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The Russian military says two of its ships launched cruise missiles at militant targets in Syria from the eastern Mediterranean Sea on Friday morning. Russia’s Defence Ministry said that the Serpukhov and the Zeleny Dol corvettes launched three long-range Kalibr cruise missiles at 10:55 a.m. at the al-Qaida-linked militant group of Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, formerly known as the Nusra Front. The ministry said three videos it published on its Facebook and YouTube channels show the launches and the targets. The missiles destroyed a command facility and a militant camp near Daret Azzeh along with a mine-making facility and a weapons facility in the province of Aleppo, Russia said. The development came after Russia this week began using Iranian territory to launch air strikes in Syria, with Moscow’s bombers flying out of the Islamic Republic for three straight days to hit targets in the war-ravaged country. The missiles add an extra dimension to the aerial campaign Russia has conducted since September in support of President Bashar al-Assad’s military. Russian warships have in the past launched cruise missiles at targets in Syria from both the Caspian Sea and the Mediterranean, a show of the navy’s long-range precision strike capability. Cruise missiles launched from Russian navy ships in the Caspian in October and November struck targets in Syria while in December, a Russian submarine also launched cruise missiles at Syrian militants. “Direct hit of the Kalibr missile on a command centre and a terrorist base in Syria”: “Kalibr missiles strike a plant manufacturing mortar munitions in Syria”: |
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[2a00:1450:400c:c00::230]) by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id el1si11229067wib.120.2015.06.29.09.35.06 for <john.podesta@gmail.com> (version=TLSv1.2 cipher=ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 bits=128/128); Mon, 29 Jun 2015 09:35:06 -0700 (PDT) Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of cbaker@hillaryclinton.com designates 2a00:1450:400c:c00::230 as permitted sender) client-ip=2a00:1450:400c:c00::230; Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=pass (google.com: domain of cbaker@hillaryclinton.com designates 2a00:1450:400c:c00::230 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=cbaker@hillaryclinton.com; dkim=pass header.i=@hillaryclinton.com; dmarc=pass (p=NONE dis=NONE) header.from=hillaryclinton.com Received: by mail-wg0-x230.google.com with SMTP id u7so131046048wgu.3 for <john.podesta@gmail.com>; Mon, 29 Jun 2015 09:35:06 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=hillaryclinton.com; s=google; h=from:mime-version:references:date:message-id:subject:to:cc :content-type; bh=mox/KarSALlj+jOt/mTEQIpnNusl6YKLDnpLzl9oMH4=; b=IXyPxWdBPdbmCdzzKw6ezCwtM55twurp4Vs/7OqV1zJBX6u6yFEbbkUscl2SQ9c3Sf SPlgPT6bQ0SBpA4TUzRBG/tKE1lu4mHqcHPOufDk7t8RBO1tQ7lFV9OmQMQucy6lzXWS 5xipZRy5DDNTZ6eavmd00mbVEsGQvJlVhZzQM= X-Google-DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=1e100.net; s=20130820; h=x-gm-message-state:from:mime-version:references:date:message-id :subject:to:cc:content-type; bh=mox/KarSALlj+jOt/mTEQIpnNusl6YKLDnpLzl9oMH4=; b=LDAmt9qUFeNjSe9H7wca34yt9yu2qlK7k0Nx5tlGYHf/iXK/vLP7jAiJ7GF2OQl5j3 CzzkbE/TI/XkjqJwzfdFMNuqUaIZHWzqZFUbHvCT2ig/4I/rb6bRyDGrgf9z2eyY/2El /YlHwT/753z/z8VfbtggwVg2/D1FXdn/z0GrbMPBCX/lNCvKLgvnHGSBjZzknQuFbmHm KxpWl0Y9Fo4Ro7+6ukwNlyE4Q3zRqn2Vecbr7K8Lc43It1czYgAtnB6Ym7rMFx1WdLH5 XoxOLOWQcCSq9sBjN9pwdb8HjovZdOlahENXEKVBO2jm2cvXwpSAsKizWPVWoCIBOK4h jQqg== X-Gm-Message-State: ALoCoQk7u7mkTM1+Y/2crCZTYFogMruvnMXHYr8d3ula8yrl1hNKi8rjxoBomNHmmVtVBtGl4fOg X-Received: by 10.180.91.166 with SMTP id cf6mr23187804wib.61.1435595705905; Mon, 29 Jun 2015 09:35:05 -0700 (PDT) From: Charles Baker <cbaker@hillaryclinton.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 (1.0) References: <4ff51ade32898746c3b413fa9ee3d366@mail.gmail.com> Date: Mon, 29 Jun 2015 12:35:04 -0400 Message-ID: <-3876880549712046285@unknownmsgid> Subject: To: Robby Mook <re47@hillaryclinton.com>, John Podesta <john.podesta@gmail.com> CC: Marc Elias <MElias@perkinscoie.com> Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=f46d043893411785ac0519aaacc0 --f46d043893411785ac0519aaacc0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 I explored with Marc what the limitations would be on HFA's use of Governor Granholm if she were paid by Correct the Record. As a threshold matter we could not call her a spokesman for the campaign or schedule her directly. We would be able to refer groups or media to her if they are looking for a non-campaign, third part surrogate, the same way we might refer them to the DNC Chair or Stephanie Schriock. For example this weekend she spoke at the Ohio State Party dinner. If she were at Correct the Record we could at least make sure her speaking and media opportunities met our needs/requests. Finally, as a person paid by CTR she could not solicit donations for the campaign. She could be at CTR for a period and move to some other vehicle (New York - or Michigan- state party, DNC, HFA) at any point (i.e. there is no waiting period). --f46d043893411785ac0519aaacc0 Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable <html><head><meta http-equiv=3D"content-type" content=3D"text/html; charset= =3Dutf-8"></head><body dir=3D"auto"><div><br></div><blockquote type=3D"cite= "><div><meta http-equiv=3D"Content-Type" content=3D"text/html; charset=3Dus= -ascii"><meta name=3D"Generator" content=3D"Microsoft Word 15 (filtered med= ium)"><style><!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;} @font-face {font-family:Calibri; panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;} a:link, span.MsoHyperlink {mso-style-priority:99; color:#0563C1; text-decoration:underline;} a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed {mso-style-priority:99; color:#954F72; text-decoration:underline;} span.EmailStyle17 {mso-style-type:personal-compose; font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif; color:windowtext;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} --></style><div class=3D"WordSection1"><p class=3D"MsoNormal">I explored wi= th Marc what the limitations would be=C2=A0on=C2=A0HFA's use of Governo= r Granholm if she were paid by Correct the Record.<span style=3D"font-size:= 12.0pt"></span></p><p class=3D"MsoNormal">=C2=A0</p><p class=3D"MsoNormal">= As a threshold matter we could not call her a spokesman for the campaign or= schedule her directly. We would be able to refer groups or media to her if= they are looking for a non-campaign, third part surrogate, the same way we= might refer them to the DNC Chair or Stephanie Schriock.=C2=A0For example = this weekend she spoke at the Ohio State Party dinner. If she were at Corre= ct the Record we could at least make sure her speaking and media opportunit= ies met our needs/requests. Finally, as a person paid by CTR she could not = solicit donations for the campaign.</p><p class=3D"MsoNormal">=C2=A0</p><p = class=3D"MsoNormal">She could be at CTR for a period and move to some other= vehicle (New York - or Michigan- state party, DNC, HFA) at any point (i.e.= there is no waiting period).</p><p class=3D"MsoNormal">=C2=A0</p><p class= =3D"MsoNormal">=C2=A0</p><p class=3D"MsoNormal">=C2=A0</p></div> </div></blockquote></body></html> --f46d043893411785ac0519aaacc0-- |
I have been playing around with Google Cloud Storage today, and I wanted to access Google Cloud Storage by using CyberDuck. For those of you who don’t know about CyberDuck, it truly is an awesome open source storage client that can be used on Mac and Windows to access pretty much anything storage related. Think FTP, S3, WebDAV etc. You can download Cyberduck here. Now the interesting part was, when I tried to connect CyberDuck to Google Cloud Storage, I had no clue about what my Username or Password (Authorization Code) was. Now other cloud storage providers give you secure access keys to simply connect. Google Cloud Storage is a little more complicated to find this information. I actually think this is a good thing, as security is critical for storage. As you can see in the screenshot above, you need a Google Project ID and an Authorisation code to connect using a Third Party Application. Cyberduck themselves also give you instructions about connecting, but they simply state “You must obtain the login credentials (Access Key and Secret) from the Google API Console under Legacy Access from the Google Cloud Storage tab.” but where do I find this information? The steps below show how to enable this. Cyberduck Google Cloud Storage 1. First you need to login to the Google Developer Console. 2. Select the Project you want to enable the access for. 3. Once in the project, scroll down the right hand side until you see Storage, Cloud Storage, and select Project Dashboard 4. In this window you will see the Project Number (although you don’t actually use this as a username). 5. I would recommend clicking the Make this my default project for interoperable storage access. This will make sure that any connections you make will always come to this project area. 6. Select Interoperable Access. This is the area where you will show the secret key or Authorization code and get your project code (really an access key). 7. Click Show. This will display the authorization key. Copy this to your clipboard. 8. Return back to Cyberduck and enter the Username which is your access key above, and Password which is the secret key above. 9. Once connected and authorized you will see your bucket that you created in your project. There we have it. Not as intuitive as some of the other cloud providers, but nice and secure none the less. It goes without saying that you don’t want to share any of these keys with anyone. Share this: Email Reddit Facebook LinkedIn Twitter Google Like this: Like Loading... |
EXCLUSIVE: The State Department’s former top watchdog, in an interview with Fox News, rejected Hillary Clinton’s repeated claims that her personal email use was in line with her predecessors’ – while saying he would have immediately opened an investigation if he caught wind of a secretary of state using such an account. Howard Krongard, a George W. Bush administration appointee who served as the State Department inspector general from April 2005 to January 2008, cited his own experience in challenging Clinton’s insistence that her practices were nothing out of the ordinary. “Certainly to my knowledge at least, Secretary [Condoleezza] Rice did not have a personal server. I certainly never either sent an email to one or received an email from one,” said Krongard, who served during Rice’s tenure. Further, he said, “I would have been stunned had I been asked to send an email to her at a personal server, private address. I would have declined to do so on security grounds and if she had sent one to me, I probably would have started an investigation.” Krongard noted that during Clinton’s four-year term, from January 2009 to January 2013, there was no Senate-confirmed inspector general in place. Suggesting the Clintons show a pattern of avoiding oversight, Krongard indicated that Hillary Clinton benefited from the fact there was no IG during her term. "I would’ve been the most unpopular person in that building [had I been there]," Krongard said, emphasizing that the inspector general has broad powers and the ability to rein in even the most senior political appointees. "They are the people who enforce the rules, and there was no one enforcing the rules during that time." Krongard spoke with Fox News before the current State Department inspector general’s office, led by Steve A. Linick, issued an extensive report on email practices of previous secretaries of state. The day that report was issued, Clinton said in an interview that her use of personal email was consistent with predecessors Colin Powell and Rice. "Just like previous secretaries of state, I used a personal email. Many people did. It was not at all unprecedented," she said. But, as Krongard indicated, the May 25 IG report clearly stated that Rice did not use personal email for government business. It said Powell used personal email on a limited basis to connect with people outside the department, and he worked with the State Department to secure the system. The report found Clinton did neither. The report concluded Clinton’s use of a private server and account was not approved, and broke agency rules. The report said by the time she became secretary, the rules had repeatedly been updated, and were “considerably more detailed and more sophisticated.” Krongard resigned from the IG position in December 2007 after accusations he blocked Iraq-related investigations, charges he denied. Regarding the 2,100 emails on Clinton’s server found to have contained classified information -- and another 22 “Top Secret” messages containing intelligence deemed too damaging to national security to make public – Krongard questioned how that material got there. He said it would take a deliberate act for the intelligence to "jump the gap" between the classified computer networks and Clinton's personal server. "It could be done by taking a screen shot with … a camera of a classified email, take a screen shot and send it to an unclassified network. It could be copied, but there are restrictions in the State Department and elsewhere as to what copiers can work from a classified network and it can only be a secure copier. So that may not have been easy," Krongard said. Asked if it could happen by accident, Krongard simply said, "No." He also challenged Clinton and State Department claims that the emails in question were “retroactively classified.” "I don't understand it, because it was either classified by the creator or it was classified by reason of where it came from or what network it was on,” Krongard said. Clinton consistently has claimed nothing she sent or received was marked classified at the time. While technically correct, this distinction also appears misleading. A January 2009 non-disclosure agreement signed by Clinton confirms her understanding that "classified information is marked or unmarked.” Rather, it is the content and source that determine classification. Former intelligence officials say the emails were improperly handled by Clinton and her team and, once reviewed by the authority that originated the information, the emails were given proper classification markings. While there is no public confirmation the Clinton server was breached, former senior military and intelligence officials -- including Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and former Defense Intelligence Agency chief Mike Flynn – have said they believe foreign intelligence services targeted Clinton's email system. In a recent interview with Fox News, the Romanian hacker who goes by the name Guccifer said he accessed the Clinton server with ease in March 2013. Anonymous government officials were quick to dismiss the hacker's claims, while admitting he was very skilled and breached the accounts of 100 Americans, including Powell. |
