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Russia recently announced plans to create a permanent military presence in the Arctic. Plans are being drawn up for a training center, as well as a permanent presence for Air Force and air defense units. The announcement of the buildup is the latest Russian foray into an ongoing campaign to militarize the Arctic amid the backdrop of tensions with the West over the annexation of Crimea and Russian interference in the Syrian civil war. “The Russian military group in the Arctic will be built up on the mainland and on the islands. This buildup is already in progress. By 2018 there will emerge a self-sufficient group incorporating radio reconnaissance companies, the way it was in the past,” a senior member of Russia’s Defense Ministry told TASS, a Kremlin-owned news agency. Last month Russia launched a 5 day training exercise in the Arctic involving more than 338,000 troops, 50 ships and 110 aircraft. The Kremlin is also building up its fleet of nuclear powered ice-breaking ships and building up other military installations in the area. |
Oakland police shot an armed man found sleeping in a vehicle off the Lakeshore off-ramp from Interstate Highway 580. (Mark Seelig/KCBS) Oakland police shot an armed man found sleeping in a vehicle off the Lakeshore off-ramp from Interstate Highway 580. (Mark Seelig/KCBS) OAKLAND (CBS SF) — A suspect found sleeping in a car with a handgun was shot and killed by police officers in Oakland Saturday morning and Oakland mayor Libby Schaaf has promised to determine if the officers’ actions were appropriate. Police were notified around 7:30 a.m. of an unresponsive driver who had a gun in a car near the Lakeshore Avenue off-ramp from Interstate Highway 580, according to Oakland police Chief Sean Whent. Whent said officers blocked off the area and spent roughly an hour trying to wake the suspect. Officers deployed beanbag rounds at the car in an attempt to get the driver’s attention, but police said the driver was unresponsive. Officers then approached the car with a metal pipe to break the passenger-side window in an attempt to talk to the driver, police said. At that point, the officers were able to confirm that a gun was inside the car, according to police. Whent said that during the last attempt to contact the driver, officers approached the car, the person woke up and then a confrontation ensued. One officer deployed a Taser and another officer used a gun, Whent said. The driver was struck by bullets and transported to Highland Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, according to Whent. Police said officers found a loaded gun with an attached illegal extended magazine and said the car had been used in a burglary that occurred last night in San Francisco. San Francisco police confirmed the car was used in a burglary reported around 8 p.m. at the Lands End visitor’s center. The vehicle fled from police. The case is being handled by the U.S. Park Police, according to San Francisco police. The Alameda County District Attorney’s Office is investigating the shooting, per the department’s policy, along with the Oakland Police Department’s homicide unit and its internal affairs division. There were 12 officers on scene who are being interviewed and Whent said investigators are reviewing the footage from their body-worn cameras. In a statement released by her office Saturday, Oakland mayor Libby Schaaf said all uses of force are taken seriously and should be closely examined “for the safety and assurance of the public and law enforcement.” “I am actively making sure that the protocols and supervision we’ve worked hard to put in place as part of our police reforms are being followed rigorously as this shooting is thoroughly investigated,” Schaaf said. “Our community deserves all of the accurate and timely information that can be provided.” The shooting is the first fatal officer-involved shooting since May 2013, according to police. © Copyright 2015 by CBS San Francisco and Bay City News Service. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed |
Rocking horses are one of the most popular purchases at Channapatna. All photos by Charukesi Ramadurai Just an hour’s drive out of the south Indian city of Bengaluru, a green overhead signboard welcomes visitors to the “Land of Toys”—Channapatna. The wide highway to Mysuru that cuts across the town is lined with small shops with dozens of wooden rocking horses outside that beckon shoppers with their cheerful colors. The interiors of these stores overflow with a dazzling array of lacquered toys of all shapes and designs. All these are made in this very town, Channapatna, where local artists have been keeping the Persian art form of toy-making alive for over two centuries now. The craft was brought to this region by the local ruler Tipu Sultan in the 18th century; he was so charmed by a toy he received as a gift that he invited Persian artisans to train his people. Many houses in Channapatna still double up as workshops, where entire families—both Hindu and Muslim—are involved in the process of making and selling the toys. Most of the craftsmen working on Channapatna toys are experienced and have been in the trade for more than two decades. Turning off the main highway into the town, the workshop of the Karnataka State Handicraft Development Corporation comes into view. Inside the hot and dusty workshop, six machines are in full whirl, the fine sawdust and splinters from the wood flying in the air and falling in heaps everywhere. Most of the dozen-odd artisans at this government-sponsored workshop are shirtless, in a nod to the sweltering afternoon of an Indian summer. Ignoring—or immune to—the dust and noise, the craftsmen carry on with practiced ease, cutting, chiseling and lacquering a variety of products, from bangles and hair clips to animal figures and spinning tops. Channapatna toys are made from the wood of a local tree called Haale Mara (Wrightia Tinctoria), too soft to be used in furniture. The wood is dried under the sun for nearly two months to remove all traces of moisture, and then chopped up into uneven blocks. These slowly take on shape and meaning at a mechanized lathe at the hands of these skilled craftsmen, who then spread lacquer till the product assumes a glossy finish. From pencil boxes to mini helicopters, the range is vast. Mohammad Shariff, 49, has been in this trade for over 35 years now, starting out as an apprentice under his father, who in turn learned the skill from his own. When things got tough in the market, his father shut down the home production unit, while Shariff found work at this small factory. Today, apart from the local shops, he has dedicated buyers across India. The Channapatna toys range was initially limited to animal and human figures, and simple games for children, popular mainly in the southern parts of the country. But over a decade ago, competition from the China—whose inexpensive, machine-made toys flooded the Indian market—left many of these toy-makers in dire straits. Combined with a lack of knowledge about marketing, and middlemen who did not pay fair prices to the producers, the industry began to flounder. The situation improved soon enough on its own, when the imported Chinese toys, with toxic dyes and cheap materials, were found to be unsafe for children. Handmade coasters for homes are part of the increasing list of Channapatna home decor items. The good thing about the brief slump was that the Channapatna artisans, with the help of a few not-for-profit agencies and product designers, started creating more sophisticated and contemporary toys and puzzles, home décor items like napkin rings, salt and pepper shakers, and storage jars. Another boost came in the form of a GI (Geographical Indication) status given by the World Trade Organization, a recognition of the uniqueness of this region’s craft. Shariff is among those who benefitted from this. He says over the unrelenting din of the machines, “Earlier there were limited designs, and everyone used to make and sell the same things day after day. Now, there are new designs we are taught every few months, so there is more demand outside (the country).” He is just one among the thousands of experienced and skilled toymakers in Channapatna today, each with similar life stories. Apart from the unique and delightful designs, Channapatna toys (as all products coming from this town are informally called) have the advantage of being completely eco-friendly. Even 10 years ago, all of the work used to be done by hand, but now most of the basic production is done on machines operated by hand. The lacquer is created with totally natural dyes, such as turmeric for yellow, indigo for blue and vermillion for red, all of which lend themselves to a rich and alluring finish. The lacquer is made from natural dyes and imparts a glossy finish to the products. There has been a growing demand for Channapatna toys overseas, with significant exports to countries as far away as Japan and the United States. Michelle Obama, in her 2010 visit to India, bought some from the National Handicrafts and Handloom Museum in New Delhi, suddenly shining the spotlight on the town. And Microsoft India is one of their largest regulars, sourcing mathematical and logical games and puzzles for use in their education projects in rural India and other developing countries. In this town of just over 70,000 people, more than 1,000 families are involved in the trade in some form, either from home or small collective workshops. However, despite all the interest shown by the outside world in this traditional form of toy-making, there is no sense of hope or optimism among the Channapatna artisans. A group of artisans at the collective supported by the local government. There used to be a time when three generations of craftsmen worked together at home. Increasingly though, artisans no longer want to introduce their children to this work, with the younger generations preferring to study or find easier employment in the big cities. For instance, Shariff (who has no formal education) made sure his two sons completed high school, and is proud of the fact they now work outside Channapatna. Like many other indigenous crafts in India, Channapatna toys are on the brink of fading out in the next couple of decades. But for now, plump Santa Claus figures, sunglassed drivers inside snazzy racing cars, pull-along cutesy turtles, winding trains with interlocking coaches, stackable counting aids and stylish chess sets: Channapatna offers up something for everyone. |
This was my first summer at the clinic. This guy brought in his cat (i think the cat's name might have been Buddy, I don't remember for sure). No carrier, no brace/leash, he just carried the cat in his arms wrapped in a towel. Now this is a major pet peeve of mine and of most people in vet clinics; when bringing your cat to the vet, you really need to bring it in a carrier. I don't care how much he hates the carrier, or how well behaved he is when you carry him, the vet clinic/animal hospital is a stressful environment for your animal and you can't predict how he's going to act, and you certainly can't predict what other animals will be there. But we'll get back to that later. So this guy brings in his cat, who's having problems breathing. He's a really sweet guy, an old man that lives alone with this cat, and you could tell that he absolutely loves this cat. And the cat is one of the sweetest cats I've had the pleasure to work with. So we bring him downstairs for a chest x-ray and bloodwork; turns out that it was a pretty serious case of pleural effusion (fluid buildup around the lungs) that was causing the breathing problems; the only reason he was still alive at this point was that he was such a calm, well behaved cat, and didnt get overly stressed out as we were poking him for bloodwork and laying him out for x-rays. He was loving the attention in fact; the whole time he just wanted pets and to cuddle. He's still probably one of my favorite patients. It really broke my heart when he got such a serious diagnosis. So the doctor sighed, brought the chest x-ray upstairs to try to explain to the client the gravity of the situation, and that he absolutely needed to be hospitalized to that she could observe him overnight and get back results on the bloodwork. The poor man was devastated, and clearly in denial. He refused hospitalization several times (with the doctor and another tech desperately trying to get him to reconsider), saying he just wanted to bring the cat home. After it was clear that we couldn't convince him to leave the cat with us, we offered to lend him one of our cat carriers to bring him home in (standard practice for when people bring in their cats unrestrained, it happens fairly often). Again, he refused. The doctor insisted, explaining that any extra stress could be fatal for the cat. The man insisted that its okay, the cat loves him and trusts him, he prefers to be held, blahblahblah. So after several fruitless attempts to get him to hospitalize the cat, and to at least let us give him a carrier for the cat, he was billed out and getting ready to leave. At this point a storm had started; it was pouring out, and there was heavy thunder and lightning. One final plea to let us give him a carrier, one final refusal, and out he went, with the cat wrapped in a towel in his arms. They made it as far as his car, when a loud clap of thunder freaked the cat out. He leapt from his owners arms, and died right there. I'm still haunted by that cat; I'm even getting a little wistful as I type this. The next week I'm asked by the doctor, "You were up there when I insisted that he hospitalize the cat right? You heard him refuse?" "Of course, several times." "And when I offered a cat carrier, you heard him refuse, you heard me tell him why it was important that he be in a carrier, right?" "Oh doc, he isnt..." Oh, but he was. It turns out earlier that day he called her hysterically, saying it was all her fault his cat is dead, swearing that he was going to sue her for malpractice. That was all we heard of it though; I guess he may have called a lawyer or two who told him that he didn't have a case, maybe he had time to calm down and come to his senses. I really do feel bad for that man. The cat was fairly young, the death was sudden and tragic, and it really seemed like that cat was all he had. I can sympathize. But to refuse treatment, refuse proper transport for the animal, and then try to sue the doctor for malpractice? Not cool. |
Steve Menendian is one of the most famous Vintage players in the world. Stephen is the 2007 Vintage Champion and the Season 1 Vintage Super League champion. He is the author of several books on Vintage Magic, and has written nearly 500 strategy articles for MagicTheGathering.com, Starcitygames.com, Inquest Magazine, QuietSpeculation.com, and EternalCentral.com. Steve is an avid enthusiast of Old School Magic. Steve Menendian is one of the most famous Vintage players in the world. Stephen is the 2007 Vintage Champion and the Season 1 Vintage Super... Read more Series Index: Chapter 1: Back to the Future – An Introduction to Old School Magic Chapter 2: Old School Magic – The History of “The Deck” Chapter 3: Old School Magic – A Visit to the Zoo Chapter 4: Build Your Own Old School Format Chapter 5: New Strategies for the Old School: The Transmute Control Deck Chapter 6: Banning and Restriction in Old School Chapter 7: New Strategies for the Old School: Blue-Red Aggro Control Chapter 8: 2nd Place at Eternal Weekend, 2016 with Blue-Red Aggro-Control Chapter 9: Reanimator Rises to the Top! Chapter 10: Rules of the Road Chapter 12: Building a Stronger Prison Introduction When I embarked upon this series, I imagined a much larger task for myself than I have ultimately been required to perform. Since this series was conceived and launched, many other writers and bloggers have done an excellent job revealing and presenting a wider spectrum of strategies in popular Old School environments. There are more events, more published decklists, but also more players working to revise and improve strategies in the format. Old School formats are not only more deeply mined, there is a much better mapping of the terrain. Yet, there is one area of Old School Magic that deserves more attention: combo. There are several excellent webpages that catalogue a spectrum of combo strategies, but there is a paucity of strategic information about how to pilot, design, or tailor these strategies. There are probably more articles currently available on prison strategies than combo. Combo is not simply an overlooked area of interest, it is also perhaps the least developed and most rough-hewn of all of the major strategic approaches in Old School. It is not for a want of interest, I trust, but rather ineluctable ignorance. Combo suffers from several deficits, which are accentuated in Old School environments. Although Old School Magic contains virtually all of the mana acceleration you could desire, there is a general perception that combo decks in Old School suffer from a lack of productive “combo enablers,” such as tutors or unrestricted draw engines. There is a parallel concern that there is a lack of excellent finishers to complement these absent engines. In truth, however, each of these concerns is greatly overstated. As we shall see, even in 93/94, there are excellent combo enablers, powerful engines, and capable finishers. Combo is the final undiscovered country of Old School Magic. I will now pull back the curtain a bit. We will take a deep dive into the six major archetypes in Old School Combo, including the mysterious and enigmatic Lich combo and the prominent and well-performing Power-Monolith Combo. In the process, I will share with you decklists that have not been published in more than twenty years, and never before on the internet, and others of my own diabolical invention. This is one of the most exciting stops in our journey. Proto-Combo Before we explore the decklists, synergies and tactics that define Combo in Old School, it helps to begin before the beginning, and understand the origins of this broad class of strategies. The primary strategic orientations in Magic, Aggro and Control, are intuitive heuristics that describe something fundamental about a deck’s plan for winning. Aggro strategies are easily classified on account of the presence of a critical mass of creatures, and often burn or other tempo disruption to speed the clock. In contrast, control decks are generally distinguished by the presence of countermagic, spot removal, sources of card advantage, and few finishers. Both strategic orientations were explored, including their origins, in Chapters 2 and 3 of this series. Combo, unfortunately, suffers not only from greater ambiguity in what that appellation describes, it lacks a universal set of markers such as those generally found in Aggro or Control strategies, and therefore describes a much more diverse, if not broader, set of strategies. The origins of the term “combo” as applied to Magic decks is lost to the sands of time (and I have searched!), but it almost certainly arrived as a shorthand for “combination.” The first months of Constructed Magic under the auspices of the Duelist Convocation featured many killer “combinations.” For example, one of the earliest references I can find is a strategy article by Beth Moursund in The Duelist # 6, early 1995, with the title “Cluster Decks: Making Combinations Work.” In an intriguing sidebar, she lists many of the game’s most broken “combinations,” including Channel-Fireball and Time Vault with Animate Artifact and Instill Energy, “the oldest ‘invincible’ combination around.” Although Channel-Fireball is probably the most famous, Time Vault, Animate Artifact, and Instill Energy was the most feared, earning Magic’s first banning for power level reasons. Beta Time Vault + Alpha Instill Energy + Alpha Animate Artifact = Infinite Turns The decks that we describe as “combo” decks today refer to both strategies constructed around particular two or three card combos such as those just described as well as strategies that were notorious in the era of Wild Magic that preceded the institution of the Duelist Convocation’s Floor Rules and Banned and Restricted Lists. In this unrestrained era (described in my History of Vintage: 1993 Chapter), you could build decks essentially as follows: Twist of Fire By Steven Merritt, 1993 Creatures and Spells: 18 Timetwister 1 Fireball Mana Sources: 21 Black Lotus Eventually, the Fireball was replaced with Braingeyser (and the deck became BrainTwist), but the principle was the same: use Loti and Twisters to generate a critical mass of mana, and win the game with a lethal Fireball on the first turn. Even this rudimentary concept reveals something fundamental about these strategies. At their core, they seek quick mana, explosive card draw, and a big finisher. Contemporary Storm decks in Vintage and Legacy follow this essential formula, but with many more deck building constraints. Fireball and Braingeyser have been replaced with Storm finishers like Tendrils of Agony, but the principle is largely the same. Instead of generating an inordinate amount of mana, now the combo pilot must generate storm instead. Engines and Finishers Most players think of combo decks in terms of their prolific engines, either draw engines (like Yawgmoth’s Bargain, Memory Jar, Prosperity) or mana engines (Grim Monolith/Power Artifact, Worldgorger Dragon/ Animate Dead, Tolarian Academy/Capsize) or any of the countless other engines that have existed in Magic’s great history. The reality of combo decks is both simpler and more complicated than they are widely perceived. The reality is more complicated because there is usually a deeper and more intricate structural relationship between the draw engines, mana engines, and the finishers. Pros-Bloom, not only one of the most infamous combo decks of all time, but perhaps the first to truly elevate that appellation, was a complicated combo deck that used multiple cards to generate large amounts of mana to generate a large Prosperity, which, in turn, would fuel a lethal Drain Life. Each card interacted in a powerful, yet specific synergy. Yet, the reality of combo decks is also more simple than the perception of draw or mana engines would seem. This is because it is often the finisher that actually matters above all. The finisher, which I call “ultimate strategic objectives” in my book Understanding Gush, is the card that ultimately defines the nature and needs of the combo deck. Storm finishers may require minimal mana production, but maximal storm production. Although it does not provide a comprehensive look, I think it is probably easiest to begin appreciating the true scope of possibilities by focusing first on the finishers, or ultimate strategic objectives. Everyone knows that Aggro decks win through packs of attacking creatures, often supported by burn or other enabling tactics. And, despite their appellation, Control decks usually win with creatures as well (as we saw in Chapter 2), although sometimes they win through sheer attrition or dedicated milling strategies, like Millstone. Combo decks, however, rarely win by creature attack. Although there are exceptions, that is perhaps their most distinguishing feature. Therefore, I want to draw attention to the non-creature win conditions in the 93/94 format. The most obvious such win conditions are those that inflict damage through means other than attacking. Black Vise and The Rack exemplify this approach. Alpha Black Vise and Antiquities The Rack | That poor stuffy doll! Back in the old days, Black Vise was a staple of Land Destruction decks while The Rack was a staple of Hand Destruction strategies. Both cards exemplify win conditions that do not involve the attack step. And although Black Vise was later restricted in Type I because of it’s abuse in a combo deck (a rare case of restricting the win condition instead of the engine), neither card has really been a prominent part of any Old School combo deck. That’s because, like creatures, these threats require multiple turns to inflict damage, much as creatures do. The key difference is that you need upkeeps, not combat phases. Moving away from Black Vise, The Rack, and Millstone, we discover that there are, in fact, many other win conditions spread across Old School formats, including 93/94. They just don’t spring to mind readily. But, to name a few, they include Underworld Dreams, Land’s Edge, Mirror Universe, and the aforementioned Fireball. These strategic objectives form the basis on which combo decks are made possible in Old School formats. And, what’s more, they are positively inspiring. Each win conditions springs the mind to action, exploring ways to abuse each, and to fuel each. This shifts attention in the appropriate direction, however, and forms the basis for uncovering engines that can do so. Two Old School Draw Engines | Legends Sylvan Library and Alpha Howling Mine Each of these win conditions is supported, in most cases, by a specific set of engines that generates a particular synergy (such as the interactions between Lich and Mirror Universe, Land Tax and Land’s Edge, or Basalt Monolith and Power Artifact, all discussed herein). However, there are a few broad cases of cards that tend to appear across multiple archetypes because they serve as general engines. The two most prominent examples of this are Howling Mine and Sylvan Library, two draw engines that I recommend any dedicated or even half-hearted Combo player fully invest in, for fun, if not for profit. But there are other draw engines that fuel combo strategies in 93/94 Old School Magic. For one thing, you can pair Bazaar of Baghdad with Sylvan Library for filtering and card selection (and adding Library of Leng, as is sometimes done in Tax-Edge combo, below, allows it to function more like a Sensei’s Divning Top). But there are more! Verduran Enchantress can build up a tremendous amount of card draw within a few turns, with Dance of Many triggering and duplicating the Enchantress in the process. Greed and Book of Rass are two similar effects that allow you to exchange life for cards, and are especially useful with Mirror Universe or other life-gain. And, there is Lich, which, when paired with Dark Heart of the Wood, becomes a tremendous card draw engine as well. In short, there are more viable draw engines to support combo strategies in Old School than may be generally appreciated. Now, I will discuss a half dozen specific combo decks that exemplify and illustrate the potential of Combo in Old School Magic. Specifically, we will look at 1) Underworld Dreams Combo, 2) Power Artifact Combo, 3) Tax-Edge Combo, 4) Time Vault Combo, 5) Lich Combo, and 6) Recursion Combo. Underworld Dreams Combo Underworld Dreams is one of the most interesting win conditions in Old School Magic. It punishes players for doing one of the best things you can do in Magic: drawing cards. And it does so not in an round-about way, like Black Vise, but directly, for every card drawn. Underworld Dreams was so powerful and such a feared threat that it was restricted in the very initial wave of restrictions following the release of the Legends expansion. It was not unrestricted until October 1, 1999. Underworld Dreams may seem, at first glance, like a rather slow way to win games, not totally dissimilar to Black Vise. But, when paired with mass symmetrical draw spells such as Timetwister or Wheel of Fortune, Underworld Dreams quickly becomes a fast-acting win condition that can kill you in an instant. The problem, however, is that all of the Draw7 in Old School (Wheel of Fortune and Timetwister) are restricted. There is, however, a similar effect that can inflict nearly as much damage: Winds of Change. Legends Underworld Dreams and Winds of Change The goal of any Underworld Dreams combo deck is to quickly resolve Dreams, and then fire off as many Winds or other Draw7s as you can, and as quickly as you can. Although restricted, this combo was first popularized by the