel, asked by Labour MP Pat McFadden how many of the traders at UBS were women, admitted that it was likely that more than 90% were male. "That is a failure of UBS," he replied when asked if a greater female presence would have helped to change the culture.
Orcel, who admitted that he would not have advised RBS to proceed with the ABN Amro takeover "with what we know now", said UBS was focused on "recovering the honour and the standing" of the bank. Even so, he said: "I can't tell you that it won't happen again" despite the changes made, which include bonuses no longer tied to individual revenue generation. The ratio of a traders' salary to their bonus could be as much as one to three, he said.
"I am convinced that we have made a lot of progress. I am also convinced that we still need to do more," Orcel said.
Four former UBS executives, including the former chief executive Marcel Rohner, will give evidence to the commission on Thursday, as will the newly knighted Hector Sants, the chief executive of the Financial Services Authority until just before Barclays was hit with a fine of £290m over Libor in June. The coalition set up the banking standards commission following the uproar caused by the Barclays fine. |
Indy Eleven President and General Manager Peter Wilt isn’t too worried about the team’s 6.3 percent attendance drop this year.
“Second seasons are always challenging,” Wilt said less than a week after the team’s season. “The tire kickers may have left, but we had a really good base. Coming out of our second season, we can find a lot of positives.”
Specifically, Wilt said, gains in sponsorship, food and beverage sales, and soccer-camp revenue made up for the loss in ticket revenue.
Wilt Wilt
Sponsorship sales increased 34 percent over last season, and the list of sponsors grew from 55 to 74.
“The level of support this team has gained in two years usually takes generations to achieve,” said Wilt, a soccer veteran who was previously general manager of Major League Soccer’s Chicago Fire. “That tells me the community has really taken to us.”
But Wilt said the team remains hamstrung by its makeshift home at IUPUI’s Carroll Stadium on the far-west side of downtown, which was built in 1982 for track and field events.
The Indy Eleven originally proposed a stadium that would have cost the state at least $80 million, but the General Assembly said no. Lawmakers have proposed a renovation of Carroll Stadium at IUPUI, where the team now plays. (Rendering courtesy of Indy Eleven) The Indy Eleven originally proposed a stadium that would have cost the state at least $80 million, but the General Assembly said no. Lawmakers have proposed a renovation of Carroll Stadium at IUPUI, where the team now plays. (Rendering courtesy of Indy Eleven)
“It doesn’t give you long-term hope or opportunities for large success,” Wilt said. “We’re open to all thoughts, but renovation of Carroll Stadium doesn’t seem to be a workable solution for the team.”
The Indy Eleven want a new stadium. But so far, the Indiana General Assembly has been reluctant to pony up the funding Wilt says he needs to make it happen.
Instead, lawmakers have suggested changes to Carroll Stadium they say will give the Eleven more money-making opportunities. But Wilt said it would be tough to turn what’s now a completely outdoor stadium into the venue the team needs to succeed.
The stadium lacks many modern amenities area sports fans have grown accustomed to at Lucas Oil Stadium, Bankers Life Fieldhouse and Victory Field.
“It doesn’t even have concourses where people can take shelter in case of rain,” Wilt said. “We had to completely evacuate the stadium twice this year when we had storms roll through.”
No Statehouse stranger
Team officials have gone before the General Assembly the last two years requesting as much as $87 million—for an 18,500-seat downtown stadium designed for soccer but also able to host outdoor concerts and other events.
Each time, a bill containing measures for either a new stadium or major improvements to the team’s existing home has died. Wilt said team officials will be back for a third try in 2016. They might not get a warm reception.
Kenley Kenley
“I don’t expect there to be an appropriation for something like this unless they do it during a budget session, and that won’t be until 2017,” said Senate Appropriations Chairman Luke Kenley, R-Noblesville. “I don’t think we should be doing something that has an impact on the budget during a non-budget year unless it’s an emergency.”
Even if a stadium bill did make it to the Senate this year, Kenley said he doesn’t think it would get wide support.
In February, the Indiana House approved a bill sponsored by Rep. Todd Huston, R-Fishers, that included $82 million for a soccer stadium to be built at an unspecified downtown site. But the Senate modified the bill to a measure using tax money captured from the stadium and a downtown hotel proposed by Indy Eleven owner Ersal Ozdemir to fund a $20 million renovation of Carroll Stadium.
At the 11th hour, a proposal bumped the renovation funds to $25 million.
“I thought we had a good proposal last session, one that benefited the state, Indiana University and the team, and the team didn’t like it,” Kenley said.
A representative for Huston said he was not available for comment, but this spring, he told IBJ he would not be surprised if another stadium bill surfaced in the 2016 General Assembly.
To get serious consideration for a new stadium, Kenley said, Ozdemir would have to make a bigger financial contribution to the project.
“The concern all along is, there needs to be a substantial investment made by the team’s owner, and so far that hasn’t been done,” Kenley said.
There have been questions as well about the team’s rosy projections for ticket revenue and attendance, which would affect the amount of tax revenue available to repay the project’s bonds.
Despite the decline this year in attendance, which averaged about 9,800, Wilt is confident the team could fill an 18,500-seat venue for its 15 regular-season home games.
“You can’t even compare what the experience—with better sight lines and seating and other amenities—would be in a new stadium compared to where we play now,” Wilt said. “Absolutely a new stadium would help us draw more people.”
Model franchise
Even without a new stadium, Wilt said, the Eleven this year made major inroads in three primary target markets: millennials, Hispanics and suburban soccer families.
“We’ve made gains through marketing and outreach in every significant category,” Wilt said, “and we think that’s going to continue to pay dividends.”
In the short term, though, the Eleven lost ground during a year that league-wide attendance in the North American Soccer League—in which the team competes—grew 10.6 percent. The team sold just more than 6,000 season tickets, compared with 7,000 (a number capped by the team) last year. The NASL season runs from April to October, broken into spring and fall divisions.
Still, the Eleven led the NASL in attendance by a wide margin for a second consecutive season. League-wide attendance this year settled at about 5,900. The Eleven sold out three of five games at the 10,465-seat Carroll Stadium during the spring campaign and were above 9,000 in nine of 10 games in the fall. A Wednesday game on Aug. 19 that attracted only 8,500 fans dragged down attendance.
Last year, the team sold out all 15 home games.
Peterson Peterson
NASL Commissioner Bill Peterson said the Eleven “is a team we use as a model.”
“I’ve been to Indy for five matches and the atmosphere there is fantastic,” Peterson said. “You can feel it. They have an engaged fan base, and that’s critically important.”
The Eleven also is a league leader in number of sponsors and sponsorship revenue, Peterson added.
“From a business standpoint, they’ve done everything right,” he said. “They’re building a strong base for a long and bright future.”
This year, the team saw a decline in merchandise sales but an increase in food and beverage sales after offerings were revamped.
“We had some really great food specials,” Wilt said. “Some of them were maybe too much of a hit. We ran out of corn dogs on corn dog night before the game even started.”
Making adjustments
Wilt said the team is not yet profitable, “but we’re close.” The Eleven operate “at a small deficit, not including capital projects,” he said.
The team carries 22 to 26 players on its roster and, according to sources with knowledge of the NASL, has a low-seven-figure player payroll.
The Eleven failed to make the NASL’s four-team playoff this year after star player Jose Kleberson was plagued by injuries that kept him out much of the season. The team finished the season in ninth place in the 11-team NASL.
But the team improved this year after it fired Head Coach Juergen Sommer and replaced him with Tim Regan in early June.
“We had a lot of eggs in one basket with Kleberson,” Wilt said. “Certainly, winning helps sell, and we didn’t do that in the spring season.”
Next year, he said, the Eleven will spread its money around to attract more quality players. The future for Kleberson, the Eleven’s highest-paid player, is still being determined, Wilt said. Sources close to the team don’t expect him to be around next season.
The player payroll isn’t the only factor under adjustment. The team plans to “raise some ticket prices a little and lower some ticket prices a lot,” Wilt said.
“We think our attendance decline was a matter of pricing rather than a function of demand,” he said. “The low- and medium-priced tickets continue to sell out.”
Wilt said the team is being careful to keep “the barrier of entry comparable to a movie ticket.”
The $10 single-game tickets are being increased to $11, $15 tickets to $17, and $20 tickets to $22. The more expensive tickets, including those in the $30 to $50 range, will be lowered $5 to $10, according to the team.
Discounts will be offered to season-ticket buyers, with deeper discounts for purchases by Dec. 31. The team is also installing three-month and nine-month payment plans to spur season-ticket sales.• |
The world’s hard drive is almost full.
Most people think digital storage technology is unlimited — you can get free gigabytes of storage by just opening up a Gmail or Box account, after all.
But in about two years, we will start to generate more data than we can save with existing technologies.
For CIOs at banks, insurance companies and online retailers, the shortage is a looming crisis. For investors and startup entrepreneurs, it represents a huge opportunity, because it means demand will outstrip supply.
You can see the heart of the mismatch in the charts below. Market research firm IDC predicts that digital data will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 42 percent through 2020, thanks to the proliferation of cellphones, digital entertainment and new technologies like Big Data and the Internet of Things that tend to generate vast amounts of files.
The total amount of digital data generated in 2013 will come to 3.5 zettabytes (a zettabyte is 1 with 21 zeros after it, and is equivalent to about the storage of one trillion USB keys). The 3.5 zettabytes generated this year will triple the amount of data created in 2010. By 2020, the world will generate 40 zettabytes of data annually, or more than 5,200 gigabytes of data for every person on the planet.
Industry estimates calculate that 92 percent of all the data in the world has been generated in the last two years alone. As Jason Taylor, director of capacity engineering and analysis at Facebook, put it recently, we live in a “Write Once, Keep Forever” world.
The explosion of data is part of the reason venture capitalists and conglomerates have invested millions into next-generation storage arrays over the last three years. Growth will be particularly strong in emerging nations. China alone will generate 20 percent of the world’s data by 2020.
But here’s the problem: It’s far easier to generate zettabytes of data than to manufacture zettabytes of data capacity. A yawning gap is emerging between data production and hard drive and flash production. The purple curve below charts data growth. The bar charts track factory capacity. By 2020, demand for capacity will outstrip production by six zettabytes, or nearly double the demand of 2013 alone. Even if the gap shrinks to three zettabytes, it will be a massive gap to fill.
We’re not just in the Zettabyte Era. We’re in the “Unavailable” Zettabyte Era.
While digital-storage companies will continue to add capacity, we won’t likely close the gap. The hard-drive industry likely won’t even have a zettabyte of capacity until 2015 or 2016. Trying to build factory capacity to scale to demand would take billions in investment.