Note from RD: Well, this is a first. What started out as a landslide win for the Bella vs. Bella Feud somehow turned into a second place finish for WWE’s Lack of Brass Rings. A bit of investigation reveals that SHENANIGANS WERE AFOOT! While we cannot lock down how much ballot stuffing was done for those in favor of brass rings, we can confirm that some was done. What so ever shall we do in such a situation? After consulting with the WrestleCrap Board of Directors (read: RD sitting on the can thinking about it), a decision has been made! For the first time in the history of the Gooker Award, we are christening co-winners. Or is it co-losers? Regardless, both will be inducted as Gooker Award Winners. The prestigious event will take place Thursday night, January 29…so check back then and YOU can make your own call as to which was truly the worst of the worst!! The calendar has flipped to January…you know what that means: GOOKER TIME! It’s your chance to vote for the very worst of the very worst in pro wrestling, which we dubbed the Gooker Award (in reverence of the legendary Gobbledy Gooker) when we started the site in 2000. Yes, we’ve been around that long. And I’m kinda questioning how many years we’ve seen worse stuff than we have the last 12 months. So without any further adieu, the nominees! Summer Rae-Layla-Fandango Love Triangle Hey, remember back when Fandango was THE hot act in the company for, oh, three weeks? When fans sang his theme song…one that has NO WORDS? Those days being long gone, the plan was to have two hot women feud over him. WWE once again showed their ability to make everyone not care about said honeys and also kill an act folks actually, you know, liked. Never-Ending Bunny vs. Adam Rose Feud We have a rule around these parts that we don’t induct ongoing angles, because they may get good. Just typing that under “Never-Ending Bunny vs. Adam Rose Feud” makes me feel like a fool. Anyway, as this feud is seemingly never going to end, may as well throw it up for the award this year. Just don’t be shocked if you see it again as a nominee in 12 months. Return of the Raw Guest Hosts mWhile Justin had these as separate items in his countdown of the worst of the worst, I’m lumping them together. While Raw guests hosts have traditionally been horrible, there have been good ones here and there. Bob Barker, anyone? No worries, not the case in 2014. We had stuff like Kathie Lee Gifford and Grumpy the Cat. See what I did there? I channeled my inner Michael Cole! Samuel Shaw: STALKER Ok, try to follow me here: Samuel Shaw is a complete weirdo that somehow gets a date with Christy Hemme. We learn that he is obsessed with her, as we get footage of him with a shrine built up to her…which she sees. However, this doesn’t cause her to run to the cops. Eventually, the madness would include his mom, also a red head, also named Christy. OH! And a SUICIDE attempt, because that’s always good fun! Bella vs. Bella Nikki and Brie are sisters who love each other…except when they don’t. Or do they? Or maybe they don’t! Ugh, this storyline. Not only did we get to hear Nikki tell us what a horrible sister Brie was growing up, but scintillating dialogue such as “I wish you’d died in the womb!” Because you know everyone talks like that. Throw in a Jerry Springer intervention, and you’ve got a potential Gooker winner for sure. Brass Rings…or the Lack Thereof While everyone thought the focal point of Vince showing up to be interviewed on Steve Austin’s podcast would be CM Punk, it wound up being talk of brass rings and how his pathetic millennial crew didn’t dare to reach out and grab them. This despite the fact WWE continually buries any talent that dares to get over on their own. The less things change… Royal Rumble 2014 Booking Speaking of brass rings and other such nonsense, one need look only to the booking of the 2014 Royal Rumble, wherein appointed golden boy Dave Batista was booed out of the building as fans chanted over and over for Daniel Bryan. In the interest of fairness, the company learned its lesson…eventually. Anyone think the same will happen again this year? The Menagerie Impact Wrestling presents THE CLOWN SHOW!!!! Not figuratively, we’re talking literally here. I will admit that I’d never heard this origin story before, with a guy going back to wrestling to support his carnie family whose dilapidated arcade had flooded. So they had that going for them. Soon we had not only Knux, but Crazy Steve, Rob Terry under a mask, and dudes on stilts! I almost feel as though they’re somehow the favorites, since everyone knows we’ll add a bunch of shots of Rebel to increase page views. Willow Spinning umbrellas and nonsensical promos were the name of the game as Jeff Hardy attempted a very ill-advised self-reboot. We should also note that a lot of these promos were done without his lips moving…that’s right, we could now READ HIS MIND. Sadly, he rarely had anything interesting to say. The Return of Claire Lynch. Kinda. Jim Cornette had a rule back in the day: you can reuse anything in pro wrestling after seven years. RD Reynolds also has a rule: you can reuse anything in pro wrestling if it doesn’t suck. WWE violated both by creating the character of Megan Miller, Daniel Bryan’s physical therapist, with whom Bryan cheated on his wife. Except, of course, he didn’t and it was all a lie. Sound familiar? Yep, TNA’s Claire Lynch had returned! Serious question: if this wins, does that make her a two time winner? So there you have it! A whole slew of horrible crap. What’s the worst? YOU MAKE THE CALL! What was the Worst of the Worst in 2014? Brass Rings...or the Lack Thereof (28%, 934 Votes) Bella vs. Bella (26%, 869 Votes) Royal Rumble 2014 Booking (21%, 698 Votes) Never-Ending Bunny vs. Adam Rose Feud (6%, 189 Votes) Jeff Hardy IS Willow! (6%, 187 Votes) Return of the Raw Guest Hosts (5%, 161 Votes) The Return of Claire Lynch. Kinda. Sorta. (4%, 120 Votes) Samuel Shaw: Stalker (3%, 87 Votes) The Menagerie (1%, 38 Votes) Summer Rae-Layla-Fandango Love Triangle (1%, 22 Votes) Total Voters: 3,305 Loading ... Loading ... |
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranian demonstrators called for more mass protests on Tuesday, a day after hardline Islamic militiamen killed a man during a march by tens of thousands against a presidential election they say was rigged. A supporter of defeated presidential candidate Mirhossein Mousavi flashes victory signs as he shouts slogans during a rally in Tehran June 15, 2009. REUTERS/Morteza Nikoubazl The Iranian capital has already seen three days of the biggest and most violent anti-government protests since the 1979 Islamic revolution after hardline incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared winner of last Friday’s vote. “Tomorrow at 5 p.m. (8:30 a.m. EDT) at Vali-ye Asr Square,” some of the crowd chanted at Monday’s march, referring to a major road junction in the sprawling city of some 12 million. Further protests, especially if they are maintained on the same scale, would be a direct challenge to authorities who have kept a tight grip on dissent since the overthrow of the U.S.-backed shah after months of demonstrations 30 years ago. U.S. President Barack Obama said on Monday he was “deeply troubled” by post-election violence in Iran. “The democratic process, free speech, the ability of people to peacefully dissent — all those are universal values and need to be respected,” he told reporters. The United States and its European allies have been trying to engage Iran and induce the world’s fifth-biggest oil exporter to halt nuclear work that could be used to make an atomic bomb. Iran says it only wants nuclear energy to generate electricity. Obama said he would continue pursuing tough, direct dialogue with Tehran but urged that any Iranian investigation of election irregularities be conducted without bloodshed. The world was inspired by the Iranian protesters, he said. “WE FIGHT, WE DIE” Demonstrators filled a broad avenue in central Tehran for several kilometers (miles) on Monday, chanting “We fight, we die, we will not accept this vote rigging,” in support of Mirhossein Mousavi, the defeated moderate candidate. Mousavi said he was “ready to pay any price” in his fight against election irregularities, his Web site quoted him as saying, indicating a determination to keep up the pressure for the election result to be annulled. Some formed a human chain in front of a building of the Basij Islamic militia, but others broke through and the hardline volunteer paramilitaries opened fire on the crowds sending thousands fleeing in havoc. One man was killed and many wounded, said an Iranian photographer who witnessed the shooting. Television footage showed one man, his leg covered with blood, being bundled onto the back of a taxi and driven away. “Tanks and guns have no use any longer,” chanted the protesters in a deliberate echo of slogans used leading up to the 1979 revolution. Slideshow (19 Images) Members of Iran’s security forces have at times fired into the air during the unrest and used batons to beat protesters who have pelted police with stones. The Basij militia is a volunteer paramilitary force fiercely loyal to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who has the final say on all matters of state in Iran. Gunfire was also heard in three districts of wealthy northern Tehran on Monday evening and residents said there had also been peaceful pro-Mousavi demonstrations in the cities of Rasht, Orumiyeh, Zahedan, and Tabriz on Monday. |
The Sixers offensive rating, which is an estimate of points scored per 100 possessions used, of 93.0 is bad. Not like kind of bad, but historically bad. There's only been one team with a lower offensive rating since the 2000-01 season: the 2002-03 Denver Nuggets, who rode an offensive rating of 92.2 to a 17 win season. So saying that the Sixers struggle to score is sort of a no-brainer: they struggle to score all the time. But if they really struggle on the season, their offensive rating of 91.1 when Robert Covington is not in the game is darned near unfathomable. In fact, finding a team with an offensive rating of 91.1 is impossible. They don't exist. Yet that 91.1 offensive rating jumps up to a 97.4 offensive rating when Covington is on the court. It's still bad, still the worst in the league, but it's not historically bad: there are 39 seasons worse since the 1973-74 season, including some in the modern era! Heck, the Toronto Raptors won 33 games during the 2003-04 season with a 96.7 offensive rating. Joking aside, that 6+ point jump is significant. The Sixers still clearly lack the talent to become a legitimate offensive club, but the more time that goes on and the more minutes Covington plays, the improvement becomes less and less likely to be a fluke. How crucial he has become can be reflected on the number of minutes he has played: despite just joining the team midway through November, Robert Covington has played the 2nd most minutes per game on the team over the last 15 games at 32.9 per night, behind only Michael Carter-Williams. Looking at the production the Sixers have gotten from Robert Covington, it seems almost unimaginable that he was available for any team in the league to sign just a little more than 2 months ago. In only 27.2 minutes per night, Covington is scoring 12.4 points per game, while connecting on 2.2 three pointers per night and shooting 39.8% while doing so. Those numbers were even better before Covington hit a recent rough stretch, which coincided with the news that came out after the Atlanta Hawks game that he had a right shoulder contusion, an injury which caused him to miss a game last week against the Raptors. Covington, who had just gone 7-14 from deep in the two games immediately preceding the game against the Hawks, was shooting 42.2% on the season from three point range up until that point. He has gone just 5-26 since. Even with that rough patch, the numbers are amazing. The numbers are even more amazing when you consider the constructs of the team. With so few shot-creators on the Sixers roster, with virtually nobody who can consistently break down a defense and cause them to collapse, Robert Covington doesn't get all that many open looks created for him. In fact, nearly 74% of Robert Covington's catch and shoot attempts are guarded, an absurdly high number. For comparisons sake, Kyle Korver and Wesley Matthews each have about 60% of their shots out of catch and shoot opportunities contested. When Covington has had the rare open catch and shoot shot, he has been as efficient as anybody in the league. Catch and Shot % of shots eFG% League Average eFG% Guarded 73.8% 51.3% 46.6% Unguarded 26.2% 70.4% 54.9% Which causes one to wonder just how much more Robert Covington could be contributing to the team if he had, say, a big man who could command a double team in the post, or perhaps a penetrating point guard like Damian Lillard who could consistently generate wide open looks for Covington. The scary thing is, Robert Covington's 39.8% shooting from three point range might actually be artificially deflated due to the the personnel he's playing with. Ah well. That's for next year, I suppose. What that does mean, however, is that if Robert Covington isn't getting uncontested jump shots at a high rate, that means his defender should be glued to him out on the perimeter, and the Sixers floor spacing should be improved. With improved floor spacing, you would hope to see a positive impact on the Sixers young point guards: things such as an increase in field goal percentage at the rim, a reduction in turnovers, and the team as a whole operating more efficiently offensively. And there are some pretty interesting numbers when you start to poke around. As we previously mentioned, the difference in offensive rating is staggering. Timespan Team ORtg 2014-15 Season 93.0 With Covington 97.4 w/out Covington 91.1 And looking at how the offense has fared with our two point guards on the court, both with and without Covington: 2014-15 Season W/Covington w/out Covington Michael Carter-Williams 91.3 83.9 Tony Wroten 101.9 88.1 (And a graph for those who prefer that): Note: the last table used NBA.com's offensive rating calculation, which is slightly different than Basketball-Reference's calculation. I prefer to use Basketball-Reference, since it's easier to put that in a historical context. However, it doesn't offer the ability to get a player's offensive rating when paired with (and without) a different player, hence why two slightly different calculations are used. NBA.com's offensive rating generally comes out slightly lower, but the Sixers 83.9 offensive rating with Michael Carter-Williams on the court without Covington is still just about as bad as it can get. Over the two years of data NBA.com has, the lowest non-Sixers offensive rating is 97.9. So 83.9 is really, really, bad. Another area where the benefit of floor spacing shows up is when looking at how frequently the team turns the ball over when he's on the court and comparing it to how frequently the team turns it over when he's not. Below is a table that contains the players who have played the most minutes on the Sixers, and compares the team's turnover percentage when they are on and off the court. A negative differential means that the team turns the ball over less when they're on the court, and is a good thing. With a team turnover percentage of 17.2%, Covington far and away has the most significant statistical impact on turnovers among regulars in the Sixers rotation, with only K.J. McDaniels coming close (which is somewhat surprising, and would be interesting to look at in-depth). Of the regulars, only Henry Sims, with a mostly negligible -0.4% differential, is on the positive side of the ledger. We once again shift our focus to the play of our two point guards. Below is a look at the assist-to-turnover ratio of the two point guards both with and without Covington on the floor. To point out that this is not only due to the team's early season struggles, I've included both the full-season statistics and the last 15 games. Assists Per Turnover Player With Covington w/out Covington Season Michael Carter-Williams 2.16 / 1 1.17 / 1 Tony Wroten 1.93 / 1 1.02 / 1 Last 15 games Michael Carter-Williams 2.21 / 1 0.79 / 1 Tony Wroten 1.61 / 1 0.93 / 1 That's amazing. Over the last 15 games, neither Michael Carter-Williams or Tony Wroten have a positive assist-to-turnover ratio when Covington has been off the floor. It's also interesting to note Tony Wroten's at-rim field goal percentage with and without Covington. As the best slasher on the team, Wroten benefits tremendously from the floor spacing Covington provides, not only as a passer but also as a scorer. Again, I'm going to list the full season and the last 15 games to show that this is not due to any early-season struggles and that the conclusion still applies. The impact has been pretty consistent, with Wroten shooting a full 11-12% better at the rim. I'm also going to include 4 screen grabs of various plays. I'm not going to do a full video breakdown, as this article was more meant to point out the statistical impact Covington has had on the Sixers offense, but these screen grabs provide a pretty simple explanation on why Covington's presence has helped. The first one is a hook shot Nerlens Noel attempted in the last game against the Wizards. I included this primarily to show that, while Covington might currently be in a slump, defenses are still giving him the same kind of attention and respect of a high-level shooter, and the benefits his spacing has provided still exist. In fact, most of the team stats have gotten better during Covington's recent struggles. This play essentially ended with 4 Wizards players guarding two Sixers players in the post. The next one is MCW's game winner against Brooklyn. Every other Brooklyn defender is looking at MCW, completely ignoring the whereabouts of their own man. Joe Johnson? Not one care given to Luc Mbah a Moute. But Covington's man remains glued to him, not even looking at the ball. The next one is Tony Wroten's game winner against the Cavs. Again, 4 defenders collapsed on Wroten, including K.J. McDaniels man, which would have left a relatively easy kick-out from Wroten to an open K.J. Covington's man stays within arms reach of Covington, though. My favorite part is MCW. He's there, in good catch and shoot position, with both his hands and feet ready for a kick-out pass, without a defender within 15' of him. And, finally, here is an example of floor spacing without Covington in the game. This is an especially bad lineup, with Furkan Aldemir, Malcolm Thomas, and Jerami Grant in the game, although Hollis Thompson in the corner provides a little bit of help spacing the floor. So what does all of this tell us? First, it tells us that Robert Covington is good. His ability to contribute, and do so efficiently, as a catch and shoot guy even when he doesn't get a lot of open catch and shoot looks, is a very good sign for his long-term potential. But it also shows just how much the Sixers need a guy(s) to spread the floor. The fact that some of those incredibly awful numbers saw substantial improvement with the presence of just one legitimate floor-spacer shows how crucial of a role shooting plays in an offenses ability to execute, while showing how much the Sixers lacked in that regard before Covington's arrival. So far, Covington has looked like a keeper, and that's something this collection of basketball players has desperately needed. |