great Mark Justice during the heyday of Type 1 with a deck he called “Winds of Chains”: Winds of Chains By Mark Justice Creatures and Spells: 4 The Rack 3 Disrupting Scepter 3 Hymn to Tourach 3 Chains of Mephistopheles 3 Dark Banishing 1 Demonic Tutor 1 Underworld Dreams 1 Ancestral Recall 1 Time Walk 1 Braingeyser 1 Timetwister 3 Power Surge 3 Shatter 3 Winds of Change 1 Blood Moon 1 Wheel of Fortune Mana Sources: 4 Badlands 1 Library of Alexandria 3 Mishra’s Factory 3 Mountain 3 Swamp 4 Underground Sea 4 Volcanic Island 1 Black Lotus 1 Mox Jet 1 Mox Ruby 1 Mox Sapphire 1 Sol Ring Sideboard: 4 The Abyss 2 Blood Moon 4 Earthquake 4 Pyroblast 1 Red Elemental Blast Mark Justice’s deck has to compensate for the sad fact that Underworld Dreams was restricted almost immediately after it’s initial printing, but Mark nonetheless built in another fantastic synergy: Chains of Mephistopheles and Winds of Change, a combo that was almost as devastating. There are so many things to remark upon in his decklist, but many are curiosities. Power Surge, for example, no longer functions in the world we live in (see Chapter 10, the last article, to better understand why). More of a dedicated discard deck (hand destruction strategy) than combo deck, this deck at least illustrates using a real-world historical example how Underworld Dreams combo was used in Old School Type I. To see how it is used in contemporary Old School, I would direct your attention to Justin Beckert’s notable 5th Place Finish at the Eternal Central Old School event in 2015: Winds of Change By Justin Beckert Creatures and Spells: 1 Ancestral Recall 1 Fork 1 Power Sink 2 Flash Counter 3 Boomerang 4 Dark Ritual 4 Lightning Bolt 1 Braingeyser 1 Demonic Tutor 1 Recall 1 Time Walk 1 Timetwister 1 Wheel of Fortune 4 Winds of Change 4 Underworld Dreams 4 Howling Mine 1 Feldon’s Cane Mana Sources: 1 Library of Alexandria 2 Island 2 Volcanic Island 3 Swamp 4 Badlands 4 City of Brass 4 Underground Sea 1 Mox Jet 1 Mox Ruby 1 Mox Sapphire 1 Sol Ring 1 Black Lotus Sideboard: 3 Red Elemental Blast 1 Blue Elemental Blast 2 The Abyss 3 City in a Bottle 3 Ivory Tower Beckert’s performance was not only notable, it was also remarkable. He honed Underworld Dreams into a finely tuned weapon. Often just thrown into other decks, Beckert presented a focused Underworld Dreams combo deck with an excellent assortment of tactics to support and surround it. Although I was the sad soul who knocked Justin out of the Top 8 of that tournament, I was sufficiently impressed with his deck to work on it in my laboratory. By the summer of 2016, I had refined the following deck, which I proudly tested with great success in our monthly Old School events at the Albatross Pub in Berkeley: Dreams Combo, September 16, 2015 By Stephen Menendian Creatures and Spells: 4 Dark Ritual 4 Underworld Dreams 4 Winds of Change 4 Fork 4 Lightning Bolt 4 Howling Mine 2 Red Elemental Blast 1 Wheel of Fortune 1 Timetwister 1 Regrowth 1 Time Walk 1 Ancestral Recall 1 Braingeyser 1 Balance 1 Demonic Tutor 1 Chaos Orb Mana Sources: 1 Library of Alexandria 1 Strip Mine 4 City of Brass 4 Badlands 4 Underground Sea 4 Volcanic Island 1 Mox Sapphire 1 Mox Jet 1 Mox Ruby 1 Mox Pearl 1 Mox Emerald 1 Black Lotus 1 Sol Ring Sideboard: 4 Chains of Mephistopheles 4 Gloom 2 Red Elemental Blast 2 Shatterstorm 1 Swamp 2 Earthquake This list represents my best attempt to not only abuse Underworld Dreams in Old School, but to improve upon the efforts that have come before. I can’t understand why more Old School players don’t maindeck Red Elemental Blast, the original Weissman tech. And this deck is no different. I suppose Flash Counter is broadly useful, but Red Elemental Blast is, and always has been, maindeckable. If your opponent isn’t playing blue, you likely aren’t losing. If they are playing blue, then REB is more efficient than Flash Counter. Aside from tweaking the mana a bit and cutting out some chaff, one of the main innovations of my list is the full implementation of Fork. Fork is particularly useful in this strategy because it allows you to double the damage of Winds of Change while also serving as a situational counterspell (Forking an opponent’s counterspell) or duplicating removal or burn. Accordingly, I upped the red part of the mana base so that I could more reliably cast Fork. This deck is fast and surprisingly consistent for a combo deck, and I think anyone who tries it will have a blast. Power Monolith Combo As noted earlier, Fireball is one of the most popular finishers in combo decks in Old School Magic. It was the “go to” finisher for combo decks, at least until Kaervek’s Torch was printed, which, in turn, was replaced by Tendrils of Agony. The most famous fuel for Fireball is Channel; but with Channel restricted, it is an unreliable source. Mages found ways to build large Fireballs through many different sources. Twist of Fire, presented above, recurred Loti and Twisters until enough mana could be generated to cast a lethal Fireball. But with the imposition of the Banned and Restricted List and 60 card minimum construction limits, building a lethal fireball was even more difficult. One of the first notable examples was “Hurkyl’s Fireball,” a deck that used Mana Vaults and Hurkyl’s Recall in the Spring of 1994 to try to pull off lethal Fireballs. Another approach that has sometimes been tried is simply to use cards like Mana Flare/ Gauntlet of Might and Candleabra of Tawnos to build toward lethal Fireballs (here is one such example of that approach, and here is another, using High Tide as well). The point is that Fireball is the finisher for a range of combo decks. But few are more popular or successful in modern 93/94 than Power Monolith combo (especially since Channel, as a singleton, can’t anchor a deck). Power Artifact and Basalt Monolith is an infinite mana engine, and probably the most powerful one in Old School Magic. The way it works is fairly simple: Power Artifact decreases the cost to untap Basalt Monolith such that each use of Basalt Monolith generates more mana than is required to untap it. It therefore generates as much colorless mana as you want. Alpha Basalt Monolith + Antiquities Power Artifact = Infinite Mana Along with a great many other cards, Basalt Monolith was issued power-level errata until 2006, in which a clause was added that it could not be used to untap itself. As a result, there is are no historical lists where this combo was permitted. Compounding matters is that the Swedish 93/94 group restricted Power Artifact until May, 2015. So it wasn’t until then that players using their Banned and Restricted List could enjoy constructing Power Monolith combo decks. That event, however, was the starting gun in a race to design Power Monolith combo decks. I designed one which I worked on during the Winter of 2015-16, which I am now sharing. Power Artifact Combo, February 20, 2016 By Stephen Menendian Creatures and Spells: 4 Power Artifact 2 Transmute Artifact 1 Rocket Launcher 4 Counterspell 1 Mana Drain 4 Power Sink 1 Recall 1 Braingeyser 1 Disrupting Scepter 1 Mind Twist 1 Jayemdae Tome 1 The Abyss 1 Chaos Orb 2 Fireball 2 Red Elemental Blast 1 Regrowth 1 Ancestral Recall 1 Time Walk 1 Timetwister 1 Demonic Tutor 4 Basalt Monolith Mana Sources: 1 Mox Sapphire 1 Mox Jet 1 Mox Ruby 1 Mox Pearl 1 Mox Emerald 1 Mana Vault 1 Black Lotus 4 Underground Sea 4 City of Brass 4 Volcanic Island 1 Strip Mine 2 Island 1 Library of Alexandria Sideboard: 2 Guardian Beast 1 Amnesia 1 The Abyss 1 Mirror Universe 1 Fireball 2 Red Elemental Blast 4 Shatter 1 Balance 2 Blue Elemental Blast 1 Nevinyrral’s Disk As noted earlier, when this series started, there were very few published or refined combo decklists for 93/94. Perhaps the most prominent example of that was Power Artifact combo decks (for reasons I just explained). In conceiving this series, decks such as this were areas that I could contribute, by testing and tuning archetypes and refining them for an interested audience. Yet, since I undertook these exercises, other players have engaged in similar work, and have done a good job of it as well. If you’ve read previous articles in this series, you know that I regard Transmute Artifact as one of the best unrestricted cards in the format. It’s a tutor in a format with a paucity of tutoring effects. Transmute can not only find Basalt Monolith, but also a finisher with Rocket Launcher. As you can tell, this deck is really a combo-control deck, in that it integrates the combo into one of the most conservative possible shells as a way of protecting it. After all, a single Disenchant or Shatter can devastate the combo by destroying both the Monolith and fizzling the Power Artifact at the same time. But, there was never an opportunity for me to play this deck in a tournament as a surprise, and in short order, very similar lists began to emerge. In fact, at the very next tournament in the Bay Area, I played a different deck, and lost a close match to “Mith” Rao, who did play a list pretty similar to what I had envisioned, and went 4-1: In June, 2016, this Power Monolith combo deck got 2nd place in European tournament, the Arvika Festival: The pilot had Top 8ed an earlier event with a similar deck a few months before. This list contains some chaff, but it features the sweet tech of Book of Rass, which is a sink for infinite colorless and helps find a win condition once the combo is assembled. Otherwise, it’s fairly similar to my independently developed approach, which included a pair of Transmutes, Rocket Launcher as a Transmute target and infinite mana sink, and a full complement of Power Sink. Then, a few months later, July, 2016, my friend Danny Friedman won a local Chicago tournament “the Relic War” with a version that falls somewhere in between: If those lists aren’t enough to give you a sense of the scope of possibilities, there were four different Power Monolith combo decks at the last Eternal Central Old School event at Eternal Weekend, 2016 to also peruse at your leisure. Suffice to say, this combo is powerful, fun and exciting. Tax Edge Combo Land’s Edge is a win condition with combo potential, but how do you accumulate enough lands in hand to make it a quick kill? The answer: Land Tax. Land Tax and Land’s Edge are a deadly and synergistic combo that offers yet another way to win games and generate card advantage at the same time! Legends Land Tax and Land’s Edge = Direct Damage Combo Unlike the two archetypes reviewed so far, this is not a strategy I have personal experience testing or working on, but it is something I’ve faced many times (and own all of the cards for). This deck churns through itself generating card advantage and building itself up until BAM, it casts Land’s Edge, and chucks 8-9 lands at you to kill you in one shot. The most effective versions of this strategy that I have seen use Ice Age cards, because both Brainstorm and Zuran Orb are tremendous enhancements. This deck is significantly more powerful with Ice Age, but even in 93/94, this deck can pack a punch. Even with all of the unrestricted cards permitted in that format, a Tax Edge combo deck managed to go 5-2 at Eternal Central’s 2016 Eternal Weekend Old School event, good enough for 22nd place in the hands of Tim Winter: This approach translates Land Tax’s card advantage into quality via Winds of Change, which, in a Scroll Rack type maneuver, transforms lands into fresh cards. A Chicago-area player Bob Agra also has an interesting take on the archetype: But Dominic Dotterer may have the most interesting of the pre-Ice Age versions: Dominic’s list uses Land Tax and Ivory Tower to fuel the Sylvan Library draw engine, which gives the deck a little more ‘oomph,’ translating one form of card advantage into a life buffer and card quality and advantage. Sylvan Library and Land Tax also synergize together, creating a shuffle effect. Time Vault Combo Probably the most enigmatic and mysterious yet feared historical combo deck was the Time Vault combo. Time Vault was restricted in the very first restricted list announcement, and then barely a month later, was the first card banned in Constructed Magic for power-level reasons alone. To this date, it is only one of three cards ever banned for power level reasons (the other two being Mind Twist and Channel). The basis for this restriction and banning was a three card combo pictured in the introduction of this article: Time Vault enchanted with Animate Artifact and Instill Energy to take infinite turns. There is an emergent debate as to whether Time Vault should even be restricted in Old School, given the paucity of ways to consistently untap it, but there have been enterprising designers who have found ways to use Time Vault to power up strategies. Probably the list and player that has received the most acclaim abusing Time Vault is the very innovative Felipe Garcia and his “TwiddleVault” combo deck: Here is what he played in a 2015 tournament (along with a tournament report here): And here is his list from the “Ivory Cup” European event in 2016: This deck is not built around an infinite turn engine like the old Time Vault combo, but rather uses Transmute to find Time Vault and Twiddles to take a few additional Time Walks, and then recur them as necessary with Regrowth, Recall and Timetwister. Before too long, it can go “infinite” or nearly so. The win condition is a lethal Fireball, which is fired off often after exchanging life totals with Mirror Universe and gorging on Sylvans or after Hurkyl’sing your Mana Vaults to generate lethal mana. But is there a way to build a Time Vault combo deck that uses the original combo? I believe so. Here is the list I’ve worked on for a few years, and enjoyed playing: Time Vault Prison, October 31, 2015 By Stephen Menendian Creatures and Spells: 1 Time Vault 1 Jandor’s Saddlebags 3 Animate Artifact 4 Instill Energy 3 Transmute Artifact 4 Birds of Paradise 4 Stasis 1 Mana Drain 4 Power Sink 1 Counterspell 1 Recall 1 Regrowth 1 Ancestral Recall 1 Braingeyser 1 Demonic Tutor 1 Chaos Orb 1 Guardian Beast 1 Time Elemental Mana Sources: 1 Black Lotus 1 Mox Jet 1 Mox Sapphire 1 Mox Ruby 1 Mox Pearl 1 Mox Emerald 1 Sol Ring 1 Mana Vault 4 Tropical Island 4 City of Brass 6 Island 3 Underground Sea 1 Strip Mine I’m very proud to present this list. My decklist is far more controlling, and in fact functions as a prison deck, compared to other Time Vault decks, but it has a series of powerful synergies. Let me point them out. First of all, Time Vault and Stasis work nicely together. You can untap Time Vault at the beginning of your turn to ship the turn back to your opponent, even with Stasis in play. When they are pretty well locked under Stasis, this creates free turns for you. Second, this deck has another use for Instill Energy than simply putting it on your Time Vault. With this deck, you can put an Instill Energy on a Birds of Paradise to pay for Stasis indefinitely. This creates an assymetrical lock. Also, instead of relying entirely on Instill Energy, you can Transmute up Jandor’s Saddlebags to untap the Animated Time Vault. This way, Transmute can find two parts of the three part combo. Lich Combo Mirror Universe has already been mentioned as a combo finisher. Like Underworld Dreams, Mirror Universe was promptly restricted following it’s release in the Legends expansion. This curbed it’s abuse as a combo finisher, but still allowed it to be used as such in control decks. By the end of it’s run, perhaps the most famous use of Mirror Universe was in the hands of a Control pilot tapping their City of Brass in their upkeep and exchanging life totals with Mirror Universe to win the game. As documented last chapter, this all went away with 6th Edition rules. But Mirror Universe still has value. As just noted, it makes Fireball a much easier play to win the game if you gorge on your life total and then give your life to your opponent. But there is still a way, even under the current rules, to make Mirror Universe instantly lethal. That way is Lich. When Lich enters play, you lose all of your life. Conveniently, this means that Mirror Universe will instantly kill your opponent when you exchange life totals. Unlimited Lich & Legends Mirror Universe = A Lethal Combination It is little wonder that this combo was used even back in the day. Here is George Baxter’s 1995 “Lich deck,” which appears surprisingly robust to modern eyes: “Charles’ Lich Deck,” By George Baxter Creatures and Spells: 2 Lich 2 Erhnam Djinn 4 Juzam Djinn 1 Time Walk 1 Timetwister 1 Wheel of Fortune 1 Ancestral Recall 3 Dark Heart of the Woods 4 Strip Mine 2 Sinkhole 1 Crumble 2 Fireball 3 Fastbond 2 Dark Ritual 4 Ice Storm 1 Demonic Tutor Mana Sources: 1 Black Lotus 4 Underground Sea 1 Badlands 2 Forest 4 Tropical Island 4 Taiga 4 Bayou 1 Mox Jet 1 Mox Sapphire 1 Mox Ruby 1 Mox Pearl 1 Mox Emerald 1 Sol Ring Sideboard: 4 Gloom 4 Black Vise 2 Erhnam Djinn 2 Sandstorm 3 Crumble There are many ways to gain life in Old School Magic, but perhaps the most reliable and instantaneous way with Lich in play is Dark Heart of the Woods, which will draw cards immediately. Another option is Ivory Tower, although that requires more time. Crumble is here both as removal but also life gain. I should note here that Drain life functions as a pseudo-Fireball, just as it did in Pros-Bloom, except that it is also a short-term tactic to draw additional cards. George Baxter offers a pretty interesting and comprehensive explanation of his deck in Deep Magic, where he explains that the Lich is here mostly as a combo finisher. He uses the Djinns to buy time and provide defense. In particular, he explains that the Lich should be played only on the turn you intend to combo out, and that the specific combo requires about five lands and a Mox with Dark Heart and Fastbond in play. With this combo set up, the goal is to sacrifice Forests to draw cards with Dark Heart, and play lands via Fastbond such that you gradually, but inevitably, build up enough mana for a lethal Fireball. I have spent some time brewing Lich decks, but I can’t claim to have had much more success than Mr. Baxter, although my list takes a different tack (I use Birds of Paradise and Hypnotic Specters). If you do decide to go in on Lich, I recommend Avoid Fates (in the sideboard) to protect yourself from Disenchant. With Ice Age permitted, things become considerably easier for the Lich pilot, who now has access not only to Zuran Orb, but also Glacial Chasm, which can protect your board with Lich in play. JR Goldman and Jimmy McCarthy designed this Lich list for a ’95 tournament in New York a few years back: Lich is a powerful draw engine, but also requires a tolerance for risk that is found in few players. Recursion Combo Finally, we reach the last major combo archetype. Underworld Dreams Combo and Power Artifact Combo probably have the strongest overall tournament resume at the moment, but it is recursion combo that I believe is probably the most overall fun to play, and may also offer the absolute highest skill ceiling. It is also the fastest. Having documented the history of early Type I Magic for my History of Vintage series, I’d encountered many “recursion” decks in the 1994-5 period, where players like Zak Dolan in the Duelist and Mark Chalice frequently wrote about decks that used Timetwister and Regrowth endlessly to create strange and interesting loops. In the Duelist # 10 (May, 1996), for example, Zak Dolan, who earned a regular column after his inaugural World Championship victory, shared the Recursion deck with the world — one of the first Type I decks ever published in an issue of the Duelist. Here’s what he presented: The Looping Deck By Zak Dolan (May, 1996) Creatures and Spells: 1 Ancestral Recall 1 Bazaar of Baghdad 1 Berserk 2 Birds of Paradise 1 Clone 1 Copy Artifact 3 Dance of Many 1 Disenchant 2 Fastbond 1 Feldon’s Cane 1 Instill Energy 1 Island Sanctuary 1 Ivory Tower 1 Time Walk 1 Timetwister 4 Spirit Link 1 Spectral Cloak 1 Stone Calendar 1 Regrowth 1 Sylvan Library 4 Unstable Mutation 4 Verduran Enchantress 1 Zuran Orb 1 Mana Flare Mana Sources: 1 Island 1 Forest 1 Mox Emerald 1 Mox Jet 1 Mox Pearl 1 Mox Ruby 1 Mox Sapphire 1 Power Sink 4 Savannah 1 Strip Mine 2 Taiga 4 Tropical Island 1 Library of Alexandria 4 Tundra Sideboard: Label Label Label This deck illustrates the core concept of the recursion loop. As Zak puts it in his strategy article, “Once you reach eight cards total in your hand, graveyard and library, for example, it doesn’t matter where your opponent cuts your deck after you cast Timetwister, you’ll know exactly what you’re going to draw. At this point, you have successfully set up the loop; you can cast the potent, restricting cards that are aimed at harming your opponent, cast Timetwister to draw them again, and repeat this until you’ve defeated your opponent.” The Enchantresses serve as the draw engine here, drawing cards to find more combo pieces and help accelerate to the next loop. According to Zak, the goal with this list is to “get to the point where you have Island Sanctuary, two Stone Calendars (or one and a Copy Artifact), a Fastbond, and a creature with Spirit Link and Unstable Mutation in play, and just Time Walk, Berserk, Timetwister, Regrowth, Disenchant, Power Sink Black Lotus, Swords to Plowshares and Strip Mine in your hand, graveyard, and library.” From that point, you can build infinite mana with Regrowth for Timetwister and Lotus in each loop (because of the two Stone Calendars). From there, you can cast Berserk an absurd number of times and take infinite Time Walks. In the same article, Zak presented a faster and more aggressive looping and recursion deck, and one that is perhaps more revealing for our needs, “The Churning Deck.” The Churning Deck (May, 1996) By Zak Dolan Creatures and Spells: 1 Ancestral Recall 2 Book of Rass 1 Braingeyser 1 Candelabra of Tawnos 1 Copy Artifact 2 Dark Heart of the Woods 1 Demonic Tutor 1 Disintegrate 1 Fastbond 1 Feldon’s Cane 2 Fireball 1 Fork 3 Mana Flare 1 Recall 1 Regrowth 2 Sylvan Library 1 Time Walk 1 Timetwister 1 Wheel of Fortune 2 Winds of Change 1 Zuran Orb Mana Sources: 2 Strip Mine 1 Mox Emerald 1 Library of Alexandria 6 Forest 3 City of Brass 3 Bazaar of Baghdad 1 Black Lotus 4 Bayou 4 Taiga 4 Tropical Island Sideboard: Label Label Label As Zak put it, “churning relies on playing and sacrificing your cards, running through your whole library every turn no matter how many cards are in your deck.” The key to this is Timetwister, which allows you to loop and churn. This deck has many interesting draw cards, from Book of Rass to Bazaar of Baghdad, two unusual, but notable, draw engines for combo decks in Old School. One of the most innovative players in the early years of Type I was a young man named Mark Chalice, who singlehandedly created some of the most interesting decks of the era. His first published version of a “Recursion” deck was built around the then-unrestricted Fork: Fork Recursion By Mark Chalice, Circa February, 1995 Creatures and Spells: 4 Howling Mine 1 Chaos Orb 1 Mirror Universe 1 Demonic Tutor 1 Mind Twist 2 Mana Drain 1 Ancestral Recall 1 Braingeyser 1 Recall 1 Time Walk 1 Timetwister 1 Copy Artifact 3 Fastbond 2 Storm Seeker 1 Channel 1 Regrowth 1 Stream of Life 4 Fork 1 Wheel of Fortune 2 Fireball 1 Dark Heart of the Wood Mana Sources: 1 Black Lotus 1 Mox Emerald 1 Mox Jet 1 Mox Pearl 1 Mox Ruby 1 Mox Sapphire 1 Sol Ring 1 Badlands 3 City of Brass 4 Taiga 3 Tropical Island 3 Underground Sea 3 Volcanic Island 1 Library of Alexandria 1 Strip Mine 2 Bazaar of Baghdad Sideboard: Label Label Label The goal of the deck was to set up Recurring Time Walks by Forking Time Walk to take enough turns to win the game. Eventually, you can generate enough mana for a lethal Fireball (or eventually find Channel). An alternative win condition is a pseudo-Fireball; It’s a Forked Storm Seeker to win the game after a Timetwister. I interviewed Mark for my History of Vintage series, and he explained many of the intricacies of the deck. But one of the key points is the way in which Howling Mine fuels this deck. By focusing on Time Walk, it tries to make Howling Mine less symmetrical. The other key, the mana engine, is the role of Fastbond in the deck. As you can see, the deck has 3 Fastbonds, which allows it to accelerate quickly. Dark Heart of the Wood allows the deck to gain life to play more mana to continue to combo out. With the restriction of Fork, Mark found another engine, and rebranded the deck “Vercursion.” Vercursion By Mark Chalice, Fall, 1995 Creatures and Spells: 1 Candelabra of Tawnos 1 Mirror Universe 1 Zuran Orb 1 Demonic Tutor 4 Dance of Many 2 Mana Drain 2 Mesmeric Trance 1 Ancestral Recall 1 Braingeyser 1 Time Walk 1 Timetwister 1 Recall 3 Fastbond 4 Verduran Enchantress 4 Forgotten Lore 1 Regrowth 2 Mana Flare 1 Wheel of Fortune 1 Fireball 1 Disenchant 1 Dark Heart of the Wood Mana Sources: 1 Black Lotus 1 Mox Emerald 1 Mox Jet 1 Mox Pearl 1 Mox Ruby 1 Mox Sapphire 1 Sol Ring 4 City of Brass 2 Forest 2 Island 1 Library of Alexandria 2 Strip Mine 1 Taiga 4 Tropical Island 1 Underground Sea 1 Volcanic Island Sideboard: Label Label Label Mark took this to a 50 player tournament in Costa Mesa, California and won the entire tournament. The card that stands out is Verduran Enchantress, which, with Dark Heart, Dance of Many, Fastbond, and other enchantments, forms a draw engine. At the same time, Mana Flare and Candleabra are another way, aside from simple recursion, to fuel a lethal Fireball (note the lone Fireball as the main win condition – yet another deck built around Fireball as a “Tendrils of Agony” finisher). But, the most interesting part of this deck isn’t Verduran Enchantress at all: It’s Forgotten Lore. As Mark explained to me, it’s this card that makes the deck possible. Forgotten Lore is the card that allows you to recur all of the restricted spells like Timetwister, Time Walk, and Ancestral Recall repeatedly. At a certain point, you build a critical mass of resources, such that any time you cast Timetwister, you will have enough good spells in hand to immediately recur it, but only after deploying all of your mana and playing other good spells in the process. Once you hit that critical point, which occurs sooner rather than later, you can essentially go infinite loops of either Twister or Time Walk. It’s not entirely deterministic, but it’s darn close. Close enough that once you are looping, you have almost no chance of losing control over the game. I decided that refining this idea would be my next big project for Old School Magic, especially since our local events allowed Ice Age for another tournament. Here’s what I came up with and played in a local event this past March: Recursion Combo By Stephen Menendian, March, 2017 Creatures and Spells: 3 Fastbond 2 Zuran Orb 1 Recall 3 Forgotten Lore 1 Regrowth 1 Tormod’s Crypt 1 Chaos Orb 1 Mirror Universe 1 Maze of Ith 1 The Abyss 1 Moat 1 Balance 1 Fireball 2 Red Elemental Blast 2 Counterspell 1 Mana Drain 2 Disenchant 1 Timetwister 1 Wheel of Fortune 1 Braingeyser 1 Time Walk 1 Demonic Tutor 1 Mind Twist 1 Ancestral Recall 1 Sylvan Library Mana Sources: 1 Black Lotus 1 Mox Jet 1 Mox Ruby 1 Mox Emerald 1 Mox Pearl 1 Mox Sapphire 1 Strip Mine 1 Library of Alexandria 1 Glacial Chasm 4 Tropical Island 4 City of Brass 2 Underground Sea 2 Volcanic Island 2 Tundra 1 Savannah 1 Bayou 1 Taiga Sideboard: 2 Moat 1 The Abyss 2 COP:Red 2 Blue Elemental Blast 2 Jester’s Cap 1 Dust to Dust 1 Mana Short 2 Pyroblast 1 Disenchant 1 Tormod’s Crypt This deck has been my private Old School obsession for the last few months. It’s ridiculously fun to play. In almost all of my actual matches with it (tournament or testing), I won on either Turn 2 or 3 (not counting Time Walk turns), and have been exceptionally close to multiple Turn 1 kills. There are a few notes to make. First of all, the win condition, as for many of these decks, was Fireball. The goal of the deck is to get a critical mass of resources such that you can set up a loop, either recurring Time Walks iteratively with Forgotten Lore or other recursion or Timetwister, and often both