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I’ve been trying to figure out what common trait binds Clinton supporters together. As far as I can tell, the most unifying characteristic is a willingness to bully in all its forms.
If you have a Trump sign in your lawn, they will steal it.
If you have a Trump bumper sticker, they will deface your car.
if you speak of Trump at work you could get fired.
On social media, almost every message I get from a Clinton supporter is a bullying type of message. They insult. They try to shame. They label. And obviously they threaten my livelihood.
We know from Project Veritas that Clinton supporters tried to incite violence at Trump rallies. The media downplays it.
We also know Clinton’s side hired paid trolls to bully online. You don’t hear much about that.
Yesterday, by no coincidence, Huffington Post, Salon, and Daily Kos all published similar-sounding hit pieces on me, presumably to lower my influence. (That reason, plus jealousy, are the only reasons writers write about other writers.)
Joe Biden said he wanted to take Trump behind the bleachers and beat him up. No one on Clinton’s side disavowed that call to violence because, I assume, they consider it justified hyperbole.
Team Clinton has succeeded in perpetuating one of the greatest evils I have seen in my lifetime. Her side has branded Trump supporters (40%+ of voters) as Nazis, sexists, homophobes, racists, and a few other fighting words. Their argument is built on confirmation bias and persuasion. But facts don’t matter because facts never matter in politics. What matters is that Clinton’s framing of Trump provides moral cover for any bullying behavior online or in person. No one can be a bad person for opposing Hitler, right?
Some Trump supporters online have suggested that people who intend to vote for Trump should wear their Trump hats on election day. That is a dangerous idea, and I strongly discourage it. There would be riots in the streets because we already know the bullies would attack. But on election day, inviting those attacks is an extra-dangerous idea. Violence is bad on any day, but on election day, Republicans are far more likely to unholster in an effort to protect their voting rights. Things will get wet fast.
Yes, yes, I realize Trump supporters say bad things about Clinton supporters too. I don’t defend the bad apples on either side. I’ll just point out that Trump’s message is about uniting all Americans under one flag. The Clinton message is that some Americans are good people and the other 40% are some form of deplorables, deserving of shame, vandalism, punishing taxation, and violence. She has literally turned Americans on each other. It is hard for me to imagine a worse thing for a presidential candidate to do.
I’ll say that again.
As far as I can tell, the worst thing a presidential candidate can do is turn Americans against each other. Clinton is doing that, intentionally.
Intentionally.
As I often say, I don’t know who has the best policies. I don’t know the best way to fight ISIS and I don’t know how to fix healthcare or trade deals. I don’t know which tax policies are best to lift the economy. I don’t know the best way to handle any of that stuff. (And neither do you.) But I do have a bad reaction to bullies. And I’ve reached my limit.
I hope you have too. Therefore…
I endorse Donald Trump for President of the United States because I oppose bullying in all its forms.
I don’t defend Trump’s personal life. Neither Trump nor Clinton are role models for our children. Let’s call that a tie, at worst.
The bullies are welcome to drown in their own bile while those of us who want a better world do what we’ve been doing for hundreds of years: Work to make it better while others complain about how we’re doing it.
Today I put Trump’s odds of winning in a landslide back to 98%. Remember, I told you a few weeks ago that Trump couldn’t win unless “something changed.”
Something just changed.
—
You might like my book because Clinton’s bullies have been giving it one-star reviews on Amazon to punish me for blogging about Trump’s persuasion skills. |
Never mind that thousands of Californians are living without tap water: A household in the star-studded L.A. neighborhood of Bel Air consumed a jaw-dropping 11.8 million gallons of water over the state’s fourth year of its worst-ever drought.
That’s according to Reveal, an investigative reporting site that just outed California biggest residential water users. Based on data collected from the state’s largest local water agencies, Reveal found that some 365 households guzzled more than one million gallons of water each during the year (ending in April). Fourteen of them used more than 6 million.
But back to that one guy in Bel Air. Twelve million gallons is about as much as 90 households use in an average year. That could fill 18 Olympic-sized swimming pools. It’s about two-thirds of the amount of water that flooded the UCLA campus when a local water main burst in 2014. Remember what that looked like?
(REUTERS/Danny Moloshok)
Much to the chagrin of #droughtshamers worldwide, the L.A. Department of Water and Power won’t identify the record-setting homeowner—or what they could possibly be up to. Yes, most likely it’s a case of inordinate lawn-watering. But CityLab decided to speculate as to what one L.A. family could be doing with 12 million gallons of water. |
One of the biggest and most common problems in front-end web development is state management. Freelance front-end developers like me are constantly focused on keeping the state object in sync with its view and the DOM representation. Users can interact with the application in many ways and it’s a big task to provide a clean transition from one state to another.
A Bit Of History
Not that long ago, web applications had a much simpler data flow. The browser would send a request to the server, all application logic would be executed on the server, and a full HTML view would be sent back to the browser for presentation to the user. Subsequent user actions (such as clicks, form submissions, etc.) would trigger the same flow again. Applications did not have to worry about the user state and each view could be regenerated by sending a new request to the server.
However, web applications grew in their complexity and user demands of the UI/UX were advancing as well. Reloading the whole page, when just one part of it changes, was ineffective and slow. We needed a quick, snappy, and responsive interaction with immediate impact on the UI.
JavaScript came to the rescue. Developers started writing significant amounts of code that was executed in the browser before a request was sent to the server. jQuery also brought significant advances to front-end web development, as it provided simple and effective out-of-the-box capabilities such as client side validation, modal windows, alert messages, animations, and even Ajax-based partial page updates.
Understanding Complexity
Let’s take a look at a simple example of evaluating the strength of a password. If the password is OK, the input box should have a green border and should display a nice message. If the password is weak, the input box should have a red border and should display a warning message. We might also show a smiley face when a password is sufficiently strong.
The following code demonstrates how this could be done by DOM manipulation. There are a lot of “ifs” here, and the code is not very easy to read.
if (hasInputBorder()) { removeInputBorder(); } if (text.length === 0) { if (hasMessage()) { removeMessage(); } if (hasSmiley()) { removeSmiley(); } } else { var strength = getPasswordStrength(text); if (!hasInputBorder()) { addInputBorder(); } var color = (strength == 'weak' ? 'red' : 'green'); setInputBorderColor(color); var message = (strength == 'weak' ? "Password is weak" : "That's what I call a password!"); if (hasMessage()) { setMessageText(message); } else { addMessageWithText(message); } if (strength == 'weak') { if (hasSmiley()) { removeSmiley(); } } else { if (!hasSmiley()) { addSmiley(); } } }
As shown above, first we need to check if the user provided any password at all and handle the case where the password field is empty. And in all cases, we need to make sure that all related DOM elements are properly updated. This includes the message, the border, and the smiley face.
Our password field can be in one of three states: empty, weak, or strong. And as noted, we have three different DOM elements that are affected by the password field state. Handling all combinations, and making sure that our view is properly displayed, increases cyclomatic complexity for even a simple piece of code like this.
The DOM works in a retained mode, which means that it only remembers the current state. In order to modify our view, we need to provide instructions for each DOM element and program the transition.
Coding transitions instead of states can be complex. The number of branches and checks we need to perform in our code grows exponentially with the number of view states to manage.
In our example, we defined three view states, which gave us 3 * 2 = 6 transitions. In general, given N states, we have N * (N - 1) = N^2 - N transitions that we would need to model. Just think about the increased complexity if we added a fourth state to our example.
There is typically too much code related to modeling the transitions. It would be much better if we could just define our view states and not worry about all the details of transitioning from one state to another.
Reducing Complexity
Assuming that we could declare the view state based on the model state, instead of explicitly coding the transition from one state to another, we could have something like this:
var strength = getPasswordStrength(text); if (text.length == 0) { return div(input({type: 'password', value: text})); } else if (strength == 'weak') { return div( input({type: 'password', value: text, borderColor: 'red'}), span({}, "Weak") ); } else { return div( input({type: 'password', value: text, borderColor: 'green'}), span({}, "That's what I call a password!"), img({class: 'icon-smiley'}) ); }
Here we have three simple branches of code, representing the three possible states of our app. We just return the specification of the view in each branch, depending on the model state. All DOM manipulation code is removed; we just provide the information about what we want, and not how to get there.
While this approach does significantly reduce the code complexity, it also assumes there is someone or something else to take care of the actual DOM manipulation on our behalf.
This is where React comes in. React will make sure that a view state is immediately managed and updated based on the state of the underlying data model.
Reaction
React is a JavaScript library created by Facebook. It is designed to handle the UI part of web applications. You can think of it as the V in MVC architecture. It is very focused. It makes no assumptions about the rest of your technology stack and it doesn’t handle anything other than rendering components. It does not provide any routing mechanisms, models, or other features that are usually bundled in larger frameworks. Thus, you can mix it and use it with any other library or framework you want.
React allows us to define UIs as trees of composite components. A React developer defines those components by specifying a render function that describes the component, given the input state. That function should be pure (i.e., it shouldn’t have any side effect or depend on anything other than its explicit input).
The render function returns a view description, which React calls a Virtual DOM. Think of it as a JavaScript object corresponding to the rendered DOM element.
When you change the component’s state, it just re-renders itself and all of its child elements, returning a new Virtual DOM.
Moreover, React will not do a simple HTML replacement, when transitioning from one state to another. It will find the diff between the previous and the new state, and calculate the most effective set of DOM operations to execute a transition.
Even without performance in mind, the reduction in code complexity is itself significant and allows us to focus our efforts on the more unique and complex parts of our application.
To get a little bit more concrete, this is how our tutorial example would be made using React to manage view states.
NOTE: The following code sample is written in JSX preprocessor, which is a common way to write a React based UI.
function getPasswordStrength(text) { // Some code that calculates the strength given the password text. } var PasswordWithStrength = React.createClass({ getInitialState: function() { return {value: ''}; }, render: function() { var strength = getPasswordStrength(this.state.value); if (this.state.value.length == 0) { return <div> <input type="password" value={this.state.value} onChange={this.handleInputChange} /> </div>; } else if (strength == 'weak') { return <div> <input type="password" value={this.state.value} onChange={this.handleInputChange} style={ {border: '1px solid red'} } /> <span style={{color: 'red'}}>Weak!</span> </div>; } else { return <div> <input type="password" value={this.state.value} onChange={this.handleInputChange} style={ {border: '1px solid green'} } /> <span style={{color: 'green'}}>That's what I call a password!</span> <Emoji value="smiley" /> </div>; } }, handleInputChange: function(ev) { this.setState({value: ev.target.value}); } }); React.render(<PasswordWithStrength />, document.body);
The Emoji component that is rendered when the password strength is OK with <Emoji value="smiley" /> is just another custom component (just like PasswordWithStrength ). It is defined like this:
var Emoji = React.createClass({ render: function() { var emojiSrc = this.props.value + '.png'; return <img src={emojiSrc}></img>; } });
React.js vs. Others
In fairness, though, there are other client-side JavaScript frameworks (such as Ember, Angular, Knockout, and others) that solved the view state management problem as well, and even added more features to it. So, why would you want to use React instead of any other framework?
There are two key advantages React has, compared to most of the other libraries.
No Data Binding
Some of the other alternative frameworks use data binding to map DOM elements to state properties, and keep them in sync by observing the property changes. This approach allows rendering the view once, with each change then triggering only modifications of the affected DOM elements. Other alternatives use dirty checking; that is, instead of observing individual property changes, they just perform a diff between the previous state and the new one. React is more similar to the latter approach but, instead of comparing states, it compares the view representations.
React has no data binding. A developer is expected to call the setState method, or re-render the top component, when the state is changed. It embraces a one-directional flow, from the state to the view.
This concept is easy to adopt as developers generally do not think about data binding. The focus is on the visual representation of the data. You therefore do not need to think about dependent properties, formatting, binding special HTML tags, etc. With React, you simply re-render the component when the model changes.
To understand the difference in view state management here, let’s compare Ember and React. We will create an object person that will output the full name in uppercase. After two seconds, we will simulate the change and update the view.
// EXAMPLE USING EMBER App = Ember.Application.create(); App.Person = Ember.Object.extend({ firstName: null, lastName: null, fullName: function() { return this.get('firstName') + ' ' + this.get('lastName'); }.property('firstName', 'lastName') }); var person = App.Person.create({ firstName: "John", lastName: "Doe" }); Ember.Handlebars.helper('upcase', function(value) { return value.toUpperCase(); }); App.IndexRoute = Ember.Route.extend({ model: function () { return person; } }); setTimeout(function() { person.set('firstName', 'Harry'); }, 2000); // Templates: <script type="text/x-handlebars"> <h2>Welcome to Ember.js</h2> {{outlet}} </script> <script type="text/x-handlebars" data-template-name="index"> The current user is: {{upcase model.fullName}} </script>
We created an object with firstName , lastName , and fullName properties. Since Ember is observing property changes, we had to specify that fullName depends on the firstName and the lastName . To do this we added .property('firstName', 'lastName') when we defined the fullName .
After two seconds, person.set('firstName', 'Harry'); is executed. This triggered the update of the view and its binding.
Now let’s do the same in React.
// EXAMPLE USING REACT var CurrentUser = React.createClass({ render: function() { return <div>The current user is: {this.props.user.fullName().toUpperCase()}</div>; } }); var person = { firstName: 'John', lastName: 'Doe', fullName: function() { return this.firstName + ' ' + this.lastName; } }; var currentUser = React.render(<CurrentUser user={person}/>, document.body); setTimeout(function() { person.firstName = 'Harry'; currentUser.setProps({user: person}); }, 2000);
Even though Ember code is simple and easy to read, it is obvious that React wins in simplicity. The person is a plain JavaScript object, with the fullName simply being a function.
No Templating
Each alternative framework has a different way of handling templates. Some of them use strings which are compiled into JavaScript, while others use DOM elements directly. Most of them use custom HTML attributes and tags which are then “compiled” into HTML.
Templates are not part of the JavaScript code. Because of this, each alternative needs a custom way to represent common operations, conditionals, iterations, calling functions, etc. They all end up creating a new pseudo-language that developers must learn.
There is no templating in React, everything is just plain old JavaScript.
React uses the full power of JavaScript in order to generate the view. The component’s render method is a JavaScript function.
JSX is available as a preprocessor that turns “HTML-like syntax” into normal JavaScript, but JSX is optional and you are free to use standard JavaScript without any preprocessors. You can also take advantage of existing JavaScript tools. Linters, preprocessors, type annotations, minification, dead code elimination, etc.
Let’s again use a concrete example to compare React to one of the alternative frameworks for view state management.
The following tutorial is an example of using AngularJS to list hashtags and the tweet count for each of them. The list is sorted by count, and a message is shown if there are no hashtags.
<!-- EXAMPLE USING ANGULAR --> <div ng-controller="MyCtrl"> <ul ng-show="hashTags.length > 0"> <li ng-repeat="hashTag in hashTags | orderBy:'tweetCount':true"> {{hashTag.name}} - {{hashTag.tweetCount}} tweets </li> </ul> <span ng-show="hashTags.length == 0">No hashtags found!</span> </div>
To be able to make this list, a developer must learn about AngularJS directives , ng-show and ng-repeat . Then he needs to learn about AngularJS filters to understand orderBy . A lot of work for a simple thing like outputting a list!
Now let’s consider the React example that does the same thing:
// EXAMPLE USING REACT function byTweetCountDesc(h1, h2) { return h2.tweetCount - h1.tweetCount; } //... render: function() { if (this.state.hashTags.length > 0) { var comps = this.state.hashTags.sort(byTweetCountDesc).map(function(hashTag, index) { return <li key={index}> {hashTag.name} - {hashTag.tweetCount} tweets </li>; }); return <ul>{comps}</ul>; } else { return <span>No hashtags found!</span> } }
Even if we used the “more advanced” approach and JSX, every web developer with a basic understanding of JavaScript can easily read the code above and understand what it does. Standard conditional check using if , iteration using map() , and a standard ‘sort()’ comes naturally to any developer, so there is no extra syntax or other concepts to learn.
Conclusion
The main takeaway from this React.js tutorial is the fact that React enables you to focus on the actual view state management rather than transitions, thereby simplifying your work and your application.
The learning curve for adopting React is fairly trivial. No custom templating language to master, no data binding to worry about, and everything comes down to JavaScript functions that describe UI elements.
To learn more about simplifying your application code using React, take a look at this talk by Steven Luscher, Decomplexifying Code with React.
Here is some additional reading for anyone who wants to take the next step and start using React: |
Story highlights PETA says SeaWorld "has taken a step forward but more must come"
SeaWorld has been under fire about its treatment of orcas since the 2013 documentary "Blackfish"
"SeaWorld has been listening and we're changing. Society is changing and we're changing with it," the company said
(CNN) The killer whales currently in SeaWorld's care will be the last generation of the mammals enclosed at the water parks, according to a company announcement posted on its website.
"Why the big news? SeaWorld has been listening and we're changing. Society is changing and we're changing with it," the company said. "SeaWorld is finding new ways to continue to deliver on our purpose to inspire all our guest(s) to take action to protect wild animals and wild places."
The company has come under fire for its treatment of killer whales since the 2013 CNN documentary "Blackfish." That film profiled one of its whales, Tilikum, who has been involved in the deaths of three people, including SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau in 2010.
Reports recently surfaced that Tilikum may be dying. He is estimated to be 35 years old.
Photos: Killer whales in captivity Photos: Killer whales in captivity Lolita, a captive killer whale at the Miami Seaquarium, was added to the endangered species listing for Southern Resident Killer Whales by NOAA Fisheries in February. Although her species was already listed as endangered, Lolita was not previously included because there was an exemption for captive members of the population. Lolita has been at the Miami Seaquarium since 1970. Hide Caption 1 of 8 Photos: Killer whales in captivity Killer whales, or orcas, were first put on public display in the 1960s. The best known killer whale shows in the United States are at SeaWorld Parks, which are synonymous with their "Shamu" killer whale shows, seen here. Hide Caption 2 of 8 Photos: Killer whales in captivity SeaWorld's first park opened in San Diego, California, in March 1964 with only a handful of employees, a few dolphins, sea lions, and two aquariums. The park introduced orcas the next year, and they quickly became the stars of the park's shows. A steady stream of celebrities have posed with SeaWorld's killer whales, including actress Halle Berry, seen here in 2009. Hide Caption 3 of 8 Photos: Killer whales in captivity SeaWorld opened its Orlando park in 1973, where the first killer whale was born in captivity in 1985. SeaWorld emphasizes that it is "dedicated to education, entertainment, research and conservation" of all its marine animals. Here, two orcas at SeaWorld Orlando perform in 2000. Hide Caption 4 of 8 Photos: Killer whales in captivity The 1993 hit movie "Free Willy" captured hearts and sparked a massive campaign to free Keiko, the orca that played "Willy" in the movie, from the Mexican amusement park where he performed. Here, Keiko is being prepared to be released into the wild in 1998. In 2002, Keiko spent five weeks journeying across the Atlantic to Norway. He wasn't quite ready to be independent, finding companionship among the Norwegian fishermen and children. He died in December 2003, most likely from pneumonia. Hide Caption 5 of 8 Photos: Killer whales in captivity A male killer whale, Bingo, is transported to the Nagoya Port Aquarium in Japan in December 2011, after the death of the aquarium's only other orca. Marine animal activists say the transfers of orcas between marine parks are unhealthy for these mammals because of the stress and trauma. Hide Caption 6 of 8 Photos: Killer whales in captivity This female killer whale, Morgan, was taken in by a Dutch dolphinarium after being found starving in the shallow waters of the North Sea off the Netherlands coast. She is now performing at Loro Parque in Spain's Canary Islands -- despite an agreement that she would be released into the wild after her rehabilitation. Animal rights activists have mounted a legal challenge for her release. Hide Caption 7 of 8 Photos: Killer whales in captivity Today, there are 45 captive orcas performing at about 10 parks across the world, most of them born in captivity. Here, orcas perform at the Marineland aquatic park in Antibes, in southeastern France. Hide Caption 8 of 8
"The orcas will continue to live at SeaWorld for many years to come, inspiring guests in new and natural ways," the company said. "They will continue to receive the highest-quality care based on the latest advances in marine veterinary medicine, science and zoological best practices." |
The headline to this review is not a slam. It is just a reality point I think you, Dear Readers, will appreciate. The Beach Boys -- with their leader, Brian Wilson -- are one of the most influential bands in pop music history, so any new release relating to them can have relevance and import.
And this one will be viewed as important to a certain subset of Beach Boys fans -- particularly the hardcore fans, of which there are still very many out there in the land of all things records and music collecting.
Becoming The Beach Boys : The Complete Hite & Dorinda Morgan Sessions gives you (as far as I know) the first complete look at all the earliest recordings and sessions made by the group before they were discovered and signed to Capitol Records. It includes material that many Beach Boys collectors have heard before with varying levels of sound quality, many on budget label collections of dubious origin both on LP and CD. I remember there was a fairly comprehensive single disc collection by DCC from the 1990s which was pretty good for its time; there may have been others licensing some of this material.
So, yes, on this new set you get all the original tracks from those rare-as-hens-teeth 45s that appeared on even-then-obscure indie record labels such as "X," "Randy" and "Candix." These are records most average Beach Boys fans (myself included) have rarely -- if ever -- seen in person, much less owned. All those early tracks are there including "Surfin'," "Luau," "Surfin' Safari,' "Barbie" and others.
But the really cool thing here is you get all all the available outtakes and demo recordings made for the period giving the listener a fascinating insight into the development of the band's sound and how the recordings were made.
Frankly, some of the demo versions, done with just an acoustic guitar, I almost like better!
Over two CDs -- yes, two discs of early Beach Boys -- you hear all this music unfold and The Beach Boys sound take shape before your very ears. This is the music that led the band to get signed to the major label that put them on the map around the world.
It was quite a leap for them to take those few steps from The Pendletones into The Beach Boys and those cautious moves are documented on this fine set. That is one of the amazing things you realized when listening to these recordings: much of the architecture of that Beach Boys sound was in place, it just needed fine tuning and shaping.
A couple of years later, Brian Wilson would write a sophisticated pop song called "When I Grow Up To Be A Man." Here you get to hear them first grow up into Beach Boys.
Its the birthing of a group that went on be the 100-million-selling, Grammy-winning, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame legends known as The Beach Boys.
Indeed, Surfs up! |
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Ahhhhh anime, it was only a matter of time before the wonderful world of anime and VR collide! I’m sure there will be plenty of quirky “simulators” for all the anime motifs and themes, but for now, here’s a relaxing ear cleaning simulator brought to you by Imagine VR.
Relaxing Ear Cleaning in VR – What’s It Like?
In this VR experience, you are transported to the middle of a traditional Japanese style house while a beautiful girl (Nagomi) in a Kimono invites you to lay down on her lap for a relaxing ear cleaning.
Now I know what you’re thinking, but wait, VR doesn’t mean you will feel anything right? That is correct. While wearing earphones, you will feel absolutely nothing, though sounds of ear cleaning play in your ears.
So Where Does the Relaxation Kick In?
The whole point of the VR experience is that you are supposed to be in the room, with a real anime girl. Did you think she would stay silent during the ear cleaning experience?
While this girl cleans your ears, she softly speaks to you about various things, from how “you have been coming home later and later these days” to her asking you to take a nap with her like “we used to do!”
These things are the types of conversations you would experience in an anime, but this is VR, and now you’re really there, right next to her as she whispers softly in your ears.
The conversations she makes with you, varies from experience to experience.
The Verdict
It was definitely a new type of experience for me. There were a few factors that really broke the whole “virtual reality” experience for me. This included the heavy VR device, which is not properly designed to be turned sideways. (User turns their head sideways to lay on the girl’s lap.)
I think that something that could really enhance the whole experience could be some 360 sound effects, that in itself can be pretty relaxing!
The whole experience took me away from the world, and brought me into a new one. I was really surprised by how accurate the motion track is, and it did feel very real.
If you are interested in seeing more projects from Imagine VR, be sure to check out their website! https://beta.imaginevr.io/ |
Please email us if you have any questions or suggestions.
We'll be sure to let you know about the next one and send you the guides for this event!
Want to know more? Check out the schedule here .
Email us if you have any questions or dietary restrictions.
Please bring your laptop and curiosity!
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During this free, hands-on workshop we'll dive into building a web application using Rails!
You'll learn how to build a site using Rails with the help from our coaches.
You need your own laptop, curiosity and a sprinkle of imagination!
Want to help? We are looking for volunteers and Rails coaches. Email us .
We will continue building out our web app.
We will break into small groups and jumpstart your first web application!
We will talk about the day and get a word from our sponsors.
During the morning, we’ll install Ruby on Rails on your computer while enjoying coffee and breakfast.
Information
Accepting applications till June 14, noon
Partners
The Iron Yard Houston4203 Montrose Blvd #100Houston, TX 77006
Rails Girls Houston is co-organized with and sponsored by our awesome partners.
The Iron Yard offer three intensive Academy courses in Houston. Our grads get jobs with amazing local companies as well as awesome shops around the country.
Poetic grew up with the Internet. Now they help it grow.
Platform Houston is a community campus for accelerating talent and ideas.
Molecule Software is the first energy trading risk management software designed with the user's sanity in mind.
GitHub helps everyone work together with tools for easier collaboration and better visibility. Check it out — open source is free!
Keystone Resources is a Brand, Interactive and Proposal Studio who doesn't need to talk with big, fancy six-syllable design words. They're just a group of people that love what they do.
ChaiONE specializes in working with established enterprises to design a roadmap for navigating the dynamic digital landscape.
SURGE is the only seed fund and early stage accelerator in the world for entrepreneurs focused on energy software.
ChalkSense is a boutique technology consultancy that provides design, development, training and HR services to early-stage ventures.
The Urban Rose is an online-store for home-goods and accessories. We are a proud supporter of girls learning to code.
Ruby off Rails is a unique course that teaches the language, frameworks, tools, and world-views that make Ruby unique.
Brightwork CoResearch is an open, collaborative research space for indie scientists.
Hawthorne Haus wholeheartedly supports learning to code and adventures in hacking, creating and community-ing.
AWIS-GCH aims to support women in STEMM through career development, community service, and networking.
How much does the workshop cost? Nothing, it's free! You just need to be excited!
Who is this aimed for? Women of any age with basic knowledge of working with a computer. We’ve had people of all ages taking part. Please bring your laptop.
Can men attend? Yes, but bring an interested lady and indicate this on the application. Also, girls are given a priority.
I know how to program - How can I help? We’re also looking for people to be coaches. We’ll have a two or three hour workshop before the event to walk you through the curriculum. Email us |
Bush Garden, the Japanese restaurant and karaoke lounge located in the International District, is one of Seattle’s most venerable watering holes. Its doors have been open since 1953, but like many longtime, slightly seedy Seattle institutions in recent years, they might not be much longer.
The building that hosts the bar was purchased by Solterra, a Seattle and Portland residential developer, in January. It’s not clear whether the building will be razed or renovated, or when that might happen. Solterra has yet to make their plans known to the public or Bush Garden’s owners. What is clear is that, sometime in the near future, Bush Garden will no longer reside in the brownstone it has occupied since the ‘50s. Besides the immortal Maneki, Bush Garden is the oldest Japanese restaurant in town, and one of the city’s most beloved karaoke institutions.
Rumors about the bar’s imminent closure have circulated in the neighborhood off and on over the years. So regulars and neighbors weren’t completely surprised when word got out earlier this year that the bar would close for good in October.
The closure didn’t happen, due to the bar’s owner — Karen Akada Sakata —negotiating an indefinite extension to her lease that kept the bar open but ended lunch and dinner services. Sakata has worked at the restaurant off and on since the late ‘60s, and considers it vitally important to the neighborhood. But its future is uncertain — their lease is month to month, all she could get from the new owners was a verbal agreement to give two months notice.
According to Sakata, Bush Garden became the first karaoke bar in town in the ‘70s, when the owners started hosting Japanese karaoke. When Sakata started playing American songs in the bar in the late ‘80s, she might have become the person who introduced English language karaoke to Seattle.
But Bush Garden is much more than a karaoke lounge. Its true value lies in its community legacy. The bar’s racially integrated crowd and political clientele are unique in Seattle’s bar scene, and it is a longtime touchstone for Seattle’s Japanese American community.
Bush Garden in the late 1970s.
Back when Sakata started at the restaurant, Bush was one of the fanciest restaurants in town. Its tatami rooms hosted countless martini-soaked business meetings. Families wearing their Sunday’s best, celebrating anniversaries and graduations, filled its giant banquet room. Dozens of weddings and wedding receptions have been held there.
For a few generations of Seattle-area Japanese Americans, Bush Garden was a demonstration of achievement. During World War II, Seattle’s Japanese American residents were cleared out of their segregated neighborhoods on First Hill and in Chinatown, and locked up in internment camps. After the war ended, the creation or re-creation businesses like Bush Garden and Uwajimaya showed the community’s resilience. Though their property and businesses were stolen by neighbors and speculators, Seattle’s Japanese folks came back. They demonstrated that Japanese Americans couldn’t and wouldn’t be removed by racism and hysteria, and that Asians were just as able as any other American to run a successful business and enter the middle class.
Bush is no longer a center of that community. The end of redlining means that Seattle’s Japanese community has spread throughout the region. What’s more, Japanese cuisine is no longer as hard to come by as it once was. Plenty of places now make more modern and formal versions of it than Bush Garden. The bar is now much more blue jean than black tie.
There is an upside to that change: Bush Garden is where everyone in the city can make themselves at home. It’s old and funky, but not divey. Everyone is nice, but the drinks are cheap and strong. People clap after every song. Nobody heckles the singers. The karaoke books aren’t alphabetized, but they do have a certain internal logic. Shōji panels overhang the vinyl-upholstered, mirrored booths. And, every night, a racially diverse bar crowd mixes in a low-key way.
Waves of hipsters occasionally dominate the karaoke microphone, belting out ironic versions of Tom Jones, but they don’t suck up the whole room. You can’t be too cool for Bush Garden, or not cool enough. It’s just been around for too long for anyone who goes there often to care.
“You can be the crew who comes in here every month and takes over,” says Allen Huang, a music booker who hosted karaoke at the bar once a week for six years. He’s also works with API Food Fight Club, an activist group that advocates for social justice in the International District. “But that’s not gonna get you anywhere. It’s funny, there’s people who come in from out of town and feel at home here. You can become family here.”
Maybe that’s why the bar is also home to a political legacy. City Council staffers knock back drinks shoulder to shoulder with anarchist activists and neighborhood seniors. King County Executive Dow Constantine came in a fair bit before he ran for office. “I've seen him in there like three or four times,” says Huang. “I don’t remember him singing, but he strikes me as a Journey type—maybe ‘Lights’ rather than ‘Don't Stop Believing.’”
Bob Santos sings with some Bush Garden attendees.
More importantly, Bob Santos was a permanent fixture of the lounge. Santos was considered Mayor of Chinatown by many of its residents, and a member of the locally famous Gang of Four. The Gang— which also consisted of King County Councilmember Larry Gossett, El Centro de la Raza founder Roberto Maestas, and United Indians of All Tribes Foundation founder Bernie Whitebear — rose to prominence in the 1970s by leading local communities of color in civil rights campaigns.
All of them became fixtures of local politics, and they frequently met at the bar for birthdays and bull sessions. Santos was the leader mayors would call on if they needed advice about Chinatown issues, or wanted support from the Asian American community for a new policy measure. Santos would hold those meetings with lawyers and City Hall staffers over Bush Garden’s lunchtime bento box special.
More memorably, Santos would sing warbling, heartfelt standards on Bush’s small stage every Tuesday. Those evenings were Santos’s office hours, when activists and politicos knew they could get Santos’ advice or ask for a favor. When Santos died, someone at Bush made a cardboard cutout of him singing in a Panama hat. It’s pasted on the karaoke stage’s wall, next to the laser disc machine.
Bush Garden is the rare manifestation of Seattle’s idealized, low-key self-image. Unlike most bars in the city, it could be filled mostly by people of color or white folks on any given evening. In a time when Comet Tavern — a once-cheap Capitol Hill institution — does much its trade in $6.00 drafts and $20.00 rye, Bush is the genuine, no-frills article.
Unlike most vanishing Seattle institutions, Bush has a reservoir of goodwill and political juice. But even if the bar survives by moving to a new location, its building and the neighborhood that contains it will change.
Seattle’s Chinatown is the only part of the downtown core that has yet to see major development, and won’t stay that way for long. Hyatt is developing a new, fourteen story hotel a few blocks away from Bush Garden. Rumors of other transactions have already been passed from stool to stool at Bush’s bar.
New building owners Solterra have an office above the bar, where employees are figuring out what to do with the property. Solterra didn’t want the restaurant, which used to be open for lunch and dinner, to operate during office hours. The building’s age and design also create difficult circumstances for its occupants. The restaurant and the developers share the bar’s bathroom on the first floor, and there’s only one electricity meter.
“The building was designed to be pretty much single use, not multiple businesses,” Sakata says.
The cardboard cutout of Bob Santos stands on the karaoke stage.
Bush’s restaurant operations weren’t nearly as successful as the bar, and Sakata thinks that Solterra might be open to another restaurant tenant that could bring in more business. Still, a new restaurant tenant would find itself in the same limbo as the bar. The arrangement would be, by definition, temporary. It’s unlikely anyone would want to invest in new equipment, or a fresh buildout, just to have it all removed two months after completion.
Sakata is hopeful to find partners that would ride out the remainder of Bush Garden’s stay in the current location and relocate with her. But that’s a costly proposition that few restaurateurs are likely to want to take on.
Ironically, Sakata says that business has been pretty good since the closure scare in October. Patrons from all over town have come to pay their respects and belt out 4 Non Blondes’ “What’s Up” one more time (someone always sings that song at karaoke). Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights are even more packed than they used to be. It even fills up on some Mondays and Tuesdays.
Whether they know it or not, those singers are part of a rich legacy of Seattle’s small city past. Maybe, if they’re diligent and careful, Bush Garden’s community of connected regulars can help the old bar hang on in the modern, growing city.
--
Correction: Following publication of this article, King County executive Dow Constantine has informed Crosscut that he is not, in fact, a Journey fan, and prefers singing the music of Cheap Trick. We regret the error. |
One of the things rarely talked about with Antonio Brown is his durability. No, he does not have a consecutive starts streak, mainly because the team has locked up playoff seeding early enough to the point where he did not have to. He also has missed a playoff game, a concussion after the hit from Vontaze Burfict in 2015. Still, in the regular season, Brown has not missed a game due to injury since 2012. On top of that, he never misses practice. That is why his toe injury against the Bengals became a headline story.
So when he went down with that injury and needed assistance to limp off of the field, you knew it was not good news. The next thought was what in the world do the Steelers do on offense when Antonio Brown is not on the field. I mean he has been the pulse since 2013.
The answer obviously was Le’Veon Bell. However, when a team relies on Bell and Brown, and Brown gets taken away, how do you get Bell the ball when it is so obvious? This was the issue the Steelers faced when Bell went out against New England last season.
The Steelers got creative in how they got Bell the ball, and it included a lot of running to the edges, off of the tackles. Whether it was the Patriots lack of speed at linebacker, a banged up group of edge rushers, or that this was something unexpected, it was very effective for the team.
You can see compared to a typical Le’Veon Bell game, he was getting to the outside a lot. The first chart is Bell last week, against the Patriots. The other three are what a typical Bell workload would look like, including the week before.
They were committed to winning on the outside with Bell. One thing the Steelers offensive line is good at as a whole is pulling and leading as a blocker on the move. The best at is David DeCastro. Challenging those edges gets the athletic guard out in space and shoving defenders out of the way to free tons of open field for Bell.
On the play below, you can see Maurkice Pouncey dash into the open field and seal off a linebacker at the second level. On top of that Hubbard is off to the races to establish a path on the edge and free up Bell for an 18-yard run.
The Steelers got creative in doing this and set up a play that they should be considering moving forward. Bell is out wide to start the play. However, he is motioned into a situation where the ball is snapped and he is moving on a sweep to the right. Again, you can see how effective Hubbard and JuJu Smith-Schuster are at getting upfield and paving the way.
However, what makes this so dangerous is all of the branches that you run off of this play. They can motion Bell back into the backfield and run between the tackles, they have two tight ends on the field. They can also send him back and on a route, run screens, or use him in play action or as a complete decoy out of this look. It is a tough idea.
When the defense has all of this to ponder, the Steelers can throw yet another wrinkle into their sweeps and tosses to the outside. Below, is what looks like the typical toss play. However, Le’Veon Bell cuts back and carves up the middle of the field. Watch the blockers. They are not pulling. In fact, DeCastro and Pouncey are sealing off that cutback lane for Bell to step through the middle.
It is a good way to get Bell in space with decisions to cut one way or the other behind his blockers. The Texans currently are better positioned at linebacker and on the edges, so it will be interesting to see if this idea was something Todd Haley was looking at all week, was this an idea that was going to pop up for this stretch run of games, or if this is what he thinks is most effective without the star receiver of Antonio Brown.
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By Scott Conroy - January 25, 2013
After a three-year run as a paid contributor to the nation’s highest-rated cable news channel, Sarah Palin and FOX News have cut ties, according to a source close to the former Alaska governor.
“It’s my understanding that Gov. Palin was offered a contract by FOX, and she decided not to renew the arrangement,” the source close to Palin told RCP. “She remains focused on broadening her message of common-sense conservatism across the country and will be expanding her voice in the national discussion.”
The source declined to say whether Palin would pursue a television contract with another news network, such as CNN.
Bill Shine, Executive Vice President at FOX, subsequently issued a statement to the New York Times confirming the news, saying, “We have thoroughly enjoyed our association with Governor Palin. We wish her the best in her future endeavors.”
After resigning as governor in 2009, Palin became one of the news channel’s marquee on-air assets, appearing frequently across its programming and often generating headlines for her memorable and characteristically provocative commentary.
In 2010, FOX constructed a studio inside Palin’s Wasilla, Alaska, home -- where her husband, Todd, would sometimes act as cameraman and producer during her live television appearances.
Palin’s relationship with FOX appeared to take several rocky turns. In a Facebook post during the Republican convention last August, for instance, the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee lamented that the news channel had “cancelled all my scheduled interviews tonight.” |
Love Live! School idol festival (JP Version) News January 25, 2019
New RPG themed cards have been added to premium recruitment. There is a higher chance of obtaining these cards until January 31 (base SR/UR rate does not change).
Event SRs Kotori and Nico were added in premium recruitment.
Doing a 10+1 draw (50 loveca stones) will guarantee you at least an SR or higher.
January 31, 2019
Chapters 32-1 and 32-2 have been added to the Aqours Mode main story.
New Valentine's Day themed cards have been added to premium recruitment. There is a higher chance of obtaining these cards until February 5 (base SR/UR rate does not change).
No Event SRs were added in premium recruitment.
Doing a 10+1 draw (50 loveca stones) will guarantee you at least an SR or higher.
EVENT CORNER
February 4, 2019
Nakayoshi Match Round 10 event will begin on February 5 at 4 PM and run until February 15 at 3 PM JST Event Rewards: Event Point Rewards include SR Maki Nishikino and SSR Fuu Saiki. Event Ranking Rewards include SR Eli Ayase and SSR Sakuya Kurobane. Score Ranking Rewards include SS Seals, S Seals, Seals. Daily Goal Rewards include Seals. Song Mission Achievement Rewards include Support Members. Other basic information may be read from here.
See previous updates... Love Live! School idol festival (WW Version) News January 7, 2019
The second round of the Happy New Year 2019 Campaign kicks off on Monday, January 7 UTC!
Special Login Bonuses Available Period From 12:00 am on Monday, January 7 until 11:59 pm on Monday, January 14 UTC Special Login Bonus Details First login - Love Gem x1 + Sugar Pot (50% LP) x1 Second login - Love Gem x1 + R Alpaca x1 Third login - Love Gem x1 + R Shiitake x1 Fourth login - Love Gem x1 + R Uchicchi x1 Fifth login - Love Gem x1 + N Sticker x5 Sixth login - Love Gem x1 + Friend Pts. x2,000 Seventh login - Love Gem x1 + Sugar Pot (100% LP) x1
Exclusive Packs Available Period From 9:00 am on Monday, January 7 until 11:59 pm on Saturday, January 12 UTC Available Packs Happy New Year Pt. 2 Pack: μ's Love Gem x20 SR+ Scouting Ticket μ's x2 SR Hiroko Yamada x2 SR+ Skill Up Scouting Ticket x1 Happy New Year Pt. 2 Pack: Aqours Love Gem x20 SR+ Scouting Ticket Aqours x2 SR Yoko Sato x2 SR+ Skill Up Scouting Ticket x1
Step-Up Scouting These special Step-Up Scoutings feature increased rates for the μ's "Kimono" series, and the Aqours "Haregi" series. SSR and above members appear at level max, not Idolized, and with their School Idol Skill slots in their original state. Available Periods Happy New Year 2019 μ's Step-Up Scouting Part 2 From 9:00 am on Monday, January 7 until 11:59 pm on Wednesday, January 9 UTC Happy New Year 2019 Aqours Step-Up Scouting Part 2 From 12:00 am on Thursday, January 10 until 11:59 pm on Saturday, January 12 UTC Steps Step 1: Scout 11 for 30 Love Gems with an SR or above guaranteed. Step 2: Scout 11 for 40 Love Gems with an SR or above guaranteed. Free bonus items: SR Alpaca (μ's Scouting) or SR Shiitake (Aqours Scouting) x2 Step 3: Scout 11 for 50 Love Gems with SR and above rates increased. Free bonus item: Sugar Pot (100% LP) x1 Step 4: Scout 11 for 50 Love Gems with SR and above rates increased. Free bonus item: Sugar Pot (100% LP) x1 Step 5+: Scout 11 for 50 Love Gems with an SR or above guaranteed and SR and above rates increased.
Exclusive Story Simply log in to receive the special story "Lean on Us, Shizuku! 3" which features members of the Nijigasaki High School Idol Club SIF group! Available Period From 9:00 am on Monday, January 7 UTC
Reward Box Wallpapers of the μ's members' rooms can be obtained through the Special Reward Box from the date below! Try to get them for your favorite members! Available Period From 9:00 am on Monday, January 7 UTC
Group Score Match As thanks to all of our wonderful players, we will be holding the Group Score Match! Available Period From 9:00 am on Monday, January 7 until 7:59 am on Monday, January 14 UTC The Group Score Match is a new function which allows users to compete against other players on a song of their choice. Users will not only match automatically with up to 3 other players, but also be able to enter matches against players of their choosing.
January 7, 2019
Chapters 27-3 and 27-4 have been added to the Aqours main story.
New Club Members UR Dia in Honor Student Scouting! Scout 11 Times for SR and above! Higher chances at new Members♪ (until December 27, 2018) No event SRs added in the Honor Student Scouting.
January 2, 2019
New Club Members UR Rin in Honor Student Scouting! Scout 11 Times for SR and above! Higher chances at new Members♪ (until January 7, 2019) Event SRs Eli and Nico were added to the Honor Scouting.
EVENT CORNER
There are currently no events ongoing. See previous updates... |
6 FREE pinball tables with great themes: Baseball, Brick Breaking, Wild West, Carnival, Space and Underwater!
Each of the tables have unique features and play very differently. Will you be able to unlock the 4-bit matrix classic minigame for each table? You will be rewarded for your quick reflexes with plenty of action. Make sure to try our Brix table where you smash destructible bricks in an ever increasing challenge - or be the sheriff in Wild West. Now with Multiplayer & Tournaments by Grantoo!
Millions have enjoyed Pinball Deluxe, come and see why!
Some of the features of Pinball Deluxe:
- Gorgeous graphics
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- Each table has a unique play style
- Will run on devices from 240x320 all the way up to to HD
- All the elements you expect from a pinball game: nudges, ball captures, multi balls, mini games and some unique variations
- Creative use of all the features of the device to bring you a better pinball experience: vibration, sounds effects, shaking.
- Now with Multiplayer & Tournaments by Grantoo! Challenge your friends to see who can get the high score. Play in Tournaments and win prizes and money for charity! Multiplayer requires Android 2.3.3 or later.
Requirements and recommendations:
- Android 2.1
- A multi-touch phone is highly suggested. By multi-touch we mean a phone that can track the movement of two (or more) fingers at the same time on the screen. Most newer models supports this. Multi-touch allows you to control both flippers at the same time. The game will work without it, but the controls will be more difficult.
- We recommend a resolution of 320x480 to better enjoy the game, but it will run on 240x320 as well. |
Hollywood’s famed Magic Castle has confirmed the death by suicide of magician Daryl Easton , whose body was found in a closet on the grounds last night. “The magic community mourns the loss of one of our most beloved and talented performers,” a statement posted on the Magic Castle’s Facebook page says, adding that the Academy of Magic Arts’ “deepest regrets and heart-felt sympathy go out to Daryl's family.” Easton, who often performed simply as Daryl the Magician, was…
By Steve Gorman
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The death of a world-class magician found hanged in his dressing room at a popular Hollywood nightclub called the Magic Castle was ruled an accident on Saturday by the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner's Department, an agency official said.
Daryl Easton, 61, touted on his website as a card-trick specialist known internationally as "The Magician's Magician," was found by employees of the club hanged on Friday in a death that police said they were investigating as an apparent suicide.
But the coroner who performed the autopsy on Saturday ruled the death an accidental hanging, said Lieutenant David Smith, the medical examiner's watch commander for the day. He said the finding was that the hanging was self-inflicted, though it was not ruled a suicide, Smith added.
"Our doctor closed it as an accident," Smith told Reuters. Adding to the mystery of the case, he said he was not at liberty to furnish further details about the circumstances of Easton's death or to explain the basis of the coroner's ruling.
Easton's body was found fully clothed with a bag over his head, said Vicki Greenleaf, a spokeswoman for the Academy of Magical Arts, which owns the Magic Castle. She disputed as untrue media reports indicating Easton was found in his underwear.
He died in a dressing space separated from the parlor performance area by a curtain, Greenleaf said.
Greenleaf said Easton was known as a "really, really good close-up magician," adding, "He didn't perform illusions. He was known as a card guy."
Her description seemed to discount the notion that Easton may have hanged himself in the course of practicing an illusion that went awry, a scenario that the medical examiner's office declined to address.
Easton had performed on Thursday night at the Magic Castle's parlor stage and was scheduled to appear there again on Friday and Saturday. The venue was closed for the night after his body was found on Friday but reopened on Saturday, Greenleaf said.
The Magic Castle, a landmark Chateauesque mansion located in the heart of Los Angeles' Hollywood district, opened in 1963 and operates as a private club offering performances by several magicians each evening to an audience consisting of members and invited guests.
Easton, a veteran headliner at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, is a world-champion "close-up" magician with over 40 years of experience in performing and selling his magic around the globe, the academy said in a statement.
(Reporting by Steve Gorman; Editing by Andrew Hay) |
The latest name to surface in the Philadelphia Eagles' hunt for a defensive coordinator is that of Cleveland Browns linebackers coach Billy Davis. Tim McManus reported Sunday that Davis' name was one to keep an eye on, and our man Adam Schefter reports Monday morning that Davis interviewed for the job Sunday. New head coach Chip Kelly said in his introductory news conference that he hadn't yet decided whether to keep the 4-3 defensive alignment the Eagles currently run or switch to a 3-4, but Davis is the latest coach whose candidacy indicates a preference for a 3-4. Davis is a former defensive coordinator of the 49ers and the Cardinals and ran a 3-4 in each of those stops.
Personally, I believe a switch to a 3-4 defense would indicate that Kelly views his task as a relatively long-term build. The Eagles have a very good 4-3 defensive line, and while some players (such as Fletcher Cox, who would make a nice 3-4 end) likely could make the transition easily, it's hard to see how the switch would play to the strengths of anyone currently on the Eagles' defense. Switching to a 3-4 takes a couple of years, as recent examples in Washington and Green Bay have shown, and the first season would be spent figuring out which current players could handle it and which would have to go. Can Trent Cole and Brandon Graham become stand-up outside linebackers? Would the Eagles have no more room for middle linebacker DeMeco Ryans, as the Texans did when they switched to a 3-4?
Those are some of the questions, and if Kelly installs a 3-4 under any coordinator, the Eagles and their fans will need to be patient with him while it takes effect. The Eagles likely would struggle with the transition in 2013, and unless they find a better solution at quarterback than they currently appear to have available to them, they can't count on the offense to simply outscore people. Rebuilding doesn't have to take long in the NFL, but it appears as though some sort of rebuild is what you can expect to take place in the early part of Kelly's tenure in Philadelphia. |
Although Islamic State has recently executed professional soccer players in Syria, members of the feared terror group had no qualms about staging their own “Jihad Olympics” in neighboring Iraq, where they played games like tug-of-war and musical chairs.
The events, which included blowing balloons, tug-of-war, and musical chairs, looked more akin to games played at a young child’s birthday party than those you would expect a radical jihadist group to put on.
The games are believed to have taken place earlier in July in the city of Tal Afar in Iraq, which is controlled by Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL). Photographs allegedly showing the event were posted on Twitter by the anti-terror watchdog Terrormonitor.
Pre-school age youngsters can be seen taking part, and, somewhat surprisingly, some of the participants in the pictures are wearing soccer shirts belonging to popular British clubs Manchester City and Glasgow Celtic.
1-#ISIS Beheaded 3 players from AL Shabab team in #Raqqa "Nehad Al Hussein,Ihsan Al Shuwaikh,Ahmed Ahawakh #Syriapic.twitter.com/U30tXSZqKe — الرقة تذبح بصمت (@Raqqa_SL) July 5, 2016
Although these kids games were given the thumbs up by IS, other sports such as soccer, which the jihadist group has labeled as “un-Islamic,” have not been as lucky.