I am so in love with pancakes. They are great any time of day and I have been craving them lately. We have put together a long list of some of the most amazing pancake recipes you will find out there. Though they are technically a breakfast food, these pancakes look like they would be perfect for dessert too. The other day my boyfriend and I had oatmeal pancakes with ice cream on top for dessert, and they were stellar. Enjoy! 22 Ways to Make Plant-Based Pancakes 1. Simple Vegan Pancakes Get the recipe here. 2. Vegan Oreo Pancakes My Latest Videos Get the recipe here. 3. Peanut Butter Pancakes Get the recipe here. 4. Loveliest Lemon Vegan Pancakes Get the recipe here. 5. Life Changing Pancakes Get the recipe here. 6. Fresh Apricot & Pecan Vegan Pancakes Get the recipe here. 7. Easy Vegan Cornmeal Pancakes Get the recipe here. 8. Cinnamon Roll Pancakes Get the recipe here. 9. Vegan Caramelized Pear Pancakes Get the recipe here. 10. Vegan Zucchini Bread Pancakes Get the recipe here. 11. Vegan Green Tea Pancakes Get the recipe here. 12. Fermented Pancakes Get the recipe here. 13. Vegan Blueberry Buttermilk Pancakes Get the recipe here. 14. Vegan Banana Pancakes Get the recipe here. 15. Gluten Free Banana Pancakes Get the recipe here. 16. Pumpkin Spiced Coconut Pancakes Get the recipe here. 17. Vegan Chocolate Chip Pancakes Get the recipe here. 18. OATMEAL PANCAKES W/ ESPRESSO GLAZE Get the recipe here. 19. Vegan Black Bean Brownie Pancakes Get the recipe here. 20. Vegan Carrot Cake Pancakes Get the recipe here. 21. Triple Chocolate Pancakes Get the recipe here. 22. Vegan S’mores Pancakes Get the recipe here. |
Support for democracy is falling. In practice, “democracy” has always been rule by the left. They fix the electorate as needed, by expanding it, “educating” it, applying political repression, or bringing in a new people to replace the old people, so as to ensure a vote for current leftism. Which gets ever lefter. And current leftism has been getting crazier and crazier, faster and faster. Which requires ever more drastic measures to massage the electorate to obtain an acceptable result. Lockean doctrine implied a democracy of property holders – since the only legitimate activities of the state were to defend the realm and uphold property rights, and allowing non property holders to vote would obviously undermine property rights. In Whig history, the restriction to property holders and the importance of securing property rights gets forgotten. In Whig history Lockeanism was triumphant in the Glorious revolution, which supposedly established the supremacy of parliament. Perhaps it did, but Lock and his patrons were exiled. If those in power were Lockeans they were forced to remain mighty quiet about it until the early 1800s in order to avoid the wrath of the divine right monarch. Divine right was still live when George proclaimed that God had appointed him regent. This resulted in Trump/Bush levels of derangement on the left, and the entire Victorian era and the resulting emancipation of women and destruction of marriage can in large part be understood as an effort to retroactively destroy George the Fourth. His filthy slut wife is still today written up as a long suffering saint, and hence all women are saints, and only wives are ever wronged, never husbands. We are still today suffering under a propaganda offensive created to delegitimize George the fourth. The left is still today half cracked on anything King George related. Anything your read in official history related to King George the fourth is half lies and half butthurt madness. Whigs got the decisive upper hand when King George’s reign ended – and two years after his death instituted lockean democracy limited to property holders. Which property restriction was progressively diluted resulting in the election of lefter and lefter governments, until in 1918 they gave large numbers of non property holders the vote, who promptly proceeded to vote against property rights. So the period where Lock’s doctrines were actually in effect was about fifty two years, from 1832 to 1884. Britain went from kingly and aristocratic rule to democracy of the propertyless with an intervening period of rule by the property owning classes of about fifty to ninety years, from 1832 to 1884, or from 1832 to 1918. This was classical liberalism, libertarianism, which is a reasonable and sane form of leftism. But it did not come to power by itself, could not come to power by itself. It came to power in coalition with two evil and crazy forms of leftism, hatred of colonialism and the doctrine that women are angels, which doctrine of women as angels was used as a bludgeon against King George and the Aristocracy, and continues to be used as a bludgeon against King George and the Aristocracy, even today. Pretty soon the evil and crazy left devoured the sane left. Since women are angels there is supposedly no need to coercively enforce chastity on them, and the marital contract only needs to be enforced on men, not women, Enforcing it on women is supposedly just misogyny. The result was what you would expect, a massive wave of female promiscuity and adultery, for example the whore Florence Nightingale and the slut Queen Caroline, and a vast horde of illegitimate children. A lot of libertarians believe that if we refrain from subsidizing fatherless children, we will not have fatherless children. Victorianism proved this false, with far too many women giving birth in dark alleys in the rain. If you don’t have a welfare state to support fatherless children, you have to do what the Victorians failed to do, forcefully coerce women to behave chastely, subjecting them to the authority of responsible male adults with authority to use corporal punishment. We wound up with a welfare state in large part because the Victorian failure to police female chastity with male authority and physical coercion resulted in an intolerable torrent of bastards. The United States is a more complicated story, because, until the war of Northern Aggression, things happened state by state. Whigs generally came to power in the American Revolution, but not always and everywhere, so came to power somewhat earlier in America than in Britain. In America, Lockeanism, democracy restricted to property owners, generally had a short life. To get acceptably leftist governments elected, had to enfranchise the masses. And then had to enfranchise even more of the masses. And then enfranchise women. And then had to bring in the third world to replace legacy Americans. Religions are synthetic tribes. So we are always ruled by a theocracy, defining religions broadly to include quasi religious doctrines like communism and proggism. But proggism, the religion descended from whiggery, itself descended from puritanism, has become ever more evil, ever more insane, and is getting crazier faster and faster. This is inevitable in a state religion that lacks an archbishop and a grand inquisitor to prevent holiness spirals. If adherents of a belief system took power, the way for the next guy to take power is to adhere to that belief system only even more so and with knobs on top. So the day inexorably comes when proggism shall fall, and with it democracy. Lockeanism was a pretty good idea – but ultimately it was a mere tool to power, and rapidly got left behind in the holiness spiral. The good ideas got used up, and the ideas remaining are demolition of Chesterton’s fence. When your ideology takes power, it becomes a state religion, and you are going to need an archbishop and a grand inquisitor to prevent your ideology from being devoured by those holier than you are. You have to have someone whose job it is to stop holiness spirals, to officially discredit those who preach more than the required level of holiness, to ensure that those possessing state power are sufficiently holy but not holier than the King, the Archbishop, and the Grand Inquisitor. |
LAKEWOOD — Anti-semitic graffiti greeted children at a Lakewood playground on Thursday. Swastikas and a misspelled salute to Hitler were spray-painted in black on a jungle gym on a playground, and windows were broken in a building at the Yeshiva Ketana, according to Lakewood police spokesman Greg Staffordsmith, who said the damage was done sometime late Wednesday or early Thursday. There were also other markings that were not clear in their meaning. The school is located on Second Avenue and is the former Lakewood YMCA. “Lakewood Township and its police department takes bias crime very seriously. It is obvious that someone is trying to intimidate a particular segment of the community and we will not tolerate that sort of behavior," Lakewood Mayor Menashe Miller told The Lakewood Scoop. Staffordsmith said there was a similar graffiti incident in July at the school but no connection has been made between the incidents. There has been growing tension in Lakewood and surrounding communities, with longtime residents complaining of what they say are predatory real estate practices by the growing Orthodox Jewish community. Some residents have compared the practices to the "blockbusting" that started with the Great Migration in 1910, when real estate agents pressured white homeowners to sell their properties at cheap rates and then inflated the prices and sold them to black buyers in desperate need of housing. In recent years, some residents in these Ocean County communities have complained that they have been harassed and pressured to sell their homes to Jewish families that want to move into the Lakewood area because of its Kosher markets, religious schools and temples. Toms River earlier this year banned real estate solicitation in two areas of the town for five years in reaction to residents' complaints. Vandals also scratched ugly comments about Jewish people into playground equipment at Riverwood Park in Toms River in March. Staffordsmith asked anyone with information about the Lakewood incident to call 732-363-0200. Contact reporter Dan Alexander at Dan.Alexander@townsquaremedia.com . |
HONG KONG — The Chinese state news media reported Tuesday that at least 22 people had died in the collapse of four residential buildings in an eastern city the day before, a toll that would make it one of the deadliest cases of its kind in recent years. The buildings, cramped six-story quarters for migrant workers in the city of Wenzhou, collapsed about 3:25 a.m. on Monday, the state-run Zhejiang Daily reported. Neighbors, flashlights in hand, began to sift through the rubble before rescue workers arrived, the paper said. Early reports indicated that several people had been killed, but the toll rose as rescue efforts continued Monday and overnight. Chinese television showed scenes of dozens of rescue workers, some in orange coveralls and others in military fatigues, digging by hand through the rubble. By Tuesday morning, six people had been rescued, including a 3-year-old girl who was pulled from the wreckage on Monday evening, the state news media reported. Reports suggested that the girl’s father, who was killed, appeared to have shielded her from the building’s collapse. Wenzhou, a bustling coastal city in Zhejiang Province, is a major manufacturing hub for goods like shoes and purses, and its factories attract thousands of migrant workers from across the country. The 3-year-old’s parents had worked in a shoe factory, and the girl spent most of the year with her grandparents thousands of miles away, her aunt told a local news website, Zhejiang Online. |
Noted critic of economic inequality, corporations and the rich, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders said he was running for president to buck the system in which billionaire families were able to buy elections and candidates. The Supreme Court’s “disastrous” decision in Citizens United created the situation in which “billionaires are literally able to buy elections and candidates,” Sanders argued. Billionaire families, he charged, are spending “hundreds and hundreds” of millions to back candidates, “often extreme right-wing” ones. Sanders brought up the Koch brothers, major Republican donors, who he said were spending $900 million in the coming election to campaign for abolishing Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. “I wonder now, in this day and age, whether it is possible for any candidate who is not a billionaire, or who is not beholden to the billionaire class, to be able to run successful campaigns,” he said. “And if that is the case, I want you all to recognize what a sad state of affairs that is for American democracy.” READ MORE: Clinton gets competition: Bernie Sanders tells media he's running for president in 2016 Sanders also attacked the economic system in which “99 percent of all new income is going to the top one percent,” while most Americans work harder and longer for less money than before. “This type of economics is not only immoral, not only wrong, it is unsustainable, it cannot continue,” he said, adding that the US was facing with a more serious crisis than any time since the 1930s Great Depression. “The major issue is, how do we create an economy that works for all of our people, rather than a small number of billionaires?” Sanders asked. He criticized the official unemployment figure of 5.5 percent, arguing it was closer to 11 percent because so many people have given up looking for work. Rebuilding the crumbling US infrastructure would create 13 million jobs, he said. Statistician Nate Silver rejected any notion of Sanders having a chance at the nomination. “I mean, literally, Al Gore is more likely to be the Democratic nominee than Bernie Sanders,” Silver tweeted. Some reporters really hustling on the "Bernie Sanders has a chance" beat! No, he doesn't. http://t.co/x3J9FGq9Jbpic.twitter.com/2KJmtcNiQA — Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) April 30, 2015 While acknowledging that Sanders’ odds of winning were nearly nonexistent, the mainstream media hailed his announcement as good for the campaign and even the Democrats’ front-runner, Hillary Clinton. Sanders describes himself as a democratic socialist and has consistently shifted the political debate leftward on several issues, in particular campaign finance, health care, the budget and the environment. “The more attention Bernie Sanders gets, the more attention economic inequality gets, which is something Republicans would rather avoid,” wrote Paul Waldman in the Washington Post’s political blog Plum Line. Sanders himself rejected speculation that his candidacy was symbolic and intended simply to shift the debate. “We’re in this race to win,” he told reporters. Listed as an independent, Sanders caucuses with the Democrats, and is counted as such for committee assignments. Earlier in the week, when he first told the press about his intentions to announce a presidential bid, he said running as an independent would be impractical. “It made a lot more sense for me to work within the Democratic primary system where it's much easier to get on the ballot and have a chance to debate the other candidates," Sanders had said. Sanders, 73, served as the mayor of Vermont’s largest city for four terms, from 1981 to 1989. He then ran for the state’s one seat in the US House of Representatives as an independent, losing in 1988 before winning the position in 1990. Sanders served in the House until January 2007, when he was sworn in as Vermont’s junior US senator. |