at the same time. Once you do that, it’s not long until you can build enough mana for a lethal Fireball or switch life totals with Mirror Universe and fire off a small, but lethal, Fireball. I started my testing with Enchantress, following Mark’s lead, but quickly realized I didn’t need it. With Library of Alexandria, Timetwister, Wheel of Fortune, Sylvan Library, Ancestral Recall, Braingeyser, and Demonic Tutor, I realized through testing that I had enough draw spells to reliably find one in my opening hand or in a mulligan to 6. At the same time, the deck has enough defense with Moat, The Abyss, Balance, etc. that you don’t need to win immediately to eventually win the game. Glacial Chasm is a nice part of the combo from Ice Age because it prevents you from taking any Fastbond damage when you are in the final stages of comboing out. Since recursion is the primary plan, I also ran a single Tormod’s Crypt maindeck to remove cards from my opponent’s deck before every Twister, while also doubling against what I think is the best deck in our ’95 environment, Reanimator (see Chapter 9). That said, there are a few rough edges that need to be tweaked. One of them is that I probably need to swap out some of the non-blue dual lands for more green dual lands, simply to make Forgotten Lore just a little more reliable. There are situations where you need to pay 7+ mana for Forgotten Lore to get the correct card. In addition, I probably should have run more Sylvan Library as a draw engine, a card that Mark Chalice probably should have run more of as well in both of his Recursion combo decklists! Sylvan, as we’ve seen, along with Howling Mine, is one of the best draw engines in the format, and it’s especially good when you have lifegain. After this tournanent, and in fact, doing preparation for this article, I encountered what the Swedish group calls “MirrorBall” strategy. This is, in essence, very similar to what I was trying to do here, but only with 93/94 cards (excluding Fallen Empires as well). Credited to Martin Jordo, here is “Mirror Ball”: This deck is interesting for a number of reasons. First of all, despite not having Forgotten Lore, it’s got the proper number of green mana dual lands. Obviously, that’s largely to support Dark Heart of the Wood, which may just be better than Zuran Orb anyway, although that remains to be seen. Second, MirrorBall is all in on Sylvan Library. I’m not sure we really need that many Sylvans, but I probably should have run more than 1! I tested Channel in my ’95 Recursion combo list, but ultimately decided it was largely superfluous. Because this deck uses so many Mirrors, I think Channel is more justifiable. Also, in the pre-Ice Age environment, you may just have more room for Channel anyway. I also really like the technology of Drop of Honey perhaps instead of some of the 4cc Enchantments I ran, although perhaps a mixture is best. If I had to replay my ’95 Recursion Combo deck, I’d probably swap out 2-3 of the dual lands for more Bayou and Taiga. And I’d probably add at least 1-2 more Sylvan Library, probably over one of the creature defense cards. But I’d also probably add a Drop of Honey or two somewhere between the maindeck and sideboard, and probably over The Abyss. Converting the deck into a 93/94 deck requires a bit more work, but I’d start by adding Channel back into the deck, and possibly, following the lead of Mr. Jordo, adding a second Mirror Universe, and possibly a third. I’m confident, however, that this archetype, by blending my ideas with those already established by MirrorBall pilots like Martin Jordo, can provide a fierce deck in any Old School environment. Conclusion This article has explored the least covered aspect of Old School Magic: Combo. Without purporting to be exhaustive, I’ve presented the six most prominent Combo strategies in two modes: their contemporary iterations and historical counterparts. These decks reflect the draw engines, mana resources, tutors and, most importantly, the win conditions that structure the possibilities for combo decks in Old School formats. The most prominent of those win conditions are Fireball, Underworld Dreams, Land’s Edge, and Mirror Universe, but they also include cards like Drain Life and Storm Seeker. My goal for this article is that you finish it having a better appreciation for the strength and range of possibilities for combo in Old School formats than you did before reading it. A secondary goal is that you may be inspired to try one of them or build your own. These decks are extremely fun to play and often unexpected in Old School metagames, and there is certainly room for improvement. Perhaps their biggest selling point is they offer enormous replay value – and therefore fun – because they are often fast and play out so differently with so many lines of play from game to game. This is another way of saying that these decks have such a high skill ceiling such that they may offer the greatest potential for improvement and skill development towards mastery of anything else in the Old School Magic experience. Until next time, Stephen Menendian Post-Script: This is the penultimate article in this planned series, with the next chapter scheduled to be the final chapter. If you have enjoyed this series, please post a reply letting us know, and share the article with your friends. That will go a long way to towards determining if we will plan future chapters beyond Chapter 12. |
NEW YORK The Girl Scouts have joined an effort to break the bronze ceiling in Central Park, CBS New York reports. As WCBS 880’s Stephanie Colombini reported, the sculptures of historical figures that appear in Central Park all represent men. But Girl Scouts such as Phoebe Bergan, 10, with Troop 3484 in Manhattan, are trying to change that. “We just want to help other girls have an idol who they can look up to in Central Park,” Phoebe said. In this Thursday, Oct. 6, 2016 photo, a statue of Simon Bolivar, a 19th century Venezuelan leader, stands at an entrance to New York’s Central Park. No real-life woman has ever been honored in bronze amid the 843 acres featuring 23 statues of illustrious males. Mark Lennihan, AP “We’re trying to crack the bronze ceiling,” deadpans Pamela Elam, who is spearheading the effort along with Stanton’s great-great-granddaughter, Coline Jenkins. The aim of the awareness and fundraising campaign - called Central Park, Where Are The Women? - is to erect the statue by 2020, the centennial of U.S. women’s right to vote. “There are no statues of women, and there’s tons of men,” says Pippa Lee, 10, a scout with Manhattan’s Girl Scout Troop 3484. “We really need a woman’s statue for girls to look up to, not just Mother Goose or Alice in Wonderland. They don’t count.” The effort has drawn the support of the Central Park Conservancy, a private nonprofit whose millions of dollars help beautify the urban oasis. Parks Commissioner Mitchell Silver also has given the green light to the suffragist monument, which is to rise by Central Park West at the 77th Street entrance. Phoebe’s troop teamed up with the Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony statue fund. They are raising money to put up a monument to the two suffragists in the park. “This will be a nationwide celebration, and New York City and Central Park will be the epicenter,” Jenkins said. It will cost about $500,000 in private donations to erect the bronze at the West 77th Street entrance to the park. About as much is needed to cover landscaping and an educational program. More than $150,000 has been raised so far. The 23 statues and busts honoring men in the park include representations of John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster and even a famed foreigner, Giuseppe Mazzini, who helped create the modern Italian state. |
Welcome to the thirteenth edition of Drugs and Pharmacology. Today, we will discuss the fallacies of Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s logic on marijuana prohibition, the prevalence and impact of dual diagnosis (mental disorders coupled with substance abuse), the benefits of breaking caffeine addiction, and poisonous birds with an analgesic effect. Remember, we review the latest blogs related to drugs — medicinal, recreational, interactional, personal, professional, or any other aspects. If you were left out in this round, just leave a comment with your blog entry. You can check out the archives for every edition of this carnival. For future editions, please remember to submit your blog entries using the online submission form. We will do our best to review and include your entry! Enjoy your readings… Rationalitate writes Possible Surgeon General Sanjay Gupta’s tortured logic on marijuana prohibition: But at the end comes the biggest doozy, when he declares: “And if you get high before climbing behind the wheel of a car, you will be putting yourself and those around you in danger.” This is made all the worse as its the last line of the article, giving you the impression that it’s the biggest thing you should take away from this all. Mind Mart writes One Treatment, No Cure: A well known study done in 1990 reported a dual diagnosis prevalence of 53 percent for problem drug users and 37 percent for problem alcohol users. A more recent study in 2004 found a prevalence of 60 percent for independent mood disorders and 43 percent as having at least one anxiety disorder. Living the Scientific Life writes The Evolution of Poisonous Birds: ‘I performed this very complicated and sophisticated experiment. I clipped off some feathers and popped them in my mouth’ — taking care not to swallow. His lips, mouth and tongue became numb almost immediately. Clearly it was the pitohui itself — not some plant or tree — that was the culprit. LimitlessUnits.com writes Why and How I Broke My Addiction to Caffeine: I have higher and more even energy levels. I no longer have the caffeine driven ups and downs. Since I work in the video game industry, I am expected to work in “crunch” mode just prior to a product shipping. During crunch, developers are hard at work for 70 to 100 hours a week, six to seven days a week for periods of up to and beyond 6 months. |
By George Friedman Founder and Chairman The civil war in Syria, one of the few lasting legacies of the Arab Spring, has been under way for more than two years. There has been substantial outside intervention in the war. The Iranians in particular, and the Russians to a lesser extent, have supported the Alawites under Bashar al Assad. The Saudis and some of the Gulf States have supported the Sunni insurgents in various ways. The Americans, Europeans and Israelis, however, have for the most part avoided involvement. Last week the possibility of intervention increased. The Americans and Europeans have had no appetite for intervention after their experiences in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. At the same time, they have not wanted to be in a position where intervention was simply ruled out. Therefore, they identified a redline that, if crossed, would force them to reconsider intervention: the use of chemical weapons. There were two reasons for this particular boundary. The first was that the United States and European states have a systemic aversion to the possession and usage of weapons of mass destruction in other countries. They see this ultimately as a threat to them, particularly if such weapons are in the hands of non-state users. But there was a more particular reason in Syria. No one thought that al Assad was reckless enough to use chemical weapons because they felt that his entire strategy depended on avoiding U.S. and European intervention, and that therefore he would never cross the redline. This was comforting to the Americans and Europeans because it allowed them to appear decisive while avoiding the risk of having to do anything. However, in recent weeks, first the United Kingdom and France and then Israel and the United States asserted that the al Assad regime had used chemical weapons. No one could point to an incidence of massive deaths in Syria, and the evidence of usage was vague enough that no one was required to act immediately. In Iraq, it turned out there was not a nuclear program or the clandestine chemical and biological weapons programs that intelligence had indicated. Had there been, the U.S. invasion might have had more international support, but it is doubtful it would have had a better outcome. The United States would have still forced the Sunnis into a desperate position, the Iranians would have still supported Shiite militias and the Kurds would have still tried to use the chaos to build an autonomous Kurdish region. The conflict would have still been fought and its final outcome would not have looked very different from how it does now. What the United States learned in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya is that it is relatively easy for a conventional force to destroy a government. It is much harder — if not impossible — to use the same force to impose a new type of government. The government that follows might be in some moral sense better than what preceded it — it is difficult to imagine a more vile regime than Saddam Hussein's — but the regime that replaces it will first be called chaos, followed by another regime that survives to the extent that it holds the United States at arm's length. Therefore, redline or not, few want to get involved in another intervention pivoting on weapons of mass destruction. Interventionist Arguments and Illusions However, there are those who want to intervene for moral reasons. In Syria, there is the same moral issue that there was in Iraq. The existing regime is corrupt and vicious. It should not be forgotten that the al Assad regime conducted a massacre in the city of Hama in 1982 in which tens of thousands of Sunnis were killed for opposing the regime. The regime carried out constant violations of human rights and endless brutality. There was nothing new in this, and the world was able to act fairly indifferent to the events, since it was still possible to create media blackouts in those days. Syria's patron, the Soviet Union, protected it, and challenging the Syrian regime would be a challenge to the Soviet Union. It was a fight that few wanted to wage because the risks were seen as too high. The situation is different today. Syria's major patron is Iran, which had (until its reversal in Syria) been moving toward a reshaping of the balance of power in the region. Thus, from the point of view of the American right, an intervention is morally required to confront evil regimes. There are those on the left who also want intervention. In the 1980s, the primary concern of the left was the threat of nuclear war, and they saw any intervention as destabilizing a precarious balance. That concern is gone, and advocacy for military intervention to protect human rights is a significant if not universal theme on the left. The difference between right-wing and left-wing interventionists is the illusions they harbor. In spite of experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq, right-wing interventionists continue to believe that the United States and Europe have the power not only to depose regimes but also to pacify the affected countries and create Western-style democracies. The left believes that there is such a thing as a neutral intervention — one in which the United States and Europe intervene to end a particular evil, and with that evil gone, the country will now freely select a Western-style constitutional democracy. Where the right-wing interventionists cannot absorb the lessons of Afghanistan and Iraq, the left-wing interventionists cannot absorb the lessons of Libya. Everyone loved the fall of communism in Eastern Europe. What was not to like? The Evil Empire was collapsing for the right; respect for human rights was universally embraced for the left. But Eastern Europe was occupied by Josef Stalin in 1945 following domination and occupation by Adolf Hitler. Eastern Europeans had never truly embraced either, and for the most part loathed both. The collapse freed them to be what they by nature were. What was lurking under the surface had always been there, suppressed but still the native political culture and aspiration. That is not what was under the surface in Afghanistan or Iraq. These countries were not Europe and did not want to be. One of the reasons that Hussein was despised was that he was secular — that he violated fundamental norms of Islam both in his personal life and in the way he governed the country. There were many who benefited from his regime and supported him, but if you lopped off the regime, what was left was a Muslim country wanting to return to its political culture, much as Eastern Europe returned to its. In Syria, there are two main factions fighting. The al Assad regime is Alawite, a heterodox offshoot of Shi'ism. But its more important characteristic is that it is a secular regime, not guided by either liberal democracy or Islam but with withering roots in secular Arab Socialism. Lop it off and what is left is not another secular movement, this time liberal and democratic, but the underlying Muslim forces that had been suppressed but never eradicated. A New York Times article this week pointed out that there are no organized secular forces in areas held by the Sunni insurgents. The religious forces are in control. In Syria, secularism belonged to the Baath Party and the Alawites, and it was brutal. But get rid of it, and you do not get liberal democracy. This is what many observers missed in the Arab Spring. They thought that under the surface of the oppressive Hosni Mubarak regime, which was secular and brutal, was a secular liberal democratic force. Such a force was present in Egypt, more than in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya, but still did not represent the clear alternative to Mubarak. The alternative — not as clearly as elsewhere, but still the alternative — was the Muslim Brotherhood, and no secular alternative was viable without the Egyptian army. The Difficulties of an Intervention There are tremendous military challenges to dealing with Syria. Immaculate interventions will not work. A surgical strike on chemical facilities is a nice idea, but the intelligence on locations is never perfect, Syria has an air defense system that cannot be destroyed without substantial civilian casualties, and blowing up buildings containing chemical weapons could release the chemicals before they burn. Sending troops deep into Syria would not be a matter of making a few trips by helicopter. The country is an armed camp, and destroying or seizing stockpiles of chemical weapons is complicated and requires manpower. To destroy the stockpiles, you must first secure ports, airports and roads to get to them, and then you have to defend the roads, of which there are many. Eradicating chemical weapons from Syria — assuming that they are all in al Assad's territory — would require occupying that territory, and the precise outlines of that territory change from day to day. It is also likely, given the dynamism of a civil war, that some chemical weapons would fall into the hands of the Sunni insurgents. There are no airstrikes or surgical raids by special operations troops that would solve the problem. Like Iraq, the United States would have to occupy the country. If al Assad and the leadership are removed, his followers — a substantial minority — will continue to resist, much as the Sunnis did in Iraq. They have gained much from the al Assad regime and, in their minds, they face disaster if the Sunnis win. The Sunnis have much brutality to repay. On the Sunni side, there may be a secular liberal democratic group, but if so it is poorly organized and control is in the hands of Islamists and other more radical Islamists, some with ties to al Qaeda. The civil war will continue unless the United States intervenes on behalf of the Islamists, uses its power to crush the Alawites and hands power to the Islamists. A variant of this happened in Iraq when the United States sought to crush the Sunnis but did not want to give power to the Shia. The result was that everyone turned on the Americans. That will be the result of a neutral intervention or an intervention designed to create a constitutional democracy. Those who intervene will find themselves trapped between the reality of Syria and the assorted fantasies that occasionally drive U.S. and European foreign policy. No great harm will come in any strategic sense. The United States and Europe have huge populations and enormous wealth. They can, in that sense, afford such interventions. But the United States cannot afford continual defeats as a result of intervening in countries of marginal national interest, where it sets for itself irrational political goals for the war. In some sense, power has to do with perception, and not learning from mistakes undermines power. Many things are beyond the military power of the United States. Creating constitutional democracies by invasion is one of those things. There will be those who say intervention is to stop the bloodshed, not to impose Western values. Others will say intervention that does not impose Western values is pointless. Both miss the point. You cannot stop a civil war by adding another faction to the war unless that faction brings overwhelming power to bear. The United States has a great deal of power, but not overwhelming power, and overwhelming power's use means overwhelming casualties. And you cannot transform the political culture of a country from the outside unless you are prepared to devastate it as was done with Germany and Japan. The United States, with its European allies, does not have the force needed to end Syria's bloodshed. If it tried, it would merely be held responsible for the bloodshed without achieving any strategic goal. There are places to go to war, but they should be few and of supreme importance. The bloodshed in Syria is not more important to the United States than it is to the Syrians. |
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The birthplace of aviation wants to be the space shuttle's retirement home. The National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton is campaigning to add one of three soon-to-be-mothballed NASA space shuttles to its collection of more than 400 aerospace vehicles and missiles. Museum officials predict its arrival would draw an extra 1 million visitors annually to the facility, create 700 jobs and add $40 million to the state's economy. About 1.3 million people already visit the free museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base each year. "Ohio's proud flight heritage, our proximity to a majority of the U.S. population and the aviation tradition of the National Museum of the United States Air Force provide all the essential elements for a dignified display educating the nation and the world on the tremendous accomplishments of the United States space program," Gov. Ted Strickland said in an April pitch to NASA administrator Charles Bolden. Ohio Aerospace Institute President Mike Heil says the proposed shuttle display would highlight the close relationship between the Air Force and NASA as well as the frequent collaborations between Wright-Patterson researchers and NASA Glenn Research Center. "Bringing a space shuttle to the Air Force museum in Dayton is not only good for the Dayton region but good for the state of Ohio and good for Cleveland," Heil said. "The Air Force museum is an internationally famous museum that draws people from around the state, around the country and around the world." Every current member of Congress from Ohio, former astronaut and U.S. Sen. John Glenn, and more than a dozen astronauts with Air Force and Ohio backgrounds have joined Strickland in lobbying NASA to secure one of the three shuttles. They say the shuttle Atlantis would be most appropriate because of its frequent use in Air Force research. The Atlantis returned from its final voyage Wednesday. A letter that Air Force Secretary Michael Donley wrote to NASA touts the museum's current attributes -- including Titan I and Titan II, Jupiter and Peacekeeper missiles -- in arguing it should also get a space shuttle. "Visitors can also see a Mercury and Gemini spacecraft, as well as the command module from the Apollo 14 mission," Donley's letter says. "Placing the space shuttle orbiter on display at the National Museum would give museum visitors an exciting look into this important part of our history." NASA spokesman Michael Curie said more than 20 museums from around the country have asked to adopt a space shuttle after the program ends in November. NASA has already offered the Discovery to the National Air and Space Museum in Washington. If Discovery goes there, an experimental shuttle called the Enterprise that's now in its collection would be sent to another institution. Endeavour is the remaining shuttle that is available. Two other shuttles -- Challenger and Columbia -- were destroyed during missions. Space shuttles have been used for a wide variety of chores, from performing scientific experiments to deploying and repairing communications satellites, to helping to assemble the space station, Curie says. President George W. Bush announced the end of the program in 2004, after Columbia disintegrated upon re-entering Earth's atmosphere. "The program has done an awful lot over the years to contribute to technological advancements and scientific discoveries," Curie said. According to Curie, NASA is likely to announce its decision early this summer, to give institutions enough time to raise the money required to properly display and transport the shuttles. "We are trying to find the best locations for the orbiters where the American taxpayers who have paid for them have the best opportunity to see them," Curie said. NASA will pay to remove toxic substances from the shuttles before they go to museums, but Curie said each museum will have to spend an estimated $28.8 million to reassemble and relocate its shuttle after toxins are removed. A shuttle is about the size of a DC-9 aircraft, Curie says: 122 feet long, 78 feet wide, and 57 feet tall. Dayton Development Coalition Vice President Michael Gessel said NASA's selection process has been "highly competitive," with facilities in New York, Texas, Florida, Washington and California making bids. He said the Air Force Museum Foundation has started a major construction program that will add a 200,000-square-foot building to the museum's current 1 million square feet of exhibit space. So far, the foundation has collected $17 million to spend on the building. Addition of the space shuttle would jump-start fundraising, he predicted. Gessel said locating an orbiter at the museum would allow its ownership to be retained by taxpayers and put it near the home of the Wright Brothers, within a southwest Ohio eight-county National Aviation Heritage area "recognized by Congress for its contributions to aviation and aerospace history and for the purpose of attracting tourists." "It would be a significant boost to the prestige of [the Air Force museum] and make the museum an even more important stop for aviation enthusiasts," Gessel said. |