The terror monitoring group “Raqqa is being Slaughtered” posted photos on Twitter showing members of the Syrian Al-Shbab soccer team from Raqqa who were killed by IS because they were suspected of spying for the Kurds.
Three soccer players were publically beheaded in front of children in the city earlier this month.
'Football ban': 12 Real Madrid fans slaughtered in Iraq during Champions League final – report https://t.co/pdMJZyvWqP — RT (@RT_com) May 29, 2016
In addition, IS attacked a group of Real Madrid supporters in May, killing at least 12 when they gathered at a cafe in the Shiite city of Balad, 80 kilometers north Iraq’s capital, Baghdad, to watch their team play city rivals Atletico Madrid in the Champions League final – Europe’s biggest club competition. |
Amy Elliott Bragg (Photo: Courtesy photo)
Amy Elliott Bragg isn't running for office, but she's been hustling around the state during the runup to Election Day anyhow.
Her campaign: Visit the graves of Michigan women who fought for voting rights.
Of course that's happening during a historic year, with Democrat Hillary Clinton taking on Republican Donald Trump as the first major-party female nominee in history. And it's happening during a campaign in which misogyny has been a key issue. Trump has drawn sharp criticism for calling Clinton a "nasty woman" during a debate and for his behavior toward other women.
"Though so much progress has been made, we still have a long way to go," Bragg said.
The 32-year-old lives in Ferndale and works for Detroit-based Issue Media and blogs about Detroit history.
She said she was inspired to start the grave project by a tradition of people leaving "I Voted" stickers at Susan B. Anthony's grave in Rochester, New York. Anthony was among national leaders working to pass the 19th amendment, which granted women the right to vote in 1920.
"I guess it's a tradition that has been longstanding, but I noticed it during the primary," she said. "I thought, '"I'd really like to be able to do that somewhere in my own town."
"I started looking for a good candidate to bring my sticker to and got going down this little research rabbit hole."
Buy Photo Blogger Amy Elliott Bragg is visiting the graves of women who worked for the right to vote. (Photo: Lansing State Journal)
What she found: Michigan has many worthy candidates, from the nationally famous -- Rosa Parks and Sojourner Truth -- to women who worked statewide, locally and behind the scenes. She got some recommendations from the Women's Hall of Fame and Historical Center in Lansing.
Truth, who lived the last years of her life in Battle Creek, was born a slave in New York in 1797 and escaped to freedom in 1826. She fought for both abolition and women's rights for the remainder of her life. Parks, known for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man in 1955, sparked the historic Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott. She moved to Detroit in 1967 and died in 2005. Parks was present when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act in 1965, prohibiting discrimination in voting.
Bragg has been posting the sites of graves she has found or visited on a Google map: http://bit.ly/2fyjA2L. She also is asking others to post photos of their visits to suffragists' graves on social media using the hashtag #visitasuffragist.
"I've really visited a range of well-known suffragists," she said. "They are all so interesting."
Among them is Martha Strickland Clark, buried in DeWitt. She was the first woman to practice law in Detroit and the first woman to argue a case in front of the Michigan Supreme She died in 1935.
There's also Lucinda Hinsdale Stone, who died in 1900 and is buried in Kalamazoo. She spent 15 years fighting for female students to be admitted to the University of Michigan; she won that battle in 1870.
And Lucinda Voorhees Grimes, active in the national suffrage movement, who told women in Detroit during a 1974 speech about the Equal Rights Amendment not to "rest on their oars." That amendment has only been ratified by 35 of the 38 required states.
Bragg said she likely will continue the #visitasuffragist effort even after election day passes.
Abolitionist and suffragist Sojourner Truth is buried in Battle Creek, Michigan, where she lived the last 30 years of her life. (Photo: File photo)
"I'd like to build up the map so that it's a little more comprehensive," she said. "There are still some suffragists whose graves I have not been able to find, and I'd like to do a little more research about them."
Although it would involve a lot of work, she said she'd consider the possibility of building the Michigan map into a national one.
"The 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment is just a couple of years away," she said.
You can find Bragg on Twitter at https://twitter.com/thenighttrain/; you can find her blog at http://nighttraintodetroit.com/
Contact Kathleen Lavey at (517) 377-1251 or klavey@lsj.com. Follow her on Twitter @kathleenlavey.
Read or Share this story: http://on.lsj.com/2faPK7r |
Submitted by Robert Everett Johnson & Nick Sibilla via Reason.com,
UPDATE: Yesterday, the federal government announced that it will return $29,500 seized from Maryland dairy farmer Randy Sowers. "This is exactly what we wanted," said Sowers in press release from the Institute for Justice, the public interest law firm that worked with him on the case. "I hope they give other people's money back. And beyond that I just hope they quit taking people's money."
When the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) came to visit Randy Sowers, it had already seized his entire bank account—over $60,000. The IRS agents, two clean-cut types in dark blue jackets, came unannounced to the dairy farm, South Mountain Creamery, that Randy and his wife have run for more than 30 years.
The agents began asking Sowers a series of strange questions: Why did he deposit cash at the bank? Why were so many of his cash deposits in amounts under $10,000? Did he know that cash deposits over $10,000 were reported to the federal government?
Sowers answered the questions as best he could. The farm deposited cash because it sold milk at farmers markets. A bank teller had told them that deposits over $10,000 required additional paperwork, but the Sowers had no idea what that paperwork consisted of. They limited the size of their deposits only because they thought it made life easier for the bank workers. The agents nodded, seemingly satisfied. They said they did not believe he was a criminal. Nonetheless, they finally told him, his bank account had been seized.
Unbeknownst to him, Sowers' bank deposits had landed him at the intersection of a number of disturbing trends in American law: draconian civil forfeiture, the overcriminalization of everyday life, and the government's increasing hostility to cash as a medium of financial exchange.
Guilty Money
Like hundreds of other Americans, Sowers was targeted because he had run afoul of a sprawling government surveillance program aimed at the nation's financial system. Federal law requires banks to report all cash transactions over $10,000 to the federal government. Federal law also makes it a crime, called structuring, for bank customers to deposit or withdraw cash in amounts under $10,000 in order to avoid that reporting requirement.
IRS agents across the country, often in cooperation with state and local law enforcement, monitor banking activity for frequent sub-$10,000 cash transactions. The IRS can then use civil forfeiture to seize entire bank accounts that it believes were involved in "structured" transactions.
Because these cases are brought against the property in question—the Sowers' case was captioned United States v. $62,936.04 in U.S. Currency—protections that govern criminal proceedings do not apply. Owners of "guilty" property have no right to counsel. Without ever having to secure a criminal conviction (or even file charges), the federal government is excused from its obligation to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Officials can seize property based on mere suspicion of a crime and effectively force property owners to prove their own innocence to get it back.
Moreover, when the IRS takes property using civil forfeiture, that property goes into a special federal fund, the Treasury Forfeiture Fund, which allows the IRS to fund its law enforcement activities. That arrangement provides an incentive for the IRS to seize as much property as possible, even when the property owner may have done nothing wrong. In 2014, the net position for the fund (that is, the amount retained after paying obligations) was $1.9 billion, a staggering rise from $69 million in 1993, the year after the fund was created.
In theory, this system is supposed to root out criminals seeking to hide their activities from the government. In practice, its targets are all too often small-business owners guilty of nothing more than doing business in cash.
Many of these stories begin the same way as Sowers': A bank teller, unhappy at having to fill out government paperwork, suggests to a customer that life would be easier if he kept his deposits under $10,000. Neither the teller nor the customer has any idea that evading that paperwork is a federal crime.
Other business owners have similarly innocent reasons for keeping cash deposits under $10,000. For example, the insurance policy for Michigan grocery store owner Terry Dekho only covered cash up to $10,000. Other businesses, such as Mark Zaniewski's gas station near Detroit, simply do not generate more than $10,000 in cash revenue in the time between bank deposits. The IRS seized the bank accounts for both businesses without even asking for an explanation for the pattern of sub-$10,000 deposits.
A 2015 Institute for Justice report found that between 2005 and 2012 the IRS seized more than $242 million for alleged structuring violations in over 2,500 cases. In at least a third of those cases, the IRS reported no suspected criminal activity apart from the mere act of depositing or withdrawing amounts under $10,000.
No More Secrets
This federal surveillance program traces its origins to the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970. For the first time, the federal government required banks to report cash transactions over $10,000. The law was explicit in its aims, stating that Congress believed these reports would have a "high degree of usefulness in criminal, tax, or regulatory investigations or proceedings."
Largely accepted today, the Bank Secrecy Act was controversial when adopted, narrowly surviving a vigorous legal challenge by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the California Bankers Association, and several individual bank customers. A three-judge district court panel ruled against the law shortly after it was enacted, holding 2–1 that the "domestic reporting provisions" were "repugnant to the Fourth Amendment."
The U.S. Supreme Court reversed, upholding the law in its 1974 decision California Bankers Association v. Shultz. Writing for the majority, Justice William Rehnquist conceded that the act "might well surprise or even shock those who lived in an earlier era" but upheld the law as a necessary response to "the heavy utilization of our domestic banking system by the minions of organized crime."
In an acerbic dissent, Justice William Douglas argued that it was "sheer nonsense" to suggest that "all bank records of every citizen 'have a high degree of usefulness.'" "Suppose Congress passed a law requiring telephone companies to record and retain all telephone calls and make them available to any federal agency on request," he presciently suggested. "Would we hesitate even a moment before striking it down?"
Although the Bank Secrecy Act and its reporting requirements were considered constitutional, structuring was not yet an explicit crime. Until the mid-1980s, people could lawfully skirt federal bank reporting requirements by splitting up transactions to keep them under the $10,000 threshold. Even the Comptroller General conceded in a 1981 report to Congress that "the regulations were silent on the propriety of a customer's conducting multiple transactions to avoid reporting."
Absent explicit law prohibiting structuring, federal prosecutors devised convoluted legal arguments. In one case, a man who bought multiple checks that collectively topped $10,000 was charged and convicted under an aiding and abetting theory. Fortunately for him, the 1st Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals overturned his conviction, citing "ambiguity" with the reporting law. "We cannot engage in unprincipled interpretation of the law, lest we foment lawlessness instead of compliance," the court unanimously ruled in its 1985 decision United States v. Anzalone. Other federal appellate courts soon followed the 1st Circuit's lead in rebuffing criminal liability for structuring.
Congress had other ideas. Partly to "negate the effect" of cases like Anzalone, Congress explicitly prohibited "structuring transactions to evade reporting requirements" as part of the omnibus Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986. "The implicit message," one law review article noted, "is that no legitimate reason exists to keep large cash transactions secret."
A Moment of Sanity
In 1994, the Supreme Court tried to rein in structuring laws. This one, short-lived push for privacy began with some staggeringly bad luck during a night of gambling. Waldemar Ratzlaf and his wife, Loretta, were high rollers, with established credit lines at 15 different casinos in Nevada and New Jersey. On October 20, 1988, Waldemar managed to lose $160,000 playing blackjack at the High Sierra Casino in Reno. The casino gave the Ratzlafs one week to pay up.
True to their word, the Ratzlafs returned with cash to settle their debt. Since any transaction above $10,000 would have to be reported to the authorities, a casino official suggested that the casino could accept a cashier's check instead. The High Sierra even offered a limo and a casino employee to help Waldemar purchase checks, each for under $10,000 and all at separate banks.
One year later, a federal grand jury indicted Waldemar on "four counts of structuring currency transactions to evade reporting requirements." He was convicted and sentenced to 15 months imprisonment. Both a federal district court and the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld his convictions.
Just when it seemed Waldemar's luck couldn't get any worse, the Supreme Court overturned his convictions in Ratzlaf v. United States. The Court was plainly concerned about the anti-structuring provision's potentially broad sweep. Contrary to the government's claim that "structuring is not the kind of activity that an ordinary person would engage in innocently," the Court observed that "currency structuring is not inevitably nefarious." The Court suggested that a small business owner might even reasonably structure cash transactions "to reduce the risk of an IRS audit."
These concerns led the Court to narrowly interpret the structuring statute. At the time, the law contained language requiring that defendants had "willfully" violated the law. For the Supreme Court, that requirement meant the government had to show "both 'knowledge of the reporting requirement' and a 'specific intent to commit the crime,' i.e., 'a purpose to disobey the law.'" In other words, ignorance of the law would be an excuse in a structuring case.
As a result, criminal structuring prosecutions plummeted. A 1995 Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology article reported that "since the Ratzlaf decision, not one defendant has been convicted for structuring currency transactions."
But Congress moved quickly to undo the Supreme Court decision. The Money Laundering Suppression Act eliminated the word "willfully" from the statute and clarified that it "requires only an intent to evade reporting requirements, not proof that the defendant knew that structuring was illegal." In September 1994, a mere eight months after the Supreme Court's decision, President Bill Clinton signed these changes into law.
Expanding Surveillance
Since Ratzlaf, the government has continued to ratchet up its data collection and enforcement efforts. More than 15 million currency transaction reports were filed in 2014, or over 41,000 every day. By comparison, in 1975, one year after the Supreme Court upheld the Bank Secrecy Act, a mere 3,418 such reports were filed.
Not surprisingly, those reports have helped law enforcement seize assets. Back in 2008, the Government Accountability Office surveyed local and state agencies that had access to currency transaction report data. More than half said the reports "identified assets that were previously unknown, including those that could be used for forfeiture action."
Today, the scale and scope of data collection under the Bank Secrecy Act has metastasized dramatically. According to a 2015 speech by Jennifer Shasky Calvery, the director of the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), data acquired under the Bank Secrecy Act "includes nearly 190 million records." FinCEN also has granted "more than 10,000 agents, analysts, and investigative personnel from over 350 unique agencies across the U.S. Government with direct access to the reporting," Calvery noted.
Yet amid this expanding federal dragnet, one aspect of the structuring law has remained static: the $10,000 reporting threshold. That figure was set in 1970 and has not changed since. Simply adjusting for inflation would mean it would easily top $60,000 in 2016.
As federal bank reporting laws have become more onerous, banks have begun to close accounts of businesses that make frequent deposits over $10,000. Jeff, Richard, and Mitchell Hirsch, three brothers on Long Island who own a convenience store distribution business, had three banks close their accounts in quick succession. To reduce the paperwork burdens for the banks, and hopefully avoid having their accounts closed in the future, their accountant advised them to keep deposits under $10,000. They did so, and in May 2012 the IRS seized their entire account—over $446,000. It took the Hirsch brothers almost three years of litigation to get that money back.
Stuck in Limbo
Despite its size and ubiquity, this government surveillance program operates outside the awareness of most ordinary Americans. Congress designed it that way: Federal law prohibits banks from informing customers that their transactions have been flagged and reported.
When a bank account is targeted for civil forfeiture, the property owner typically learns about it only after the contents have been seized. The IRS does not provide any prior notice or opportunity to offer an innocent explanation for a series of under-$10,000 cash transactions.
Courts instead approve seizures on the basis of one-sided affidavits submitted by law enforcement, frequently in sealed court proceedings. The affidavits are formulaic, containing long, boilerplate recitations describing the structuring laws and a table listing a series of under-$10,000 cash transactions. In Randy Sowers' case, the affidavit concluded that "cash was repeatedly deposited in amounts just below the [currency] reporting requirement threshold (i.e. between $8,000 and $10,000)" and that this bare pattern of deposits demonstrated "a concerted effort to keep cash deposits just below that amount."
After cash has been seized, property owners must wait a minimum of 120 days to get into court, and they must file two separate claims to preserve their right to their property. Even once the property owner is before a judge, litigation can stretch on for months, even years. The Institute for Justice report found that the average structuring case between 2005 and 2012 took almost a year to resolve, with the longest case taking more than six and a half years. Throughout that period, the property remains in possession of the government.
About a third of structuring forfeitures are resolved via "administrative" forfeitures that are not overseen or approved by a federal judge. In the case of North Carolina convenience store owner Ken Quran, for instance, a group of IRS agents and local police went directly to his store after seizing over $150,000 from his bank account, and demanded that Quran sign a form "voluntarily" agreeing to forfeit the seized funds. Intimidated, he agreed to sign. When he later took his case to a local lawyer, the lawyer advised him there would be no point in seeking to contest the forfeiture. "I feel like the United States government stole my money," Ken says. "I did nothing wrong."
Even where a judge is involved, the court's role is often little more than approving a settlement negotiated by federal prosecutors. Against the time and expense of litigation, the government typically offers property owners a tempting proposition: Settle with us, let us keep half of what we seized, and we will return half your money today. Business owners, struggling to keep their businesses running without needed funds, often have little choice but to agree.
Forced Settlement
After the IRS agents left his farm, Randy Sowers contacted a lawyer. His lawyer, in turn, reached out to the responsible federal prosecutor, Stefan Cassella, who explained right off the bat that the case would be resolved by negotiation. Both sides would propose a number below the total sum seized by the government, and the parties would then agree on a forfeiture amount.
This approach was no accident. Justice Department policies expressly state that "settlements to forfeit property are encouraged."
The Sowers needed the seized money to buy supplies for that year's crops. Their bank had closed the farm's account, and Randy was left explaining to his business partners why scheduled transactions were not going through. Meanwhile, fighting the case could easily end up costing more in legal bills than the amount of money that had been seized.
Sowers also had to consider the consequences if he refused the settlement. The same day that the government seized his account, it served him with a grand jury subpoena, raising the possibility that he could be charged criminally for structuring—and face up to five years in prison. The government's proposed settlement confirmed this implicit threat: In exchange for Sowers giving up his money, the government would agree not to pursue criminal charges.
Frustrated, he gave an interview to the Baltimore City Paper explaining that "we had no idea there was supposedly a law against" making small cash deposits. "Now we just feel like putting [our cash] in a can somewhere," he added.
Amid the settlement negotiations, Sowers' words became a sticking point. Cassella demanded he agree to less favorable terms than the prosecutor had offered in a similar case. When Randy's lawyers asked for an explanation, he wrote in an email that the other property owner "did not give an interview to the press."
Lacking any realistic route to fight the government, in May 2012, three months after the government seized his money, Sowers signed an agreement to forfeit $29,500.
'They Need to Give It Back'
Not long after Sowers agreed to settle, the mainstream media began scrutinizing structuring more, causing the government to start a hasty retreat. A decisive turn appeared to come in October 2014, when the IRS announced a new policy change. Absent proof that the property owner was engaging in some other criminal activity, it would no longer pursue "legal source" structuring cases.
The IRS announced this shift when The New York Times ran a front-page investigation into two structuring cases litigated by the Institute for Justice on behalf of the Hirsch brothers from Long Island and Carole Hinders, who ran a Mexican restaurant in rural Iowa. Five months later, the Justice Department announced a similar shift "restricting civil or criminal forfeiture seizures for structuring until after a defendant has been criminally charged or has been found to have engaged in additional criminal activity."
Yet those policy changes are purely voluntary. Since structuring laws still remain on the books, a future administration could easily reverse course and start seizing Americans' hard-earned money again. Moreover, while the shifts may prevent these types of cases from arising in the future—assuming the new policy is faithfully applied—they do nothing for the victims whose money was seized before the guidelines changed.
Between 2007 and 2013 alone, the IRS seized over $43 million from over 600 property owners in cases involving no allegations of wrongdoing apart from the mere act of evading bank reporting requirements. For those individuals, the government's policy change came too late.
Hoping to establish a precedent that other property owners could follow, the Institute for Justice in July 2015 filed petitions with the government on behalf of Ken Quran and Randy Sowers, seeking the return of their confiscated cash.
A bipartisan coalition in Congress has lined up behind that effort. In August 2015, members of the House Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew urging the agency to "return funds as appropriate in cases that do not meet the IRS's current policy that the funds must have come from an illegal source."
Fortunately for Quran, in February 2016 the agency agreed to return the entire $153,000 that it had unjustly seized.
Sowers still hasn't heard an answer to his petition. The federal government has never explained why, if it is willing to return the money that it seized from Quran under the structuring laws, it is not willing to do the same for him.
"I'm just waiting for the government to do the right thing," he says. "Not just for me, but for everyone in this same situation. The government shouldn't have taken our money, and they need to give it back." |
I love how desensitized our society has become that some people are going to complain that a dude breaking his bone on another guy’s bone as his leg unnaturally bends the opposite direction isn’t graphic. That’s the Grand Theft Auto generation we live in; we can see the body contort in ridiculous directions, witness hundreds of people being shot with a rifle, see a person’s arm get sliced off while buckets of blood comically shoot out of the limb — but the only thing that can truly be considered ‘graphic’ is a women’s breast. Nudity is taking is too far — we can see the human body be sliced like potato, but the moment we see that same human body without any clothes, all bets are off.
Fortunately for you, there are two sets of bare boobs in this video. Man boobs, though. Maybe you’re into that sort of thing, in which case you’ve come to the right place. There’s also a leg break in this video as well, which is sort of bizarre. However, some of you are also into that sort of stuff, in which case you’ve also come to the right place. Check out Shane Bretag breaking his leg after his kick is checked by Iggy McGowan at Legacy in Australia this past Friday (which is technically today), and props to @XFCfighting for the find. |
“Money is like shit: if you pile it up, it stinks. If you spread it around, it makes stuff grow.” -Jimmy Dore
Leftists are generally not overly fond of most people who label themselves “progressives.” After all, at the end of the day, progressives are still liberals.
I used to be a huge fan of The Young Turks and their founder, Cenk Uygur. Back when I was still a liberal, I became an ardent supporter and fan of TYT after seeing Uygur’s interview with Reza Aslan, whose book Zealot was instrumental in my development as a revolutionary Christian leftist.
This happened just in time for the beginning of the 2016 presidential primaries, and for the year that Bernie Sanders fought valiantly against Hillary Clinton and the “establishment, corporatist wing” of the Democratic Party, TYT was my go-to source for news and commentary.
TYT, with all of its hosts, guests, and satellite shows, was and still is the exemplary of liberal-left progressive media. (To this day, I refuse to hate on it along with most of my fellow leftists). But when Sanders was finally defeated last June and endorsed Clinton, and then TYT shifted the focus of their coverage to be more anti-Trump than anything else, I lost heart.
That was the beginning of my radicalization. That was when I finally took the first step away from liberal progressiveness, and towards radical, anticapitalist leftism. And I was far from alone.
Along the way, we progressives-turned-leftists discarded most of what we had loved from the bygone days of 2015. TYT’s endless coverage of Donald Trump disgusted me. I was reminded of the late Bush years, when all liberal media was united in their opposition to the president, except now I saw their hypocrisy: the massive inequities of the Obama years were (and are) still fresh in my mind.
I realized that Elizabeth Warren is an opportunistic fraud. I saw Bernie Sanders stumping for Hillary Clinton, the epitome of everything he was supposed to stand against. I heard Cenk Uygur defend capitalism. Most of the regular hosts of The Young Turks, actually, began to disappoint me on a regular basis.
With one notable exception. Jimmy Dore, comedian and political satirist, refused throughout the general election to balk at Trump and let up on the Democrats. He refused to tone down his criticisms of the status quo, to pull any punches on the neoliberal establishment that has ruined this country (and indeed, the world).
Then, after the election, with my feet planted firmly in the radical left, this happened:
I still remember the feeling I got the first time I watched this video. A mix of surprise, disbelief, and amazement washed over me. Was I really hearing such impassioned, ferocious polemics against Barack Obama, from a member of the “progressive media?
What’s more: Jimmy Dore stated, outright, that “capitalism is failing.” No qualifiers. Not “corporatism.” Not “crony” capitalism, whatever that means. Capitalism is failing, and Jimmy Dore isn’t afraid to tell you about it.
Over the next few months, Jimmy Dore proved himself to be a mind far beyond the “progressive media.” After the death of Fidel Castro, Dore made several videos on his own YouTube channel, The Jimmy Dore Show, highlighting Castro’s accomplishments and calling out American hypocrisy on Cuba. He began calling out American imperialism with ever-growing conviction. He continued to criticize capitalism, and was always fair towards communism without explicitly endorsing it.
I wasn’t the only leftist to notice. Across social media, jokes about “Comrade Jimmy Dore” and “Jimmy Dore Thought against Cenk Uygur Revisionism” began to crop up. Leftists I know were sharing Dore’s videos at the same time as they criticized the rest of TYT and abandoned their love of Bernie Sanders. Dore himself has been completely unafraid to criticize Sanders when the occasion calls for it.
And it’s all because Jimmy Dore continues to tell the truth, no matter how he is criticized or marginalized. His appearances on TYT’s flagship show have become more sporadic as he is relegated to the members-only Aggressive Progressives, where he has continued to speak truth to power. Even when Youtube de-monetized many of his videos, he plowed ahead, calling out Western lies about Syria and Bashar al-Assad, further cementing his place as a voice against imperialism.
Jimmy Dore may or may not consider himself a communist, socialist, or anti-capitalist. I am not here to tell anybody that he is secretly a radical leftist. I don’t know him.
But what I do know is that if he isn’t one of those things, he’s damn sure close to it. He has done what no other “progressive” has been able to do: earn the respect and adulation of the radical left, without placing himself firmly among us.
What Jimmy Dore has proven himself to be, however, is a courageous truth-teller with an open mind and a passion for justice. Whatever his ultimate feelings about capitalism, he is an ally of ours.
And maybe, just maybe, there is room for him to move even further to the left.
#RadicalizeJimmy |
I’m usually not one to celebrate holidays that have nothing to do with me. Canada Day? Eh. Mardi Gras? Throw your beads at someone else. But Cinco de Mayo? Well, slap a sombrero on me and call me señorita! I will never pass up a chance to drink an ice cold margarita (or six) and scarf down plenty of spicy food!
This chicken fajita pizza may look involved, but in fact it couldn’t be an easier or more delicious way to celebrate next Saturday’s Mexican-American holiday!
Just toss some cut-up chicken in a marinade of olive oil, lime juice and spices, pan fry it, and plop it on a pizza crust with your favorite salsa as the sauce. Top with chopped bell peppers, red onion and black beans, and sprinkle some Sargento® Fancy Shredded 4 Cheese Mexican Cheese over top. Set it to sizzle in the oven for 15 minutes and savor the spicy, pizza-licious scent! Then, sprinkle your beautiful, bubbling hot pizza with green onions or cilantro.
Repeat after me: Yuuuummmm.
For a scrumptious, simple pizza that can feed a crowd this Cinco de Mayo, or just as a new dinner idea to dazzle your palates, I know you’ll enjoy this pizza SO. MUCH. It’s delicious with a dollop of sour cream, hot sauce or salsa, and makes even better leftovers the day after! That is, if you’re lucky to have any left.
Craving more? Keep in touch on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram for new post updates and more. You can also check out my FAQ page, or contact me with any questions or inquiries!
Yield: Serves 4-6 Ingredients: 1/4 cup fresh lime juice 2 Tbsp. olive oil 1 tsp. minced garlic 1 tsp. chili powder 1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper 1/2 tsp. garlic powder 1 tsp. kosher salt 1/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper 1 lb. (2) boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1/2-inch pieces 1 (12-inch) prepared pizza crust 2 cups chunky-style salsa 2 cups (8 oz.) Sargento® Fancy Shredded 4 Cheese Mexican Cheese 1/2 cup chopped red bell pepper 1 15 oz. can black beans, drained 1/2 red onion, cut into thin slices 2 Tbsp. sliced green onion or minced cilantro Sour cream, optional Directions: Combine lime juice, oil, garlic and spices in a large bowl. Add chicken and toss to coat. Marinate 15 minutes, or up to one day, covered in the refrigerator. Cook chicken in large preheated skillet over medium-high heat 5-7 minutes, or until no longer pink; drain if necessary. Place crust on baking sheet or pizza pan. Spread salsa over crust; top with chicken, cheese, bell pepper, black beans and red onion. Bake in preheated 400°F oven 15 minutes, or until cheese is melted. Sprinkle with green onions or cilantro. Serve with sour cream, if desired. Enjoy! Adapted from Sargento |
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It’s official: The Trump campaign lives in an alternate reality.
In an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Tuesday, Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway didn’t just claim the polls are rigged for Hillary Clinton, but she said her campaign is so confident about Donald Trump being victorious in November that they’re already vetting candidates for cabinet positions.
Donald Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway: We are vetting people for Trump’s cabinet https://t.co/hSV9tEhII4 pic.twitter.com/u1DEm9VMhC… — Cnn (@CnnReal) October 26, 2016
“Yes,” Conway said when asked if the Trump campaign is starting to vet individuals for cabinet seats. “Because we’re going to win so we have to get ready to form a government.”
She added that the campaign is “really happy” that so many people are willing to serve in a potential Trump-Pence administration.
A Trump-Pence administration? Good luck with that.
Describing why she is confident, Conway cited internal polling that shows the Republican nominee doing better than public surveys, which show Clinton demolishing Trump pretty much everywhere on the map.
“We show Hillary Clinton under 50, and usually well under 50,” the Trump campaign manager said. “In North Carolina, it’s closer to tied.”
The latest poll of North Carolina shows Trump losing by 7 points, and early voting numbers in the state are extremely positive for Democrats.
Still, Conway says she thinks “Donald Trump is going to win the election,” saying Clinton is underperforming Barack Obama’s numbers from 2012. What she didn’t mention is how Trump is also behind Mitt Romney, who lost by a solid margin four years ago.
“We don’t like to say things are over,” Conway said, ignoring data that shows Trump would likely need a miracle to win an election that’s already underway. “We like to leave that narrative to people who are already critical of him and want the race to be over.”
Sure, the race isn’t officially over until the votes are counted on Nov. 8. But Conway, a veteran GOP pollster, must privately know that the possibility of Trump ever having a cabinet – a spooky thought, I know – is almost nonexistent.
If you’re ready to read more from the unbossed and unbought Politicus team, sign up for our newsletter here! Email address: Leave this field empty if you're human: |
Image copyright Sotheby's Image caption The work was reportedly sold for £8.5m in 2011
A work thought to be by Dutch artist Frans Hals that sold for a reported £8.5m ($10.8m) has been declared fake.
Sotheby's said it had "rescinded the sale and reimbursed the client in full" after tests revealed the painting, An Unknown Man, was "undoubtedly" forged.
The investigation followed reports that a sophisticated forger is at large.
The forger is also believed responsible for a painting attributed to Italian master Orazio Gentileschi that was loaned to the National Gallery.
The painting, David Contemplating the Head of Goliath, was loaned to the gallery by its current owner in 2013 and was on display until March this year. It has since been returned.
The National Gallery said it "undertakes due diligence research on a work coming on loan as well as a condition check", and that these were carried out on the painting.
"In the time the painting was at the National Gallery we had no obvious reasons to doubt that David with the Head of Goliath was a work by Gentileschi."
'Modern materials'
Another disputed work, attributed to Renaissance artist Lucas Cranach the Elder, was seized by authorities in France in March after doubts were raised about its authenticity.
The work had been loaned to an exhibition in Aix-en-Provence by Hans-Adam II, the reigning Prince of Liechtenstein.
According to The Art Newspaper, the work came on to the market in 2012 and was sold "in good faith" to the prince in 2013.
Analysis by BBC arts editor Will Gompertz
Page one of any decent guide to the business of acquiring artworks should spell out in bold letters, BUYER BEWARE.
Unless you have bought the painting or sculpture directly from the studio of a living artist, you are running the risk of buying a fake.
On the plus side, science is increasingly playing a part in authenticating artworks - but then a top notch forger tends to find ways to stay ahead of the game.
Provenance is all. If you want to reduce the odds of purchasing a fake, then you need the paperwork that details all past owners and what they have done to conserve the piece.
The more gaps in an artwork's "backstory", the greater the opportunity for Mr Dodgy to get to work. In the parlance of the motor trade, you really need to see a full service history.
Fakes are far more common than many in the art world would admit in public. Uncertainty is rarely good for business. But then just look at the success of shows like Fake or Fortune, which appear to have an endless supply of tales to tell.
Sotheby's said that "with the agreement of the seller" of the work thought to have been by Hals, which was sold in 2011, it had "informed the buyer of a possible issue with the authenticity of the painting".
It subjected the Hals painting to "an in-depth technical analysis" after links emerged between it and the Cranach.
Sotheby's said the tests "showed the presence of modern materials used in the painting in a way that meant it could not have been painted in the 17th Century".
'Best faker of all time'
Speaking on Radio 4's World at One, art historian Bendor Grosvenor called the case "extraordinary".
"What is amazing about [the painting] is the quality and the fact that it's not a copy," he said.
"Whoever has subsumed the aura of Hals when he painted this also came up with a totally fresh composition.
"If these [paintings] are fake, and I believe they are very likely to be, we are dealing with the best faker of all time."
Follow us on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, on Instagram, or if you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk. |
MONTREAL – An east-end Montreal college is gaining a reputation as a breeding ground for jihadis after four of its students were arrested at the airport Friday, allegedly on the verge of taking off to join an overseas terror group.
The latest arrests bring to 11 the number of Collège Maisonneuve students who since January have either left to join jihadi groups overseas or have been arrested on suspicion of planning to leave.
The four were among 10 students from various CEGEPS — post-secondary institutions unique to Quebec — and high schools arrested at Pierre Elliott Trudeau Airport Friday, the college confirmed. They are “suspected of wanting to leave the country to join jihadist groups,” the RCMP said in a statement.
They had their passports confiscated and were released without charge. The police said they spoke to the families and friends of those arrested and the investigation is ongoing.
In January, five Collège Maisonneuve students were among a group of seven Montreal-area youth who left for Syria. Last month, another two of the CEGEP’s students, 18-year-olds Mahdi El Jamali and Sabrine Djermane, were arrested and charged with trying to leave Canada to commit terrorism.
“Over the past months, it must be noted that the phenomenon of youth indoctrination has taken a turn that we could not have suspected,” the college said in a statement Wednesday. It said its powers are limited because its students’ lives extend well beyond the school walls. “It appears clearer and clearer that the recruitment of young people goes through their activities on social media,” the statement said.
One student who left for Syria in January was revealed to have been taking classes in Islam offered at the CEGEP by Adil Charkaoui, an imam who in 2003 was arrested under a federal security certificate as a suspected sleeper agent. Charkaoui successfully fought the security certificate in court and last year was granted Canadian citizenship.
The CEGEP suspended its contract renting space to Charkaoui’s Ècole Les Compagnons following news of his connection to the departed student, but it subsequently allowed him to resume weekly classes with a monitor present.
On Wednesday, the Islamic centre that operates the Ècole Les Compagnons issued a statement in response to a Radio-Canada report that one of the people arrested Friday had also registered for Charkaoui’s courses.
The centre said it had no information about the identities of the 10 arrested. It added that it “takes very seriously the question of radicalization of young people and reiterates its commitment to contribute to the harmonious integration of the Muslim community in Quebec and Canadian societies.”
The latest case raised alarm at all levels of government about the threat of radicalization.
Premier Philippe Couillard called the news of the arrests “profoundly troubling” and said his government will soon be announcing details of a plan to combat religious radicalization, including “elements of prevention and detection.”
Federal Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney announced Wednesday that he will invite his provincial counterparts to an early summer meeting to discuss terrorism and radicalization.
“There is no profile of terrorists. You can come from whatever (income), whether Canadian-born or foreigner, the profile of a terrorist is very diverse,” he told CBC News Network. “What we need to work on is the motive. We need to be able to identify at an early stage those individuals who are being radicalized and, more importantly, we have to work on the radicalizers.”
He said Friday’s arrests were made possible by a tip from a family member concerned about the behaviour of one suspect.
Haroun Bouazzi, co-president of the Association des Musulmans et des Arabes pour la Laïcité au Québec, a Muslim group in favour of state secularism, said three factors combine to inspire young Westerners to join jihadi groups: a feeling of exclusion, a desire to fight imperialism and the attraction of a fundamentalist strain of Islam.
In Quebec, he said, anti-Muslim sentiment fuels the exclusion felt by would-be jihadis.
“Imagine for a kid who is today 17,” he said. Since 2007, there has been almost constant debate in Quebec over the accommodation of the Muslim minority. “For eight years in a row, everything surrounding his community is a problem. How do we expect these kids to actually feel part of the Quebec nation?” Bouazzi asked.
“They are born here. They’re not Algerians. They’re not Syrians. They’re really from here, but they feel lost, and religion can be a way out to feel part of a group.”
National Post
• Email: ghamilton@nationalpost.com | Twitter: grayhamilton
CANADIANS WHO JOINED THE FIGHT
The ten young people stopped in Montreal aren’t the first Canadians who have sought to join the conflict in the Middle East. Here are six other prominent cases involving Canadians thought to have joined extremists groups abroad.
Damian Clairmont
Years before taking up arms in Syria, Clairmont — troubled by a turbulent childhood — attempted suicide at age 17 by drinking anti-freeze. He later converted to Islam and left Calgary to go abroad in November 2012, under the pretense of studying Arabic in Egypt. Instead, it is believed he flew to Istanbul, then made his way to Syria, joining the Jabhat al-Nusra rebel group. “The ski masks here usually aren’t for the cold,” he told the National Post from Syria in December 2013. One month later, the Free Syrian Army claimed it had killed Clairmont in battle.
John Maguire
In December 2014, a man appeared in a propaganda video released by ISIL and pegged himself as a “typical Canadian” who grew up playing hockey and earned high grades throughout university. He then urged Canadians to commit acts of domestic terrorism. That man was Maguire, who studied business at the University of Ottawa and converted to Islam in 2010. He left for Syria in December 2012, where he adopted the name Yahya. According to an ISIL-affiliated Twitter account, he was killed in battle near Kobani in January. His death has not been officially confirmed.
André Poulin
Poulin became radicalized in his hometown of Timmins, Ont., during the late 2000s, and reportedly helped persuade several other Canadians to travel to Syria after he arrived there in late 2012. Poulin initially joined a contingent of foreign extremist fighters; in 2013, he told an American filmmaker that his family did not fully comprehend why he had left. He married upon his arrival in Syria and left behind his wife and an unborn child when he died in August 2013, felled in an assault on a government airbase in Aleppo, according to ISIL.
Ahmad Waseem
The Windsor man came home from Syria in 2013 to recover from injuries he said he sustained in battle, but returned later that year, ignoring advice from his imam to pursue humanitarian work and leaving even though his mother took away his passport. In 2014, the RCMP charged him with passport fraud and, according to the imam, told Waseem’s mother he’d be arrested if he entered Canada again — a message the imam deemed “unproductive” in an interview with the National Post. Kurdish fighters likely killed Waseem in northeast Syria this March, according to a researcher from Dalhousie University.
Sami Elabi
Born in Montreal to a Québécois mother and a Syrian father, Elabi entered Syria through Turkey around April 2013, then posted photos of himself donning fighting equipment to his Facebook page, according to Enquête, a Radio-Canada news program. An ensuing post in January 2014 showed Elabi — reportedly a Jabhat al-Nusra recruit — setting his Canadian passport aflame. His Facebook account went dark last August. According to Enquête, an al-Nusra source confirmed that Elabi spent time in southern Turkey recovering from battle wounds, before returning to the fight in Syria late last year.
The Montreal Six
In January and February, six Quebec youth, including two young women, flew to Turkey. It is believed they then trekked on to Syria with the intent of joining ISIL’s ranks. Four have been confirmed as former students of the Collège de Maisonneuve, a CEGEP in Montreal. The school briefly suspended a contract with a group it rented space to because one of the agreement’s signatories was Adil Charkaoui, a Muslim teacher the Canadian government had arrested under a security certificate in 2003, and who reportedly taught some of the six youth. The current whereabouts of the six are unconfirmed.
National Post |
The Finals: Pale Ales #25-1
25. Upslope Brewing Co. Citra Pale Ale
City: Boulder, CO
ABV: 5.9%
The verdict: Boulder’s Upslope Brewing Co. is a brewery that regularly does well and flies under the radar in Paste blind tastings, but this was still something of a surprise, because they’re not technically a place we usually associate with hop-forward beer. Sure, Upslope Christmas Ale is a classic of the genre, but pale ale? Well apparently they make a very solid entry here as well. Citra Pale Ale is on the simple side, but it’s giving the consumer exactly what they want: Nicely juicy tropical (pineapple) and citrus (pink grapefruit) hoppiness, with enough residual sweetness to really make both of those notes pop. That sweetness is key to a lot of modern hop-forward beers, and it’s pulled off really well here. This one is just really easy to enjoy.
24. Maine Beer Co. MO
City: Freeport, ME
ABV: 6%
The verdict: MBC’s classic flagship pale ale is always a treat, and this tasting was no exception. This is one of the beers that helped to start the style down the road to NE-IPA, and it still stands up pretty beautifully today. It’s quite perfumey on the nose, with sprinklings of tropical fruit (passionfruit?), subtle citrus juiciness and light bitterness that is sometimes overlooked in the current generation of hoppy beers. Says one score sheet: “Lightly juicy and very bright and inviting. What I’d expect a NE-PA to be all about.” This is one of those very drinkable, quaffable examples of the style that actually seem significantly lighter in terms of ABV than the still modest 6% it possesses. If it was labeled as 4.5% ABV, you’d still believe it, and that’s a good thing in this case.
23. Dry Dock Breakwater
City: Aurora, CO
ABV: 5.8%
The verdict: Dry Dock says this beer is just dry-hopped with Cascade, which is hard to believe, given all the interesting fruit impressions we were getting from it. You certainly do get some of those classic Cascade floral notes on the nose, but there’s an exotic tropical fruit note somewhere in the background as well that captivated a couple of tasters. One described it as lychee, while another admitted there was simply “something exotic I can’t quite put my finger on.” Regardless, Breakwater features a subtle residual sweetness while having very little bitterness, making for a very drinkable pale ale that we’ll have to return to again at some point.
22. Parish Brewing Co. 4XDH Envie
City: Broussard, LA
ABV: 5.5%
The verdict: You’ve heard of “double dry-hopped” beers, right? Well screw that noise, man—QUAD HOP ALL THE BEERS. Apparently that’s what Parish decided to do with their pale ale, Envie, and dear lord—what a result it turned out to be. Suffice to say, there’s a crazy amount of hops involved in this beer, and the juice is very much loose as a result. Massively fruity on the nose, this beer is redolent in notes of intense citrus/mango/apricot-like stone fruit, all at once. One taster’s notes compare it to a beer from Richmond, VA’s Triple Crossing, the brewery that placed two beers in the top 5 of our tasting of 176 DIPAs. In fact, the only criticisms of this beer come from score sheets where the tasters were more or less overwhelmed by the sheer intensity of the hop juiciness. Not for the faint of heart, but for the lovers of juice? Absolutely.
21. Burial Beer Co. Bonedagger American Pale Ale
City: Asheville, NC
ABV: 5.5%
The verdict: There was discussion now and then throughout this tasting about which of the beers on the table might be made using Lupulin Powder, one of the “next big thing” tech advancements within craft beer in the last few years, but this pale ale from Burial removes all doubt by straight-up saying “double dry-hopped with Lupulin Powder.” So there you go. The effect is a very pure, concentrated form of hoppiness—strong, clean flavors of lemon and tangerine candy, followed by resin, with a light body and very low bitterness. Every score sheet says “lemon” on it somewhere, so that’s definitely one of the operative flavors here. This one is very bright, pure and uncomplicated, which seems to be one of the hallmarks of Lupulin Powder as far as we can tell. It produces beers with very clear, singular hop flavors, of which this one is a good example.
20. Benchtop Brewing Co. Hazing Face
City: Norfolk, VA
ABV: 5.2%
The verdict: It’s funny how you can never really know what to expect in terms of body/mouthfeel when you pour a beer that looks like this one. Some of them are ridiculously thick and chewy, as the opaque quality might lead you to expect, but others such as this pale ale from Benchtop are far lighter in texture than you might expect. Regardless, it works well here, in a pale ale that features delicate flavors of grapefruit juice, grass and green resin/cattiness. Unlike a lot of the hazy pale ales, it still finishes pretty dry—which, coupled with the light body, makes for a very drinkable beer. I think this is our first time tasting something from Benchtop, but I’ll remember that name in the future.
19. Triple C Brewing Co. Light Rail Pale Ale
City: Charlotte, NC
ABV: 4.5%
The verdict: In terms of packing a lot of flavor into a pretty small package, this pale ale from Triple C really excels. It’s a lot of things at once: Lightly juicy (orange, mostly), floral and slightly grainy, while remaining on the drier side. As it warms, tasters got more of the “green” side of the hop spectrum, with grassy and resinous notes that linger on through the finish. At only 4.5% ABV, you could hardly ask for much more in terms of classical American pale ale—and with a modern twist.
18. 18th Street Brewery Chasing Paper
City: Hammond, IN
ABV: 6.2%
The verdict: There was once a time when Three Floyds was the de facto brewery that any beer geek would mention in reference to northern Indiana, but these days, 18th Street is making a name for itself in the same region. This hazy NE-PA smells like a fistful of fresh hop pellets on the nose, an aroma familiar to any homebrewer who has ever stuck his nose into a bag of Citra and inhaled. On the palate we’re getting plenty of juicy orange and maybe a little bit of pineapple, as well as a slightly tangy/tart quality that makes Chasing Paper majorly refreshing. This certainly qualifies on the “refreshing” front more than a lot of the hazier pale ales, which tend toward sheer decadence.
17. Cigar City Invasion
City: Tampa, FL
ABV: 5%
The verdict: This is one of those beers that feels like it’s never quite gotten its due because it exists in the same portfolio as a much better known bigger brother. Fresh Jai Alai IPA is still one of the industry’s tastiest hop-forward beers, and passion for it sometimes makes people forget that Cigar City also brews some really good pale ales—more on that a few entries from now. Invasion has been around for a while, and it’s been really good for just as long. It’s the picture of balance, with a deftly executed profile of tropical fruit (mango, clementine oranges) on the nose, followed by grassiness and just a hint of bitterness. A slightly creamy texture and hint of bready malt ties everything together. It does have some similarities to the profile of Jai Alai, actually, but in an even more sessionable package. Nothin’ wrong with that.
16. Fort George Brewery City of Dreams
City: Astoria, OR
ABV: 5.2%
The verdict: It’s interesting that Fort George doesn’t play up the “hazy” or “northeast” quality of this beer anywhere on the can as far as we could see, and we were hardly expecting it to look like it does as a result. It may not be the prettiest of the hazy beers, but it certainly has it where it counts. The nose is expressive—bombastic, really—in terms of juicy fruit impressions, to the point that one taster actually wrote “you can smell the haze.” Peach, passionfruit and orange juice are major players, as is an overall dearth of bitterness. This drinks really easily, with a soft texture that is very inviting. Just another piece of evidence that big, tasty NE-PA’s are being produced in every corner of the country at this point.
15. Westbrook Brewing Co. One Claw
City: Mt Pleasant, SC
ABV: 5.5%
The verdict: A modern classic in the genre of pale ales at this point, it feels like One Claw is probably a beer that has inspired a lot of imitators making hop-forward “rye pale ale”—although Terrapin also deserves a shout-out for their trendsetting original. This one is an interesting exercise in balance, incorporating more character on the malt side of the spectrum than most, thanks to that slight “rye bread” note from the malted rye. Hops are on the citrusy side, but reservedly so—a beer that is slightly more “zesty” than “juicy.” Bitterness is also restrained, and the mouthfeel is soft and creamy. In general, this isn’t one of the more assertive pale ales, but it is one of the best balanced.
14. Fieldwork Brewing Co. Batch 2
City: Berkeley, CA
ABV: 5.2%
The verdict: We’re starting to think that it’s no exaggeration at all to say that Fieldwork may be the hoppiest brewery, pound for pound, on the face of the Earth. These guys are just nuts; they have never met a beer style that they won’t hop the bejeezus out of. No matter what they send to Paste blind tastings, they always have that one thing in common—they make explosively hoppy beer. This one is a real assault on the senses, with intense resin and grassiness in the immediate first rush, followed by a bomb of tropical fruit juiciness—lots of pineapple in particular. There’s also some solid bitterness backing everything up, but man, the volume is just cranked up to 11. Even on a table full of other hoppy beer, you stick your nose into this glass and say “dear lord, that’s a lot of hops.” If that sounds like something that’s likely to make you happy, then this is your sort of beer.
13. Cigar City Guayabera
City: Tampa, FL
ABV: 5.5%
The verdict: Using a bunch of Citra hops in a pale ale is almost sort of like cheating, isn’t it? They’re just so tasty, and so agreeable. You might hear debate on certain varietals, but who in their right mind doesn’t like Citra? And as an extension, who in their right mind wouldn’t like this beer? Cigar City’s second pale ale in four spaces within this ranking is just a people pleaser, plain and simple. Bright and juicy, with lemon/orange citrus notes that slowly fade into a bit of greener, grassier impressions, it packs just a little bit of bitterness but is mostly just an easily consumed delight. The prominent citrus gives this one an almost shandy-esque quality—it’s light, refreshing and focused on what it’s trying to do. Not complicated, but very tasty.
12. Red Brick Brewing Co. Soul of the City
City: Atlanta, GA
ABV: 5.7%
The verdict: It’s always fun in the course of one of these blind tastings when we discover a really good, newer beer from our own backyard that none of us have sampled before. Atlanta’s Red Brick Brewing Co. is the city’s oldest craft brewery, but they’re by no means resting on their laurels. Soul of the City is a new pale ale that is thoroughly in the nouveau style, featuring a blend of Denali, Crystal and Citra hops, and with it, Red Brick has captured something very interesting. Perfumey on the nose, with notes of sweet pine needles and stone fruit, it segues into some unique fruitiness on the palate, which one taster swore reminded him of pears. This combination of hops certainly created something unusual, but it was unanimously appreciated.