For years Sheldon Silver, speaker of the New York State Assembly, earned a lucrative income in addition to his government salary, and now he’s been hit with federal fraud charges. Where have we heard that one before? Oh, right: the tale of Joe Bruno, the former Republican Senate majority leader who, along with Silver, was once “one of the so-called ‘three men in a room’ who decided what, if anything, got done in Albany,” according to a 2008 New York profile. In January 2009, about six months after he retired from the state Senate, Bruno was indicted on eight counts of corruption. His alleged method of monetizing a government office was a bit different from Silver’s, but his legal struggles — and triumphs — still provide a peek at what may be in store for Silver. Bruno was accused of inappropriately mixing his private and political work by running a consulting business out of his government office. Prosecutors said he received millions of dollars from businessmen who wanted help from the Legislature, and firms that had him pressure labor unions to invest money with them — and then he concealed the payments in his ethics disclosure forms. The former majority leader said that was just how things were done in Albany, and insisted he’d done nothing wrong. In December 2009, a jury convicted Bruno on two felony counts of mail fraud related to payments from entrepreneur Jared Abbruzzese, who went to him for help with various business ventures. Bruno was found not guilty on five counts of mail or wire fraud, and the jury failed to reach a verdict on the final count. Though he was facing 20 years in prison, in May 2010 Bruno was sentenced to just two years in prison — and he was allowed to remain free while the Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of the law used to convict him. The justices found that the law that made it a crime “to deprive another of the intangible right of honest services” was too vague, and a federal appeals court vacated his conviction. But his legal troubles still weren’t over. The appeals court ruled Bruno could be retried on different charges, and in May 2012 he was indicted for taking bribes and kickbacks. Bruno argued that would constitute double jeopardy, but the court disagreed. Finally, after a two-week trial in May 2014, a second jury found Bruno not guilty of all charges. On Christmas Eve last month, the 85-year-old Bruno got some more good news. In New York, state employees are entitled to have their legal fees reimbursed if they’re acquitted of crimes related to their duties. Thus, the office of Attorney General Eric Schneiderman informed state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli that it “had no choice” but to approve Bruno’s request to be reimbursed for $2.4 million in legal fees — though most of that money came from a “long-dormant” campaign fund. The letter says that vague laws on the use of campaign money create a tremendous “potential for abuse,” and notes, “In hopes that this shortcoming will be addressed in the upcoming legislative session, I am forwarding a copy of this letter to Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, Senate Majority Leader Dean G. Skelos, and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.” Somehow, we doubt they’re going to hop on that. |
By John Blake, CNN (CNN) - The Rev. Timothy McDonald gripped the pulpit with both hands, locked eyes with the shouting worshippers, and decided to speak the unspeakable. The bespectacled Baptist minister was not confessing to a scandalous love affair or the theft of church funds. He brought up another taboo: the millions of poor Americans who won’t get health insurance beginning in January because their states refused to accept Obamacare. McDonald cited a New Testament passage in which Jesus gathered the 5,000 and fed them with five loaves and two fishes. Members of his congregation bolted to their feet and yelled, “C’mon preacher” and “Yessir” as his voice rose in righteous anger. “What I like about our God is that he doesn’t throw people away,” McDonald told First Iconium Baptist Church in Atlanta during a recent Sunday service. “There will be health care for every American. Don’t you worry when they try to cast you aside. Just say I’m a leftover for God and leftovers just taste better the next day!” McDonald’s congregation cheered, but his is a voice crying in the wilderness. He’s willing to condemn state leaders whose refusal to accept Obamacare has left nearly 5 million poor Americans without health coverage. But few of the most famous pastors in the Bible Belt will join him. Joel Osteen? Bishop T.D. Jakes, and other prominent pastors throughout the South? Like McDonald, they preach in states where crosses and church steeples dot the skyline yet the poor can’t get the health insurance they would receive if they lived elsewhere. All declined to comment. When people talk about the Affordable Care Act, most focus on the troubled launch of its website. But another complication of the law has received less attention: a “coverage gap” that will leave nearly 5 million poor Americans without health care, according to a Kaiser Health Foundation study. Learn more from Kaiser about the coverage gap in states that refused Obamacare The coverage gap was created when 25 states refused to accept the expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare. The people who fall into this gap make too much money to qualify for Medicaid and not enough to qualify for Obamacare subsidies in their state insurance exchanges. If they lived elsewhere, they would probably get insurance. But because they live in a state that refused the new health care law, they likely will remain among the nation’s uninsured poor after Obamacare coverage kicks in come January. The coverage gap has been treated as a political issue, but there is a religious irony to the gap that has been ignored. Most of the people who fall into the coverage gap live in the Bible Belt, a 14-state region in the South stretching from North Carolina to Texas and Florida. The Bible Belt is the most overtly Christian region in the country, filled with megachurches and pastors who are treated like celebrities. All but two Bible Belt states have refused to accept the Medicaid expansion under Obamacare. Should Bible Belt pastors say anything publicly about the millions of poor people in their communities stranded by the coverage gap? Is it anti-Christian for state leaders to turn down help for the people Jesus called “the least of these"? Or should pastors say nothing publicly about such issues because they are strictly political? CNN's Sanjay Gupta explains who falls into the coverage gap Who speaks for the poor in the coverage gap? When these questions were sent to many of the most popular pastors in the Bible Belt, they hit a wall of silence. Virtually no prominent pastor wanted to talk about the uninsured poor in their midst. Joel Osteen, pastor of the largest church in the nation, declined to be interviewed about the subject. So did Bishop T.D. Jakes. Their megachurches are both in Texas, the state with the nation’s highest number of people without health insurance. Max Lucado, the best-selling Christian author who is a minister at a church in Texas, declined to speak; Charles Stanley, the Southern Baptist pastor in Georgia whose In Touch Ministries reaches millions around the globe, declined to speak; Ed Young Sr. and Ed Young Jr., a father and son in Texas who pastor two of the fastest-growing churches in the nation, also declined to speak. The list goes on. The silence is not hard to understand. Obamacare is a polarizing political issue in the Bible Belt. A pastor who publicly weighs in on the subject could divide his or her congregation or risk their job. And some prominent pastors like Osteen are popular in part because they do not alienate fans by taking political stands. The Rev. Phil Wages, senior pastor Winterville First Baptist Church in Georgia and a blogger, was one of the few Bible Belt ministers willing to speak on the subject. He says he won’t preach about the coverage gap created by the state’s rejection of the Medicaid expansion because he has what he calls theological differences with the thrust of the new health care law. Wages says the Bible teaches that the care of orphans, widows and the sick are given to the church, not to the government. Early Christians were the first to create hospitals, orphanages and hospices. “I have an issue with the government coming in to get money through me - through taxes - to take care of people, when my argument is that I should be free to give to charities or to my church in order to take care of the sick and destitute,” he says. Wages says he has no doubt that lack of health insurance is a monumental problem, and that many people are poor because of circumstances beyond their control. Yet there is no New Testament example of Jesus trying to shape public policy on behalf of the poor. “I do not see any biblical precedent where Jesus ever went to Herod or Pilate and said you should be taking care of the poor,” Wages says. “Jesus told his disciples to take care of the poor and the apostles said the same thing to the early church.” Wages’ position is impractical and unbiblical, says Ronald Sider, a longtime advocate for the poor and author of “The Scandal of Evangelical Politics." Churches and charities don’t have enough resources to take care of an estimated 48 million Americans who don’t have health care. The Bible is filled with examples of God's fury over economic oppression of the poor, which Christians should regard as scandalous, he says. “If you are not sharing God’s concern for the poor, it raises huge questions about whether you are a Christian at all,” he says about pastors who say nothing about the uninsured poor. “As God’s spokespersons, you ought to be talking about God’s concern for the poor as much as God. In the richest nation in world history, it’s contradictory to have millions without health insurance.” “It absolutely stinks” The coverage gap may inspire a religious debate, but for its victims the issue is raw and personal. A recent New York Times article about the coverage gap revealed that many of its victims are the working poor: cooks, cashiers, sales clerks and waitresses. “These are people who are working people but they haven’t been able to afford health insurance or their employers don’t offer it and they’re stuck,” says Andy Miller, editor of Georgia Health News, a nonprofit news organization that covers health news in the state. “A lot of these folks have chronic health conditions.” They are people like Shelley “Myra” Mitchell, a single mom with four children who makes $9 an hour working at a Chick-fil-A in Georgia. She makes $18,000 a year – too much for Georgia’s existing Medicaid program, but not enough to qualify for subsidies to sign up for Obamacare’s insurance marketplace in Georgia. Mitchell’s voice grew edgy with frustration when asked to describe her health needs. She rang up about $20,000 in emergency room bills because she has no health insurance. She can’t afford to get pap smears, go to the dentist or get surgery for a two-year-old hernia. She can’t take medication for her depression and anxiety because she can’t afford it. She thought she could get help under Obamacare but recently learned she can’t because Georgia did not accept the law’s Medicaid expansion. “It stinks,” she says. “I’ve been dealing with this hernia for two years now, and I can’t get anyone to help me because I don’t have health insurance. It absolutely stinks.” Why pastors should stay silent about the coverage gap Mitchell’s plight may stink. But at what point should a pastor go public on such a complex issue, and what could he or she actually say? Two prominent evangelical pastors openly wrestled with those questions. Andy Stanley is one of the most popular evangelical pastors in the nation. He is the senior pastor of North Point Community Church in Alpharetta, Georgia, a megachurch with at least 33,000 members. He is also the author of the forthcoming book “How to be Rich,” which urges Christians to be "rich in good deeds" instead of wealth. His church recently announced that it donated $5.2 million to Atlanta charities and provided another 34,000 volunteer hours. Stanley says the coverage gap disturbs him. The church cannot handle the needs of millions of uninsured people alone and should quit taking shots at government involvement, he says. But he adds that it’s not anti-Christian for political leaders in states like Georgia to turn down the Medicaid expansion for the poor. “If you really want to know how concerned someone is for the poor ask them what percentage of their personal money they give to organizations that help the poor,” he says. “Ask them how much time they give to organizations that help the poor.” Stanley says it would be difficult for any pastor to talk about the Medicaid expansion without addressing the entire law. “I tried to imagine a scenario where I urged people to write our governor encouraging him to reconsider his decision regarding the expansion of Medicaid for the poor,” he says. “As I imagined that, I got the feeling that by the time I finished explaining the issue, people’s eyes would be glazed over.” Pastors who don't preach one way or the other on Medicaid expansion aren't callous or apathetic, says Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. They may be suspicious of a bigger government and skeptical of whether this move will solve the problem. “The Bible calls on Christians to answer the cries of the poor,” he says. “All Christians must do that. The question of the Medicaid expansion is a question of how we do that. I don’t hear many people arguing that we shouldn’t care about the plight of the poor when it comes to medical care. The question is a genuine debate about the role of the state.” Moore says some people have a “utopian view” of what state power can accomplish. “Government programs sometimes encourage dependency, unintentionally break down family structures, and become unsustainable financially,” Moore says. Bob Coy, pastor of Calvary Chapel megachurch in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, wondered aloud about what he could, and should, say. Florida, which has the second highest number of people without health insurance behind Texas, has not accepted the Obamacare Medicaid expansion. Coy says he hasn’t spoken publicly about poor people missing health coverage in Florida. But he has called the governor to get more information. “I’m not an activist guy. I don’t tell the government what to do. I am a church guy. I teach the Bible.” That doesn’t mean he doesn’t care for the poor, though, Coy says. He grew up in a poor family that couldn’t afford to go to the dentist. His church also spends a large percentage of its budget on serving the poor. Coy says he is suspicious of large-scale programs that are publicly funded because they are often abused. “One side of our society is saying, 'We need this,' while on the other side is saying, 'This isn’t fair and isn’t going to work.’ So how should a pastor, who has a heart to help people, respond?” Why pastors should speak out The Rev. Shane Stanford’s answer to Coy is simple: Talk about justice for the poor like Jesus did. Stanford is the senior pastor of Christ United Methodist Church in Memphis and author of “Five Stones: Conquering Your Giants.” He is also HIV-positive. He was born a hemophiliac and contracted the virus when he was 16 during treatment for his illness. Stanford says he publicly speaks out about the millions of Americans stranded without health coverage because he knows how it feels. Once, after heart surgery, he was getting a transfusion when a nurse came into the room and pulled the needle out of his arm because she said he had maxed out his health insurance coverage. He says standing up for people in the coverage gap is a matter of justice. “Sometimes pastors have to tell people what they need to hear, not what they want to hear.” Stanford ignores fellow pastors who counsel him to be silent about his state and others that refused to accept the Medicaid expansion. “They say you have to be careful talking about political issues,” he says. “When I look at their lives, part of me thinks they never had that needle yanked out of their arm.” Conservative pastors who urge their colleagues to avoid politics are hypocrites, says James Cone, a prominent theologian who has spent much of his career writing books condemning white churches for what he says is their indifference to social justice. “When their own interests are involved, they are very much involved in politics,” Cone says. “Same-sex marriage and abortion – they have no trouble politically opposing them.” Cone, a professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York, says a nation is defined by how it treats its most vulnerable members. But there is an entrenched hostility to poor people in America that goes unchallenged by some white, conservative Christians, he says. “When poor people get food stamps, they get mad,” Cone says. “When the rich and corporations get tax breaks and pay no taxes, they don’t say anything.” McDonald, the pastor who spoke out on behalf of poor people from his Atlanta church, says Jesus provided universal health care. The Gospels are filled with accounts of Jesus healing marginalized people. “He did it for free,” McDonald says of Jesus’ healing. “The reason the crowds gathered around Jesus primarily was for healing. People want wholeness.” Perhaps the gap between Bible Belt pastors who say nothing about the uninsured poor and those who do is also rooted in history. Conservative Christians have traditionally emphasized providing charity to the poor - soup kitchens, donations to impoverished people in undeveloped countries - while progressive Christians have blended charity with calls for public policy changes that help the poor. The distinction between both approaches was distilled by a memorable quote from the late Brazilian Roman Catholic Bishop Dom Helder Camara, who said: "When I feed the poor they call me a saint. When I ask why so many people are poor they call me a communist." That may be changing as a new generation of evangelicals rise in the Bible Belt and elsewhere. One minister who speaks to them is the Rev. Timothy Keller, a conservative Christian author who pastors a megachurch in New York. Keller is the author of “Generous Justice: How God’s Grace Makes Us Just,” a popular book that argues that evangelicals should do more than preach personal salvation; they must “speak up for those who cannot speak up for themselves.” He is a role model for many younger evangelicals. “God loves and defends those with the least economic and social power, and so should we. That is what it means to ‘do justice.’ ’’ CNN.com recently contacted Keller to see if he would talk about "Generous Justice" and how it might apply to health care and the poor. Did he think pastors in Bible Belt states should say anything publicly on behalf of poor people being denied basic medical insurance? His publicist said she would contact Keller with the request. Several days later, she returned with Keller’s answer. He had no comment. |