By Norica Nicolai, Member of the European Parliament for Romania Standardization of thinking creates the basis for a simplified society, where we just follow the latest tweet Norica Nicolai Romanian MEP This year Romania is celebrating its 10th year anniversary of EU membership. In this period, according to the constitutional principles, different governments have issued more than 1,200 emergency ordinances, among which 34 were in the domain of justice. The government installed last December adopted an Emergency Ordinance, with the main purpose of modifying the Penal Codes according to the recommendations of the Constitutional Court. This was supposed to happen two years ago but all the governments preferred to ignore the subject and continue to have the Penal Codes in conflict with the Constitution. Politicians from the opposition, as well as some citizens of Romania, considered that this legislation was not adopted transparently and that it was meant to favour different political leaders investigated or convicted in corruption cases. In my opinion, in a European state governed by the rule of law, legislation is valid if adopted by the parliament or by other institutions which are entitled to create laws. No matter how fragile democracy is, it cannot be accepted that laws should be made in the street, under pressure and emotion. By doing this, we ignore the main democratic mechanism, which is the popular vote. The recent developments in Romania characterized by strong public protests, are repercussions of the political battles, which unfortunately did not stop after the election. I remember that more than one year ago, following the tragedy at the Colectiv club which resulted in the death of 64 young people burned in a fire, under pressure from the street and after the intervention of the president who encouraged the protests, the Socialist government was obliged to resign. At the time we saw that the president, despite the fact that he should have moderated the conflict, expressed his clear wish for a specific government, his government, adding a very shocking statement: “People had to die in order to obtain the resignation of this government”. As a coincidence, during the year following the elections, the same type of fire started in another club in Bucharest, which fortunately ended without victims and did not generate any more public discontent. Just days after this incident, people started to head onto the streets, during the public debate period of this new legislation, despite the fact that the government created the conditions for all the people to understand and to comment on the new legislative project. After the adoption of the Ordinance, the mobilisation was done very fast on Facebook, since the emotion had already been created. Most of the agitators are members or leaders of NGOs, organisations that are supposed to be apolitical, and this is the reason why I have serious doubts about the so-called spontaneous character of these street protests. I must say that, as the press revealed, some of the protestors are employees of international companies located in Bucharest. In this context, it is not a detail the fact that the new government has just increased the minimum wage in Romania, and this will surely create economic loss to a part of these companies, who will be obliged to give more money to employees with an impact on their own profit. In addition, the new Fiscal Code will impact these businesses’ profits, which will be subject to more tax. I think what we face now in Romania is something we have already seen in Europe, a decent civic protest used and manipulated by the political parties of the opposition to force a government’s resignation. We have recently seen these kind of riots in and around Europe and it is still possible we will face them again in the next few months, since it is an electoral period in many EU states. The attempt to use the people’s frustrations and discontent, the fragile economic situation in many countries, this logic of creating public conflict in order to destabilize a legitimate government, will have the sole result of weakening our democracies. I think that, despite the fact that the principle of the separation of powers in a state is a very old principle, it cannot be replaced by chaos, it cannot be ignored by a minority’s will against what most of the people voted for in the elections. As a personal reflection towards the new social media that is influencing so much of our society, I would like to say that this kind of new communication could help the process of individual emancipation, but it cannot replace the people’s education. Social media becomes a part of what we are, but it must not be everything, since a person should continue to be the result of the education he receives, the teachers he has, the books he reads and his own personal life experience. This process of following only what the social media says and does is dangerous for our own development as individuals and as democratic societies. The world we live in is a complex world, with debates and dilemmas, and it should continue to be like that thanks to dialogue. The standardization of thinking creates the basis for a simplified society, where we just follow the latest Tweet or Facebook tendencies, without passing it through our own process of thinking. From this to the radicalisation we are dealing with lately is a small step, which I hope a European Romania will not take. Not after 10 years of openly embracing European values and principles. By Norica Nicolai, Member of the European Parliament for Romania The views expressed in opinion articles published on euronews do not represent our editorial position |
During last night's Democratic presidential debate in Flint, Michigan, Hillary Clinton once again criticized Bernie Sanders for supporting the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, a 2005 law that she falsely claimed gave gun manufacturers and dealers "absolute immunity" against lawsuits. Clinton, who as a senator voted against that law, has brought up Sanders' vote for it during six out of seven debates so far, misrepresenting what the law says almost every time. Sanders has responded defensively, saying he would take another look at the law to see if it can be improved. But last night he made it clear that he supports the basic principle embodied in the law, which is that manufacturers and dealers generally should not be held responsible for criminal misuse of the guns they supply. Moderator Anderson Cooper asked Sanders about a lawsuit against the manufacturer, distributor, and retailer of the rifle used in the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Here is Sanders' reply: If you go to a gun store and you legally purchase a gun, and then, three days later, if you go out and start killing people, is the point of this lawsuit to hold the gun shop owner or the manufacturer of that gun liable? If that is the point, I have to tell you I disagree. I disagree because you hold people—in terms of this liability thing, where you hold manufacturers' [liable] is if they understand that they're selling guns into an area that—it's getting into the hands of criminals, of course they should be held liable. But if they are selling a product to a person who buys it legally, what you're really talking about is ending gun manufacturing in America. I don't agree with that.... As I understand it...what people are saying is that if somebody who is crazy or a criminal or a horrible person goes around shooting people, the manufacturer of that gun should be held liable.... If that is the case, then essentially your position is there should not be any guns in America, period. That is basically what the plaintiffs in the Newtown massacre lawsuit are saying, but they dress up their argument in terms designed to get around the limits imposed by the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. That law bans lawsuits based on "the harm solely caused by the criminal or unlawful misuse of firearm products or ammunition products by others when the product functioned as designed and intended." But it allows tort claims based on "negligent entrustment"—i.e., "the supplying of [firearms] by a seller for use by another person when the seller knows, or reasonably should know, the person to whom the product is supplied is likely to, and does, use the product in a manner involving unreasonable risk of physical injury to the person or others." The Newtown plaintiffs, who include the families of nine people murdered at Sandy Hook, plus a survivor of the massacre, maintain that the defendants are guilty of negligent entrustment because they made a gun with no legitimate civilian uses available to the general public. That argument is implausible, to say the least, since AR-15-style guns like the one used in Newtown are very popular and plainly do have legitimate civilian uses. Yet Sanders, who favors a federal ban on so-called assault weapons, seems to believe otherwise. Last night he said, "I don't think it's a great idea in this country to be selling military-style assault weapons which are designed to kill people." That does not necessarily mean Sanders would support this lawsuit, since the gun at the center of it was legal at the time even in Connecticut. The plaintiffs are trying to stretch negligent entrustment to cover entirely lawful actions by a large segment of the gun industry. Even Dennis Henigan, former director of the Legal Action Project at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, concedes they are unlikely to succeed. That does not mean the lawsuits allowed by the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which can be based on product defects or illegal actions as well as negligent entrustment, are doomed to fail. Last fall a Wisconsin jury awarded $5.1 million in damages to two police officers who were gravely injured by a handgun that Badger Arms, a store near Milwaukee, sold to a straw buyer. The jurors concluded that the store clerk who sold the gun ignored obvious clues that the ostensible buyer was not the real buyer, who was 18 and therefore not legally permitted to purchase a pistol from a federally licensed dealer. The jurors faulted the store's owners for failing to properly train their employees. As that example shows, it is still possible to hold gun makers and dealers liable for negligence. Clinton wants to do more than that, arguing that litigation can "force gun makers to do more to make guns safer." She is referring to "smart guns" that are more expensive, harder to use, and less reliable than standard firearms. The only way litigation would encourage the sale of such guns is by making manufacturers liable for producing the firearms their customers actually want. When such lawsuits were filed "in the late '90s and in the early 2000s," Clinton said last night, "the NRA saw this happening, and they said, 'We've got to stop it. Last thing in the world we want is to have guns that you can only shoot with your fingerprint, or to have guns with such strong safety locks on them that they may not be sellable.'" But as far as Clinton is concerned, unsellable guns would be a victory. I remain unconvinced that the law Clinton faults Sanders for supporting was necessary or appropriate. There is a credible argument that Congress acted to protect Second Amendment rights against litigation that ultimately could have made them difficult or impossible to exercise. That is the argument to which Sanders alluded when he said lawsuits blaming gun makers for gun crimes, if successful, could mean "ending gun manufacturing in America." In 2005, however, that threat remained distant and theoretical, since the lawsuits had been almost uniformly unsuccessful and had prompted legislative responses at the state level. Furthermore, there were legitimate constitutional concerns about interfering with state tort law. But no matter which side you took in that debate, Clinton is clearly wrong to suggest that the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act gave the gun industry complete immunity against lawsuits, and Sanders is clearly right that manufacturers, distributors, and dealers should not be held liable for crimes committed with their products unless they deliberately or negligently foster those crimes. |
Retirees with substantial wealth tied up in their homes might soon face face the prospect of losing their pension, the head of the Productivity Commission says. Chairman Peter Harris will tell a breakfast in Perth on Thursday that Australia is ill-prepared for the coming flood of relatively healthy long-lived retirees. Peter Harris, the Productivity Commission chairman, says people don't realise they have no rights to ownership of their own data. Credit:Andrew Meares "The original age pension recipients generally had spent near enough to 75 per cent of their life after the age of 15 in full-time work," he will say. "For the baby boomers, that figure has fallen to about 60 per cent, and for the generation today in high school, that figure will fall to around 50 per cent, mostly based on significant health gains. |
Dartmouth researchers demonstrated a connection between brain responses, measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and future behavior. The researchers targeted the nucleus accumbens, often called the brain's ‘reward center,’ in a group of incoming college students. While undergoing scans, the subjects viewed images of animals, environmental scenes, appetizing food and people. Six months later, their weight and information regarding sexual behavior were compared with their previously recorded weight and brain scan data. "The people whose brains responded more strongly to food cues were the people who went on to gain more weight six months later," explains Kathryn Demos, first author of the paper. The researchers point out that understanding the brain's response to triggers is important in stopping unwanted behavior. "You need to actively be thinking about the behavior you want to control in order to regulate it," remarks William Kelley, associate professor of psychological and brain science and a senior author on the paper. "Self-regulation requires a lot of conscious effort." |
Former GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum took to social media on Wednesday to announce his support for fast food chain Chick-fil-A in the wake of backlash prompted by its CEO's recent comments against gay marriage. In a series of tweets, Santorum touted the "Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day" initiative launched by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) earlier this week. He then raved about the restaurant's food: Santorum followed up with a similar post on Facebook. Last week, Chick-fil-A President Dan Cathy, a well-known Christian and supporter of anti-gay religious organizations, responded to a question about his views against same-sex marriage, saying that he was "guilty as charged." "We are very much supportive of the family -- the biblical definition of the family unit," he said. "We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that ... we know that it might not be popular with everyone, but thank the Lord, we live in a country where we can share our values and operate on biblical principles." While those remarks didn't sit well with some -- Jim Henson's Muppets severed their partnership with the chain, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino announced plans to block Chick-fil-A's expansion in to the city, and a number of other public figures have urged a boycott -- Santorum's support for Cathy and his anti-gay beliefs isn't surprising. Throughout his presidential campaign and political career, Santorum frequently spoke out on issues of gay rights, establishing himself as a staunch social conservative who opposed equal rights for gays in a number of areas. Below, some of Santorum's most notable comments about sexuality and the LGBT community: |
Sony has distributed free headphones to every athlete participating in this month's World Cup, as part of its exclusive licensing deal with FIFA, but as Reuters reports, that hasn't stopped Beats Electronics from stealing the spotlight with some familiar marketing tactics. Although soccer's governing body prohibited players from wearing the popular headsets on the field and at official media events, stars like Neymar and Luis Suarez have been seen wearing them elsewhere in Brazil this month — at practices, and when getting off busses — and marketing experts say the ban may even play to the Apple-owned company's advantage. "When fans see World Cup athletes wearing Beats in their downtime, by choice, it has as much impact as seeing them lace their Adidas [shoes] or sip a sponsored beverage," Ellen Petry Leanse, a marketing strategist and former Apple and Google executive, told Reuters. "Maybe more, actually – Beats isn't a sponsor, so the message is more authentic and credible." The company, which Apple acquired last month for $3 billion, has skirted similar licensing deals in the past. During the 2012 Olympic Games in London, Beats representatives were seen handing out headphones to some athletes, undermining Panasonic's official sponsorship deal. The Dr. Dre-founded company has not commented on its marketing strategy for this year's World Cup, though the event is certainly a point of focus. Earlier this month, Beats released a cinematic, five-minute World Cup ad featuring appearances from Neymar, Serena Williams, and LeBron James, among others. |
Surviving assaults with sharp objects comprises a regular part of our training. Such objects, after all, are readily available. Knives Utility knives Broken bottles Screwdrivers An armed attacker is obviously extremely dangerous. A stab or cut can disable or kill. Escape is your best option. (note in video above that IKMF Director, Avi Moyal is not disarming) Why do we advocate escaping rather than disarming? Here are 4 reasons. Speed : Blocking or deflecting and incoming arm is extremely challenging. Controlling is more difficult – even for the best trained in the world! Unpredictable : The attacker can stab and slash from various directions and angles, to different parts of your body. You don’t know. Time : Disarming takes time (even a few seconds is too long), time that you are preoccupied with one person and limiting your environmental awareness. (e.g. of other attackers). Getting Close : The more we are engaged with an attacker at close range the more things can go wrong. Disarming when you can escape increases the risk of injury or worse. There are times when disarming is necessary – no escape routes, protecting others… Accordingly, we prepare you for these circumstances. In light of the immense difficulty of disarming, avoid if possible. |
Jared Kushner, reportedly the new power behind the throne in the Trump administration, has tried to borrow luster from another presidential éminence grise, Henry Kissinger. Kushner introduced himself to Kissinger after a foreign policy lecture in 2015, and since then has kept in touch with the former secretary of state. We know this because Kissinger wrote an exceptionally lukewarm tribute to Kushner for Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People issue, which he concluded by comparing Kushner to the mythical Icarus, a nepotism hire who crashed and burned after flying too close to the sun. Whatever Kissinger’s private reservations about Kushner, there are some parallels to be drawn between the Nixon and Trump administrations, especially in their bureaucratic intrigue and the cultivation of an image of unpredictability (what Nixon called the “madman theory”). But Trump isn’t so much a modern Nixon as a clown Nixon, repeating the tragedy of the 37th president’s flawed policies without having the Nixonian intelligence or competence to know what he’s doing. Nixon and Kissinger came to Washington intending to start a foreign policy revolution, one that would rescue America from its increasing isolation with a dual program of detente with the Soviet Union and opening up to China. But to carry out this revolution, they had to work around the permanent government housed in the State Department and the Pentagon. As University of Kentucky historian George Herring noted in his 2008 book From Colony to Superpower, Nixon and Kissinger were “reluctant to share power and certain that a hidebound bureaucracy could be an obstacle to the bold moves they hoped to implement,” so they put foreign policy in the hands of Kissinger as head of the National Security Council, shutting out diplomats and military men. The Byzantine intrigue got so intense that Defense Secretary Melvin Laird and Thomas Moorer, chair man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, began spying on the president and Kissinger. As Herring recounts, the JCS “employed a navy yeoman to purloin documents to keep them informed about what was going on in the White House.” (Nixon, meanwhile, wiretapped Laird’s chief aide.) A similar dynamic is at work in the Trump administration with the so-called axis of adults—Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Homeland Secretary John Kelly, often working with NSC adviser H.R. McMaster—which is pushing for a more traditional hawkish foreign policy, against Trump’s desire for a unilateralist America First revolution. But Trump and his immediate coterie are much less adept at bureaucratic infighting than Nixon and Kissinger were. Trump himself is singularly lazy, unfocused, and ignorant of how the government functions. As a result, while Nixon and Kissinger carried out a foreign policy revolution, Trump’s foreign policy has been characterized by incoherence. |
To the creators of Arrow, Wendy Mericle, Marc Guggenheim and the CW Firstly, I wish to congratulate you on your journey so far. You have created a successful superhero show, which has spawned two other shows in its universe. Arrow has been pioneering for comic book TV, and I could not be more proud of what the show has accomplished. But it’s time for me to tell my story. I used to love Wednesday nights. Four years ago, a dark and gritty vigilante took over my screen, fighting injustice and ending cruelty in Starling City. Every scene, every moment of this man’s journey was a crucial and important step of his evolution to becoming a hero. And for two years, I was happy. My favourite super hero, Green Arrow, had been adapted to a different but also perfect hero for television. Character drama, tight story plots, intriguing backstory, immense action…. no one could surpass him. As more Comic based shows were announced, I was certain: no one could topple the success that was Arrow. I was so proud of the show. I told everyone about it. My parents, my friends, my neighbors. I promoted your show like it was gospel. I used it as an ice-breaker in new situations. I gave you viewers! But… things changed and now we are here, at Season 4 and…. I just can’t do this anymore. I look back at how I felt two seasons ago: how could I feel so different? What has happened to my favourite show? It started during Season 3. The show started well with a huge mystery, but when Oliver was kicked off a cliff, suddenly something changed. My friends around the water cooler at work suddenly didn’t want to talk to me about Arrow. They said they would catch up soon. ‘It has to be good’ I thought to myself. It’s Batman meeting Green Arrow! Obviously, this is good content. I told myself that for Season 3. I knew overall quality had dropped, but that was OK, every show has a down point. But one by one, I found myself having fewer friends to talk to about this show. I turned to social media to be my new water-cooler. But I stuck it out. I couldn’t see what was wrong with the show. No, I dared not see it. I waited intently for Season 4. Like Season 3, it started out well. Huge plots were introduced that had enough content to last the season: mayoral campaign, Damian Darhk, Diggle and Hive, Thea’s blood-lust, Laurel’s love for her sister. This would be the return of the quality I had seen in Season 1 and Season 2. However, what I got was something…else. Someone else: Felicity. The show has been nothing but the struggles and pain and plights of Felicity and her relationships with other characters. Every situation has been about her and her feelings. Any interaction with characters outside of the Arrow cave has involved her: Mr Terrific, Paul, the Board at Palmer Tech, Calculator, Donna Smoak, Damian Darhk and even Samantha. Suddenly, I was watching the struggles of Felicity in Star City, and how every character praised her for being a strong and powerful female model. How insulting. As a woman, I cannot bare to have Felicity as my role model. If she doesn’t have her way she cries, if Oliver does something wrong she gives immature ultimatums, she became head of Palmer Tech by emotionally toying with a man who had lost everything (Ray Palmer). She puts down Oliver, makes snide remarks about him and his abilities. She is a cold, manipulative bitch of a woman. (I could go on about how you are letting an abusive woman emotionally attack a man with PTSD and are presenting it as a ‘healthy relationship’, but that’s a discussion for another day) And no, this is not the fault of her actress or even the character. This is the fault of you, the writers. The inconsistency in your writing has turned characters into different people. Felicity is an unstable, unpredictable, contradictory, abusive and emotional wreck, Laurel is a quiet loner with no ambition, Oliver is a simpering sap of a man and Thea is either comical or traumatized depending on who is in the room with her. I don’t know this team anymore. Where has my Oliver gone? One day he can take down Ras Al Ghul, Slade Wilson or confront Laurel for her behavior. The next, he can barely form two words to Felicity after she breaks up with him, and can be defeated by Lady Cop or Cupid. But this is apparently OK, because the real drama is in ‘Olicity’. All those plot threads introduced at the beginning of the show have either been dropped, casually written out with Deus Ex Machinas or are continuing with zero effort in their execution. Instead, we are supposed to be happy for ‘Olicity’ in Season 4. We are supposed to enjoy the Tumblr references to OTA (Original Team Arrow) and the term ‘Olicity’ even made it into the show! The show doesn’t need action any more. It can live off this forced drama and romance. I remember the days when we, the viewers, were part of Oliver’s team. We were the detectives. We were provided with clues and evidence and plot threads to stitch together and we would race to solve it first. Now? We can’t do that because it is apparent you are making it up as you go. There’s no thought, no logic, no process. Because that is no longer the shows focus. Now, for 40 minutes each Wednesday, I act as mediator between emotional, illogical teenagers in an abusive relationship. And I say no. I write this rant as my message. I will not take this! This show used to be my weekly highlight. This show made me realise my own fight with depression and to take action against it. This show changed my life. And I will not watch it die. Writers of Arrow: You have failed this show. With your need to appease ‘Olicity’ shippers, you have neglected the very fans that spread the word of this show. You have ignored those who have been with you since the Pilot. You have mutated this show from a Green Arrow adaptation to a mere shadow of its former self. I finally know what is wrong with the show. It is not made for Green Arrow fans. It is not a Green Arrow show. I feel lost, being driven away from my favorite super hero. Can you honestly look at what you have created, and say to me that this is the best work you can produce? Can you honestly say that this is what you had envisioned when you set out to make Arrow? Can you say that you are happy with this as your legacy? ...Maybe this is my fault. Maybe I didn’t notice it soon enough. Maybe I let this happen or even asked for it. But is losing fans, losing your writing team, ignoring the source material, is that my fault? Is that The Flashes fault or are you going to blame it on Legends of Tomorrow's budget? I have stood by you through everything, the awful Slade return, the ‘Olicity’ stuff, hell I was concerned for you when you kicked Oliver off a cliff and revived him with penicillin tea! I’m done. I’m done contributing to your viewership and I’m done caring. You should continue pandering to fangirls, write ‘Olicity’, go to Tumblr. I'll link it I have loved you for half your series, but I’m done running after you. |