Flash is even more challenging. By 2020, the cost of a fabrication facility for making flash memory could rise from $4 billion today to $15 billion to $20 billion. It would take $210 billion in factory investments to displace 15 percent of the demand for drives in 2014, according to John Monroe at Gartner. Memory makers are chronically skittish about building new capacity because of the escalating costs. That $210 billion figure is outside the realm of possibility.
What happens when you have rising demand that can’t be met by business as usual? You see the development of new business models and technologies. It’s the classic situation where innovation emerges to create new opportunities. Cloud services represent a first step in that direction. By keeping files in a centrally managed facility where equipment, drive space and bandwidth can be more efficiently utilized, companies like Dropbox and Box can drive out waste and redundancy. Customers are gladly paying fees because the cost for these services is less painful than trying to continually upgrade their own systems.
We will also likely see architectures where intelligent summaries replace raw data. Data from smart meters and building-management systems, for instance, can be converted to trend lines, while the original records get sent to tape archives or even optical disks. Data on tape isn’t rapidly accessible, but it’s cheaper. Better software for eliminating duplicate files and more quickly navigating sprawling databases will also emerge.
And of course we’re going to see continued advances in density, capacity, retrieval speed and other performance metrics. Heat-assisted magnetic recording will lead to drives in 2015 that can store a terabit of information on a square inch. Nick Goldman and Ewan Birney of the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) are experimenting with ways of storing data on engineered strands of DNA.
At this point, it’s impossible to predict winners and losers. But make no mistake: Space is filling up fast.
Rocky Pimentel serves as president, global markets and customers, and is responsible for Seagate’s global customer engagement, sales, sales operations, product line management, marketing and retail activities. His diverse career experience has included COO and CFO at McAfee, senior vice president and CFO at LSI Logic, and senior leadership positions at Glu Mobile, Zone Labs, WebTV Networks and Redpoint Ventures. |
Advertisement Transients comment about frustrations from New Orleans residents Several have taken to Mayor Mitch Landrieu's page with complaints Share Shares Copy Link Copy
Chances are you've seen them at many major intersections across New Orleans, but some are sounding off bringing their complaints straight to the mayor.Sometimes they are camped on neutral grounds and oftentimes they are joined by their pets asking for money. Maybe you've complied with the transients.MOBILE APP USERS: Watch Report Here"You know, gutterpunk," Houston transient Chris Smith said. "A guy called me a dirty bum the other day."Smith joins 20-year-old Lillian Green of Portland as one of the several people that call themselves travelers. But their views are shared by everyone in the city.According to Mayor Mitch Landrieu's Facebook page, some feel New Orleans has become a hub for the men and woman living on the streets. So much so that they want the city to start cracking down.Smith said at 17 he earned his GED, went to college and earned a bachelor's degree in computer science. But after his divorce, he went back to the world he's known before traveling city to city spending days on medians or neutral grounds.Smith and Green liken New Orleans to other cities like San Francisco and Austin who have significantly large transient populations. Both don't believe the cities will do anything about the issue."Will the gutterbums be attending this event, too?," one Facebook commenter said on Landrieu's page. "Perhaps if we spring for some beer and dog food, they'd show up to bring 'local color.''Smith said that there is no use in being frustrated. He said he's been coming to the city for 15 years and it doesn't benefit New Orleans to throw them in jail because it's just costing them money when you lock them up.But Green does admit, after traveling for six months hitchhiking, taking trains and panhandling for money, her way of seeing the world is tough."Eat out of the garbage and stuff like that, and eating out of the garbage, sometimes you have to panhandle. It sucks, people look down on you, but it could be worse. It could always be worse," says Green.WDSU reached out to the city of New Orleans for comment. No response has been provided since this weekend. |
By Helen Yaffe. Originally posted here on 22 April 2011
Photo: Ismael Francisco
The Sixth Congress of the Cuban Communist Party (CCP) took place in Havana between the 16 and 19 April 2011, marking the 50th anniversary of two historic events: the declaration of the socialist character of the Cuban Revolution on 16 April 1961 and the defeat of the Bay of Pigs invasion by CIA-trained Cuban exiles, within 72 hours, on the 19 April 1961.
The principal function of the Congress was to discuss, amend and approve the Draft Guidelines of the Economic and Social Policy of the Party and the Revolution and then to oversee their implementation. Distributed nationally in early November 2010, these guidelines contained 291 proposals for consolidating or amending social and economic policy in twelve broad categories:
*economic management
*macroeconomic policies (including monetary, exchange, fiscal and pricing policies)
*external economic relations
*investment
*science, technology and innovation
*social policy (education, health, sports, culture, social security, employment and wages)
*agro-industry
*industry and energy
*tourism
*transport
*construction, housing and water resources
*commerce
The aim is to update and improve the efficiency of the socialist Revolution in meeting contemporary challenges.
The introduction of the guidelines affirm ‘the principle that only socialism is capable of overcoming the difficulties and preserving the conquests of the Revolution, and that in the updating of the economic model, planning will be supreme, not the market.’ Socialism, it states, means ‘equality of rights and opportunities for the citizens, not egalitarianism. Work is both a right and a duty; the personal responsibility of every citizen, and must be remunerated according to its quantity and quality.’
The short-term aim of economic policy is to eliminate the balance of payments deficit, increase national income, substitute imports with internal production, improve economic efficiency, work motivation and income distribution, ‘and create the necessary infrastructural and productive conditions to permit the transition to a higher stage of development’. The long-term aim is ‘food and energy self-sufficiency, an efficient use of human potential, a higher level of competitiveness in traditional production areas, and the development of new forms of the production of goods and services of higher added value.’
In an example of real democracy, every Cuban was given access to this document and then invited to participate in an open debate about its content. Between 1 December 2010 and the 28 February 2011, 163,000 meetings were organised by work or study centres, political and residential groups. Out of a total population of 11.2 million, almost nine million people participated in these meetings (it was possible to participate more than once), over three million comments were made about the draft guidelines. The CCP membership is around 800,000 but these meetings were open to every member of society, regardless of political or organisational affiliation.
This was no mere symbolism or public relations exercise. Every opinion stated was registered, analysed and organised into 780,000 distinct recommendations. The document was subsequently amended. In his inaugural speech to the CCP Congress, Raul Castro announced that 16 guidelines had been moved to other points, 94 remained unchanged, 181 were modified in content and 36 new guidelines were incorporated. 45 proposals advocating the concentration of property were not included because they ‘openly contradicted the essence of socialism’ (Raul, 17 April).
Over half of all proposals, Raul reported, related to the chapters on social and macroeconomic policies: ‘the highest number of proposals pertained to guidelines number 162, dealing with the removal of the ration book; 61 and 62, on the pricing policy; 262, on passengers’ transportation; 133, on education; 54, related to the establishment of a single currency; and, 143, on the quality of health care services.’ The essence of these details is not the numbers involved, but what they reveal about a revolutionary leadership which has its finger on the pulse of the people. 68% of the guidelines were modified following consultation with the Cuban masses.
The CCP Congress was attended by almost 1,000 delegates who worked in five commissions to discuss the guidelines and the populations’ recommendations. As a result, a further 86 guidelines were modified and two added. The now 313 guidelines will be submitted to the National Assembly of Peoples’ Power for legislative ratification. A Standing Committee will be set up to monitor the implementation and adjustments of the guidelines over a period of five years and as objective circumstances change. The Central Committee will analyse progress in its plenary meetings at least twice a year. Raul warned that the process must be undertaken: ‘without haste or improvisation’ and always maintaining the support and understanding of the Cuban masses.
Delegates voted on membership of the Party’s Central Committee, Politburo and Secretariat. The Central Committee was reduced in size from 150 to 115 members and the Politburo from 24 to 15. The Secretariat retains seven members pending the Party’s National Conference on 28 January 2012 (birthday in 1853 of Cuban independence hero José Martí), which will ‘objectively and critically’ analyse the CCP’s work with a view to improving its political performance and the training of cadre. Elected as First Secretary of the Central Committee of the CCP, Raul described his ‘principal mission and purpose in life’ as defending, preserving and continuing to improve socialism and never allowing the return of the capitalist regime (19 April).
Another resolution passed at the Congress was presented by head of the National Assembly, Ricardo Alarcon to strengthen the institutions of the Peoples’ Power system of participatory democracy, giving more control to the local assemblies. This implies further changes in the political and administrative divisions of the country – a process which began on 1 January 2011 when the Havana Province was divided into two new provinces: Artemisa and Mayabeque.
Raul confirmed that legislation is being formulated for the ‘purchase and sale of housing and cars…expanding the limits of fallow land to be awarded in usufruct [rent-free short term loan] to those agricultural producers with outstanding results and the granting of credits to self-employed workers and to the population at large.’ This should be understood in the context of his comment that ‘the concentration of property’ cannot be permitted because it ‘openly contradicts the essence of socialism’. Raul also reassured the population that the ration book would not be removed ‘by decree, all at once, before creating the proper conditions to do so, which means undertaking other transformations of the economic model with a view to increasing labour efficiency and productivity in order to guarantee stable levels of production and supplies of basic goods and services accessible to all citizens but no longer subsidised.’ Socialism would never use the ‘shock therapy’ of neo-liberalism, he said. ‘The social welfare system is being reorganised to ensure a rational and deferential support to those who really need it. Instead of massively subsidising products as we do now, we shall gradually provide for those people lacking other support.’ (17 April).
Other key proposals contained in Raul’s report and approved by Congress were:
1. Limit leadership roles to two terms of five years. This will open access for younger Cubans to leadership positions and strengthen the institutions of the Revolution.
Fidel Castro supported this proposal with his reflection on 18 April which stated: ‘The Party leadership should be the sum of the best political talents of our people, capable of confronting the policy of the empire that jeopardises the human species…The duty of this new generation of revolutionary men and women is becoming an example of modest leaders, studious and tireless fighters for socialism. In the barbaric era of consumer societies, to overcome the capitalist production system that fosters and promotes selfish interests among human beings is, no doubt, a difficult challenge.’
2. Increasing the proportion of women, black and mixed-race people in leadership positions. 48 of the newly-elected Central Committee are women who now make up 42%, three times the previous figure. Black and mixed race people are up to 36 – increasing the proportion by 10% to 30% (NB: around 35% of Cuban population are black or mixed race). Raul reported that:
‘The Party has been working for months toward this end with the objective of submitting a list of candidates that takes into account the necessity to have a fair representation of gender and race in the Central Committee membership…These are the children of the working class; they belong to the poorest segments of the population and have had a politically active life in students’ organizations, the Union of Young Communists and the Party. Most of these youths accumulate 10, 15 or 20 years of experience working at the grassroots level without abandoning their jobs in the professions they studied, and the majority were proposed by their respective Party cells during the process leading up to the Congress.’ (19 April)
3. Greater separation between the CCP (political and ideological leadership) and the government (management, administrative and legislative functions)
‘The fortitude of the Party basically lies in its moral authority, its influence on the masses and the trust of the people…The fortitude of the State lies in its material authority, which consists of the strength of the institutions responsible for demanding from everyone to comply with the legal regulations it enacts. The damage caused by the confusion of these two concepts is manifested, firstly, in the deterioration of the Party’s political work and, secondly, in the decline of the authority of the state and the government as officials cease feeling responsible for their decisions’ (Raul, 17 April).