Image copyright AP Image caption Dean Jones was one of Disney's major stars of the 1960s and 1970s The US actor Dean Jones, best known for his starring role in Disney's The Love Bug, has died at the age of 84. He died of complications related to Parkinson's disease, in Los Angeles. He performed as a TV and theatre actor, but his career was defined by Hollywood, appearing in 46 films, including 10 for Disney. He was one of Disney's major stars of the 1960s and 1970s, appearing in That Darn Cat!, Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo and Beethoven. The Love Bug, in which he played a struggling racing driver who acquires a Volkswagen named Herbie that shows human traits, was arguably his most successful film. Jones was proud of the family-friendly entertainment that was his hallmark. "I see something in them that is pure form. Just entertainment. No preaching," he once told the Los Angeles Times. "We're always looking for social significance, but maybe people just like to be entertained. British screenwriter and director Edgar Wright was among those who paid tribute to the star overnight: "RIP Dean Jones. Hoping you ride Herbie into Valhalla," he tweeted. Image copyright Twitter Originally from Alabama, Jones began his performing career as a singer in a New Orleans nightclub. After university, he spent four years in the Navy, before signing a contract with MGM. After an unremarkable start to his movie career - including a small, but notable, role in the 1957 Elvis film Jailhouse Rock - he turned to Broadway, making his debut in 1960 opposite Jane Fonda in There Was a Little Girl. He went on to receive critical acclaim for his role in Under the Yum Yum Tree on stage, which was later adapted for the big screen - also starring Jones. Screen success followed with That Darn Cat! - with Jones playing an FBI agent opposite Hayley Mills - Any Wednesday (with Fonda again), Monkeys, Go Home! and then, in 1969, The Love Bug. He made a memorable - if short-lived - return to the stage in the lead role of Robert, in Stephen Sondheim's classic Broadway musical Company. He withdrew from the 1970 production after just two weeks, citing family problems, but remains on the Grammy-winning album. Both actress Martha Plimpton and Glee star Darren Criss paid tribute on Twitter by posting his performance of the song Being Alive in Company. Image copyright Twitter "In loving memory of Dean Jones- for those of you unfamiliar treat yourself with this iconic, breathtaking vocal perf, " tweeted Criss. "The greatest. Rest in peace, Dean Jones," wrote Plimpton. 1977's Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo marked Jones' final foray in the Herbie franchise, though he took smaller roles in the 1997 remake of That Darn Cat! - starring Christina Ricci - and the 1997 TV remake of The Love Bug. As a Disney favourite, he earned a spot in the Disney Legends Hall of Fame in 1995. He worked regularly into his 70s, appearing in films including 1992 comedy Beethoven, Other People's Money (1991) and alongside Harrison Ford in Clear and Present Danger. His last film was Mandie and the Secret Tunnel in 2009. He is survived by his wife of 42 years, Lory, and three children. Image copyright AFP Image caption The Herbie car on display at the Cannes Film Festival in 2005 Did you know Dean Jones? What are your memories of the actor? If you are willing to speak to a BBC journalist about these issues, you can get in touch with us in the following ways: |
Mexico City is taking potshots at its mayor for his breakthrough initiative to fight rampant sex crime: giving everyone a plastic whistle. Some have also suggested burqas and chastity belts. The initiative now joins the already existing pink buses. Sexual assaults in the Mexican capital appear to be on the rise, with high profile crimes especially. Around three million attacks occurred in 2010-2015, including minor assaults, according to the National Statistics Institute. This spurred Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera into action with a new initiative that will see the epidemic tackled by handing out white whistles to women “which will help them to warn of possible crimes.” That did not sit too well with campaign groups, who went online to blast Mancera for patronizing women instead of addressing actual criminal behavior. Possibly the funniest of all things tweeted back at the mayor were upgraded versions of the whistle with the same CDMX logo, including now the Mexican shakers to ward off corruption, a vuvuzela to combat extortion and other useful options. La CDMX regalará silbatos contra el acoso y no podemos dejar de imaginar las próximas propuestas#ElPitoDeMancerapic.twitter.com/HFNIyulkiS — pictoline (@pictoline) May 26, 2016 And here’s the thing about whistles. They’re also a metaphor for male genitalia. So, #ElPitoDeMancera – or Mancera’s whistle – was one hashtag that quickly rose to prominence. But there are real problems many see with the whole idea. “Women without a whistle – real or metaphoric – would ‘expose themselves’ and if they are assaulted and no one does anything, they would be to blame for not whistling,” wrote columnist Catalina Ruiz Navarro for Sin Embargo. Highly critical of the initiative, she wrote that women find making a noise ridiculous because no one will help either way, and that “the measure shows [the mayor’s] poor understanding of harassment.” She goes on to say that "the rape whistle has only served in other countries as an emergency measure and is only effective in organized societies, where the police and the community respond quickly and without violence.” La segunda fase de la política de Mancera para combatir la violencia en contra de las mujeres: pic.twitter.com/ZoKkLuPrBI — Sambuka (@samnbk) May 25, 2016 The metro system is probably the scariest public place for a woman in Mexico. At least 126,000 cases were registered there in 2015, according to the Mexico City-based Institute for Women. Of those only 300 were reported. Someone suggested – what’s the point in using a whistle when even screaming doesn’t help? There are also those gender-specific pink buses intended just for women: they are probably the thing that was most compared to the whistle idea. Last month, a demonstration against gender violence and femicide took place, attended by thousands. The Twitter campaign #VivasNosQueremos detailing victim stories was soon marred by sexual and death threats. |
If you google ‘the toughest training in the world,’ Royal Marines Training will come up in the first three searches. It’s not necessarily true that it is the toughest but let’s put it this way; It is tough, very tough. If you think you have what it takes to join training; You don’t. Nobody does. No one ever will until they get into training and develop what it takes to be a recruit. There are 3 completely different phases you have to go through if you decide to join. Phase one; Personal Training. You have to exercise on your own for at least 6-9 months to pass the tests required. They include aptitude tests, physical tests, medical tests and a couple of admiralty interviews to see if you will be hoofing or biff in training. (Hoofin in RM terms is good and Biff is Bad) The physical tests include: A 1.5 mile run in 12:30 minutes on a treadmill at 2% incline followed by 1 minute rest then A 1.5 mile run under 10:30 best effort, 60 Press ups under 2 minutes 80 Sit ups under 2 minutes 8 Pull ups to a beep Bleep run to level 9.4 minimum (running between two 20 meter points to a beep, the beep gets faster each minute and you have to keep up until failure) Phase two; PRMC If you can do all of the above and pass the mile stones I mentioned, you will get an invitation letter and your name will be preceded by Mne, to a 3 day PRMC course (Potential Royal Marines Course) When I received the letter and saw Mne S Seda; I felt a new kind of content, a feeling I never thought existed, it’s not just accomplishment that you are celebrating but rather a gift you have given your weak self and simply felt better than all your achievements combined. You can kleenex your tears now. During PRMC you will see and experience things that will test your mental toughness way more than it will to your physical side. The physical exercises will have you throw your life up at every stage, you will be running on empty, there will be nothing left in the tank, actually the tank will get dry, rusty and fall into pieces but you will not stop, you will go on, you will not think, you will just do, you will not fall, you will get up, you will not fail, you will succeed. Forget about any type of courage or determination you ever took in your life before, when you had to go through a tough experience. During PRMC, your biggest challenge will be your mind, not the tests. You must conquer and supress your fears if you want to make it. You will face a new type of fear you never came across before, your whole body will shake uncontrollably not because it is cold, it’s because your mind is rejecting what you are going to put your body through. You will see death and life injury approaching but you have to smile and embrace them as they will become your new best friends. You will learn a new way of thinking; as one of the trainers once yelled at me during a run on a 3 meter high wall and I was about to fall and break my neck, ‘The body goes where the head is looking,’ You will go through underwater freezing cold tunnels, you will travers ropes at 15 meters high, you will crawl through mud and rocks, you will pick your oppos up and carry them on your back, you will get screamed at in a way never thought possible and you will experience things you never thought existed. One thing kept me getting up every time I fell; The thought of the hand shake and receiving my PRMC passing certificate and boots at the end of all this. Less than half of the PRMCers will make it. Even some of those ones who make it will decide no to get into the RM after what they have been through. On my train journey back home, I sat on an isle seat away from the window. I was scared I might fall off the train window for some reason. I was afraid of everything around me. I was still trying to process what I went through; I was scared of my own thoughts and feelings. Phase 3; Making it in training. A while ago The Royal Navy’s main advert to recruit people to join the RM was ’99.99% need not apply’ Marine training is beyond hard; some will make it through and some will quit, like me. After 28 days, I quit; although I had too much pressure to stay; I just couldn’t help it but quit. Sometimes quitting is great; unlike people who say quitting is unacceptable; quitting is a very natural reaction to what your mind and body are incapable of doing. You may quit because you developed an injury and you care for yourself; you may quit cause you have made the wrong decision and realized how to rectify that; you may quit cause you just want a change; quitting will lead you to new possibilities that are hidden behind the curtain of guilt. You may say; I will regret it forever if I quit when in fact when quitting will give you a chance to analyse things and either go back and do what you were doing when you are more prepared or embark on a new challenge. I decided to quit full time training because it was not for me, it turned out I was among the 99.99% need not apply. I decided to go back as a reservist and so far it’s been the right decision. There are some types of quitting which are shameful and must not apply to your life; as Socrates puts it best 'No citizen has a right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training… what a disgrace it is for a man to grow old without ever seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.' For example, never quit something you love doing. If you like writing and never get any likes, continue on as long as you love what you are doing, why quit. You like running, keep on running and smashing new personal bests, or any sort of habit you develop because you like, never quit until you can master that passion. Make sure you don’t develop a habit to attract people’s attention because it won’t, ask a veteran in this. Being single, after getting rejected by around 5 million girls, has opened up a lot of new ways to come up with ideas to occupy and develop myself, like training to run a marathon, swim 4km, writing, cycling, going on holidays, reading, meeting lots of strangers and the biggest opportunity was joining the royal marines. I hope today’s post would give you a clear understanding of what’s it is like if you want to negotiate with what you once thought hard to get or achieve. It’s all in our heads, train your head first before you train your body. |
The US government is to drop espionage charges against two officials of America's most powerful pro-Israel lobby group accused of spying for the Jewish state because court rulings had made the case unwinnable and the trial would disclose classified information. The two accused, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, worked for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), which drives fundraising for some US members of Congress. They were accused of providing defence secrets to the chief political officer at the Israeli embassy in Washington, Naor Gilon, about US policy toward Iran and al-Qaida in league with a former Pentagon analyst who has since been jailed for 12 years. Dana Boente, who was prosecuting the case in Virginia, said that the case was dropped because pre-trial court rulings had complicated the government's case by requiring a higher level of proof of intent to spy. The court said the prosecution would have to prove not only that the accused pair had passed classified information but that they intended to harm the US in doing so. Rosen and Weissman have argued they were merely using the back-channel contacts with government officials, lobbyists and diplomats that are common in Washington. The defence intended to call the former US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and other officials to establish that the government regularly uses Aipac to discreetly send information to Israel. A former Pentagon analyst, Lawrence Franklin, has already pleaded guilty to disclosing classified information to Rosen and Weissman. The dropping of the charges will come as a relief to Aipac because the case threatened to overshadow its annual conference this weekend at which it parades support from American politicians. It was also an embarrassment which laid the lobby group open to charges of putting Israel's interests above those of the US. The case has been further complicated by a scandal revealed last month by a political publication, Congressional Quarterly, around a member of Congress, Jane Harman, who was secretly taped telling an Israeli agent that she would pressure the justice department to reduce spying charges against the two former Aipac officials. In return, the Israeli agent offered to get a wealthy donor who helps funds election campaigns for Nancy Pelosi, the then-minority leader in the House of Representatives, to pressure Pelosi to appoint Harman to a senior position on the congressional intelligence committee. Aware of the sensitivity of the position she has put herself in, Harman finished the discussion with the Israeli spy by saying: "This conversation doesn't exist." Congressional Quarterly obtained a transcript of the tape recorded by the National Security Agency. An FBI probe of Harman was dropped after the intervention of President Bush's attorney general, Alberto Gonzales. Aipac has long wielded considerable influence over US policy in the Middle East though a mix of appeals to American sympathy for Israel and a hard-ball approach against members of congress who question the unyielding policies of Israeli governments. |