KIEV (Reuters) - Ukrainian authorities on Friday provisionally freed the last 234 detained protesters under an amnesty offer aimed at defusing protracted street unrest, but activists decried the move as a sham and pressed for further concessions. Riot police stand guard near barricades built at the site of recent clashes with anti-government protesters in Kiev February 13, 2014. REUTERS/Gleb Garanich President Viktor Yanukovich’s government has fixed Monday as the deadline for all occupied municipal buildings to be cleared of protesters and barricades to be removed from city center roads in the capital Kiev in exchange for the release of the detainees and a possible future pardon. Yanukovich negotiated the amnesty offer through parliament to try to take the sting out of street protests in Kiev and elsewhere in Ukraine that have kept him on the back-foot since he spurned a trade pact with the European Union in November. With much of downtown Kiev a fortified camp where hundreds of “Euro-maidan” activists keep up protests behind barricades and sandbags, Yanukovich wants to tamp down tension before he picks a new prime minister, possibly as early as next week. But with protesters highly suspicious about virtually any offer from Yanukovich’s side, there seemed little chance of them relinquishing control of the streets by next week, though they said late on Friday that they might allow traffic to pass on the main road leading to government headquarters. Though police released the last of 234 detained protesters on Friday, criminal charges have not been lifted against them. They face prosecution at some point in the future for participating in “mass disorder” - a charge carrying a sentence of several years in prison - unless their comrades leave occupied buildings and clear blocked roads. General prosecutor Viktor Pshonka said on Friday authorities would immediately begin considering dropping charges if buildings were cleared and key roads in the capital re-opened by Monday. But opposition parties and radical protesters, who clashed violently with police last month, said they wanted all charges dropped immediately. “We have people being released from jail but kept under house arrest, that is to say they are deprived of their rights, and there is a criminal case hanging over each one of them. This is not an amnesty. This does not meet the conditions of the opposition,” Rostislav Pavlenko, a member of opposition leader Vitaly Klitschko’s party, Udar (Punch), was quoted as saying by the Russian news agency Interfax. At least six people have been killed in clashes with riot police - unprecedented in the 22 years since Ukraine gained independence - since thousands of protesters rebelled against Yanukovich’s sudden move to snub the EU in favor of forging closer economic ties with former Soviet master Russia. EAST-WEST RIVALRY The crisis has triggered a geopolitical tussle between East and West: Russia is beckoning Yanukovich with a $15 billion aid package to plug holes in Ukraine’s heavily-indebted economy while the United States and its Western allies have urged him to move back towards an IMF-backed deal with Europe. The East-West rivalry flared anew on Friday when Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, meeting Germany’s Frank-Walter Steinmeier in Moscow, accused the EU of seeking to create a “sphere of influence” on its borders. “Dragging Ukraine to one side, telling it that it needs to choose ‘either or’, either with the EU or with Russia, (the European Union) is in fact trying to create such a sphere of influence,” Lavrov said. There have been no street violence in Kiev for three weeks. But Western governments are worried about an escalation of conflict and breakdown of law and order unless Yanukovich meets opposition demands to allow them to form a government that could act independently of him. They are also pressing him to change the constitution, under which his powers would be reduced and which would mean presidential elections before the scheduled date in March 2015. A pivotal decision will be who Yanukovich names as his candidate for prime minister to replace the Russian-born Mykola Azarov, whom he sacked on January 28 in a vain attempt to appease the protesters. He has until the end of the month to reach a decision although parliament speaker Volodymyr Rybak was quoted by Interfax on Friday as saying he thought Yanukovich might present his choice to parliament next Tuesday. With the hryvnia under devaluation pressure, he has to find a new steward of the economy quickly. |
In the previous post I said that the problematic-ness of current recidivism models (ie algorithms which predict the risk of a person who committed a crime re-offending) cannot be conceptualized using only statistical knowledge. In this post I will try to quickly explain the background of this issue, show algorithmically how these biases occur and why I think these models fundamentally fail to help the problem of mass incarceration in the United States. (Sorry that the post is long…) The most widely used recidivism risk assessment algorithm in the US is the COMPAS (Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions) model developed by the Northpointe company, a for-profit statistical/criminological modelling organization. It relies on a 150-question questionnaire which is filled in after a person has been arrested. The results of this questionnaire are then fed through a Cox proportional hazards model to give a prediction of the relative risk that this person will commit another crime on a scale from 1-10. This model is both used to set bail amounts and to aid judges in sentencing (after a jury has already convicted the individual of a crime). About 6 months ago, ProPublica, a data journalism non-profit, published “Machine Bias” where they showed that the model systematically overestimated the risk score of defendants of colour and underestimated the risk score of white defendants. They demonstrated this by showing that black defendants who didn’t commit any new crimes (ie didn’t recidivate) where mislabelled as high risk 45% of the time (compared to 23% for white defendants). Conversely, white defendants who did recidivate were mislabelled as low risk 48% of the time (compared to 28% for black defendants). This represents a deep rooted systemic bias in the model since it is not fair that defendants of colour are consistently misclassified to their disadvantage while white defendants are misclassified in a way that benefits them. Northpointe responded that this analysis was incorrect and published their reanalysis in a (purposefully?) dense, new, academic report. In this report they re-drew the cut-offs of the “High Risk” versus “Low Risk” classifications (ProPublica used a cutoff risk level of 4 while Northpointe’s reanalysis used a cutoff level of 7 for “High Risk”) and claimed that this completely reversed the ProPublica findings, attempting to demonstrate that the bias was merely a function of the analysis. Also, they stated that the model is internally consistent in that a score of 7 represents the same probability of recidivism for an individual regardless of their race. The result of internal consistency was confirmed by researchers at the Crime and Justice Institute in Boston, and again here and by researchers at Stanford here. These analyses make the point that internal consistency seems to be a non-negotiable prerequisite for a model to be considered fair. After all, if the score meant different things for different racial or gender groups, then what is the point of comparing risk scores at all? The problem is complicated however, by the results of Kleinberg et al. and Chouldechova who concurrently proved that risk assessments of this nature cannot simultaneously satisfy mathematical conditions of internal consistency and conditions of fairly distributed misclassification errors. Furthermore, Chouldechova proved that in cases where one group has a higher base risk (in this case, people of colour have a higher rate of recidivism) the algorithm will usually discriminate against that group when it comes to misclassification error. This is another demonstration that algorithms can’t judge fairness or morality so it is up to humans to set ethical norms and to program algorithms to follow them. This means manually deciding which is worse: being misclassified as high risk when you are black and so already in a vulnerable position or classifying a white person as low risk when they really will go on to commit new crimes. (These are two distinct results mathematically, so you would need to specify an order of desirability of these outcomes for all four types of misclassifications.) At this point in my research I was demotivated; both confused and unconvinced. Confused because despite the clear mathematical and ethical controversies, these models are being adopted at an increasing rate, and unconvinced because amid the pages of proofs, graphs and back and forth rebuttals, I felt these authors had missed some key points with clear decolonial importance. Firstly, despite the fact that most people agree that internal consistency is a necessary aspect of designing a fair model (so that a score of 7 means a 7 regardless of race), there is no reason to believe that police, judges or juries will view all individuals who score similarly as equally risky. We all bear individual biases which society has taught us and this is one of the reasons the criminal justice system is so unequal currently. We see that not all individuals who commit the same crime are treated the same way (think of white college athletes in rape trials) so why should a low risk score mean anything to a judge that implicitly believes all black and brown people are criminals? On that note as well, one writer brought up that many judges say that they don’t use risk assessment models to aid their decision making even if they are available to them. This to me indicates the possibility of amplifying inherent racial or gender biases as users judge whether or not to trust and use the risk score generated by the model. In my opinion, the use of these models (even if they could be made unbiased) will not be able to combat subjective preference and oppression in the criminal justice system unless a concerted effort is made concurrently inside the system. Secondly, I strongly problematize the criminological reasoning used by Northpointe in developing the COMPAS score as well as the previous recidivism modelling work it is based on. Looking at the questionnaire developed for the COMPAS test it is not difficult to see how anti-poor and anti-black the field is. Questions are organized based on 15 predictors for criminality including “Financial Problems,” “Vocation/Education,” “Family Criminality” and “Antisocial Attitudes.” Starr notes that no separation is made between characteristics which are relevant or irrelevant to blameworthiness. This is the same for static versus changeable characteristics. This means that since higher risk scores lead to more harsh punishments, factors like unstable family history (which can’t be changed), low level of educational achievement (which is irrelevant to blameworthiness), or drug or alcohol abuse problems (which can be treated with professional help) all increase your chances of being locked up now because they increase your probability of recidivism in the future. I would argue that this is ethically problematic because these factors are legally irrelevant to the current crime. In fact, Harcourt wrote a great paper which argues that the inclusion of these variables means that the model can also predict race with nearly 100% accuracy so that even if race is not an explicit variable, the models can use combinations as a proxy for race. This is just as problematic as using race or nationality directly in the risk assessment process, it is just masked better and even hearkens back to the days when criminology and eugenics were explicitly linked. A third and incredibly important problem I have with risk assessment models is that the data they use is biased against black and brown people because the criminal justice system is historically biased. Algorithms are only as good as the data they are trained on and unless data shortcomings are explicitly dealt with (like in this paper), any injustices present in the dataset will be repeated over and over in model predictions. Police patrol black communities differently and prey on minority groups to increase policing statistics or to get revenue from fines like in Ferguson. Black defendants face worse legal representation, more bias from juries and are disproportionately affected by mandatory minimums for many non-violent offences. Overall this contributes to a criminal records dataset in the US which is incredibly biased against black and brown defendants. How could anyone expect to use this data to train an algorithm to predict crime without it being biased? The prospect is almost laughable. Until the bias which is due to differential policing and sentencing policies has been accounted for and removed from training datasets, there is no hope of creating unbiased recidivism models. Lastly, and most importantly, a question which no one I encountered during my research was asking is: would accurately predicting an individual’s risk of recidivism (if it were possible) give any important, objective information about how to help this person? Obviously many people feel that this is an important outcome, but I would argue no. Predicting recidivism risk to me seems to actually wastes the richness of the information in the questions on the one simplistic outcome they measure. Looking at the questions, they are biased in numerous ways when attempting to predict recidivism but many of them could give valuable information on how to best help the defendant to not commit any future crimes. Measurements of social vulnerability such as poverty, education level, substance use and feelings of boredom or hopelessness, etc. could be used to develop new data driven treatment plans to dynamically help vulnerable individuals from turning to criminality. Such algorithms, based on principles of social justice as opposed to criminal punishment, could improve objective consistent sentencing and hopefully help problems of mass incarceration and preferential treatment of whites. However, such an algorithm could only work if there was a massive re-prioritizing of the values that drive criminal justice, policing and incarceration. Harcourt writes that this could start in the short term with doing away with mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug offences. The incredible sociologist Robert Staples goes much deeper and writes that in the US legal system victims of mass incarceration should be conceptualized as political prisoners because of the colonial systems of oppression and disenfranchisement which resulted in their imprisonment. To me, this is the only place to start from when thinking critically about criminal justice and how deep the problems go. Even the constitution was a tool to justify slavery, the 3/5ths compromise and then segregation. Where is the incentive to follow laws that were explicitly designed to perpetuate a system of oppression which is still present today and allows for white collar criminals to steal millions and serve no jail time? For this reason and all the reasons above, I think that decolonization of recidivism risk assessment models is, at this stage, not possible. The problems within the criminal justice system are too deep. I would argue that statisticians should stop trying to tinker with the algorithmic mechanisms of the models to decrease their racial bias and rather focus on advising politicians and judges to stop using these models in sentencing and bail setting because at this stage, their use can only serve to increase disparities in justice between whites and blacks and make already vulnerable individuals even more desperate. I will try to keep on top of this issue as I read and write more. I am attempting to compile a list of which recidivism risk prediction models are used where in the US and for what. Please leave any thoughts or questions in the comments, or get in contact with me directly via email or facebook. |
For "Quotidian Record," artist Brian House transformed a year's worth of location data into a handsome vinyl. Photo: Artur Ratton The record represents the movements as an 11-minute track; each revolution is one day. Photo: Brian House Photo: Brian House Photo: Artur Ratton Photo: Brian House Photo: Brian House Photo: Brian House One of the scariest things about all the data we generate is how little we seem to care about it. It's like we've come to accept it as some intrinsic, inevitable thing, blowing off us harmlessly and invisibly like pheromones and settling, simply, somewhere else. Of course, it doesn't just settle; it collects. Or, more accurately, it gets collected. Former NSA official and whistleblower Thomas Drake describes our government's relationship with data as "a hoarding complex." Corporations, too, are increasingly seeing the value in the stuff. But whether you find all that business downright Orwellian or just irksome, those efforts risk obscuring the fact that data can give us entirely new ways to look at our lives. And new ways of hearing them. For a project called "Quotidian Record," media artist Brian House turned a year's worth of his movements into an 11-minute musical track and stamped it on a handsome piece of vinyl. In bleeps and bloops, the record follows House's daily routine. Every revolution represents a single day. It sounds a little bit like Animal Collective. >"Each place gets assigned a step of the scale in the music." House recorded his location data with Open Paths, a private, personal tracking app he helped develop last year during a stint at the New York Times' Research and Development Lab. When he had a year's worth collected, he started thinking about what to do with it. Maps were an obvious choice, but not an especially compelling one. "I'm interested in the human perspective, not an all-seeing top down perspective," he explains. But it occurred to him that his data contained something that cartographic representations could never capture: rhythm. "The hypothesis of the piece became the idea that the cadence of everyday life is in fact musical by virtue of the inherent, semi-repeating patterns that we trace in the world." So House cooked up an algorithm that identified the places he visited most, and set about putting them to music. "Each place gets assigned a step of the scale in the music, and each city a key," he explains on the project's page. "Theres kind of an underlying pulse to the composition…which represents two hours of actual time. And what you hear on top of that are these little motifs, the geographic narratives that I cycle through over the course of my daily movements." House tapped Brooklyn-based graphic designer Greg Mihalko to develop the look of the record itself, which shows the time of day and the city you're listening to at any given moment. In an age of infographics, quantified selves, and the all-fixing promise of Big Data, House's record is refreshingly useless. "Quotidian Record is about experiencing data in a way that might be more interpretive than practical," he admits. But the idea behind the project–that data can be intimate and expressive and is, in the end, ours to tinker with–is a vital one. It's the opposite of your location data ending up in an inscrutable spreadsheet or an NSA dropbox or a hyper-targeted advertisement. It shows us how art might represent a different place for our data–one that's vastly more accessible. "Music is felt intuitively, so we don't have to analyze the data to extract meaning," House says. "In a way, it's meant as a bit of a warning," he continues. "The data exhaust everyone produces everyday through the use of these devices, computers and cellphones and ATMs and self-driving cars, is more personal than we think, and we have to reckon with that…One way is to find alternative means of relating to data, ways that are not about classification and commodification and control but which emphasize embodiment and subjectivity and expressivity. There is a critical dimension in pointing out that data are always qualitative and mean different things depending on how they are cast. Google and the NSA don't have to get the final word." |
Modest Mouse have announced a new US tour. It kicks off May 23 in Spokane, Washington, and includes shows in Oregon, California, Missouri, and more. Check out the band’s full list of tour stops below. Modest Mouse’s last album, Strangers to Ourselves, arrived in 2015. They hit the road alongside Brand New in a co-headlining tour last year. Modest Mouse: 05-23 Spokane, WA - Knitting Factory 05-24 Eugene, OR - Cuthbert Amphitheater 05-26 Napa, CA - BottleRock 05-28 Pomona, CA - Fox Theater 05-30 San Diego, CA - Cal Coast Credit Union Open Air Theatre 05-31 Phoenix, AZ - Crescent Ballroom 06-02 Anaheim, CA - House of Blues 06-03 Las Vegas, NV - Brooklyn Bowl 06-05 Salt Lake City, UT - Rockwell Room @ the Complex 06-08 Oklahoma City, OK - Diamond Ballroom 06-09 St Louis, MO - The Pageant 06-10 Lincoln, NE - Pinewood Bowl Watch Pitchfork Classic’s episode on Modest Mouse’s The Lonesome Crowded West on Pitchfork.tv: |
Close Moto G4 leaks again, one day prior to the official unveiling of the much anticipated Motorola device. A press render that presents the frontal side of the upcoming device recently landed thanks to Evan Blass, more famous for his Twitter handle @evleaks. Blass posted the image paired with a catch-phrase that caused some confusion among his followers. The quote read "Say hello to your little bro," and the tipster linked the image to one of his previous Moto G leaks. Although the Moto G leak hinted at the fact that the recent image was from the same neighborhood, some reporters and tweeters interpreted the "little bro" image as belonging to the Moto E series. The tipster eventually made it clear that the recent image is of the Motorola Moto G4, and stated that the "Little bro" reference was a way of bringing the bigger Motorola Moto G4 Pro in the picture. Both devices will be unveiled at a public event on May 17. Surprised there was so much confusion here. Thought quoting the G4 Plus leak would make it obvious that it's the G4. https://t.co/dVa8wcR0oT — Evan Blass (@evleaks) May 15, 2016 Motorola announced that two media events will take place tomorrow in both Mexico and New Delhi, where the Motorola Moto G4 Plus and Moto G4 will be showcased. In the previous weeks, plenty of leaks surfaced in the media with details about the two handsets. We are happy to report that the Moto G4 Plus will likely come with a fingerprint scanner in its home button. It should be mentioned that the naming strategy of Motorola is a tad confusing: there were no G2 or G3 models, so why the manufacturer went for the G4 is hard to tell. The only reasoning behind it could be the fact that Motorola did indeed release three versions of Moto phones prior to the G4. Another Motorola device that will come equipped with a fingerprint sensor is the Moto X4 that also leaked recently. The phone seems to pack the ShatterShield screen protection tech that was first seen in Motorola Droid Turbo 2. Some might see a strong resemblance between the newly leaked Moto G4 and the Nexus 4 design, but we will have a full image tomorrow, after the events. We will keep you posted on all the details Motorola reveals at its upcoming events. ⓒ 2018 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. |
Clinton campaign chair John Podesta said in a statement, "it is extraordinary that we would see something like this just 11 days out from a presidential election." "The Director owes it to the American people to immediately provide the full details of what he is now examining. We are confident this will not produce any conclusions different from the one the FBI reached in July," Podesta said in a statement. The State Department declined to comment to Reuters. NBC News reported that officials familiar with Comey's letter said it did not appear that anyone had intentionally withheld the new evidence. The letter was sent to lawmakers "out of an abundance of caution," a senior law enforcement official told NBC News. The official also told NBC News that these emails were not held by someone who was investigated in the Clinton email case. NBC reported that the emails were not revealed by hackers or in the Wikileaks cache related to Clinton's team. The newly discovered emails did not come from her private email server, the Associated Press reported citing a U.S. official. Comey had previously announced that his department was not recommending that the Justice Department bring charges against Clinton for her handling of classified information on a private server. In that July speech, Comey had insisted the decision was made without outside influence and that it was the professional judgement of the FBI which led to his announcement. "Although there is evidence of potential violations regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case," Comey said at the time. That announcement came as a relief to Democrats who feared that charges against their party's presidential nominee would stymie her efforts to win the White House. After a long campaign season, the November 8 elections were looking to go in Clinton's favor, according to most polling averages, but Friday's announcement could potentially offer a major political inflection point. Even if Clinton were to win on election day, the pall of an ongoing investigation would likely weigh on the president-elect. The White House said, however, that nothing has happened that would change President Barack Obama's view of Clinton. For his part, Donald Trump celebrated the news at a Friday campaign event. "They are reopening the case into her criminal and illegal conduct that threatens the security of the United States of America" Trump said to loud applause. "Hillary Clinton's corruption is on a scale we have never seen before, we must not let her take her criminal scheme into the Oval Office. I have great respect for the fact that the FBI and the Department of Justice are now willing to have the courage to right the horrible mistake that they made." |