4. The Cuban media has the role of clarifying debates and producing ‘objective, continuous and critical reports on the progress of the updating of the economic model’, breaking ‘the habit of describing the national reality in pretentious high-flown language or with excessive formality’ and ‘boring, improvised or superficial reports’. The media’s role is to stimulate public debate.
In his closing speech to the Congress Raul pointed out that:
‘Cuba is one of the few countries in the world in which conditions exist to transform its economic model and leave the crisis behind while avoiding social trauma. First of all because our patriotic people know that their force stems from their monolithic unity, the justice of their cause and military training as well as from their high level of education and pride in their history and revolutionary roots. We shall advance resolutely despite the US blockade and the adverse conditions prevailing in the international market, which among other things, limit Cuba’s access to financial sources and expose it to the oil prices spiral that impinges on the prices of the rest of the raw materials and food.’
The annual plan finalised in December 2010 must be adjusted because the cost of imports for 2011 has risen by $800 million as a result of rising international prices.
Raul concluded that: ‘Our brothers and sisters in the Third World, especially those from Latin America and the Caribbean, who are making great efforts to transform the legacy of centuries of colonial domination, should know that they can always count on our solidarity and support… [F]raternal greetings also go to the communist parties and other progressive forces all over the planet fighting restlessly with the deep conviction that a better world is possible.’
New measures and legislation will be announced in Cuba in the coming months as the guidelines are implemented. Although there will be no surprises, we can expect these to be met by sensationalist exclamations about the advent of capitalism from the enemies of Cuban socialism. Cuba’s revolutionary people, lead by the CCP, will progress with patience and resolution to improve the efficiency of their system; maintaining the principles of socialism, while adapting, with creativity and innovation, to the challenging context of the global capitalist crisis.
Helen Yaffe |
Updating the Hall of Fame
by SaffronOlive // Jun 12, 2017 Tweet
This week, Wizards announced changes to make it harder to get into the Pro Tour Hall of Fame by requiring two recent (since 2012) finishes and raising the threshold for actually getting into the hall to 60% of the vote (up from 40%). The main goal is to make the Hall of Fame more exclusive. While I'm not a pro—so I don't have a personal stake in these specific changes—they generally seem fine. Considering that being enshrined in the hall comes along with lifetime invites to Pro Tours, it's probably better to have a smaller number of people getting in each year. By my count, there are already 44 members of the Pro Tour Hall of Fame in just 12 years, which means we've inducted an average of 3.67 players each year (although this rate has slowed a bit recently—we haven't had a five-person class since 2008, and we only had one four-person class in 2012). Even assume a three-person class each year moving forward, this would mean that in less than 20 years, we'd have more than 100 Pro Tour Hall of Fame members with Pro Tour invites, and while they won't all show up, that's potentially a lot of extra players, especially when you consider the Pro Tour only had a couple of hundred players when many of the current Pro Tour Hall of Famers were actively playing.
The wisdom of giving Hall of Fame members lifetime Pro Tour invites is another question entirely. There are certainly benefits—we wouldn't get to see all-time greats like Jon Finkel and Kai Budde play Magic if it weren't for these invites because there's no way they could find the time in their real lives to go through the grind of earning an invite. So in one sense, giving out these free invites is a great way to connect to the history of the game. On the other hand, while I won't name names, we've also seen examples of some people using these invites like free vacations, not really testing, playing poorly, and seemingly not taking the Pro Tour seriously, which just ends up feeling bad for everyone. It doesn't make the game look good, and it doesn't make the player look good. All in all, it seems that the good outweighs the bad, especially considering that Wizards can pick and choose who it covers, which means we shouldn't have to watch the "free vacation" players on camera unless they are in contention, and if they are in contention at a Pro Tour, they likely took the event at least somewhat seriously and the "free vacation" label probably doesn't apply.
Generally speaking, the Pro Tour Hall of Fame isn't in bad shape at the moment, and the recent changes don't really seem like a bad thing. However, the Hall of Fame could be so much more than it is right now. At least for me, the Pro Tour induction ceremony is one of the best Magic events of the year because it gives everyone a glimpse of how much the game we all love really means to people, not just in terms of having a fun hobby but their real day-to-day lives.
These moments make Magic real and provide examples of why the game is so important to so many people. We already know the game itself is amazing, but what makes Magic the great game it is are the people, and while we've seen an increase recently (especially from Corbin Hosler, who does a great job) in telling the stories of the people in the game, the Hall of Fame induction ceremony is the one time each year when this is fully on display for everyone to see. We need more of these moments and more of the stories of the people who make up the game we all love, which means it's time to expand the Pro Tour Hall of Fame.
Drop the "Pro Tour"
Now, I'm not proposing that we need to change the way the Hall of Fame currently interacts with pro players. While we can argue about Pro Point levels and numbers of Top 8 finishes, generally speaking, the current system seems to be working fairly well. However, the Hall of Fame could benefit a lot by dropping the "Pro Tour" from the name.
The first Pro Tour Hall of Fame class was back in 2005, and in the past 12 years, the game has grown in ways that Wizards probably couldn't have imagined, sparking an entire industry of YouTube videos, written articles, podcasts, and the like. Back then, it likely made sense to have a Pro Tour Hall of Fame because making it to the Pro Tour was the primary path to "success" in Magic. Today, things are much different, and the road to success is Magic is much more varied. We have popular content producers who have never played a Pro Tour match. We have cosplayers and artists giving Grands Prix a convention-like feel. We have formats like Commander, podcasts like Limited Resources, and comedy from groups like LoadingReadyRun. All of these things combined have changed the very meaning of Magic. While the competitive grind to the Pro Tour is still very much an important part of Magic, it's no longer the only part of Magic. Basically, the game of Magic has moved away from being exclusively about the Pro Tour to encompassing a wide range of passions and pursuits, and it's time for the Hall of Fame to follow suit by becoming the Magic: the Gathering Hall of Fame, rather than just the Pro Tour Hall of Fame, so it can promote and recognize everything the game has become, rather than just one aspect of the game.
Once again, let me make this very clear: this wouldn't impact pro players in any way, shape, or form. The voting would remain the same, the qualifications would remain the same, and the benefits would remain the same. If need be, the Pro Tour Hall of Fame name could remain as a wing of the Magic: the Gathering Hall of Fame. This change isn't about the pros; it's about everyone else who makes Magic the amazing game it is today.
If we look around at the halls of fame of other sports in North America, every one has some mechanism for recognizing non-players for their contributions to the game. The National Baseball Hall of Fame, for example, includes not just players but managers, umpires, executives, and pioneering contributors. The NFL Hall of Fame regularly recognizes owners and coaches, while the Basketball Hall of Fame makes room for contributors like Meadowlark Lemon of Harlem Globetrotters fame.
This is arguably even more important in Magic than it is for other sports, considering that there's a massive group of Magic players who interact with the game primarily on a non-pro level. If you're a football fan, you almost certainly watch NFL games; if you're a baseball fan, you're pretty much guaranteed to spend time watching MLB games. On the other hand, a majority of Magic fans don't watch the Magic Pro Tour or even follow the pro scene (the last Pro Tour topped out at just over 40,000 viewers during the finals, while Wizards says there are 20,000,000 Magic players in the world, which means 0.2% of Magic players tuned in for what is essentially the Super Bowl of Magic). There's a reason why hardcore gameplay videos featuring one of the best players in the world might get 30,000 views on YouTube while a countdown video ranking the 10 worst cards in Magic gets 400,000. This isn't a knock on high-level play but more a recognition that most Magic is played on kitchen tables in the hands of people who don't really care about the Pro Tour.
So, my request is this: after expanding the Hall of Fame from "Pro Tour" to "Magic: the Gathering," create a system for contributors to be recognized and enshrined. This would be 100% separate from the "Pro Tour" part of the Hall of Fame (although it would be part of the same induction ceremony). Instead of having other pro players vote, have a voting system that involves the general Magic public (which would be a fun event in and of itself and doubtlessly create a ton of conversation and hype) combined with Wizards and perhaps some sort of Community Committee chosen by Wizards and designed specifically for this purpose. People enshrined in the "contributor" part of the Hall of Fame wouldn't get Pro Tour invites or any other special benefits, apart from some sort of plaque / trophy and a paid trip to the Pro Tour (as a non-player) where they are being inducted, to take part in the ceremony.
To me, this seems like a no-brainer for a bunch of reasons. First, it's very low cost for Wizards, with the only real expense being flying an extra person to the induction ceremony and some work hours setting things up. Second, it would generate a ton of hype and be great advertising for Wizards. The Pro Tour Hall of Fame is already a huge conversion topic, and it involves a statistically insignificant percentage of the Magic community as either players or voters. Imagine the popularity of something similar but involving the entire community, instead of this small sliver. Third, and most importantly, there are a ton of community members who deserve this recognition.
What Do You Mean, "Contributor"?
Now, let me make this clear right off the bat: I shouldn't be in the Hall of Fame. The Professor from Tolarian Community College shouldn't either, or Wedge at The Mana Source, or Marshall from Limited Resources, or whoever else happens to be popular at the moment. While it's possible that all of these people could be deserving of a contributor slot eventually, what the contributor part of the Magic: the Gathering Hall of Fame should not be is a contest to see who is most popular right now. Thankfully, this is easy to fix by setting up requirements for eligibility—just like pro players need to have played their first Pro Tour at least 10 years ago to be considered, we'd need some similar guideline for contributors. The goal would be to give honor and credit to people who have had a long-term positive impact on the game but don't happen to be Pro Tour all-stars.
While I hesitate to even throw out names because I'm sure I'm going to miss a lot of people, especially from years past, I can give you some broad ideas of the types of people I believe would be deserving of contributor slots right now, today, and also some groups that will likely be deserving in the future:
Wizards People:
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It's hard to argue that people like Mark Rosewater, Aaron Forsythe, and of course Richard Garfield shouldn't be in the Hall of Fame. I believe that every other major sports hall of fame has the game's creator enshrined, and people like Mark Rosewater and Aaron Forsythe are akin to "owners" in sports, who are another group that often finds their way into the hall of fame.
Artists:
At this point, there are some Magic artists who have been helping to make iconic Magic cards for over 20 years, which certainly seems worthy of a contributor slot in the Hall of Fame. We couldn't enshrine all artists, of course, but it's hard to imagine too many people being against artists with the track records of John Avon or Terese Nielsen finding their way into the Magic: the Gathering Hall of Fame.