Protesters clashed with riot police at Montreal's Palais des congrès for a second day as a job symposium for Quebec's northern plan was held inside under guard. Dozens of members of the Réseau de résistance du Québecois joined aboriginal groups and students for the planned protest. They faced off with riot squads in full armour stationed around the downtown conference centre. Police arrested 90 people after declaring the protest illegal midday. Officers blocked the convention centre's entrance, as hundreds of job seekers waited outside. Inside the building, about 100 businesses set up kiosks under police watch, for the second day in a row. A protest outside the convention centre Friday erupted into violence with police using tear gas and sound grenades on rock-throwing protesters. Seventeen people were arrested. Plan Nord targets natural resources Companies hope to recruit workers for the Plan Nord, Quebec's ambitious, $80-billion economic development plan. Some First Nations are concerned about how the 25-year strategy is unfolding. "I'm willing to share these resources in Nunavik, but nowhere with my Eskimo ears did I hear anything about Quebec willing to share the resources they claim is theirs," said Harry Tulugak, who lives in Puvirnituq, an Inuit village. Several aboriginal groups have set up tents outside the convention centre. A group of Innu women are expected to join the protest, after travelling by foot from their home community of Uashat-Maliotenam, on Quebec's Lower North Shore. The 900-kilometre journey took a month. |
Published: Tuesday, December 25, 2012 @ 4:01 PM Updated: Tuesday, December 25, 2012 @ 4:01 PM — Within five hours, a Kettering family saw their Christmas whisked away and then restored by morning. Coming home from a family party on Christmas Eve, the family from the 500 block of Carrlands Drive found their home burglarized and their presents missing. They called the police, who documented the incident and left. Police came back five hours later with loads of wrapped presents for the family. In the time between, the officers had gone shopping at a Walgreens. They started with $300 of their own, but while they were shopping other customers started pitching in. The family told News Center 7’s Kate Bartley the gesture showed them the “true meaning of Christmas.” She’ll have the full report at 11 p.m. |
There are two types of plates. The majority are photographic: clear glass sheets scattered with dark specks of stars. Today, these plates draw the most interest from scientists. But about one in five is a spectrographic plate, with each star depicted as a grey smear (representing the rainbow of visible light) perhaps a quarter inch long. In the early days of the collection, these spectra were the cutting edge of astronomy. The first major developments to come out of the Harvard plate collection were systems that classified stars based on the tiny white lines slicing the spectrum’s grey rainbow. “It’s almost incomprehensible that this was all done visually by examining the plates under magnifying glasses,” said Josh Grindlay, an astronomer at Harvard. “Thank heavens they did because it was not something that just immediately popped out, what this spectral classification system was.” The first system was designed by Williamina Fleming, whom Pickering originally hired as a housemaid only to discover her astronomical potential. Fleming’s system, published in 1890, sorted more than 10,000 spectra into an alphabetical sequence of 15 letters. A second, independent system—complicated and criticized for its complexity—was created by Antonia Maury and used 22 letters, with further subclasses denoting how wide or narrow certain spectral lines were. (Years later, astronomers realized some of these characteristics identify binary stars and supergiants.). These two systems were expanded and reconciled by Annie Jump Cannon, whom Grindlay calls a “wonder woman.” Over her career, Cannon classified more than 350,000 spectra on the Harvard plates, sometimes managing a hundred in one day. “She was an extraordinary woman who did one thing extremely well all her life,” said Hearnshaw. In her free time, she also spotted 300 variable stars and five novae Cannon built on Fleming’s and Maury’s work to create the O, B, A, F, G, K, M sequence that still underlies stellar classification. Nevertheless, other astronomers likely could have tackled the classification problem. “This would have been done, but not in the concerted way that it was done here,” Grindlay said. Hearnshaw agreed, pointing particularly to observatories in California and Germany. “Harvard was a pioneer, but they had other people chasing on their tails, and of course that’s good for science.” The spectrographic plates had another secret hidden among their streaks: the recipe for stars, deciphered by Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin. Scientists elsewhere had tied specific elements and their charged varieties to the wavelengths of light they absorb, which match the white lines chopping through a spectrum; Payne-Gaposchkin applied this work to translate the Harvard spectra into elemental ingredients. “What she found was that the stars all seemed enormously uniform in composition,” Gingerich said. “The spectra looked very different, but that was because of the temperature difference of the stars.” Hot hydrogen and very hot hydrogen have very different spectra, but both are hydrogen. “That was a very important finding,” he added. Payne-Gaposchkin’s work also proved that the vast majority of the universe is hydrogen and helium. Even while the spectra were still unveiling their secrets, the photographic plates were beginning to shine, thanks to what is widely recognized as the single most important discovery to come out of the Harvard plates. Astronomers wanted to sort out how bright different stars were — but there’s usually no way to determine whether a star looks bright because it’s nearby or because it’s genuinely a bright star. Harvard astronomer Henrietta Leavitt looked at the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds and saw clusters of stars. “She could see there was this big clump of what looked like a gazillion stars,” said Grindlay. “It was clearly one thing.” Stars clumped together must all be about the same distance from Earth—which in turn meant the ones that appeared brighter really were brighter. By studying a specific type of variable star, called Cepheids, in the Magellanic Clouds, Leavitt realized that brighter Cepheids took longer to dim and brighten, establishing a relationship between intrinsic luminosity and period. That relationship meant astronomers could reverse the process: Measuring how quickly a Cepheid brightens and dims would reveal “how many watts were in the lightbulb,” said Grindlay, and from there, “out pops the distance.” That conversion required other techniques to pin down how far away specific Cepheids were, Gingerich added. But Edwin Hubble was still able to use Leavitt’s work to prove the Milky Way and Andromeda were two separate galaxies. The collection’s full-sky scope was crucial for Leavitt, since the clouds are only visible from the often-ignored southern hemisphere. Other galaxies could have yielded the same realization, but they were too far away for the small telescopes of the time to truly see into them. “It would have been very difficult and I would say essentially impossible without having the Magellanic Clouds,” Grindlay said. |
This insane montage of (nearly) every instance of “What?” from the LOST series started me thinking about this genre of video meme, where some obsessive-compulsive superfan collects every phrase/action/cliche from an episode (or entire series) of their favorite show/film/game into a single massive video montage. For lack of a better name, let’s call them supercuts. (Thanks, Ryan.) Here are some examples I could find, but I’m sure there must be more. Post ’em in the comments and I’ll add them. Bonus points for supercuts with the most clips, the shortest clips, and in additional genres (sports? politics?). UPDATE: This entire list (and many more) is now on Supercut.org. Add more there! Film Glengarry Glen Ross – Obscenity Count Glengarry Glen Ross – “The Leads” Ship, Computer, and Sauce in the first six Star Trek films Shia LaBeouf in “No No No No” Requiem for a Dream, montage of every drug montage (meta!) Casino, every “fuck” Big Lebowski, every “fuck” Big Lebowski, Every “dude” Big Lebowski, Every “man” (thx, Matt) True Romance, every kill from the finale True Romance, every “fuck” Rushmore, handjob references (thx, Matt) Scarface, every “fuck” (thx, oscar) The Departed, every “fuck” (thx, oscar) Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, every “fuck” (thx, MeatFarley) All the pauses and silence in His Girl Friday from 1940 (thx, progosk) The Incredibles, buttons, doors, and explosions (thx, Joshua) Fargo, every “yeah” (thx, Doobybrain) Charles Bronson Death Wish Bodycount (thx, Dave) Chris Hefner’s Talking Picture (The Road to Ruin), removes all words from a 1938 film (thx, Jamie) Boondock Saints, every “fuck” (thx, Brandon) Midnight Run, every “fuck” (thx, Lakawak) Miscellaneous films, cops turning in their badge and gun (thx, Darrin) Every “McFly” from the Back to the Future trilogy Cell phone cliches in horror films Mirror scares Nearly every Hitchcock film cameo (thx, Oscar) “We’ve Got Company” (thx, Buzzfeed) “Get out of there!” (via Buzzfeed) “It’s Gonna Blow!” Every lightsaber ignition/retraction from the Star Wars series (thx, Buzzfeed) Everything Chris Klein Says in “The Legend of Chun Li” (thx, Jeff) “You look like shit.” Every Arnold Schwarzenegger scream (thx, Buzzfeed) Every Nicolas Cage freak-out In 3D! (thx, Joe) Every “Michael” in The Lost Boys “Now if you’ll excuse me…” “Blah blah blah.” 7 minutes of face slaps in film “It’s Showtime!” “Nooooooooo!” (thx, Scott) Every Bone Steven Segal Has Broken TV Every “What?” from the LOST series Legend of Zelda TV show, Excuse Me, Princess! Knight Rider – Turbo Boosts CSI: Miami, Caruso’s One-Liners The Simpsons, every couch intro The Sopranos, Every single whacking Ojamajo Doremi, every transformation Star Trek: The Next Generation, Last 10 seconds of every episode of season 1 Every Dragonball Z transformation Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers, every finishing move from Season 1 Deadwood, every curse in Episode 1, 2, and 3 (thx, Brian W) LOST, Sawyer says “Son of a Bitch” (thx, Jordan) Rozen Maiden, every “Desu” (527 times! More context, thx Jason) Buffy the Vampire Slayer, every mention of “Buffy” from Season 1 (Chuck Jones) Battlestar Galactica, every “frak” from season 1 (thx, Nowak) Big Brother’s Julie Chen, every “but first” (thx, Cardhouse) House M.D., every “lupus” reference (thx, engtech) LOST, Sawyer’s nicknames in the first three seasons (thx, oscar) Rachael Ray, “Mmm!” MTV’s Newport Harbor, 82 “like”s in one episode (thx, Jamie) Red Dwarf, every “smeg” reference in all 52 episodes (thx, arto) LOST, Desmond saying “Brother” (thx, cypher) The Wire, Clay Davis’ “Sheeeeeit” (thx, dunk3d) 24, Jack Bauer says “damn it” (thx, jonathan) The Simpsons – Homer’s D’ohs, excerpt from an official episode (thx, Scott) Scrubs – Every Girls Name to J.D. from Dr. Cox (thx, oscar) Naruto – Every Rasengan from the filler story arcs (thx, Binkley) The Hills, without the dialogue (thx, Rex) Bea Arthur says “Whoa!” on the Golden Girls (thx, BWE) The Office – “That’s What She Said” (thx, Jason) “I’m not here to make friends” from every reality TV show (thx, Rich) Dr. Who – “What are you doing here?” (thx, Duncan) The Sopranos, every profanity The Royle Family, every “My Arse!” (thx, Dunk) Stargate SG-1’s Teal’c says “Indeed” (thx, Torley) Kramer’s Entrances from Seinfeld (thx, Buzzfeed) Every “Dude” from Hurley on LOST Every Secret Ingredient from Iron Chef America (thx, Oscar) Mad Men’s Don Draper says, “What?” Every cigarette smoked on Mad Men Every “Christmas” from the 90210 Christmas special Star Trek, Spock says “Fascinating” (thx, Scott) MST3K, The Many Names of David Ryder (thx, Nathaniel) Games Half-Life series, every G-Man sighting (and part 2) Every Famicon (NES) Game Title Screen Metal Gear Solid questions? (thx, William) Miscellaneous Sources Various films, Wilhelm Screams Various films, The Slow Clap Various films, NOOO! Steve Jobs says “Boom!” in Mac keynotes (thx, Jeff) Clip from Christian Marclay’s “Telephones” from 1995 (thx, progosk) iPhone “Hello” ad, heavily inspired by “Telephones” (thx, progosk) Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight,” every “Oh Lord” (thx, oscar) 2008 State of the Union, without any speech Bill Gates says “Uh…” in Rocketboom interview Collage of “Zoom In and Enhance” scenes “Hey, Guys!”, collection of YouTube beauty guru intros Collection of “Myspace salutes” (more context) “I Could Tell You, But Then I’d Have to Kill You” “We’re not in Kansas anymore.” Club Drunk Party Hands, every use of those four words in the Billboard Top 10 for 2010 All the pauses in Sarah Palin’s response to the 2011 Arizona shootings Obama says “spending” Audio Only the inhaling from an hour of NPR’s All Things Considered (Chuck Jones) Loveline, every question asked by the hosts (Chuck Jones) Loveline, every name mentioned in alphabetical order (Chuck Jones) Loveline, every “Yes” and “No” (Chuck Jones) Loveline, every number (Chuck Jones) Loveline, interjections (Chuck Jones) Loveline, dead air (Chuck Jones) NWA’s Straight Outta Compton, obscenities only (thx, oscar) Honorable Mention A commenter points to the work of Chicago artist Chuck Jones, who’s created a number of excellent audio and video supercuts he calls Isolation Studies. I’ve listed them all above. The “Most Obsessive” award goes to artists Jennifer & Kevin McCoy for their work Every Shot, Every Episode from 2001, a 277 DVD set compiling 10,000 clips from Starsky & Hutch, arranged by categories like “Every Dead Body,” “Every Mirror,” “Every Gunshot,” and “Every Affirmative Response.” Other work of theirs includes I Number the Stars, a shot-by-shot index of the first 20 Star Trek episodes in 120 categories, How I Learned, a 10,000 shot inventory of the show Kung Fu in over 100 categories, and Every Anvil, cataloguing the violence in 100 Looney Tunes cartoons. Mind-blowing. (Thx, Buzzfeed!) June 15, 2011: The earliest supercut appears to be Joseph Cornell’s “Rose Hobart”, a short film from 1936. It compiles nearly every scene featuring the obscure actress in the 1931 B-movie, East of Borneo. Want more? Michael Bell-Smith and I launched a site dedicated to the supercut genre at Supercut.org. |