11. Woodland Farm Brewery Up All Night
City: Utica, NY
ABV: 5.8%
The verdict: I honestly expected we might end up with a sizable number of Belgian, wild, or otherwise mixed culture pale ales in this tasting, but there really weren’t very many. However, the few we did get were captivating, starting with this entrant from New York. It strikes us as something you would label as “farmhouse pale ale,” possessing some of the qualities of Belgian/saison yeast, without a ton of the wilder funk of brettanomyces. Clove, banana and Belgian esters meet restrained grassy/citric hops in a beer that threw tasters for a loop in their first passes, but eventually this one found a lot of fans. Or as one person wrote, “unique and excellent from front to back.” This beer gets more mileage out of its yeast profile than it does the hops, but this is “pale ale” and not “IPA,” after all.
10. Threes Brewing Counterpart
City: Brooklyn, NY
ABV: 4.5%
The verdict: Everyone loves the flavors of NE-PA and NE-IPA, but the thing people don’t want to talk about with the style is the fact that a large number of those beers have a tendency to be … well, rather “samey.” Once you’ve had plenty of hazy IPA, it’s just not often that you try a new one and think “huh, I haven’t tasted something like that before.” That’s one of the things we enjoyed about this offering from Threes—it brings a bit of weirdness, in a good way. Big, lush tropical fruit notes are all over the nose, with exotic impressions of passionfruit, papaya and mango. It also strikes us as slightly tart, but that acidity works well with the overwhelming fruitiness to make the flavors feel authentic. As one taster wrote, “surprisingly clean finish—it’s different, but it works.” There’s a lot going on here, and we appreciate the complexity of the fruit-forward hop profile on display.
9. Hops and Grain Brewery A Pale Mosaic
City: Austin, TX
ABV: 5.9%
The verdict: It’s probably not the tagline that a brewery would choose, but this beer was proof of the fact that looks aren’t everything. They don’t show well in the photo, but this beer was absolutely packed with “floaties”—those particles of dead yeast still in suspension that look like unappealing snowflakes when the beer is agitated. Despite that, however, the beer itself is pretty damn great. Smooth and creamy on the palate, it’s loaded with plenty of citrus (grapefruit zest!) and resin notes, and even a bit of that exotic, berry-like fruitiness that you sometimes get from Mosaic as a varietal. Moderate bitterness reminds you of just why we historically have added hops to our beer, while crisp, understated malt offers just enough balance to put up a fight. It’s another excellent Texas pale ale.
8. El Segundo Brewing Co. Citra Pale Ale
City: El Segundo, CA
ABV: 5.5%
The verdict: It’s safe to say that any time that a taster describes your beer as “guzzle-able,” you’ve probably done a pretty good job. This classic Citra-based pale ale from El Segundo is an oddity in its genre these days in the sense that it comes in a 22 oz bottle, which seem to have gone the way of the dodo as far as hoppy styles are concerned. But it is what’s inside the bottle that counts, and this is just a classic pale ale by any estimation. It’s not hugely flavorful, per se, but it is close to the platonic ideal—big citrus and pine on the nose, with light juiciness and good hop depth that forges out into grassy and earthy notes on repeat visits, backed up by a little bit of crackery malt. What else can you say? Not all beer is guzzle-able, but this is.
Note: Apparently this beer also comes in 12 oz stubby bottles as well, so it’s not just the 22 oz bombers after all.
7. Prison City Illusion of Knowledge
City: Auburn, NY
ABV: 6.1%
The verdict: When you’re the maker of the #1 IPA in our last blind tasting of 247 IPAs, you’re always entering into a new blind tasting with a certain degree of expectations firmly in place. With Illusion of Knowledge, Prison City lives up to the bar we’ve already set in our minds for them. This one is bright and tropically inclined, with lush flavors of pineapple and mango. At the same time, it’s still quite light of body—very easy drinking, very approachable, very tasty. It does what all of the best NE-PAs do, which is to balance drinkability and pleasing texture with a certain fruity decadence and hint of sweetness. That’s what the style is all about, and this is a prime example.
6. Cerebral Brewing Muscle Memory
City: Denver, CO
ABV: 4.5% (or 5.2%)
The verdict: We’re not exactly sure of the ABV on this one, as the listed number is different in a few places online, but if it’s only 4.5%, then damn, they packed plenty of flavor into that number. Denver’s Cerebral is a brewery that has been working its way up the rankings in Paste tastings lately, and now they’re within sniffing distance of the top. Muscle Memory is very soft on the palate, with big, clean citrus (orange, but especially lemon), resin and lemongrass herbaceousness, but is also one of the drier takes on the NE-PA wave at the same time. It’s a beer that made multiple tasters independently write that they “dig it” in their notes, which isn’t something I can usually write. In fact, one wrote that “I dig it thoroughly,” so there you go.
5. Boneyard Beer Co. Bone-A-Fide Pale Ale
City: Bend, OR
ABV: 5.5%
The verdict: The last time we blind-tasted 83 pale ales it was this bad boy that took home the crown, and Boneyard’s superlative beer hasn’t slipped a bit, two years later. This is just a great example of a modern pale ale that forges connections between the past and the present. Very few of these write-ups have contained words such as “caramel,” when once upon a time this would have been commonplace. The reality of the style is that those types of beers have difficulty exciting fans of modern hoppy beer, but Boneyard makes it work by truly fusing older flavors with newer ones. Juicy, blood orange-like citrus is an exotic centerpiece to a beer streaked with tropical fruit, florals and a toasty, slightly caramelized malt backbone. It tastes, for all intents and purposes, like a miniaturized version of a great DIPA. Even in a field that was very different than the last time we sampled it, Bone-A-Fide is still a true stand-out.
4. Toppling Goliath Brewing Co. PseudoSue
City: Decorah, IA
ABV: 6.2%
The verdict: We’ve been trying approximately forever to get some Toppling Goliath into these blind tastings, and for the first time ever, it happened in pale ale. And really, where else would you do it—TG’s PseudoSue is one of the best-rated pale ales in the world, and one of their best-known beers. And after tasting it, we can pretty much all agree that yep, the hype is real. This beer is beguiling and delicious, with an ultra soft, plush texture and sweet (although actually fairly subtle) flavors of peach, orange and passionfruit. It has a way of sort of building over time—each time we went back to PseudoSue, it was as if its flavors had intensified, and yet it simultaneously remains dangerously drinkable. If you have any fondness at all for modern hops, it’s hard to imagine who wouldn’t enjoy this.
3. Steel String Brewery Brett Mon
City: Carrboro, NC
ABV: 6.3%
The verdict: The best compliment I can pay to this brettanomyces pale ale is that if everyone could make a beer like this, then everyone undoubtedly would. However, judging from the relative lack of brett beers we received in this tasting, it’s clear that most places haven’t made “brett pale ale” work on such a sublime level—that, or they’ve just saved it for IPA, which would be a shame. Brett Mon is just a lovely, vivacious synthesis of both wild ale and pale ale/IPA elements; it’s almost shocking how well everything works together. Big brettanomyces funkiness is the star of the show, with lots of hay/barnyard/leathery influences, but not to be outdone are the big tropical fruit impressions, a complex bouquet (one taster wrote “Trix cereal, but in a good way”) that is balanced with the wild yeast profile in terms of intensity. Brett Mon is simultaneously refreshing, assertive and adventurous. It’s really a spectacular beer, and we can’t wait to have more wild ales from these guys in North Carolina.
2. Fieldwork Brewing Co. Painted Gold
City: Berkeley, CA
ABV: 5.4%
The verdict: When I was writing above about the certifiable hop lust of Fieldwork Brewing Co. in reference to the Batch 2 pale ale, I was picturing in my mind what I’ve come to think of as the prototypical Fieldwork beer—intensely green, resinous, dank, citrusy and somewhat intimidating. That’s one of this brewery’s signature profiles, but it turns out they can also make velvety, juicy masterpieces like Painted Gold, and woah—this is a showstopper. This one is what the internet would no doubt describe as thicc, a very chewy, creamy, juice-bomb of a beer that made one taster actually underline the word “juice” on his score sheet. Big, bold citrus shines through with waves of orange, followed by sweet mango and even a bit of toasty malt. One taster was even reminded of the sweetness of a very ripe dessert banana, and that’s not the sort of tasting note you see on pale ales every day. As another score sheet put it: “An absolutely on point version of the big, all-in hazy-juicy NE-PA.”
1. Monday Night Brewing Han Brolo
City: Atlanta, GA
ABV: 4.7%
The verdict: Well, it finally happened. In more than three years of doing this, I don’t believe we’ve ever had a #1 beer in a blind tasting style that came from Paste’s native Atlanta, but the drought is finally over. Monday Night Brewing, who brought home two medals from GABF in 2017 and also opened their second facility within the city, is an ascendant brewery in the Southeast, and it’s time to recognize it.
Han Brolo, the pale ale in question, is unique, possibly among all of the entries, for the fact that it is brewed with lactose, as is common among the so-called “milkshake IPAs” popularized by breweries such as Tired Hands. Unlike true milkshakes, however, Han Brolo isn’t made with any fruit purees, vanilla or additional sweeteners—just plenty of hops. The results are pretty sublime, accentuating the fruit flavors and juiciness without adding an overwhelming amount of residual sweetness. From one score sheet: “Super citrusy, full of tangerine and apricot, soft and semi-sweet. Just delicious.” From another: “Nailed it. Modern, but not too over-the-top NE-PA.” From yet another: “Yum. Juicy tangerine deliciousness.” This beer walks that delicate line between decadence and drinkability, and emerges just barely on the right side. The use of lactose only enhances the silky texture, but it’s the hops that are doing most of the heavy lifting. It’s an outstanding pale ale, and #1 in our field of 151.
Jim Vorel is a Paste staff writer and resident craft beer guru. You can follow him on Twitter for much more beer writing. |
Canadian energy companies have cut thousands of jobs and scrapped projects in a drive to cut costs. Now they’re raiding workers’ perks.
Holiday parties, childcare benefits and Fridays off are being targeted as the rout in crude prices grinds into its 16th month, workers and company representatives say. The clampdown on perks comes as firms dig deeper for savings after eliminating about 36,000 oil and natural gas jobs in the crash, according to a tally by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.
At Canadian Natural Resources Ltd.’s office in Aberdeen, Scotland, the only microwave is in overdrive after the cafeteria stopped serving hot meals and raised the price of sandwiches. The coffee cups are smaller, too. While the company has avoided job cuts, salary reductions of as much as 10 per cent mean some workers are also earning less.
ConocoPhillips, which is cutting 500 workers in Canada this year, removed complimentary juice and soda from fridges in Calgary and canceled personal development benefits of up to $1,500 a year that some employees used for sports training.
Cenovus Energy Inc. is weighing whether to end the practice of employees getting two Fridays off a month. The company already reduced its travel and training budgets and has eliminated 1,340 jobs.
“In times of fiscal prudence, it’s essential to see companies eliminating all unnecessary expenditures,” said Eric Nuttall, a portfolio manager at Sprott Asset Management LP in Toronto. “This whole every second Friday off thing, that’s the most egregious example.”
The changes to incentives at Canadian Natural and ConocoPhillips are according to people familiar with the moves, who asked not to be identified discussing private matters. Kristen Ashcroft, a spokeswoman at ConocoPhillips, said the company won’t confirm specific cost-reduction actions. Julie Woo, a Canadian Natural spokeswoman, declined to comment.
At Cenovus, “no stone is being left unturned” in a broad review of workforce policies, said Brett Harris, a spokesman. Employees currently work longer hours on other days to earn the Fridays off, he said.
Tobias Read, chief executive officer of staffing consultant Swift Worldwide Resources, said retirement and childcare benefits are also being scaled back along with social events, as companies offer unpaid leave and work-share programs on top of salary reductions and job cuts.
“You are seeing a radical change in the incentives,” Read said. “It’s a grim reality that if they don’t reduce costs in every area, the situation will be dramatically worse.”
Companies are driven to get rid of perks to prove to shareholders they’re serious about lowering costs, said Chris Feltin, an analyst at Macquarie Group Ltd. in Calgary.
“One of the only factors you can control is costs,” he said.
The Standard & Poor’s/TSX Energy Index has fallen 22 per cent in the past year, compared with a 5.8 percent decline in the S&P/TSX Composite index. Prices for the U.S. crude benchmark are down 45 per cent in the past 12 months.
Cenovus’s earlier cuts are already affecting its bottom line. The oilsands producer’s general and administrative expenses fell 28 per cent in the second quarter from a year earlier. Job cuts and reduced discretionary spending helped, along with lower compensation costs because of a drop in the company’s stock price.
Not all incentives are vanishing with the oil market crash.
Crescent Point Energy Corp. is keeping an in-house catering service, which it calls the bistro, to serve bagels, fruits and vegetables each day, chief operating officer Neil Smith said by phone last month. The company cancelled a summer golf outing and toned down plans for its upcoming Christmas party, however, as it avoids cutting jobs, he said.
“A happy crew will put out 20 to 40 per cent more than a stressed, unhappy crew,” Smith said.
A surplus of qualified workers means the industry’s lost incentives probably won’t come back quickly, according to Swift’s Read.
“I don’t think there’s a worry that if the market returns, they’ll find a shortage of people,” Read said. |
A man who allegedly sent offensive letters to the families of soldiers who died in Afghanistan has told the High Court that wounding someone's feelings is not a criminal offence.
Man Haron Monis, also known as Sheik Haron, wants the court to quash multiple indictments alleging he used the postal service to offend the families of fallen diggers as well as relatives of a trade official killed by a bomb in Jakarta.
Lawyers for Mr Monis and his co-appellant, Amirah Droudis, told the court today the relevant section of the Commonwealth Criminal Code was invalid because it infringed the implied constitutional freedom of political communication.
The letters were critical of Australia's involvement in Afghanistan and denigrated the deceased soldiers.
One said the Australian nation was to blame for the 2009 bombing in Indonesia because it was silent about the government's "oppressive behaviour" overseas. |
A pirate dog with an eye patch. Reuters Pictures Pilot episodes for four new TV series have leaked onto torrent sites.
A post in the Piracy subreddit points out that pilots for "The Carmichael Show," "Lucifer," "Minority Report," and "Blindspot" are now all available on torrent sites.
This is an embarrassing leak for the shows, none of which are scheduled to air yet. In fact, "Lucifer" is meant to debut next year, but now its pilot has leaked online for everyone to see.
The leaked pilots appear to have originated from the DIMENSION group of leakers. DIMENSION is known as a "warez" group, which trades privately, often in "pre-air" TV shows. The group tries to keep its releases private, and they're usually only available on private torrent sites that aren't open to the general public.
"Lucifer" was supposed to debut in 2016. Fox
Some torrent site commenters got a little confused with the new releases and thought that the shows were about to air: |
LENNOXVILLE – Four players remain in the hunt for, potentially, three running-back positions on the Alouettes with the final cutdown date approaching.
And, should Brandon Rutley be on the outside looking in when the dust settles, he appears to be prepared, knowing the season’s long and anything can happen – just as it did a year ago.
“If somebody goes down, I’m willing to jump up. The thing about me is I’ve always understood my role. You have to wait your turn. Eventually the time will come and I’m okay with that,” Rutley said following Tuesday’s training camp workout at Bishop’s University.
Rutley started last season on the practice roster, eventually was released and returned home, only to be summoned back due to injuries. And he was the Als’ starting tailback during the playoffs.
In the East Division semifinal against British Columbia, he gained 98 yards on 15 carries and scored one touchdown. The following week, against Hamilton, he carried 11 times, accumulating 52 yards.
It was Rutley’s first season with Montreal. He played five games for the Tiger-Cats in 2012.
“It’s not something you worry about. You come here and perform and do the best you can do and prepare the best you can. You wait until your number’s called – and I’m fine with that,” said the 5-foot-11, 192-pound Rutley, 31. “That’s the nature of the business. You have to wait your turn. There’s always somebody that’s going to be in front of you until it’s your turn.
“Hopefully, at some point, I’ll be the guy in front and I’ll be telling the young guys to be patient and keep working.”
The Als’ backfield’s indeed crowded, with incumbent Brandon Whitaker, Tyrell Sutton and newcomer Stefan Logan, whose best shot at making the team probably remains as the return specialist. It’s unlikely Montreal can retain all four, unless it places Rutley on the practice roster again.
Nonetheless, Rutley re-signed with the team last Feb. 3, not exercising his right to test the free-agent market.
“I don’t think they wanted me here for no reason. They know I can play and they know my potential,” he said. “This is my job, whether on the practice or active roster. I can’t complain. I know my time will come.
“It’s all about patience and timing. If the timing’s right, I’ll be ready.”
The Als conclude their exhibition schedule Thursday night at Molson Stadium against the Toronto Argonauts.
Notes – Linebacker Kyries Hebert was in Montreal on Tuesday, having his lower leg examined. He’s experiencing some pain on the bone and might be suffering only from a bruise. He’s unlikely to play this week. … Defensive-tackle Michael Klassen’s experiencing some tightness in his Achilles tendon and probably won’t play either. … Irv Smith, who played cornerback for the Als from 1996, when the franchise returned to Montreal, until retirement following the 2001 season, visited camp on Tuesday. Smith’s the father of a teenaged son in La Prairie who’ll be attending Vanier College in September. Coincidentally, the kid plays corner. Smith won a Grey Cup with the Baltimore Stallions. Smith’s now a firefighter in Gaithersburg, Md., near Washington, D.C. He was recently promoted to lieutenant.
hzurkowsky@montrealgazette.com
twitter.com/HerbZurkowsky1 |
Mission
Green Bronx Machine builds healthy, equitable, and resilient communities through inspired education, local food systems, and 21st Century workforce development. Dedicated to cultivating minds and harvesting hope, our school-based model using urban agriculture aligned to key school performance indicators grows healthy students and healthy schools to transform communities that are fragmented and marginalized into neighborhoods that are inclusive and thriving.
Vision
We believe that healthy students help drive healthy schools, and that healthy schools are at the heart of healthy communities. We envision growing healthy communities where those who are "apart from" will become "part of" new solutions that benefit 100% of society; a world where people do not have to leave their community to live, learn and earn in a better one. Together, we can grow something greater! Ready, set, GROW! |
Texas Parasol Plans
The Texas Parasol plans and builders manual are archived at Matronic
for free download. But due to the size of the files a high speed connection
is absolutely necessary.
There are two links here. One is for the Builders Book (the plans).
The other is a compendium of photos and information - a full CD worth!
Get both!
Also!
At the bottom of this page are links to a few links to some short
YouTube movies of our planes. I hope you enjoy!
Richard
Plans Links :
Link to the Plans files
The Plans book is broken into two PDF files and are much smaller.
The drawings file is 16.5 meg and the text is 7.5 meg.
http://www.matronics.com/photoshare/cavelamb@earthlink.net.02.11.2006/index.html
GO TO PLANS FILE
Link to the full CD file:
Below you will find a link to the Matronics site for the Texas Parasol
CDROM. This file includes the complete plans as well as my builders
web page and a bunch of detail pictures and notes.
This is a 410MB file, so attempt to download this ONLY if you have
high-speed network access such as a cable-modem or DSL.
http://www.matronics.com/photoshare/cavelamb@earthlink.net.03.04.2006/
GO TO CD FILE
If you don't have the bandwidth, send me a note for details and
I'll burn a CDr for you and send it snail mail.
Price is $35(us) - shipping and handling included.
No, I don't take Pay-Pal.
A money order or check will do fine.
Enjoy,
Richard |
Presidency 2012
President Obama is seeking re-election to a second term in 2012. A large crowd of Republican candidates are competing for the GOP nomination. Plus there are LOTS of third party and independent P2012 hopefuls. So, if a person is running --regardless of party, ballot status, or chances of winning -- we have him or her listed below. Incumbent party first, following by the main opposition party, then the third party candidates, and finally the independent and write-in hopefuls.
LEGEND:
BOLD = Announced Candidate (or Filed an Exploratory Committee)
Italics = Possible Candidate
DEMOCRATIC PARTY:
REPUBLICAN PARTY:
THIRD PARTY and
INDEPENDENT CANDIDATES:
(Note: Parties with ballot status in at least one state -- based on either 2008 status or preliminary 2012 status -- listed first, then all others under the INDEPENDENT & WRITE-IN CANDIDATES header).
**CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE BALLOT ACCESS CHART FOR THIRD PARTY & INDEPENDENT CANDIDATES**
AMERICA'S PARTY / AMERICAN INDEPENDENT PARTY:
AMERICAN THIRD POSITION PARTY:
CONSTITUTION PARTY:
GREEN PARTY:
JUSTICE PARTY:
NOTE: ALSO NOMINEE OF THE INDEPENDENCE PARTY OF CONNECTICUT and NATURAL LAW PARTY OF MICHIGAN.
LIBERTARIAN PARTY:
OBJECTIVIST PARTY:
PARTY OF SOCIALISM AND LIBERATION (PSL):
NOTE: THE PSL MAY ALSO USE SURROGATE PSL NOMINEES IN SOME STATES, WHERE NEEDED FOR BALLOT ACCESS PURPOSES, AS LINDSAY (AGE 27) AND OSORIO (AGE 26 & FOREIGN BORN) ARE NOT CONSTITUTIONALLY QUALIFIED TO SERVE IF ELECTED.
PEACE & FREEDOM PARTY:
PROHIBITION PARTY:
REFORM PARTY USA:
SOCIALIST PARTY USA (SP-USA) / LIBERTY UNION PARTY:
SOCIALIST EQUALITY PARTY:
SOCIALIST WORKERS PARTY (SWP):
NOTE: THE SWP MAY ALSO USE A SURROGATE VP NOMINEE IN SOME STATES, WHERE NEEDED FOR BALLOT ACCESS PURPOSES, AS MAURA DeLUCA (AGE 33) IS NOT CONSTITUTIONALLY QUALIFIED TO SERVE IF ELECTED.
INDEPENDENT CANDIDATES WITH BALLOT STATUS IN AT LEAST ONE STATE:
Jeff Boss (Independent-New Jersey)
Jim Carlson (Grassroots-Minnesota) - No Campaign Website
Will Christensen (Independent American / Oregon Constitution-Utah)
Richard Duncan (Independent-Ohio) - No Campaign Website
Jerry Litzel (Independent-Iowa) - No Campaign Website
Dean Morstad (Independent-Minnesota)
Jill Reed (Twelve Visions-Wyoming)
Randall Terry (Independent-West Virginia)
Sheila "Samm" Tittle (We The People-Virginia)
Barbara Dale Washer (Mississippi Reform-Mississippi) - No Campaign Website
INDEPENDENT, OTHER & WRITE-IN CANDIDATES WITHOUT BALLOT STATUS IN ANY STATES:
Dorothy "Doc" Adams (Independent-Texas)
Avery Ayers (Independent-Texas)
Jeff Block (Independent-Georgia)
Tiffany Briscoe (Independent-Maryland) Whence Brown (Independent-Washington)
Darryl Bryant (Write In-Georgia)
Robert "Naked Cowboy" Burck (Independent-New York)
Lester Byerley Jr. (Tea-New Jersey)
President Emperor Caesar (Independent-Florida)
Hal Chad Carrington-Hayes (Independent-Arizona)
Jerry Carroll (Independent-California)
Joseph Charles (Independent-Texas)
Paul Chehade (Independent-Florida)
Liza Dawn Cherricks (Independent-Delaware)
Santa Claus (Write In-Nevada)
Todd Clayton Jr. (Constitutionalist-Washington)
Douglas Clement (Independent-Missouri)
Floyd Conover (Independent-Tennessee)
James Cooper (Michigan)
Don Cordell (Write In-California)
Sanford Cramer III (Independent-California)
Christopher Dardzinski (Write In-Michigan)
Fred Donald Dickson Jr. (Write In-Maryland)
Michael Doname (Independent-New York)
Jim Duensing (Boston Tea Party-Nevada)
Stephen Durham (Freedom Socialist Party-New York)
Michael David Elder (Independent-Texas)
John "Green" Ferguson (Eco Green Party-Texas)
Ronald Gascon (Write In-Pennsylvania)
Jackie Gouge (Independent-Texas)
Mark B. Graham (Citizens-West Virginia)
Ken Grammer (Independent-Virginia)
J. Paul Hadd (Write In-Pennsylvania)
Bob Hall (Independent-Illinois)
William Harney (Independent-Florida)
Rutherford Bert Hayes (Independent-Arkansas)
Craig Hermann (Independent-Florida)
RaeDeen Heupel (Independent-Montana)
Thaddaus Hill (Madisonian Federalist-Texas)
Darrell Hillis (Independent-Tennessee)
John Hoelzel Jr. (Independent-Texas)
Samuel Hoff (Independent-Delaware)
Brian Holland (National Socialist Movement-Virginia)
"Mad Mike" Hughes (Independent-California)
Darrell Hykes (Independent-Georgia)
Michael Jenkins (Write In-Texas)
Ronald D. Jones (Independent-Florida)
Terry Jones (Independent-Florida)
Scott Keller (Independent-Florida)
Nelson Keyton (Independent-Virginia)
Dennis Knill (Independent-Arizona)
Tollefsen Kristen (Independent-Virginia)
Gott Johan Josephe Lally (Independent-Vermont)
Temperance Alesha Lance-Council (Anti-Hypocrisy-California)
Jerry Lanser (Independent-Colorado)
David Larson (American Independent-California)
Robert Lee (Independent-Virginia)
Brad Lefler (Independent-Ohio)
Michael "Lev" Levinson (Independent-Florida)
Sophia the Logos (Independent-Virginia)
Love-22 (Write In-California)
Ed Maddox (Independent-South Dakota)
James McCall (Independent-Ohio)
Richard McCormick (Kis-Washington)
Ron McCune (Independent-Florida)
David McFadden (Independent-Ohio)
J.L. Mealer (Independent-Arizona)
Albert Morzuch (Independent-Florida)
Bill Nees (Write In-Georgia)
John Parmele Jr. (Independent-Virginia)
Mark Pimentel (Independent-Florida)
Matthew David Pinnavaia (Independent-California)
Samuel "Uncle Sam" Powell (Independent-District of Columbia)
Rajesh Raghavan (Independent-Maryland)
Arthur Rakowitz (Independent Party-Texas)
Luis Ramos Jr. (Write In-New York)
Rich Reed (Independent-Kansas)
John Karl Reiman (Independent-California)
"Mad Max" Riekse (Citizens-Michigan)
Platt Robertson (Write In-Nevada)
Rick Rogers (Independent-Washington)
Billy Roper (Nationalist-Arkansas)
Paul Rosenberger (Independent-California)
Laurie Roth (Independent-Washington)
Dan Rozelle (Independent-Indiana)
Donald Sauter (Independent-Delaware)
Francis Savarirayan (Independent-Illinois)
"Average Joe" Schriner (Independent-Ohio)
Larry Schuetter (United Third Party-California)
Stephen Shadden (Independent-Oklahoma)
William Shaw (Independent-Illinois)
James Dee Shinn (Independent-West Virginia)
Montgomery Blair Sibley (Write In-District of Columbia)
Jeff Siggins (Write In-Delaware)
Charles Smith (Write In-Pennsylvania)
David Jon Sponheim (America's Third Party-Washington)
Gary Stark (Independent-California)
Scott Allen Meek Stephens (Independent-New York)
Vincent Stieber Jr. (Independent-Ohio)
Vermin Supreme (Independent-Massachusetts)
Charles Tolbert (Independent-Florida)
Anthony Tubbs (Independent-Louisiana)
Douglas "Dutch" Van Raam (Independent-Arizona)
Da Vid (Light Party-California)
George Washington Williams (Independent-Ohio)
Andrew Wildman (Independent-Louisiana)
Jerry Wilson (Write In-Tennessee)
Michael "Doc" Witort (Independent-Illinois)
Danny Woodring (Write In-Florida)
OTHER P2012 RESOURCES:
New Hampshire Political Library - This site contains just about anything you could ever want to know about the influential New Hampshire Presidential primary -- including a directory of every candidate who ever ran in the NH primary. Maintained by the New Hampshire State Library, Franklin Pierce College, University of New Hampshire, St. Anselm College, the New Hampshire State Archives and the New Hampshire Historical Society.
C-SPAN: Road to the White House - Information, links and some streaming video events from one of the nation's leading sources of raw political television coverage. Covers the various likely Presidential candidates. Constantly updated.
Ballot Access News - This respected publication -- founded in 1985 by Libertarian activist Richard Winger -- tracks the attempts of third party and independent candidates for various offices to secure ballot access in the 50 states. The site also tracks changes in the law, court challenges and other interesting tidbits of third party news you usually won't find elsewhere. Use this page to stay current on which third party and independent candidates will and won't appear on your state's general election ballot in November 2008
Democracy in Action: P2012 - A great site has lots of detailed information on the 2012 Presidential contest. Published by Eric Appleman of GWU. Eric has been covering the White House races starting with the 2000 elections. Very useful, well balanced. A great resource.
Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections - Dave Leip prepared this very informative site, which provides historic voting results from the Presidential general elections of 1860-2008. Covers the vote totals for the major party nominees and the top 2-3 third party nominees in each race. Colorful maps and graphs, too.
PollingReport.com - Why bother reinventing the wheel and writing our own poll tracking page when this excellent page already exists. To follow the trends in all of the latest polls in the White House race, simply visit this site.
Commission on Presidential Debates - Established by leaders of the two major parties to ensure that debates remain a permanent part of every general election, this nonprofit and bipartisan organization sponsored all the general election Presidential debates since 1988. Their controversial and restrictive participation rules largely exclude third party candidates (even the major ones) from participating in these nationally televised debates.
VicePresidents.com - No one pays much attention to Vice Presidents -- or, at least, they didn't used to -- except for these guys. History, trivia, quotes, bios, and more.
4President.org - An online museum of Presidential campaign brochures, bumper stickers and key speches from 1960 through the 2008 campaign. A great site for political junkies. |
When Gimpville co-founder Alf Lovvold decided to make a trailer in his spare time aimed at experimenting with complex scenes and GPU rendering, he started documenting the process. The Norwegian artist would upload test shots to his Vimeo page and receive and review comments. Then, boom, about a month ago he posted the finished trailer online and called it Dawn of the Planet of the Zombies and the Giant Killer Plants on Some Serious Acid. That pretty much sums up the action in the trailer, and it certainly resonated with other artists worldwide, quickly amassing hundreds of thousands of views. fxguide thought we’d find out more about Lovvold’s seven month approach to the work.
One of the artist’s initial desires was to see how much geo GPU renderer Redshift could handle. “It turned out,” says Lovvold,” that I could pretty much throw whatever at it and once the initial previz was done, I crammed a lot of details in there to, hopefully, get some interesting looking shots. As work continued, i developed the concept side-by-side into a fictive film trailer.”
The first shots for Dawn of the Planet of the Zombies were ‘one-offs’ done without storyboarding or animatics, but later scenes of the car chases involved more planning. “I roughly storyboarded the sequence and also made a map in terms of city layout to plan ahead in terms of witch way the car was actually driving and so forth,” explains Lovvold. “My main area of expertise is fairly quick animatics so it was natural for me to previz the whole sequence and lock in all camera work and rough animation before moving on to adding 2nd animation and detailing it up. I would also do rendered ‘ dailies’ as often as I could when I did updates to the sequence.”
Some live action would inform the CG animation, but not a great deal. “The only live action used, besides a lot of FX plates, was the guy on top of the Humvee,” says Lovvold. “Originally, I tried to hide him away as much as possible due to a fairly simple stock character from Mixamo. Though, I got contacted by some nice people from Sweden (Stiller Studios) who offered to help me out with some plates. I said yes, and next thing I was off to Sweden shooting plates for it in their awesome studio with motion control gear. To match up the placement of the camera and actor / vehicle - I sent Stiller some of my Maya scenes for data extraction. They matched up nicely.”
Since Lovvold was working as a one-man team, he looked to stock assets for things like the vehicles and aircraft featured in the piece. “I used sites like 3D02, TurboSquid and Evermotion,” he says. “Once cleaned up and optimized, I would do some custom work of most assets - and for assets like the Humvee / Heli, rig them for animation.”
Digital characters were Mixamo assets with various running cycles. “Since they are fairly low poly,” notes Lovvold, “I kept most characters small in the frame and dynamic to, hopefully, get away with it. For the crowd itself, I used Golaem Crowd Sim to make them chase a target - and from there, exported all characters into Alembic keeping most tech and fuzz away from the main render scene. Some characters where also manually placed out.”
Dawn of the Planet of the Zombies includes an unusual array of plant life, which was created from “foliage exported from Ivygen, Maya`s native PaintFX, a lot of custom modelling and some optimised trees from Evermotion,” says Lovvold. “I tried to really be effective in terms of scene load, and hence render time, so most foliage assets was imported as Redshift proxies.”
As stated, the intention of the piece was to test out GPU rendering in Redshift, a tool Lovvold says handled the work incredibly well. “Rendering on GPUs was really no issue. Though to be able to do chew out frames and updates frequently I would optimise assets in terms of poly count, combining objects, using a minimal amount of reflective shaders, using RS sprite shader for transparent objects, keeping it low poly and as clean as possible and using proxies for all heavy geo. This way, I was able to do the whole project on a single workstation with render times ranging from 2min to 15min in 1440p with full brute force GI and Motionblur / DOF. Deadline was also used to stack up jobs so my workstation would be busy around the clock.”
The CG renders were composited in Fusion. “I’m an old Fusion user,” states Lovvold, “and I’m still sticking to it even with all the NUKE hype. NUKE is great, but for my kind of work - I haven’t run by any job I couldn’t do in Fusion just as fast or as good. I really hope Fusion, with Blackmagic as a backbone, regains traction in its field. And, if your’e a small studio not doing overly complicated stuff or some fancy pipeline integration, Fusion is currently free with very few limitations vs. NUKE’s hefty price tag.”
The score was composed by Lovvold’s friend Ådne Lyngstad Nilsen, with SFX done in After Effects based on stock from Pond5 and VC. “I did basic mastering before final output was done in Audacity,” says Lovvold. “It was quite an amount of work since there’s a lot going on in the 44 shots.”
Lovvold created the piece on a single workstation from his home in Norway. “Nothing too special,” he admits, “except four GTX780TIs for the GPU rendering. You could say the last generation top-end cards - I would go with GTX980TIs or TitanXs if i where to build a new system now a days. My workstation also doubled as an oven in my tiny cellar, with each GPU card running at 83C!”
Find out more about Alf’s work at his website: http://www.alflovvold.com |
'The seven golden rules for a healthy life: Simple lifestyle steps can help prevent cancer and heart disease,' the Mail Online website reports. This accurate headline comes from a new study that found that people who took steps to reduce their heart disease risk also had a lower risk of developing cancer. These seven factors, drawn up by the American Heart Association (AHA) in 2010, were designed as an easy way for people to understand the best ways of avoiding cardiovascular disease (CVD), such as heart disease.
In this large long-term study, researchers found that cancer risk was lower among people who met the ideal levels for each of the seven factors. For example, people who achieved ideal levels for six or more factors had a 51% reduced cancer risk. Having just four of the factors at ideal levels still reduced cancer risk by 33%.
While this is welcome news, it is worth noting that smoking appeared responsible for the majority of the associations seen between the seven factors and cancer risk. However, even after excluding smoking, having ideal levels for more factors was associated with a reduced risk of cancer.
Where did the story come from?
The study was carried out by researchers from Northwestern University (Chicago), the University of Minnesota, and a number of other US research institutions. It was funded by the US National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, the state of Maryland, the Maryland Cigarette Restitution Fund, and the National Program of Cancer Registries.
It was published in the peer-reviewed journal Circulation which has been made available on an open access basis.
This story was covered well by The Daily Telegraph, Daily Express and the Mail Online website. The Mail Online helpfully provides background information on previous studies related to each of the seven factors.
The Daily Telegraph introduced the story with a quotation from Professor Jean-Pierre Després, scientific director of the International Chair on Cardiometabolic Risk, who said that only one in every 1,000 (0.1%) people in the developed world have ideal levels for all of the seven factors. The current study also found that only 0.1% of participants had ideal levels of all seven factors.
What kind of research was this?
This was a cohort study that followed people for between 17 and 19 years to see if maintaining ideal levels of seven health factors proposed by the AHA to promote cardiovascular health also reduced the risk of cancer.
The seven health factors and their ideal levels are:
physical activity – at least 75 minutes per week of vigorous physical activity, or 150 minutes per week of moderate or moderate plus vigorous activity
healthy body mass index (BMI) – less than 25kg/m2
diet – having four to five components of a healthy diet score
cholesterol – total cholesterol less than 200mg/dl
blood pressure – less than 120mm Hg systolic and 80mm diastolic
blood sugar – fasting levels of glucose less than 100mg/dl
smoking – never smoking, or quitting more than 12 months ago
This study was a large cohort study with a long follow-up period. As with all cohort studies, this study cannot prove that maintaining ideal levels of the seven factors – referred to in the press as the 'seven golden rules' – is the only thing that causes a reduction in cancer risk. The presence of other factors that could also be responsible for the association (confounders) cannot be excluded.
A randomised controlled trial would be required to prove a direct causal effect, and would need to be designed with care. Given what we know about healthy lifestyles, it would be unethical to randomise people to smoking, no exercise, and bad diet.
What did the research involve?
The researchers analysed information for 13,253 white and African American participants in a large US cohort study (the Atherosclerosis Risk In Communities study). Participants were aged between 45 and 64 at the start of the study, and only people who did not have cancer when the trial started were considered in this study. Participants were followed-up for between 17 and 19 years.
The researchers looked to see whether baseline measurements for the seven health behaviours and factors were associated with the risk of developing cancer.
Each participant's diet was assessed using a food frequency questionnaire. Physical activity was also reported using a questionnaire, and smoking status was derived from interviews. Blood samples were taken to measure cholesterol and glucose levels. Blood pressure, weight and height were also measured.
Information relating to cancer that developed during follow-up was obtained from cancer registries and hospital surveillance.
All types of cancer – except non-melanoma skin cancer – were combined. Non-melanoma skin cancer was excluded because the main risk factor for the development of this type of cancer is exposure to sunlight or UV light, which is different from most other types of cancer.
What were the basic results?
At the start of the study:
71.5% of participants did not smoke
33.2% had ideal BMI
26.9% had ideal cholesterol levels
5.3% had ideal diet
37.9% had ideal levels of physical activity
51.8% had ideal levels of blood sugar
41.6% had ideal levels of blood pressure
Most people had ideal levels of two or three health factors. Only 16 people (0.1% of all participants) had ideal levels of all seven health factors, while 371 (2.8%) did not have ideal levels for any of the factors.
During the follow-up, 2,880 people were diagnosed with cancer. As the number of factors that participants had ideal levels of at baseline increased, the risk of developing cancer during the follow-up fell.
Compared with people who had no ideal levels of the seven factors:
people who had ideal levels of six or seven of the factors (2.7% of participants) had 51% lower risk of cancer (hazard ratio (HR) 0.49, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.35 to 0.69)
people who had ideal levels of five factors (8.8% of participants) had 39% lower risk of cancer (HR 0.61, 95% CI 0.48 to 0.79)
people who had ideal levels of four factors (17.8% of participants) had 33% lower risk of cancer (HR 0.67, 95% CI 0.54 to 0.84)
people who had ideal levels of three factors (26.3% of participants) had 26% lower risk of cancer (HR 0.74, 95% CI 0.59 to 0.91)
people who had ideal levels of one or two factors (41.6% of participants) had 21% lower risk of cancer (HR 0.79, 95% CI 0.64 to 0.98)
When smoking was excluded, participants who had ideal levels of five or six of the remaining factors had 25% lower risk of cancer than those who did not have ideal levels of any of the factors.
How did the researchers interpret the results?
The researchers conclude that having ideal levels of the seven factors and behaviours proposed by the American Heart Association (physical activity, body weight, diet, cholesterol, blood pressure, blood sugar and smoking) is associated with a reduced development of cancer.
Conclusion
This was a very large study. It found that having ideal levels (defined by the American Heart Association) of seven factors and behaviours was associated with a reduced risk of cancer. These factors include smoking, diet, physical activity, BMI, cholesterol, blood sugar and blood pressure.
However, it seems that a large proportion of the association was due to one behaviour: smoking. It represents further proof, if any more is required, of how smoking can harm multiple aspects of your health, such as your heart, blood pressure, circulation and individual risk of developing cancer.
This study has several strengths, including its size and length of follow-up. However, it also has several limitations, most of which were noted by the authors.
The researchers did adjust for age, sex, race and location when performing their analyses, but they say they did not adjust for a number of other factors that could explain the association (confounders), such as socioeconomic status or other cancer risk factors. However, because we already know about these behaviours and risk factors, this may not be an important limitation.
Health behaviours and factors were only measured once, at the start of the study, and could have changed during the long period of follow-up. In addition, some variables, such as diet and exercise, were self-reported by participants, rather than being objectively measured. Both of these things may have reduced the accuracy of the measurement.
The study only included white and African American people, so its results may not be entirely applicable to other ethnic groups. But, again, given what is known about these behaviours and risk factors, this may also not be an important limitation.
Although these goals were drawn up to prevent cardiovascular disease, in this study they have been shown to be associated with a reduced risk of cancer. It is likely that they are also associated with a reduced risk of other chronic diseases too.
This study reinforces what is already known about health and cancer risk, but adds useful numbers showing the effect of tackling several things together. The message is clear: not smoking, maintaining a healthy weight, staying physically active and maintaining ideal levels of cholesterol, blood sugar and blood pressure is beneficial for long-term good health. |
The Dallas Cowboys and Indianapolis Colts are both coming off losses in Week 1 of the preseason, and both teams face questions at a major skill position heading into the regular season. They’ll face each other on Saturday evening at AT&T Stadium.
This is one of the national games on a busy Saturday slate. Kickoff is at 7 p.m. ET, and it will be televised on NFL Network and streaming online at Watch NFL Network.
The Colts have been vague about Andrew Luck’s status all August, and we still don’t know when he’ll be ready to play. Luck underwent surgery on his throwing shoulder in the offseason and has yet to participate in training camp. When pressed on the subject, Colts owner Jim Irsay said that Luck will be ready “around the start of the season,” but the team isn’t sure if he’ll play in Week 1.
Either way, the Colts should be prepared for the worst and have a backup quarterback ready, which could be a big problem. Scott Tolzien was pretty dreadful in the preseason opener, completing just 2 of 5 passes for 24 yards. Stephen Morris and Phillip Walker weren’t much better as the Colts dropped a 24-10 loss to the Detroit Lions. Not helping matters is the absence of starting center Ryan Kelly, who will likely be out for the first half of the season after undergoing foot surgery.
The Cowboys, for their part, don’t have too many serious injury worries, but they’re still expected to be without star running back Ezekiel Elliott, who was suspended six games for violating the NFL’s domestic violence policy. Elliott has appealed the decision in what could be an ugly legal battle, with the league office and NFLPA trading barbs on Twitter earlier in the week.
In the meantime, Dallas has Darren McFadden, Alfred Morris, and Rod Smith, who should all get a chance to step up and win the starting job while Elliott is sidelined. McFadden played with the first team in last week’s 13-10 loss to the Los Angeles Rams, carrying the ball six times for 28 yards. Morris had five carries for 11 yards, while Smith was a distant third on the depth chart with just one carry for 2 yards.
Besides Elliott, one of the big stories in the Cowboys’ preseason has been the development of tight end Rico Gathers. A basketball player at Baylor, Gathers is making some eye-opening plays this month and scored another touchdown in last week’s game, finishing with four catches on six targets for 47 yards. The Cowboys are set at starting tight end with the ageless veteran Jason Witten, but Gathers could well play himself onto the final 53-man roster.
Another name to watch is Cowboys linebacker Jaylon Smith. A highly touted prospect out of Notre Dame, Smith was a potential top-five draft pick before he suffered a devastating knee injury in his team’s bowl game. The Cowboys took him in the second round of the 2016 NFL Draft, but he missed his entire rookie year recovering. Now Smith is healthy enough to see some football action, and he’s set to make his debut in this game. If Smith plays up to his potential, he’ll be a big upgrade to a defense that was average at best last season.
How to watch Colts vs. Cowboys Saturday night
Time: 7 p.m. ET
Place: AT&T Stadium, Arlington, Texas
TV: NFL Network
Announcers: Don Fischer, Rick Venturi (Indianapolis); Bill Jones, Babe Laufenberg, DeMarcus Ware (Dallas)
Online: Watch NFL Network
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People have different reactions when their team loses important games.
For CSN Mid-Atlantic sports anchor Michael Jenkins, he decided to turn to alcohol live on air.
After the Washington Capitals lost their NHL Playoffs Eastern Conference semifinals series to the Pittsburgh Penquins in game 6, going down 4-3 in overtime, Jenkins poured himself a stiff drink and got on with the job.
CSN Sport anchor Michael Jenkins commiserated in unorthodox fashion.
The result was a hilarious performance on live television.
READ MORE: Putin a hit on the ice
"I've got a message for all you kids out there," Jenkins said at one point.
"I know everyone says, 'oh, you can do whatever you want if you put your mind to it'. It's all one big lie."
There's always next year for Jenkins and the Caps. |
Mansfield had a lucky escape from the clutches of a cosmic villain as election fever swept Nottinghamshire last night.
A Mansfield voter decided to plunge the General election into a parallel universe by voting for Star Wars infiltrator Darth Vader.
Mr Vader, a Death Star proprietor was a late entrant as a Mansfield candidate in this year’s general election - at least on this voting card, which was revealed on a Tweet from @killer_kitsch last night.
Vader, who appeared as a Galactic Empire candidate, from Nottinghamshire postcode NG196DZ, had mysteriously replaced Labour’s Sir Alan Meale.
It appears the Force was not with Mr Vader on this particular occasion as his dastardly plan to exercise power through the democratic process unravelled.
A spokesman was unable to confirm reports that Mr Vader was considering resigning his position as Supreme Commander of the Empire this morning. |
Four US Congressmen have introduced legislation in a bid to block an airline's attempt to launch the first transatlantic flights from Cork Airport.
Representatives Peter DeFazio and Rick Larsen, both Democrats, and Republicans Frank LoBiondo and Lynn Westmoreland, confirmed last night that they have introduced a bipartisan bill that would prevent the US Department of Transportation (DoT) from permitting a foreign air carrier to operate between European countries and the US unless the carrier complies with basic, fair US or EU labour standards.
The legislation was introduced in response to the DoT’s tentative decision earlier this month to grant a permit to Norwegian Airline's Irish subsidiary, Norwegian Air International (NAI), to operate flights between Ireland and the US.
It comes days after Norwegian's boss, Bjorn Kjos, said he hope to start the Cork to Boston service in August, pending formal DoT approval expected late next month.
The representatives claim that NAI set up in Ireland, where labour laws permit it to hire pilots and crew on individual contracts under non-EU law to cut costs.
Mr De Fazio claimed NAI’s "overt practice of labour forum-shopping" violates the EU-US Open Skies deal and gives the airline an unfair competitive advantage in the transatlantic market.
Norwegian has always insisted that it complies fully with Open Skies. The US DoT has also said there is no legal impediment to the granting of a foreign carrier permit.
Cork Airport is expected to fight the move. |
Attorneys for a Russian entrepreneur say they have discovered the source who provided BuzzFeed with the infamous Trump dossier whose unverified charges were embraced by the FBI.
They are not disclosing the identity for now.
BuzzFeed took the momentous step on Jan. 10, 2017, of posting the entire 35 pages, including salacious charges about President Trump and “golden showers” in a Moscow hotel. The posting propelled a document seen only by Washington insiders into worldwide public exposure
Aleksej Gubarev, chief of XBT holdings and its Webzilla web hosting firm, is suing BuzzFeed for libel in U.S. District Court in Florida.
The dossier, orchestrated by Democrats and the firm Fusion GPS and written by former British spy Christopher Steele, accused Mr. Gubarev of hacking Democratic Party computers under pressure from Russian intelligence.
As part of pre-trial discovery, Mr. Gubarev’s attorneys had asked a judge to compel BuzzFeed to name its source.
All Trump people accused in the dossier have denied the charges of Russian collusion and have labeled the document fiction.
Fusion, which passed around the dossier or its information to Washington reporters and politicians, has denied it was BuzzFeed’s source. In another case, Fusion is being sued for libel by three Russian oligarch bankers. The dossier accused the Alfa Bank investors of paying bribes to President Vladimir Putin and implied they were involved in Russian election interference.
Val Gurvits, one of Mr. Gubarev’s attorneys, told The Washington Times on Friday that he now knows the BuzzFeed source.
“I unfortunately cannot give you any details because that information has been designated as confidential attorneys eyes only for the moment,” said Mr. Gurvits, who heads Boston Law Group.
Two new developments in the case happened at about the same time.
A judge ruled on Thursday against compelling BuzzFeed to produce its source.
The Gubarev team responded by saying it already knew the name.
“Because we obtained the information about BuzzFeed’s source from the source itself, we were in the process of withdrawing our motion to compel BuzzFeed to reveal their source,” said Charles Dolan, a spokesman for Mr. Gubarev. “Before we had the chance to file our withdrawal, the judge in Miami issued an order denying our motion to compel. His reasoning was that we did not yet exhaust all other possible ways to get the information. BuzzFeed is trying to use this ruling as a positive development, which it is not.”
BuzzFeed declared victory with the judge’s opinion that reporters have a right to protect sources.
“We’re pleased the judge has reaffirmed the right of news organizations to safeguard the identities of sources — a right that is protected under both state and federal law,” said spokesman Matt Mittenthal.