Commentary People:
Here, the two big ones that come to mind are Brian David-Marshall and Rich Hagen, although it's very likely that more names will join this list as time passes.
Content People:
Right now, this would include people like Evan Erwin, who pretty much pioneered Magic content on YouTube, but I'm sure there are other early content pioneers who deserve recognition as well. As time passes, this group would contain podcasters, writers, YouTube personalities, and the like.
Community People:
This might not be the best name for the category, but here I'm envisioning people like Sheldon Menery, who has had a huge impact on Commander, along with tournament organizers and even game store owners.
Judges:
We often forget about the judges who keep our tournaments running smoothly, but there's precedent for giving outstanding judges membership in the Hall of Fame—the National Baseball Hall of Fame regularly enshrines umpires. While this wouldn't include every judge or even every high-level judge, someone like Riki Hayashi would certainly be deserving.
Others:
While Chris Pikula should be in the Pro Tour Hall of Fame already, his work to end cheating during the wild west early days of the Pro Tour would certainly be worth considering for the contributors wing, as would an alternate version of Willy Edel (who is hugely important to Magic in South America) who wasn't already in the hall based on his Pro Tour play.
The Future:
The other exciting aspect of this is that we don't know what will happen in the future. In just the last couple of years, we've seen the rise of Magic cosplay, and while I'm not sure there's any cosplayer who should be inducted into the Hall of Fame right now, there are some like Christine Sprankle who likely will be in a few more years.
The Nuts and Bolts
The exact way to make this change work is certainly open for debate. While I really like the idea of somehow involving the vote of the community—because I think it would generate a ton of conversation, hype, and advertising for Wizards—it's also possible that Wizards (or a small group created by Wizards) could simply enshrine deserving members (much like the old timers / veterans committee in the Baseball Hall of Fame, which has the ability to induce players they deem worthy without going through the voting process).
The number of slots that should go to contributors is debatable. In basketball, contributors are granted entrance into the hall of fame quite regularly, with the recent norm being somewhere around two each year, on average. On the other hand, the baseball hall of fame enshrines non-players fairly infrequently. For Magic, enshrining one contributor each year could be fine, although it might have to be more at first to work through the backlog (even just from my short list, there are at least 10 people who are shoo-ins, and I'm sure there are more whom I'm not thinking of at the moment, who are from before my time, or who are from other countries that I'm not as familiar with).
The long and short of this is that we, as the Magic community, have members who deserve to be recognized and honored for their massive contributions to the game. Every other major sport has a way of recognizing these people through their halls of fame, and the Magic: the Gathering Hall of Fame should follow suit. Doing so doesn't cost Wizards any significant amount of money, and it seems that these community-driven Hall of Fame votings would be some of the most popular events of the year. While not in the same way, many of these people have dedicated their lives to making Magic the amazing game it is today, just as much as a Pro Tour Hall of Fame-level players have, and as a result are just as deserving of recognition and praise.
The Downside
From my perspective, expanding the Hall of Fame from "Pro Tour" to "Magic: the Gathering" seems like all upside, although I could imagine some members of the pro community disliking the change, either because they feel like it somehow trivializes their accomplishments or threatens the "sanctity of the game." Here, once again, I'd counter by pointing out that the current setup of the Magic Hall of Fame is the exception rather than the rule. Having the "clown prince" in the Basketball Hall of Fame doesn't diminish the accomplishments of Michael Jordan or Bill Russell, and having Henry Chadwick (creator of the box score and the founder of statistics in baseball) in the National Baseball Hall of Fame doesn't make Hank Aaron's home runs worth any less.
If Michael Jordan is okay with Meadowlark Lemon in the Basketball Hall of Fame, then Magic players should be able to deal with Brian David-Marshall or Mark Rosewater in the Magic Hall of Fame.
The other possibility is that including more non-players will actually be beneficial for the pro players. For example, Wizards just gave a Hearthstone streamer a special invite to the Pro Tour in the hopes of drawing some of his audience to the Pro Tour coverage, and more coverage means more potential sponsorships and more money for pro players (whether or not this strategy works remains to be seen, but it can't hurt to try). Likewise, Wizards would draw a different audience to the Hall of Fame ceremony (and coverage of the Pro Tour, since the ceremony is part of Pro Tour coverage) to watch someone like Evan Erwin or Mark Rosewater give their speech, which benefits pro players in the long run.
Conclusion
In the past, Magic's selling point was that you could play the game and see the world by qualifying for the Pro Tour, and while this dream lives on, it has also expanded. When the Pro Tour Hall of Fame was started, all of the biggest stars of Magic were pro players, but the Magic world has changed over the past decade. Now, many of the most popular and productive members of the Magic community have never played a Pro Tour match and instead contribute by making videos; judging tournaments; creating formats, podcasts, and articles; cosplaying at events; or creating artwork. While the Pro Tour and pro players are part of what makes the Magic community great, the game has moved past being exclusively about the Pro Tour. It's time for the Hall of Fame to catch up to this new reality and, rather than recognizing just one type of greatness as displayed by pro players, recognizing all of the different types of greatness displayed by the community that goes into making Magic the best game in the world.
Anyway, that's all for today. What do you think? Should we expand the Hall of Fame to include contributors who aren't Pro Tour all-stars? If so, who would you like to see included? Did I forget about any aspects of the community that are deserving of recognition? Let me know in the comments, and as always, you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com. |
Samuel Gerald Jones (born August 12, 1954), known professionally as Sam J. Jones, is an American actor. He is best known for having played the title character in the 1980 film Flash Gordon and The Highwayman (1987–1988).
Filmography [ edit ]
Early life [ edit ]
Jones was born in Chicago, Illinois, and grew up in Sacramento, California, where he graduated from Mira Loma High School in 1972.[citation needed]
Career [ edit ]
In 1975, prior to his first screen roles, Jones appeared in full frontal nude under the alias "Andrew Cooper III" as the centerfold for a photo-spread in the June issue of Playgirl magazine.[1]
He made his first film appearance in the 1979 romantic comedy film 10.[2] His appearance in 10 allowed him to beat Kurt Russell and Arnold Schwarzenegger for his most famous role, that of Flash Gordon in the 1980 film of the same name.[3] Jones dyed his hair blonde for this role. The film was moderately successful at the box office grossing $27.1 million in North America, and $22 million in the UK: double its $20 million budget. However, a falling out between Jones and the producers helped to scrap the planned trilogy.[4]
After the release of Flash Gordon, Playgirl reprinted his 1975 photo-spread in its January 1981 issue, this time using his real name. He went on to play Chris Rorchek in the TV series Code Red (1981–1982). He had guest roles in other TV shows including The A-Team, Hunter, and Riptide. In 1987, he played the lead role in a TV adaptation of Will Eisner's comics character The Spirit.[5] He also played the title character in the short-lived NBC sci-fi series The Highwayman.[5] In the late 1980s and early 1990s he portrayed Johnny Valentine on the HBO series 1st & Ten.
Jones starred in the 1986 theatrical release My Chauffeur[6] and the straight-to-video movies Jungle Heat (1985), Jane and the Lost City (1987), Under the Gun (1988), Silent Assassins (1988), Whiteforce (1988), Driving Force (1989), and One Man Force (1989). In the 1990s, Jones had roles in films including In Gold We Trust (1990), Maximum Force (1992), Fist of Honor (1993), Hard Vice (1994), Enter the Shootfighter (1995), Texas Payback (1995), The Killer Inside (1996), Earth Minus Zero (1996), Baja Run (1996) and American Tigers (1996), and guest roles in the TV shows Baywatch, Diagnosis Murder and Walker: Texas Ranger.
In 2001, Jones was cast in Animal Planet's family series Hollywood Safari as a park ranger. He appeared in "Deadman Switch", an episode of the television series Stargate SG-1. In 2007, he played the prisoner Krebb in the Sci Fi Channel original television series Flash Gordon. He also had extended cameos (as himself, with his blond Flash Gordon hairstyle) in both the 2012 comedy film Ted and its 2015 sequel, Ted 2.
Personal life [ edit ]
Jones married Lynn Eriks in 1982; they had two children and divorced in 1987. He married Ramona Lynn Jones on June 26, 1992; they have three children.[citation needed] |
It's Memorial Day, all Ars staff is off, and we're grateful for it (running a site remains tough work). But on a normal Monday, inevitably we'd continue to monitor the world of ISPs—especially how the major players handle big data users . Our Nate Anderson looked at the economic side of the decision in July 2010, and we're resurfacing his piece for your holiday reading pleasure.
Just over a year ago, Time Warner Cable rolled out an experiment in several cities: monthly data limits for Internet usage that ranged from 5GB to 40GB. Data costs money, and consumers would need to start paying their fair share; the experiment seemed to promise an end to the all-you-can-eat Internet buffet at which contented consumers had stuffed themselves for a decade. Food analogies were embraced by the company, with COO Landel Hobbs saying at the time, "When you go to lunch with a friend, do you split the bill in half if he gets the steak and you have a salad?"
In the middle of the controversy, TWC boss Glenn Britt told BusinessWeek something similar, though with less edible imagery. "We need a viable model to be able to support the infrastructure of the broadband business," he said. "We made a mistake early on by not defining our business based on the consumption dimension."
This basic argument has a compelling logic—pay for what you consume—and it came with a side order of "implied apocalypse." Unless a major shift in pricing happens in the near future, TWC's Internet business won't be "viable" and the infrastructure won't keep pace with demand.
This key assertion underlies numerous industry experiments with consumption pricing (AT&T just wrapped up a trial of its own tight data caps in a few test markets, and other ISPs have mooted the idea for years). Few consumers are in a position to judge such claims; maybe the sky is falling. Maybe home Internet use is unsustainable without far more caps or far less data. Maybe those Netflix and Hulu users really are pigs at the broadband trough.
But there's reason to doubt. Big ISPs usually rely on peered connections to other major ISPs, connections which incur no per-bit cost. As for the cables in the ground, they've been there for years. The equipment back at the headend must be installed once, after which it runs for years. Cable node splits and DOCSIS hardware upgrades are relatively cheap. Requesting one additional bit does not necessarily incur any additional charge to the ISP.
If most Internet costs are fixed (and the National Broadband Plan agrees that they are), and if bandwidth is dirt cheap, what "charges" are heavy Internet users ringing up for ISPs like Time Warner? As a New York Times writer summed it up in the middle of last year's debate:
I tried to explore the marginal costs with Mr. Hobbs. When someone decides to spend a day doing nothing but downloading every Jerry Lewis movie from BitTorrent, Time Warner doesn’t have to write a bigger check to anyone. Rather, as best as I can figure it, the costs are all about building the network equipment and buying long-haul bandwidth for peak capacity. If that is true, the question of what is "fair" is somewhat more abstract than just saying someone who uses more should pay more. After all, people who watch more hours of cable television don’t pay more than those who don’t. Mr. Hobbs declined to react to my hypothesis about how costs are almost all fixed costs.