This is the fourth part in a short series of blog posts about quantum Monte Carlo (QMC). The series is derived from an introductory lecture I gave on the subject at the University of Guelph. Part 1 – calculating Pi with Monte Carlo Part 2 – Galton’s peg board and the central limit theorem Part 3 – Markov Chain Monte Carlo Introduction to QMC – Part 4: High dimensional calculations with VMC In the previous post, Markov Chains were introduced along with the Metropolis algorithm. We then looked at a Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) Python script for sampling probability distributions. Today we’ll use a modified version of that script to perform calculations inspired by quantum mechanics. This will involve sampling high dimensional probability distributions for systems with multiple particles. We are heading into complicated territory, so I set up the first section of this post in question-answer format. Why is it called VMC and not MCMC? As far as I can tell, variational Monte Carlo (VMC) is the same as MCMC. The name was probably inspired by the variational theorem from quantum mechanics, but we’ll get to this later. For now let’s simply pose the problem: Given a probability distribution , where is the configuration vector for the positions of particles in a box, calculate the average energy of the system. Why do we need to worry about probability distributions? Because in the quantum world things to not always have well defined positions, but instead only have well defined probabilities of being in specific positions. Hence the existence of probability distributions. What function are we calculating? We’ll calculate the average value of the local energy , which is defined as the sum of kinetic and potential energies: It’s not unreasonable to plug in some and calculate by hand or with a computer, but to calculate the average we’ll need to sample the probability distribution with Monte Carlo. Kinetic term T The kinetic energy will depend on the second derivative of the wave function, which is relatively difficult and computationally time consuming to calculate. To avoid dealing with this beast we’ll use a made-up function It could be interpreted as the particles having more kinetic energy (i.e., larger ) depending on how far they are from the center of the box (as we’ll see the box is centered about r=(0,0)). This doesn’t make sense physically of course. Potential term V This is the cumulative potential energy of the particles, and unlike it will be calculated “for real” (i.e., how it actually can be done in practice). We’ll assume the system is split into equal sized groups of different “species” particles, denoted and [1], and only consider interactions between particles of different species. In this case we have where is the two-body potential and is the distance between particles and . The notation ensures that we only count each interaction once. We'll take to be a shifted Gaussian: from scipy import stats mu = 0.5 sig = 0.1 y = lambda r: -stats.norm.pdf((r-mu)/(sig)) We’ll focus on the case where , for which the potential becomes What probability distribution will we sample? From elementary quantum mechanics, the probability density is given by the square of the wave function. So, for our many-body wave function , we have that The absolute value is meaningful when the wave function has imaginary components, which is not the case for us today. Our first will be a linear combination of single-particle wave functions and [2]: def prob_density(R, N): ''' The square of the many body wave function Psi_V(R). ''' # e.g. for N=4: # psi_v = psi(r_1) + psi(r_2) + psi(r_3) + psi(r_4) psi_v = sum([psi_1(R[n][0], R[n][1]) for n in range(N)]) + \ sum([psi_2(R[n][0], R[n][1]) for n in range(N)]) # Setting anything outside the box equal to zero # This will keep particles inside for coordinate in R.ravel(): if abs(coordinate) >= 1: psi_v = 0 return np.float64(psi_v**2) Our configuration space is two dimensional (so we can visualize it nicely) and so particle positions consist of just and coordinates, i.e. . Lets take to be a positive Gaussian and to be a negative Gaussian. def psi_1(x, y): ''' A single-particle wave function. ''' g1 = lambda x, y: mlab.bivariate_normal(x, y, 0.2, 0.2, -0.25, -0.25, 0) return g1(x, y) def psi_2(x, y): ''' A single-particle wave function. ''' g2 = lambda x, y: -mlab.bivariate_normal(x, y, 0.2, 0.2, 0.25, 0.25, 0) return g2(x, y) The summation of and looks like: If we take this summation to be the wave function of a system with just one particle then the associated probability distribution for the particle location would look like: So what about a plot of the many-body wave function ? We would require a higher dimensional space for this. Take the example of particles. In this case we have and would need to include an axes for not just “ and ” as done above, but for , , , , , , , and . Calculating the average energy We’ll focus on the particle system where 2 are species and 2 are species . The wave function in this case is Running a quick simulation with 1000 walkers (i.e., 1000 samples per step) for 40 steps, the samples look like this: The top left panel shows the initial state where walkers are distributed randomly. As the system equilibrates we see them drifting into areas where the probability density is large. Species is plotted in blue and in red. To calculate we average over many values of for equilibrated samples. An example using 200 walkers is shown below. Each point is an average over all walkers at the given step. In this case we calculate an average energy of , where the first 200 steps have been excluded so we only average over the equilibrated system. The error, as shown by the red band around the average, is calculated as the sample standard deviation of [3]: Running a calculation with 2000 walkers, we can see a dramatically reduced error: Now we calculate , which agrees within error to the previous calculation. Equilibration times In the calculations above, the system appeared to equilibrate almost immediately. This is because the initial configurations were randomly distributed about the box. If instead we force the particles to start near the corners of the box (far away from the areas where the probability distribution is large) we can clearly see decreasing as equilibration occurs. Below we plot this along with the particle density from various regions of the calculation (as marked in yellow in the right panel). Variational Theorem The usefulness of VMC for quantum mechanical problems has to do with the variational theorem. In words, this theorem says that the energy expectation value (denoted for short) is minimized by the true ground state wave function of the system. This can be written mathematically as follows: where is the ground state energy of the system. A proof can be found at the bottom of page 60 of my masters thesis. The triple-bar equals sign simply means “is defined as”, what’s important is the other part of the equation. If the name of the game is to find the ground state energy, which is often the case, then a good estimate can be achieved using VMC. A can include variable parameters to optimize, which is done by calculating for a particular set of parameters (the same way we’ve calcualted in this post) and repeating for different parameters until the lowest value is found. The resulting energy estimate will be an upper bound to the true ground state energy of the system. Calculating average energy with a different many-body wave function To show how changing can impact the calculation of we’ll adjust the wave function: where the two species and now have different single-particle wave functions. As shown above, we define as the left Gaussian (looking back to the first figure) and as the right one. For we now have: The new probability density will be: def prob_density(R, N): ''' The square of the many body wave function Psi_V(R). ''' psi_v = sum([psi_1(R[n][0], R[n][1]) for n in range(int(N/2))]) + \ sum([psi_2(R[n][0], R[n][1]) for n in range(int(N/2),N)]) # Setting anything outside the box equal to zero # This will keep particles inside for coordinate in R.ravel(): if abs(coordinate) >= 1: psi_v = 0 return np.float64(psi_v**2) This should have the effect of separating the two species of particles. Do you think will become larger or smaller as a result? Plotting some of the samples, we can see how the system now equilibrates according to the new probability density: Comparing a calculation with the new (red) to the old one (blue), we see an increase in : Thanks for reading! You can find the entire ipython notebook document here. If you would like to discuss any of the plots or have any questions or corrections, please write a comment. You are also welcome to email me at agalea91@gmail.com or tweet me @agalea91 [1] – For example we could have a system of cold atoms with two species that are identical except for the total spin. Where one species is spin-up and the other is spin-down. [2] – I made the many-body wave function a sum of single-particle wavefunctions but it would have been more realistic to make it a product of ‘s as can be seen here (for example). [3] – In practice, the error on Monte Carlo calculations is often given by the standard deviation divided by . Otherwise the error does not decrease as increases, which should intuitively be the case because we are building confidence in the calculation as the simulation is run longer. For more information see this article – specifically the first few equations and Figure 1. Advertisements |
Please note this article is not another case of a Democrat insulting the Republican party and their religious members. I don't like either political party and I've lost hope in the current political system until major changes are made. While I've lost most interest in national politics, some things still catch my eye. But what bothers me the most, and always gets my attention, is when a politician campaigns on a the premise that their allegiance to their God makes them a better person than the other candidate. Fast forward a few months after their election and there they are obstructing ethical (i.e. Godly) legislation for their constituents only to make their donors happy. If a politician's adherence to the Bible is what makes them a good person and good elected official, what do they become when they no longer adhere to the Bible? You can understand why I feel my arguments made here are sound: The voting and campaign records of Congress are widely-available public records, and since 7 out of the 10 Bible verses I used are from either Matthew, Mark, Luke or John, meaning that 70% of this is literally the Gospel truth (I hope that means the other 30% is the naked truth) ------ see also: Republican Talking Points Flowchart |
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines) — Senator Leila De Lima refused to enter a plea on Monday over the "disobedience to summons" case filed against her. The court entered a 'not guilty' plea on her behalf. "Tuloy po ang laban ko kasi inosente po ako. Lahat ng kaso na finille po nila sa akin, panggigipit lang po 'yan," de Lima said in an ambush interview after the hearing. [Translation: We will continue this fight because I am innocent. All of the cases filed against me are mere harrassment.] "Sana po pagbigyan ng Supreme Court ang kahilingan ko, na mapalaya po ako," she added. [Translation: I hope the Supreme Court fulfills my wish to be set free.] The Department of Justice filed the case with the Quezon City Metropolitan Trial Court on December 21, 2016 against De Lima, who advised her former driver-bodyguard, Ronnie Dayan, to snub summons to attend the House of Representatives' investigation into the alleged drug trade inside the New Bilibid Prison. The charge stemmed from the complaint filed by House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez and Representative Rey Umali on December 13, 2016. BREAKING: Sen. Leila De Lima refuses to enter plea before QC court https://t.co/2nODEQgra2 pic.twitter.com/U1PwI1Unyj — CNN Philippines (@cnnphilippines) March 13, 2017 The lawmakers said De Lima's action was a violation of Article 150 of the Revised Penal Code or disobedience to summons. Atty. Philip Sawali, Senator de Lima's chief-of-staff, however said that De Lima did not induce or pressure Dayan into snubbing the summons. "Base mismo sa complaint, base mismo sa house hearing..., sa transcript, ay humingi ng opinyon si Ginoong Ronnie Dayan, at ang opinyon ay 'Maaari bang 'wag ka na munang pumunta doon, dahil hihiyain lang tayo parehas diyan?' 'Yun po ay opinyon," Sawali said. [Translation: Based on the complaints, house hearing transcript, Mr. Ronnie Dayan was asking for an opinion. And [De Lima's] opinion was, "Would it be okay that you don't show up, because we'll both be humiliated there?" That's an opinion.] De Lima earlier admitted to "advising" Dayan to hide, but she did not order him to skip the hearings. Related: Dayan: De Lima urged me to skip probe, hide Asked if Dayan would be called on to testify on De Lima's behalf, Sawali said that it's all up to the senator. De Lima's legal counsel filed a motion for reconsideration on March 10 but this was denied because it missed the March 9 deadline. The next hearing is scheduled on April 26, and House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez is ordered to testify against the senator. The senator has been detained without bail at the Philippine National Police Custodial Center since February 24, 2017. Muntinlupa Regional Trial Court Branch 205 Judge Juanita Guerrero ordered De Lima's arrest after she cited probable cause for charges against the senator. She was accused of abetting illegal drug trade in the New Bilibid Prison while she was Justice secretary from 2010 to 2015. CNN Philippines correspondent Rex Remitio contributed to this report. |
Netherlands v Sweden Betting: Visitors to compound Dutch misery While the Oranje need a massive win in order to reach the World Cup play-offs, Al Hain-Cole expects them to struggle to even beat Andersson's team The will be hoping for a miracle when they welcome to the Amsterdam ArenA for Tuesday’s final World Cup qualifier. Needing to win by seven clear goals in order to leapfrog their opponents into the play-off spot, the Oranje are available at 20/23 (1.87) with SportPesa to at least end on a high by coming out on top in Amsterdam. Sitting just a point behind in second place, Janne Andersson’s team are priced at 29/10 (3.90) to give themselves a chance of automatic qualification with an impressive win here. The sides shared a 1-1 draw when they met in Solna last September, and there are similar odds of 29/10 (3.90) on offer on them cancelling each other out once again in this one. While all the talk going into this final clash of how impossible a task Dick Advocaat’s men face in order to snatch a place in the play-offs, their guests actually have a rather more realistic target to aim for. Should France draw against Belarus in their final match then victory would see the Blue-Yellow to leapfrog them into first place, while an unlikely home defeat in Paris would mean a single point would also be enough to claim top spot. Considering Didier Deschamps’ side were held to a 0-0 draw by Luxembourg in their previous home game, the Swedes will certainly not be contenting themselves with a mere play-off spot just yet. In high spirits after racking up their biggest win in 79 years by beating Luxembourg 8-0 on Saturday, the guests certainly appear unlikely to roll over and allow Dick Advocaat’s outfit to claim any sort of convincing victory – let alone the seven-goal thrashing they require. Instead, odds of 10/11 (1.91) seem to offer solid value on the Dutch saying goodbye to their World Cup dreams by failing to beat their confident opposition for the third encounter in a row. |
Image caption A police image showed Mr Mandara, in white, smoking a cigar while being led away Italian police have arrested the head of one of Italy's biggest mozzarella makers on charges he had close ties to the mafia. Giuseppe Mandara - who once dubbed himself the "Armani of Mozzarella" - was arrested with three associates near Naples, police said. They accused Mr Mandara of collaborating with the Casalesi clan of the Naples-based Camorra mafia. His Mandara Group firm is also accused of producing counterfeit cheese. The company allegedly mixed cow's milk with more expensive buffalo milk that is the key ingredient in the trademark soft white cheese, and passed off batches of provolone cheese as a more expensive kind, AFP news agency reported. In pictures released by police, Mr Mandara was shown being led away by police with a cigar in his mouth. 'Linked from 1980s' Police said they had seized 100m euros (£79m; $123m) worth of assets. "We have seized the whole company," Paolo Di Napoli, an officer from the environmental protection section of the Carabinieri police, told AFP. Police said the links between Mr Mandara and the mafia went back to the 1980s, when a mafia bailout helped rescue his business from bankruptcy. Mandara mozzarella is sold across the world, reports the BBC's Mark Duff in Milan. The cheese itself is a key ingredient in some classic Italian recipes such as caprese - a simple tomato, basil and mozzarella salad - and the trademark Neapolitan pizza. The mozzarella producers' association was quoted as saying it had expelled the Mandara Group and would take an active part in the investigations. This is not the first time allegations have surfaced of links between mozzarella producers and the Camorra, our correspondent says - but it is the first time such an illustrious name has fallen foul of police investigations. |
It’s been nearly two years since Freecsale introduced its i.MX6 processor. The 1.2 GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor hasn’t exactly taken the world by storm since then… but there are now a number of inexpensive tablets powered by Freescale’s chip. And the 10 inch tablets are reasonably cheap, with prices around $225 or less. Retailer W2Comp contacted me today to let me know about the Ampe A10, which the store calls the first Chinese quad-core tablet. You can pick one up for $225 plus free shipping. But a quick check of AliExpress shows that the Ampe A10 isn’t alone. Several sellers are offering tablets with virtually identical specifications. They’re selling for as little as $204, but you’ll have to pay around $25 for shipping from China on those models. Interestingly, if you search AliExpress for “Ampe A10,” you get a bunch of listings for tablets with single-core Allwinner A10 ARM Cortex-A8 processors. It looks like all of these tablets feature 10.1 inch, 1280 x 800 pixel IPS display, 1GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, WiFi, Bluetooth, front and rear cameras, and Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandiwch software. They feature 10-point multitouch capacitive touchscreen displays and USB, SD card, and HDMI ports. The tablets have ARM Mali 400 graphics. According to the product listings, they also feature support for the Google Play Store, which should make downloading third party apps easy. I wouldn’t expect the same build quality or performance from one of these tablets as from an iPad, Kindle Fire, or Nexus 7. But $225 isn’t a bad price for a 10 inch tablet with a quad-core processor. |
The right's deluded shutdown euphoria According to conservative media, a government shutdown is either a non-issue... or an unalloyed positive Judging by the rightwing media's response, you'd think a partial government shutdown was good news — or no news at all. Although the mainstream media (and even Sen. John McCain) spent Tuesday morning focused on a new Quinnipiac poll showing the Republican shutdown strategy to be political poison, the rightwing media opted instead to ignore or downplay the impact of a shutdown, while maintaining its demand that Obamacare is repealed, defunded, delayed, or diminished. Advertisement: After spending the first few hours of the shutdown cracking jokes about its consequences, Erick Erickson, the Fox News contributor and editor-in-chief of RedState, wrote a post on the influential rightwing blog arguing that a government shutdown wasn't such a big deal after all. "The government is shut down and the world is spinning on," wrote Erickson. "You and I are still alive ... The President promised us horror upon horror with sequestration and we didn’t get it. They’ll do the same now." For Erickson, in fact, the biggest concern was not the deleterious effects of a government shutdown, but the prospect that Republicans might agree to end it without extracting the right's desired Obamacare concessions. "The GOP only has something if it now stands its ground and demands defunding Obamacare," wrote Erickson before adding that Republicans "must be in this to win this." After arguing that a short-term shutdown "will do nothing but embarrass [the GOP]," Erickson ended his post with a warning to any potentially wavering Republicans: "The fight must be to either now keep government shut down till the Democrats blink or drive from office Republicans who vote to fund Obamacare." Yet Erickson's single-minded intransigence wasn't reflected by all other rightwing media sources. Others, like the neoconservative Weekly Standard or the rabble-rousing Breitbart, opted instead to either obliquely address or completely ignore the shutdown. The Weekly Standard's Daniel Halper's first post on Tuesday morning, for example, only indirectly acknowledged the shutdown crisis, and did so through the lens of implicitly criticizing the president for the number of staffers he'll maintain throughout the shutdown. Breitbart, meanwhile, didn't even bother to run a front-page story about the shutdown, opting instead to focus on the technical glitches accompanying Obamacare's rollout. Meanwhile, National Review, one of the most influential rightwing media sources in the country, also chose to indirectly respond to the shutdown, releasing early Tuesday morning an Op-Ed from the magazine's editors titled, "Now Is the Time to Halt the ACA." While the piece never explicitly addresses the government shutdown, it's hard not to interpret the editors' exhortation that "now is the time to act" as a call to arms for the conservative rank-and-file to support House Republicans in the shutdown struggle. The piece's sub-headline, urging Republicans to halt the bill "before it entrenches itself," is just further evidence of where the editors' sympathies lie. |
Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk seems like the ideal person to get excited about flying cars. The Tesla CEO has made a fortune in developing future-facing vehicles, but he’s rather downbeat about the idea that the skies could hold the solution to congestion woes. Instead, during an interview about his new tunnel-digging venture, he said the future of transport lies underground, naturally. “Obviously, I like flying things, but it’s difficult to imagine the flying car becoming a scalable solution,” he told Bloomberg Businessweek. “If somebody doesn’t maintain their flying car, it could drop a hubcap and guillotine you.” “Your anxiety level will not decrease as a result of things that weigh a lot buzzing around your head.” Musk has talked before about how he sees tunnel digging as the way forward, and even though he’s explicitly tweeted that he’s “actually going to do this,” many were still unconvinced it wasn’t all an elaborate joke. But Musk is adamant: his new venture is real, it’s called the Boring Company, and it’s currently working on its first project to build a pedestrian tunnel in the SpaceX parking lot. Bloomberg Businessweek's Musk-mole-themed cover. Traffic congestion is an undeniable issue in a lot of cities, but a lot of people in Silicon Valley see flying cars as the solution. Uber has published a white paper proposing a vertical takeoff and landing vehicle, ideal for confined cityscapes, that would work in conjunction with hired car rides at either end. The Silicon Valley branch of Airbus has developed a “Vahana” flying taxi prototype that would be ideal for Uber’s plans: Airbus' Vahana. Outside of Silicon Valley, Dubai has decided to get into the flying taxi business. At the World Government Summit on Monday, the city’s transportation authority revealed plans to introduce self-driving drones that carry passengers as soon as July. The initial launch will use the EHang 184 drone that can fly for 25 minutes carrying up to 220 pounds of weight, cruising at a speed of 37 mph around the city. INVERSE LOOT DEALS Meet the Pod The first bed that learns the perfect temperature for your sleep, and dynamically warms or cools according to your needs. Buy Now It’s not just ride-sharing where people are exploring the idea of a flying car. Google co-founder Larry Page has founded two startups committed to making the flying car a commercially available product. The problem, as Musk sees it, is that a flying car would involve a lot of force to maintain its position in the sky. The people on the ground would bear the brunt of the produced wind, noise and debris. It’s also a far more technically complex solution to city congestion than tunnels. Cities already have tunnels. They work with existing vehicles. With Musk’s vision, cities could have up to 30 layers of tunnels, ferrying various types of vehicle around. By digging down, cities would add greater infrastructure capacity without using precious horizontal space. The first step is improving existing tunnel technology: Musk wants to bring the price of digging down by making more powerful boring machines that are capable of digging even while tunnel walls are being built. Right now, that’s not possible, but at least the Boring Company won’t need to worry about bigger problems like how to stop cars falling out of the sky. |
FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA. -- Around here, one of the most powerful men in the nation is known as plain old John Stevens -- courteous bridge player, early-morning regular at the country club's tennis courts, a quiet but active condo neighbor who checks his weight in the gym before heading off for his daily swim. But those who cross paths with him in his second home of South Florida have the same question as the president of the United States, the leadership of Congress, the abortion rights combatants, the disgruntled conservative legal activists and the grateful civil libertarians, all of whom know him as Justice John Paul Stevens. "Do you think he's going to retire?" asks his friend Raymond A. Doumar, an 83-year-old lawyer who met Stevens years ago while waiting for a tennis match. Stevens, who turns 90 later this month, isn't quite ready to say. "I can tell you that I love the job, and deciding whether to leave it is a very difficult decision," he said in an interview. "But I want to make it in a way that's best for the court." That would mean a decision sooner rather than later, in time for the nomination and confirmation process to be completed before a new term begins in October, he said. He acknowledged that he told a reporter early last month that he would decide in about 30 days, but he said with a laugh that he hoped "that wasn't being treated as a statute of limitations." His departure will hand President Obama his second chance to leave a lasting mark on the nine-member Supreme Court. "I will surely do it while he's still president," Stevens said, who plans to leave either this year or next. If he stays past this term, Stevens will remain on course to become the oldest and longest-serving justice in Supreme Court history. Paradoxically, he is also among the court's least-known members; in a poll taken last summer, only 1 percent of Americans could summon his name. His departure will mark a significant shift in the workings of the politically divided court. Obama is certain to nominate someone from the left to replace Stevens, so the ideological balance would not change. But Stevens's lack of recognition nationally stands in direct contrast to his prominence on the bench. For more than 15 years, he has served as the leader of the court's liberal wing. His ability to find common ground with the court's justices in the middle -- Anthony M. Kennedy and Sandra Day O'Connor, who has since retired -- has led to groundbreaking decisions in favor of gay rights, restrictions on the death penalty, preservation of abortion rights and the establishment of a role for the judiciary in the nation's terrorism fight. Stevens's departure also would mark a generational change, the removal of a link not only to the court's past but also to the country's. Stevens was in the stands, as was Franklin D. Roosevelt, when Babe Ruth hit his "called shot" home run in the 1932 World Series. He is the only justice who was around for the start of the Great Depression or who lived through Prohibition. He cracked Japanese code during World War II. |
An issue report published a few days ago to the Chromium bug reporter mentioned something pretty significant, a Google Play Music Chrome app. The issue report talked about wanted to have an issue resolved before the launch of Google Play Music's "full Chrome App", and that Google was planning to "market this to users of other browsers." With this information we can make an educated guess that Google will be planning on using the Play Music Chrome App to compete with Apple's iTunes service. The application, once released to the public, will have the capability to run anywhere that the Chrome browser is able to run, that means that Windows and Mac users will be able to run this Chrome app as well. Just more reason to believe the Play Music Chrome App will be competing with iTunes. As us who use Google Play Music know, you can just go to the Google Play Music website and have access to your full library there already. Our question is this, if this Chrome App was to come to fruition, what functionality would it offer that the website doesn't already? Don't get us wrong, we would love to have a standalone app for the service on our desktops but it has to give us some incentive. Either way we want this. There is some bad news, unfortunately there was no other information in the bug report, such as a release window or capabilities of the Play Music Chrome App. Although, as we are sure all of you Android fans out there already know, next week is going to be a huge week for Android and there is a good chance we will learn more about this then. We have the supposed release of Android L, the Nexus 6 and the Nexus 9 all coming next week, so it would not be that crazy to imagine we are going to at least get a release date for this as well. While we play the waiting game for word on the Google Play Music Chrome app, why don't you guys give us your opinion. Are you excited for the Google Play Music Chrome App? And what functionality do you think it will offer users? Leave a comment below and let us know! |