As for the Gubarev lawyers saying they located the source, Mr. Mittenthal said, “The First Amendment gives plaintiffs every right to try to spin a loss as a win, but in this case it will not work. The issue before the court was about protecting sources and the judge ruled clearly in BuzzFeed’s favor.”
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission. |
article
Comedian Larry the Cable Guy took a break from comedy to talk presidential politics and Hillary Clinton’s email scandal.
Continue Reading Below
But first he responded to the controversy over San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s decision to not stand for the national anthem before the team’s preseason game against the Green Bay Packers.
“He’s third string, he doesn’t play that much anyway, you’d think wanting to stand for the national anthem he’s getting some exercise, get him up in the air every now and then, you know what I mean,” Larry the Cable Guy told the FOX Business Network’s Stuart Varney.
Larry the Cable Guy shifted gears to politics, weighing in on Hillary Clinton’s scandal and her handling of the controversy.
“There’s people in jail that have done worse than she [Hillary Clinton] has done. She is a criminal, that’s a fact. I mean, there’s people going to jail for doing what she did. You know, I think, look, when you have somebody running for president that has committed the crimes that she’s committed, by not concealing her e-mails, putting them on servers that people can get into.”
Then Larry the Cable Guy criticized Clinton’s seemingly dishonest handling of the scandal.
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“And then flat out looking at the American people and lying to them. I mean, when she said, ‘well, they’ve released everything I’ve got, I mean let them go ahead and look at them, released everything.’ Oh, hey guess what, here we are seven months later, they just found 15,000 more that you didn’t release. And she acts like that’s no big deal. I’m a pretty even-keeled dude, just be honest, just be honest. So we really want to elect somebody that has already looked you in the straight in the eye and flat out lied to you? Really?”
But Larry the Cable Guy did not appear to be behind Donald Trump’s campaign either.
“And I’m not saying that the other guy is [Donald Trump] any better. But I’m just saying I don’t want somebody like that leading the country.” |
President-elect Donald Trump Donald John TrumpHouse committee believes it has evidence Trump requested putting ally in charge of Cohen probe: report Vietnamese airline takes steps to open flights to US on sidelines of Trump-Kim summit Manafort's attorneys say he should get less than 10 years in prison MORE slammed China on Sunday, criticizing the country on Twitter for taxing U.S. products and for its aggression in the South China Sea.
“Did China ask us if it was OK to devalue their currency (making it hard for our companies to compete), heavily tax our products going into…their country (the U.S. doesn't tax them) or to build a massive military complex in the middle of the South China Sea? I don't think so!” Trump wrote in two separate tweets on Sunday evening.
Did China ask us if it was OK to devalue their currency (making it hard for our companies to compete), heavily tax our products going into.. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 4, 2016
their country (the U.S. doesn't tax them) or to build a massive military complex in the middle of the South China Sea? I don't think so! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 4, 2016
The tweets come several days after Trump’s conversation with Taiwan’s president, which broke years of United States diplomatic protocol and risked a rift with China.
China said on Saturday that it raised a complaint over the call.
"We have noticed relevant reports and lodged solemn representation with the relevant side in the United States," the country’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway told pool reporters in the lobby of Trump Tower on Sunday morning that Taiwan President Tai Ing-wen called Trump.
“He received a phone call. He received a congratulatory phone call. It was brief. And he also recognizes that we currently have a president of the United States and a commander-in-chief until Jan. 20,” she said, according to the pool report.
Trump criticized China throughout his presidential campaign, arguing that trade deals have hurt American jobs and workers. |
Today, we are pleased to share the first version of an early alpha‑level patch that enables HTTP/2 support in NGINX.
Editor – HTTP/2 is fully supported in NGINX 1.9.5 and later, and NGINX Plus R7 and later. The patch described in this post is no longer necessary, but is provided for the convenience of customers using NGINX versions 1.9.0 through 1.9.4.
How NGINX Supports HTTP/2
HTTP/2 is new, which means there is quite a bit of fear and misunderstanding around it. One of the biggest fears is that supporting HTTP/2 requires rearchitecting the entire application. That fear, and many of the others around HTTP/2, are unfounded. With NGINX, HTTP/2 can be supported with very little change to application architecture.
NGINX acts as an “HTTP/2 gateway” to ease the transition to the new protocol. On the front end, NGINX talks HTTP/2 to client web browsers that support it, and on the back end it talks HTTP/1.x (or FastCGI, SCGI, or uwsgi) just as before. In between, NGINX translates between HTTP/2 and HTTP/1.x (or FastCGI, etc). This means that servers and applications proxied by NGINX will be unaffected by the move to HTTP/2, and don’t really even need to know that their clients are using HTTP/2. The only configuration change you need to make to your existing HTTPS setup is adding http2 to existing listen directives (the ssl parameter is also required):
listen 443 ssl http2 default_server;
As of June 2015, over 50% of users run web browsers that support HTTP/2. The adoption of HTTP/2 by web browsers is strong and will continue to increase over time. To support both HTTP/1.x and HTTP/2 side by side, NGINX implements the Application Layer Protocol Negotiation (ALPN) extension to TLS. When a web browser connects to a server, it sends a list of the protocols it supports. If h2 is in the list, NGINX uses HTTP/2 for that connection. If the browser doesn’t implement ALPN or doesn’t include h2 in its list of supported protocols, NGINX falls back to HTTP/1.x.
As you might be aware, there are a number of HTTP/1.x optimizations that are now “anti‑patterns” with HTTP/2. Optimizations such as image spriting, concatenation, inlining, and domain sharding that helped performance with HTTP/1.x are no longer needed with HTTP/2. You can adopt HTTP/2 even if you use these optimizations, but we recommend that you remove them eventually to maximize performance with HTTP/2.
Installing the HTTP/2 Patch
Editor – HTTP/2 is fully supported in NGINX 1.9.5 and later, and NGINX Plus R7 and later. These instructions are no longer necessary, but are provided for the convenience of customers running NGINX versions 1.9.0 through 1.9.4.
Install OpenSSL 1.0.2 or later. This is required to support the ALPN extension to TLS that our HTTP/2 implementation uses. Download and unpack the source code for an NGINX version between 1.9.0 and 1.9.4, if necessary. The example is for NGINX 1.9.3. # wget http://nginx.org/download/nginx-1.9.3.tar.gz # tar zxvf nginx-1.9.3.tar.gz # cd nginx-1.9.3 Download the patch. [Editor – The patch is now available at http://nginx.org/patches/attic/http2/.] # wget http://nginx.org/patches/http2/patch.http2.txt Do a dry run to make sure the patch will be applied cleanly. # patch -p1 --dry-run < patch.http2.txt If no errors are reported, apply the patch. # patch -p1 < patch.http2.txt Recompile NGINX, including the following options along with the others you normally include. If you are building NGINX with OpenSSL from source and statically linking to it: # ./configure --with-http_ssl_module --with-http_v2_module --with-debug --with-openssl=/path/to/openssl-1.0.2 ...
If OpenSSL is installed as an optional library (as on Mac OS X, for example): # ./configure --with-http_ssl_module --with-http_v2_module --with-debug --with-cc-opt="-I/opt/local/include" --with-ld-opt="-L/opt/local/lib" ... Build NGINX. # make
Configuring NGINX
To enable HTTP/2 support, simply add the ssl and http2 parameters to existing listen directives:
server { listen 443 ssl http2 default_server; ssl_certificate server.crt; ssl_certificate_key server.key; # ... }
Note: The ssl parameter is required. At the time of this writing HTTP/2 is not supported without SSL encryption by browsers.
A good way to verify that HTTP/2 translation is working is the HTTP/2 and SPDY indicator plug‑in for Google Chrome. A similar plug‑in is available for Firefox.
Caveats
As with any early release software, there are a few caveats:
It is important to note that the patch is at an early alpha level of quality and should not be used in production. We are still actively working on bringing our HTTP/2 implementation to production quality. We would very much appreciate your help in achieving NGINX Inc.’s standards for reliability and performance by testing this alpha in nonproduction environments and sending feedback to the nginx-devel
HTTP/2’s ‘Server Push’ feature is not supported in this patch and will not be supported in the first production‑ready release of the HTTP/2 implementation. This feature might appear in a future NGINX release.
Applying this patch removes the SPDY module from the NGINX codebase and replaces it with the HTTP/2 module. After applying this patch, you can no longer configure NGINX to use SPDY. This will also be the case for the production‑ready release of the HTTP/2 implementation in both NGINX and NGINX Plus. SPDY is being deprecated by Google in early 2016, so there is no need to support both.
Special Thanks
NGINX, Inc. would like to thank Dropbox and Automattic, who are heavy users of our software and graciously cosponsored the development of our HTTP/2 implementation. Their contributions have helped accelerate our ability to bring this software to you, and we hope you are able to support them in turn. |
High school students in Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows went back to class this week asking for the Wi-Fi password, only to be told they won’t be able to access social media on it.
School District 42 has configured Internet connections at its six high schools to block access to Netflix, Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook on devices connected to school Wi-Fi.
Assistant superintendent Shannon Derinzy said the decision was made with support from each principal, after counsellors vocalized concerns that students were too attached to their social media and not paying attention in the classroom.
“It was becoming an issue,” Derinzy said.
What once was passing notes to your friends has turned into sending each other Snapchats during class, and officials are grappling with how to handle students using social media while on campus.
“We’re trying to say these are realities of today – actually a valuable education tool – but how can we use them in meaningful ways,” Derinzy said.
READ MORE: Victoria middle school cutting the chord on cellphone use
Social media educator Sean Smith says configuring Wi-Fi access is a band-aid solution, however, for what really needs to be addressed: teaching children and youth to use social media in a positive way.
“The problem doesn’t lie in the device, or in the application,” Smith said. “The problem only lies in the fact that we are in denial that they exist.”
Smith, founder of The Digital Hallway, said social media posting is an expected skill to have nowadays for most careers, with employers looking at a candidates’ accounts before hiring.
Educators need to adapt to incorporating the technology in the classroom, he insisted.
“If you find that you have two dozen kids that are sitting there surfing Facebook in the classroom time, maybe the problem isn’t with the device, maybe it’s the teacher,” he said. “Why does a kid get distracted? Because they’re bored.”
Smith suggested it can be as simple as adapting school projects – like creative writing assignments – to integrating a students phone.
“It’s about the creation and creativity of a story, and that story can be done on Instagram or Snapchat.”
Blocked WiFi could cost parents in data usage
Derinzy said staff are aware students can just turn to using their own cell phone data, with the Wi-Fi being down. The district will be reviewing the reults of the ban later this the fall.
In the meantime, increased data use over the span of the school year could cost parents hundreds on their phone bills.
There are also apps out there that re-route servers, allowing websites to sneak around these kinds of blocks.
“When you tell a teenager they can’t do something, what’s the first thing they’re going to do? They’re going to find a way around it,” Smith said. “So rather than find a way to block [social media], embrace the technology [and] new ideas into the classroom.”
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ashley.wadhwani@bpdigital.ca
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After numerous reports throughout the past few weeks, the Huskies will officially play in the St. Petersburg Bowl on Saturday, Dec. 26 at 11 a.m. against Marshall. The game can be seen on ESPN.
The game will be played at Tropicana Field, the home of the Tampa Bay Rays. UConn men’s basketball also won its first national championship at the same venue.
This marks the sixth bowl game the Huskies have played in in program history and the first since they played Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl in 2011.
“The UConn football family is very honored to be playing in the 2015 St. Petersburg Bowl,” UConn head football coach Bob Diaco said in a statement Sunday. “I am especially excited for our senior class, who are an outstanding group of young men and have worked so hard for this. I also want to congratulate Marshall on their selection to the bowl and on an excellent season. We look forward to the challenge of meeting an outstanding football program. I know our strong fan and alumni base in Florida will be supportive of the St. Petersburg Bowl and will make their presence known.”
UConn finished the season 6-6 and 4-4 in the American Athletic Conference. A year ago, the Huskies finished 2-10. This is Diaco’s second season as head coach for UConn.
Marshall, playing in the Conference USA, finished with a 9-3 overall record and 6-2 in conference play. The Thundering Herd posted a win over Purdue in the team’s season opener. Marshall is coached by Doc Holliday.
"We have a very good matchup this year with UConn, a program on the rise that just knocked off undefeated Houston, and Marshall is one win away from notching its third consecutive 10-win season," Brett Dulaney, executive director of the St. Petersburg Bowl, said in a statement. "Surprisingly this is the first time that UConn is playing a bowl game in Florida so we hope to see many of their fans make the trip to take advantage of our tropical weather and bowl week events. We enjoyed hosting Marshall in 2011 and look forward to having them back again this year and seeing lots of Thundering Herd fans in St. Petersburg." |
Control
The hydroMazing controller is designed to operate ventilation fans for air circulation, water pumps, occasionally a humidifier, heaters, or any other appliance that is necessary to maintain an ideal environment for plants to grow. Typically, we DIY’ers would hook-up some relays to a microcontroller to achieve control. However, with hydroMazing, the system uses remote controlled wireless AC outlets, ensuring safer control than traditional relays. hydroMazing uses low-cost open-hardware modules and the ubiquitous microcontroller, the Atmega328, on an Arduino Nano*, offering the flexibility of customization and expansion. The sensor choices are endless, but I’ve narrowed it down to a few important and relatively inexpensive modules. A temperature and relative-humidity sensor, moisture sensors for soil, liquid temperature probe for hydroponics, a simple photocell. There are many other optional additions including the float switch or switches and flow-rate sensors.
The wirelessly controlled outlets proved to be a reliable method of controlling the fans using the Arduino to send the signals depending on the temperature sensor’s readings. It didn’t take long for the source-code to evolve into a beast. The Arduino family of microcontrollers is limited in how many instructions it can run and hitting the program size limit doesn’t take very long when you want to control more than a few blinking LEDs. I have found that the size limitation has forced me to write better, more efficient code than I initially do. Even with creative variable handling and custom libraries, eventually, there is a need for another microcontroller or to move to a larger one.
Wireless Monitoring w/o Internet
There are several ways that the microcontrollers can communicate with each other. The least expensive wireless method I could find is the nRF24L01 wireless radio transceiver. The module is a low-power, lightweight variety of bluetooth giving hydroMazing the ability to communicate with a monitoring unit.
I decided to add another Arduino Uno with an Liquid Crystal Display shield so that I could display what the sensors were reading, the state of appliances, and alerts with notifications.
I made my own open and adaptable platform that can be custom tailored to a wide variety of gardening needs and conditions; yet, also a self-contained wireless system. The open-architecture of the system allows for ease of integrating Internet connectivity and web services.
Internet Monitoring
Enter the Raspberry Pi connected with an nRF24L01 module.
I was able to modify much of my Arduino Source code to listen for incoming transmissions and then write that data out to a few files. First, a log file that captures all communications between the Pi and the hydroMazing Monitor. Next, I have the program write out the current state of all sensor objects and a file for all of the appliance objects. When an alert occurs the progr am will create a file containing that alert.
I then added a PHP script to read in the data object’s from their respective files and display live on the Pi’s Apache server.
Next, I wrote a Python script to read the directory for the alerts file and if it exists, read the file, parse out the pertinent information and then email or through SMS text the user. In addition to sending an email or text alert, the python script moves the alert file into position for the PHP script to read and display.
Using the log files that are created, I am able to import the data into a database. Once the hydroMazing’s data is recorded into a database residing on the Raspberry Pi we can start performing analytics and generate some reports.
Monitoring and controlling the system is mostly done for us, but when the hydroMazing needs to alert us to a problem it can now by using the Raspberry Pi.
With the hydroMazing smart gardening system, you can grow healthy, happy plants anywhere! Contact us today for more information! |
Besides the terrible killings inflicted by the fanatics on those who refuse to pledge allegiance to them, Al-Qa'eda has lost credibility for enforcing a series of rules imposing their way of thought on the most mundane aspects of everyday life.
They include a ban on women buying suggestively-shaped vegetables, according to one tribal leader in the western province of Anbar.
Sheikh Hameed al-Hayyes, a Sunni elder, told Reuters: "They even killed female goats because their private parts were not covered and their tails were pointed upward, which they said was haram.
"They regarded the cucumber as male and tomato as female. Women were not allowed to buy cucumbers, only men."
Other farcical stipulations include an edict not to buy or sell ice-cream, because it did not exist in the time of the Prophet, while hair salons and shops selling cosmetics have also been bombed.
Most seriously, Sheikh al-Hayyes said: "I saw them slaughter a nine-year old boy like a sheep because his family didn't pledge allegiance to them."
Such tactics have triggered a backlash among Sunnis, whom Al-Q'aeda had claimed to be protecting, the sheikh and military leaders said.
Lieutenant-Colonel Tim Albers, an American intelligence officer, told the news agency: "Al-Qa'eda's very heavy-handed killing of civilians backfired on them. The Sunnis just wouldn't stand for it any more.
"The self-described protectors of the Sunni community now kill more Iraqi Sunnis than anyone else." |
Press Sample Affiliate Links
Way back in the early days of Memebox I received a sample of IOPE’s Bio Essence Intensive Conditioning along with some cotton pads to help with its application.
True to its promise, after about three days of application my skin became strangely glowy and luminous and, hot damn, I was in LOVE. If you’ve never used a product like this…prepare to be wowed. I hunted down samples and hoarded them in hopes of retaining my glow on a budget, but eventually my samples ran out, Tester Korea didn’t stock more, and I had a crazy zoo of products to test and use. We lost touch, IOPE Bio Essence Intensive Conditioning and I, and I thought that we would never be reunited.
This all changed when I met Angela, owner of InsiderBeauty (now Via Seoul), an online Korean beauty boutique and review community based in NYC that ships to the US and Canada. By the way, [sidetrack coming] what readers sometimes don’t realize is that for the most part, bloggers don’t tend to go knees-to-pavement as soon as a sponsor ends up in our inbox. I realize that the prospect of free products given for the purpose of (unbiased, obviously) review tempts a lot of people into blogging, but the reality is that it takes most bloggers [writing posts worth reading] weeks to test a skincare product and several days to write a comprehensive review. For the most part, my labor costs vastly more than the value of the products I receive.
So why accept products for review? Given the economics of the decision, I obviously don’t do it often.
Well…sometimes I want magic to happen. It’s kind of like allowing someone who you trust implicitly with setting you up on a blind date. There’s a very good chance that things won’t work out, but there’s also a possibility that your world will expand and your heart will be moved. One of my big fears as a blogger is that I’ll move deeper and deeper into an echo chamber specific to the international Korean beauty community and I’ll miss out on things that are popular in Korea or things that should be popular everywhere and just haven’t caught on.
That’s where good sponsorship relationships can help. With a very few shops and brands I have contacts who might from time to time suggest that I review something they carry. I always set limits on what I’ll accept–basically, I want to only try things that I think I’d buy myself if I had the money. But there’s always a bit of wiggle room in the mix for my contact to show off something unexpected.
So here’s the thing about InsiderBeauty Via Seoul: when I went to make my list of what I’d be ok with reviewing I literally made heart eyes at every product. I ended up sending Angela a list of the things I already owned and then sort of gushed for a while about how she basically stocked the store with what seem to me 100% winners. My request to Angela was to just trust her own curation taste and pick something for me to review that she thought I might like.
So when Angela revealed my lost IOPE first love (and another fantastic product that I’ll review soon) during our coffee meeting I sort of freaked out and may have flapped my hands a bit. DESTINY.
Ingredients
Saccharomyces Ferment Filtrate, Niacinamide, Citrus Unshiu Peel Extract, Glycerin, Saccharomyces Ferment, Achillea Millefolium Extract, Geranium Robertianum Extract, Thermus Thermophillus Ferment, Beta-Glucan, Eriobotrya Japonica Leaf Extract, Glycereth-26, Adenosine, Propanediol, Hydroxyethylcellulose, Phenoxyethanol, Water. (source: Hwahae app, checked against the Korean list included with the product–this seems to be an updated version of the product formulation)
CosDNA analysis. This has zero common acne or sensitive skin triggers.
Where this fits in your routine
This product belongs in the first essence, toner, essence, and serum portion of your routine. (By the way, these routine lineup graphics are a preview of something I’m working on.^^)
There exists some debate about where this product goes in one’s routine within that category. It could be used as either a first essence (basically a hydration booster that preps the skin for toner and everything else to come) or as a toner. Or essence. Uhh. Kerry lays out the confusion in her review on Skin & Tonics. IOPE says this is actually supposed to be used after one’s toner, making it a regular essence.
I’m going to make this easy: use it as a first essence. I’ve tried to use it a few different ways and this functions best as a super light, odorless version of SK-II and Missha’s First Treatment Essence.
What the everloving fluff is a first essence? It’s a booster that hydrates your skin, thereby coaxing it into accepting more moisture later in your routine than it might otherwise accept. First essences also usually have fermented and brightening ingredients, which help to build that luminous “red carpet” glow that I think so many of us want.
First essences are usually fantastic for people with all skin types, but as someone with oily skin I can say that I love them for making my skin take on more water-based moisture than it would want to without the booster. This means reduced oil production, plumped fine lines, and a temporarily thicker layer of light absorbing/reflecting skin. That uppermost layer of light-infused skin is the source of natural glow; my microscope/skin experiments tell the tale.
How to use it
Option 1: economical
Shake a few drops into your palm. The dispenser reminds me of a vinaigrette dispenser in some ways–you just shake some out.
Use your other hand to slather the liquid onto your face. Let the liquid dry. It usually takes about 60 seconds or so.
Option 2: less economical
Shake several drops onto a cotton application pad.
Smooth the pad over your skin. Let the liquid dry. It usually takes less than 60 seconds with this method.
Either option is fine, to be honest. I’ve been going with “economical” and it’s been pretty great–I’ve been using this bottle for some time and I’ve barely made a dent in the 168ml. WOO!
My strategy for first essences
I obviously love the original version of Goodal’s Waterest Tone Up First Essence, so how does this product fit into my skincare routine?
When my skin is feeling dry due to the environment or the effect of my acids and prescription acne medication I use Goodal. Goodal contains fermented oils that help rebalance my skin.
When my skin is feeling normal to oily I use IOPE. When my skin is feeling a bit less annoyed it loves the watery boost and light moisture. IOPE is perfect for most of the year for my skin–and in summer it’s a dream.
Am I still in love?
I’ve had the chance to try lots of skincare products since the first time I encountered IOPE Bio Essence Intensive Conditioning–is it still an HG?
Absolutely. The way I can tell how much I like something, by the way, is whether I use the economical or less economical method for applying it. When I’m trying to work through something so I can move on, I’ll apply it using a microfiber round (they’re really pleasant–my favorite are made by Purederm), knowing that I’m wasting a bit, but liking the tidy application method. When I really want to keep something in my stash for a long time, I’ll apply it carefully using my hands so as not to waste any product! I’ve sometimes noticed that I switch application methods midway through using something because my feelings change. I’ve never used a cotton round to apply this–its powers make it too precious to waste.
I find that this still makes my skin more hydrated with water-based moisture, meaning it’s less likely to get super oily, even in the incredible NYC July heat. This also delivers an amazing glowy quality to my skin after a few days of continual use and doesn’t irritate it or cause breakouts for me.
The one thing that makes my heart uneasy is the pretty glass bottle–I’m terrified that I’ll smash this on something or it will roll off my stupidly cluttered makeup table and break. And yet it’s so elegant and clean that I don’t know that I’d change the bottle if given the choice. I hear that children like to break these, so I’ll just make sure to avoid acquiring any of those.
Find this at Insider Beauty Via Seoul (plus a special promotion)
IOPE Bio Essence Intensive Conditioning 168ml: $60
InsiderBeauty Via Seoul is also having a special promotion right now on my HGest HG of 2014, LJH Tea Tree 90 Essence, which can be purchased for $30 with the code RASIANBEAUTYLJH; they’re also offering free shipping for purchases $30 and over (free shipping usually applies to orders of $50 and over). Check out my review and think about grabbing the LJH essence before this deal expires 1 August.^^
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. Clicking those links before you shop means that fan-b receives a small commission, which helps to support the blog. Please see my full disclosure for more information. |
HelloMD, a service that uses telemedicine to connect people with doctors willing and able to prescribe medical marijuana, has raised just over a million dollars via equity crowdfunding on SeedInvest. The raise includes $200,000 from SeedInvest itself via the platform’s “Selections Fund”. The round won’t be complete for another month, so the company could raise significantly more.
Though the company is sometimes met with skepticism, CEO Mark Hadfield assured MobiHealthNews that HelloMD is very much a healthcare company, which even won Best Healthcare Startup at San Francisco’s Launch Festival this year.
“People have a sense perhaps that the medical side of cannabis is sort of a ruse for recreational cannabis and that’s not our view,” Hadfield told MobiHealthNews. “If you look at the market, it’s a bell curve. On the one side you have very sick patients. On the other side you have recreational patients. In the middle you have a much larger slice of the market which is health and wellness-slash-medical. These people have migraines, PTSD, chronic pain, back aches, insomnia. There’s about 18 different conditions that cannabis has proved to be incredibly helpful for. … So we’re very much a healthcare play and we believe that health and wellness is a serious and significant part of cannabis.”
HelloMD is live in all 30 states where medical marijuana is legal, as well as in Canada and Germany. The startup has been operating for about two years and in that time it’s been largely a telemedicine play.
“The telehealth is important because it gives them this discrete way of interacting with medical professionals outside of going to a doctor’s office,” he said. “They don’t necessarily even want to go to a dispensary because they don’t want to be seen going in or out, or they’re just intimidated. So telehealth is a very important feature to give people access.”
HelloMD’s doctors are independent, board-certified physicians who have been trained and educated by the company about cannabis.
The company’s goals, however, are bigger than just telemedicine. The company already has a wealth of user-generated but company-vetted content on medical uses for cannabis, for instance.
“Our goal is to provide the full range of solutions for the cannabis consumer,” Hadfield said. “So when they first enter the market they get access to a doctor, they go through our process and meet one of our doctors, and we maintain their medical records in our HIPAA compliant platform. But we also help them through their next step, which is to discover which products might be useful for them to have, and to facilitate community-type interactions with other similar patients. And also to engage with brands and retailers, to ask questions, to engage, and ultimately purchase cannabis products as well, all on our website. So that’s the vision: that full service solution for a cannabis consumer.”
Hadfield says there are some private equity firms ready to invest that haven’t made their contribution public, but part of the reason they’re using equity crowdfunding is because many big name investors are currently prohibited from investing in cannabis by their subscription agreements.
Ultimately, HelloMD is banking on the stigma of medical marijuana fading as time goes by and laws change.
“I think over time what’s going to happen is, as cannabis is descheduled by the federal government and it continues to be less stigmatized, it will merge into being a significant development in the health and wellness and medical world and then other big players will want to participate across the board. Because hundreds of millions of people across the world can benefit from cannabis.” |
ABANG, Indonesia — The harsh, tropical sunlight that dapples Bali’s tourist-thronged beaches streams through the fingers of a palm leaf and lands on the shoulders of Nengah, who slumps like a rag doll amid a pile of tattered pillows in the island’s far eastern reaches.
The poor village is remote, and Nengah spends her days in a heap, staring at hands that lie in her lap like dry leaves.
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Today, Nengah is not alone. Neighbors have gathered in the mid-July heat to watch as her brother uses a stone to break a chain that has bound her to a concrete pit — her home — for nearly a decade.
Nengah, whose full name is confidential, suffers from schizophrenia. After the 35-year-old violently attacked her stepmother in a blind rage nine years ago, her family decided they had to restrain her.
Her situation improved after local psychiatrist Luh Ketut Suryani arrived in the village in June to find Nengah naked, caged and filthy. The doctor consulted the family and prescribed medication. Later, Suryani helped get Nengah's family to free her from bondage.
Nengah’s situation is not unique in Indonesia, where the mentally ill are often locked in chicken coops or chained up in family yards to prevent them from disturbing the community.
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A shortage of psychiatrists, limited mental health services, stigma and misinformation about mental illness are some of the reasons people here go without treatment. In a country of 240 million people, there are less than 600 psychiatrists, many of them based in urban centers.
Dr. Irmansyah, the director of mental health at Indonesia’s Health Ministry, estimates that around 30,000 people are living in restraints, but gathering accurate information about them is difficult.
Last year the department of mental health announced “Meuju Bebas Pasung,” a roadmap to free people in chains.
Officials say they are relying on community members to report cases like Nengah’s. Then it will be up to local health officials to negotiate with the families for their release.
Since taking his position in April 2010, Irmansyah, who goes by one name, has worked hard to reach out to rural communities and create awareness about mental illness.
But he says mental health remains low on the government’s priority list, particularly as it works toward meeting its Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs, by 2015.
The United Nations-designated targets for development fall under eight categories, including reducing child mortality, fighting disease epidemics such as malaria and AIDS and improving maternal health.
The MDGs have become the universal gauge for development, and countries are judged by their ability to meet them. “But improving mental health services is not part of those goals,” said Irmansyah, “so there is little incentive to spend on them.”
The former Harvard University fellow knits his fingers over his government-issued khaki uniform and sighs through his stiff grey moustache when explaining the uphill battle to improve mental health care here.
“Awareness is rising that restraints are against human rights,” said Irmansyah, but he worries that increasing depression among the elderly, behavioral disorders among teenagers and side effects of drug use will only increase the need for better care. “We need to be ready for these problems,” he said.
For now, community outreach is limited, confined to a smattering of volunteers and concerned psychiatrists like Luh Ketut Suryani.
In 2005, she founded the Suryani Institute in Bali, which uses a combination of psychiatry, anti-psychotic medication and spiritualism to treat mental illness.
Many Indonesians still regard mental illness as a curse caused by black magic and best treated by a spiritualist rather than a medical doctor. Suryani believes doctors should draw on local beliefs and religious figures to instill trust, a key to helping mentally ill patients recover.
In 2009 the governor of Bali committed $115 million to a program led by her institute to identify and treat people with mental illness in Karangasem, one of Bali’s poorest districts.
Suryani estimates that as many as 2,000 people in the district suffer from chronic mental illness.
With the government’s support she was able to reach out to more than 320 patients, but a year later her funding was cut. She now works to raise her own funds, but it's slow going.
Indonesia’s Health Minister, Dr. Endang Rahayu Sedyaningsih, says she understands the need for more resources, but her ministry has a limited amount of money to put toward tackling Indonesia’s raft of health issues.
Still, while only 2.3 percent of the total national budget goes toward health care, less than 1 percent of that amount is put toward mental health.
More people came forward to request help for mental illness when Suryani first began seeing patients under the government-funded program. And despite budget cuts, she still sees as many patients as she can. She currently sees around 450 patients, but her limited time and resources make repeat visits difficult.
During a recent visit she checked on Made, a schizophrenic she has been treating since 2009.
Made’s older brother and caretaker fielded the doctor’s questions: How many hours a night does Made sleep, and where? What does he eat?
Made stood in the yard nearby, tugging at his shirt and looking down in what seemed a bashful pose.
Suryani, whose long silver hair gives her a warm, grandmotherly look, asked him how he was responding to the medication. He held out his arms to show they were steady — a side effect of anti-psychotic drugs is often tremors.
It took Suryani making visits to Nengah's family every week for a month before they agreed to negotiate her release. But in the future they will handle the majority of her treatment.
Komang Gede, one of Suryani’s assistants, worries they may not be ready. “The family has suffered a trauma,” he said.
Relapses are common in remote areas where people are unable to return to mental hospitals for regular treatment. “When families spend lots of money on assistance and people continue to relapse they give up and turn to restraints,” said Irmansyah.
The lack of follow-up only entrenches the problem.
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“If we stop treatment and people have not recovered then we must start again from the beginning, and that is not as effective,” said Suryani, who tells patients that recovering from mental illness is a lifelong process.
Increasing access to services is essential, but so too is improving the quality of Indonesia’s mental health hospitals, says Irmansyah, who tells stories of overcrowding and abusive staff.
Until the country gets serious about treating mental illness humanely, Irmansyah says freedom like Nengah’s will only be symbolic. |
Read this article at https://www.pugetsystems.com/guides/1012 Premiere Pro CC 2017.1.2 CPU Comparison: Skylake-X vs Threadripper Written on August 30, 2017 by Matt Bach
We have a new article available that includes the 14, 16, and 18 core Skylake-X CPUs alongside the 12 and 16 core Threadripper CPUs: Premiere Pro CC 2017.1.2 CPU Performance: Core i9 7940X, 7960X, 7980XE
Introduction When AMD launched their Ryzen CPUs back in March, they became a serious challenger to Intel in many markets including video editing with software like Premiere Pro. Intel fired back in June with their 6-10 core Skylake-X CPUs which made Intel once again the go-to choice for most video editors using Premiere Pro but the dust hasn't even settled and both Intel and AMD are again launching new products. In mid-August, AMD launched their 12 and 16 core Threadripper CPUs that are designed specifically for workstation workloads. On Intel's side, the Core i9 7920X 12 core Skylake-X CPU launched a few days ago (August 28th, 2017) and have another three CPUs with 14, 16, and 18 cores coming in September. With all these new CPUs, it can be very tough to keep track of what CPU is the best for different applications so today we are going to look specifically at how AMD's Threadripper CPUs compare to the currently available Intel Skylake-X CPUs in Premiere Pro. There are a wide variety of tasks we could test in Premiere Pro to see how these CPUs perform, but in this article we will specifically be looking at: Rendering previews Exporting Performing a Warp Stabilization Live playback performance Our testing includes test footage with resolutions of 4K, 6K, and 8K using six different codecs (more information in the test setup section). In total, we ran nearly 90 unique tests on 6 different CPUs (along with testing both Creator and Game Mode on Threadripper) resulting in more than 600 data points. If you would rather skip over our analysis of the individual benchmarks, feel free to jump right to the conclusion section.
Threadripper: Creator Mode vs Game Mode Before we start comparing Intel and AMD, the first thing we want to do was to ensure that we are testing Threadripper in the proper mode. Since Threadripper is in essence just two Ryzen CPUs combined onto a single device, it can have some performance issues depending on how the application is coded. To be clear, this is not an AMD-only issue and is something we have seen from Intel as well with dual Xeon workstations. You can read the fine details in AMD's blog about using Threadripper for gaming but the short of it is that some applications simply don't work well with very high core counts - especially when those cores are spread across multiple "CPUs". To try to alleviate these issues, AMD has provided the ability to switch between two modes through the AMD Ryzen Master software: Creator Mode (default) - All cores are used Game Mode - Half the cores are disabled which turns Threadripper into essentially a Ryzen CPU with more PCIe lanes and memory bandwidth. The big downside to this approach is that switching modes requires you to restart your computer so it isn't something you can do on the fly. Since Premiere Pro typically scales decently well with more cores we don't expect Game Mode to give any sort of performance boost but we are curious as to what the difference actually is between the two modes: [-] Hide Raw Results Rendering Previews Exporting Warp Stabilize Live Playback [+] Show Raw Results Feel free to examine all the raw data by expanding the "Show Raw Results" link, but the data is pretty straight-forward: Creator Mode is definitely the right choice for Premiere Pro. In fact, it wasn't even close as the default Creator Mode resulted in ~15-25% higher performance. Due to this, we are going to continue our testing without worrying about including any Game Mode results.
Rendering Previews Now that we know that Creator Mode is definitely the way to go with Threadripper, the first task in Premiere Pro we want to compare Threadripper to Skylake-X is Rendering previews. This is something you never really want to have to do since it interrupts your workflow, but if you do complex editing it is sometimes unavoidable. Because of this, being able to render previews as quickly as possible is often an important part of a Premiere Pro workstation. [-] Hide Raw Results [+] Show Raw Results Since we are comparing 6 different CPUs across 16 different projects that include a range of resolutions and source codecs, it would take us a long time to go through the results one by one. Because of this, we decided to compile all the results into an overall average for each CPU compared to the Intel Core i7 7800X. As the lowest cost CPU in both the Skylake-X and Threadripper lines, it should be a great comparison point to judge the other CPUs against. If you wish to examine the raw results yourself, you can do so by clicking on the "Show Raw Results" link under the chart. The Core i7 7800X is quite a bit worse than the other CPUs (likely due in large part to the lack of Turbo Boost 3.0 support), but surprisingly the other CPUs all performed within ~4% of each other. The only real interesting thing to point out is that the Core i9 7920X was actually slower than both the Intel Core i9 7900X and the AMD Threadripper 1950X even though it costs about $200 more. Otherwise, the CPUs largely performed about where you would expect given their price points. The Core i7 7820X was a hair faster than the more expensive TR 1920X, however, which makes Intel a bit stronger overall for this test.
Exporting Exporting is one of the biggest time sinks for a Premiere Pro user and is often the go-to metric for measuring performance. For this test, we looked at 35 different combinations of source footage and export settings. This includes 4K, 6K, and 8K resolutions along with H.264, DNxHR HQ, ProRes 422 HQ, ProRes 4444, RED, and H.265 codecs. In addition, we will also be looking at VR projects using both built-in effects as well as with the popular Mettle plugin. [-] Hide Raw Results [+] Show Raw Results Just like in the previous section, since we are comparing 6 different CPUs across 35 different projects that use a range of resolutions, source codecs, and export settings, we decided to compile all the results into an overall average for each CPU compared to the Intel Core i7 7800X. If you have the time and will, feel free to examine the raw results yourself by clicking on the "Show Raw Results" link below the chart. The results for exporting are about as straight-forward as you can get. Whether you go with Intel or AMD, the more money you spend on the CPU, the faster your exports will complete. It is worth noting however, that even though the AMD Threadripper 1950X is technically $1 more than the Intel Core i9 7900X, it was 3% faster on average for exporting so for this test the 1950X is definitely the stronger choice over the Core i9 7900X. However, note that this performance gain was almost entirely when exporting 4K media to 4K DNxHR HQ 8-bit and when exporting 8K media to 8K H.265. So if you primarily export to H.264, the Core i9 7900X should actually faster than the AMD TR 1950X. Overall, there isn't really a clear winner for this section between Intel and AMD, but given the strong performance of the AMD TR 1950X we are going to give the edge to AMD.
Warp Stabilize While exporting and rendering previews may be the easiest and most common thing to benchmark in Premiere Pro, we have received a lot of feedback that performing a warp stabilize is another task where high performance is important. We have found that the time it takes to complete a warp stabilize analysis does not vary much on the source codec, but the resolution does make a big difference so we will be testing with a 4K H.264 clip as well as a 8K ProRes 4444 clip. Since warp stabilize is not well threaded (meaning that it does not take great advantage of multiple CPU cores), we also opted to split our test clip into multiple parts and analyze all of them at the same time in order to force Premiere into making more effective use of all the CPU cores. This is a trick some people use to speed up the time it takes to analyze a single clip, but it is also a great indicator of performance when you have multiple clips that need to be stabilized. With this in mind, we not only timed how long it takes to apply a warp stabilization effect to a single 10 second clip, but also how long it takes if the clip is split into 2, 4, 8, and 16 "sub-clips" that are all analyzed at the same time. [-] Hide Raw Results [+] Show Raw Results While we were able to get away with an overall average in the last two sections, the results for warp stabilize depends so heavily on the number of clips you are analyzing that we decided to show both the average result with a single clip and with 16 clips. Feel free to examine the raw results if you would like to see the results for 2, 4, and 8 clips, but the results for those fell between the single and 16 clip results about as you would expect so we opted to not muddy the chart with even more data. Starting with a single clip, all of the Skylake-X CPUs interestingly performed within a percent or two of each other. Due to the lower single-threaded performance of the AMD CPUs, however, Threadripper was about 20% slower than Skylake-X when stabilizing a single clip. With the number of clips increased to 16, the Threadripper CPUs compare a bit more favorably to the Intel Skylake-X CPUs, although they are still around 10% slower than most of the Intel CPUs.
Live Playback Live playback performance is a challenge for us to accurately test since whether you can play a timeline at full, half, quarter, etc. resolution is highly dependent not only on your source footage but also what effects you have applied to the timeline. To try to keep things universally applicable, we opted to test 10 different projects using 4K, 6K, and 8K footage with multiple codecs across three relatively simple timelines. What we wanted to see was if we would be able to play the timeline at either full or half resolution without dropping any frames - even if it was just one or two at the very start of playback. Basic 4 clips in series
No effects
No transitions Lumetri Color 4 clips via multicam sequence
Lumetri Color Correction
No transitions Lumetri & Cross Dissolve 4 clips via multicam sequence
Lumetri Color Correction
Cross dissolve [-] Hide Raw Results Intel Core i7 7800X Intel Core i7 7820X AMD TR 1920X Intel Core i9 7900X AMD TR 1950X Intel Core i9 7920X 4K TIFF - Basic Full Full Full Full Full Full 4K TIFF - Lumetri Color Full Full Full Full Full Full 4K TIFF - Lumetri & Cross Dissolve Full Full Full Full Full Full 4K H.264 - Basic Full Full Full Full Full Full 4K H264 - Lumetri Color Full Full Full Full Full Full 4K H264 - Lumetri & Cross Dissolve Full Full Full Full Full Full 4K DNxHR HQ - Basic Full Full Full Full Full Full 4K DNxHR HQ - Lumetri Color Full Full Full Full Full Full 4K DNxHR HQ - Lumetri & Cross Dissolve Full Full Full Full Full Full 4K ProRes 422 HQ - Basic Full Full Full Full Full Full 4K ProRes 422 HQ - Lumetri Color Full Full Full Full Full Full 4K ProRes 422 HQ - Lumetri & Cross Dissolve Full Full Full Full Full Full 4K ProRes 4444 - Basic Full Full Full Full Full Full 4K ProRes 4444 - Lumetri Color Full Full Fail Full Fail Fail 4K ProRes 4444 - Lumetri & Cross Dissolve Full Full Fail Full Fail Fail 4K RED - Basic Full Full Full Full Full Full 4K RED - Lumetri Color Full Full Full Full Full Full 4K RED - Lumetri & Cross Dissolve Full Full Full Full Full Half 6K RED - Basic Fail Fail Half Half Half Half 6K RED - Lumetri Color Fail Fail Half Half Half Half 6K RED - Lumetri & Cross Dissolve Fail Fail Fail Fail Half Fail 8K DNxHR HQ - Basic Full Full Full Full Full Full 8K DNxHR HQ - Lumetri Color Half Half Fail Half Fail Half 8K DNxHR HQ - Lumetri & Cross Dissolve Half Half Half Half Fail Fail 8K ProRes 4444 - Basic Fail Fail Fail Half Half Full 8K ProRes 4444 - Lumetri Color Fail Fail Fail Fail Fail Fail 8K ProRes 4444 - Lumetri & Cross Dissolve Fail Fail Fail Fail Fail Fail 8K RED - Basic Fail Fail Half Fail Half Half 8K RED - Lumetri Color Fail Fail Fail Fail Fail Fail 8K RED - Lumetri & Cross Dissolve Fail Fail Fail Fail Fail Fail [+] Show Raw Results For a general overview of how each CPU performed for live playback, we created a scoring system based on how many timelines each CPU was able to run at either full or half resolution. Every successful playback without dropping any frames at full resolution is 1 point while every playback at half resolution is .5 points. However, if there is a codec you typically use that we happened to include in our testing, we highly recommend taking a look at the raw results to see how each CPU performed for that specific codec. Using our score-based system, you can get a pretty decent idea of how each CPU might affect live playback performance. Honestly, the results were a lot closer than we expected with only the Core i9 7900X being truly better than the others. One thing we do want to point out, however, is that while the Threadripper CPUs had some issues with 4K ProRes 4444 timelines, they were able to play basic 8K RED timelines at half resolution - a feat that only the Intel Core i9 7920X could match.
Conclusion Competition is a wonderful thing and one thing is clear: Threadripper is definitely a competitive product. Looking at the overall performance including rendering previews, exporting, warp stabilize, and live playback, we saw the following average performance from each CPU we tested: Starting with the AMD Threadripper 1920X 12 core, despite being $200 more expensive than the Intel Core i7 7820X we really have to give the edge to the Core i7 7820X as the overall the better choice for Premiere Pro. The two CPUs are basically identical when exporting and rendering previews, but the Core i7 7820X is much faster for warp stabilize and has better live playback performance as well. Warp stabilize might not be terribly important for many Premiere Pro users, but the improved live playback performance is a big deal and makes the Core i7 7820X a solidly better choice over the AMD Threadripper 1920X for Premiere Pro. Unfortunately, the Threadripper 1950X 16 core has many of the same issues as the TR 1920X. It matches the Intel Core i9 7900X when rendering previews and is actually 3% faster overall when exporting but it has worse performance for both warp stabilize and live playback. More than anything else, it is the lower live playback performance that keeps the TR 1950X from being a better choice than the Core i9 7900X. So is Threadripper a bad choice for a Premiere Pro workstation? If you just care about export performance, you probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a workstation using AMD Threadripper or one using Intel Skylake-X. However, the key area where Threadripper has issues is with live playback. It isn't really even that it is particularly bad, but Intel simply has a small lead in that area. Live playback is such an essential part of a video editing workstation that this alone keeps us from really recommending Threadripper for Premiere Pro. If you want to support AMD's efforts and help them continue to provide solid competition for Intel that is a completely valid reason to use Threadripper over Skylake-X, but otherwise Intel just has the stronger offering for Premiere Pro at this time.
Tags: Premiere Pro, Skylake-X, Threadripper |
Copyrighted Image? DMCA
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Democratic Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich has won another major poll among grassroots Party activists most likely to vote in caucuses and primaries, capturing 41% of the vote from Progressive Democrats of America (PDA), which has more than 80,000 members across the nation.
- Advertisement - In the field of eight candidates, the Ohio Congressman was the overwhelming winner, easily out-pacing second-place finisher former Senator John Edwards, who received 26% of the vote. Senator Barack Obama came in third with 13%, followed by Senator Hillary Clinton with 9%, and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson with 5%. The other Democratic candidates were in the low single digits. Kucinich was also the top vote-getter among PDA members in the early-voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire.
- Advertisement - It is the third exceptionally strong finish by Kucinich in polls among active, grassroots Democrats. Last month, he topped all other candidates in 47 of 50 states in a poll sponsored by Democracy for America (DFA). Also, a poll conducted by the progressive The Nation magazine showed Kucinich with 35% of the vote, Obama second with 24% and Edwards third with 13%.
In last month’s DFA poll, Kucinich received almost 32% of the 150,000-plus votes cast, more than Edwards and Obama combined. There, too, he won both Iowa and New Hampshire.
In announcing today’s results, PDA said, “The Congressman's showing indicates that Progressive Democrats are still in sync with the Kucinich agenda: Out of Iraq; no attack on Iran, single-payer healthcare, fair trade, etc.” The poll was open only to PDA members, and the organization said it added “extra layers of security” to protect the integrity of the survey.
- Advertisement - In an analysis of the recent polls in The Nation today, Washington correspondent John Nichols wrote that Kucinich’s “pointed opposition to the war in Iraq and outspoken advocacy of impeachment of Vice President Cheney has echoed the sentiments of the Democratic base” and “party activists who do the heavy lifting.”
Nichols also noted, “The DFA and PDA poll results give Kucinich an additional measure of credibility as he reaches out to key activists, including Democrats who are currently leaning toward other contenders...”
Kucinich’s national and state-by-state poll numbers have risen noticeably in the past several weeks. Not only is he the only Democratic candidate who voted against the Iraq war authorization in 2002 and every supplemental funding measure since, he also is the only Democratic candidate who voted against the Patriot Act. And, his early opposition to hostile moves by the Administration towards Iran was validated earlier this week when the National Intelligence Estimate revealed that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program four years ago.
Kucinich, sponsor of a resolution calling for impeachment proceedings against Cheney, has called for a Congressional investigation of the handling of the NIE findings by the Administration. He said that such an investigation “will further build the case for the impeachment of both the President and the Vice President.” |
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Abstract Earlier this year, we described an analysis of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) variants in myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME)/chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) patients and healthy controls. We reported that there was no significant association of haplogroups or singe nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) with disease status. Nevertheless, a commentary about our paper appeared (Finsterer and Zarrouk-Mahjoub. J Transl Med14:182, 2016) that criticized the association of mtDNA haplogroups with ME/CFS, a conclusion that was absent from our paper. The aforementioned commentary also demanded experiments that were outside of the scope of our study, ones that we had suggested as follow-up studies. Because they failed to consult a published and cited report describing the cohorts we studied, the authors also cast aspersions on the method of selection of cases for inclusion. We reiterate that we observed statistically significant association of mtDNA variants with particular symptoms and their severity, though we observed no association with disease status.
Keywords Myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME)
Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS)
Next-generation sequencing
Mitochondrial DNA
mtDNA
Heteroplasmy
Association
SNPs
Haplogroup
Variants
Following the publication of our paper [1] concerning mitochondrial DNA variation in ME/CFS patients and controls, Finsterer and Zarrouk-Mahjoub [2] published a commentary on our paper entitled “Is chronic fatigue syndrome truly associated with haplogroups or mtDNA single nucleotide polymorphisms?” Anyone reading this title might assume that our paper claimed a correlation of mtDNA SNPs with disease status. In fact, in describing our paper they wrote that “the study showed that CFS is associated with mtDNA haplogroups J, U and H”. However, we concluded exactly the opposite. We reported that we did not detect any statistically significant association of mtDNA variation with patient vs. control status. Instead, we reported that individuals of certain haplogroups or carrying certain mtDNA SNPs were more likely to report experiencing particular symptoms or certain severity levels of particular symptoms [1]. It is evident from the title of the commentary, as well as its content, that Finsterer and Zarrouk-Mahjoub [2] did not read our paper carefully.