To get some answers, we dug into TWC's financial statements, then spoke to the company and to its critics. One thing quickly became clear: it's good to be an ISP. In fact, it's better than being a cable operator, since there are no multibillion-dollar payments to content creators. As TWC said in a recent filing, "Once again, High Speed Data was our best performing Primary Service Unit category."
A very good year
TWC's revenues from Internet access have soared in the last few years, surging from $2.7 billion in 2006 to $4.5 billion in 2009. Customer numbers have grown, too, from 7.6 million in 2007 to 8.9 million in 2009.
But this growth doesn't translate into higher bandwidth costs for the company; in fact, bandwidth costs have dropped. TWC spent $164 million on data contracts in 2007, but only $132 million in 2009.
What about investing in its infrastructure? That's down too as a percentage of revenue. TWC does spend billions each year building and improving its network ($3.2 billion in 2009), but the raw number alone is meaningless; what matters is relative investment, and it has declined even as subscribers increased and revenues surged. "Total CapEx [capital expenses] as a percentage of revenues for the year [2009] was 18.1 percent versus 20.5 percent in 2008," said the company a few months ago.
In fact, CapEx has declined for the industry as a whole. As the National Broadband Plan noted, the big ISPs invested $48 billion in their networks in 2008 and $40 billion in 2009. (About half of this money can be chalked up to broadband; the rest of the improvements were done to aid cable or phone service.)
To recap: subscribers up, revenues up, bandwidth costs down, infrastructure costs down. This might seem like a textbook case of "viability"; what were execs like Britt and Hobbs talking about last year when data caps were held up as a necessary safeguard against doom?
It's about bandwidth labor
Several months ago, while on a business trip to Manhattan, I entered a nondescript building near the Flatiron building and rode the elevator to the top. Inside was one of TWC's main New York operations centers, hosting an astonishing array of cable and Internet gear. But the real showpiece was the monitoring room, a darkened room with control hardware, computers, and a wall of TVs showing every cable channel currently running out over TWC's network.
It looked brand new and obscenely expensive. Engineers slipped in and out in silence. A huge pile of boxes on the floor held a new set of replacement TVs. When I make my career shift from ink-stained wretch to Evil Genius, this is exactly the sort of room I will build in order to plot my world domination.
"It's not a cheap endeavor to run a network like we do," said TWC's tweeting VP of Public Relations, Alex Dudley, when I had spoken to him the week before. Here was an obvious reminder of what he meant.
This point is hammered home by most ISPs—the billions of dollars of new investment, the upgrades, the capacity building. But it's a point only meaningful in the context of revenues. A company's financials don't lie, and TWC's financials showed a declining percentage of revenue spent on infrastructure even as profits soared and bandwidth costs dropped. I pressed Dudley on Glenn Britt's statements about viability. If these are problems, they're problems most companies want to have.
Britt is "a long-term-view kind of guy," Dudley said, and with broadband use surging, "all of the ancillary costs affiliated with broadband are going up." This didn't quite compute, since bandwidth and network investment were actually declining as percentages of revenue.
But according to Dudley, those two numbers don't tell the whole story. TWC's single biggest expense for Internet access is not network investment or bandwidth. It's labor.
As Internet use increases, TWC techs, engineers, and executives need to make adjustments such as DOCSIS upgrades at the cable company headend or "node splits" that divide a shared cable loop in two when bandwidth use hits certain metrics. Paying all of these people costs money, and those costs increase as the network is more heavily used.
(This differs from how Landel Hobbs defended the company at the height of the backlash against TWC last year. He quite clearly stated that bandwidth creates real costs for the company and that those need to be covered. "For those who want to use a tremendous amount of bandwidth, there should be a charge, because that costs money," he told the Times.)
Besides, Dudley said, TWC does invest plenty of money in raw infrastructure. If CapEx spending was down in 2009, chalk it up to the company's video subscribers, which declined a bit over 2008. One big piece of TWC's CapEx is buying all those cable set-top boxes (which are then rented on a monthly basis by subscribers), and fewer subscribers mean fewer new boxes to purchase.
The company's critics couldn't disagree more with this entire line of argument.
"Greed"
"Hogwash," says Free Press research director S. Derek Turner. "Their OpEx [Operating Expenses, which includes labor] is not growing; if anything, it's steady. Their CapEx is decreasing both in overall terms and as a percentage of revenue."
Turner has little patience for the "woe is me" arguments that ISPs trot out to defend a shift to data caps or per-bit pricing. Free Press, a constant critic of the big ISPs, says it has no philosophical problem with a move to a consumption model for broadband—but such a shift should accurately reflect costs, not serve as an excuse to gouge customers by companies already swimming in cash.
TWC's data capping trial in 2009 featured "literally ridiculous overage amounts that had no relation to underlying costs," Turner said. And the danger isn't just to consumer pocketbooks, it's to the entire Internet ecosystem. Who will start using the next high-bandwidth YouTube or Netflix when doing so results in big fees? If not done right, consumption pricing "will cripple innovation."
Turner concedes that networks cost money to build and maintain, but he argues that the costs are wildly overstated. For instance, Comcast is one of the ISPs furthest along with DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades, which do require a labor-intensive card swap at the headend and new modems in people's homes. But even as it makes this investment, the company's OpEx and CapEx are declining. As for node splits, many are "virtual" these days and don't require much labor.
Bandwidth has become dirt cheap; despite the fear-mongering about the "exaflood" and the "zettaflood" and (presumably) the "yottaflood," bandwidth costs drop significantly every year. As the National Broadband Plan noted earlier this year, international bandwidth has grown by 66 percent each year for the last five years—but the cost of IP transit has dropped 22 percent a year at the same time.
Congestion can happen even on networks with tremendous bandwidth, but consumption pricing doesn't generally care about congestion (if it did, ISPs could exempt all traffic in the middle of the night, for instance, when congestion is generally absent).
So why the push for consumption pricing? Turner has his own theory.
"This is nothing more than greed," he says. "The industry may be maturing, and therefore margins aren't rapidly increasing the way they were." Consumption pricing could be a way to boost margins. As for ISP complaints that heavy users cost them more money, those are just "excuses that they give."
Still rare
But low data caps are still not widespread in the US wireline business. That's due in large part to public resistance to the idea. When TWC expanded its capping trial last year, it took only a couple of weeks for a New York Congressman (the now-disgraced-and-resigned serial tickler of his male staffers, Eric Massa) to pledge a "Broadband Internet Fairness Act" that would "prevent job killing broadband downloading caps."
Despite a few trials (sorry, Beaumont, Texas), consumption Internet pricing remains unusual. Unless ISPs find a way to make a more compelling case for its necessity—and its fairness—it may remain so. |
A new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, confirms close relationship of Ardipithecus ramidus – a species of hominid that lived in the east of the African continent around 4.4 million years ago – to the subsequent Australopithecus and humans.
Though Ardipithecus ramidus had an ape-size brain and a grasping big toe used for clambering in the trees, it walked on two feet and had diamond-shaped upper canines, not the v-shaped ones chimps use to chomp.
Anthropologists disagree about where this mixture of features positions the ancient hominid on the tree of human and ape relationships.
Now new research has revealed a pattern of similarity that links Ardipithecus ramidus to Australopithecus and modern humans and but not to apes.
The hominid shares with Australopithecus and Homo a relatively short, broad central cranial base and related modifications of the tympanic, petrous, and basioccipital elements.
“Given the very tiny size of the Ardipithecus ramidus’ skull, the similarity of its cranial base to a human’s is astonishing,” said lead author Dr William Kimbel of Arizona State University.
The cranial base is a valuable resource for studying phylogenetic, or natural evolutionary relationships, because its anatomical complexity and association with the brain, posture, and chewing system have provided numerous opportunities for adaptive evolution over time. The human cranial base, accordingly, differs profoundly from that of apes and other primates.
In humans, the structures marking the articulation of the spine with the skull are more forwardly located than in apes, the base is shorter from front to back, and the openings on each side for passage of blood vessels and nerves are more widely separated. These shape differences affect the way the bones are arranged on the skull base such that it is fairly easy to tell apart even isolated fragments of ape and human basicrania.
The cranial base of Ardipithecus ramidus shows the distinguishing features that separate humans and Australopithecus from the apes.
Earlier research had shown that these human peculiarities were present in the earliest known Australopithecus skulls by 3.4 million years ago. The new study expands the catalogue of anatomical similarities linking humans, Australopithecus, and Ardipithecus ramidus on the tree of life and shows that the human cranial base pattern is at least a million years older than Australopithecus afarensis.
______
Kimbel WH et al. Ardipithecus ramidus and the evolution of the human cranial base. PNAS, published online on January 06, 2014; doi: 10.1073/pnas.1322639111 |
(Reuters) - A Texas law restricting a second-trimester abortion technique, initially due to take effect on Friday, was put on hold for two weeks pending a court hearing on a challenge to the legislation, a federal judge in Austin, Texas, ruled.
U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel on Thursday granted a temporary restraining order against the ban on a procedure known as dilation and evacuation requested by Planned Parenthood and other organizations challenging the law.
Abortion opponents call the procedure “fetal dismemberment” and it would be barred under the law passed by the Republican-controlled legislature and signed by Republican Governor Greg Abbott.
“Dismemberment abortions are gruesome and inhumane, which makes it troubling that a district court would block Texas’ lawful authority to protect the life of unborn children from such a barbaric practice,” a spokesman for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement.
“The Texas Attorney General will continue to defend our state’s legal right to protect the basic human rights and dignity of the unborn,” the statement added.
Women’s health groups say that Texas abortion law is already so restrictive that it forces more women to seek the procedure during the second trimester instead of earlier. They argue that dilation and evacuation is the safest procedure and is performed before the fetus is viable.
“We’re grateful that today’s decision will protect women’s access to one of the safest and most common methods of abortion in the second trimester,” Raegan McDonald-Mosley, chief medical officer at Planned Parenthood Federation of America said in a statement.
“This dangerous law is yet another attempt by politicians to ban abortion step by step and method by method, regardless of who it hurts,” the statement added.
Under Yeakel’s ruling, the law was stopped from going into effect until a hearing set for Sept. 14 in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas in Austin. |
Introduction
Despite the Obama administration’s repeated warnings about the menace of a widespread contagion within the United States, both lawmakers and independent experts have recently given low marks to government initiatives designed to detect, track, and protect against those threats.
In recent years, both the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and the spread of the Zika virus in Latin America have brought the nature of threat into sharp relief. In the 2015 Worldwide Threat Assessment, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper admitted that the world’s response to Ebola was too slow.