At about 3:50 pm, Thursday afternoon, the following motion was put to the House of Commons: That, in the opinion of the House, the government should: (a) recognize the need to quell the increasing public climate of hate and fear; (b) condemn Islamophobia and all forms of systemic racism and religious discrimination and take note of House of Commons’ petition e-411 and the issues raised by it; and (c) request that the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage undertake a study on how the government could (i) develop a whole-of-government approach to reducing or eliminating systemic racism and religious discrimination including Islamophobia, in Canada, while ensuring a community-centered focus with a holistic response through evidence-based policy-making, (ii) collect data to contextualize hate crime reports and to conduct needs assessments for impacted communities, and that the Committee should present its findings and recommendations to the House no later than 240 calendar days from the adoption of this motion, provided that in its report, the Committee should make recommendations that the government may use to better reflect the enshrined rights and freedoms in the Constitution Acts, including the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. (Private Members’ Business M-103) Here is how each MP voted. If you don’t see your MP’s name on the list, it means that your MP was absent — the Prime Minister, for example, and several cabinet ministers were not present — or your MP decided to abstain — Conservative Alex Nuttall, for example was in the House voted neither yea nor nay. Division No./ Vote no : 237 Subject/Objet: M-103, Systemic racism and religious discrimination / M-103, Racisme et discrimination religieuse systémiquesYEAS/POUR: 201NAYS/CONTRE: 91 nay/ Aboultaif nay/ Albas nay/ Albrecht yea/ Aldag yea/ Alleslev nay/ Allison nay/ Ambrose yea/ Amos paired/pairé Anandasangaree nay/ Anderson nay/ Arnold yea/ Arseneault yea/ Arya yea/ Ashton yea/ Ayoub yea/ Bagnell nay/ Barlow nay/ Barsalou-Duval yea/ Baylis nay/ Beaulieu yea/ Beech yea/ Bennett yea/ Benson nay/ Bergen nay/ Bernier nay/ Berthold nay/ Bezan yea/ Bibeau yea/ Bittle yea/ Blaikie yea/ Blair nay/ Blaney (Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis) yea/ Blaney (North Island—Powell River) nay/ Block yea/ Boissonnault yea/ Bossio nay/ Boucher yea/ Boutin-Sweet nay/ Brassard yea/ Bratina yea/ Breton yea/ Brison yea/ Brosseau yea/ Caesar-Chavannes nay/ Calkins yea/ Cannings yea/ Caron yea/ Carr nay/ Carrie yea/ Casey (Charlottetown) yea/ Casey (Cumberland—Colchester) yea/ Chagger yea/ Champagne yea/ Chan yea/ Chen yea/ Chong yea/ Choquette yea/ Christopherson nay/ Clarke nay/ Clement nay/ Cooper yea/ Cormier yea/ Cullen yea/ Cuzner yea/ Dabrusin yea/ Damoff yea/ Davies yea/ DeCourcey nay/ Deltell yea/ Dhaliwal yea/ Dhillon yea/ Di Iorio nay/ Diotte nay/ Doherty yea/ Donnelly nay/ Dreeshen yea/ Drouin yea/ Dubourg yea/ Duguid yea/ Duncan (Edmonton Strathcona) yea/ Duncan (Etobicoke North) yea/ Dusseault yea/ Duvall yea/ Dzerowicz yea/ Easter nay/ Eglinski yea/ Ehsassi yea/ El-Khoury yea/ Ellis yea/ Erskine-Smith yea/ Eyking yea/ Eyolfson nay/ Falk nay/ Fast yea/ Fergus yea/ Fillmore nay/ Finley yea/ Finnigan yea/ Fisher yea/ Fonseca yea/ Fragiskatos yea/ Fraser (Central Nova) yea/ Fraser (West Nova) yea/ Freeland yea/ Fry yea/ Fuhr nay/ Gallant yea/ Garrison nay/ Généreux yea/ Gerretsen nay/ Gill nay/ Gladu nay/ Godin yea/ Goldsmith-Jones yea/ Goodale yea/ Gould nay/ Gourde yea/ Graham yea/ Grewal nay/ Harder yea/ Hardie yea/ Harvey yea/ Hehr nay/ Hoback yea/ Holland yea/ Housefather yea/ Hughes yea/ Hussen yea/ Hutchings yea/ Iacono nay/ Jeneroux yea/ Johns yea/ Joly yea/ Jones yea/ Jordan yea/ Jowhari yea/ Julian yea/ Kang nay/ Kelly nay/ Kent yea/ Khalid yea/ Khera nay/ Kitchen nay/ Kmiec yea/ Kwan nay/ Lake yea/ Lametti yea/ Lamoureux yea/ Lapointe yea/ Lauzon (Argenteuil—La Petite-Nation) nay/ Lauzon (Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry) nay/ Lebel yea/ LeBlanc yea/ Lebouthillier yea/ Lefebvre nay/ Leitch yea/ Lemieux yea/ Leslie yea/ Levitt nay/ Liepert yea/ Lightbound nay/ Lobb yea/ Lockhart yea/ Longfield yea/ Ludwig nay/ Lukiwski yea/ MacAulay (Cardigan) yea/ MacGregor nay/ MacKenzie yea/ MacKinnon (Gatineau) nay/ Maguire yea/ Malcolmson yea/ Maloney yea/ Massé (Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia) yea/ Masse (Windsor West) yea/ Mathyssen yea/ May (Cambridge) yea/ May (Saanich—Gulf Islands) nay/ McCauley (Edmonton West) yea/ McCrimmon yea/ McDonald yea/ McGuinty yea/ McKay yea/ McKenna yea/ McKinnon (Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam) nay/ McLeod (Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo) yea/ McLeod (Northwest Territories) yea/ Mendès yea/ Mendicino yea/ Miller (Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Soeurs) yea/ Monsef paired/pairé Moore yea/ Morrissey nay/ Motz yea/ Mulcair yea/ Murray yea/ Nantel yea/ Nassif nay/ Nater yea/ Nault nay/ Nicholson yea/ O’Connell yea/ Oliphant yea/ Oliver yea/ O’Regan nay/ O’Toole yea/ Ouellette yea/ Paradis nay/ Paul-Hus nay/ Pauzé yea/ Peschisolido yea/ Peterson yea/ Petitpas Taylor yea/ Philpott yea/ Picard nay/ Poilievre yea/ Poissant yea/ Quach yea/ Qualtrough yea/ Rankin yea/ Ratansi nay/ Reid nay/ Rempel nay/ Richards yea/ Rioux nay/ Ritz yea/ Robillard yea/ Rodriguez yea/ Romanado yea/ Rota yea/ Rudd yea/ Ruimy yea/ Rusnak yea/ Sahota yea/ Saini yea/ Sajjan yea/ Sangha yea/ Sansoucy yea/ Sarai nay/ Saroya yea/ Scarpaleggia nay/ Scheer yea/ Schiefke nay/ Schmale yea/ Schulte yea/ Serré yea/ Sgro yea/ Sheehan nay/ Shields nay/ Shipley yea/ Sidhu (Brampton South) yea/ Sidhu (Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon) yea/ Simms nay/ Sopuck yea/ Sorbara nay/ Sorenson yea/ Spengemann yea/ Stanton nay/ Ste-Marie yea/ Stetski yea/ Stewart nay/ Strahl nay/ Stubbs nay/ Sweet yea/ Tabbara yea/ Tan yea/ Tassi nay/ Tilson yea/ Tootoo nay/ Trost yea/ Trudel nay/ Van Kesteren nay/ Van Loan yea/ Vandal yea/ Vandenbeld yea/ Vaughan nay/ Vecchio nay/ Viersen yea/ Virani nay/ Wagantall nay/ Warawa nay/ Warkentin nay/ Waugh nay/ Webber yea/ Weir yea/ Whalen yea/ Wilkinson yea/ Wilson-Raybould nay/ Wong yea/ Wrzesnewskyj yea/ Young nay/ Yurdiga yea/ Zahid nay/ Zimmer |
There are only a few bastions of mystery left regarding today's G3 announcement , but still more leaked images are coming to shed extra light on the upcoming LG flagship, this time diving deeper in its hardware and software features, as well the retail boxing material. First off, we were tipped a bunch of higher resolution images from the infamous premature listing of the G3 on the LG Netherlands website , which clearly show the existence of a new LG Health app, which includes a pedometer of sorts, as well as a calorie counter. Health apps and biometric measurements are all the rage these days, and LG has obviously decided to keep up with the times. The leaked press material also indicates that the camera technology will be called OIS+ LaserAF, on account of the laser assist light, and the 13 MP camera will feature a dual LED flash. On the software front, we already heard about the simplified, flatter interface, and now we are seeing more info about an improved file and app management, as well as about the Smart Notice system, which will apparently compete with Google Now, reminding you that you have arrived in the office and you might be wanting to turn on your Wi-Fi, for instance. Another image set, coming straight from Korea, is showing the alleged LG G3 boxing material, in its full retail glory, accompanied by a few never-before-seen press shots of the LG G3, rotating the handset from all angles. Take a dive in the slideshow below, and tell us what you think of the eventual new LG Health app. Thanks for the tip! |
Roger Tullgren, 42, is unable to hold down a full-time job because of his love of rock A Swedish man is now able to claim disability benefits after his heavy metal obsession was declared an ‘addiction’. Roger Tullgren, 42, had consulted a number of doctors who testified that his obsession had indeed become an addiction, meaning he was unable to hold down a full-time job, reports Swedish news site Local, via Global Post. “I have been trying for 10 years to get this classified as a handicap,” said Tullgren, who sports tattoos and long black hair, according to the article, and attended almost 300 gigs last year. “I spoke to three psychologists and they finally agreed that I needed this to avoid being discriminated against.” He currently has a part time job as a dishwasher at a restaurant in Hassleholm, but this will be supplemented by disability benefits. His new boss reportedly will let Tullgren wear what he wants to work and give him time off for gigs, as well as letting him play music as he works. “I signed a form saying: ‘Roger feels compelled to show his heavy metal style. This puts him in a difficult situation on the labour market. Therefore he needs extra financial help’. So now I can turn up at a job interview dressed in my normal clothes and just hand the interviewers this piece of paper,” commented Tullgren. |
I am in no doubt that what will end the war in Syria is what ultimately ends every conflict: words and diplomacy, not weapons. But when diplomacy fails and civilians suffer, as they have been doing for many years in Syria, and when they are the victim of weapons that have been outlawed by the international community for their horrific and indiscriminate consequences, then we cannot shy away from proportionate military intervention. Second attack on Syrian town hit by chemical weapons reported after Trump strikes in Idlib – live Read more I’m proud of Charles Kennedy for facing down the political elite and condemning the Iraq war as illegal, and the justifications for intervention as flawed. But I am equally proud of Paddy Ashdown, who led the call for multilateral intervention in Kosovo to stop a humanitarian disaster in its tracks. This week, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria used chemical weapons to attack his own people. Men, women, children – every one of them was a target. In itself, the deliberate targeting of civilians in war is illegal under international humanitarian law, difficult though it is to prove. But the use of chemical weapons was banned long before even the UN existed. Back in 1925, the world realised the horror of chlorine and mustard gases, after 1.3 million people experienced their effect during the first world war. The strength of international condemnation of these weapons at that time was enough to largely prevent their use in the second world war. This was not the first-time Assad has used chemical weapons. But it must be the last. In 2013, I abstained on the coalition’s plans against Assad, following a similar chemical attack then. In hindsight, seeing what has unfolded now, I believe I should have supported the action. This is why Liberal Democrats will not condemn the action taken by Donald Trump last night, nor the intention behind it. We still believe in the doctrine of responsibility to protect, and there can be no clearer-cut case in which to invoke that then the use of these evil weapons. However, we disagree with the way in which he conducted it – unilaterally, without allies, outside of a wider strategy. Trump saw a wrong and wanted to react, no doubt in large part to differentiate himself from Barack Obama. But taking matters into his own hands without thinking of the consequences, without a wider plan, without considering what next, exposes both his naivety about how the world works and his potential to create instability on an international scale. So, how should the UK respond now? Trump has made it clear that this was a one-off, which Michael Fallon has echoed, and we should welcome that. This wasn’t about intervention in Syria. The purpose was twofold: to send the strongest possible signal of condemnation of Assad’s actions, and to ensure he is much less likely to be able to act in that way again. The Syrian regime and their Russian allies may be acting outraged on their respective state television channels, but they have been sent a message they will surely not now ignore. His emotions have been stirred – but Trump’s bombs won’t help Syria | Simon Jenkins Read more That does not mean the war in Syria is going to stop any time soon. Millions of Syrians still live in fear, under siege, as refugees scattered throughout the region and throughout the world. International diplomacy hasn’t gone anywhere, and all the while Isis still thrives in Syria and will continue to while the war is continuing. The UK now has two jobs. The first is civilian protection – and that means proper consideration of protected humanitarian zones. No-fly zones are complicated, and any coalition that creates them must be ultimately willing to shoot a plane out of the sky, an action with inevitable consequences. Further commitment from the international community to protect civilians could force Russia to question its support of Assad. The second is what will end this once and for all: diplomacy. With our allies, we must kickstart the international process again. It’s not easy, it will not be quick, and it must be driven by the main actors in the region. Above all, it will not be driven by Trump. That is not his style. But now is the time for our prime minister to stand up to him and say: you’re involved in this now, let’s finish the job. |
Wendy Byerly Wood | The Tribune Frank Holleman, senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, talks about the history of the coal ash issue in North and South Carolina to a group of area residents who gathered at the Elkin Presbyterian Church for the kick off of Watershed NOW’s Creek Week Thursday. - Citizens should be outraged at several things involving the Duke Energy coal ash issues, according to the speaker for opening night of Watershed NOW’s Creek Week. Frank Holleman works as the senior attorney for litigation with the Southern Environmental Law Center, the organization which has been leading the effort to clean up the unlined pits used to store toxic coal ash in North and South Carolina by three major utility companies, including Duke Energy. Roughly 25 people gathered at Elkin Presbyterian Church Thursday night to hear Holleman share his story of the law center’s efforts, events leading up to the coal ash spill on the Dan River, and what citizens can do now moving forward with the fight to continuing cleaning up coal ash storage areas. He explained prior to working with North Carolina’s coal ash pits, the Southern Environmental Law Center was successful in South Carolina getting its two major utility companies to agree to move their coal ash to lined pits to keep the harmful toxins created when coal is burned for electricity from seeping into the nearby waterways used for drinking water. “Coal ash is created when you burn coal in a concentrated manner, and it creates toxins including lead, mercury and arsenic, and other things you don’t want in your water,” said Holleman. “They store millions of tons of coal ash in unlined pits, holes in the ground, directly next to our waterways and drinking reservoirs.” Those pits, he explained, are held back only by dykes made of earth, which leak. “This is not a complicated issue. That is no way to store any waste, much less industrial waste,” he said. “If you and I tried to do it with simple waste like compost, we’d be arrested.” An initial spill in Kingston, Tennessee, occurred when one of the dykes broke and billions of gallons spilled, Holleman said. But efforts and promises by officials in Washington, D.C., to regulate the coal ash waste became “gridlocked,” he said. In the southeastern portion of the United States, “we have a double dose,” of coal ash pits, Holleman said. “The [Environmental Protection Agency] says over half of our toxic pollution in reservoirs comes from these sites.” With the state and federal governments not regulating or cracking down on coal ash waste sites, Holleman said the law center decided to look into it. “You don’t have to have a Harvard law degree or be a rocket scientist to figure out something has to be illegal. They leak, and that’s illegal.” So in South Carolina, the law center began enforcing the law. They filed suits against the utility companies. He said an acceptable amount of arsenic is 10 parts per million, but in the pits in South Carolina, it tested at 2,000 parts per million. The first utility company, S&G, agreed to put the coal ash waste in lined landfills at all of their sites. “There was a 90 percent drop in the percent of arsenic by just removing 30 percent of the coal ash,” Holleman reported. The Sandy Cooper utility company is owned by the state of South Carolina, he explained. They had a million and a half tons of coal ash stored in a swamp in the middle of Conway, South Carolina. “Here it’s as much as 300 times the legal limit at 3,000 parts,” Holleman said. So the law center fought them. They sued them twice, and Sandy Cooper officials said they would store it in a concrete vault. “We call it a mausoleum,” he said. Law center representatives got the backing of the Conway city council and mayor in the form of a resolution which essentially said, “We love you Sandy Cooper, but you’ve got to get your ash out of town,” Holleman said. Residents in the community agreed and Sandy Cooper agreed to clean up its Conway site as well as its other coal ash sites. “They’re doing a great job of removing it,” he said. Then came the effort on getting the third company, Duke Energy, to clean up its coal ash sites. “We started with Asheville and Charlotte,” he said. At one site 3 million tons of coal ash is stored by Mount Island Lake, a drinking reservoir for 1 million people, Holleman explained. “Officials of Mecklenburg say, if the dyke breaks, they have no plan A, or plan B.” So the law center sent 60 day notices under the Clean Water Act asking Duke Energy to clean up the sites and telling them the SELC was going to start enforcing the law. Southern Environmental Law Center officials were stunned by what happened next. “The first parable, if a law abiding person reports law breaking to law enforcement, then law enforcement works with the law abiding person to address the illegal activity,” said Holleman. But that’s not what happened in North Carolina, he said. “When we began enforcing the Clean Water Act, virtually immediately the lobbyists and lawyers for Duke began meeting with state officials,” explained Holleman. In 2013, he said, the state and Duke Energy collaborated and came up with a plan for the state to sue Duke Energy “to preempt us, so state law enforcement would enter into an agreement