The authors criticized our study for examining mtDNA variation only, rather than variation in nuclear genes encoding proteins involved in mitochondrial functions. Because the funding available allowed us only mtDNA analysis, we made no claims in the paper that all genes affecting mitochondrial performance had been analyzed. We stated clearly that we were analyzing mtDNA variation, not all genetic variation that could affect mitochondrial function. Moreover, the last sentence of our discussion sets forth the need for “further analysis of the mitochondrial and nuclear genomes.”
The authors also expressed concern that we might have missed some heteroplasmic mutations because of the use of DNA from lymphocytes, rather than from other tissues. We reported very low levels of heteroplasmy in our samples, which were comprised of DNA from whole blood of ME/CFS patients and controls. Whole blood DNA was available to us; DNA from other tissues was not. Although we were aware that tissue specificity of mtDNA heteroplasmy exists [3], it is highly unlikely that any subjects harbored physiologically significant amounts of a heteroplasmic mutation despite our use of blood DNA, which is suitable for identifying mutations in most mtDNA-encoded diseases, with one exception. It is known that individuals with MELAS, especially as age increases, sometimes harbor far fewer abnormal mtDNAs in their blood cells than in other cell types [4, 5]. Someone with severe MELAS was unlikely to remain undetected, given the number of differential symptoms that would have allowed the ME/CFS experts, who provided the samples, to identify any such individual victim. Furthermore, while in a study of 34 Dutch families, some individuals harbored undetectable levels of the MELAS mutations in blood but significant amounts in other cell types, the majority of MELAS carriers in that study did have detectable heteroplasmy in blood [6].
The authors then pointed out that we did not carry out “immune-histological nor biochemical studies of muscle biopsies” and that such studies would be valuable to identifying dysfunctional mitochondrial pathways. We do not disagree with this point, but again we made no claim that we had detected all possible such dysfunctions, given that such experiments were outside the scope of our project. While such studies might be of future interest, obtaining muscle biopsies from a patient population that usually exhibits high sensitivity to pain poses ethical considerations.
Finsterer and Zaroub-Mahjoub [2] then ask how other causes of fatigue were distinguished from ME/CFS and then imply that our subject cohort could have included individuals with a number of other diseases. Had the authors consulted the paper we cited [7], which provides a thorough discussion of how ME/CFS subjects were screened for other diseases and selected for inclusion by 6 ME/CFS expert physicians, they would find their worries about proper subject selection to be unjustified. The authors complain that “nothing is reported about the previous history of the 193 patients.” They are correct, because such information was already reported in detail in the paper authored by the ME/CFS experts [7], who have collected an extremely valuable set of samples that have been [8] and will undoubtedly be used for many other types of studies. We encourage readers of our study and other studies utilizing the Chronic Fatigue Initiative sample set to consult the foundational paper describing the cohort [7] instead of making unwarranted negative assumptions about its quality.
Abbreviations ME/CFS: myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome mtDNA: mitochondrial DNA SNP: single nucleotide polymorphism |
As we arrive at Kammerer Ranch — a property owned by the Nature Conservancy, near Alum Rock Park in San José — a very large brown bird swoops up from the hillside. Too big to be a falcon or hawk; not flying like a turkey vulture. A golden eagle, I suggest to Ethan Inlander, a stewardship manager for the Nature Conservancy. Maybe, he says, but he thought he saw some white near the tail. A juvenile? We turn to Kirk Klausmeyer, the third member of our party and a conservation manager at the Nature Conservancy. He didn’t get a good look.
Golden eagle or not, it’s a perfectly clear day, about 70 degrees, with a slight breeze. The three of us remark on how lucky we are to be out on such a day, though clear, sunny days are the norm out here. Anyway, it's ideal for our short hike with the Google Trekker. Introduced in 2012, the backpack has been used at various places including the Taj Mahal and the Galapagos Islands. The Trekker is derived from Google's Street View trucks and is meant to help keep Google Maps at an advantage relative to its competitors, by making sure Google has more images of more areas.
The Nature Conservancy is using the Trekker at the ranch for a different purpose — to monitor climate change. It's one of several groups that are participating in the Trekker loan program, where people can apply to take the Trekker to "hard-to-reach places."
it's as though i'd put my tent at the top of my pack and hung a heavy stove from it
The device itself is unwieldy and comes in two parts: the backpack, which contains GPS, an accelerometer, two monster-looking batteries, and a computer with 256 GB of data; and the cameras — 15 cameras, with a combined 75 megapixels, mounted in a green circle above the wearer’s head. The Trekker is about 40 pounds, but the weight is badly distributed: when I try it on, the camera bobbles as I walk. It’s as though I’d put my tent at the top of my pack and hung a heavy stove from it; my center of gravity is higher, and the bouncy sensation from the cameras throws my gait out of whack. That awkwardness is fine for the dirt roads we’ll be on; I'd hesitate to take the Trekker on a trickier route.
Inlander helps Klausmeyer strap into the Trekker. They will be taking shots of Kammerer Ranch’s blue oaks, a species of California tree particularly threatened by climate change. Though blue oaks are hardy — they can offset the stress of a drought by tapping groundwater resources once they’re past seedlings — even they have limits. Computer modeling has suggested that there will be climate stress here, Klausmeyer says. That’s why the Nature Conservancy is using the Trekker now — to get a baseline picture of how the oaks are doing.
In fact, things are already changing. In four sites studied by naturalists — one of which was the Kammerer Ranch — there were three times more dead oaks in the drier, hotter areas than at the cooler temperatures found at higher elevations. And seedlings found in the study, published in Ecopshere in July 2014, were located closer to streams than adults, suggesting the new trees were growing in increasingly restricted environments.
The Trekker’s 360-degree view should help scientists track how the blue oak populations change over the coming years, Klausmeyer explains. Because the trees are, well, trees, and thus stationary, they can’t simply leave the area as it becomes hotter and drier — and invasive species may out-compete them.
only two-thirds of california's oak woodlands remain
That’s a problem because blue oaks protect soil from erosion and landslides. Oak woodlands provide homes for 330 species — birds, mammals, reptiles, and amphibians — in California. Acorns, for instance, are abundant food for many animals. Only two-thirds of California’s oak woodlands remain, most of them under private management.
Google will host the images and maintain an archive. The Nature Conservancy plans to use the Trekker for photos of Kammerer Ranch every five years for the indefinite future. And the project probably won’t just benefit blue oak conservation — since everything along the route will be shot by the cameras, other species may benefit from the monitoring as well.
We set out. Inlander and I walk well behind Klausmeyer for a brief trip around a pond, where we startle a garter snake and some squirrels. It’s something of a trial run; the longer collection hike is on a loop of ranch roads across the crest of hilltops. For the longer hike, Klausmeyer is solo; Inlander and I walk the opposite direction on the loop so we won’t be in all the photos. Shortly after we set off, Inlander points at a dead oak. It died recently, he says — you can tell because it hasn’t been turned over yet. |
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rawdownloadcloneembedreportprint text 2.72 KB Links to listen to the VORW Program via Shortwave ###### UPDATED November 16th, 2017 ###### This guide provides you with all the links necessary to listen to the VORW Radio Show online! You can choose from multiple digital streams to listening on an online shortwave radio! Thursday 5 AM Eastern / 10 AM GMT - 5850 kHz to Western North America http://w7rna.dyndns-remote.com:18901/?tune=5850am Thursday 3 PM Eastern / 8 PM GMT - 11580 kHz to Eastern North America http://k3fef.com:8901/?tune=11580am http://jerseyshoresdr.hopto.org:8073/?f=11580.00amz11 http://k2sdr.homelinux.com:8073/?f=11580.00amz11 http://kiwisdr.k1ra.us:8073/?f=11580.00amz11 Thursday 6 PM Eastern / 11 PM GMT - 9955 kHz to South America Tunein Radio Digital Stream: http://tunein.com/radio/WRMI-9955-s50329/ Creek.fm Digital Stream: http://wrmi.listen.creek.fm/stream Thursday 8 PM Eastern / 1 AM GMT - 7490 kHz or 9395 kHz to North America Tunein Radio Digital Stream: http://tunein.com/radio/The-Planet-7490-s24829/ http://jerseyshoresdr.hopto.org:8073/?f=7490.00amz11 http://k2sdr.homelinux.com:8073/?f=9395.00amz11 http://kiwisdr.k1ra.us:8073/?f=7490.00amz11 http://n4tvc.zapto.org:8073/?f=7490.00amz11 Sunday 11 AM Eastern / 4 PM GMT - 9400 kHz to Europe / Middle East http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/?tune=9400am Sunday 4 PM Eastern / 9 PM GMT - 9395 kHz to Eastern North America http://jerseyshoresdr.hopto.org:8073/?f=9395.00amz11 http://k2sdr.homelinux.com:8073/?f=9395.00amz11 http://kiwisdr.k1ra.us:8073/?f=9395.00amz11 http://n4tvc.zapto.org:8073/?f=9395.00amz11 --- You can also listen on demand at any time via SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/vorw_radio_int --- What is shortwave? Shortwave radio is radio transmission using shortwave radio frequencies, generally 1600 kHz - 30000 kHz. Radio signals are reflected off the upper atmosphere back to earth, allowing signals to travel thousands of miles. Shortwave radio remains very popular throughout the developing world though audiences still exist in all parts of the world. Purchasing a shortwave radio: Listening to the broadcast live on a shortwave radio can be a fun experience! Shortwave radio can also prove useful in situations of natural disaster, war, government censorship or general unrest in order to obtain important outside news and information. Shortwave radio is also a unique way to hear independent radio programming, world music, news and entertainment from distant countries at the turn of a dial! Affordable shortwave radios which I recommend are: Tecsun PL-660 Tecsun PL-380 Tecsun PL-310et Tivdio V-115 CC Skywave Radio Questions, comments and reception reports are welcome at vorwinfo@gmail.com Happy listening!
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Links to listen to the VORW Program via Shortwave ###### UPDATED November 16th, 2017 ###### This guide provides you with all the links necessary to listen to the VORW Radio Show online! You can choose from multiple digital streams to listening on an online shortwave radio! Thursday 5 AM Eastern / 10 AM GMT - 5850 kHz to Western North America http://w7rna.dyndns-remote.com:18901/?tune=5850am Thursday 3 PM Eastern / 8 PM GMT - 11580 kHz to Eastern North America http://k3fef.com:8901/?tune=11580am http://jerseyshoresdr.hopto.org:8073/?f=11580.00amz11 http://k2sdr.homelinux.com:8073/?f=11580.00amz11 http://kiwisdr.k1ra.us:8073/?f=11580.00amz11 Thursday 6 PM Eastern / 11 PM GMT - 9955 kHz to South America Tunein Radio Digital Stream: http://tunein.com/radio/WRMI-9955-s50329/ Creek.fm Digital Stream: http://wrmi.listen.creek.fm/stream Thursday 8 PM Eastern / 1 AM GMT - 7490 kHz or 9395 kHz to North America Tunein Radio Digital Stream: http://tunein.com/radio/The-Planet-7490-s24829/ http://jerseyshoresdr.hopto.org:8073/?f=7490.00amz11 http://k2sdr.homelinux.com:8073/?f=9395.00amz11 http://kiwisdr.k1ra.us:8073/?f=7490.00amz11 http://n4tvc.zapto.org:8073/?f=7490.00amz11 Sunday 11 AM Eastern / 4 PM GMT - 9400 kHz to Europe / Middle East http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/?tune=9400am Sunday 4 PM Eastern / 9 PM GMT - 9395 kHz to Eastern North America http://jerseyshoresdr.hopto.org:8073/?f=9395.00amz11 http://k2sdr.homelinux.com:8073/?f=9395.00amz11 http://kiwisdr.k1ra.us:8073/?f=9395.00amz11 http://n4tvc.zapto.org:8073/?f=9395.00amz11 --- You can also listen on demand at any time via SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/vorw_radio_int --- What is shortwave? Shortwave radio is radio transmission using shortwave radio frequencies, generally 1600 kHz - 30000 kHz. Radio signals are reflected off the upper atmosphere back to earth, allowing signals to travel thousands of miles. Shortwave radio remains very popular throughout the developing world though audiences still exist in all parts of the world. Purchasing a shortwave radio: Listening to the broadcast live on a shortwave radio can be a fun experience! Shortwave radio can also prove useful in situations of natural disaster, war, government censorship or general unrest in order to obtain important outside news and information. Shortwave radio is also a unique way to hear independent radio programming, world music, news and entertainment from distant countries at the turn of a dial! Affordable shortwave radios which I recommend are: Tecsun PL-660 Tecsun PL-380 Tecsun PL-310et Tivdio V-115 CC Skywave Radio Questions, comments and reception reports are welcome at vorwinfo@gmail.com Happy listening! |
Today many people follow vegetarian, vegan and a variety of eclectic diets, but before World War II meals were commonly based on the meat and two veg philosophy. And so food rationing, which began 75 years ago on January 8 1940 and lasted for a remarkable 14 years, forced many people to adjust their eating patterns to accommodate wartime food restrictions.
This was not the first time that rationing was introduced in Britain. Wartime food controls were first devised and implemented on the British home front towards the end of World War I. Large losses in shipping from German U-boat attacks and the resultant shortages made food restrictions vital. But food controls at this time were limited and not strictly enforced, often leading to hoarding and shortages.
So when World War II was approaching, officials were determined to organise a better programme of food management. They set out to construct a food system that was more comprehensive and all-encompassing. And so initial planning began in advance of the declaration of war in September 1939. The government had decided to begin food controls in the autumn of 1939. But due to public anxiety about rationing it delayed the introduction of food controls until the following January.
Bring on the cod liver oil
Amounts of basic foods such as meat, cheese and sugar were set for adults regardless of age, gender, class or occupation. At the beginning only bacon, butter, and sugar were rationed, with meat, cheese and tea later added to the list. Most food rations were allocated by weight, but meat by price. Allocated rations varied throughout the war depending on supply levels.
Pregnant and nursing mothers, and later, men working in heavy industries were given additional allowances of food such as meat to sustain them. Children and babies also had different rations including extra milk and meat, as well as the provision of orange juice and cod liver oil. Everyone was issued a coloured ration book according to their status. People were required to register with shops, and when purchasing food, they presented their ration book for verification of the amounts allocated to them.
Married women bore the brunt of having to adjust to the ration system because they were primarily responsible for feeding family members. These women pooled the quantities of food allocated to each member of their family, allowing their households to benefit. Some mothers used children’s extra meat ration to feed larger portions to fathers, while also using the children’s orange juice allowance in their cookery dishes.
Initially there were some difficulties with the organisation and supplies for the food programme which resulted in some discontent about the controls. But soon a down-to-earth approach to the public relations campaign promoting rationing, led by Lord Woolton, helped to create positivity among the majority of the British wartime population.
In 1941, the government introduced a points-based scheme for certain items including tinned goods. Food points on each item varied weekly, according to supply. Shoppers had the freedom to apply their allocated points to purchase foods covered under this system, which allowed more flexibility in the food programme and gave consumers more choice in constructing their meals.
Historians, researching wartime eating have shown that patterns were not radically altered, but old patterns of eating were modified to accommodate the quantity of rationed foods available. People sought to maintain, as close as possible, their pre-war diets. If dishes required items that were not readily available or took up too many rations at one time, they were less often made during wartime.
During the war, foods such as SPAM and powdered eggs were shipped from America to Britain through the Lend-Lease Agreement between the two countries. Margarine, which was largely disliked before the war, became a part of the rations allotted to each household, but remained unpopular.
After the war
But all wasn’t over with the end of the war. Instead, it got worse after 1945 because of severe economic issues at home, world shortages of food, and the diversion of supplies to feed a recovering Europe. And this continuation did not sit at all well with the British public. While people could readily understand the necessity to limit food resources in wartime in order to win the conflict, once it was over it was a different story.
Discontent grew over the sustained, and at times, worsening conditions of the food situation in the post-war period. Potatoes, the backbone of the wartime diet, became rationed for the first time in 1947, as did bread between 1946 and 1948. To compensate, the government sought to import alternative food supplies, including snoek, a fish commonly eaten in South Africa and South America, which proved unpopular to the British palate.
In Britain today, snoek is nowhere to be seen, but SPAM is readily available in most grocery shops, suggesting the enduring legacy of food rationing 75 years on. |
The Manic Street Preachers will always be up there in my favourite bands and their history is a story in itself with how many times they've managed to come back against the odds and still produce some wonderful, re-inventive sounds for the band. Escape From History is focused on the considerable tragedy that struck the band in 1995 with Richey Edwards going missing and the fallout of that leading up to the release of Everything Must Gone with commercial and critical acclaim.
Everything Must Go still stands proud as one of the Manics' greates albums in their long standing discography but what makes it an even more astonishing achievement was how they created it still in the doubts of the future of the band in searching for not only their friend Richey but also themselves in what they could do next in this time of doubt. Escape from History goes into detail with the band members themselves and surrounding managers, producers and so forth that discuss quite honestly how serious this period of time was. There's a great deal of honesty in there and all of the closest people to the band get their say throughout Escape from History.
What I found interesting about the documentary though was the honest from the band themselves. There's a moment in which lead singer James Dean Bradfield begins to realise what they have on their hands with Everything Must Go but slips into a spiral of self doubt wondering to himself if this was something Richey would approve of, if Richey would even like what they were going. Everything Must Go is an obvious departure from the previous albums the Manics had made, and the Holy Bible in particular in being such a brutal listen in comparison thematically. It's no surprise though to hear the producer on Everything Must Go immediately point out to the band upon hearing rough versions of Design For Life that this was the 'jukebox song'. And how right he was.
The style of Escape from History feels very 'Manics' as well, which isn't a huge surprise given that director Kieran Evans is a long time collaborator with the band's videos. In between some of the more sombre discussions we see lingering shots of countryside areas, of coastlines alongside the discussions of Richey's last appearances and there's a real sombre feel to a lot of these moments. It's quite beautiful in a few places but as the discussions falls more towards the development of Everything Must Go more archival footage comes in and we see more of the band than in the initial first half. Plus I think this documentary might be the most I've ever seen drummer Sean Moore talk!
Escape from History is quite an important look at how a band finds itself again after such an awful event in losing not only their bandmate but their friend with no closure. In amongst all of that uncertainty they manage to find a sound that works for them with incredible confidence and re-energizes the band we still have creating relevant music 20 years later. It's a solid documentary even for fans not even that aware of the band just to learn more into this part of their lives and the importance of Everything Must Go to their lives. |
This whole exercise is getting old.
The biggest problem with the financial system is that of bad measurement. Without accurate data, no analyst can make sound investment judgments.
Unfortunately for all of us, the data is gimmicked to the point that nothing is valid any longer. GDP is gimmicked using a phony deflator. Unemployment is gimmicked by not counting those who stop looking for work. Inflation is gimmicked by ignoring food and energy prices. Employment is gimmicked by adjusting the work week to make the the economic equivalent of the loss of hundreds of thousands of job look like employment gains.
And on and on.
This is how those at the top of the economic-political food chain think: if the data is bad, change how you measure it until it looks good. And that equals growth!
If only we could apply a similar idea to issues like personal weight, home values, and the like. If we could do that, we’d all be six foot tall, multi-millionaires living in mansions with six-pack abs.
I realize that last example is ridiculous, but I use it to illustrate a key point with the “data” being promoted by the Feds today: that it’s a mirage. Changing the way in which you measure something doesn’t change its actual reality. You cannot create economic growth by altering how you measure GDP growth anymore than I can change my height by adjusting the “inch” measurements on a ruler to be smaller.
Unfortunately for economists, there is a thing called reality. And the ugly underlying economic realities of this “recovery” will eventually emerge, no matter how many accounting gimmicks are used.
When this happens, the move will be fast. Consider Italy and Spain. Both were considered rock solid members of the EU for years. Then in the span of a few weeks they nearly imploded and the ECB had to pump hundreds of billions into the system. Ditto for Cyprus, Enron, the subprime housing bubble and any other accounting fraud that people ignored when making investment decisions.
It always ends the same way: the truth comes to light and the losses are enormous.
For more investment ideas and market insights, visit us at www.gainspainscapital.com
Best Regard,
Graham Summers |
HOUSTON — The NFL scouted four Canadian stadiums in 2016 as candidate sites for possible future regular-season games, Postmedia has learned.
Mark Waller, the NFL’s executive vice-president of international, said in an interview on Wednesday that league reps last year visited Montreal’s Olympic Stadium, Toronto’s Rogers Centre, Edmonton’s Commonwealth Stadium and Vancouver’s B.C. Place Stadium. The latter two play host to CFL games.
In the interview, Waller talked up Canada as a future host of a regular-season “international” game, or games.
He added, however, that a “dark cloud” hangs over Canada regarding the CRTC’s decision to allow U.S. commercials to be shown during Sunday’s Super Bowl LI. More on that in a moment.
Following commissioner Roger Goodell’s annual pre-Super Bowl news conference, Waller told Postmedia that he and his team visited the four Canadian stadiums in person for two main reasons: first, to see if team locker rooms were sufficient, and secondly, to see if those venues meet NFL technological standards.
The NFL has not yet reached a conclusion on a Canadian venue, Waller said, nor does it disclose findings of such information missions.
The NFL is contracted to play at least three games annually in the United Kingdom through 2020. Four games will be played in England in 2017.
Goodell announced Wednesday a game this fall will be played in Mexico City for the second straight year.
In October 2015, Waller had said Canada is among the top candidate countries the league wants to expand to, after the U.K. and Mexico and probably Germany.
“We also visited a number of German cities (in 2016), just so you have that as context,” Waller said on Wednesday. “And we do that all the time. We’ve looked at stadiums in Brazil, I’ve looked at stadiums in Australia and China. That’s our job.”
But Waller is now stopping short of suggesting Germany remains ahead of Canada in the queue.
“I wouldn’t like to think of it as a pecking order, to be honest,” he said. “It’s very much looking at what teams we have available to play, and how many games we are already committed to.
“We have a great fan base up there in Canada. It’s a great market for us. I would love to be back there, and obviously from a logistical standpoint, a scheduling standpoint, a broadcast standpoint, that’s much easier for us than a game in Germany, and certainly a game in China. So I would have Canada high on the list.”
While it’s not easy for the league to free up enough willing teams to play in international games, Toronto and Montreal are only a short plane ride from many NFL teams situated in the U.S. Northeast.
In fact, for some NFL teams, Toronto and Montreal are a shorter flight away than one or more division rivals, just as Vancouver is much closer to Seattle than any of the Seahawks’ three NFC West foes.
“We’re pleased with the development of taking regular-games internationally,” Waller said. “But we want to go to more countries, and we want to go back to Canada. We’re very proud of the fact we have such a great fan base there.”
The NFL head office has one big issue with North America’s largest country by land mass, however.
“I think the only dark cloud for us at the moment is the CRTC ruling on the Super Bowl broadcast,” Waller said. “That impacts us very negatively.”
Bell Media owns English-language NFL telecast rights in Canada, and airs all playoff games — plus Sunday and Monday regular-season games — on its CTV or TSN family of channels.
The CRTC in August altered a long-standing policy for just the Super Bowl, to allow big-buzz U.S. ads to be aired during the game.
For decades, the standard practice has been for Canadian TV rights-holders to sub in their own domestic commercials for any popular out-of-country sports event, such as The Masters or U.S. college football games. That’s how networks recoup their rights fees. (And that’s how CTV irks the country with its non-stop promos of other prime-time shows during NFL games, it should be noted.)
[np_storybar title=”Raiders to host Patriots in Mexico City” link=””]And back they go to Mexico.
The Oakland Raiders will play a “home” game for the second consecutive NFL season in Mexico City, commissioner Roger Goodell announced Wednesday.
The Raiders will play the New England Patriots at Estadio Azteca, on a date to be determined by late end of April, when the 2017 schedule is expected to be released.
In November, the Raiders rallied to defeat the Houston Texans, 27-20, in front of 76,743 fans.
“We enjoyed tremendous support from the Raider Nation in Mexico in 2016 and look forward to experiencing that great passion again this year,” Raiders owner Mark Davis said in a statement.
Goodell said at his news conference Wednesday that the 2017 game probably won’t be played on the Monday before U.S. Thanksgiving, which caused undue logistical hardships on the Texans and Raiders.
— John Kryk[/np_storybar]
The CRTC’s decision is “incredibly discriminatory,” Waller said, because the policy has been changed only for one event: the Super Bowl.
“I think from a fan’s perspective, it’s very simple: Bell and other broadcast partners pay significant rights fees to us to bring our content in, and the way that that works is they’re enabled to sell on that content and take advertising into the game (telecast),” he said.
“The Bell broadcast of the Super Bowl is a hugely important platform for Canadian businesses, Canadian creative companies, Canadian creative agencies — businesses that maybe don’t need to advertise in the U.S., or don’t want to, or even can’t afford to. So that right is being taken away.”
The Financial Post reported Tuesday that Bell Media maintains it will lose millions of dollars in revenue, a factor in its decision to eliminate more than two dozen jobs across Canada.
Bell and the NFL are fighting the CRTC in court.
Canadian fans for decades have been livid they can’t see the debut of highly popular ads during the Super Bowl, which now soak social media for hours or days afterward.
“I understand the argument that, from a fan perspective, it would be great to see the American commercials,” Waller said, “but those commercials were bought, paid for and due to run in America — not in Canada, Mexico or anywhere else.”
It’s probably true that if the NFL, and particularly the Super Bowl telecast, weren’t so popular in Canada, the policy might never have changed.
“I just think it’s wrong,” Waller said, “that we get penalized and our partners get penalized for that popularity — penalized legislatively and economically. That does not seem right.” |
About This Game You awaken in a decrepit old mansion.
A woman with eyes of jade stands before You, informing You that You are the Master of the house, and she Your Maid. However, You have no memories, no concept of self—or, indeed, any certainty that You are even alive.
The Maid invites You to join her on a journey through the mansion's lifeless halls, to behold the numerous tragedies that have befallen its residents. She suggests that among them, perhaps You will find some trace of Yourself.
Beyond the first door lies the year 1603.
It is an era of unparalleled beauty, where art and theatre flourish. Roses bloom abundantly in the garden where the inseparable Rhodes siblings play, and though they appear to be free of worry and strife... not everyone is content to see them happy.
Beyond the second door lies the year 1707.
In this era, the mansion lies in ruins, and a beast dwells within. He claims to yearn for a life of serenity, but it is not long before he yields to his innate savagery and a massacre ensues.
Beyond the third door lies the year 1869.
In this technologically advanced era, people are always on the move. The mansion's master is an ambitious businessman who has invested in the rail industry. However, his obsession with wealth and power leads him to neglect and mistreat his wife.
Beyond the fourth door lies the year 1099.
The Maid tells You that this is the final tale. In this era, You see a young man who claims to be cursed and a girl with white hair, called Giselle, who has been branded a witch and marked for death.
Having borne witness to these four tragedies, each set in a different time and place, You are now free to choose whether You wish to end Your story here... or press on.
But there are those who would say,
"You were able to bear them because they weren't your tragedies." |
WOW! ANTI-TRUMP REPORTER CRIED WOLF! NEW VIDEO Shows Michelle Fields Not Even Bumped by Trump Campaign Manager
WOW!
What the hell, Michelle?
Breitbart reporter caught fabricating story about Donald Trump Campaign Manager Corey Lewandowski.
Michelle Fields made headlines when she said Lewandowski grabbed her and threw her down on the ground at the Jupiter, Florida victory speech on Tuesday night.
The Gateway Pundit’s Kristinn Taylor was in the room at the time and did not see the incident in question. He was the last reporter to film Corey closing up the event with reporters.
Video of @CLewandowski_ ending press Qs after Trump presser in Jupiter, FL Tuesday. pic.twitter.com/fe8HwUCnPz — Kristinn Taylor (@KristinnFR) March 9, 2016
Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields filed criminal assault charges with Jupiter, Florida police against Donald Trump’s campaign manager Corey Lewandowski on Friday several days after the incident. Fields claims she suffered a slight bruise when Lewandowski “intentionally” assaulted her.
Video released on Friday shows a fragmented version of Lewandowski walking past Fields.
(Lewandowski is in the blue shirt. Fields is in the white suit.)
Different angle of Michelle Fields, Ben Terris and Corey Lewandowski. pic.twitter.com/bw3uYfHbKY — Jeremy Art (@cspanJeremy) March 11, 2016
On Saturday a new video was released. It clearly shows Lewandowski trying to get Trump out of the room after ending the presser. Reporters are swarming Trump including Michelle Fields. Secret Service is also around Trump.
The video shows Lewandowski walking past Fields. No contact was made. He didn’t even bump into her.
(Video was updated after first video was hacked)
FOR THE RECORD: I spoke with Corey Lewandowski on Friday in St. Louis. I’d caution the anti-Trump crowd from pushing this story further.
This video is very damning for the young anti-Trump reporter.
Good luck with that lawsuit. |
Urbana, Illinois (CNN) The crowd of demonstrators who rallied behind Yingying Zhang's family included hundreds of students, professors and concerned strangers.
It also included the man suspected of kidnapping her, officials say.
University police confirmed the man standing by himself in a dark T-shirt with his left hand on a railing as Christensen, said Robin Kaler, associate chancellor for public affairs at the University of Illinois.
The day after the rally, Christensen was arrested on suspicion of kidnapping. And while many were surprised Christensen would show up to the rally, the suspect had actually been under surveillance for weeks.
Suspect's phone visited 'Abduction 101' forum
A spate of bizarre circumstances led to Christensen's arrest. Among those cited by FBI Special Agent Anthony Manganaro in a criminal complaint
-- Christensen's unusual car, a black Saturn Astra, had a sunroof and a cracked front passenger hubcap, just like the vehicle that picked up Zhang the day she disappeared.
-- The suspect changed his story about what he was doing the afternoon of June 9, the day of the disappearance, Manganaro wrote.
Christensen said he was probably sleeping or playing video games "at his residence all day," the FBI agent wrote. A few days later, Christensen told investigators he was "driving around the UI campus when he observed an Asian female with a backpack standing at a corner appearing distressed," Manganaro wrote.
Christensen told authorities he dropped the woman off a few blocks away, the complaint said.
JUST WATCHED Arrest made in grad student's disappearance Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Arrest made in grad student's disappearance 01:07
-- Investigators sought search warrants and started "continuous surveillance" on Christensen around June 16. On June 29, the day before he was arrested, Christensen "was captured on audio recording ... explaining how he kidnapped Y.Z.," or Yingying Zhang, the FBI agent wrote.
"Christensen stated that he brought Y.Z. back to his apartment, and otherwise held her in his apartment against her will," Manganaro said.
The agent said Zhang is still missing and presumed dead.
'My scalp was tingling'
Yuan Ziwen, a roommate and close friend of Zhang's boyfriend, said he was frightened when he saw the video released by police.
"My scalp was tingling. Yingying is a really cautious and reasonable person, I don't believe she will enter some stranger's car unless there is an emergency or she is in a rush," Yuan told CNN.
As Chinese news outlets continue to provide extensive coverage on the Zhang case, public interest in the story shows no sign of abating.
While sympathy for the victim appears universal, heated debates have also broken out on social media platforms on topics ranging from personal safety in America to the efficiency of US law enforcement agencies.
A commentary in the Global Times, a provocative but state-sanctioned tabloid that often takes hard-line positions, concluded the FBI mishandled the investigation because "police were overwhelmed" by the high crime rate in the United States.
"In fact, the FBI's inefficiency is not by accident, yet difficult to avoid; this is tied to the high crime rate and judicial system in the US, also, the problems of FBI itself," the paper said.
Many current and former US-based Chinese students and scholars have also brushed aside the notion that the Zhang case highlights the danger of living in America -- in sharp contrast to major Chinese cities where violent crimes are still relatively uncommon.
"I'm not afraid of going to the States at all," said Zhong Siqi, a 22-year-old recent college graduate in southern China who will attend Northeastern University in Boston in the fall.
Defense attorney: 'Keep an open mind'
Christensen appeared in a magistrate's court for an arraignment hearing Monday, but said very little. He did not enter a plea for the kidnapping charge.
Another hearing will take place Wednesday to determine whether the 28-year-old should remain in custody, said Sharon Paul, spokeswoman for the US Attorney's Office for the Central District of Illinois.
Christensen's defense attorney, Evan Bruno, urged the public to avoid jumping to conclusions.
"There's a long road ahead," Bruno said. "I encourage everyone to be patient, to keep an open mind and wait until the evidence comes in."
A love of watching fireflies at night
In an interview Tuesday with CNN, Guofang Miao, Zhang's colleague, said she was "sad and angry" when she saw the man in court charged with kidnapping her friend.
Miao, a post-doctoral student at the university, worked closely with Zhang for more than a month on a project with the university's College of Agriculture. They called themselves field ecologists and were concerned about the environment, said Miao, who holds a Ph.D. in forestry and environmental resources from North Carolina State University.
The pair used new technology to develop methods to predict crop yield and studied how new crops adapted to climate change, Miao said.
"The work is really tough but we enjoyed (the work) a lot," Miao said, standing in the university corn field where the two worked.
Zhang was talented and passionate about her work, Miao said. But she also recalled the lighter side of her friend.
Yingying Zhang working on an agricultural project in May.
They talked about the corn stalks that sprang up quickly and the beautiful fireflies at night that fascinated Zhang, said Miao, a native of China. Zhang didn't see fireflies where she studied in China.
"When she started to see those she was so excited," Miao said. "I said 'okay, if you really like, I can drop you here and you can stay until night. ... Then I can come to pick you up later.' "
"I still hope she can make it back to see those," Miao added. "She will love that." |
I recall telling my mother that I was going to be a Republican after winning my first election to the Arizona chapter of Teen Age Republicans' executive board while in high school.
Her response was, “That’s great son, just don’t tell you grandfather, he’s a Democrat!” Half joking, half serious, my mother never judged me, always encouraged me to pursue my goals, believe in myself and have the courage to stand up for my convictions. Growing up, I always heard the phrase, “Remember who you are and whose you are.” I never forgot that.
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As a Republican who happens to be black, I have sadly grown accustomed to being called some of the most derogatory and racist terms in the bigoted lexicon of the ignorant. I have experienced racism living the middle-class black experience in Phoenix, Ariz., parts of South Carolina and even here in Washington, D.C. It was and will always be their problem, their ignorance and their jealousy of my achievements.
I lost friends and have been ridiculed over my support of President George W. Bush, Senator John McCain John Sidney McCainGOP lobbyists worry Trump lags in K Street fundraising Mark Kelly kicks off Senate bid: ‘A mission to lift up hardworking Arizonans’ Gabbard hits back at Meghan McCain after fight over Assad MORE, Governor Mitt Romney Willard (Mitt) Mitt RomneyHillicon Valley: Senators urge Trump to bar Huawei products from electric grid | Ex-security officials condemn Trump emergency declaration | New malicious cyber tool found | Facebook faces questions on treatment of moderators Pence meeting with Senate GOP ahead of vote to block emergency declaration Key senators say administration should ban Huawei tech in US electric grid MORE and now President Donald J. Trump. However, there is something different about the level of viciousness coming my way, because of my support of our current president.
"Left-wing assassination fantasies spill over into real violence" https://t.co/aKYs3LEWu4 pic.twitter.com/CXBlLO42Di — The Hill (@thehill) August 21, 2017
The recent events in Charlottesville, Va., unmasked the reality that there are still deep-rooted racial divides that extend beyond church services and public schools. There is a palpable and growing segment of disenfranchised, hopeless and fearful young people who are lashing out and blaming people who do not look like them in the process. There is also more media attention and access given towards the spread of bigotry from domestic hates groups in the United States.
Let me be clear, I would never support anyone in public or in private if I felt they were racist, and went against everything I was raised to believe in and stand for politically. My integrity, and my good name, is worth more than that. Politicians and political leaders come and go but I have to sleep at night, look my family and future children in the eye and say what I stood for and supported was right.
That said, when President Trump Donald John TrumpHouse committee believes it has evidence Trump requested putting ally in charge of Cohen probe: report Vietnamese airline takes steps to open flights to US on sidelines of Trump-Kim summit Manafort's attorneys say he should get less than 10 years in prison MORE disavowed the KKK and David Duke in March of 2016, I supported him. When President Trump said, “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence” on August 12, 2017, I supported him. When President Trump said “Racism is evil. And those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans” on August 14, 2017, I supported him. When President Trump said, "I've condemned neo-Nazis” and “I think the driver of the car is a disgrace to himself, his family, and this country. And that is — you can call it terrorism,” on August 15, 2017, I supported him.
The facts are that President Trump has repeatedly denounced hate groups, like he did again at the MAGA Phoenix Rally August 22, 2017, but it seems as if that is still not good enough. Many on the left and in the media did not hold President Obama to the same standard after the Charleston nine domestic terrorism attack by a white supremacist.
WATCH LIVE: Trump defends his Charlottesville comments at campaign rally https://t.co/liKXERfmBU pic.twitter.com/GiQUtiYJre — The Hill (@thehill) August 23, 2017
In a recent CNN appearance, I brought up Charleston to address the need to be fair and not hypocritical. My statement that President Obama did not name the racist groups or call the perpetrator a domestic terrorist was fact checked and proven to be accurate.
I have the utmost respect for Presidents George H.W. and George W. Bush but, in their joint statement after Charlottesville, they did not call out the hate groups by name, and everyone was fine with their appropriate statement.
But for President Trump there seems to be another standard. Why do they continue to move the goal post for this career businessman, this outsider non-politician? There seems to be a carefully crafted campaign to discredit everything that he is and does.
They claim “Make America Great Again” is racist but did not claim that when President Clinton used the phrase in 1992. They do this because his victories undermine the very notion that he could actually be a great president who wants to really help minorities, the forgotten, and those in fragile communities. They said minorities hated him but he received more black votes than Governor Romney and Senator McCain, winning 13 percent of young black males' support.
Hatred, bigotry, and ignorance know no political party. Unfortunately, there is still enough to go around.
Bill O'Reilly: "On Charlottesville, media is the megaphone of the Trump-loathing left" https://t.co/3TUmK3ep7f pic.twitter.com/deEPpWvuvf — The Hill (@thehill) August 16, 2017
President Trump was not in office when a group of fraternity members chanted a racist song to a complacent group of their peers; Donald Trump was not the president who praised former KKK member, Sen. Robert Byrd; he did not filibuster the Civil Rights Act; and he was not the cause of the Civil War, or Jim Crow laws. Rather, he is the president now whose words are being matched by action with ICE prosecuting the largest group of white supremacists in history.
President Trump has called for us to come together and we should do that, not automatically doubt one’s commitment or documented lifelong dedication to working to help minorities, namely the black community, without knowing the facts. We shouldn’t use the same hate filled, vile words, and threats these hate groups use at someone who happens to a black Republican, and we certainly should not tell them to “shut up” because they are a supporter of our president.
A random man from Georgia sent me viciously cruel and crude emails after seeing me on TV. His daughter had an incident at school and was teased, harassed and verbally attacked for because of her race. Thinking I was fueling this hatred because I support President Trump, he showed her some of my commentaries when to his surprise she pointed out the rudeness and attacks that mirrored her own experience. He tracked me down and asked for my forgiveness.
We should not use personal attacks to get our point across or express our frustration online, on the phone, or with our cars, our fists, and our weapons.
I’m blessed to live in the best country on earth, one that allows me to be a free man, and a free thinker. My late grandfather told me, “Paris I hate your party but I love you and love you in your party, they need you in it fighting for us so don’t leave.”
I am still a Republican, proud of this president, honored to have worked in the White House, and am just as proud to be black in America. Hatred, bigotry and violence have no place in American society and I appreciate President Trump for saying that.
Paris Dennard (@PARISDENNARD) is a communications strategist and GOP political commentator who has worked in the George W. Bush White House, the Republican National Committee (RNC), and most recently works on behalf of the nation’s public Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).
The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the views of The Hill. |
The Philadelphia 76ers have decided to not exercise the fourth-year option for Jahlil Okafor, according to ESPN.
Okafor joins Anthony Bennett (2013) and Hasheem Thabeet (2009) as the only players drafted in the top three to not have their fourth-year team options exercised. Unless traded by Philadelphia, the 21-year-old center will become a free agent this summer.
Before this season began, there was talk from Philadelphia's brass that Okafor would get "every opportunity" to play and prove himself. Shortly thereafter came an article with Okafor on SBNation.com in which he openly questioned his future with the team.
To date, Okafor has appeared in just one game for the 76ers in 2017-18, a 22-minute, 10-point stint in a 128-94 blowout loss to the Toronto Raptors on Oct. 21.
Philadelphia exercised options for guard-forward Ben Simmons, forward Dario Šarić, guard-forward Timothé Luwawu-Cabarrot, and guard-forward Justin Anderson on Tuesday afternoon. |
A number of articles critiquing comments Caitlyn Jenner has made about trans people have been published recently. An all too familiar pattern of media representation of trans women is playing out on a more high profile stage than usual: a privileged and newly out white trans woman is propped up as a spokesperson by cisgender people who like what she has to say, since she has yet to unlearn a cis centric worldview, and is then torn down when she inevitably makes wrong and offensive comments, becoming a scapegoat. Meanwhile, a recent interview with Transparent creator Jill Soloway features a number of transphobic comments, but they have not been called out in the press. While Jenner is critiqued, cis people in media get away with spewing thinly veiled transphobia and even – as in Soloway’s case – get held up as representatives for the trans community.
Caitlyn Jenner called out
A number of articles have published recently highlighting ignorant statements Caitlyn Jenner has made about trans people in recent interviews. On Dec 10 at Cosmopolitan, male author and editor Alex Rees called out as transphobic Jenner’s comments in a TIME interview saying that, “if you look like a man in a dress, it makes people uncomfortable. So the first thing I can do is try to present myself well.” Rees critiqued these comments for stereotyping and and scapegoating trans women who don’t pass and can’t afford the medical interventions Jenner can. This take on the interview was widely circulated and repeated in other articles, leading to a clarifying apology from Jenner. On Dec 12 the Advocate published an article calling out Jenner’s comments in a low profile interview at the UN that trans people in the US have it relatively well off: “If you look at issues on a worldwide basis, I’m pretty comfortable with the issues here in the United States.”
I have heard newly out trans women like Jenner make the same comment about presentation. When talking with other trans women about the pressures of presenting in a way that’s acceptable to the cis gaze, there would be nothing wrong these these comments. Jenner does have a lot of pressure on her to “pass,” as she came out in the public eye, has the kind of the celebrity that means constantly being photographed, and because she set herself up and has been accepted by the media as a trans spokesperson. And it is true that many people won’t respect trans women who don’t pass and aren’t as put together as humanly possible. As Meredith Talusan points out, the original interview contextualizes Jenner’s comments in a way that make it clear this is what she was trying to address. The critique of Jenner’s comments follows a familiar pattern: trans women are disrespected and treated terribly when they don’t pass, but if they do pass they’re called out for upholding the gender binary and cis standards of beauty. It is an impossible bind.
But this narrative has different meaning playing out this publicly in the media and involving a rich white trans woman. In this context, with this quote highlighted in articles, a privileged trans woman who can afford to present the way she wants is telling trans women without that luxury that they make cis people uncomfortable, and even further, letting cis people off the hook for treating women who don’t pass terribly. Which is absolutely not OK, and is also exactly the kind of messaging mistake that I would expect from a newly out trans woman, even one with as much media savvy as Jenner.
The trans spokesperson cis media wants
Caitlyn Jenner is in many ways exactly the trans woman spokesperson cis people want, and her acceptance and subsequent critique by the media follows a familiar pattern, just at a higher profile than it often plays out. Media loves newly out spokespeople who will say what a non-trans audience wants to hear – or even parrot their bigotry – because they are still seeking cis approval and have yet to unlearn a worldview that centers cis opinions and experiences. Newly out trans women are experts on their own experiences, to be sure, but it takes time to learn about actively living in the world as a trans woman. I am intimately familiar with this pattern as it is how I got a media platform in the first place as I was newly out, not saying much to challenge a cis-centric worldview, and much less knowledgeable about issues facing people like me, which endeared me to editors and publishers and also left me open to sometimes vicious critique. And I have watched this pattern play out with a number of other newly out, almost exclusively white trans women.
Jenner is also white and incredibly wealthy, which insulates her from many of the hardships other trans women face. There are staggeringly high rates of poverty among trans women who often struggle to find food and somewhere to sleep at night, let alone the medical care and high fashion Jenner can afford. Trans women of color are facing a global epidemic of violence, with the most murders ever recorded in the US in 2015. This is the context in which Jenner says she is “pretty comfortable with the issues here in the United States,” most of which she will never have to face. It is how she is able to decry that “nearly 25% of the women in high-end sex business are reportedly trans women” as a sign of oppression, as she did when she came out. She is far removed from the reality of staggering employment discrimination trans women face that makes sex work one of the few jobs open to them – though most are struggling in poverty, and would be so lucky to be on the high-end side of the business.
Unlike Laverne Cox, who came up in trans community, is deeply knowledgeable about the struggles trans women face and can speak to them powerfully, Jenner’s own experience is far removed from these realities, and thus more appealing to media that loves tokenizing trans women for views and hits and is less interested in addressing oppression. This is part of why writers and advocates, including myself, expressed concern about the media focus on Jenner before she even came out, which served as a distraction from very real, literal life and death issues that need to be addressed. Cox is expert at pivoting from typical celebrity talk to real world issues. Jenner is much less experienced with this, is much less connected to and knowledgeable about the realities facing the most marginalized trans women, and much more likely to try to appease cis interviewers instead of standing up for herself, which Cox has the immense experience to be able to do. And while she may try to highlight some of these issues on her unpopular reality show, her celebrity is ultimately about holding up a model of success that is rich, white, passable, and lets people get away with laughing at her – and by extension other women – for being trans.
Jenner is also the ideal spokesperson to fall into the tropes the media wants because, as part of the Kardashian media empire, her celebrity was always already set up to be about presentation. Looks matter a great deal in Jenner’s world, and she was already positioned to be looked at, to be evaluated for her ability to not just “pass” as a woman but aim for extreme beauty standards.
Just as the media loves propping up a spokesperson like Jenner to generate hits and say what they want her to say, they also love tearing trans women down. There are critiques of Jenner coming from trans women of color that are about much more relevant issues than her comments about presentation, and I am in no way saying she is above critique. Her calling out was also inevitable, as a newly out, incredibly privileged celebrity was always bound to make these errors. And the eagerness with which callouts of Jenner are published by cis authors or editors shows exactly what she was set up for from jump. This is underscored by the fact that cis critics don’t go get their own people, overlooking transphobic comments from cis folks like Jill Soloway who are also positioned as spokespeople.
Jill Soloway, Ariel Levy, Eileen Myles, and retro transphobia
In many ways, Transparent creator and executive producer Jill Soloway is exactly the cis person the media wants “representing” trans women (“Before there was Caitlyn Jenner there was Jill Soloway and Transparent,” declares the headline of a problematic Vogue article, erasing generations of spokespeople who are actually trans). To my mind, Transparent is clearly written from and for a cis perspective, casting Jeffrey Tambor as a caricature of Soloway’s own trans parent in a narrative about how hard it is to have to deal with a trans person in your life. Then Soloway and Tambor win awards and thank the trans community for letting them represent them, and the show is seen as positive in a context where any representation or visibility is seen as a good thing, even if what’s visible isn’t the reality of trans women at all.
Soloway has already had a public brush with transphobia. Over a year ago she shared an offensive meme about Jenner before Caitlyn had even come out, but this does not seem to disqualify her from representing trans women. It seems unlikely her comments in a recent interview – heavily linked as they are to a legacy of transphobic “feminist” thought – will disqualify her either.
As the second season of Transparent receives press coverage everywhere praising a show starring a cis man and created by a cis woman for representing trans women, the New Yorker published a profile of Soloway in their December 14 edition (which published online earlier) that reeks of transphobia. The piece is by Ariel Levy, whose previous work, including Female Chauvinist Pigs and her article Where the Bois Are, has been critiqued for showing the author’s transphobia. The profile of Soloway continues this trend.
Soloway’s quotes as deployed by Levy are peppered with ideas straight out of trans exclusionary feminist theory. So-called feminists whose politics have done real harm in the world scapegoat trans women as representatives of patriarchy and not really women. Soloway’s essentialist thinking is revealed early on when she positions the vagina as the site of gendered oppression and the penis as the tool of the patriarchy: “Because you have a pussy! To me, that is what’s underneath all this gender trouble: most of our laws are being formed by people with penises.” This is classic transmisogynistic rhetoric, essentializing the patriarchy down to body parts, which positions trans women as agents of patriarchy simply because of their genitals, instead of some of its most vulnerable and oppressed victims.
Later on in the article, Levy challenges the singular pronoun “they” and suggests that in Soloway’s utopia there would be no need for transition, an all too common argument used to delegitimize trans identities. Soloway pushes back: “In a few years, we’re going to look back and say, ‘When we were little, we used to think that all women had vaginas and all men had penises, but now, of course, we know that’s not true.’” This suggests the implications of Soloway’s initial comments about pussies and penises may not reflect her intent. Yet the first quote is prominently featured without direct clarification. And it is certainly an odd statement for someone positioned as a spokesperson for trans issues, though not surprising coming from a cis person who has to think very deliberately about not essentializing gender down to genitals. And while it is very possible given Levy’s biases that Soloway’s intent was not to undermine trans people’s identities, what is particularly important here is that Jenner did not get this sort of benefit of the doubt from Rees and others – indeed, her much clearer clarifying statements were ignored.