The myth of a Sunni-Shia war 17 June 2014 The narrative of a Sunni-Shia war is so prevalent it is now accepted without challenge – but Abdul-Azim Ahmed argues it is misleading to the point of inaccuracy. ‘But what about the great divide that is currently ripping apart the Middle-East?’ The question was asked to me at the launch of an exhibition about Muslim and Jewish relations at Cardiff University. The questioner was an elderly gentleman, clearly an academic, who had just finished reading part of the exhibition. I asked him to clarify. ‘The Sunni and Shia divide, that tore Islam asunder from the earliest days after the Prophet up to today’ he explained. As we continued our conversation, I discovered that this Professor of Chemistry felt the exhibition was intellectually dishonest for not acknowledging the impact of the division. It is a view that is increasingly common. Namely, that much of the conflict in the Middle-East and to some extent North Africa, can be summarised as a struggle between warring factions within Islam -the Sunni majority and the Shia minority. You can read about it in respectable titles such as TIME magazine, The Spectator, even the New Statesman – all of whom covered it with front-page features, illustrating the conflict with stereotypical images of Arabs that tapped into centuries of Orientalist depictions of Muslims. The Sunni versus Shia narrative has been featured in almost every newspaper I cared to check. Most recently, The Independent published a piece with the headline ‘The vicious schism between Sunni and Shia has been poisoning Islam for 1,400 years – and it’s getting worse’. The article of course mentioned the idea of the ‘Shia Crescent’ (a crescent-shaped area of land where there is a high Shia population) that is so ubiquitous in analysis it is almost cliché, not to mention being almost entirely useless as a tool for understanding geopolitical relationships. The Sunni-Shia thesis essentially posits that a 7th century conflict of leadership amongst Muslims is the source of current Middle-Eastern unrest. The conflict led to two distinct theological groups emerging, the Ahlus Sunnah wal Jamaah (People of the Example of the Prophet and the Majority – conveniently shortened to ‘Sunni’) and the Shi’at Ali (the Party of Ali or ‘Shia’). The story goes that the two groups have been locked in a 1400 year conflict that has spanned continents, nation states and empires, and reaches its modern zenith in Syria, Bahrain, and the cold war between Iran and Saudi Arabia. The problem with this thesis is that it is wrong. Not just partially wrong (as political analysis is, of course, always subject to interpretation) but so misleading, so inaccurate, and so detached from reality that it cannot be described as anything other than myth. Even more problematic is that this myth has become so pervasive that gentlemen such as the professor I met consider it inconceivable to talk of Islam without talking of the Sunni-Shia conflict. Religious journalism has never been so dismally let down. An Ancient Conflict? The most common myth associated with the Sunni-Shia thesis is that Islam has been rent asunder by the sectarian conflict since its inception. This is simply reading history through solely modern eyes. There was of course a dispute about religious authority following the death of the Prophet Muhammad. Historical specificities aside, the Sunni and Shia divide was largely a political one. There were no direct theological implications until the 10th and 11th centuries when orthodoxies began to settle and a Sunni Islam became distinct from a Shia Islam, led in separate directions as they developed distinct legal and interpretative traditions. The lines have always been blurred between Sunnis and Shias, and they are so blurred that it is often difficult to make a distinction at all in the early centuries of Islam – for example, both Sunnis and Shias celebrate and claim for their own many of the same historical figures. Many of the Imams of Twelver Shiism are regarded as pious and orthodox by Sunni Muslims. Identities were fluid too, so that the revolution that put the Abbasid’s in power in the 9th century started as strongly Shia but ended as ardently Sunni. Paul Vallely, writing in The Independent, argued that ‘the division between the two factions is older and deeper even than the tensions between Protestants and Catholics’. He is certainly correct that the division is older. But deeper? More significant? Certainly not historically, nor theologically. Sunni and Shia divergence in practice is really only intelligible to those very familiar with Islam in general. There are differences in notions of orthopraxis (how and when to pray, for example). There are differences too in how scripture is assessed and interpreted – important yes, but historically, these have been the topic of scholarly dispute rather than military dispute. There have been times when Sunnis and Shias fought against each (the 7th century not being one of those times, importantly), but there have also been times when Shia have fought against Shia and Sunni have fought against Sunni. The argument that Sunnis and Shias have been at each others throats since the 7th century is wrong in every way possible. A War of Two Nations So, if the claim of a Sunni-Shia conflict is historically incorrect, what about in the modern context? What journalists and those who buy in to the Sunni-Shia narrative are doing is essentially replicating unquestioningly the rhetoric of two particular nation states. Saudi Arabia and Iran are perhaps the two most significant powers in the Middle-East, and since the Iranian Revolution in the 1970s, both have been vying for ascendency. Saudi Arabia especially has been exporting anti-Shia theology in a bid to delegitimise Iran and isolate it from other Muslim-majority nations. Both nations recognise that amongst Muslims, any claim to legitimacy and authority to rule must be expressed in religious terms. Murtaza Hussain, a journalist at The Intercept, argues that Iran however, is less eager to push sectarian rhetoric than Saudi – ‘Iran’s statements are much more conciliatory because they know they can never achieve their goal of leading a largely Sunni Muslim world if they are openly sectarian’. Conflict in the Middle-East is very much about resources and influence; it is of course however marked by religious rhetoric—rhetoric however that should rarely be taken at face value. The Syrian Civil War What about in nations such as Syria, where a Shia government is fighting against a Sunni populous? Surely here the claim of a Sunni-Shia conflict has merit? Again the reality is more complicated. It was only in 1973 that modern Shias formally accepted Allawis (the religious sect to which the Assad family belong) as a branch of Shia-Islam. Musa al-Sadr, a senior Shia cleric in Lebanon, issued the fatwa, which brought centuries of ambiguity to an end. Until then—the Allawis were an unknown quantity. The religion was certainly influenced by Islam, but much else too, and Orthodox Sunnis and Shias both were sceptical of the high secretive tradition. Al-Sadr’s fatwa was as much motivated by politics as by piety—but it should underscore the fractured nature of religion and power in the Middle-East—a fracturing that is most clear in Syria today. Journalists who consistently frame the conflict in sectarian terms also add to a pressure for religious groups to adhere to a particular political standpoint. ‘It’s called legitimacy by blackmail’ says James Gelvin, an academic and author who has researched the Middle East and Arab Spring. He explains to me the relevance of a Shia identity for Syria’s Assad Regime; ‘What the Syrian government has done is make itself stable by identifying the government with a particular sect, what they have done is forced other members of that sect into support of the government.’ It is a common tactic not only in Syria but in Bahrain also; ‘What that means of course is that the government tells minority communities, ‘if you do not support us, you’re dead, the majority will do something to you’’. When journalists in the West repeat the ‘legitimacy by blackmail’ narrative in newspaper reports, they make the job of important bridge-builders, such as an Allawite Shia who doesn’t support the Assad regime, even more dangerous. The same tatic is used by cheerleaders of the conflict, framing the Syrian Civil War as one between to Sunnis and Shias so as to garner theological support from certain quarters or to delegitimise claims of authority in other quarters. Muhammad Reza Tajiri, a Shia scholar in the United Kingdom, believes ‘the Syrian conflict certainly did not start on sectarian grounds, but as a result of opportunism from ‘scholars’ of both sides, the sectarian ideological issue is now inseparable from the conflict’. Misleading Analysis But it is clear that sectarianism is an element of the conflict; a devil’s advocate may argue that describing the conflict as Sunni-versus-Shia isn’t inaccurate. To truly appreciate how misleading it can be, try the following thought experiment. Imagine a newspaper in the Middle-East, let’s say reporting in the 1990s. It is covering The Troubles of the UK and Ireland, specifically the Manchester Bombing of 1996. The headline of this piece is ‘The vicious schism between Protestant and Catholic has been poisoning Christianity for 500 years – and it’s getting worse’. You begin reading the first few paragraphs of this article which professes to trace the history of the conflict between Britain and Ireland. It then locates the source of this conflict as beginning with Martin Luther nailing the Ninety-Five Theses to the door of Castle Church in Wittenburg. The article concludes that the only way to resolve the dispute over Northern Ireland is sitting the Archbishop of Canterbury down with the Archbishop of Westminster to hammer out points of theological divergence, perhaps beginning with Transubstantiation. Only then, the author argues, can we hope for peace in Western Europe. This bizarre article would never address the core of the issue, nor the problems being faced, nor offer any real solutions or clear ways forward. In fact, by choosing and forcing the narrative of a Christian sectarian conflict, it obfuscates the issue so drastically that it is useless. It is the same with the Middle-East. Sectarianism is an aspect of Syria, but should the Muslim world come to some consensus about who should have been leader after the Prophet Muhammad, the difference at the centre of the original Sunni-Shia divide, the conflict in Syria would not cease. Despite this, it isn’t uncommon to find articles talking about Syria, Bahrain or Pakistan, beginning with a discussion about 7th century Islam and disputes of who should be the next leader, Abu Bakr or Ali. Clearly this is neither insightful nor informed. Alternative Understandings If sectarianism is the wrong paradigm by which to understand conflicts in the Middle-East? How should they be understood? ‘The region has been economically stagnant’ believes James Gelvin, who has written extensively on the economic and social factors that led to the Arab Spring; ‘there is a largely young demographic, an unemployed youth, living amongst regimes that are incredibly oppressive’. Murtaza Hussain agrees that the problem is a combination of ‘economic failure’ and ‘identity politics’. There is an emphasis sometimes put on the Saudi Arabia-versus-Iran cold war, but there are other pressures too. Most recently, the fracturing of relationships highlights how Qatar has emerged as a major player in the region. Saudi Arabia and Qatar have increasingly been hyping up tensions and rhetoric (a very Sunni-versus-Sunni conflict, to use the sectarian lens). Turkey too has very carefully developed links with post-Arab-Spring states, positioning itself as a potential moral voice for Muslims globally. The United States, which supports the Egyptian army with $3 billion annually, and Russia, which is propping up a beleaguered Assad Regime in Syria, also have deep interests in the region. Conflicts are messy. Tony Blair’s speech in late April showed this most clearly. He advocated supporting intervention in Syria, but creating ties with Russia to fight Islamist threats. Yet Russia is supporting Assad, the same regime fighting the rebels Blair suggests offering support. His policy would quite literally force Britain and other Western nations to support two sides of the same war. If experienced statesman like Blair can’t provide a coherent narrative without stumbling over themselves, we should certainly be wary of newspapers that simplify the problems of the Middle-East using the Sunni-versus-Shia schism. Perhaps best to conclude then with James Gelvin:- “In terms of the Middle East, the straw people always grasp at first is religion. They don’t do that in the case of the West. If there is a problem, it’s not a national problem, it’s not an economic problem, it has to be nailed on religion. It’s facile, simplistic and lazy analysis.” This article is from Issue 7 of On Religion. Stay ahead of the debate by subscribing to our print media magazine for just £19 annually. [wp_paypal_payment] |
On Thursday, just hours after the FBI released blurry pictures of the two suspected Boston Marathon bombers, CNN anchor Erin Burnett assumed the suspects were “stereotypically” white Americans and not linked to any foreign terror group. It turned out that the suspects–Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev–are technically “white” as they are ethnically Chechen (although Dzhokhar recently became a citizen). But what Burnett, like many in the mainstream media who instinctively assume such acts are committed by those who look like Timothy McVeigh, was implying was that the suspects in the photos were white Americans who were born in this country. “They are young. They’re white. They’re very confident. They kind of look like college kids,” Burnett said on the Thursday evening edition of her low-rated primetime show, “Outfront.” Later in the show, when Rep. Mike McCaul (R-TX) mentioned that he knew the, “Justice Department has requested the assistance of foreign countries in terms of foreign travel” about the suspects, Burnett seemed shocked. “On foreign travel?” she incredulously asked. McCaul said there, “may be some sort of foreign connection here.” “Wait,” Burnett interrupted. “Let me make sure I understand. Sorry, I want to make you understand. So they’re still looking into the possibility that even though these two kids look very, very stereotypically like they’re from here that this may be linked to a foreign terror group?” McCaul then reiterated that it was “unclear and the nationalities are very unclear from the images that you see.” “This particular device is very common in Afghanistan and Pakistan. I will say that the al Qaeda playbook is usually to hit sporting events. You read this all the time, sporting events, mass casualties,” McCaul said. Based on some of the initial evidence, it seems as if Tamerlan, the older brother, may well have been radicalized by Islamic radicals that may be linked to Al-Qaeda. |
Just days after the U.S Government acknowledged that the entertainment industries have misled the authorities with bogus piracy reports, the RIAA and MPAA are using those same statistics to convince the copyright czar to transform the Internet into a copyright police state. The PRO-IP Act is a United States law that aims to toughen current anti-piracy measures. As part of the Act, President Obama appointed Victoria Espinel as the new copyright czar last year. Espinel announced a public consultation a few months ago, looking for comments and suggestions from the U.S. public on how to deal with piracy. For this consultation the RIAA and MPAA have now jointly submitted (pdf) their suggestions, calling for a future without piracy. As expected, the submission starts with bitter complaints about the massive losses the entertainment industries have to endure because of online piracy. The same old bogus studies and reports are cited, publications that were heavily criticized and labeled as inaccurate by the U.S. Government earlier this week. What follows are a set of recommendations that, if they become law, would turn the Internet into a copyright police state. The EFF has cherry picked some of the most draconian recommendations in a recent blog post, but these are just the tip of the iceberg. We highlight some of the suggestions below. If the RIAA and MPAA had their way… – The public would be encouraged to install anti-piracy software on their computers which would monitor their network for copyright-infringing materials. They are most likely referring to the Digital File Check application that they’ve been plugging for a while. – Internet service providers would have to allow third parties to spy on the files that are transferred by their customers and check them against a reference database of “fingerprints” to check whether the files are infringing copyright or not. – Torrent sites and file-hosters would have to preemptively filter content that is uploaded to or indexed by their sites. The reasoning behind this suggestion is that the regular notice and takedown procedures are time consuming and ineffective because content quickly reappears. – Search engines, hosting companies, payment processors, advertising agencies, social networking sites and domain registrars would be encouraged to team up with copyright holders in order to prevent online piracy. The purpose of this collaboration would be to cut off sites that ‘facilitate’ copyright infringement. – Consumers and websites that repeatedly infringe on the rights of copyright holders would lose their Internet access. These are just a few of the recommendations that are listed in the submission. It is quite clear that the copyright industries want full control over the Internet by building a copyright police state. Let’s hope that the politicians responsible for drafting the legislation will use their brains, instead of blindly accepting such proposals. |
The NHL has seen several star players in the cap era take less than market value to remain with their teams, with an eye towards allowing those teams to retain other players and maintain success. Of course, since 2005, the salary cap has been a reasonable mechanism for capping salaries because the ceiling has been at rec room levels rather than grand foyer. But as the NHL brings in billions (thanks, outdoor games!), the salary cap could reach $75 million by 2015. Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane go unrestricted next summer. The Chicago Blackhawks are already in talks about an extension. Bob McKenzie of TSN reports that Kane and Toews have made their first pitch ... Scroll to continue with content Ad … and they’re asking for around $12 million per season. From TSN: McKenzie notes that both players will likely end up with a lower salary than their initial ask, but could still see $10 million per year averages. Toews and Kane each have one year remaining on their contracts. They both signed identical five-year $31.5 million contracts prior to the 2010-11 season. Again, with the cap rising, this shouldn’t be an issue with regard to the Blackhawks’ roster. They have 10 players under contract for 2015-16, including Patrick Sharp, Marian Hossa, Brent Seabrook and Duncan Keith all making over $5 million. |
OVERWEIGHT TROOPS OVERWEIGHT TROOPS WASHINGTON The number of troops diagnosed as overweight or obese has more than doubled since the start of the Iraq war, yet another example of stress and strains of continuing combat deployments, according to a recent Pentagon study. The review, contained in the January edition of the Defense Department's Medical Surveillance Monthly Report, raises concerns about the overall readiness as demands on the military continue to increase, says Dr. Michael Kilpatrick, director of strategic communication for Pentagon health affairs. "Stress and return from deployment were the most frequently cited reasons" for gaining weight, the study said. The largest increase in diagnoses of overweight and obese troops came in the last five years, the report said. From 1998 to 2002, the number of servicemembers diagnosed as overweight remained steady at about one or two out of 100. But those numbers increased after 2003, according to the study, and today nearly one in 20 are diagnosed as clinically overweight. There may be even more overweight troops than the report shows, Kilpatrick said, because the study includes only servicemembers diagnosed as overweight during a visit with a doctor. The actual percentage of troops who are found to be overweight during fitness trials could be higher, he said. The weight-gain trend is among many strains shown within the military after six years of war and back-to-back deployments. They include steadily rising suicides and divorce rates among soldiers and Marines and increased prescription drug use in the Army. Problems with obesity among the general public — fostered by fast-food restaurants and increasingly popular sedentary pastimes such as video games — have spilled over into the military, the study suggests. One in five Americans between ages 18 to 34 is obese, the study says. The Army reports problems of obesity among recruits. "Overweight/obesity is a significant military medical concern because it is associated with decreased military operational effectiveness," the study says. Guidelines: You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. Read more |
Image copyright Emily Finn Image caption The researchers compared activity at 268 key locations in the brain Neuroscientists have found that they can identify individuals based on a coarse map of which brain regions "pair up" in scans of brain activity. The map is stable enough that the researchers could pick one person's pattern from a set of 126, by matching it to a scan taken on another day. This was possible even if the person was "at rest" during one scan, and busy doing a task in the other. Furthermore, aspects of the map can predict certain cognitive abilities. Presented in the journal Nature Neuroscience, the findings demonstrate a surprising stability in this "functional fingerprint" of the brain. "The exciting thing... is not that we can identify people by putting them in an MRI machine - because we can identify people just by looking at them," said Emily Finn, a PhD student at Yale University who co-wrote the study with her colleague Dr Xilin Shen. "What was most exciting to me was that these profiles are so stable and reliable, in the same person, no matter if it's today or tomorrow and no matter what your brain is doing when we're scanning you." Predicting intelligence Crucially, this fingerprint is based on brain activity - not the organ's physical structure. In the the myriad links between our billions of brain cells, and even at the level of a normal MRI scan, we are all physically unique. But Ms Finn and her colleagues drew a map of each brain purely on the basis of which regions, in each individual, tended to leap into action at the same time. They used data from functional MRI (fMRI), which records subtle ups and downs in the busyness of the brain. Because it is relatively imprecise, fMRI has not typically been used to compare individual brains. Instead, scientists tend to record from several subjects and average the results. "We were interested in flipping the traditional fMRI analysis on its head, and not asking what are the commonalities - how do all brains look the same, doing the same task - but rather, does the same brain look the same, regardless of what it's doing?" Ms Finn explained. So they took fMRI results from the first 126 subjects of the Human Connectome Project, a huge US initiative to gather data about the brain's "wiring diagram". These subjects had all been scanned multiple times, on different days, both while they were resting and while they were occupied by various tests. Within each of those scans, the researchers looked at what was happening in 268 key spots within the brain: how closely did the ups and downs at this spot match the ups and downs at all 267 other spots? This produced a profile of the flow of activity in each brain. And that profile was consistent enough that the team could use it to pick out the same individual - more than 90% of the time - from a different set of scans, done on a different day. They also found that they could use the profile to predict, to a certain degree, how well the subjects did at particular cognitive tests that measured "fluid intelligence". This is a type of on-the-spot, untrained reasoning that is measured by some IQ tests. Ms Finn is quick to point out that her technique could never substitute for those questionnaires. "None of us would recommend a brain scan over an IQ test," she said. "This is just proof-of-concept that these connectivity profiles are relevant to this very sophisticated cognitive behaviour." Image copyright Science Photo Library Image caption Could these new scan-based techniques eventually help assess psychological problems? If these individual maps show strong associations with psychological phenomena, she added, they could prove useful in the clinic. "This opens the door to predicting things that are harder to tell just by looking at someone, or giving them a test - like risk for different mental illnesses." Ones and zeros Recently, a different study used a very similar technique to show that these brain maps can predict a range of characteristics, from someone's vocabulary to their income. One of its authors, Prof Thomas Nichols, said he was not surprised that Ms Finn and her colleagues were able to distinguish individuals. "What this is getting at is the very high-quality nature of this data," said Prof Nicholls, a brain imaging statistician at the University of Warwick. He said the data emerging from the Human Connectome Project, which also formed the basis of his study, is "bleeding-edge, state-of-the-art" stuff. "It's really, really good and there's a huge volume of data on each subject." Tim Behrens, professor of computational neuroscience at Oxford University, said he was most impressed by the consistency between the resting and task-based maps in the study. "What is particularly interesting is that the way the brain connects… at rest, is so similar to how it connects during a task - when it's doing something interesting. That's what's exciting about it," Prof Behrens told the BBC. By comparison, he said, you would not expect "the pattern of ones and noughts" in a busy computer to reflect the pattern in a computer that is not doing anything. "It tells you that something about the function of the brain is fundamentally built into patterns of activity that just live there, all the time." Follow Jonathan on Twitter |