“Gaps in disease surveillance and reporting, limited health care resources, and other factors contributed to the outpacing of the international community’s response in West Africa,” Clapper wrote. In the most recent Worldwide Threat Assessment, released in February, Clapper issued an ominous warning in regard to the Zika virus, which he said “is projected to cause up to 4 million cases in 2016; it will probably spread to virtually every country in the hemisphere.”
Earlier this month, that assessment was amplified by researchers from the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. In a study published in the Public Library of Science’s journal PLOS Currents: Outbreaks, they warned that at least 50 U.S. cities are at risk for a Zika Virus outbreak this summer.
As the effects of climate change spread worldwide, experts warn more that contagions are on their way. And yet, the two Department of Homeland Security (DHS) programs meant to protect Americans against these biological threats aren’t up to the task, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
One of these programs, the National Biosurveillance Integration Center, or NBIC, was created in 2007 to be a hub of information and coordination for federal agencies tracking diseases and biological threats. But the mission is suffering, a September 2015 GAO report said, because many federal agencies, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), are not sharing information with NBIC. Among the reasons, CDC officials said: legal restrictions that compel them to redact data from reports, a labor-intensive process. The report said other federal agencies’ officials did not understand the purpose or value of giving resources to NBIC.
“[NBIC doesn’t] have the access to information and data, they don’t have the trust of partners,” said Chris Currie, director of the GAO’s Emergency Management and National Preparedness Team, in an interview. “What they do provide is good but it isn’t really that useful for the partners.”
DHS did not respond to a request for comment. But in its response to the GAO report, the agency noted that GAO had not surveyed state and local authorities. “DHS believes that NBIC’s products provide these stakeholders significant value,” the agency wrote, adding that NBIC is developing tools to facilitate better information gathering.
Nevertheless, Andrew C. Weber, former assistant defense secretary for nuclear, chemical and biological defense programs, is among those who find the status quo unacceptable.
“I think it’s outrageous that any agency wouldn’t feel obligated to share with other agencies just as a matter of course,” he said. “I’ve heard all of the excuses for not sharing and I think they don’t hold up in a world where early detection of biological events can save lives.” Weber continued: “Data collection, data sharing, data management were a major impediment during the entire Ebola crisis.”
NBIC’s reports during the Ebola crisis did provide biosurveillance information, but those working in government during the crisis recall that it was just another resource, rather than a substantive information clearinghouse. Some experts don’t remember NBIC’s role during the crisis at all.
In the aftermath of the crisis, the Obama administration’s former Ebola Czar Ronald Klain has suggested the creation of a Public Health Emergency Management Agency—a specialized group of people trained to deal with emerging disease outbreaks. Critics counter that another center is unnecessary; and that instead federal agencies need to work together.
NBIC isn’t the only DHS program facing criticism; officials are also skeptical of BioWatch, a system of about 600 air collectors in 30 cities nationwide that is meant to detect a mass biological event such as a terrorist attack.
The collectors resemble little ice boxes and are meant to “sniff” the air for an intruder such as Anthrax or smallpox. But the air samples are only retrieved once every 24 hours. A local public health official has to manually remove a filter from the ice box and take it to a lab to determine if it matches a known toxin. The entire process is estimated to take between 12 and 36 hours, which experts say is too slow.
Attempts to automate that process failed.
Between 2009 and 2014, DHS spent at least $61 million in an effort to create a more high-tech box that could both collect the sample and analyze it within 4 to 6 hours. That initiative, dubbed “Gen 3,” turned out to be science fiction. DHS cancelled the project in 2014 in the wake of a September 2012 GAO report that found it was billions of dollars over budget.
The GAO subsequently said in October2015 that it wasn’t clear the current BioWatch technology was working either, because DHS had never properly tested the existing air collectors.
“They didn’t really document all of the uncertainties with the system, which you kind of need to know,” Currie said.
DHS largely concurred with that GAO report, but took exception to GAO’s conclusion that DHS had not established proper performance requirements for the system during testing.
Despite the controversy over BioWatch’s effectiveness, the Obama administration is proposing to spend $81.9 million on the program in its fiscal year 2017 budget.
Other experts say the whole Biowatch concept is flawed. Dr. Laura Kahn at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security, an expert on biodefense and pandemics, suggested that money would be better spent tracking animal life, arguing that animals can be monitored as natural biosensors. Other experts agree that collection methods need to evolve to include more animal specimens.
But former DOD official Weber believes that a variety of detection methods must be employed, and then coordinated across the government. At the moment, bio-surveillance programs are spread across numerous federal agencies.
“If there were to be a large aerosol release of say anthrax, the earliest detection would be environmental sensors,” he said. “That’s because animals wouldn’t get sick immediately.” Air sampling, Weber said, is vital to the strategy. “We can’t afford to lose a few days.”
“That’s why I really believe in integrated comprehensive surveillance that includes both environmental and clinical data,” Weber added. “It can’t be stove-piped; we can’t rely on just one aspect,” says Weber.
Congress has put forth a potential legislative fix. The CBRNE Defense Act of 2015 would create a new office within DHS, the Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and Explosives Office, which would place both NBIC and BioWatch under integrated new management.
President Obama’s 2017 budget accounts for this bureaucratic shift even though this legislation has not yet passed in the Senate: the House approved the idea on Dec. 10, 2015.
Members of Congress expressed frustration at the current state of affairs in a February 11 hearing of the House Homeland Security Committee’s subcommittee on Emergency Preparedness, Response & Communications.
“I’ve grown frustrated, like many, that we seem to be having the same hearings over and over again. At least once every Congress, we ask the department to come to the committee to respond to the latest criticisms of BioWatch and NBIC,” Congressman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said in his opening statement.
And even coordinating NBIC and BioWatch within DHS may not be the answer. The GAO asserted in its testimony at the subcommittee hearing that the White House’s implementation plan and strategy for bio-surveillance falls short, because they do not establish where bio-surveillance fits into the larger biodefense strategy. A separate Blue Ribbon Study Panel concluded in 2015 that the government’s biodefenses needed to be better organized. The panel suggested that the effort be placed under the Office of the Vice President.
Lauren Chadwick is a Scoville fellow at CPI. |
Robotech: The Macross Saga is a side-scrolling shoot 'em up for the Game Boy Advance handheld system, developed by Lucky Chicken Games and published by TDK Mediactive. This title was released during a renaissance of Robotech video games, where struggling projects were no longer cancelled and actually made it to market.
Gameplay [ edit ]
The game centres on the piloting of Veritech Fighters, the transformable mecha that are a notable feature of the Robotech series. The different modes offer unique advantages and vulnerabilities. Fighter mode has the fastest movement, but can't touch the ground. Battloid mode offers much better aim, but mobility is greatly diminished. While the hybrid Guardian mode splits the difference by combining and averaging these features.
The player can choose from their favorite Macross Saga characters (as seen on Masterpiece Collection toys released at the time). Each character offers varying levels of Power (Quantity of missiles), Stamina (Life energy), Strength (Strength of attacks), Piloting (Speed of movement) and Speed (Speed of Battloid).
After every few side-scrolling missions, there is an isometric view Destroid mission. Destroids are non-transformable Battloids that serve a similar role as a walking tank. The player can choose from a number of Destroids with different abilities.
The game also included a number of unlockable characters who like the main characters have different power levels. Many also fly different vehicles with their own quirks. Each main character you complete the game with unlocks their secret counterpart.
Link cable support allows for up to four player multiplayer.
Development [ edit ]
Reception [ edit ]
Reception Aggregate score Aggregator Score Metacritic 61/100[1] Review scores Publication Score GameSpot 6.5/10[2] GameSpy 70/100[3] IGN 5/10[4]
Robotech: The Macross Saga received a mixed reception by video game critics.
In a retrospective review by Hardcore Gamer's Jason Bohn, he criticized the length of the levels for being too long.[5] |
In November 2014, Mahsa Vahabi, an Archeology student serendipitously discovered in the dug soil in Mowlavi St., of Tehran Water and Wastewater Company some pottery.
Her discovery of simple earthen material drew attentions from her fellow archeologist and a study team addressed the place on Mowlavi St. Further excavations uncovered from under the soil bones and skeleton, reportedly and supposedly belonging to a women from 7,000 years ago.
Soon archeology researchers carried out research to find out more about its characteristics. A 3D documentation method was carried out on the skeleton by Mohammad Reza Rokni, an expert in Archeology Research Center.
He told Mehr News that to develop a 3D documentation, “we used whole parts of the skeleton and the principle of symmetry of human skeleton to reconstruct the missing parts or parts which are unfit for the reconstruction.”
“The model was developed drawing upon the supine position of the skeleton to represent its true position when interred; to reconstruct the face we added a digital version of missing parts mounted on the 3D model; the prepared model was pinpointed in 11 points in face on eyes, nose, ears, chicks, lips, and chin, and then the digital texturing filled these pinpoints to give us a clear image of the face,” he detailed.
Rokni also commented on the way the hairs of the woman was reconstructed; “since we had no trace of the hairs, choosing a color for hair was a matter of taste; in doing so, we drew upon the signs in pottery found in Cheshmeh Ali; five strong and standard modeling software versions helped us synchronize and corrected,” he told Mehr News.
He claimed that the finished reconstructed face would be 95 per cent accurate compared with the original face of woman last seen 7,000 years ago. “This is a common practice to reconstruct the face of skulls; however, the public would be abandoned uninformed about the practice; to make the reconstructed face more true to natural state, we fed some people’s faces to the machine to use the details to give a better and improved finished face,” he added.
Hamideh Choubak, head of the Archeology Research Center believes it is very interesting for the public to know what the face of ancient past people looked like; she said that the estimations made would not show the level of similarity to the original face. |
Activists On The Left Seek To Harness Spending As Part Of Their Anti-Trump Resistance
Enlarge this image toggle caption Spencer Platt/Getty Images Spencer Platt/Getty Images
President Donald Trump may not have the most Twitter followers on the platform but he is probably the most powerful person in the world who is tweeting on a regular basis. (Look no further than the recent "covfefe" incident and the raging wildfire of memes it incited.)
And it is precisely the president's compulsion to tweet-vent/tweet-rage that Allyson Kapin is counting on as the best vehicle to keep Democrats and progressives engaged in the national anti-Trump movement — especially novice activists.
Kapin is the brains behind WeCanResist.It, a new app launched in late May that funds social justice organizations "whose issues are being targeted by Trump."
"It is basically America's swear jar but for toxic ideology," she said. "So every time Trump goes on a Twitter rampage or tweets something dangerous or hateful, the app lets you automatically donate to a nonprofit that's fighting to protect our democracy, human rights, or the environment," she explained.