Soloway talks in the article about there not being screenwriters with a “trans-feminine perspective” for her to hire at Transparent. Articles have been published praising Soloway’s comments about vetting a number of trans woman writers as challenging the widespread tokenization of marginalized voices in Hollywood. Which is odd, as I know a number of incredibly talented trans women with powerful voices who Soloway vetted (and I can even think of a trans woman screenwriter off the top of my head). Yet Soloway hired only one, putting Our Lady J in the difficult position of representing all trans women on the writing staff of a show ostensibly about a trans woman. Now Soloway can point to her to say trans women’s voices are represented despite having only one trans writer who does not control the show’s story or perspective.
The article has been cited a number of times throughout the press, including at Cosmopolitan, because it features Soloway coming out about her relationship with author Eileen Myles. What has not been covered are Myle’s comments that are also full of thinly veiled swipes at trans people as upholders of traditional oppressive gender roles and comments undermining trans people’s need to exist. Levy quotes Myles describing herself as “recoiling” when hearing a normatively presenting trans man refer to his “lovely wife, “because [of] that traditionalist take on gender—which I’ve heard from trans women as well as trans men.” Myles comments are used to blame trans people for upholding the traditional gender binary, despite the fact that they face extreme oppression and violence because they are seen to fall outside traditional notions of gender. This is followed by Myles’ comment about not needing to transition to living as a trans man and being “the gender Eileen.” Myles can certainly identify any way she wants, but the positioning of these comments makes them fall into a long transphobic feminist tradition of questioning the need to transition. And these sorts of comments are too often celebrated in the media without clarification – as in the case of Ruby Rose, for example – in a way that contributes to delegitimizing other’s need to transition.
Indeed, much of what makes this article so offensive comes down to Levy’s already clear biases, though Soloway and Myles give her plenty of fodder. Levy seems to position herself with Myles in implicitly questioning the need to transition and envisioning a gender-free future. Levy is certainly not the only journalist to repeatedly get away with publishing transphobia in the guise of objective journalism. Michelle Golberg published an article on December 9 at Slate that continues her pattern of digging in places like Tumblr to find voices that will support her view of trans activism as oppressing feminists. Golberg’s anti-trans bias is well documented – indeed, I wrote about it when she published something similar in the New Yorker last year (notice how the same publishers come up again and again). Yet Goldberg is able to continue publishing these articles, repeatedly getting pieces past editors that treat comments on a personal tumblr as news.
As of this writing, Levy’s article and Soloway and Myles’ comments have not been called out elsewhere in the press for their transphobia. While Soloway’s coming out has been written about widely, her vetting of trans woman writers praised, and season two of Transparent continues to be covered as a mainstream representation of trans women, the serious problems with these comments from the primary voice behind the show is ignored, or invisible to a cis audience not versed in this rhetoric.
Media gatekeepers and the limits to trans discourse
Trans people are not a monolith. Just like Caitlyn Jenner does not speak for all trans people, neither do I. I recognize, for example, that some trans people celebrate Transparent as a positive addition to media that’s increasing visibility, while others call it out for a number of failures. If there is really a “trans tipping point” it should mean trans people don’t have to present a monolithic worldview and experience. But when the voices included in media and the ways they’re positioned and framed predominantly perpetuate cis-centered, class and race-privileged viewpoints, it is impossible for this discourse to happen.
Cisgender gatekeepers – heads of media companies, publishers, editors, writers – still control what stories and ideas about trans people make it into the mainstream. Indeed, I originally wrote this article for another publication, briefly forgetting despite the subject matter that “the trans tipping point” hasn’t changed the fact that it’s simply not fair to give a piece like this to a cis editor without the knowledge base to work on it (and frankly, the only cis editors I know who are equipped to work on trans-related pieces that aren’t regurgitating existing narratives are here at Feministing).
It makes sense in this context that the spokesperson media latches onto is a newly out, incredibly privileged woman who declared herself a community representative from jump, who presents no real challenge to the status quo, and who is perfectly set up to fail so she can become the scapegoat for transphobia. It makes sense that media uses her comments to simplistically reify problems like the impossible bind trans women face around passing, because of course authors and editors are uninformed about these issues. It also makes sense that the fictional representation of trans women that finds success comes from a creator who is not trans and who even expresses transphobic views, and that this show reinforces the notion that trans women are hardships in cis people’s lives instead of centering and humanizing actual trans women. And it is completely unsurprising that press misses or ignores Soloway’s transphobic comments while praising her for representation.
While these patterns are, dare I say it, transparent to observers of the ways feminist thought and media narratives have been weaponized against trans women, it’s not surprising they are missed by a general audience. After all, there are very different audiences coming at these conversations with very different bases of knowledge and experience to work from. So transphobic ideas can continue to be advanced and trans women can continue to be scapegoated for transphobia, all in a media play for a cis audience. |
On the night John Doe No. 278 died, he had a pocket full of used Lottery tickets, $350 in cash and a small Samsung cellphone never once used to make a call.
Not that there would’ve been anyone for him to dial with the phone. There were no contacts, no voice mails, no recently called or missed calls. It had only been used for games.
He was a loner and a creature of habit. For the past year, he’d dutifully go into Jolly Donuts at 9 p.m., get a cup of coffee and charge the phone. He was particular about where he sat in the shop. If the table he preferred was occupied, he’d wait until it was empty before sitting down. There was also a slight streak of pragmatism there. It was one of only two tables close enough to an electrical outlet.
Heang Lei, who was working the night of Oct. 4, saw him come in and remove his baseball cap, just like he always did. He gave her a dollar bill for the coffee. Again, like always. He added sugar in a long pour that revealed a sweet tooth. He dumped in the powdered milk — never liquid — before getting a stirrer. There were six people scattered at the shop’s tables. But as fate would have it on this particular evening, the spot he always opted for was available.
The homeless man Lei knew by sight, but not by name, settled in to the seat and plugged in his phone.
Before it would finish charging, he’d be dead.
Officially, the Los Angeles County Department of Coroner doesn’t know who he is. Unofficially, they followed up on a tip that his name was Tuan Nguyen, a man who had been homeless for the better part of three decades in the Canoga Park area.
Craig Harvey, the county’s coroner investigations operations bureau chief, ran the name through the California Department of Motor Vehicles after learning he’d been born in 1961.
The computer spit out 623 possible matches.
“There’s part of the problem right there,” Harvey said.
Complicating matters was the crime-free life Nguyen lived. In more than three decades living homeless in the Canoga Park area, he’d never been arrested. No arrests meant no fingerprint hits in the system. To the computers, the existence of a body without a name wasn’t proof a life was lived.
In the three weeks since he was killed when a 42-year-old driver ran her SUV through the front doors of Jolly Donuts on the corner of Roscoe Boulevard and DeSoto Avenue, no family has come to identify or claim him. Los Angeles Police Department authorities have said the investigation is ongoing and don’t believe the driver, Kristin Chang, was impaired by drugs or alcohol.
That he was still unidentified bothered Lori Huynh because she knew he was more than a blue toe tag on a body and a green sheet filed in a box at the medical examiner’s office.
He had a life. She’d seen it unfold over 20 years almost every day at the corner of Roscoe Boulevard and Winnetka Avenue. She knew it because she’d taken time to get to know him. And his story of coming to the United States as a refugee from Vietnam after the fall of Saigon resonated with her because it was a version of her story, too.
She bought Violet Nails salon in 1986 after escaping from Vietnam in 1980. Shortly after getting the business running, she noticed a slight Asian man wandering the parking lot alone. She started small — offering him coffee — and over the course of two years and countless conversations pieced together parts of his life. It wasn’t until 1988 that he told her that both of his parents were among the so-called boat people who fled Vietnam and that they died at sea.
“His voice was a bit blurry,” said Huynh, 77. “He said he was all that was left of his family.”
Since she sold the business in 2007 she hadn’t seen him as often. But the new owners of the salon were given specific instructions as part of the sale: They had to look out for Nguyen.
They agreed. And when he died, they got together flowers and put them at the scene of the accident. Then they wept.
Nguyen came from an upper-middle-class family in Saigon. His parents worked for the water and power department in Saigon, and the three of them lived in a nice enclave near the city’s government center. He attended the highly regarded Petrus Ky High School, now known as Le Hong Phong High School.
He had an aptitude for math. Even after living decades on the street in Canoga Park, he’d sometimes sit and draw schematics. He usually always had a book in his backpack.
When he told Huynh and her son David his story and how his parents were among the estimated 200,000 Vietnamese refugees who died at sea in the ’70s and ’80s, she told him about her journey. How her family was forced to split up after her husband was forced into a Communist-run re-education camp. How after floating in a boat with 300 people packed on it, she lived for six months on an island of horrors near Indonesia.
“I once walked around and saw people lying there with flies covering them like a blanket,” she said. “I thought they were dead, but then they moved and the flies left. I told my cousin later that it was worse than dying.”
She wanted to help him, and the two forged a bond over their common background. Over the years, she’d bring meals to the shop and feed him. She remembered noodles were his favorite meal.
He developed a routine in the strip mall over the years. He’d gather recycled cans from the back. He offered to take the trash out for Ben Massaband, who ran his dry-cleaning shop next to the nail salon for 32 years.
“I saw him more than I saw my family,” he said.
Kate Leone, co-owner of Mane Affair Beauty Lounge just around the corner from the nail salon, said that earlier this year, she had forgotten to lock up the front door after leaving work on a Sunday night. The salon was closed Monday and when she came in Tuesday morning, she was startled when the door just pushed open.
After checking to make sure nothing had been taken, she went to her security camera system and saw why: Nguyen discovered she had mistakenly left the door unlocked and then spent the Monday when it was closed as a guard. The camera showed him like a sentry and even when he’d leave for a bit, he’d come back and test the door and make sure nobody had come in.
Maria Avila, who cut his hair twice a year, cried when she learned he died in the accident. Avila said she always tried to cut it for free. He always insisted on paying the $10.
“He thought we were looking out for him, but he was looking out for us,” Avila said.
Brooke Carrillo became homeless last year after losing her house to a short sale and now lives in her car with the rooftop packed with stuff covered by a blanket (“I call it my car’s hunchback”).
The 42-year-old has been volunteering at the pantry at Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, cooking and serving meals to the homeless in the area. The church offers meals every Thursday, and Nguyen came regularly.
She served Nguyen’s last meal at the church on Oct. 2, two days before his death. It was spaghetti noodles and a glass of cranberry juice.
Carrillo knew he’d been homeless a long time, but he kept to himself. He’d sleep in Winnetka Park or sometimes in a secluded spot off Winnetka Avenue.
“He was part of us for a long time and it’s hard to live a life that long on the street,” she said. “I’m a year on the street and people might not think that’s a long time, but when you’re out on the street, it’s a very long time.”
Her car is her last attachment to her old life, and she collects cans to buy gas to keep the car moving from spot to spot to avoid being bothered by the police.
Her eyes filled with tears when she learned Nguyen was dead.
“I was out of gas one time and he just came over and gave me money so I could keep my car going,” Carrillo said. “Just a kind, generous man who never bothered nobody.”
He had two vices: smoking and playing Lottery scratchers. He generally rolled his own cigarettes.
The latter habit paid off big once — an $800 payday not long ago. He used some of the winnings to buy perfume for the women who worked at Violet Nails. He bought flowers for the shop from the Jon’s Market that anchors the strip mall.
It’s unclear if the $350 he had on him was from that haul, but Harvey said unless it’s claimed by next of kin, it ultimately will be transferred to an unclaimed cash account run by the state.
For now, even in death, Nguyen is transient.
He’s currently housed in the county crypt with close to a couple hundred bodies. If nobody identifies and claims him, DNA samples will be collected and stored. Within two to four months, he would then be sent to a crematory in either Orange County or Whittier before being brought back and stored at the Los Angeles County Cemetery.
Those grounds are dotted with shade trees planted along a gently sloping patch of grass just a little ways removed from the white and blue building. Each December, the county conducts a small ceremony for those to be buried in a common grave.
Harvey said unless someone identifies him and gets a probate judge to issue an order to collect his remains, it will take a few years for him to eventually be buried in a simple site marked only by a plaque and the year he died: 2014.
Then the journey and transiency would likely end in December 2017. He’d be settled.
Nguyen would be home. |
“Over one’s mind and over one’s body, the individual is sovereign.” —John Stuart Mill
From the point of view of psychedelic enthusiasts, the prohibitionist stance is farcically weak. The moral imperative could not be more obvious: stop jailing non-violent consciousness explorers and give us back our tax dollars.
But let’s consider how we got here to begin with. I don’t want to talk about Nixon and the Controlled Substance Act, or the DEA, or how America has exported its neurotic drug policy to the rest of the world. I won’t even present data revealing how ineffective and dehumanizing the War on Some Drug Users really is. That’s all been covered before.
Today, I want to examine the psychology of a culture that gives lip service to human rights, yet imprisons people for experiencing unsanctioned forms of consciousness. Why would we cage our brothers and sisters this way? Why do we put up with it, especially in a nation that paradoxically prides itself on freedoms?
This kind of questioning is so uncommon, so far removed from the everyday rhetoric of “Just say no” and other drug war propaganda, that I must make a detour to address common objections. These substances aren’t outlawed with the intent of oppressing people, argues the prohibitionist, but to protect us! The point is to reduce harm. Don’t get your bell-bottoms in a bunch over this imagined “oppression of the mind.”
This argument actually has some merit—drugs get banned, at least officially, for their harms and not for the mental states they induce. And harm reduction is certainly a worthy goal of drug policy.
Harm reduction may even justify outright prohibition of some chemicals, just as the anti-drug champions argue. Imagine, for instance, a hypothetical drug which turns a user a bloodthirsty zombie, devoid of empathy and intent on murdering everybody in sight. Presumably we may be justified in banning such a dangerous drug. Although even in this extreme case, prohibition is probably still a bad policy for the simple reason that it is ineffective.
I’m not some starry-eyed idealist; I recognize that individuals must make concessions to ensure the safety and freedom of their fellow citizens. No right is truly absolute, and one of the toughest tasks of government is to balance the rights of all individuals. Even our dear freedom of speech has its limits—you can’t yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater, right?
The thrust of cognitive liberty is not that all drugs are good for society, nor that substances can never be legitimately banned. It’s that the desire to prohibit any drug must be weighed against the fundamental right of individuals to control their own consciousness. We have to at least recognize this right before violating it so casually.
Our courts should guard freedom of consciousness as fiercely as they guard the freedoms of speech, religion, and assembly.
In a democratic society, the only legitimate laws are those that make us all more free. Yet most drugs barely move the needle when weighed upon the scales of liberty. At the very least, respect for human dignity requires legalizing the psychedelics, a relatively non-toxic, non-addictive class of chemical catalysts.
Individual sovereignty over our minds and bodies is fundamental. Our courts should guard freedom of consciousness as fiercely as they guard the freedoms of speech, religion, and assembly.
Today we do not give any consideration whatsoever to the right of cognitive liberty. Most of us don’t even acknowledge that we should have a say in our own conscious experience, except for the use of sanctioned chemicals like alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, and pharmaceuticals prescribed by authorities. We don’t realize that we are handing the keys of consciousness over to Big Brother, and for the most part, we don’t really care. When it comes to consciousness, our default position is not respect for liberty, but imprisonment—of bodies and minds.
That is the cultural attitude I wish to address.
Look at the drugs we use. Except for pharmaceutical poison, there are essentially only two drugs that Western civilization tolerates: Caffeine from Monday to Friday to energize you enough to make you a productive member of society, and alcohol from Friday to Monday to keep you too stupid to figure out the prison that you are living in. —Bill Hicks
To know the nation, you must know the citizen. Consider how psychedelics affect the individual—they upend our assumptions, causing great personal transformations and periods of profound questioning. These are not the ego’s favorite activities.
It’s important to qualify the word “ego.” I use it in a mainly Freudian sense: “the organized part of the personality structure that includes defensive, perceptual, intellectual-cognitive, and executive functions” (Wiki). It is a vital but often dishonest part of Self. Many of our problems stem from the ego’s preference for defense mechanisms over honest conflict resolution. Its job is to maintain stability and structure, not to tell the truth.
Ego is also a timid and stubborn creature, quick to categorize opposing views and ideas as threats. Wanting to be reassured that our model of the world is an accurate one, we tend to dismiss evidence for other perspectives. Psychologists call this confirmation bias.
Psychedelics do the exact opposite, poking holes in the foundations of identity, disassembling the machinery of self and putting it back together anew. They challenge everything you thought you knew about reality.
The ego likes answers—right or wrong, it doesn’t matter, as long as they can be used to reinforce an existing worldview. It is drawn to order and structure, and grows more rigid with age.
The psychedelic mind prefers questions—the deeper and more unsettling, the better. Its favorite thing to pick apart and analyze may be the ego itself. Naturally, the ego resists the psychedelic experience. They are diametrically opposite forces.
Psychedelic prohibition is a vast defense mechanism erected by the national ego.
It is no different at a cultural level; in fact, the conflict is amplified. It’s no surprise that our society—a society based on doing rather than being, on productivity and problem-solving, mired in mindless materialism and ruled by vast corporate and governmental powers—should resist these drugs so vehemently. They show us our true selves. What could be more frightening?
So why do we permit this Orwellian prohibition of mental states to continue? In a word, fear. Psychedelic prohibition is a vast defense mechanism erected by the national ego.
Everyone knows the ego’s voice: cling to what you know. Seek confirmation of all that you believe and collect evidence against all other perspectives. Deny, rationalize, deceive—whatever it takes to maintain the current sense of self.
And we listen. The age-old pathology of ego worms its way through our personal behaviors and our laws, thwarting our growth as a culture. Make no mistake, the War on Drugs is a war on people. Our culture attempts to disguise it as a noble crusade, but there is nothing noble about ruining people’s lives for committing victimless thoughtcrimes. This is what makes prohibition so insidious—that we are not outraged, but accept it as the most natural and necessary thing in the world.
We have no problem exploring some unknowns—we climb mountains, push the boundaries of knowledge with cutting-edge science, and even travel through the jet black void of space. In many disciplines we enjoy the process of discovery very much.
But when it comes to voyaging through the internal landscape of emotions and assumptions, we grow timid. Our hearts and minds shrivel up; the ego, sensing a threat, raises its hackles. We prefer cognitive dissonance to confronting the mysteries inside, even if it leads us to cage people in their own minds. It would be funny if it weren’t tragic: we would rather explore outer space than inner space. We would rather chain our peers than free ourselves and step outside Plato’s cave.
All the medicines that can make us limitless have been shelved.
Some of our greatest fears, such as change, the dark, and death, are just reflections of the One Big Fear—the Unknown. Prohibition is a natural manifestation of that fear, made all the more toxic by its large scale. We have codified our phobia into law. You don’t suffer from the paralyzing neurosis of fear? Well now you do; we’ve made it the official policy.
The worst part is that we’ve outlawed the very tools that can reveal this pathology and help us resolve our childlike fears. All the medicines that can make us limitless have been shelved. We embrace our most limiting tendencies—fear, irrationality, coercion—and forsake our best ones—empathy, understanding, and respect. We cling desperately to the past, to lowly human nature, when we could instead imagine ourselves in a future that transcends these petty shortcomings.
Being constrained to ordinary consciousness is like living in a country that never lets you leave. “You can take a day trip into Drunkenness or Stimulation,” warn the border guards. “Heck, you can even move there permanently. But don’t even think about visiting Oceanic Boundlessness or Blissful Non-Duality. No, no, you’ll get arrested just for possessing a ticket to those places.”
Prohibition is the least compassionate, least sensible, and least mature approach towards these tools of consciousness.
To reach such enchanting idylls you have to tiptoe across the border, and the path is fraught with danger. Must we intentionally litter the path to other states of consciousness with hazards like drug impurity and the threat of imprisonment? Is maximizing the risks associated with drug use a goal worthy of vast public expenditures? It doesn’t even matter if you love drugs or regard them with absolute contempt; prohibition is the least compassionate, least sensible, and least mature approach towards these tools of consciousness.
Repealing bad laws will resolve our state of cognitive dissonance, but it’s slow and difficult work—the cultural equivalent of admitting fault. Gosh, I didn’t mean to oppress you all these years. I really thought it was best.
In order for us to repeal prohibition, we have to admit how colossally stupid it always was. We have to acknowledge that the whole drug war apparatus, all $50 billion of it spent annually in the US alone, is a product of fear, not reason. As individuals, we don’t like to apologize; it’s even more difficult as a culture. The national ego rears its ugly head.
We will do it. We will learn to respect the basic human right of cognitive liberty. We will take these medicines off the shelf and begin using them freely to unshackle minds and hearts. We will put the rights of our fellow citizens before our own irrational fears. It won’t be easy, because it requires the truly transformative work of confronting ourselves with honesty and integrity. But we will do it. Over time, our species always progresses towards freedom.
All signs are pointing toward this psychedelic renaissance. The only question is how long it will take us. |
The Mississippi River: home to grand old paddle steamers, blues music, Huckleberry Finn, and... pirate ships.
With its skull-and-cross-bones flag flapping in the wind, and swashbuckling captain at the helm, this is perhaps the last boat you'd expect to find on America's most famous inland waterway.
But the 12-meter Gypsy Rose II is just one of six pirate ships built by 54-year-old Captain Tim Woodson and setting sail on the iconic river.
Now the buccaneering boat has been sold to the History Channel for $80,000, after being advertised on classifieds website Craigslist.
"It's probably the most photographed ship on the Mississippi River," Woodson, from St Louis in Missouri, told CNN.
Shirley Robertson explores the physical challenges of racing against men and speaks with Britain's Sam Davies.
What is the cost of circumnavigating the globe in the world's greatest pay in play boat race?
A decade ago Australian Paul Larsen embarked on a mission to set a new world sailing speed record.
"We get a lot of kids running along the shore, trying to catch the cannonballs as we go by," he said, referring to the 4-inch sponge balls shot from the ship.
Dream boat
The professional boat builder first started making pirate ships five years ago, converting ordinary house boats into fairytale vessels.
"I wanted to find an old boat that I could transform into something really cool," said Woodson.
"My girlfriend asked: 'What are you going to do?' I don't know where it came from, but I said: 'I'm going to build a pirate ship.'"
That's exactly what he did, adding fake masts and covering the boat in planks of wood stained with varnish and black spray paint.
"As you walk on board you see a skeleton wearing an eye patch -- that's the old captain we pillaged the boat from," said Woodson.
"The sails are all torn with cannonball holes," he added. "Inside, the first thing you see is a hand-drawn map, globe of the world, and an old desk covered in treasure."
Luxury living
The remarkable boat may appear to be something out of a 17th century European fable, but inside it has all the luxuries of a modern ship.
Woodson spent just over two months building Gypsy Rose II, which can hold around 30 passengers.
It features two bedrooms, a bathroom, kitchen, and putters along at 30 kilometers per hour.
"The galley is fully functional but is stacked with rum barrels and pewter mugs," said Woodson.
"It really is a modern-day pirate ship with 1600s treasures scattered throughout."
Costume drama
With his battered hat, ripped vest, and dangling earring, Captain Woodson is every inch the pirate of old.
Alongside his girlfriend, Wench Maria, he can be found steering his fantastical vessels from Missouri to Illinois as part of sightseeing tours down the murky Mississippi.
Groups can also rent the boats for pirate-themed parties, with one elderly woman recently celebrating her 99th birthday on board.
"When I was a kid, pirates were cool and that hasn't changed," Woodson said. "It's about that feeling of being free, of being an explorer."
"It gives you an excuse to be the bad boy."
One man's fleet
Among Woodson's six converted pirate ships are a former 21-meter U.S. troop carrier and another 12-meter boat now lined with 18 bunk beds for school trips.
Once complete, each boat is advertised for sale on Craigslist, with the History Channel snapping up Gypsy Rose II for its TV series Ax Men, which follows the history of timber cutters.
Other boats have been bought by cruise operators and restaurateurs.
"When I was building my first ship, people would say I was crazy," said Woodson. |
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- What can you do with the blockchain, a public account of every Bitcoin transaction ever? No one knows for sure, but big banks like UBS (UBS) , Barclays (BCS) , and, Citi (C) are betting that it may reshape the future of finance.
Bitcoin, once the darling of the dark Web, has recaptured imaginations for its underlying technology, the blockchain. Heralded as the "internet of finance," the blockchain has bewitched bankers for its potential to streamline settlements and reduce transaction costs.
The blockchain has many possible applications, like expediting stock trades, cutting fees on money transfers, and making payment systems more efficient. But no one knows which will have the greatest impact.
What is certain is that this fundamental change in the ability to move value -- money, assets, shares, deeds -- has seized new attention. And in a rapid about-face, bankers are asking not if the blockchain will affect their business, but when and how.
What Is Blockchain?
At its heart, the blockchain is a seemingly dull database used to record and update transactions. Databases aren't new; companies like PayPal (PYPL) and Visa (V) use similar bookkeeping systems to manage accounts. The difference is that the blockchain is run on a decentralized network, where accounting is distributed instead of managed by a third party. Everyone using the network can see all of the transactions in real time on something akin to a globally shared spreadsheet.
Transactions on the blockchain are also irreversible, meaning that once a record has been confirmed, it cannot be manipulated. This confirmation confers trust in the distributed network -- a problem that previously could only be solved by an external party, like a bank or clearing house.
The Blockchain Bandwagon
Nasdaq OMX Group (NDAQ) was one of the first to trial blockchain technology for its private market stocks. The current system, which uses paper certificates, will be updated with bitcoin-based blockchain technology to execute faster and more transparent exchanges.
UBS, another early mover, launched a blockchain research and development lab last spring inside one of London's booming financial-technology accelerators, Level39. UBS's blockchain group focuses on "proofs of concept:" developing hypotheses, testing them out, and seeing what works.
Barclays, which also runs a bitcoin accelerator program, announced Sunday that it will begin helping charities accept bitcoin payments. This makes Barclays the first U.K. bank to accept digital currency.
Citi, long reticent about bitcoin, reported over the summer that it had created its own digital currency, a "Citicoin." Citi revealed that it's tinkering internally with three different blockchain-based distributed ledger systems to explore more efficient ways to transfer value.
BBVA (BBVA) and Goldman Sachs (GS) have also embraced the blockchain. In July, BBVA reimagined a fully decentralized financial system based on blockchain technology; and in May, Goldman described digital currencies as part of a "megatrend" that will transform the movement of money.
And in June, Santander (SAN) announced that it's testing 25 different applications for blockchain technology through its financial technology investment fund, InnoVentures. Santander thinks that blockchain technology might save $20 billion annually on international transaction and settlement costs.
Where Blockchain Is Going
It's unclear where the blockchain is headed -- faster trades, settlements, payments, or financial infrastructure. Bankers are increasingly exploring the notion of "permissioned" ledgers. These are private distributed ledger-based systems that extol the benefits of blockchain technology, but retain a higher level of managerial and regulatory oversight.
But what is evident in the upsurge in blockchain interest is an equal boom in bitcoin sector investment: $915 million so far in 2015, up 262.5% since last year.
As the search to discover the blockchain's great fortune accelerates, the race is now on to see who will get there first. |
Photo by: Anne Erdmann Islamic architecture in Iran is noted for its beautiful tilework, typically in shades of blue and turquoise. Image
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By Anne Erdmann
Iran? That was the first reaction of just about everyone who heard I was planning my April 2013 vacation to that country.
Reactions ranged from "You're crazy!" to "You're doing this for a vacation?" to "Why on earth would you want to go there?" In this article, I'll attempt to show you why. My three-week trip there was more rewarding than I ever imagined it could be.
Because Iran has historically been a crossroads between East and West, just about everyone seems to have left their mark on the country in one century or another. So one reason to go is the country's rich, fascinating history.
Some of the oldest cities in the world are in Iran, still in use, with architecture and living styles that don't seem to have changed for centuries. Another reason is Iran's fantastic scenery: snow-capped mountains, the lush Caspian coast, the starkly beautiful deserts.
But what I found the most fascinating, and rewarding, about Iran was the Iranian people. Behind most of the pretrip questions I was asked was the underlying thought, sometimes expressed and sometimes not, "Is it safe for Americans to go to a country that hates us so much?"
To my astonishment, as an American in Iran, I was treated like a rock star. Most Iranians can't easily leave their country, and in many cases I was the first American they had ever met. Iranian culture has a deeply ingrained tradition of hospitality, and again and again I was welcomed with heartfelt warmth.
Any trip to Iran should include Tehran, the capital and huge beating heart of the country, with a population of about 12 million. Other attractions included the Caspian coast, the desert cities of Yadz and Shiraz and the beautiful city of Isfahan, as well as numerous smaller towns and archaeological sites.
One of the historical highlights of any trip to Iran are the ruins of Persepolis, established about 515 B.C. by King Darius.
Persian architecture is noted for its use of blue and turquoise tiles, and mosques and shrines are usually beautifully decorated. Calligraphy is an important Persian art as well, and many buildings were adorned with lovely examples.
For those who enjoy exploring different cuisines when traveling, Iran is likely to provide you with tastes you haven't experienced before. Persian cuisine uses unusual seasonings such as sumac and za'atar (a type of thyme) and makes good use of the country's produce such as pomegranates and eggplant.
As a female traveler, I was required by Iranian law to wear hijab, or covering, which consisted of a manteau (a loose coat or overgarment) and a head scarf. Women, even tourists, must wear this at all times in public, which means that it can be taken off only in your hotel room.
While having to wear hijab was annoying (and hot!), I chose to think of it as an opportunity to experience what life was like for Iranian women every day. Most Iranian women, like Western women, want to look their best, and many expressed their individuality by wearing colorful head scarves, makeup and stylishly cut overcoats. More traditional women might choose to wear an all-black chador, but doing so was not required.
Here are some practicalities. Americans cannot legally travel independently in Iran and must travel with a tour or guide. After considerable research into tour companies that take Americans to Iran, I traveled with MIR Corp., a Seattle-based company that specializes in Central Asia and the former Soviet republics (http://www.mircorp.com). A visa is required and must be applied for well in advance.
Costs once in Iran are extremely reasonable, usually less than $1 for a cup of coffee or a glass of juice. Spring and fall are the best times to travel, as winters are quite cold and summers extremely hot. In particular for women, who have to wear hijab, summers are to be avoided.
Most younger people speak at least some English and were thrilled to have a native speaker, especially one with an American accent to practice with. To meet people, all you have to do is make eye contact and smile, and most of them will come over to speak with you.
Despite the logistical difficulties, Iran was an exciting, rewarding destination, and one that I would recommend highly to anyone who enjoys off-the-beaten path travel.
Anne Erdmann lives in Champaign, is a geologist with the Illinois State Geological Survey and has traveled to more than 80 countries. She also is the second-ranked competitive crossword puzzle solver in the U.S. Crosswords also are very popular in Iran. |
Opposing rallies focused on Islam culminated in bursts of violence Saturday after members of both groups confronted each other outside the State Capitol in St. Paul.
A group of more than 300 counterprotesters gathered on the Capitol steps in response to a “March Against Sharia,” an event held inside asserting that sharia, a set of Muslim principles drawn from the Qur’an and the teachings of the Muslim prophet Mohammed, is a threat to American democracy.
The anti-sharia event was organized by ACT for America, which has been classified as an extremist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. It was one of 28 similar events planned across the nation Saturday.
The fights culminated in seven arrests, most of them counterprotesters. No one was hurt, according to authorities.
As both rallies wrapped up after 1 p.m., a group of 15 to 20 people from the anti-sharia event, some of them wearing camouflage gear and vests, walked outside to the front of the Capitol near where counterprotesters were gathered. They approached the counterprotesters and began to argue with them.
The confrontations then escalated, moving across the street from the main section of the Capitol lawn. As counterprotesters chanted, “Off our streets, Nazi scum!” state troopers surrounded the anti-sharia group and began to escort them to a nearby building.
An "anti-sharia law" group and counterprotesters clashed during dueling rallies at the Minnesota State Capitol, Saturday, June 10, 2017 in St. Paul.
Several fights then erupted between the two groups, drawing shoves, kicks and fists. Troopers lined up to separate the counterprotesters from the anti-sharia group, who were backed up against a building across the Capitol lawn. Scuffles ensued as tension built, with many counterprotesters criticizing officers.
The anti-Sharia group then entered the building via a back entrance, waving at the counterprotesters as they yelled at them to leave. One man flashed “OK” symbols with his hands, a gesture associated with the alt-right movement, which has views often coinciding with white supremacy.
More chaos then erupted between some counterprotesters and police, with officers continuing to detain people and place them in squad cars. After more squad cars arrived, the situation eased.
Most of the seven people arrested were booked on a range of charges, from disorderly conduct to disrupting the legal process, according to the state Department of Public Safety. Two face assault charges.
“I was hoping for this whole entire thing to be peaceful,” said Jaylani Hussein, the executive director for the state branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MN). “We got a lot of people who were extremely angry; we got a crowd that was extremely tired from the heat.”
The groups had remained fairly separated earlier in the day. People who were going to the smaller “March Against Sharia” event were asked by Capitol security to enter from the building’s northern entrance.
Hundreds of counterprotesters stood on the Capitol steps to listen to speakers and hold signs denouncing hate against Islam, with the temperature creeping above 90 degrees. “Today people just like you ... are overshadowing hate across the country,” Hussein told the audience.
Inside the Capitol rotunda, about 100 people gathered to speak against Islam and sharia. Some held signs saying “Islam is un-American,” “End Muslim Immigration” and “Female genitalia matters ... unless you’re antifa [anti-fascist].”
Tammy Varholdt, of Andover, led a prayer before speakers. “God gave us free will,” she said. “It’s up to each of us to choose how we use it.”
She added, “This is not about political parties ... it is about protecting people.”
A letter from ACT for America founder Brigitte Gabriel was read, with the crowd cheering at its call for tighter restrictions on immigration and standing to applaud when President Donald Trump was mentioned.
Dueling rallies across the nation
Similar events took place in more than 20 U.S. cities after ACT for America announced that it would hold its marches. Arrests were also made in Seattle, where police used pepper spray to break up fights.
“If you stand for human rights, please join us to march against sharia. Sharia is incompatible [sic] with our Constitution and with American values,” the group wrote on its Facebook page. “We stand against female genital mutilations and child marriages.”
American Muslim groups and their supporters say such statements reflect a prejudiced misunderstanding of what sharia is and how it is manifested in different cultures. They have accused ACT for America of racism and Islamophobia and plan counterprotests nationwide.
ACT for America says on its website that it aim to fight terrorism and promote national security. It portrays sharia as incompatible with democracy.
An anti-Sharia law group and antifascist protesters clashed during dueling rallies at the Minnesota State Capitol, Saturday, June 10, 2017 in St. Paul.
In the United States, sharia is most likely to come up in divorce and custody proceedings or business litigation that could not be resolved in a religious setting. The kinds of extreme practices ACT for America blames on sharia are isolated and primarily cultural, scholars and Muslim leaders say, and roundly rejected by a vast majority of Muslims.
Before the rallies, CAIR-MN encouraged the public, including anti-sharia protesters, to tour a nearby mosque, the Minnesota Dawah Institute in St. Paul, later in the afternoon. And from 8 to 10 p.m. Saturday, an interfaith iftar — a dinner that breaks the Ramadan fast — would be held at the Cedar Cultural Center.
Hussein, however, said he did not get a chance to invite protesters to the mosque following the fights. |
Getty Images The ban on single-use plastic bags in the city of Los Angeles was expected to expand to smaller stores on Tuesday, July 1, 2014.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - The Assembly on Monday rejected legislation that would make California the first state to impose a ban on single-use plastic bags, but the bill could be heard again later this week.
SB270 failed Monday on a 37-33 vote crossing party lines after an hour-long debate largely focused on a 10-cent fee grocers can charge for bags.
The bill by Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Los Angeles, prohibits stores from carrying single-use bags as a way to encourage reusable ones. It follows about 100 cities and counties, including Los Angeles and San Francisco, that previously banned plastic bags to fight litter in parks and water.
"It is time to bring the rest of the state up to speed with this environmentally and economically sound legislation, " said Assemblyman Rob Bonta, D-Alameda. "Local jurisdictions have taught us this policy works.''
But plastic bag manufacturers looking to prevent such a ban from succeeding on a statewide level have lobbied heavily against it. Similar bans in Washington and Massachusetts were considered this year but did not pass.
The measure also attracted opposition from paper bag makers because of the fee on bags that many grocers already provide for free.
"When you turn around and penalize these consumers for using a better alternative, we are creating a terrible policy for the state of California,'' said Assemblyman Jeff Gorell, a Republican from Camarillo who said lawmakers should find another approach to fighting the buildup of plastic waste in oceans and waterways.
Multiple Democratic lawmakers from the Central Valley and low-income districts withheld their votes or voted no.
"We are departing from a long history of policy around food affordability and availability," said Assemblyman Adam Gray, D-Merced.
B270 was recently amendment to say that fees on reusable bags could only be used for providing the bags and educational programs to encourage recycling.
If it were to become law, SB270 would take effect in 2015 for larger stores and 2016 for convenience stores. It also includes $2 million for local manufacturers for worker training and assistance to shift to production of reusable bags.
Time is running out for the bill, which must pass both the Assembly and Senate before the session ends this week. Padilla says years of plastic bag bans with fees shows fears are overhyped.
"Consumers quickly adapt and the amount of ten cents paid for the paper bags is far less than all the estimates,'' he said in an interview after the vote.
Copyright Associated Press |
Get superior audio quality without spending a ton of money There are a lot of ways to stream music at home. Dedicated Bluetooth speakers, like the Supertooth Disco or Jawbone Jambox work well, but because they are designed for portability they don't sound all that great. At home, the Chromecast is cheap and easy if you already have a home A/V system to distribute the music, or you can splurge and pick up a Sonos for better sound and features like multi-room broadcasting. But, as we all know, a DIY junkie always has his or her eyes open for something better. I've got an alternative that lets you not only stream music from your Android (or any portable device that supports Bluetooth 3.0 or higher with A2DP) or computer, but will sound as good as you want it to sound, determined on how much you want to spend on speakers. Realistically, you can spend $200 and have the very best audio possible while streaming over Bluetooth, or you can spend $100 and have something that sounds really good and the satisfaction that you did it yourself. And it's really easy to set up once you figure out which parts to buy.
We'll talk more about the components in a bit, but first let me explain what you're doing here. You're taking a cheap (but surprisingly good-sounding) "bookshelf" amp, and using a Bluetooth audio receiver as its input. Add a pair of speakers, and you have instant stereo from Google Play Music, Pandora, or any online streaming source. It's small, it's cheap, and it sounds great. Here's what you'll need. The amplifier
There are literally hundreds of small "bookshelf" amplifiers (a pretty generic term for a small amp that will drive small passive speakers) out there to choose from. Prices start at about $20, and as you add more features — like sub output or multi-channel outputs — things can get much more expensive. I'll leave the discussion of which bookshelf amp is best for another time, but what's important to remember is that we're talking about a device that streams audio from the Internet, so we can get away with the cheaper alternatives. Streamed audio is not known for it's amazing sound quality (you're streaming compressed audio at a maximum of 320kbps), and adding Bluetooth to the mix means that you will never have perfectly flat "audiophile" quality sound coming in to this system. That means you don't need something like an expensive tube amp to preserve sound that was never delivered. This may sound like I'm claiming that all streamed music sent over Bluetooth is bad, but that's not at all what I'm saying. I'm just saying that it isn't ever going to be perfect, so you don't need equipment that can send out perfect audio to your speakers. In a basic 2-channel setup like what I'm describing, all the amplifier is doing is passing along a signal that's boosted a bit to your speakers. It's easy to preserve the quality of the source audio with a cheap amp. For this project I went with the Lepai LP 202A+ that I picked up for $19.59 from Amazon. It's small, it provides enough power for a decent pair of speakers, and has a bit of tone adjustment via front knobs for treble and bass. It's certainly not the best small amplifier you can buy, but as mentioned, we don't need the best for this project. A Bluetooth audio adapter
This is the "brain" of the whole system. The Bluetooth audio adapter is what your source — be it your phone, a tablet, or your Bluetooth-enabled desktop or laptop computer — is going to connect to. It acts just like a set of Bluetooth headphones, so that means it can send all audio out or act as a media audio destination in apps that support it. Google Play Music is a good example here, and you can find your Bluetooth adapter listed in the "cast" button in the Android app. If you've used a set of Bluetooth headphones or something like a Jambox, you know how this all works. If you haven't used a pair of Bluetooth headphones or a stand-alone speaker, you'll figure it out easily.
For my Bluetooth adapter, I went with the Logitech Bluetooth Audio Adapter. You can find this on Amazon for $29.99, and it works really well. Another great option is the Monoprice BlueTooth Music Receiver. Basically, all you need is a device that uses Bluetooth 3.0 (or higher) and features A2DP audio streaming, and a way to connect the output to the audio input on your amplifier. I've been playing with several different types and models, and have found no noticable difference in the audio quality, but with all Bluetooth devices, the important part is that they stay connected to your Android. The two I mention above have given me zero issues in that area. The speakers
This is the most important part of the system, and will make all the difference in the sound quality. It's also the part that can be the most expensive, and you'll never find two music lovers who can agree on which speakers are the best. There's two ways to think here: I want a fairly cheap system that sounds as good or better than a stand-alone Bluetooth speaker. I will spend a little more money and have a system that gives me the best possible sound from audio streamed over Bluetooth. If you fall into the first category, a $30 pair of small cube speakers will do you just fine. Sure, you could spend more money and have something that sounds better, but your sub-$100 audio system will sound better than those expensive Bluetooth speakers you see online and at Target. If you want to spend more money, you'll have a single-room sound system that sounds better than anything else you can buy. What you won't have is some of the extra features that come with something like a Sonos system. There's a reason that those networked speakers are so expensive, but it's not always about the audio quality.
What you'll need to remember in either case is that you need the right kind of speakers. If you know your amplifier is set up for 4 or 6 Ohm speakers, get 4 or 6 Ohm speakers. My speakers happen to have an impedance of 6 Ohms. The amplifier I bought will drive them because it drives low power speakers from 4 to 8 Ohms. If you have no idea what this means, get standard 8 Ohm speakers and you'll be fine. The important part is that you get a pair of passive speakers, and not a pair that you plug into the wall outlet so that they have their own power source. You're providing that with the amplifier you bought. If you're in doubt, just ask someone. For my little setup, I went with a pair of Pioneer SP-BS22-LR bookshelf speakers. I grabbed them while they were on sale at Amazon for $99.99 with the idea that I would strip them and use the cabinets to build my own speakers. But they sound so good, I've scrapped those plans and roll with them as-is. The good news is that they, too, are overkill for a streaming audio system. There are plenty of $50 Bookshelf speakers that will sound just as good, because the source of the music is no better than they can deliver. See what's on sale, and read some reviews. Don't get discouraged by the insane amount of arguing you'll see about any speakers, just look for reviews from average users like you and me who just want their music to not sound like crap. Audiophiles like to fight on the Internet even more than smartphone fans. One last thing to keep in mind is the power of your amp. In my case, the little Lepai will only put out about 17 watts per channel, and if I had went with any bigger or better speakers there wouldn't be enough "oompf" to drive them correctly. Chances are that if you buy an off-the-shelf small amplifier, any pair of off-the-shelf small speakers will be fine, but read the specifications to make sure you can output enough to properly drive them. Setting it up and trying it out
This is the easy part. On the back of your amp you'll have a place for audio input. Your Bluetooth adapter gets connected here, and chances are the cable you need to connect them will be in the box with your adapter. You'll also see a place for left and right audio out, and thats where the speakers connect. Run a speaker wire from each to the speaker itself, and make sure to connect positive to positive and negative to negative (red to red and black to black). Your speaker wire will have a stripe on one of the conductors, be sure the striped wire is on the same color at each end. Do the same for the other speaker, and plug everything into the wall.
Next, grab your phone and make sure Bluetooth is on. Follow the pairing instructions that came with your adapter. Next, turn the volume down on your amp and try it! Take a few minutes to set the tone controls to your liking and ramp up the volume to enjoy your new Hi-Fi audio streaming system! Extra bonus protip round |
The Wizards are coming off an impressive win on the road against the Chicago Bulls, but they’ll have to find a way to put it together at home. Washington’s five-game homestand begins tonight against the defending champion Miami Heat. The game tips off at 7:00 PM from the Verizon Center.
Key Match Up:
Dwyane Wade, who rested last game, is expected to be back in Miami’s lineup tonight. Although Wade isn’t the same player he was a few years ago, at least in terms of athleticism, he’s found a way to remain very productive for the Heat. Wade is averaging about 20 points, 5 rebounds, and 5 assists per game this season, but his efficiency makes it even more impressive. He’s shooting a career-high 54% from the field, while knocking down over 42% of his three-point shots, which is also a career high. Wade has obviously benefited from playing along side LeBron James and it’s evident in his increased percentages. He’s not forced to carry the offensive load like he was in the past, making it much easier for him to play the game where he’s most comfortable.
Needless to say, Bradley Beal will have to find a way to play well against Wade if the Wizards want to stay competitive tonight. Beal’s shot selection hasn’t been very good as of late and the Heat will certainly try to take away the 3-point shot from Beal. Beal has been settling for long two point shots and his field goal percentage has suffered as a result. When his shot isn’t falling, Beal has a tendency to fall asleep defensively and that can’t be the case against the Heat tonight, or else the Wizards are going to get obliterated at home again. Beal needs to do a better job at mixing it up from the floor, because he hasn’t gotten to the rim nearly enough this season. There’s no better time to turn it around than against the Heat, so Beal’s impact will definitely play a big role in a win or loss tonight.
Notes:
The Heat have lost two straight games. We might be in for a long game tonight.
Miami has the second highest offensive rating in the NBA, but they also have a top-10 defense. Yeah, they’re still a pretty good regular season team despite winning back-to-back championships.
The only glaring hole in Miami’s game is their lack of a dominate rebounding big. They’re last in rebounds per game, so the Wizards have to find a way to beat them on the boards tonight.
LeBron James told the media to “see the numbers I’ll put up on Wednesday. Just watch.” Basically, he’s promising a big game against the Wizards tonight. Yikes.
Mario Chalmers is out tonight. Washington will need a dominate game from John Wall against Norris Cole.
Prediction:
A lot has to go right for the Wizards to pull off an upset tonight.
Even though LeBron James will inevitably put up some monster numbers tonight, the Wizards still have some advantages against the Heat. Nene is coming off his best game of the season, scoring 19 points against Joakim Noah, and he needs to remain aggressive against the Heat tonight. Marcin Gortat has also been better as of late and he could potentially dominate the glass against Miami. Chris Bosh averages under 7 rebounds per game, yet he’s still Miami’s leading rebounder. Gortat has to have a big game tonight, especially considering the lack of front court depth the Heat have. Trevor Booker has also put up some great rebounding numbers this season, so the Wizards will need his contributions tonight.
Besides their front court, Washington’s only other advantage comes from their point guard position. John Wall has been the best point guard in the Eastern Conference and the Heat will definitely do their best at closing lanes tonight, forcing Wall to settle for shots. Like Beal, John Wall has a tendency to settle for jump shots after missing a few layups in the half court. He has to remain aggressive by penetrating the basket, especially since the Heat don’t really have an enforcer underneath the basket.
Washington only has 1 victory against a winning team this season, so tonight will obviously be a challenge. I think they’ll stay competitive, but LeBron James might be too much to handle. I expect the Heat to sneak out of the nation’s capital with a win. |
This is great stuff. Watch Texas Sen. Ted Cruz explain to an extremely rude NBC News Capitol Hill Correspondent, Kasie Hunt, why President Donald J. Trump’s Russia is vastly superior to the Barack Obama-Hillary Clinton appeasement of Russia:
Transcript:
Hunt: Is Russia an enemy of the United States?
Cruz: Russia is a significant adversary. Putin is a KGB thug.
Hunt interrupting: Do you think Trump is treating him that way?
Cruz: I think we have that we have had eight years of Barack Obama showing nothing but appeasement toward Russia. Part of the irony . . .
Hunt Interrupting again: President Trump is not appeasing Russia?
Cruz: Actually if you look on substance, part of the irony of this media obsession with Russia is that the Obama Administration began with Hillary Clinton bringing a big red reset button to Russia saying that they were going to reset relationship with Russia so that she and Obama could be friends with the Russians. That’s how they began.
If you look at what happened with Russia, Russia invades Ukraine and the Obama administration does nothing, is utterly ineffective. You have John Kerry saying he desperately wants to provide Putin with an off-ramp. . .
Hunt interrupting yet again: Trump is trying to water down sanctions bill that you voted for.
Cruz ignoring the interruption: Putin didn’t want an off-ramp. And the policies of the Obama administration were constant weakness and appeasement. One of the best things recently announced was the Trump administration’s intention to go forward with placing anti-ballistic missile batteries in Poland and Czech Republic.
Those were scheduled to go in ten years ago, and in January 2009, in the opening weeks of the Obama administration, cancelled the anti-ballistic missile batteries in Poland and Czech Republic. Why? Because they wanted to appease Putin. They wanted to appease Russia. Russia didn’t want those batteries to go in.
I am glad the Trump administration is returning to a common sense defense of our allies against our adversaries.
Substance matters. Policy matters. I think standing up, using all the tools we can have to constrain Putin’s and Russia’s aggression is a good thing to do. One of the real problems with the Obama-Hillary Clinton foreign policy is that it facilitated Russian aggression. And I’m glad we are not doing that anymore. |
The Times of India has accused Chinese hackers, allegedly backed by the Chinese government, of systematically attacking Indian online assets over the past 18 months. The goal of these assaults, at least according to the paper, is to map and discover weak points within India's IT infrastructure. Such information could give China an advantage in any potential conflict, and the article implies that India has been slow to develop a retalitory system in the event of a Chinese attack.