Reloop do rather push the boat out at trade show time. It’s a constant stream of DJs rocking their various lumps of gear for your listening and sometimes dancing pleasure, usually well into the evening. In fact, Reloop are looking for young fresh meat to grace their stage – the freshest meat in fact, and they’re running a competition for the hottest controller rocking talent on the planet to come to The BPM Show and perform live on stage. Not just that – there’s a slew of prizes for the runners-up (or is that runner-ups) too. Here’s how you enter and hopefully win: Reloop Controller DJ Contest 2012 Reloop is looking for THE Controllerism Newcomer of 2012. Therefore we appeal for a worldwide Controller DJ Contest! This competition calls for innovation and creativity at the Reloop equipment’s potentiometers and faders because the winner will receive a brand-new Reloop Terminal Mix 4 and the possibility to perform a showcase at Reloop’s booth at the BPM Show 2012 in Birmingham including flight and hotel! The winner will spend two days with the Reloop crew & artists at the trade fair for DJs and producers in England, performing his show case in front of visitors, manufacturers and DJs at Reloop’s booth. What to do? Prepare for your showcase and record your skills on video. Introduce yourself before mashing the buttons and trigger pads and enthuse us! Music style and applied mixing techniques are your choice. The video should have a length of 2 – 5 minutes and has to be uploaded to your Youtube account. From July 15st – August 15st you can participate with your video at our Facebook profile’s Controller DJ Contest site. How can you win? Visitors of our page determine the best 6 video clips. For you this means: Mobilise your fans and call attention to your upload! Every vote counts as this is a worldwide contest! After the closing date (August 15st, 2012) the Reloop artists and product experts will sit down, determining places 1 – 6. The prizes are as follows: 1st Place: Two days with the Reloop Team at the BPM Show in Birmingham incl. flight and hotel as well as a Reloop Terminal Mix 4. 2nd Place: 1 x Reloop Terminal Mix 2 3rd Place: 1 x Reloop Contour Interface 4th – 6th Place: A pair of Reloop RHP-20 headphones each. Do you have further questions? Then contact us! Otherwise have fun preparing, we are looking forward to your video clip! Good luck to all who enter, and I’ll see you there! |
Being publicly-funded gives us a greater chance to continue providing you with high quality content. Please support us! There is no better way to utilize the waning warm days of summer than a backyard cookout or get together. That usually means a lot of meaty dishes – burgers, sausages, hot dogs, shish kebabs – which can be heavy and not so healthy for us. If you’re looking to eat less meat, it doesn’t have to mean having to eat only plain vegetables. It’s possible to make meatless dishes with the same savory, umami tastes and flavors that rival “classic” meaty dishes. It’s true. Look at these 10 Vegetables that Can Substitute for Meat and The Ultimate Guide to Vegan Meats and Meat Substitutes. There are so many foods we can cook with instead of meat. With a few creative tips, we can make these meat-free ingredients taste meaty. Get all the info in 5 Tips to Make Meatless Food Taste Meaty. It will also help to know that you can make a meatless version of pretty much any dish. Still have doubts? Here are 15 classic meaty dishes made meatless. Advertisement 1. Black Bean Apple Burgers With Caramelized Onion Chipotle BBQ Sauce and Shiitake Bacon Nothing says classic like a BBQ bacon burger and this Black Bean Apple Burger will become your new classic go-to. With savory caramelized onions, spicy chipotle BBQ sauce and smoky shiitake bacon, you’ll never miss the meat. 2. Homemade Seitan Hot Dogs Hot dogs are a classic but who knows what’s really in them. These Homemade Seitan Hog Dogs give you all the taste and texture of classic frankfurters without the mystery of questionable ingredients. Slather on your favorite toppings to make a Delicious and Healthy Vegan New York-Style Hot Dog. 3. The Vegan Gutbuster Sandwich – Homemade Vegan Italian Sausage on Baguette There are few things more satisfying than the timeless sausage and peppers hero. This Vegan Gutbuster Sandwich will take you right back to that amazing taste with homemade vegan Italian sausage with sauteed mushrooms, peppers, onions and vegan cheese. 4. Chicken-Less Burgers It’s easy to make these Chicken-less Burgers that taste so much better than anything you can get at a drive-through. With a spicy breading, these chicken-flavored burgers are just waiting for you to load your favorite toppings on them and dig in. Advertisement Advertisement 5. Tofu Vegetable Kebabs with Peanut Sauce Fire up the grill with these Tofu Vegetable Kebabs. The marinade gives the tofu a savory, smoky flavor that’s perfect for grilling. The smoky peanut sauce is added flavor that will make these kebabs your new favorite. 6. Balsamic BBQ Seitan and Tempeh Ribs If you want to sink your teeth into smoky, chewy ribs, these meatless Balsamic BBQ Ribs are the perfect recipe for you. Make them with meaty seitan or go gluten-free with tempeh. Indulgent and delicious, these will satisfy those meaty cravings. Advertisement 7. Portobello Mushroom Steaks Portobello mushrooms have a juicy, savory, meaty flavor that is perfect for your meatless meals. These Portobello Mushroom Steaks are sauteed with onions, balsamic vinegar and fresh herbs and can be made indoors or outdoors on the grill. 8. Super Protein Kale Caesar Salad Everything’s better with tempeh bacon! This Super Protein Kale Caesar Salad not only has mushrooms, tomatoes, avocado, nuts and seeds but smoky, savory tempeh bacon crumbled all over it. Topped with a homemade vegan Caesar dressing, this is one satisfying salad. Advertisement 9. Cauliflower Buffalo Bites Wings are for flying, not frying. Serve these Cauliflower Buffalo Bites with celery and carrot sticks and homemade vegan blue cheese dressing. These are a definite crowd-pleaser so make a lot. 10. Walnut ‘Taco Meat’ The next time you make tacos, skip the meat and go nuts. Walnuts, that is. You can make ground “meat” from walnuts, tamari and spices. Spoon this Walnut “Taco Meat” onto tortillas with all your favorite toppings for meaty meatless tacos you’ll go nuts for. Advertisement 11. Vegan BBQ Lentil Meatball Sandwich with Sweet Miso Coleslaw This BBQ Lentil Meatball Sandwich with Sweet Miso Coleslaw is two meaty classics in one. Savory, smoky meatballs made with meaty lentils makes a satisfying sandwich balanced with cool and creamy sweet coleslaw. 12. “Crab” Cakes Here, vegan “Crab” Cakes are made with hearts of palm. They are baked so these “crab” cakes are not only delicious but healthier too. 13. BBQ Jackfruit Jackfruit may be a fruit but when it’s unripe, it has a savory taste and the perfect texture to substitute for meat. This BBQ Jackfruit is made in a slow cooker so you can be out in the sunshine while it cooks. 14. Portobello Mushroom BLT Sandwich No sandwich is more classic than the BLT. This Portobello Mushroom BLT Sandwich has the usual lettuce and tomato but the “B” stands for “better bacon” made with mushrooms. Cooked with smoky, savory flavors, this sandwich will satisfy your BLT cravings in a better way. Advertisement 15. Tempeh Burger Pizza If you have trouble choosing between pizza and burgers, the good news is you don’t have to. This Tempeh Burger Pizza combines two classic dishes – the burger and the pizza – in one amazing dish. Forget meat-lover’s pizza; this is a meatless-lover’s pizza dream. With a bit of creativity and a few helpful tips, any meaty dish can be made meatless and still be satisfyingly delicious. Lead image source: BBQ Jackfruit |
The threat to jobs comes from the possibility the UK will leave Europe, writes Ralph Topping ©Getty Threats, accusations and insults have been levelled at some fund executives who have backed Scottish independence S cots are a people of strong views, especially on the question of our country’s future. I have thought hard about whether to make my own opinions publicly known. A number of business leaders have spoken out against Scottish independence . One executive in the defence industry has told this newspaper that UK officials in Westminster are making “deft use of the dark arts” to encourage business figures to lend support to the unionist cause. Yet many in business favour an independent Scotland. I am one of them. Our voices, too, should be heard. The British economy is chronically unbalanced – tilted towards the southeast of England, and with too much emphasis on the financial sector to the detriment of manufacturing. An independent Scotland will remedy this structural weakness by providing a hefty counterweight. We must manufacture quality goods for export in sectors where we have a competitive advantage. A Yes vote is the first step towards setting Scotland on a sustainable economic path. We will not be cutting ourselves off from the rest of Britain. Much will remain: the social union of family ties and friendship; the currency union; the defence umbrella of Nato; the single European market; even sporting unions, such as the British and Irish Lions, one of rugby union’s most enduring names. All of this is in our mutual interest. But while we treasure what we have in common, Scotland must also be allowed to pursue its interests and compete in global markets on its own terms. I have spent the past six years as chief executive of a company whose 17,000 employees work in Scotland, elsewhere in the UK and throughout the world. Businesses are accustomed to dealing with different tax systems and employment regulations in the countries in which they operate. This rarely causes real difficulties. And they know that national governments tend to collaborate where there is a mutual economic interest – indeed, they expect nothing less. George Osborne has said there would be no currency union between Britain and an independent Scotland. Here is a Conservative chancellor of the exchequer nailing his colours to a policy that makes no business sense. This perversity will not last. Companies based outside Scotland that operate north of the border will not want to incur the cost of trading in a new currency. Westminster’s bluff will soon be called. And there is a bigger point. Our countries’ economic fortunes will remain intertwined. The government in London will have a huge interest in a strong Scottish economy, which will be the second-largest national export market for the rest of the UK. Both London and Edinburgh will want the economies of both countries to prosper. Erecting political barriers that prevent this, as the coalition proposes, would be an act of pure spite. It will not happen. The demands of markets will prevail. An independent Scotland will pool sovereignty on monetary policy but take control of fiscal policy. There is nothing about sharing a currency that will restrict an independent Scotland’s ability to attract jobs and investment with a competitive tax regime. I disagree with those who suggest that companies, including banks owned by the British state, will take jobs and investment elsewhere. A fiscally autonomous parliament will entice companies to make Scotland their home. With these levers in the hands of those who care most – the people who live and work here – our nation will thrive. A Yes vote offers the security that comes with knowing you are in control of the rudder, whether the waters are choppy or calm. The real threat to jobs, capital flows and investment comes not from Scottish independence but from the very real possibility of a British exit from the European single market. Scots are uncomfortable with backward-looking isolationism. We have a long and proud history as innovative and outward-looking contributors to the world. We should take our place as an equal member of the international community. Our choice is between two futures, both involving uncertainty. A Yes vote will give us the power to manage change. A No vote would hitch our wagon to Westminster’s erratic locomotive – a dangerous gamble indeed. The writer is outgoing chief executive of UK-listed bookmaker William Hill. He is writing in a personal capacity |
Cristiano Ronaldo is transforming himself into a centre-forward capable of "incredible" scoring numbers over many years to come, says Gary Neville. The Real Madrid attacker became the first player to score 100 Champions League goals with his match-winning hat-trick in the quarter-final tie with Bayern Munich on Tuesday. While his overall tally of 31 in 38 appearances across all competitions this season doesn't quite meet his regular extraordinary standards - Ronaldo is on course to fall short of the 50-goal mark for the first time since 2009/10 - he has still scored key goals for Real Madrid, and is in the process of making the transition from a wide role to a more traditional No 9. Neville, who played with the Portuguese at Manchester United for six seasons, believes the 32-year-old's finishing ability, coupled with his commitment to fitness and a determination to go on playing, could see him finish his career with a goal tally to rival the greatest goal-scorers ever. "I was thinking the other day, what's the long game for him? And I wonder if he's going to go on and play into his 40s," Neville told Sky Sports' Spanish football expert Guillem Balague on Revista, ahead of Sunday's El Clasico. "I wonder if he's building up for a long career as a centre forward, where his running doesn't have to be 11km, 12km per match, it can be 7km, 8km, 9km, where he can still score two goals and live off moments. He's living off moments more than his all-round performance now. Cristiano Ronaldo became the first player to score 100 Champions League goals "When he was at United, between 2006 and 2008, I still maintain that's his best two football years as a football player, in terms of his contribution through the whole game. "Since he's gone to Real Madrid he's contributed enormously to everything they've done but he's living more off moments rather than a contribution through a whole 90 minutes. "He'll be thinking Pele. Those numbers. Those scandalous numbers you think you can never achieve, the appearances, the goals, and that to me is where it's going. I think he'll play for longer than Lionel Messi, I think he'll score more goals in the end and will go on to do incredible things. He'll be thinking Pele. Those numbers. Those scandalous numbers you think you can never achieve. Gary Neville on Cristiano Ronaldo "I think he'll go on for a long, long time. And in this game, he's becoming a goal-scorer, he's getting in the box more, he's coming across the near post, his heading is incredible anyway. "I think we've seen the transformation of a player. We've seen Ryan Giggs go from a flying winger to someone who played more centrally as a midfielder. We're seeing Cristiano now as a centre-forward. "He knows he can't go up and down all the time now. He knows he can't go past players all the time. He'll become a goalscorer, a poacher and a good one." Watch the video above to see Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher discuss Ronaldo's goal-scoring ability further - and then tune in to El Clasico from 7pm on Sky Sports 1 HD on Sunday. |
About a year ago, I put together a listing 30 or 40 free podcasts of lectures from Universities. When I started putting together another list, I was amazed at how many more lectures are available. The lectures in this list are all free and don’t require any type of authentication–you don’t have to be a student to download them. The links are to the rss feed of class lectures. If you copy the URL and in iTunes click on Advanced > Subscribe to Podcast it will automatically download the lectures and new ones as they become available. I was hoping to find the Physics of Superheros in the list or a Pottery lecture. Maybe next year. Also be sure to checkout our study tips for students and our simple memorization technique. Here is the complete list of 145 podcasts for your educational pleasure: |
Afghan security personnel prepare for combat during an ongoing battle with Taliban militants in the Nad Ali district of Helmand on Aug. 10. (Photo by Noor Mohammad/AFP/Getty Images) The service member killed in Afghanistan’s restive Helmand province earlier this week has been identified as Staff Sgt. Matthew V. Thompson, the Pentagon said Wednesday. Thompson’s patrol triggered a roadside bomb Tuesday, wounding another American and six Afghan soldiers. Army Staff Sgt. Matthew V. Thompson was killed in Afghanistan on Aug. 23. (Army photo) According to a statement released by the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan, U.S. troops were accompanying their Afghan counterparts near the province’s capital of Lashkar Gah when their unit came under attack. Thompson, 28, of Irvine, Calif., was assigned to 3rd Battalion, 1st Special Forces group, according to an Army release. The incident is under investigation. “He was an exceptional Green Beret, a cherished teammate, and devoted husband. His service in Afghanistan and Iraq speak to his level of dedication, courage, and commitment to something greater than himself,” said Lt. Col. Kevin M. Trujillo, the commander of the U.S. Special Operations task force in Afghanistan. According to the Army release, Thompson enlisted in the Army in 2011 and reported as a medical sergeant to 1st Special Forces Group in 2014. He was on his first stint in Afghanistan when he was killed and had previously deployed to Iraq in support of the U.S.-led war against the Islamic State there. Thompson was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart, a Bronze Star with a V for valor in combat and the Combat Infantry Badge. [Taliban pushes toward strategic provincial capital in Afghanistan] Helmand province has been the site of heavy fighting in recent weeks as Taliban forces have used the summer months to launch multiple offensives across the country. The group is estimated to control well over 50 percent of Helmand, and its pressure on the provincial capital has forced U.S. and NATO troops to shuttle resources to help prop up the embattled Afghan security forces. Despite their gains around the periphery of Lashkar Gah, the Taliban has been unable to enter the city limits in the face of near-constant U.S. and coalition airstrikes. On Monday, the NATO-led mission announced that 100 U.S. troops had been moved to Lashkar Gah to primarily advise Afghan police in the area. Col. Mike Lawhorn, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said Thompson was not a part of the 100-troop detachment. U.S. Special Operations forces have been operating in and around the city since the Taliban began its offensive in the province earlier this summer. Thompson’s death marks the second combat death in Afghanistan this year. In January, Army Special Forces Staff Sgt. Matthew McClintock was killed in a pitched firefight alongside Afghan commandos in Marjah, a city in a fertile area just west of Lashkar Gah. Helmand province, known as the birthplace of the Taliban and nicknamed Marine-istan following President Obama’s 2009 surge into the country, is an opium-rich area that has been the scene of some of the most intense fighting of the nearly 15-year-old war. While conflict continues unabated in Helmand province, Taliban forces have also recently made gains in the northern part of the country. In the last few days, Kunduz — the city that briefly fell to the Taliban in October 2015 — has been the site of combat between Afghan security forces and the Taliban. [Taliban forces consolidate gains around Kunduz] U.S. helicopter gunships and the small prop-driven aircraft of the fledgling Afghan air force have since helped repulse attacks on the city, and officials from the NATO-led mission were optimistic that the Afghan forces would be able to hold their ground. Read more: These are the elite Taliban forces fighting for a province once held by U.S. troops Head of Islamic State in Afghanistan killed in airstrike, Pentagon says I see my old battalion assigned to Helmand again and I wonder: What is the point? |
We had a pleasant surprise last night at the Jean Cocteau when Elizabeth Bear and Scott Lynch dropped by for a short visit.Of course, we immediately took advantage of their presence by making them sign books.So... for as long as the supply lasts, which will not be long... we have hardcovers of ROGUES signed by Scott, and hardcovers of OLD VENUS signed by Elizabeth.Of course, I've autographed both of these as well... and the copies of ROGUES on hand also have signatures from another contributor, Walter Jon Williams.Also, from the day before, we have copies of THE DOLL COLLECTION, autographed by editor Ellen Datlow and contributors Jeffrey Ford and Stephan Graham Jones.All of these, and many other titles, can be ordered from the Jean Cocteau bookshop at:Happy reading. |
DENVER -- Multiple factors conspired against the Broncos reaching the playoffs. Their coach Gary Kubiak fell ill, disrupting the staff, which was already struggling to field a productive offense. Their quarterbacks boasted a single NFL snap prior to last season, and it showed. And their terrific defense revealed two weaknesses, alarming ineffectiveness against opponents' first drives and an inability to stop the run. It proved too much to overcome. The Broncos finished 9-7 with their nosed pushed up against the postseason window pane. As Vance Joseph and his new coaching staff return to work this week, let's look back for a second. The NFL passes out its top awards on the eve of the Super Bowl. I can't wait until then. A look at those receiving my Broncos' (virtual) hardware, some of which is more coveted than others: Defensive MVP Let's take the hardest first. This could have gone in multiple directions. Outside linebacker Von Miller remains a strong candidate to win NFL Defensive Player of the Year honors. Thus, it makes little sense to believe he's not the Broncos' top defender. His 13.5 sacks ranked second in the league as he received first-team All-Pro honors for a third time. He provided relentless pressure, even while double-teamed. He posted a career-high 78 tackles. Can't go wrong with Von. He's the choice. But cornerback Aqib Talib provided a compelling case as the NFL's best coverage defender. All he did was take names and chains. And Chris Harris' versatility and knowledge provide the back bone of the No Fly Zone, which helped Denver lead the league in pass defense for a second straight year. Offensive MVP Take a few deep breathes. Squeeze a racquetball. Visualize a unicorn. Anything to reduce stress. Despite the angst and frustration it caused fans, the offense featured a few strong performers. No one was more consistent than Emmanuel Sanders. He made his second Pro Bowl. He plays tough, delivers in big moments and avoids injuries. Demaryius Thomas finished strong, but inconsistency again hurt him. Had C.J. Anderson stayed healthy, he was poised to win the award, but a knee injury cost him the final nine games. For durability and reliability, center Matt Paradis deserves a mention. He was the team's best linemen and enjoyed a terrific season. Sanders needs better body language at times when the quarterback misses him wide open (see at Kansas City) -- but his statistics are solid: 79 catches, 1,032 yards, five touchdowns. Biggest surprise I admit my choice, at a glance, looks contradictory. The offense provided reason to hike, ski or build a puzzle during too many games. At one point, the Broncos went through their worst scoring drought since 1966. But as a seventh-round pick, Siemian, who nearly left football after college to pursue a career in commercial real estate, beat out veteran Mark Sanchez and first-round pick Paxton Lynch for the starting job. In 14 starts, Siemian completed 289 of 486 passes for 3,401 yards with 18 touchdowns and 10 interceptions. There's no guarantee he keeps his spot. The uptempo attack should help Lynch, but he will not be guaranteed anything. And obviously if the Broncos pursue Tony Romo -- if he's cut and the Broncos improve their offensive line, it increases the likelihood they will express interest in the veteran -- then Siemian's situation changes. Nonetheless, Siemian showed promise in his first season, and met expectations as a complementary piece to a running game that, um, never reached its potential. Those deserving honorable mentions include: safeties Justin Simmons and Will Parks, punter Riley Dixon and linebackers Corey Nelson and Todd Davis. Biggest disappointment When a Super Bowl defending champion misses the playoffs, there is a line for this unfortunate achievement. Pick among the offensive tackles -- Russell Okung, Donald Stephenson and Ty Sambrailo. The tight end position remained a mystery of lacking production with Virgil Green, Jeff Heuerman and A.J Derby unable to sustain success. Defensively, the Broncos had no run stopper to help Derek Wolfe. Sly Williams could not build on his breakthrough 2015 season as the team sorely missed Vance Walker. Lynch also didn't appear ready to capitalize on his start at Jacksonville, given an ultra conservative game plan that produced zero third-down conversions in the second half. |
Update from MSNBC spokesman Jeremy Gaines to Huffington Post: "Joe didn't walk off. He chose not to participate in the final couple of minutes of the discussion because he felt the conversation didn't fit his role as a political analyst." Previously: Did Joe Scarborough walk out of David Gregory's show "Race to the White House" Thursday night on MSNBC? It seems that way by the video below. Joe was a panelist on the show along with Air America's Rachel Maddow, CNBC's John Harwood and former Tennessee Congressman Harold Ford, Jr. The panel was discussing the effect of Sen. Obama's personal and professional relationships on his campaign when Rachel and Joe disagreed. Joe started to challenge Rachel's argument that relationships only become an issue when a political opponent makes them an issue, but she cut him off, "Let me make my point and then you can dismiss me." She then finished with an example of a McCain campaign co-chair in Florida's bathroom activities. After a commercial break, Joe prefaced his rebuttal to Rachel's point by saying "I don't engage in Crossfire-type debates and certainly I don't want to talk about what people do in bathrooms." When he finished speaking, and after David Gregory had shut Joe vs. Rachel down, John Harrow came on camera. Then, viewers can hear Joe taking off his microphone (2:47 into the below video). When the panel picture came back, no Joe. Watch Rachel and Joe make their points, hear Joe unplug, and then (after a jump) see the panel after Joe has gone: <0--1511107201--hh>0--1511107201--hh> |
Emergency response following acid attack on the junction of Hackney Road junction with Queensbridge Road, London, Britain July 13, 2017 in seen in this picture obtained from social media. SARAH COBBOLD via REUTERS THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES. MANDATORY CREDIT THIS PICTURE WAS PROCESSED BY REUTERS TO ENHANCE QUALITY. AN UNPROCESSED VERSION WAS PROVIDED SEPARATELY. LONDON (Reuters) - Britain will look at tougher punishments for people who attack others using acid, interior minister Amber Rudd said on Sunday, after a spate of incidents in London in recent months. Five acid attacks on moped riders in less than 90 minutes across east London on Thursday left several people with facial burns, the latest in what Rudd described as a “worrying increase” in reports of attacks where acid or similar substances had been used as a weapon. “We can and will improve our response,” Rudd wrote in an article for the Sunday Times newspaper. “It will include a wide-ranging review of the law enforcement and criminal justice response, of existing legislation, of access to harmful products and of the support offered to victims.” Rudd said guidance to prosecutors would be reviewed so that acid and other corrosive substances could be classed as dangerous weapons, and authorities would be given the powers they need to ensure those who commit such crimes “feel the full force of the law”. “I am clear that life sentences must not be reserved for acid attack survivors,” she said. The government will also work with retailers to agree measures to restrict the sales of acid and other corrosive substances. |
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