Unlike single or annual donations, which Kapin said can be quickly forgotten, these recurring contributions not only keep political causes top of mind, they also "help channel people's anger and frustrations." The nonprofits on the receiving end of the app are vetted by Kapin and her all-volunteer team of colleagues.
But, beyond providing instant gratification for her fellow lefties, Kapin is clear about the big-picture objective of the app: To keep people new to the world of political activism engaged beyond a single rally — what she describes as a growing number of first-time protesters who have not been involved in the "activist" space before. Additionally, Kapin hopes to draw attention to some of the smaller or less well-known advocacy groups that are often overlooked because people have never heard of them.
Kapin's efforts are part of a building national movement of anti-Trump pro-cotts — when consumers seek out companies, products or services that align with their political values.
Joel Naroff, president of Naroff Economic Advisors, confirms that the growing polarization that has permeated today's political discourse is mirrored in an expanding polarization in the economy and the way citizens are spending disposable income. Although he hasn't studied the phenomenon, Naroff notes there is ample evidence that consumers at large are exerting their partisan power over companies. And he argues technology is playing a critical role.
"Just look at Nordstrom," he said.
The national department store chain dropped the Ivanka Trump brand in February after a viral campaign called #GrabYourWallet encouraged shoppers to boycott all Trump products. Officially, Nordstrom cited the brand's poor performance as the reason for the decision without explicitly stating what role the boycott or the social media backlash may have played in those dropping sales.
"Given that we've got the Internet, we've got email, we've got Twitter and everything else that's out there, the ability to reach these disaffected people and turn them into disaffected consumers is probably greater now than it's ever been," he said.
Although he usually refrains from advising his clients to out their own political leanings, he notes many large companies benefit from publicly staking their ground. For instance, shortly after Trump announced the U.S. is withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement, Andy Pharoah, vice president for corporate affairs at Mars Incorporated, told NPR that he is disappointed in the president's decision, but that the candy and pet food company will be undeterred in its own efforts to combat climate change.
That is the kind of statement that will likely lure chocoholics who also support stringent climate change policies.
Tracking the financial gains for large companies that go out on these ideological limbs is complicated, because a multitude of factors can contribute to rising sales, but small organizations can sometimes make those connections more easily.
Take Rachel Berks, owner of the boutique shop, Otherwild. Berks, who continues to be an avid Hillary Clinton supporter, was the first designer to set off the "The Future is Female" T-shirt craze leading up to the 2016 election. The simple cotton tee — Berk's riff on a 1960s lesbian mantra — was outperforming all of her other designs but it wasn't until she decided to donate a quarter of the proceeds to Planned Parenthood, that her business exploded.
"When I did that it really blew up and went viral," she said.
Berk was moved to make the donation during the period when Congress was first voting to defund Planned Parenthood. Just as she was inspired to contribute, Berk said, "I think [people] were interested in a tangible way to give back."
It's anecdotal but Berks said it was proof to her that slews of progressives are looking for new ways to carry their political values into other areas of their private lives.
"People were feeling just like me — frustrated, hurt, asking what do we do next?" she said.
Enlarge this image toggle caption John Bazemore/AP John Bazemore/AP
Similarly, Nate Lerner, executive director of the Democratic Coalition Against Trump, took a look around his own circle of friends and observed the same longing for direction. That prompted him to create the Boycott Trump app shortly after the November election.
It is essentially a searchable database that shows links between companies and the Trump administration. Lerner estimates the app has been downloaded more than 350,000 times since November.
He said he created it because he was afraid to lose the momentum progressives opposing Trump had managed to build leading up to the election.
Lerner wanted them to know, "They can still speak through their wallets and through their purchasing power every day," he explained, "So we wanted to remind them of that and give them the ability to take action through that."
Since its debut, Lerner has added several new features to the app that he says make people feel more empowered. In addition to connecting users with their local representatives, they can now also email companies directly through the app to convey their dissatisfaction.
Like Kapin, Lerner hopes the Boycott Trump app will act like a gateway to political action.
"There certainly is a new generation of political activists that we're seeing rise and come forward," he said, "but at the same time they're not getting engaged on traditional means of political action like volunteering and donating and calling their representatives and we aim to change that."
But there have been some unintended uses of Lerner's creation. Pro-Trump shoppers have been downloading it too in order to find and buy products that will go to companies aligned with the administration.
That doesn't bother Lerner.
"If you're downloading our app and if you're using it for a negative purpose, you're actually still helping our cause," he said. That's because every download only helps bump up the app's rankings.
"So the joke's on them," he said. |
When a 21-year-old Arnold Schwarzenegger first came to America in 1968, he witnessed 54-year-old Jack LaLanne down on Venice Beach in California doing thousands of push-ups and chin-ups. A challenge was declared — and Arnold, the youngest Mr. Universe at the time, went on to lose. Badly.
"I beat him in chin-ups and push-ups," LaLanne says. "He said, 'That Jack LaLanne's an animal! I was sore for four days. I couldn't lift my arms!' "
LaLanne, the long regarded "godfather of fitness," passed away at his home in Morro Bay, Calif., on Jan. 23 at the age of 96.
I first heard of the man years ago after he invited some fitness guru to come and attempt one of his legendary challenges filled with push-ups, chin-ups, and a host of other high-intensity workouts. LaLanne crushed him — even in his late 80s.
He had an attitude described as fierce, but even Jack would tell it straight if asked. When questioned whether age ever got in the way of his goals, LaLanne once said:
"I train like I'm training for the Olympics or for a Mr. America contest, the way I've always trained my whole life. You see, life is a battlefield. Life is survival of the fittest. How many healthy people do you know? How many happy people do you know? Think about it. People work at dying, they don't work at living. My workout is my obligation to life. It's my tranquilizer. It's part of the way I tell the truth — and telling the truth is what's kept me going all these years."
LaLanne, who was known for doing 1,033 push-ups in 30 minutes — and also reportedly inspired the "Jumping Jack," was one of the first fitness legends to talk about eating healthy. He was "mostly vegetarian," avoided dairy products, and only occasionally had egg whites or a bite of fish.
"Look at the average American diet: ice cream, butter, cheese, whole milk, all this fat," he said. "People don't realize how much of this stuff you get by the end of the day. High blood pressure is from all this high-fat eating. Do you know how many calories are in butter and cheese and ice cream? Would you get your dog up in the morning for a cup of coffee and a donut? Probably millions of Americans got up this morning with a cup of coffee, a cigarette and a donut. No wonder they are sick and fouled up."
In terms of organic food, Jack thought that while pursuing that option was fine, in his opinion, exercise should be a greater concern for people.
"It's [organic food] a bunch of bull," he said. "How do you know what's really organic? Today, there's all these impurities in the water and the air. The water for the fruits and vegetables has junk in it. If you get enough vitamins and minerals out of normal food and whole grains, and you get enough proteins and exercise (that's the key), then nature builds up a tolerance to all of these things. It's survival of the fittest. You can't have everything perfect, that's impossible, but the fit survive."
In a world rich with quick weight-loss schemes and expensive gizmos designed to tone and shape our forms, it's refreshing to know that LaLanne never took the easy way out. Over 96 years, he showed that a healthy diet and regular exercise are worth more than any pill or fad diet. More than that, however, was a "grab the bull by the horns" attitude that defined his teachings and inspired generations.
Said Jack, "I don't care how old I live; I just want to be LIVING while I am living!"
Thank you, Jack, for the inspiration, exercise tips, and healthy living advice. You will be missed.
Quotes via ShareGuide
Jack LaLanne: The first fitness superhero
Celebrity trainer and "godfather of fitness" passes away at age 96. |
When Alcatel Onetouch announced the Idol 3, I was suspicious. We’ve seen a lot of really bad phones released around $200-$250 price point. HTC and Samsung have notoriously flooded the market with “mid-range” devices that are about half the price of their flagships but have terrible screens, storage and performance. This left a bad taste in the mouth of many looking for a cheaper option than signing a new 2 year contract with a big carrier or moving to a smaller MVNO.
The push to bring us cost efficient devices that perform well and look just as good is new to the US. While around the world the market for cheaper phones is already huge, it’s beginning to blow up here at home too. Devices like the Moto G and Moto E are increasing in popularity and newer entries into the market like the Idol 3 and the Asus ZenFone 2 are making big splashes, especially among the Android enthusiasts community. While these devices aren’t perfect, they do a lot of things right but the search for the right device for you can be difficult. Do you know what features are really important to you and what can fall by the wayside? Stick around as we explore the Alcatel Onetouch Idol 3 and decide for yourself if this is the best bang for the buck on the market.
Dimensions 152.7 x 75.1 x 7.4 mm (6.01 x 2.96 x 0.29 in)
Weight 141 g (4.97 oz)
Display Type IPS LCD Size 5.5 inches
Resolution 1080 x 1920 pixels (~401 ppi pixel density)
OS Android 5.0 Lollipop
Chipset Qualcomm MSM8939 Snapdragon 615
CPU Quad-core 1.5 GHz Cortex-A53 & quad-core 1.0 GHz Cortex-A53
GPU Adreno 405
Internal 16 GB, 2 GB RAM
Camera 13 MP, 4128 x 3096 pixels, autofocus, LED flash (rear), 8 MP, 1080P (front)
WLAN Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, dual-band, Wi-Fi Direct, DLNA, hotspot
Bluetooth v4.1, A2DP
Battery Li-Ion 2910 mAh battery
Build Quality
There’s a lot of hyperbole about build quality in phone reviews. Many people think just because something is plastic that it’s trash. I’d like to take issue with that. A lot of people think because something is light it’s not well made. I’d like to take issue with that too. The Idol 3 is only 141 grams which compares very well to the Samsung Galaxy S6 (138 grams) and the Motorola Moto X (144 grams) but it feels lighter. Some of that is due to the fact that the Idol 3 has a bigger 5.5″ screen so the weight is stretched across a bigger surface area. I’ve never once felt in danger of bending or breaking the Idol 3 while it was in my pocket or during use.
The plastic body is solid and surrounded by a shiny plastic band around the outside. I fear that drops on anything jagged is going to be bad news for the future looks of your phone due to the plastic surround. It won’t get beat up like an aluminum phone like the HTC One but it’s definitely not at the quality of something like the Moto X or Samsung Galaxy S6. There is no flex to the phone when put under pressure and no creaking as well. This comes a nice surprise as my initial thoughts turned toward the awful Galaxy S4 before I actually got to hold the Idol 3.
Speakers
Speakers on a mobile phone are tough. OEMs have been, for a long time, putting speakers on the back, firing away from you and pumping up the volume to compensate at the expense of audio quality. There’s been bigger push recently for speakers drilled into the bottom of the phone, like on the S6 and S6 Edge that at least you can cup your hand around when watching video in landscape. The Idol 3 goes another direction. Much like the HTC One and Sony Xperia Z line, the Idol 3 has dual stereo speakers on the front of the phone.