The degree to which the Chinese government is actually involved in these attacks is still an open question, The Times' rhetoric notwithstanding. A continuing series of sophisticated and methodical assaults is no longer proof of another nation's malevolent intent, even if such attacks appear to be originating in the country in question. The same market forces responsible for the commercialization of the malware industry across the globe promote sophisticated attack vectors and a methodical approach to security probes. So the hackers behind the intrusion attempts that Indian IT workers are detecting are essentially cyber-casing the country's digital joint, and while they may be working for the Chinese government they could also just be out to make a buck.
The problem with accusing other countries of attacking one's own cybersecurity systems is that, at least to date, such accusations haven't proven particularly accurate. As we covered in January, a series of cyber attacks that the Estonian government initially blamed on the Russian government actually turned out to be the work of a disgruntled student hacker. The incident did no permanent damage to Russian-Estonian relations, but it did cause a temporary diplomatic cooling between the two countries over a set of allegations that the Russians vehemently—and apparently truthfully—denied.
Sino-Indian relations are probably better, on the whole, than Estonian-Russian relations, but the two burgeoning powers have had their share of conflicts, including a brief war in 1962. Since the 1980s, however, the relationship between China and India has generally grown stronger. China recognized Indian sovereignty over the disputed state of Sikkim in 2003, and the two country's jointly reopened the Nathula Pass in 2006, which had been closed since the aforementioned Sino-Indian War of 1962.
India's relatively friendly relationship with China may have grown a bit more tense of late thanks to the recent Chinese crackdown in Tibet. India is home to the largest group of Tibetan refugees in the world, including the Dalai Lama's government-in-exile. The cybersecurity attacks India detected aren't directly related to the Tibetan riots—evidence indicates that they've been occurring for at least a year—but the government's decision to release such information at a time when China is under enormous scrutiny is hardly accidental.
The Times notes that "cyber warfare is yet to become a big component of India’s security doctrine." Even in the US the military's role in cybersecurity is still in its relative infancy; India is but one of many countries in the process of evaluating how cybersecurity (and cyber warfare) impact its safety. |
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PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- A Philadelphia couple - serving 10 years' probation for the 2009 death of their toddler after they turned to prayer instead of a doctor - has violated their probation now that another of their children has died.
Herbert and Catherine Schaible belong to a fundamentalist Christian church that believes in faith-healing.
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Philadelphia Judge Benjamin Lerner said at a hearing they violated the most important condition of their probation: to seek medical care for their remaining children.
Authorities have yet to file criminal charges in the death of the 8-month-old boy last week, after he suffered with diarrhea and breathing problems for days. But charges could be filed once authorities pinpoint how the baby died.
The couple is on probation after a jury convicted them of involuntary manslaughter in 2010 in the death of their 2-year-old son, Kent, from pneumonia. |
"Does this count as a selfie?"
Researchers working in the Gulf of Mexico were stunned earlier this week when an inquisitive sperm whale decided to crash a live stream feed, nearly 2,000 feet below the surface. The whale hung out with the remotely operated Hercules vehicle as adorably giddy scientists working on the E/V Nautilus found themselves all but speechless in the background.
"Awesome!" "Oh, wow!" "I hope we are screengrabbing!"
Sperm whales are currently listed as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and classified as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. At the peak of the whaling era around the mid-20th century, nearly 25,000 sperm whales were being killed every year, which dramatically reduced populations. Underwater encounters are a rare occurrence due to the whales' reclusive nature and the great depths to which they dive.
The Nautilus exploration vessel is on the first leg of a six-month expedition throughout the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean. At the time that the sperm whale appeared in the live stream, scientists had been using the Hercules to map bubble plumes through the water column in an effort to study natural gas seeps in the Gulf. |
By @StefanKubus –
For the first time since NHL Hitz and 3-on-3 NHL Arcade, there’s a legitimate arcade-style hockey video game available.
And it happens to have been designed in an old-school style, with heavy comparisons to the movie Slap Shot.
Upon loading the game to the title screen, I was met with perhaps the best classic song to set the tone for my experience: “The Hockey Song” by Stompin’ Tom Connors.
The game initially greets you with the choice of which controls to use. There’s “Newbie,” “Casual,” and “Hardcore” settings, all based on your level of experience with video games. Newbie and Casual offer simple two-button controls for shooting and passing, whereas Hardcore offers an experience similar to that of the EA SPORTS NHL games in which you use the left stick as your skates and right as your stick. This can always be changed in the Settings menu.
But perhaps the most creative controller layout, and this is something I found to be quite clever, there’s a Beer Mode configuration. As it sounds, it allows the user to play the game with one hand – one joystick and its adjacent trigger buttons, on either side of the controller – so you can simultaneously enjoy your favorite beverage with the other. Having played a game with it, it actually functions quite well.
And on that note, it’s important to point out that this game certainly isn’t the typical family-friendly hockey game. It comes with a Mature rating for things like blood, ref abuse, stick fights, some explicit language and beer references. But in doing so, it captures the spirit of ’70s, beat-’em-up Slap Shot hockey quite well. There’s something charming about playing in an old barn in front of a handful of fans.
Vancouver-based developer V7 Entertainment included a Story Mode in the game that puts you on the ice with the mightily-struggling Schuylkill Hinto Brews. Without giving too much away, essentially the story takes you on a roller coaster ride with this ’70s rag-tag hockey team in the Bush Hockey League as it faces a depleted roster and a folding season on the horizon. The Hinto Brews have had some of their players paralyzed in a recent brawl, and they’re left with a roster of rookies.
When you first start out in Story Mode, the initial games serve as tutorials for learning the game. While that’s a great way to get acclimated, it also proves difficult to try to win said games – important since your main goal is to keep the team afloat. You’ll be tasked with certain objectives for each game (check a certain player on the other team, etc.). Even if you win a game 5-1, if you don’t complete your objectives, you’ll fail and the score ultimately won’t matter.
Within Story Mode, there’s a range of Collectibles to seek out for completing various objectives throughout games. The Collectibles are hockey cards featuring characters in the game, designed like the late-1970s Topps hockey cards and they even provide short bios on each player. As someone who grew up collecting hockey cards, it was a neat touch.
And, of course, what would a hockey game be without Michigan?
The Portage Lake Widowmakers play out of Houghton and seem to be the highest-rated team in the game, with offensive and defensive ratings of four and a five for toughness/fighting (ratings out of five).
Not bad.
The gameplay itself takes a bit of getting used to, and it can bit a bit choppy in execution, but there’s a quick learning curve. One minor mechanic that annoyed me was the fact you can’t control your goalie, as he typically just plays the puck off to the corner, but that’s something you quickly learn and adjust to defensively.
And for a classic, old-school hockey game that’s designed to be an easy, fun experience for you and your buddies to share laughs over, realism doesn’t need to be a priority. In fact, the more big hits you throw, the more you beef up your team’s shooting power. The fun comes with the devastating hip checks (the ragdoll physics are outstanding), the bloody fights, lighting the lamp, the absurdity and how much the game mimics Slap Shot-like hockey.
Old Time Hockey hits Playstation 4 and PC (Steam) on March 28, and it’s also coming to Xbox One and Nintendo Switch at a later date. For a game that’s priced at a fraction of the typical video game price ($12 on the Steam listing) these days, it’s well worth it. |
China's propaganda department 'not good enough at propaganda'
China's propaganda department, tasked with controlling the media and arts, has been given a slap on the wrist for not being good enough at shaping public opinion, according to a report on a government website.
The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) posted an article on its website Wednesday that described findings from its two-month-long probe of the ruling Communist party's propaganda department, which began in February.
Leaders in the department did not feel a sufficient sense of responsibility for undertaking ideological work, the piece cited CCDI member and investigation spokesman Wang Huaichen as saying.
China's President Xi Jinping (pictured, C) reminded top state media outlets to "strictly adhere to the orders of the Chinese Communist Party" during a series of high-profile visits to their headquarters in February ©Greg Baker (AFP/File)
Art was not directed clearly enough towards socialist aims and political thought not emphasised enough in universities, he was quoted as saying.
News propaganda was not targeted or effective enough, especially in the field of new media, where the department had failed to fully implement the principle of "the party controlling the media", the post cited him as saying.
Wang called upon the department to make propaganda appear more valid by enhancing its attractiveness and appeal, it said.
The Communist party tolerates no opposition to its rule and newspapers, websites, and broadcast media are strictly controlled. An army of censors patrols social media and many Western news websites are blocked.
President Xi Jinping reminded top state media outlets to "strictly adhere to the orders of the Chinese Communist Party" during a series of high-profile visits to their headquarters in February.
Xi has also in recent years called for higher education to play a larger role in "ideological guidance" and urged more teaching of Marxism in universities, where curricula remain tightly controlled and liberal scholars report increasing fears of censorship. |
LISTEN: Seattle Riot treats Ultimate as a lifestyle Your browser does not support the audio element.
The Seattle Mariners didn’t quite make the pennant race. We’re still waiting for the Seahawks to get into Super Bowl form. The Cougs and Huskies tanked last weekend, and there’s still no basketball team.
More stories from Colleen O’Brien
But the Sounders are doing well and there’s another Seattle team that nobody seems to be able to beat. They’re called the Seattle Riot.
At Magnuson Park on a slightly-sunny Sunday morning, the members of Seattle Riot get warmed up with the thump of music echoing down the field. It’s an intimidating and exhilarating experience to watch highly-skilled athletes play Ultimate – the competitive game of Frisbee.
Team member Molly McKeon has tossed the disk (Frisbee is a term trademarked by Wham-O) for nine years.
“Played soccer, basketball, track, volleyball, cross country, all growing up. [Ultimate] is the best thing I’ve ever done. I’ve never wanted to work so hard to get better at a sport. I love it. I can’t get enough of it. The people are incredible. They also wanted to play to the highest standard,” McKeon said.
The standard is more accurately called the “Spirit of the Game.” It’s written into the rules and is a sort of code of conduct. Players rarely dissent. The spirit goes so deep that this sport is self-refereed.
“Everyone calls their own fouls so if I have the disk and pivot to try and throw a backhand and I feel like someone hits my hand before I let go I will yell ‘foul’,” McKeon explained.
Molly says, for the most part, self-refereeing works.
“You’re frustrated when you’re playing any other sport and the ref gets it wrong or people are cheating the system. This eliminates that,” McKeon said. “Your teammates will hold you accountable.”
What’s remarkable about Ultimate is the fierceness with which these women talk about the sport and each other. It’s their life. Molly is a coffee roaster, but that job is a means to the end. Nearly every other hour outside of roasting is dedicated to Ultimate.
“We have a two-hour practice during the week. Then, anywhere between, one and two practices a weekend that are for four hours. At least we are playing eleven hours a week but then we have workouts to do on top of that. There are random people that just want to throw and do another workout. We’re expected to do more than just practice and a workout a week. We should be working out five to six times a week,” McKeon said.
Seattle Riot is on its way to the National Championship in Sarasota, Florida. It’s a tournament they’ve qualified for every year since 2001. Last year, they missed the trophy by one point.
Of course, the team wants to win the National Championship this year, but after spending the day with them you quickly find out that Ultimate is so much more than notching off wins. This is a diverse group of women. They hold diverse jobs from teaching to global health. They are racially diverse and accept all body types.
If you’re political that’s OK, too. Considering the debate in the NFL right now it’s unique that Ultimate is unapologetically political. Do you want to kneel? Go for it.
“A lot of Ultimate players have started doing that during the National Anthem starting last year at Nationals. It makes me think about social problems and I didn’t use to in high school and college. Ultimate is more than just a sport. It’s a lifestyle. This is what they do this is how some people identify and it’s what makes them happiest and it’s how they live their life. People live their life via Spirit of the Game,” McKeon said.
The Ultimate life also requires the commitment of fundraising. McKeon estimates that it costs about $2,000 per player, per year, and every dollar comes from fundraisers and sponsors.
It’s something they gladly do.
“This program has been around for so long that it deserves its recognition. Everyone’s story deserves to be heard. This is my life. These are my best friends. These are the people that I think about all day. These are the ones that I work for. They’re who I think about. They’re the ones that motivate me. They’re the ones that push me. They’re the ones that make me better – as a person as a player,” McKeon said.
The National Championship in Sarasota, Florida begins Thursday and will be live-streamed. |
NASA’s newly arrived Jovian orbiter Juno has transmitted its first imagery since reaching orbit last week on July 4 after swooping over Jupiter’s cloud tops and powering back up its package of state-of-the-art science instruments for unprecedented research into determining the origin of our solar systems biggest planet.
The breathtaking image clearly shows the well known banded cloud tops in Jupiter’s atmosphere as well as the famous Great Red Spot and three of the humongous planet’s four largest moons — Io, Europa and Ganymede.
The ‘Galilean’ moons are annotated from left to right in the lead image.
Juno’s visible-light camera named JunoCam was turned on six days after Juno fired its main engine to slow down and be captured into orbit around Jupiter – the ‘King of the Planets’ following a nearly five year long interplanetary voyage from Earth.
The image was taken when Juno was 2.7 million miles (4.3 million kilometers) distant from Jupiter on July 10, at 10:30 a.m. PDT (1:30 p.m. EDT, 5:30 UTC), and traveling on the outbound leg of its initial 53.5-day capture orbit.
Juno came within only about 3000 miles of the cloud tops and passed through Jupiter’s extremely intense and hazardous radiation belts during orbital arrival over the north pole.
The newly released JunoCam image is visible proof that Juno survived the do-or-die orbital fireworks on America’s Independence Day that placed the baskeball-court sized probe into orbit around Jupiter – and is in excellent health to carry out its groundbreaking mission to elucidate Jupiter’s ‘Genesis.’
“This scene from JunoCam indicates it survived its first pass through Jupiter’s extreme radiation environment without any degradation and is ready to take on Jupiter,” said Scott Bolton, principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, in a statement.
“We can’t wait to see the first view of Jupiter’s poles.”
Within two days of the nerve wracking and fully automated 35-minute-long Jupiter Orbital Insertion (JOI) maneuver, the Juno engineering team begun powering up five of the probes science instruments on July 6.
All nonessential instruments and systems had been powered down in the final days of Juno’s approach to Jupiter to ensure the maximum chances for success of the critical JOI engine firing.
“We had to turn all our beautiful instruments off to help ensure a successful Jupiter orbit insertion on July 4,” said Bolton.
“But next time around we will have our eyes and ears open. You can expect us to release some information about our findings around September 1.”
Juno resumed high data rate communications with Earth on July 5, the day after achieving orbit.
We can expect to see more JunoCam images taken during this first orbital path around the massive planet.
But the first high resolution images are still weeks away and will not be available until late August on the inbound leg when the spacecraft returns and swoops barely above the clouds.
“JunoCam will continue to take images as we go around in this first orbit,” said Candy Hansen, Juno co-investigator from the Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, Arizona, in a statement.
“The first high-resolution images of the planet will be taken on August 27 when Juno makes its next close pass to Jupiter.”
All of JunoCams images will be released to the public.
During a 20 month long science mission – entailing 37 orbits lasting 14 days each – the probe will plunge to within about 2,600 miles (4,100 kilometers) of the turbulent cloud tops.
It will collect unparalleled new data that will unveil the hidden inner secrets of Jupiter’s origin and evolution as it peers “beneath the obscuring cloud cover of Jupiter and study its auroras to learn more about the planet’s origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere.”
The solar powered Juno spacecraft approached Jupiter over its north pole, affording an unprecedented perspective on the Jovian system – “which looks like a mini solar system” – as it flew through the giant planets intense radiation belts in ‘autopilot’ mode.
Juno is the first solar powered probe to explore Jupiter or any outer planet.
In the final weeks of the approach JunoCam captured dramatic views of Jupiter and all four of the Galilean Moons moons — Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.
At the post JOI briefing on July 5, these were combined into a spectacular JunoCam time-lapse movie released by Bolton and NASA.
Watch and be mesmerized -“for humanity, our first real glimpse of celestial harmonic motion” says Bolton.
Video caption: NASA’s Juno spacecraft captured a unique time-lapse movie of the Galilean satellites in motion about Jupiter. The movie begins on June 12th with Juno 10 million miles from Jupiter, and ends on June 29th, 3 million miles distant. The innermost moon is volcanic Io; next in line is the ice-crusted ocean world Europa, followed by massive Ganymede, and finally, heavily cratered Callisto. Galileo observed these moons to change position with respect to Jupiter over the course of a few nights. From this observation he realized that the moons were orbiting mighty Jupiter, a truth that forever changed humanity’s understanding of our place in the cosmos. Earth was not the center of the Universe. For the first time in history, we look upon these moons as they orbit Jupiter and share in Galileo’s revelation. This is the motion of nature’s harmony. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
The $1.1 Billion Juno was launched on Aug. 5, 2011 from Cape Canaveral, Florida atop the most powerful version of the Atlas V rocket augmented by 5 solid rocket boosters and built by United Launch Alliance (ULA). That same Atlas V 551 version just launched MUOS-5 for the US Navy on June 24.
The Juno spacecraft was built by prime contractor Lockheed Martin in Denver.
The mission will end in February 2018 with an intentional death dive into the atmosphere to prevent any possibility of a collision with Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons that is a potential abode for life.
The last NASA spacecraft to orbit Jupiter was Galileo in 1995. It explored the Jovian system until 2003.
From Earth’s perspective, Jupiter was in conjunction with Earth’s Moon shortly after JOI during the first week in July.
Personally its thrilling to realize that an emissary from Earth is once again orbiting Jupiter after a 13 year long hiatus as seen in the authors image below – coincidentally taken the same day as JunoCam’s first image from orbit.
Stay tuned here for Ken’s continuing Earth and Planetary science and human spaceflight news.
Ken Kremer
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Learn more about Juno at Jupiter, SpaceX CRS-9 rocket launch, ISS, ULA Atlas and Delta rockets, Orbital ATK Cygnus, Boeing, Space Taxis, Mars rovers, Orion, SLS, Antares, NASA missions and more at Ken’s upcoming outreach events:
July 15-18: “SpaceX launches to ISS on CRS-9, Juno at Jupiter, ULA Delta 4 Heavy spy satellite, SLS, Orion, Commercial crew, Curiosity explores Mars, Pluto and more,” Kennedy Space Center Quality Inn, Titusville, FL, evenings |
In the aftermath of public revelations that the Obama Justice Department snooped on scores of AP journalists and accused Fox News reporter James Rosen of criminal acts for seeking out statements from a State Department official, there is a lot of much-needed talk about the so-called “chilling effect,” especially in the context of the unprecedented number of whistleblowers prosecuted under the 1917 Espionage Act under the Obama administration.
The President’s aggressive tactics in keeping government activity in air-tight secrecy, “creates a serious climate of fear in which investigative journalists are finding it increasingly difficult to do their job — informing citizens about the secret actions of political leaders — because everyone involved in that process is petrified of government persecution,” writes Glenn Greenwald at The New York Times. “As The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer put it in a New Republic article detailing the harm done to journalism: ‘It’s a huge impediment to reporting, and so chilling isn’t quite strong enough, it’s more like freezing the whole process into a standstill.'”
One aspect of this that hasn’t been widely articulated is this Rumsfeldian notion that, in this climate of fear where informative leaks and off-the-record statements are increasingly rare, the American people don’t even know what we don’t know. That is, there could be plenty of national security policies that have a significant or even mostly covert nature to them, but we can’t even determine with much confidence which policies those are.
But if I were to speculate, one of the most likely of these cases is the U.S. approach to Syria.
Enter Harvard professor of international relations Stephen Walt and his latest post at ForeignPolicy.com. He writes that he “wonder[s] whether U.S. involvement in that conflict isn’t more substantial than I have previously thought,” and speculates on what the U.S. is “REALLY doing in Syria.”
Consistent with its buck-passing instincts, Barack Obama’s administration does not want to play a visible role in the conflict. This is partly because Americans are rightly tired of trying to govern war-torn countries, but also because America isn’t very popular in the region and anyone who gets too close to the United States might actually lose popular support. So no boots on the ground, no “no-fly zones,” and no big, highly visible shipments of U.S. arms. Instead, Washington can use Qatar and Saudi Arabia as its middlemen, roles they are all too happy to play for their own reasons. Since taking office, Obama has shown a marked preference for covert actions that don’t cost too much and don’t attract much publicity, combined with energetic efforts to prosecute leakers. So an energetic covert effort in Syria would be consistent with past practice. Although there have been news reports that the CIA is involved in vetting and/or advising some opposition groups, we still don’t know just how deeply involved the U.S. government is. (There has been a bit of speculation in the blogosphere that the attack on Benghazi involved “blowback” from the Syrian conflict, but I haven’t seen any hard evidence to support this idea.) In this scenario, the Obama administration may secretly welcome the repeated demands for direct U.S. involvement made by war hawks like Sen. John McCain. Rejecting the hawks’ demands for airstrikes, “no-fly zones,” or overt military aid makes it look like U.S. involvement is actually much smaller than it really is.
Indeed, as I wrote in these spaces almost a year ago:
…my own view is that the Obama administration probably has an expansive covert policy on Syria in place. Micah Zenko, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, agrees that “Covert ops [are] ongoing.” This is one of the most secretive administrations in recent memory and the situation in Syria is extraordinarily sensitive and precarious. The notion that Obama is holding off in the clandestine realm of policy is not really credible. Again, [the Syrian conflict] has all the reasons for not intervening attached to it, but if it’s done in secret, the administration can avoid taking responsibility for its actions.
Publicly, Obama has opposed no-fly zones, opposed directly arming the rebels, opposed boots on the ground, etc. Covertly, (although it has been reported in the press, I would guess as a deliberate and authorized leak) the CIA has been facilitating the delivery of arms to rebels through Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
But what else don’t we know? It’s difficult to write about because we just don’t know what we don’t know thanks to the chilling effect Obama’s unprecedented secrecy has had on the press.
There is a tangled proxy war going on in Syria with enormous stakes. In other areas of foreign policy that are even less consequential than the fight in Syria, the record of the Obama administration has been to make it all secret and insulate themselves from any accountability for costs and failures. It’s hardly far-fetched to suspect a similar scenario with respect to Syria.
“I don’t know what the level of U.S. involvement in the Syrian civil war really is,” Walt writes. “But that’s what troubles me: I don’t like not knowing what my government is doing…”
Unfortunately, that’s exactly how Obama likes it. |
[Editor's note: In this exclusive excerpt from Joel Makower's new book, "Strategies for the Green Economy, we look at the easy steps to tell your company's green story. You can read a previous excerpt here.]
Talking to consumers about buying less stuff just might be the third rail of green marketing. Reducing or limiting consumption is antithetical to marketing, or at least it has been so far. Practically no one seems to want to go there. I'll accept my portion of responsibility. In the late 1980s, when I penned The Green Consumer, I helped advance the notion of solving our planet's environmental ills by making good purchasing choices -- that we could, in other words, shop our way to environmental health. "By choosing carefully, you can have a positive impact on the environment without significantly compromising your way of life," I wrote. "That's what being a green consumer is all about." I didn't stop there:
It wasn't very long ago that being a green consumer was a contradiction in terms. To truly care for the environment, it was said, you had to drastically reduce your purchases of everything -- food, clothing, appliances, and other "lifestyle" items -- to a bare minimum. That approach simply doesn't work in our increasingly convenience- and consumption-oriented society. No one wants to go back to a less-comfortable, less-convenient way of life.
This is still true, of course -- no one wants to be less well off. And, for the large part, few people seem willing to change or be inconvenienced in the name of Mother Earth. Sure, people are making small changes -- turning off computers, swapping out light bulbs, using cloth bags instead of disposable ones, buying hybrid cars, and recycling stuff. All necessary, but hardly sufficient.
Sustainable consumption is decidedly more complex and more global than just environmental concerns. It has to do with satisfying basic human needs and with spiritual, moral, and ethical matters. It has to do with the growing appetite in China, India, and other developing countries for cars, appliances, fashions, fast food, and many of the other things accessible to the consumption class. According to Norman Myers, a professor of environmental science at Oxford University, more than a billion people in 20 developing and transitional nations have recently become wealthy enough to begin consuming like Americans. Sustainable consumption also has to do with the underconsumption that characterizes roughly a third of the world's populace.
So how on Earth do companies acknowledge the elephant in the living room -- sustainable levels of consumption? Should they?
It won't be easy. For better or worse, we live in a commercial world and consumer society. You can see it at work in the cacophony of advertisements and commercial messages that intrude on our daily lives, in the companies and webs of commerce whose existence depends on consumers' endless appetite for more, and in the political leaders who work to promote unsustainable levels of economic growth, often at the expense of ecological and human needs. You can see it at work in our culture of debt and our need for keeping up with the Joneses.
Yet the environmental impacts of our consumption are virtually hidden. Most of us don't see firsthand the roughly 120 pounds of natural resources extracted from farms, forests, rangelands, oceans, rivers, and mines that go into the products that are consumed each day. For example, experts have estimated that the sum of all substances required to support one American for a year, including water used that is no longer available for reuse, totals nearly 1 million pounds -- or roughly 109 truckloads for a family of four. And do we recycle those 1 million pounds of resources? Not likely -- in the United States alone, individuals discard nearly three million plastic bottles every hour and enough steel and iron to continuously supply all the country's automakers.
A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports that average human consumption of water, forests, land, energy, and other natural resources exceeds the capacity of the biologic systems that support our planet by 20 percent. This means that we must change the way we produce goods and services lest we risk "overdrafting" our "ecological account," as ecologists put it, with devastating effects on economies and the environment.
Of course, we suffer in other ways from this buying binge. For several decades now, psychologists, sociologists, and other observers of the human condition have discussed and deconstructed the disparity -- or perhaps it's a gulf -- between consumption and happiness. More, it seems, is not necessarily better in terms of engendering security, self-esteem, meaning, personal fulfillment, or any of the other Maslowian traits that make for individuals, communities, and societies that are healthy, in every sense of the word. Americans, for one, consume more per capita than anyone else, yet we're chronically unhappy.
It would be one thing if all the stuff we buy somehow made us better people, but this doesn't seem to be the case. There is an extensive literature on materialism demonstrating a negative relationship between materialism and well being. For example, in a 1985 study by Russell Belk, now a marketing professor at the Schulich School of Business at York University, materialistic people were found to be possessive, in that they preferred to own and keep things rather than borrow, rent, or throw things out. They were seen as non-generous, or unwilling to share their possessions with others. And they tended to covet their neighbors' stuff, feeling displeasure when others had things they themselves desired. This is no victimless crime. Materialistic lifestyles can infect marriages (by devaluing non-materialistic bonds that keep relationships together during tough times) and parenting (since our children's value systems tend to imitate our own).
The reason we often seem powerless to resist this maelstrom of marketing messages is that we've been conditioned to buy, buy, buy from nearly the moment we emerge from the womb. Journalist Thomas Hine, in his fine book, I Want That, explores the history of acquisition -- finding, choosing, spending -- from our amber-coveting Neolithic forebears to twenty-first-century bargain hunters on eBay. Three of four American babies visit a store, usually a supermarket, by the age of six months, although some start "virtually at birth," he says. "They soon begin to realize that the store is the source of some of the good things that they had previously associated solely with their parents." It's not long before they're pointing at and choosing, often insistently, their breakfast cereals, toys, entertainment, and fashions.
For toddlers, teens, and grown-ups alike, exercising the power of choice in the marketplace is exactly that -- a form of power. Shopping enables us to take control and wield authority in our often-powerless lives. Indeed, as Hine deftly points out, the mere act of going shopping itself can be more important than anything that ends up in one's shopping cart as a result. Shopping, Hine argues, "is an exercise of both profound responsibility and profound freedom."
Not that we manage to exercise the former or achieve the latter. When it comes to navigating the marketplace, rational thinking often gets short shrift. Hine cites a study in which 36 percent of women and 18 percent of men admitted buying things they didn't need. Roughly one woman in four says she "can't resist a sale," and one in three says she shops to celebrate. Hine notes that shoppers "conspire in their own seduction," allowing themselves to be manipulated by marketers.
Given all this, the idea of consuming less rings hollow. We are looking to be seduced, it seems, and the marketing world is ready, willing, and able to beguile us with its respective psychological pheromones.
What is the business opportunity in confronting consumption? Few companies have likely asked this question, and fewer still have made it part of their strategy. Patagonia, for one, raised the issue with an essay in its fall 1993 catalog. After the company had undergone an environmental product audit, the company's founder, Yvon Chouinard, came to the conclusion that "Everything we make pollutes." As a result, the company "decided to make a radical change: We are limiting Patagonia's growth in the United States with the eventual goal of halting growth altogether." The company dropped 30 percent of its clothing line in its most recent catalog. "What does this mean to you?" Chouinard asked his customers. "Well, last fall you had a choice of five ski pants, now you may choose between two. This is, of course, un-American, but two styles of ski pants are all that anyone needs. They contain all that we have learned about design and the best available coatings for weather protection."
Kia, the Korean car maker, promoting its Sedona model in the United Kingdom, attempted to differentiate itself from competitors by encouraging walking instead of driving for short trips, not your typical car company tactic. Kia promoted the notion of a "Walking Bus," in which "a group, or 'bus,' of children walks from home to school each morning quickly and safely under the guidance of trained adult supervisors."
There are opportunities here. "We've all talked about sustainability, but suddenly having to sell less product is what frightens most companies," says Sarah Severn, director of corporate responsibility horizons at Nike. "Selling less isn't necessarily what's called for. Consumption is not the problem. It's the nature of consumption." The problem with most products -- Nike's and others' -- is that their materials have a relatively short life span before becoming unusable waste. Severn believes that companies able to improve on this model may be well positioned to succeed in a society geared toward sustainable consumption. So, for example, if Nike or anyone else could make shoes from materials that can be taken back and remanufactured into new shoes, all done with renewable energy and closed-loop manufacturing systems, "You have a regenerative model," says Severn. "The key is to maximize the use of resources that are already in play, radically reducing virgin materials input, but still meeting the consumer's requirement for innovation and freshness."
As Severn makes clear, this is no bah-humbug movement. The idea of sustainable consumption increasingly is being discussed well beyond the back-to-nature crowd. The Geneva-based World Business Council on Sustainable Development, a global alliance of mostly large companies, convened a summit several years ago to talk about how to respond to a world in which the notion of sustainable consumption gains currency. The meeting -- attended by 3M, British Telecom, Coors, Dow, DuPont, Fiat, General Motors, Johnson & Johnson, and others -- was designed to stimulate corporations into considering the subject.
The public already is starting to think about sustainable consumption. For instance, there's the voluntary simplicity movement, which in recent years has grown beyond the Birkenstock crowd to include burned-out yuppies and others wishing to escape the fast-track treadmill. Voluntary simplicity courses now are being taught in schools, even inside companies. And there's the growing attention paid each year to "Buy Nothing Day" (or, in some countries, "No Shop Day"), a small but increasingly global annual Earth Day–like event aimed at promoting reduced consumption, celebrated on the last Friday of November. Few companies' bottom lines have suffered from this day-long rash of anti-consumerism, but that's not necessarily the point. It's all about education, raising consciousness, and a metaphysical smack upside the head just as the holiday shopping season commences. It's an all-too-brief reminder: Think before you shop.
How will your company fare should sustainable consumption, by whatever name, become part of the public conversation? What is the story you will be able to tell? Will anyone believe it?
To a large extent, this is the ultimate green-economy strategy -- enabling customers to reduce their impacts by doing business with your company. What is the opportunity to create products or services that become the green default -- the no-brainer option that is better and greener? What is the opportunity to be disruptive -- changing the economics, the business model, the market perception in a way that renders such barriers as the unaffordability and inconvenience of "going green" moot? What is the opportunity to create products that solve customers' problems -- enabling them to fulfill their needs in a way that makes them genuinely part of the solution?
Joel Makower is executive editor of GreenBiz.com.
Excerpted with permission from Strategies for the Green Economy, by Joel Makower, published by McGraw Hill. © 2008 Joel Makower. |
1. Mississippi State
One of the highlights of the Bulldogs’ 45–31 victory over Kentucky was this crazy run by Josh Robinson, who deserves basically all the credit for these 22 yards after breaking eight tackles.
Through seven games, though, one of Mississippi State’s keys has been the offensive line’s ability to open up holes for both Robinson and quarterback Dak Prescott.
The Bulldogs’ offensive line ranks 14th nationally in Football Outsiders’ adjusted line yards ranking, a statistic that attempts to separate the ability of a team’s line from its runners. This kind of success is especially impressive considering Mississippi State hasn’t finished better than ninth in the SEC in 247sports’ composite recruiting rankings in the past five years.
The O-line was so good on one play Saturday that it helped turn a bad decision by Prescott into a 73-yard TD run.
On this zone read, Prescott most likely costs himself a long play of his own. Because Kentucky defensive lineman Mike Douglas commits to the inside, Prescott should keep this ball and run to the right.
Because of the blocking — and a nifty run from Robinson — it goes for a score anyway. The left side of the offensive line gets great push, and Robinson does what running backs are taught, going straight uphill to try to run through an arm tackle.
In this instance, he does, breaking through the grasp of the defensive lineman that Prescott incorrectly read earlier.
2. Florida State
FSU’s current win streak will become harder to ignore if the Seminoles can keep up their recent trend of winning close games.
With a victory at Louisville on Thursday, the Seminoles can move into a tie for the third-best consecutive-game run in the last 15 seasons. Only Miami and USC would have better streaks, and each of those took place in a world where iPhones didn’t exist. The Seminoles’ last three seasons have only further solidified their spot as the unquestioned top team in ACC history.
Going back to the start of the FBS era in 1978, five different ACC teams have posted win streaks of 12 games or more … and Florida State has done it four of those five times.
3. Alabama
Offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin put Alabama in a great position against his former employer, as on his team’s first offensive play he used play action to free receiver Amari Cooper for an 80-yard TD reception in the Crimson Tide’s 34–20 victory Saturday.
Receiver DeAndrew White does a nice job of sealing off the final block to spring Cooper for the score, but this was also a strong play design. Because Alabama’s powerful running game has to be respected, faking the running play to the left frees up quarterback Blake Sims for the naked play action back to his right.
Success with play action is one reason Alabama has been able to strike for numerous long passing plays this year. The Crimson Tide actually leads the SEC in 30-plus-yard passing plays …
despite being in the middle of the pack when it comes to pass attempts per game.
4. Auburn
Auburn, like Mississippi State, owes a lot of its offensive success to a dominant O-line. The Tigers rank second nationally in adjusted line yards and also have picked up at least five yards on 47.4 percent of their run plays this year (on those plays when rushing for five yards is possible).
This 4-yard TD run by Nick Marshall in Saturday’s 42–35 victory over South Carolina was an example of how overpowering Auburn’s offensive line can be. The QB counter read starts with a punishing block by left guard Devonte Danzey and finishes with left tackle Shon Coleman and tight end Brandon Fulse delivering hits of their own.
The hole ends up being so big that Marshall goes untouched while decelerating into the end zone.
Auburn’s receivers also helped out the running game on this Ricardo Louis 75-yard TD run.
Sammie Coates — a preseason first-team all-SEC selection that is averaging 18.2 yards per reception — is one big reason this QB power read works, as he drives a South Carolina defender back a few yards to clear the path for Louis down the left sideline.
Auburn’s 5.96-yard-per-carry average ranks 11th nationally, and a team dedicated to finishing blocks like the two plays above should continue to experience offensive success, no matter the opponent.
Final Four just missed: Oregon, Ole Miss, TCU, Notre Dame. |
Kenya (CNN) Christians have come under repeated attacks in North Eastern Province in Kenya at the hands of Al-Shabaab militants who have killed hundreds.
It's sunrise over the Tana River. Traffic starts to flow over the bridge and morning rush hour begins. What looks like the beginning of a normal workday here has a much darker undertone. Most of the commuters are day laborers, people going into their offices, but also many Christians who are too scared to sleep inside Garissa town. They have decided to move themselves and their families across to the other side of the river to safety.
We met Esther as she was crossing the bridge on foot on her way to work. She is a mother of three and a Christian. When we ask her why she decided to move her and her family out of town she tells us: "It is because of Al-Shabaab that I moved out of Garissa. You can be shot anytime while you are walking. Even when we're at home they can just come from the bush."
In April this year, hundreds of students at Garissa University in northern Kenya came under attack when Al-Shabaab militants from across the border in Somalia raided dormitories at the college. Separating Christian students from their Muslim classmates, the raiders killed 147 and wounded dozens more . Today, the university stands empty.
Christians in North Eastern Kenya have come under repeated attacks by Al-Shabaab militants
At Sunday Mass in Garissa's Cathedral, Our Lady of Consolation, the benches are full. The congregation is praying under armed guard but they're praying nonetheless.
Photos: Leaders of deadliest terrorist groups Photos: Leaders of deadliest terrorist groups Mawlawi Haibatullah Akhunzada, named the new Afghan Taliban leader following the death of Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, is in his late 50s and comes from Panjwai district of southern Kandahar province. Hide Caption 1 of 7 Photos: Leaders of deadliest terrorist groups Ayman Al-Zawahiri is the leader of al Qaeda. He previously acted as Osama bin Laden's personal physician and is believed to have played an important role in the September 11 terror attacks. Hide Caption 2 of 7 Photos: Leaders of deadliest terrorist groups Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is the leader of ISIS, the militant group that wants to create an Islamic state across areas of Iraq and Syria. Not much is known about the ruthless leader. A reward of up to $10 million has been offered by the U.S. government. Hide Caption 3 of 7 Photos: Leaders of deadliest terrorist groups Qasm al-Rimi is the leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. He succeeded Nasir al-Wuhayshi, who was killed in a drone strike . Al-Rimi has spent more than a decade at the helm of the military side of AQAP, and he also plans their large international operations. Hide Caption 4 of 7 Photos: Leaders of deadliest terrorist groups Mullah Fazlullah is the leader of the Pakistani Taliban. The group, which has links to the Afghan Taliban and al Qaeda, has claimed responsibility for shooting teen activist Malala Yousafzai and attempting to detonate a car bomb in New York's Times Square in 2010. Hide Caption 5 of 7 Photos: Leaders of deadliest terrorist groups Ahmed Omar Abu Ubaidah is the leader of al-Shabaab, an al Qaeda-linked militant group based in Somalia. Little is known about the man characterized as a low-ranking commander. Hide Caption 6 of 7 Photos: Leaders of deadliest terrorist groups Abubakar Shekau is the leader of Boko Haram, a militant Islamic group working out of Nigeria. Little is known about the religious scholar. He operates in the shadows, leaving his underlings to orchestrate his mandates. A reward of up to $7 million has been offered by the U.S. government. Hide Caption 7 of 7
Each Sunday brings with it new threats from Al-Shabaab. Garissa's Christians are told that if you worship here, you'll die. One of those attending Sunday Mass, Patrick Gitau tell us that despite the risks: "Every Sunday I'm here it's my cathedral. Yeah I'm here I was baptized in this church."
Leading this congregation in these uncertain times is Maltese priest Joseph Alessandro, now the Bishop of Garissa, who came to Kenya in the early 1990s.
He was shot by separatist militants on the Kenyan coast in 1993, and left the country to receive medical attention, but he was determined to return. He eventually came back to Garissa five years ago.
In spite of the threats that arrive before every Sunday mass, he says he would never consider leaving his congregation.
"It's not a matter of choice," he says. "It's our duty to remain here. Since we are appointed as bishops, we have to stay -- not withstanding what happens -- 'til there are no Catholics, it's our duty to stay."
In the wake of the attack, he says, many students stopped attending their classes.
"Before the Garissa attack, we had 460 students in our school. After the attack, only 300 reported back. The others left Garissa or were scared to come back [to school] because of the attack."
Alessandro says he hopes that the institutions forced to shut down because of the threat of terror will soon reopen and that life will return to normal.
"Now we are gaining confidence again -- we have security on the compound for the school and even during the night for the sisters, for the priests."
He along with his fellow bishops and nuns, have been a constant in this community.
Sister Evelyn Ingoshe, has been part of the Diocese of Garissa for two years. She works at the school next to the Garissa Cathedral. Sister Evelyn tells us that she loves children and it is for that reason that she has devoted her whole life to serve them.
Being fully aware of the risks involved she decided nevertheless to come and work in this part of Kenya where Christians have suffered many attacks and there are weekly, if not daily threats.
"I knew that there was a danger in coming to this place of the country for a non Muslim but I followed my heart and wanted to do it."
Photos: Kenyan schools live in fear of Al-Shabaab Photos: Kenyan schools live in fear of Al-Shabaab A young girl studies for class at the Ibnu-Siina school in Garissa, Kenya. The school is located only a few hundred meters from Garissa University, where 147 people were killed by Al-Shabaab terrorists in early April. Hide Caption 1 of 8 Photos: Kenyan schools live in fear of Al-Shabaab James Ndonye, the headmaster of the school, says five out of 11 teachers have left in the past year amid rising fears of an attack by Al-Shabaab on the school. He has replaced them, but it has not been easy. Hide Caption 2 of 8 Photos: Kenyan schools live in fear of Al-Shabaab Al-Shabaab have launched a series of deadly attacks over the last few years in the region mostly targeting Christians. Many of the math and science teachers in this area are Christian. There is only one security guard for Ibnu-Siina school, and he is unarmed. Hide Caption 3 of 8 Photos: Kenyan schools live in fear of Al-Shabaab The school teaches mathematics, science and English. But it's an education that Al-Shabaab is trying to prevent the children from obtaining, according to Ndonye. Hide Caption 4 of 8 Photos: Kenyan schools live in fear of Al-Shabaab Lessons and metrics are graphically illustrated on some of the school walls. Hide Caption 5 of 8 Photos: Kenyan schools live in fear of Al-Shabaab Kenya's students -- like the girl picture here -- aren't the only ones under threat. In Nigeria around 270 girls were kidnapped from their school in Chibok by Boko Haram last year. Hide Caption 6 of 8 Photos: Kenyan schools live in fear of Al-Shabaab A class timetable for the school in Garissa. Hide Caption 7 of 8 Photos: Kenyan schools live in fear of Al-Shabaab A sign outside the Ibnu-Siina school provides some small light relief to students who live in constant fear of an attack. Hide Caption 8 of 8
During her two years in north eastern Kenya she has worked in some of the most dangerous areas such as Mandera and Wajir -- places that have suffered numerous attacks on Christians.
She is determined in her faith. "If you can go to your place of work you can also go to a place of worship," he said.
The diocese has received words of encouragement from the Pope himself. At the invitation of the diocese, Bishop Alessandro tells us that the Pope added Kenya to his Africa trip in November. He says members of the congregation will be chosen to travel to Nairobi to meet him.
For now though, he and his bishops are focusing on the daily task of keeping their flock safe as best they can. The bishop tells us: "We are people of God, we are people of faith. God never abandons us and maybe in moments when we feel that we are left on our own. There are those moments that God might be very close to us. Even if we don't feel him." |
The success of Jordan Peele’s Get Out – it took $30m in its first weekend in the US – is remarkable for lots of reasons. This is a first-time film from a respected, but essentially cult comedian, with no real big-name stars and a premise that is anathema to most of middle America. Yet people came out to see it in their thousands and critics raved about a horror film, which just does not happen. The film has a A- rating from audiences on CinemaScore, which as some have pointed out is unheard of for a horror, and a rare 99% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Like Donald Glover’s Atlanta, almost universal praise has followed the film’s debut and as with that series, Peele has dealt with race in America in a refreshing, funny and unflinching manner. The number of things Peele manages to reference is stunning: the taboo of mixed relationships, eugenics, the slave trade, black men dying first in horror films, suburban racism, police brutality.
Get Out review – white liberal racism is terrifying bogeyman in sharp horror Read more
Film-makers have used absurd horror to tackle race before, like in Timo Vuorensola’s 2012 film Iron Sky, which placed the action on the dark side of the moon where the Nazis had been hiding out, plotting to forcibly make black people white. But in Get Out, Peele brought the action much closer to home. Some have dubbed the film an “African-American nightmare movie”; it isn’t. This is an American horror story. (It comes after an impressive run of low-budget two-word-title horrors that place the action in middle America, and prod at issues bubbling just beneath the surface: Don’t Breathe, It Follows and You’re Next.)
The villains here aren’t southern rednecks or neo-Nazi skinheads, or the so-called “alt-right”. They’re middle-class white liberals. The kind of people who read this website. The kind of people who shop at Trader Joe’s, donate to the ACLU and would have voted for Obama a third time if they could. Good people. Nice people. Your parents, probably. The thing Get Out does so well – and the thing that will rankle with some viewers – is to show how, however unintentionally, these same people can make life so hard and uncomfortable for black people. It exposes a liberal ignorance and hubris that has been allowed to fester. It’s an attitude, an arrogance which in the film leads to a horrific final solution, but in reality leads to a complacency that is just as dangerous.
There was always something that didn’t quite ring true about Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner – a film many have compared to Get Out. It wasn’t in Sidney Poitier’s performance, which felt real: his anger, fear and frustration at having to battle his own family’s disapproval of him marrying a white woman and her family’s liberal hand-wringing was note-perfect. What didn’t feel real was the mostly calm reactions of almost everyone involved. In Get Out, under that placid exterior lurks the dark subconscious, where the true horror lies.
Trayvon Martin’s parents, five years on: ‘Racism is alive and well in America’ Read more
In the screening I was at, the biggest reactions from the mainly black audience were the knowing laughs whenever Peele took on tropes people recognised from real life. There was the anxiety about meeting the family of a white partner, which proved to be well placed when Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya) arrives at the Armitage residency and is immediately treated to a line of ham-fisted and loaded questioning. There was the cringe-inducing way the black serving staff are treated; the interactions with the police who, unlike in most horror films, aren’t last-minute saviors but potential fatal hurdles.
Horror tropes are inverted, subverted and turned on their head, none more so than the way Peele takes the idea of a white woman being in peril as soon as she’s in an inner-city area and turns that into a black man being at his vulnerable in an affluent white neighborhood. The unique history – plus the fascination, fetishization and fear of dark-skinned men – on this continent gives Get Out even more punch. After seeing it, I started to think that it might not be a coincidence the film came out almost five years to the day since Trayvon Martin was killed.
Peele said The Stepford Wives, because of the way it “dealt with social issues in regards to gender”, was an inspiration for Get Out. “I just thought, that’s proof that you can pull off a movie about race, that’s a thriller and entertaining and fun,” he said. His debut has managed to do just that, and like The Daily Show – a satirical news show which became must-watch social commentary – Peele has placed real issues in an unlikely context, this time a horror film, and said something painfully true about them. Get Out will be one of this year’s biggest conversation starters. Just don’t expect it to be comfortable. |
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With the bright prospects of pitchers and catchers reporting to Spring Training in just three weeks, Saturday, January 19, was a cold, dark day for Major League Baseball fans.
Early in the morning it was announced that the great Earl Weaver had died.
Roughly 12 hours later, reports arrived indicating that Stan “the Man” Musial passed away in his suburban St. Louis home. He was 92.
A genial, sweet-swinging, unpretentious individual known as “The Man,” Musial was inarguably one of the best pure left-handed hitters in baseball history alongside Ted Williams, Ty Cobb, and Tony Gwynn.
The Western Pennsylvania native had so many incredible accomplishments that listing some of them is the only feasible way to do justice:
24 all-star selections (tied for most in history with Willie Mays).
3,630 hits, all in the same uniform (4th all time).
Nearly 2000 RBIs
475 homeruns.
Three MVPs.
Three World Series titles.
Seven NL batting crowns (hit over .350 five times).
Never struck out 50 times in a season.
Second most total bases in history (6,134).
Musial was indeed the greatest star in a franchise full of stars.
While his Polish immigrant father wanted him to attend college, Musial graduated from high school and signed with the Redbirds for $65 per month. He was brought up to the Majors just months before Pearl Harbor was attacked, hitting .426 in 47 at-bats that September at age 20, then winning many of the above honors with the dominant Cardinal teams of the early 1940s.
Missing the 1945 season for World War II service, he returned from the U.S. Navy early in 1946 and promptly won his second NL batting title eight months later.
Musial, who hit .330 at age 41, was clearly to the Cardinals what Joe DiMaggio was to the Yankees and Ted Williams to the Red Sox.
For most of his career, St. Louis was the farthest outpost in the big leagues, and the Cardinals’ vast radio network broadcast his exploits from Little Rock, Memphis and Dallas to Des Moines, Omaha, Denver, and points west. (Ironically however, the Ebbets Field faithful in Brooklyn christened “The Man” moniker.)
Farmers in the field, families on the porch, and folks in the factory would tune in during those 22 summers. The folksy Musial carried around autographed cards of himself to give away, enjoyed doing magic tricks, and played a harmonica to entertain crowds.
Later, in his lone season as Cards’ general manager, he oversaw the 1967 World Series championship. Musial was inducted into the Hall of Fame two years later in his first year of eligibility with 93 percent of the vote.
The beloved outfielder/first baseman received the Presidential Medal of Freedom — the highest honor that can be bestowed on a civilian — in 2011. He was at Opening Day that spring, preceding the Cardinals’ most recent — and 11th — title run, and he appeared at Busch Stadium for a final visit during the 2012 NLCS.
His wife of more than 70 years, Lillian, died last May.
Even erstwhile Cardinal legend Albert Pujols deferred to Musial. After “El Hombre” became his nickname, Pujols requested that he not be identified as such, saying in 2010, “I don’t want to be called that. There is one man that gets that respect, and that’s Stan Musial.” Pujols told media Sunday he was “blessed to spend time” with the legend 60 years his senior.
With Pujols’ December 2011 departure, it’s assured that “The Man” will remain the greatest Cardinal of them all.
During the same week where sports brought us lowlights like Lance Armstrong and Manti Te’o, Musial was the antithesis: humble, honest, and scandal-free.
Stan “The Man’s” accomplishments remain undiminished by time — with fans throughout the Midwest and beyond. |
Scrivener 2.1 for OS X adds technical refinement, additional features and Lion compatibility. It’s one of the great tools for writers on the Mac, whether the project is a novel, screenplay, or just a research paper.
Back in the spring of 2009, I started a project to review software for people who write novels and screenplays. I looked at most of the major apps and summarized what I found in August.
One of the standouts was Scrivener 1.5 from Literature & Latte located in Cornwall, England. At the time, I said:
If StoryMill took a very technical, methodical and structural approach to writing a novel, then Scrivener walks down a different, more relaxed path with cork boards and help with the tactics of text manipulation. You won’t find time sequencers, character building and cataloging or cliche finders because the app can tackle a broader range of projects (than just a novel or screenplay). What you will find in spades is help with managing the text of your document — or story…. With Scrivener, the immediate focus is on writing. The typeface is defined in the preferences so that the screen remains clean, devoid of rulers (by default) and tab markers that can distract one from the pleasure of writing. After all, if one wants a smorgasbord of visual clutter, buttons, pallets, rulers, tab markers, and font controls, one can always use Microsoft Word.”
Scrivener 2.1, ready for Lion, retains that easy going, flexible approach, but has also added considerable technical strength under the hood and UI refinements that either clarify operations or make life easier for the writer. Some of the change reflects, I surmise, user feedback and some reflects the new and changing needs of modern authors, for example, direct output to EPUB format, ready to be uploaded to various ebook services.
In fact, the eternal dilemma for software like this is that writers want to jump in and start writing without getting buried in technology and technique — yet their craft, the output suitable for publication, is an extraordinarily technical affair. This is why I really like Scrivener. Not only is the app a brilliant blend of technology and the act of catering to the author, but the gentle, low-key approach by the developers in the documentation and design keeps one from becoming too annoyed (or obsessed) with the operation of the software. (However, I have some nits regarding that below.) Did I mention boatloads of passion for the art of writing by the company? It shows.
Perhaps the best way to show how Scrivener 2.1 has evolved is to look back at my initial review, check out the current list of features and then look at the changes in version 2.0 and, recently, 2.1 — which is ready for Lion. The first review I did will give you a strong feeling for the flavor, look and feel, and philosophy of this app.
New features in 2.0
View a freeform corkboard for sections where cards can be moved around arbitrarily.
Collections.Think of it as tabs for your binder.
Marginalia provide a choice betwwen in-line notes or notes in the inspector.
Improved Compile. This is the formated output option, and it now includes EPUB and WebArchive formats in addition to an already extensive list.
Support for iPad as a collaboration tool including Dropbox support.
A crisper, more intuitive relationship between the corkboard, outliner and editor. (This was a problem in version 1.5, and it still lingers now.)
Editable QuickReference Windows that are editable.
Document snapshots and automatic backups.
Page Layout preview, somewhat like a word processor, gives a preview of how many pages the document will be during layout.
Scrivener already had a very rich repertoire of output formats, including .mobi, .rtf, .doc, .docx. .fdx, and.html. So .epub is a welcome addition. Also, Scrivener previously had in place the ability to create a ZIP’d backup and save it to Dropbox (or MobileMe).
Output formats
New features in 2.1
Lion compatibility.
For use with equations, integration with MathType.
Better control of the export and Compile Summary Mode.
Improved search in the Binder.
Logical separation of saved preferences and color themes. This allows the user, for example, to use one theme in the daytime and one at night without effecting the document preferences.
A logical separation of Lion’s new Full Screen mode and what Scrivener used to call Full Screen. Scrivener’s old Full Screen is now called Composition Mode and support for Lion’s Full Screen is added.
Added export options: CSV and OPML.
For more details on what’s new, the developer has a great page with full descriptions.
Documentation
Scrivener 2 is one of the best documented apps I have ever seen, both in terms of volume and quality. First, there is a boatload of video tutorials. Next, there’s a new 455 page User Guide in PDF format. It’s found in the Help menu or when you start a new project. And then there’s the Interactive Tutorial also available when you start a new project. Finally, There’s the excellent Take Control ebook by Kirk McElhearn. This is just a fantastic set of documents and videos.
Some Nits
As great as the program is, there are still some issues for me. I am not pleased with the process by which new scenes are created by hitting the Return key. That seems like a bad UI decision; a more explicit action is called for. Conversely, the delete key doesn’t work for the deletion of a scene, and that’s good because a good UI demands a more explicit action there to avoid the loss of content.
Corkboard
Also, I have a lot to learn about the operation of the corkboard, adding items, and linking to graphics. It still seems counterintuitive, unMac-like and awkward at times, but I’ll admit that it takes some time on the learning curve to fully exploit this feature. None of this is major.
Finally, and I’m not sure how to approach this, but Scrivener can be, in some modes, a visually busy app. That’s okay, so long as the documentation is excellent and everything works well together. I think the lesson here is that as one climbs the learning curve, as with Microsoft Word, the myriad of buttons and toolbar icons become your friends instead of strangers. Also, to be fair, the Inspector and Binder can be hidden, and there’s the famous full screen mode which is distraction free. And yet, I have the feeling that there’s still work to be done in the contextual clarity of all the busyness in the mode shown below.
Visually Busy: Binder, Toolbar, buttons, Inspector, and Format Bar.
The Précis
I’ve been working with Scrivener 2.0.5 for a few weeks now and recently upgraded to 2.1. I am pleased with the better clarity and organization as well as the technical refinements that will make this app a front runner for anyone embarking on a novel or a screenplay. (Maybe even me someday.) Also, for as long as I’ve used this app, it has never crashed or locked up. Version 2.1 puts it right up there with — and perhaps surpasses — any app of its kind.
Upgrades
According to the developer, the update to Scrivener 2.x is free for users who bought Scrivener 1.x on or after 1st August 2010, and $25 for users who purchased Scrivener 1.x before that. The upgrade fee is the same for both the regular and education licences.
While Scrivener has historically been Mac-only, a Windows version is in the works with a release expected this summer. |
BBC audiences in Iran, the Middle East and Europe may be experiencing disruption to their BBC TV or radio services today. That is because there is heavy electronic jamming of one of the satellites the BBC uses in the Middle East to broadcast the BBC Persian TV signal to Iran.
Satellite technicians have traced that interference and it is coming from Iran. There has been intermittent interference from Iran since Friday, but this is the heaviest yet.
It seems to be part of a pattern of behaviour by the Iranian authorities to limit the reporting of the aftermath of the disputed election. In Tehran, John Simpson and his cameraman were briefly arrested after they had filmed the material for this piece. And at least one news agency in Tehran has come under pressure not to distribute internationally any pictures it might have of demonstrations on the streets in Iran.
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However, the availability of witness material from Iran is enabling international news organisations to be able to report the story. Viewers of BBC Persian TV have been in touch (in Farsi), sending videos, stills and providing personal accounts.
It is important that what is happening in Iran is reported to the world, but it is even more vital that citizens in Iran know what is happening. That is the role of the recently-launched BBC Persian TV which is fulfilling a crucial role in being a free and impartial source of information for many Iranians.
Any attempt to block this channel is wrong and against international treaties on satellite communication. Whoever is attempting the blocking should stop it now.
Peter Horrocks is the director of BBC World Service. |
7th April, 2016 by Amy Hopkins
Diageo’s head of whisky outreach has rejected claims Scotch producers are imitating Bourbon, instead arguing the whisky industry has witnessed a “Scotchification of Bourbon”.
Speaking to The Spirits Business, Nick Morgan, head of whisky outreach at Johnnie Walker producer Diageo, said: “There’s a narrative out there about the ‘Bourbonisation’ of Scotch, but I think this is the wrong narrative, because it’s the ‘Scotchification’ of Bourbon. Producers are trying to mirror the diversity of Scotch, which they will never manage.”
Morgan’s comments were made during a discussion about Scotch whisky innovation and Diageo’s new Whiskey Union arm.
Described as an experimental “craft” whisky arm, Whiskey Union forms part of Diageo’s newly unveiled strategy to target growth in the Scotch whisky segment and combat the challenge posed by innovative American and New World whiskies.
Bottlings launched within the range are described as “unorthodox, weird and wonderful”. While some are labeled as Scotch whisky when they adhere to industry regulations, others that do not are titled ‘spirit drinks’.
“Over the past three or four years, the rate of innovation at Diageo has been quite remarkable, and it has been remarkably successful,” said Morgan. “Innovation is really making a difference to our business but I don’t think we are any where near finished yet – there’s a lot more we can do.
“Looking at Scotch, this is a category where we have innovated for over 100 years. What [we] are seeing now is an accelerated pace of innovation, but this reflects the accelerated pace of everything. All categories are trying to keep up with this.”
At an investors’ conference last year, David Gates, head of premium core spirits at Diageo, said that Diageo will endeavor to combat the “erosion” of consumer trust in big institutions and “kill any BS”.
Addressing the possible challenge independent brands pose to establish players, Morgan said: “Big is beautiful and allows us to do lots of things that smaller distilleries can’t do. Every brand wants to create a consistent product.
“We have huge experimental facilities and have been experimenting for years and years. But it’s only been over the past few years that people have been open to hearing this. Now we can lead the conversation.”
For a more in-depth look at Scotch whisky innovation, see the March 2016 issue of The Spirits Business magazine. |
Scott Pye set the pace in opening practice for the Castrol Gold Coast 600 despite feeling “pretty tender” as he tested out his fractured rib on the punishing street circuit.
Pye ran the bulk of the session in the DJR Team Penske Ford, setting a best of 1:11.7s on the soft tyre before handing over to co-driver Marcos Ambrose.
Steven Johnson has been placed on standby for Pye this weekend as the South Australian battles the rib injury he sustained at Bathurst a fortnight ago.
“The car is pretty good which makes my job a lot easier, but just that back chicane the car bottoms out and knocks the wind out of me pretty quickly,” he said.
“I want to drive more than ever, we’ve finally got the car to a position where we’re comfortable and I’m not handing it over without a fight. It’s a matter of just pressing on.
“I’ll take some good doses and keep pushing. Sometimes it’s just about how bad you want something and I want it pretty bad.”
Lee Holdsworth, Tim Slade and Nick Percat all ran late laps on the softs to fill second through fourth, while Jamie Whincup was fifth despite an early end to his session.
The Red Bull driver tagged the wall at the exit of the first chicane, spinning his Holden down the road and damaging a suspension arm.
“This place is all about attacking the chicane and I gave it a little bit too much and just clipped the rear on the wall,” he admitted.
“Generally these things are pretty bullet proof but it’s bent one of the arms on the rear. We’ll replace that and PD (Paul Dumbrell) will be back out for the next session.”
James Courtney completed the entire session at the wheel of the #22 HRT Commodore and later reported no immediate problems with his own injuries.
“I think maybe later on it might flare up a bit but at the moment it’s perfect,” he said.
“To be honest before I got in I got a bit quiet and thought ‘geez, I hope everything stays where it should be’.
“But once I got out there and got into it your brain switches back and you’re thinking about the car.
“It wasn’t until the end of the session where I started to think about what I felt like.”
Tim Blanchard failed to turn a flying lap in the session as the team worked on issues with its back-up chassis, which has been pressed into action following the driver’s Bathurst crash.
Three more 30 minute V8 Supercars practice sessions remain for the day, with the next two to be run for the co-drivers only.
Result: V8 Supercars Practice 1, Surfers Paradise |
This update:
- Adds controls to mute audio in Safari tabs
- Adds additional viewing options for Safari Reader
- Improves website AutoFill compatibility
Ahead of the official launch of OS X El Capitan, Apple's newest operating system, Apple today released Safari 9.0 for OS X Yosemite users. According to Apple, today's update is recommended for all people running OS X Yosemite and includes improvements to privacy, compatibility, and security.The update adds El Capitan-centric features including a new mute audio feature for Safari tabs and additional viewing options for Safari Reader. Pinned Sites, a major Safari addition in OS X El Capitan, is not included.Many OS X Yosemite users will be upgrading to OS X El Capitan in the next few hours, following its official public release. It is not clear when Apple plans to debut the software, but the company has promised that it's coming on September 30. |
Melbourne Airport jet fuel shortage begins to ease, airlines reporting no delays
Updated
A shortage of jet fuel at Melbourne Airport has started to ease with supply resuming to some terminals and airlines reporting no delays.
A fuel shortage on Friday sparked concerns of diversions and flight delays following the delivery of a substandard shipment of imported aviation fuel.
The ABC was told that less than 2 million litres of aviation fuel was available at the country's second busiest airport.
An A380 can require more than 300,000 litres of fuel for a long-haul flight.
ExxonMobil, the representative of the fuel suppliers, said the issue had arisen following disruptions in recent weeks to jet fuel deliveries from a number of terminals across Melbourne.
"While the issue is not yet resolved, supply has started to resume from some of the impacted terminals which may help bolster supply at the airport and soon alleviate the need for customer allocations," the company said in a statement.
Airlines make contingency plans to avoid delays
Airlines Qantas and Virgin made contingency plans and said so far there had been no delays.
Two Qantas international flights were diverted to Sydney to refuel after airlines were rationed to half of the amount of fuel they would normally use.
Virgin said it was flying as normal and that most domestic flights were arriving in Melbourne with extra fuel on board.
"The fuel supply issues at Melbourne Airport have so far had no impact on Virgin Australia's operations in or out of Melbourne," the company said in a statement.
"We do encourage our guests to check the flight status page on the Virgin Australia website for the most up-to-date information."
Storage capacity 'needs to be improved'
Victorian Energy Minister Lily D'Ambrosio said the shortage highlighted the need for Melbourne to match other airports like Sydney, in terms of storage capacity.
"Melbourne Airport is a world-class international airport but for far too long, Melbourne Airport has not had sufficient jet fuel storage to be able to meet the growing needs of the flights that are coming in and out of Melbourne," she said.
"We cannot continue this level of uncertainty where there is potentially from moment to moment insufficient jet fuel supply because of storage issues at Melbourne Airport."
A decade ago seven fuel refineries operated in Australia but now there are only two in Victoria and imports from Asia are needed to meet the demand.
Topics: air-transport, industry, business-economics-and-finance, melbourne-3000
First posted |
Photo Credit: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90
By Jonathan Benedek/TPS
Jerusalem (TPS) – Yisrael Beiteinu party head Avigdor Liberman visited the Damascus Gate of Jerusalem’s Old City yesterday afternoon March 9, in what he said was an expression of solidarity with security forces in their struggle to prevent terror. The Damascus Gate area has seen a number of attacks in recent months.
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As at other times in the past year, Liberman criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon in their handling of the wave of terror attacks.
“Netanyahu and Yaalon are bad for the security of Israel,” Lieberman said. “The prime minister and the defense minister have succeeded in bringing Jerusalem back decades to the period of 1967.”
In 1967, many neighborhoods of Jerusalem, including the Old City, were liberated by Israel from Jordan in the Six-Day War. Jerusalem’s Old City was located near the 1949 armistice lines that then separated Israeli and Jordanian forces.
“Jews are not visiting, are worried, and feel that there is no way to walk around here,” added Lieberman, explaining the implications of his statement.
Lieberman said that Israel was facing organized terror through social media. “Whoever is speaking about terrorism from individuals has no idea what he is talking about,” argued Liberman. “This is organized terror.”
“Instead of cells and communication devices, they are using social media.” |
A couple of weeks ago, my regular Destiny crew stopped playing. It wasn't some big announced event, or something we had planned. Our loss of momentum started with a confluence of other, smaller occurrences. We took a few days off, then a few more. Then we weren't playing at all.
Once or twice, I'd be talking to my colleague and Destiny bro Jason Schreier about playing, and we'd both hem and haw and slowly realize that, to be honest, we'd rather do something else. It just wasn't worth our time.
We could both imagine what would happen if we did play: We'd spend an hour or so running through a difficult battle, a battle we'd played through a dozen times before. At the end, we'd be bitterly rewarded with booby prizes and useless junk. Rather than go through all that, we decided to stick a pin in it and go do other things.
And just like that, Destiny lost its hold over us.
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We're not the only ones. A tide of discontent has swept the Destiny community, and many of the game's most dedicated players are announcing planned vacations. This isn't some grandiose, "We're fed up and we won't take it anymore!" thing, though that's not an uncommon sentiment. Rather, people who have put hundreds of hours into the game are finding that, for a variety of reasons, they're losing the motivation to play.
This development strikes me as a normal part of the progression for a game like Destiny. I was feeling it even a month ago, when I re-reviewed the game. My group was scraping up against the edges, and it was taking a toll. We were more irritable when we played, less joyful in our victories. Even our team email threads felt sharper, more weary.
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Since its release last September, Destiny has performed a hopscotch dance between love and hate—it's the game you love to play, even as you're consciously, vocally angry at it for a number of failings. What's changed is that lately, the game's feet have landed more squarely on anger and irritation. It's harder and harder to keep one's chin up and soldier on.
The current 'exodus,' such as it is, is far from complete. Plenty of people are still playing and enjoying Destiny—heck, I still hop on for the occasional strike. Nor is it permanent—most of the people currently taking breaks won't stay gone for good. But it's a noteworthy development for one of the most talked-about games of the last six months, and represents yet another turning point for a game that's already had several.
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Not Enough Carrots
As I was partway through writing this article, I saw a thread on the Destiny subbreddit titled "Who else feels like taking a break from Destiny until the next expansion?" I've seen that sentiment shared more and more at the various Destiny hubs I frequent, and this particular thread captured the zeitgeist.
"I broke 800 hours of combined gameplay," the original poster, temporarycreature, wrote, "and I'm just feeling bored and burned out. I'm not complaining. I am not threatening Bungie. I just hit a wall, and I don't feel like doing the same things over, and over, day in, and day out."
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The thread has more than a thousand responses, many from other players who feel similarly. The whole thing boils down to carrots, basically.
"The main problem with the dangling of the carrot progression is, once you get the carrot (or enough bites of it), you really don't feel the need to keep chasing it," responds one player, supaloco.
"This whole thread makes me scared that Bungie will make the carrot harder to catch when [the House of Wolves expansion] comes out…" writes another player, banannabelle, in response. "I've minimized my playtime considerably since [Crota's End hard mode] came out, because I'm tired of chasing the carrot."
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"Honestly, it doesn't matter where the[y] put the carrot anymore," a third player, Poor_cReddit, replies. "The problem is that everyone is sick of eating the carrot."
The carrots those players are talking about are the rewards Destiny offers players for completing missions, raids, strikes, and crucible matches. Dedicated players have easily put in at least three or four hundred hours with the game, and that's enough time to get almost every gun, upgrade, and piece of armor you could want.
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Emphasis on the almost, however. Here's my situation, which I know is far from unique: I have three alt characters, two of which are level 32, and the last one could get there if I cared to farm the shards for it. Between those three, I have almost every single good exotic and legendary weapon in the game, aside from the coveted rocket launcher Gjallarhorn. I have almost every single good exotic armor piece in the game, aside from the coveted titan helmet Helm of Saint-14. There are a few more items that I wouldn't cry about getting, but those two exotic items are the only two I still "want" from the game.
There's no way to earn or work my way toward getting either of those things—I'm entirely at the mercy of the random number generator. My two best chances are to complete weekly Nightfall strikes and hope one of them drops, or hope that Xur turns up selling them one weekend. Both of those things are reliant on chance, meaning that the only way I can hope to get the items I still want is to pray for fortune to smile on me.
Guess what? That's a shitty way to play a game, especially one that rewards players as arbitrarily as Destiny does. It didn't take much mental algebra to figure out that my chances of having a Gjallarhorn drop are low enough that I might as well just stop playing altogether, sit on my hoard of strange coins, and wait for Xur to sell it again. It doesn't help that some exotics appear to be weighted to drop more often than others—I've had No Land Beyond, the worst exotic gun in the game, drop for me not once, not twice, but five times. At this point I just expect the thing to drop at the end of Nightfalls. It feels like Destiny is going out of its way to insult me.
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Once more, this whole thing comes down to what I've already identified as Destiny's biggest flaw: There simply isn't enough stuff in the game. When every hardcore player has a near-identical loadout, and every player is still grinding away in hopes of getting the same rocket launcher, that's a sign that players have all hit the same wall. We've run out of things to do and rewards to earn because there simply weren't enough there in the first place.
And suddenly, I realize…
I've Started Playing Destiny For The Wrong Reasons
Oh, shit, I've started playing Destiny for the wrong reasons. In the past, I used to hassle Jason when he'd say there was "no reason" to do some mission or other. What he meant was, there's no useful loot we can get out of it. He was working under the assumption that we only play Destiny for the loot.
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"But it'll be fun!" I'd counter. This game is, after all, fundamentally very fun to play. Surely that's enough?
Lately, my mentality has changed. I find myself performing cold mental calculations to determine the worth-itness of a given undertaking. I always did that, mind you, but nowadays, it's my primary calculation, rather than a secondary one.
When I try to step back and understand why my feelings have shifted, I can only come back to that old Destiny problem: There's not enough to do. I've played all of these levels so many times that they really just don't feel like rewards unto themselves anymore.
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Each of my three characters is sitting on a nearly-full passel of completed bounties. I have no reason to turn them in. I haven't gotten a new weapon I wanted to level up in weeks, and all three of my characters have maxed out their armor.
Destiny's relentless focus on its own economy works right up until the game runs out of reasons for you to buy things. This game has many types of currency, from glimmer to strange coins to experience points themselves. But if there's nothing worthwhile to spend it on, currency becomes meaningless.
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Crota's End Hard Mode Is A Bust
Many of us were optimistic about the high-level "hard mode" for the Crota's End raid. It launched almost a month ago, and it only took one or two attempts for us to realize that something was off.
There were few new ideas happening; in most ways, it was the same raid. The one major difference was that the enemies had all been kicked up to level 33, one level above players' level 32 cap, which artificially inflated the difficulty in a cheap and unenjoyable way.
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Even the highest-level, most kitted-out team will have an exceptionally difficult time playing the first two sections of the raid legit (i.e. without using some sort of crafty strategy or cheese). That's not because the challenge has been enhanced in an interesting or fun way—there aren't, say, twice as many thralls in the abyss, or a more complicated routine at the sword bridge—it's simply because the enemies will now one- or two-shot you, because they're all at least one level higher than you are. Ugh.
I've already gone on at length about why the Vault of Glass is a better raid than Crota's End, so instead of doing that all over again, I'll share a story: A few weeks ago, some of my regular raid buddies and I wound up trying to beat Crota on hard. We got a pretty good group together, and had our strategy worked out.
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We tried, and failed, tried and failed, tried and failed again. Often, we were defeated by bugs, inconsistent behavior from Crota, or the old vanishing sword problem.
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Other times the Swordbearer AI would act up and momentarily throw us off our game, which in Hard Mode is as good as having your whole team die.
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I was running late to meet some friends for dinner, but I decided to try one more time, and we failed. So I tried again; we failed again. I finally tore myself away—I was late to dinner, and I had to let go of the notion that we were on the verge of beating Crota. I left the fireteam, and they replaced me with someone from an LFG site.
A short while later, I was away from my PS4, having a drink with my friends. I had sheepishly arrived about 20 minutes late, and we had immediately begun talking about things that were not Destiny. The game was still buzzing in my head, but the buzz was fading. I texted Jason: "Hey, if you guys beat him, let me know!" Then, a couple of hours after that: "Did you beat him?"
"Nope," he finally responded. "The others might have. I eventually dropped out."
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I had been certain we were mere minutes from defeating Crota. I had been wrong. It turns out the group did defeat him, but only after several more hours beating their heads against it. I've never been so glad I left a raid early.
I found myself mildly mortified that I had been rudely late to meet my friends, all because I'd decided to stick it out in a futile attempt to defeat a buggy boss who had been specifically designed to be unfairly difficult. Maybe, I reflected, it really was time to stop playing so much Destiny.
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Xür, Agent of Sadness
Weekends are an exciting time in the world of Destiny, because that's when Xur comes. Like a sad Santa with a mostly empty sack on his shoulder, the Tentacle-Faced One arrives and, inevitably, disappoints the shit out of everyone.
I've talked in the past about why Xur is generally so disappointing—most players already have most of the exotic items they need, so it's much more likely that Xur will turn up selling stuff they already have or don't want. And of course, some of the bitterness around Xur will dissipate if he turns up next week selling Gjallarhorn, or the Heart of Praxic Fire, or the Helm of Saint-14. The Ice Breaker honeymoon lasted at least a week.
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Rare good days notwithstanding, Xur's stock has been so consistently lackluster that it's hard to fully wash away the sour odor he's left in his various corners of the Tower. Bungie has been notoriously vague about the algorithm that determines what he sells each week, but while I believe them that it's randomly generated, it would appear that some items are weighted much more heavily than others. Oh look, he's selling No Land Beyond again. Oh hey, it's Plan C. Oh neat, Sunbreakers.
At the cusp of every Friday, 1AM Pacific, I visit the Tower to witness an event I like to think of as "The Running of the Xur." A bunch of guardians all arrive at once and begin tearing around the Tower like kids playing hide-and-seek, looking for Xur in his new weekly hiding spot. It's a great deal of fun, and one of my favorite activities in Destiny. But Xur's stock has been so roundly disappointing, so many times in a row, that I'm probably going to stop. I'd rather sleep than stay up late just to be let down.
One of the biggest problems with Xur's inventory hasn't been his weapons or his armor, it's been the fact that he hasn't been consistently selling heavy weapon ammo. That's because…
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The Heavy Ammo Bug is a Bigger Deal Than You'd Think
Of all the bugs in Destiny—and there are a lot of bugs in Destiny—one stands apart in the minds of players: The heavy ammo bug. In the game, if you die while wearing a piece of armor that increases your heavy ammo capacity, you actually lose some ammo. Maybe one or two rockets, or some heavy machine-gun rounds. Die multiple times, and your stock of seven rockets will be reduced to one or two.
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This wouldn't ordinarily be all that big a deal, but several factors stack on top of one another and make it into a much bigger problem than it first seems.
Heavy ammo is crucial for Crota's End. Defeating Crota requires everyone to use a lot of heavy ammo with precision timing, and if someone on your team runs out of rockets, it can blow the run for everyone.
Fighting Crota also requires a lot of trial and error, meaning that teams will frequently need to "wipe," or all die so that they can restart.
The raid armor that lets you get to level 32 has a perk that raises your heavy ammo, meaning that the raid armor—specifically, the leg armor—triggers the heavy ammo bug. Every time you wipe while wearing raid armor (which almost everyone wears during a hard mode raid), every person on your team will lose some of their heavy ammo.
Heavy ammo is relatively difficult to find in the field, meaning that the most sure-fire way to get it is to use heavy ammo "synths," or single-use packs you can buy that replenish all of your heavy ammo in the field.
It's possible to pop a heavy ammo pack, then have your team wipe several times and lose all of the ammo you just got, not because you used it, but because the bug drained it away.
A heavy ammo pack costs nearly 1,000 glimmer at the gunsmith, so if you run out of heavy ammo packs and want to go raiding, first you'll have to spend a big chunk of time mindlessly grinding glimmer at the exclusion zone.
Xur sells heavy ammo packs for relatively cheap, so when he has them in stock, it's a great way for hardcore raiders to stock up. The problem is that he hasn't sold heavy ammo packs for several weeks now, meaning that anyone who's been farming Crota's End Hard Mode has probably run out of heavy ammo packs and has been forced to farm the Exclusion Zone multiple times when they'd rather be off playing the raid.
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In other words, players need heavy ammo to beat Crota, but Crota frequently kills the entire team, and the bug drains them of their heavy ammo as they die. Xur hasn't sold heavy ammo in a while, so players need to go and perform thankless grinding in order to get more heavy ammo so they can go fight Crota again. And on, and on, and on.
The whole thing creates a nasty circle of blame between players, Bungie, and Bungie's proxy, Xur. How frustrating, then, that Bungie would abdicate responsibility for a legitimate player grievance, throwing up their hands and saying, "Hey, we don't control Xur! Be mad at him, not us!" Give me a break.
At the heart of the problem, of course, is the fact that the heavy ammo bug exists in the first place, and that it's been allowed to persist for so long. Bungie says they're going to patch the bug sometime this month—they've said it's difficult to fix, and I'll have to take their word for it. But in the meantime, players (justly) feel that the least the game's creators could do would be to ensure that Xur carries heavy ammo until the bug is fixed.
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It's an understandable request, and so it's all the more irritating when Xur turns up for yet another weekend with no heavy ammo packs. The cycle repeats, and players who are already feeling the gnaw of the time-sink must spend many more hours mindlessly grinding for glimmer. It's enough to make even the most dedicated player consider throwing in the towel.
Bungie Keeps Fixing The 'Wrong' Things
Meanwhile, Bungie continues to tweak and fine-tune their game, but they're changing things players don't want changed while leaving in things players hate. To put it another way: They're addressing and correcting bugs that favor players, while leaving in bugs that work against players. That approach is certainly not helped by the smarmy, "wink-wink, you know you love us" tone of the Bungie Weekly Update, which frequently shares a bushel of bad news while playfully punching us in the arm about it.
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The next announced change will introduce a bevy of minor tweaks to the game's arsenal, many of which will lower the range and utility of the most popular weapons in the game. (The chart above is via Bungie and tracks gun usage.) The loudest grumbles from players aren't necessarily from people who don't think Bungie should address balance issues in the game's weapons—particularly for PvP play, where balance is crucial—they come from people who would like to feel that Bungie is more actively addressing players' complaints, rather than fixating on some internal concept of how the game "should" play.
An Unusual Forum Post
A couple weeks ago, Bungie designer Luke Smith sounded off on NeoGAF in the middle of the night with a clear, no-bullshit post about the lessons learned from The Dark Below, the new approaches they'll be taking with the next expansion, and all the mistakes they won't repeat.
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Smith's post was precisely the sort of thing Destiny players want to see, not only because it promised actual improvements, but because it was respectful of players and addressed their concerns with relative clarity. Why Bungie won't include that sort of information in their own official updates is beyond me.
If Destiny is going to succeed in the long term, Bungie is going to have to significantly improve their communication skills. Hopefully the community's response to Bungie's many lousy official updates—and their single, seemingly unauthorized, good one—has been instructive.
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The Next Expansion Is A Ways Off
The Destiny of today has lost some sparkle for a lot of hardcore players, so the natural inclination has been to look forward. That means talking about House of Wolves, the second of two planned expansions for 2015, before the rumored, larger "comet" expansion hits this coming fall.
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Hopes for House of Wolves are high—too high, most likely. To hear Smith tell it, it does sound as though the second expansion won't repeat the most egregious mistakes of the first one: Vendor armor won't immediately beat your Crota's End armor, and exotic weapons won't have to be re-leveled from zero. But those are two mistakes Bungie shouldn't have made in the first place, and not repeating them should be the least we expect.
Will House of Wolves add a complex and challenging raid with a rewarding and well-designed hard mode? Will it give us more modes with which to play story missions, and some new challenges that actually feel different from the existing ones? Will it include new weapons and armor that actually, substantially change the way we play and enjoy the game? Will it add more new modes and functionality to crucible, and finally manage to coax PvE-centric players like me into playing more?
Maybe, maybe not. But no matter how good or disappointing it turns out to be, House of Wolves isn't coming out for a good long while. Bungie said in their latest update that it'll be out sometime between April and June. So, let's say it comes out in May. There's a long, cold couple of months between then and now, especially for anyone who already feels like they're going through the motions. It's only natural that some people would stop playing, at least for the time being.
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This is Normal; We'll Be Back
If all of this sounds a bit apocalyptic, rest assured, it isn't. With every Destiny article I write, there are several people who respond by saying something like, "I never got the hype," or, "I played for a week, then traded it in. Whatever." I'm certain the comments below this article will be filled with many more of those folks, smilingly sharing the fact that they stopped playing long ago.
I'm not speaking for those people. I'm also not talking about newer, more relaxed players, some of whom have only recently gotten into Destiny, and who seem content to slowly chew through levels and earn new gear. Those players have probably got it best right now, partly because their restraint has led them to the least thankless way to play Destiny, and partly because grizzled veterans like me find a surprising amount of joy in taking new players through the raids and strikes and experiencing the game fresh through their uninitiated eyes.
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When I talk about dedicated Destiny players leaving, I'm talking about people who, like me, fundamentally dig the heck out of Destiny. I'm talking about people who have sunk hundreds of hours into the game and are planning to be playing it off and on for the next several years at least.
For those people, this sort of ebb and flow is normal. It's understandable that someone could put 400 hours into a game, burn out, take a break, and come back with the next expansion. That's been the way of MMOs for years. Unlike almost every other game I play, Destiny makes me feel like my progress is "safe," like it'll be around for years to come. I can afford to take a few months off, because my three characters will be right there waiting for me when I return. We're in this for the long haul.
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But our likely return doesn't mean that Bungie can just sit back, relax, and enjoy the downtime. They've screwed up enough things recently that we're going to need some specific reassurance that speaks directly to our concerns and doesn't waste our time. To that end, Bungie would be well-served by more Luke Smith-type updates, and fewer bullshitty jokes about the Cryptarch. Maybe they could even put those updates on the company blog, instead of posting to gaming forums in the dead of night. Crazy idea, I know.
With that said, it is still possible that Bungie could blow this whole thing. If they don't eventually scrape together the game that so many of us can sense is inside of Destiny, some other studio will, and we'll all go play that. One of Destiny's greatest assets has been that there isn't anything else quite like it, and as long as that's the case, Bungie will find it pretty easy to coax lapsed players back to the fold. But that won't always be the case, and you can bet that there are some future competitors out there right now, testing their own prototypes and taking notes.
For my part, I'll be back for House of Wolves. Heck, if Bungie brings back the Queen's Wrath, or releases a significant upgrade for the Vault of Glass, I'll go back even earlier. Failing that sort of an update, it's likely that my Destiny playing will remain on the wane. I'd love a good reason to come back, but that's what it'll take: A good reason.
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Digitization is proving to be a major partner for the Modi Government. Aadhaar based benefit delivery, ably supported by technology has proved beneficial in cutting leakages. As per the Finance Secretary to the Government of India, the Country saved a whooping 34,000 Crores due to Aadhaar linking. Apart from this, Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) schemes have further cut out 3.34 crore duplicate consumers under PaHAL (use of Aadhaar for claiming LPG subsidy) and a further 2.33 crore ration cards saving a whooping 50,000 crores is subsidies.
It is our general tendency to observe events in isolation and not as a part of a bigger plan or intent. Which is why, perhaps, we saw the opposition and the ‘neutrals’ who act like the mindless opposition, criticise each step in hyperboles. From demonetization to Aadhaar linking, every step was criticised as a stand alone reform rather than a part of the larger process to cleanse the entire economy. There seems to be substantial confusion as to why everything is going digital and Aadhaar based and ‘experts’ have only been able to provide hollow rhetoric in their attempt to criticise. Their standard response being that the state is trying to play the ‘big brother’. The aim of any government is to collect revenue and spend on activities like infrastructure, railways, defence, subsidies etc. It is towards the realisation of such goals, that these seemingly isolated steps come together to help the government.
It is a fact that India’s tax-to-GDP ratio is below the emerging market economies (EME) and OECD (Organisation for Economic cooperation and Development) averages of about 21% and 34% respectively. Taxation is the key to long-term political and economic development. The Finance Minister himself has expressed the need to expand the tax base to achieve desired revenue levels. Hence it is important to know and understand how the Government intends to achieve the same.
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GST and Demonetisation:
As explained in my previous article, demonetisation has given the government a wealth of information. One may safely assume that every old demonetised currency note today has a specific address and identity matched with Aadhaar (as its now compulsory to link bank account and Aadhaar). Similarly as explained in this article reverse charge mechanism under GST is going to expand the tax base further. This is already evident from the fact that many new businesses (previously unregistered) have registered freshly under GST.
All this data is being mined to generate automated notices seeking further explanations and information from the tax payers.
Project Insight:
Every document or Income Tax return filed with the department is an addition to the wealth of data. Few years back Central Board of Direct taxes decided to digitize every piece of data they had and match it with the respective PAN of the assessees To effectively process this data, “Project Insight” was launched. The basic tenets of this project are to collect information on a “Non-Intrusive Basis” to improve tax compliance and effective usage of information in administration of taxes.
A good tax system should be
Fair Adequate Simple Transparent Should ensure administrative ease
One of the most important features of the new system (the integrated platform under ‘Project Insight’) is that it will mine Social Media accounts of people and match the same with their income levels and send automated notices via email and letters in case of discrepancies.
What one might wonder whether such a feature might infringe upon a citizen’s right to privacy, which has now been upheld by the court as a fundamental right.
Sometime back Government of India had signed a pact with the Swiss government for sharing of information. Project Insight will also be leveraged for implementation of Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act Inter Governmental Agreement (FATCA IGA) and Common Reporting Standard (CRS).
Just like the Centralised Processing Center (CPC) for IT Returns, a new Compliance Management Centralized Processing Centre (CMCPC) will also be setup as part of the Project for handling preliminary verification, campaign management, generation of bulk letters/notices and follow-up.
The department hopes that the new system shall ensure voluntary compliance and enable taxpayers to resolve simple compliance related issues online, without visiting the Income tax office. This should ensure minimal interface between the assessee and the Department . A common complaint across the spectrum is that department officials harass tax payers. Minimal interface would ensure lesser harassment and corruption.
As per reports Project Insight “will integrate enterprise data warehouse, data mining, web mining, predictive modelling, data exchange, master data management, centralised processing, compliance management and case analytics capabilities.”
In the first phase of this project, financial data like credit card bills, investment portfolios and bank statements will be moved to a centralised digital system.
The second phase will process this data and any mismatch will lead to notices being issued. The plan is to launch Stage 2 in December 2017.
Will this technological advancement and deployment ensure that the “good qualities” of tax administration are achieved? Only time will tell but as of now this seems to be a big step in the right direction.
Benami Law and the Way Forward
I have been a strong advocate of both demonetisation as well as GST. According to me both these reforms shall usher in a wave of unprecedented change in the long run. With the passage of stringent laws like Benami Act, the department needed this technological tool to make “sense” of the data that is with them. It is widely estimated that similar projects in other jurisdictions have saved billions of dollars for the governments. Will they do the same for us?
Tax Administration Reform Commission (TARC) under the chairmanship of Dr.Parthasarathi Shome, had recommended extensive use of Information Technology in the administration tax laws and governance of tax system in India.
GST, Demonetisation, Aadhaar PAN Linking, Aadhaar- Bank account linking, data mining using project insight is going to change the entire scenario. The “grid” is being completed. We are being ushered into a new era where tax evasion is going to be difficult and costly. Citizenry need to realise that tax compliance is one of the prime responsibilities of a citizen and it is perhaps a marker of a developed economy where evasion becomes increasingly difficult and costly.
While concerns regarding privacy and need for a law are genuine, we have seen excessive intellectualisation and fear mongering by the usual left liberal circles regarding Aadhaar and its seeding into various services. Every loophole plugged and tax payer’s money saved, directly means that much lesser funds go into the pockets of the corrupt. I see no reason why the old, leaky system needs to continue. While the debate around privacy might in itself be hypocritical considering we live in times where globally, data is currency whether Aadhaar is taken into consideration or not. One may even wonder if privacy concerns are being used as a veil behind which an important reform is being scuttled by manipulating public sentiment with tales of the ‘big brother’. We have seen a political opposition bereft of issues and an establishment, independent of the government, working very hard to derail the progress of the nation. A ‘cabal’, so to speak, that insists on cutting off the nose, to spite the face. Perhaps it’s time they realise that India’s time has come. The path of progress might be laden with thorns, but a valley of roses await.
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Colorado Berned one tonight. The results are still coming in, but his lead is so strong that the networks were calling it for him as we were walking out of the caucus location, Byers Middle School, just west of ritzy Washington Park. The energy tonight was palpable, and the Sanders electorate impossible to miss. Each precinct was put into separate rooms for the caucus process and, in our room, Berners outnumbered the Clinton camp 2-to-1.
A Michael Bennet staffer who was acting as the local press liaison told me that officials had expected about 1,200 voters, but turnout was easily twice that. Reports of overwhelmed caucus locations were reported throughout the night. One twitter user in Fort Collins reported that the building her precinct was using had been cleared by the fire marshal:
Fire marshall kicked us out and in true Colorado fashion we are caucusing in the outdoors. #FortCollins pic.twitter.com/Di8OA54sbl — Dakota Smith (@weatherdak) March 2, 2016
The scene inside Byers was one of gleeful chaos. Everybody knew that Trump had basically swept the South, and there seemed to be a common understanding that–despite the scaremongering–nothing could be better for either of our candidates. The caucus was scheduled to begin at 7:00, but by 6:45 the line was some four to five blocks deep, and officials promised that anybody in line by 7:00 would be admitted (“So as not to disenfranchise anybody!” said one captain to applause and cheers). As time wore on, frustrations became more evident. Several alpha-types got a little loud about it, but no real drama arose.
We were assigned a room sans leader, and a small group of us were left to figure it out as we went until, about 20 minutes in, a group of 60 or so additional people poured in. They had apparently been forgotten and then rescued. After a brief rundown by the big boss at caucus, we were left again, 60 folks heavier, and stumbled our way through the process. It was raw, clumsy, grassroots democracy at its best with strong-willed, respectful, and pragmatic participants.
Marijuana Politics’ blogger-in-chief, Anthony Johnson, wrote previously that recent polling in Colorado looked good for Bernie Sanders. And you know what? The results speak for themselves as Colorado was one of the four Super Tuesday states that went for the anti-establishment candidate, helping keep Bernie Sanders’ campaign alive.
Our precinct? We went 93-42 Bernie, giving him a delegate count of five. Hillary walked away with two. |
Very early in Sunday's game between the Arizona Cardinals, Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll had had enough.
Cornerback Byron Maxwell was called for pass interference on John Brown after he appeared to knock the ball down. Carroll was livid with the refs.
"Maxey made a great play, a very poised play to not contact the guy," Carroll said during his Monday morning segment on 710 AM ESPN Seattle. " His left hand did touch the guy's shoulder and then he did not try to blast through the guy, he did it very artfully, like they have to. I thought he should get rewarded for a heck of a play. Both guys (refs) on the sides saw, and they both said 'are you sure?' they told me this, 'are you sure you saw contact?' that disrupted the play, and the back guy said yeah.
"It was not a wrong call - they can make that call. It was just the point. Some of these you just got to battle."
Pete Carroll losing his mind at the refs while chewing gum is always good for some cheap laughs.[/p]— Kevin Clark (@KevinClarkWSJ) November 23, 2014
Based on how the season has gone, Carroll has good reason to be frustrated with the officiating.
Through 11 games, Seattle has been called for 88 penalties for 670 yards. Their opponents, meanwhile, have only been penalized 48 times for 396 yards. After the Packers in Week 1, Seattle has had more penalties called than their opponent 10 straight times.
"I have had it about up to here with this penalty situation and the way it is gone," Carroll said. "There is nothing I can do about it, but they just wont call penalties on the other guys, they just won't do it. When a guy steps forward at the tailback position and our players point it out and they say 'no no no...he did not simulate a start,' and they decide not to call that.
"I gave it my best shot yesterday."
On one call, Carroll went nuts on the referees - when the call was in his favor.
"I got caught one time too and the players were laughing at me," Carroll said. "They called a holding on their guy and the referee signaled holding and he pointed to me...and I lost it.
"He was just saying it was for you, but I was so much on the wrong side that I got kind of punked. Kevin Williams and those guys were giving me a hard time on the sideline."
This is not the first issue the Seahawks have publicly had with the refs this season. Following the loss to the Rams, safety Earl Thomas called for the refs to 'stay out of it and let us dominate,' and two weeks ago the same referee who botched several calls in the Seahawks Super Bowl loss to the Steelers once again led a crew that incorrectly called a key pass interference call in the loss to the Chiefs.
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Google is hyping up its October 4th event for the new Pixel phone unveiling, but there may be a crazy #onemorething happening too. As we reported earlier today, Google is working on a new Android-based OS codenamed Andromeda that integrates some features from Chrome OS, making it more suitable for use on a laptop-like device. This might be previewed at the event. Now, 9to5Google reports that Google's first Andromeda device will be that long-rumored 7-inch Huawei-built "Nexus" tablet.
There are a few interesting, and somewhat confusing things about this rumor. For one, they're calling this a Nexus tablet, but we're under the impression that Google is moving away from Nexus branding. 9to5 hedges its bets here—the branding might change. Previous leaks from Evan Blass pointed to this tablet launching by the end of 2016, but that would be far too soon for a full Andromeda release, as far as we're aware.
It's possible that all parties could be right about this tablet, at least in some limited fashion. The 7-inch Huawei tablet could come out later this year, but run Android at first. Andromeda could be available as a developer preview, and as a developer-focused device, it could retain the Nexus branding. In this version of the future, only Google's consumer-focused devices would become Pixels. Running Andromeda on a 7-inch device doesn't necessarily seem ideal from what we know of the platform, but perhaps the tablet will offer video out, making it an ideal way for developers to test Andromeda on larger displays. This is all just speculation, but we might know more come October 4th. |
He sat there and stared at it as it continued to ring. He tried answering it, but it went straight to voicemail. A voice began speaking, stuttering like the person on the other end of the line was nervous about something. "Um... Hello? Hello? Uh, I wanted to record a message for you to help you get settled in on your first night on the job!" Mike sat back, unimpressed (and also disgusted) with the looks of the office he had to sit in. Papers were scattered everywhere on the desk, an empty cup sat there, still halfway full, and a small grey desk fan was plugged in and set to its highest setting, providing a cooling atmosphere to the rather small and claustrophobic room. "Um, okay! Well I actually worked in that office before you, fun fact! I'm about to finish my last week there. So, I know it can be a bit overwhelming, but I want to reassure you there is nothing to worry about! You'll do fine! So let's just focus on getting you through your first week, okay?" "Heh, first week. Why would I even want to return to this shit stain of a place after the first night here?" Mike asked himself aloud. He didn't really bother to listen to much of the call as he grabbed one of the paper balls on the desk and threw it around as the man on the phone babbled on like a child about the company and their strange history over the years Freddy's has gone on for. "The animatronic characters do get a bit quirky at night, but do I blame them? No!" That comment made Mike suddenly freeze for a moment as he thought to himself for a moment.
"They get a bit quirky? The fuck does that mean?" At that time, he noticed a small black tablet sitting on his desk. He grabbed it and turned it on. He was shown a screen from one of the cameras perspectives of the Show Stage, the red curtain now opening up due to it being 12AM. The three animatronic robots on stage simply sat there and stared blankly at the Dining Area where the people would normally be crowding around to watch their shows. They looked a lot creepier at night. "So just be aware. The characters do tend to wander a bit. Uh, they're left in some kind of... Free roaming mode during the night, I think. Something about their servos locking up if they get left off for too long?" Something already wasn't right about this place in Mike's mind. He felt sweat trickling down his forehead already, and it was already 12:05. "They used to be allowed to walk around during the day, too! But then there was the Bite of 87" His eyes suddenly widened and looked up at the phone as his hands began to tremble at that statement. His whole body was soon covered with sweat as the memories began to fade in again. "W-What did you just say?" he asked in a very shaky voice. Mike felt his mind unravel into the horrible memories. He remembered the Foxy Mask, the beatings from William, the unimaginable pain the imprints from the beatings left him with... He couldn't take it. Words began to flash across his vision: IT'S ME. IT'S ME. IT'S ME. Over and over again, the words danced around the room like ballerinas, taunting him endlessly. Mike quickly looked around the cameras, thinking it would help take his mind off it, and clicked on a camera labeled "West Hall Corner". What he saw on that camera was something he would have preferred to have never saw at all. The otherwise normal looking poster of Freddy Fazbear on the wall was now different. It was replaced by a poster of a yellow Freddy with no eyes pressing its face against it like it was a window. Mike heard a high pitched childlike giggling fill the room as he lowered the monitor, remembering the bite and how he ran off like a kid after it was done. And then he saw it... Sitting in the room in front of him was a yellow Freddy Fazbear suit, resembling the one on the poster. It sat there in a dead like posture, staring directly at Mike with its head slightly cocked to the side, a large sadistic smile of sheer delight filling its expression. It sat there as the words flashed again and Mike felt like he was about to collapse. He could hear Kenny's voice bouncing around in his mind chanting:
"It's me, Mikey... Don't you remember me?" Mike tried to fight against the hallucinations to hear the man on the phone talk. "The animatronics may not see you as a person. They may instead see you as a metal endoskeleton without a suit on. Now, that's against the rules here at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, and the robots fully know that. So if they do catch you, they might try to... Forcefully stuff you inside a Freddy Fazbear suit."
And with those words, the suit slowly but abruptly rose to its feet, the hallucinations getting worse and leaving Mike speechless... Suddenly, without warning, it leaped right towards Mike, screaming in a very low demonic voice. Mike quickly hid his face in the monitor and yelled, waiting for impending death. But nothing happened. The screams faded out, the hallucinations ceased, and Mike lowered the tablet slowly to see the suit and all traces of it completely gone, no signs of it ever being there at all. "Just check those cameras and remember to close the doors only if absolutely necessary! Gotta conserve power! Alright, goodnight!"
And with that, the call ended. Mike sat there, drenched in sweat from fear as he tried to calm himself. "Alright, Mike. Just calm down. Try to relax." He turned on the monitor again and saw that something was off:
Bonnie was GONE.... |
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