I can honestly say that this is the first time I’ve thought a phone was loud since my time with the HTC One M7 and One M8. The speakers are part of the shiny plastic surround we mentioned above and they sit above and below the screen so it’s hard to cover them up while holding your phone. Not only are they loud, but they’re clear. They don’t reach the level or clarity of the boomsound speakers on the HTC One line but I have enjoyed watching YouTube videos and streaming audio. If you’re an audiophile, you’ll still be reaching for your headphones but the speakers here are a huge plus, especially on a phone at this price.
Battery Life
There are a few things in life that are predictable. The sun will rise tomorrow, you’ll have to pay taxes and when a phone is announced, the top 10 or so comments on reddit will be questioning battery life. The Idol 3 packs a 2910 mAH battery inside (non-removable) and has none of the fancy new charging technologies like Qualcomm quick charging or wireless charging. But battery life is good. I’m not a huge gamer or anything but I tend to stress my battery a bit. I check it a lot so it doesn’t often go into a deep sleep but I’m still getting great battery life.
I’ve averaged about 4 hours of screen on time with standby time anywhere between 24 and 36 hours. On my first full charge I had the phone on for almost two full days with no charging in between. Extremely impressive. I keep all of the radios on (wifi, location high accuracy, bluetooth) and have my Moto 360 connected and even so I’m getting a full day which is pretty much the standard for batteries right now. If I had to use one of my phones and I knew I wouldn’t be able to top up during the day, I’d grab the Idol 3 over my Galaxy S6 and iPhone 6. Seriously impressive for a $250 phone.
UI
If you were disappointed in the size and price of the Nexus 6, you may want to consider the Idol 3 if you’re looking for a new phone now. I wouldn’t even say that Alcatel Onetouch put a skin on top of stock Android. A better description is that they’ve used an icon pack and added a couple features. We’re on Moto X territory here. Almost every part of the OS was left untouched including the notification shade (except for adding a few toggles), the application drawer and settings. I would have liked to have seen the Google Now launcher come pre-installed but we do get the AOSP keyboard standard. One weird thing, though is that the AOSP keyboard would not let me swipe even though it was enabled. I had to go download the Google Keyboard from the Play Store.
The lockscreen features several icons you can use to quick launch apps but they’re not ones you’d generally expect to find here. You get 5 icons, including the calculator, one to play music (which opens the Mix app instead of Play Music), an icon to launch the front facing camera to take a selfie, an icon to add a contact and the QR code reader. I found these more trouble than they’re worth and luckily Alcatel Onetouch lets you turn them off in settings.
And that’s kind of the story of the Idol 3. Alcatel Onetouch has added some smart features into the phone but largely gotten out-of-the-way to let you make it your own. Sure, there aren’t the standard Lollipop icons. They’ve been replaced by more colorful icons that will appeal to crowds in the east but it’s just a cosmetic change. If you’re coming from a Nexus, you’re going to know exactly where you’re going in this phone.
Software
The Idol 3 ships with Android 5.0.2 which is an almost up to date version of Android Lollipop. Android currently sits on 5.1.1 and will probably be that way until Android M is released some time later this year. During a chat with Alcatel Onetouch PR, I had a chance to ask a couple of questions about their vision for the software in the future.
We’re committed to ensuring that we always have the very best user experience possible and plan to have IDOL 3 software updates available to consumers via over-the-air updates. Timing on these updates will be on a rolling basis as needed. Steve Cistulli, VP & GM
While I’d definitely like to see some more concrete answers from Alcatel Onetouch, I am optimistic about the future of software updates on the Idol 3 for a couple of reasons. First off, they run a very close version of stock Android as has been discussed a bit in this review. Companies like HTC and Samsung run heavy skins that take time to modify to Android updates because they have to worry a lot about how their skins and features are going to play with AOSP and carriers. Also, Alcatel Onetouch doesn’t have to worry about loading down their phones with carrier bloat or carriers holding up their updates. We hope to see Apple-like updates where all of their phones get the update at the same time. Time will tell.
Camera
Please note for the sake of making the pictures actually work with our site, the pictures below have been resized from 4000 x 2250 to 2000 x 1125 and at an image quality of 90%. No other alterations have been made. I have uploaded the sample pictures to imgur in full resolution. All pictures were taken with the default mode the camera shipped with and with the flash off. I tried to snap a few quick pictures showing a range of lighting and set pieces. As you can see, in light the colors are vibrant and the blacks are very deep. There is some over-sharpening occurring in an attempt to pick up more detail in the pictures. The low light picture doesn’t fare as well as in the light but it’s about what you can expect from a camera on a $250 phone. The camera will definitely get you by but won’t be replacing your point and shoot or competing with the quality of the camera on a Samsung, LG or Sony phone.
Added Features
The list isn’t long here so I’ll try to keep them all in this one section. Added into the settings is an option to control your gestures. Under this option you can turn on “turn over to mute” when you have an incoming call and “turn over to activate snooze” when your alarm is going off. The most popular option is going to be the double tap to wake but for the life of me I can not get this feature to work reliably on the Idol 3. I don’t know if it’s software or hardware or but it just won’t work but maybe 10% of the time. Hopefully Alcatel can fix this with a software update because the power button is very high up on the left. It’s a pain in the ass to push.
Due to the fact that the Idol 3 has dual stereo speakers on the top and bottom of the phone and microphones on each side as well, the phone can be used right side up or upside down. Controlled by a toggle in the notification shade, the phone’s UI will flip 180 degrees when held upside so no matter what way you pick it up, you can use it how you want it. Now, you’re going to be covering your rear facing camera and your buttons will be on the wrong side but it makes grabbing your phone to answer a call quickly very easy. I love the creativeness shown by Alcatel Onetouch here.
Performance
If there is anything to complain about with the Idol 3, it may be the performance. Again, I didn’t walk in expecting too much from the phone so I can’t say I’m disappointed but we’re not at a flagship level here. For the most part, the Idol 3 does a good job. If you give it time to complete its tasks its reliable and pulls through. If you expect to be able to fly through menus and the multitasking window, you’re going to have a bad time.
There are animation stutters if you go too fast. Sometimes there are UI stutters even if you give it time. But it’s a solid performer. I don’t think you’re going to be seeing 60 FPS consistently that Android has been working on with Project Butter in Android 4.1 but generally animations are smooth with the occasional stutter. Some animations feel painfully slow, like iOS 8 slow so turning down the window animation scale, transition animation scale and animator duration scale all down .5 in developer options will help the phone feel a bit faster even if it’s at the cost of some animations.
I don’t do much gaming but I wouldn’t expect the Idol 3 to break any FPS records in games. This is still a midrange Snapdragon processor (basically comparable to a SD800) so you’re going to be behind the 8 ball a bit but you should be able to play your favorite games without much issue. There is definitely going to be some delays in launching bigger games and apps as the processor tries to load them, but much like the rest of the phone, if you give it enough time, it’ll get there.
Conclusion
The Alcatel Onetouch Idol 3 does a ton of things right. I can’t say enough how awesome it is to have an almost stock android experience on a budget friendly phone again. Manly Android enthusiasts were really in the market for a Nexus 5 (2015) when Google announced the Nexus 6. While disappointment was shared by many, I think the Idol 3 is the best case for a close to Nexus experience. I’m still waiting on interest on XDA to pick up as the phone becomes more widely popular since the bootloader appears to locked. I’d really like to see Alcatel release an official bootloader unlocking tool especially since this is an unlocked phone and shouldn’t have to bow to any carrier demands to be sold.
The phone is sold unlocked at $250 with 16 GB of storage space but only 11 GB is usable and in 2015 this simply just isn’t enough. Between pinning one large playlist and taking a couple of pictures, I’m almost out of space. I’ve reached out to Alcatel Onetouch for a comment on if we’re going to be a version go on sale with more storage. If you don’t heavily rely on locally stored content, you can definitely skip past this concern but if you’re anything like me, you definitely need a version with 32 GB of storage. Hopefully OEMs get the message (Samsung, HTC and LG seem to have gotten it) and double their base storage even in midrage devices.
There are compromises to be made if you use the Idol 3 but I feel like when you compare those compromises to the $400 you’re going to save by not going with a flagship device, it’s very much worth it. The performance is good enough. I don’t generally get frustrated with it. I love the speakers and the screen does well and how much can you say about having almost stock Android. I’d like to see better control over unlocking the bootloader and more storage space but all in all, this is a great buy.
Product Page: Idol 3 |
Hugh Hefner is dead and we're now being bombarded with myriad stories making him into a modern anti-saint for the cause of hedonism and sexual deviancy. This man was not someone to look up to. Yes, he made a lot of money by breaking up families, feeding addictions, and exploiting young women. But what did he give to our society? The argument can be made that it was nothing but misery. Hefner, who was very politically motivated, contributed to the decline of American morality. Many papers, like The New York Times, can't help but celebrate that.
In 1962 Hefner wrote "The Playboy Philosophy," a 25-installment editorial that was a mix of libertarian and libertine arguments meant to defend his magazine against charges that it was a "cult of irresponsibility and of aiding in the decline of the Western world." He railed against the repressive influence of the church and championed abortion rights, decriminalization of marijuana, and, most important, the repeal of 19th-century sex laws.
The full extent of what he contributed was not felt until recently when even staunch libertarians started to think, maybe we've gone too far. That moment was undeniably Bill Nye The Science Guy's episode on Netflix about "My Sex Junk," where some screeching woman gyrated around yelling about "fleshlights" and "power bottoms." There's only so much debauchery the public can stand before it starts turning stomachs. A chubby SJW in pleather and a guy pretending to be a scientist while pushing more than two genders seems to have finally done it. In almost every public comment about that episode, people were begging for traditional morality to make a comeback. After watching that train wreck, even atheists were asking for God to make a comeback.
It was Hefner who pushed the widespread use of birth control, abortion and promiscuous sex. As a result, divorce and venereal diseases skyrocketed. His political machinations were far more offensive than his magazine. It's hard, even for me, to criticize Playboy, vanilla as it was. Recently it even stopped showing any nudity at all. There's no doubt that Playboy was the best of the worst when it came to pornography in its day. By today's standards, it's puritanical! But it was Hef's political activism that did the most damage. It was a fun sideshow that Gloria Steinem hated him; he pitted himself against militant feminists who are, after all, repulsive — anyone who dares take them on is seen as a cult hero. But there were no heroes in this fight. Both sides were equally evil and the effects of both will haunt us forever.
Both philosophies sought to put women quite literally under men. The only things gained by this sexual advocacy was freeing men from the responsibility of sex and opening us up to the unending cesspit of perversion we are currently fighting (like Teen Vogue teaching teens how to have anal sex). Yet Hefner saw himself as a new moral authority with the power to abolish all the wisdom that had come before him. |
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