with Duke Energy.” Holleman said there are actual public records, emails between the state environmental agency and Duke Energy where the state asks Duke officials, “How do we describe you in our suit?” Fortunately, he said, the court system does still work in most cases. And when the state’s suit got into court, a judge “asked citizens, us to intervene.” Because it involved the Clean Water Act, the agreement between the state and Duke Energy had to be put out to the public for comment. “Five thousand people commented against the suit, with one Duke employee commenting in favor of it,” said Holleman. At that point, the Southern Environmental Law Center filed its third suit against Duke for its Wilmington site. Holleman said a Duke official pointed out in court they have 14 sites, so 30 days later, the state filed suit on the other 14 sites to preempt the SELC from getting to those. “There was a problem with this strategy, you can’t sue someone for obeying the law,” said Holleman. “So the court turned it over to the state department who had to document all the violations at the sites. “The state said under oath it is a threat,” he said of the coal ash sites. That was in August of 2013, and for six months, the state proceeded to do nothing, Holleman said. “On Super Bowl Sunday, Feb. 22, 2014, the Associated Press broke the story of the Dan River spill. A pipe broke emptying coal ash into the river,” he reported. The issues with the pipe, he said, had been reported by Duke ground level workers to their managers on several occasions, and they’d asked for $5,000 to run a camera up the pipe, but Duke officials refused, Holleman said. “Duke and the state knew and had reportedly been warned about it.” “The state did not do one thing in six months,” he said. After the AP broke the story, a federal criminal ranger and the press flocked to the Dan River site, and “then the state ways we better withdraw the settlement,” he said. Duke Energy has said it will remove the coal ash at the Dan River site and the three sites on which the law center filed suit. “The first reason to be outraged is, in North Carolina unlike South Carolina, the state agency worked with the law breaker,” said Holleman. “The second reason, they said there was a problem and they did nothing.” In May 2015, Duke Energy pleaded guilty 18 times at nine sites across the state to violating the Clean Water Act, and they were placed on nationwide criminal probation, he said, noting that is the equivalent of being locked up. “Seventeen days later, the executives of the convicted American criminals were hosted at the governor’s mansion with the state head of the environmental organization and awarded,” Holleman said. “As a citizen of the United States of America, it offends me, it outrages me that a state’s law enforcement official would have a private dinner at the governor’s mansion hosting and honoring recently convicted criminals.” The final reason Holleman gave for citizens to be outraged, “Your legislators passed the coal ash management act, it requires four sites to be cleaned. It does not include Buck Steam Station on the Yadkin River,” he said. “The statute required the state agency to rate each of the sites according to the risk no later than midnight on New Year’s Eve 2015.” Holleman said on Nov. 30, 2015, the professional staff which had been overseeing the coal ash sites for 30 years presented their ratings. “They rated virtually every site as high risk, including Buck, several as intermediate and one or two as low risk,” he reported. With the rating system, those determined to be high or intermediate risk are required to have the coal ash removed and put in a lined pit away from water, he explained. “Thirty days later, the political leadership on noon of New Year’s Eve, took the ratings and watered them down and didn’t rate any high, and the only ones rated intermediate were the three we sued.” The Southern Environmental Law Center is going through public comment meetings now at sites across the state in an effort to continue its work toward ending the pollution from coal ash, Holleman said. A meeting is scheduled for March 22 at 6 p.m. about the Buck Steam Station, which sits on the Yadkin River, at Catawba College, Center for Environment Building, Room 300, 2300 W. Innes St., Salisbury. For those unable to attend the public meeting, Holleman said written comments can be sent by April 18 to buckcomments@dcdenr.gov or N.C. Division of Water Resources, Groundwater Protection Section, N.C. Department of Environmental Quality, Attn: Debra Watts, 1636 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, NC 27699-1611. According to a letter encouraging the public to attend the comments meeting, “Over 293,000 people rely on drinking water intakes downstream in the Yadkin River watershed from leaking, unlined coal ash pits at Duke Energy’s Buck site. It’s past time for Duke Energy to remove its coal ash to safer dry, lined storage here and at all of the polluting, unlined coal ash pits near communities and families across North Carolina. “The state cited Duke Energy for broken, failing corrugated metal stormwater pipes at Buck that are cracked and leaking, the same problem that caused the Dan River coal ash spill.” “There are reasons to be positive,” Holleman said. “We still live in a democracy. We go into court on behalf of small groups like the Catawba Riverkeeper or the Yadkin Riverkeeper. We’re in big court against some of the biggest law firms in the country and the richest enemies every to exist in the history of the world, and we’ve not lost a single motion. The court’s ruled for us every time. “We stopped the best laid plan for Duke and the state,” he said. “This is a great country, and it is very discouraging when we see law enforcement act like the state Department of Environmental and Natural Resources did, and when you see a rich company not step up and do the right thing. “The moral of water resources in America … they cannot be protected unless you protect them,” said Holleman. “You cannot count on the government to do the governing for us. We can protect these resources. If we do this right, we will have protected North Carolina and South Carolina reservoirs from the most toxic pollution going forward.” When he ended his story, a short question and answer session was held, and one of the local residents attending asked what citizens can do to help. “Duke Energy responds to public outrage, legal leverage and politicians, your local legislators,” Holleman responded. “A huge crowd at these hearings will get people’s attention.” He said the issue between North and South Carolina wasn’t a partisan issue, because both are Republican states. Instead it was political in North Carolina. “The utilities are political beings, they have the most valuable political ticket – our governments give them a legal monopoly and guarantee them they’ll make a profit,” said Holleman. Another resident asked if the cost of cleaning up the coal ash would fall back on consumers. “In South Carolina, the two utilities cleaned up every site. They both said they were going to clean and not affect the rates,” he answered. “Duke has said if they make us do it it’s going to increase rates to scare people.” Holleman said it would be up to the state’s Utilities Commission whether rates are allowed to increase, but he added, “It’s not throwing money away. “The Dan River is the second smallest Duke site, and look at what it’s going to cost them,” he said. “But we don’t know that answer yet,” he said of the possibility of rate increases. “We don’t want them to be fined or convicted of crimes. We just want them to clean up the coal ash,” said Holleman, who added in South Carolina, state elected officials passed a law to improve the standards of regulating coal ash, while in North Carolina, “the government has been resistant.” Other Creek Week events for Watershed NOW include a celebration and update of the past year’s projects Tuesday at Brushy Mountain Winery with music by Bandit’s Roost, and a stream restoration project at 9 a.m. at Elkin Municipal Park Thursday. Wendy Byerly Wood may be reached at 336-258-4035 or on Twitter @wendywoodeditor. Frank Holleman, senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, talks about the history of the coal ash issue in North and South Carolina to a group of area residents who gathered at the Elkin Presbyterian Church for the kick off of Watershed NOW’s Creek Week Thursday. https://www.elkintribune.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/web1_creek-week.jpg Frank Holleman, senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, talks about the history of the coal ash issue in North and South Carolina to a group of area residents who gathered at the Elkin Presbyterian Church for the kick off of Watershed NOW’s Creek Week Thursday. Wendy Byerly Wood | The Tribune More Creek Week events set this week |
In the early years of the 20th century, the students in Bullitt County, Kentucky, were asked to clear a test that many full-fledged adults would likely be hard-pressed to pass today. The Bullitt County Geneaological Society has a copy of this exam, reproduced below—a mix of math and science and reading and writing and questions on oddly specific factoids–preserved in their museum in the county courthouse. But just think for a moment: Did you know where Montenegro was when you were 12? Do you know now? (Hint: it’s just across the Adriatic Sea from Italy. You know where the Adriatic Sea is, right?) Or what about this question, which the examiners of Bullitt County deemed necessary knowledge: “Through what waters would a vessel pass in going from England through the Suez Canal to Manila?” The Bullitt geneaological society has an answer sheet if you want to try the test, but really, this question is just a doozie: A ship going from England to Manilla by way of the Suez Canal would pass through (perhaps) the English Channel, the North Atlantic Ocean, Bay of Biscay (possibly), Strait of Gibraltar, Mediterranean Sea, Suez Canal, Red Sea, Gulf of Aden/Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean, Gulf of Thailand (may have been called Gulf of Siam at that time), South China Sea. Eighth graders needed to know about patent rights, the relative size of the liver and mountain range geography. They had to be able to put together an argument for studying physiology. Though some of it is useful, much of the test amounts of little more than an assessment of random factoids. So, if you’re anything like us, no, you’re probably not much smarter than an 1912 Bullitt County eighth grader. But that’s okay. Tests like this are still done today, of course, often in the form of “scientific literacy” tests. The tests are meant to give an idea of how well people understand the world around them. But, in reality, what the these tests share in common with the Bullitt County test is that they quiz facts in place of knowledge or understanding. Designing a standardized test to quiz true understanding is of course very difficult, which is one of the reasons why these sorts of tests persist. Writing for The Conversation, Will Grant and Merryn McKinnon argue that using these types of tests to say that “people are getting dumber” or “people are getting smarter” is kind of dumb itself. “Surveys of this type are, to put it bluntly, blatant concern trolling,” they say. We pretend that factoids are a useful proxy for scientific literacy, and in turn that scientific literacy is a useful proxy for good citizenship. But there’s simply no evidence this is true. Like asking a 12-year old Kentuckian about international shipping routes, “he questions these tests ask have absolutely no bearing on the kinds of scientific literacy needed today. The kind of understanding needed about alternative energy sources, food security or water management; things that actually relate to global challenges.” So, really, don’t feel too bad if you can’t finish your grandparent’s school exam—the fault lies more in outdated ideas of education than in your own knowledge base. But, with all that aside, taking the Bullitt County quiz is still kind of fun: More from Smithsonian.com: Do Teachers Need Their Own “Bar Exam”? Document Deep Dive: What Was on the First SAT? |
Gylfi Sigurdsson has been Swansea's player of the year for the past two seasons Swansea City midfielder Gylfi Sigurdsson says he is "not trying to leave" the Premier League club. Everton and West Ham are among the teams to have been linked with the 27-year-old, who was named players' and supporters' player of the year for a second straight season on Wednesday. However, the Iceland international said: "I signed a new contract in the summer and I've got three years left. "It's down to the club if they want to sell me." Sigurdsson has scored nine goals and made 13 assists during a difficult top-flight campaign for Swansea - a combined tally matched only by Tottenham midfielder Christian Eriksen. Swans have spent the season deep in relegation trouble, before eventually securing survival with one game to spare. "I'm not trying to leave or want to leave," said Sigurdsson, who is in his second spell at the Liberty Stadium after re-signing from Tottenham in July 2014. "I'm very happy here. "It has been easy in the last couple of months because we've been in a very serious position in the league, so it's been easy to concentrate on that," Sigurdsson added. "I think it'll continue to be like that because whatever happens, happens. "I'm not desperate to go or anything. It's not like I want to go. It's just very calm and I'm not focused or concentrating on what people are writing." Sigurdsson played a prominent role in Iceland's run to the Euro 2016 quarter-finals and, with his form attracting interest from other sides, Swansea sought to secure his future by making him the club's best paid player with a new four-year contract last summer. After this season's flirtation with relegation, Sigurdsson believes the Swans will improve next season. "You only have to look at the coaching staff who came in. They're top notch and Paul [Clement, Swansea's head coach] knows what he's doing," he said. "You could see that from the first day. He's been outstanding and he managed to change the mood, the atmosphere and the confidence of the team. "For as long as he's here, the club is in really good hands." |
From lab to courtroom. Magdalena Koziol claims her boss retaliated against her after a fellow postdoc tampered with her experiments. CREDIT: PHOTO BY JOHN OVERTON When Magdalena Koziol suspected that someone was sabotaging her research at Yale University, she did what comes naturally to a scientist: She set up a controlled experiment to test her hypothesis. Koziol's studies of how the genome switches on after an egg is fertilized had begun failing mysteriously in July 2011, a month after she started her postdoc in the developmental biology lab of Antonio Giraldez. In August, she began producing transgenic zebrafish; they all died, not once, but time after time. A lab technician assured her she was doing everything right, and colleagues' fish were fine. So Koziol produced a new batch of fish and divided them in two groups. One she put in a container labeled with her initials, MK, as she had done before. She left the other half unmarked. Sure enough, the labeled fish died; the others were fine. The experiment was a key step in proving that someone was tampering with her experiments, according to a lawsuit Koziol filed with the Superior Court in New Haven on 7 February. When hidden cameras were installed in the lab, they revealed a fellow postdoc poisoning her fish, the complaint says. Now, Koziol is suing the alleged perpetrator, Polloneal Jymmiel Ocbina. According to the complaint, he left Yale after he was caught on video. But Koziol, now at the Gurdon Institute at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, is also suing Giraldez and Yale University. In her complaint, she alleges that after the saboteur was nabbed, Giraldez didn't allow her to speak about the affair, became increasingly hostile, and threatened to fire her. Koziol accuses him and Yale of negligent and intentional infliction of emotional distress and breach of contract. Among other things, she's asking for an unspecified amount of compensation for the lost time and funding—she had a grant from the prestigious Human Frontier Science Program Organization (HFSPO)—attorney fees, and emotional suffering. Ocbina, who now works at a communications company in New York City, declined to comment because the case is in court; so did Giraldez. Yale sent Science a statement that acknowledges the sabotage and says the culprit's employment was terminated immediately. But the university dismisses Koziol's complaints against her former boss and Yale and says that it "will mount a vigorous defense." The complex case raises a host of questions about how to deal with sabotage, a type of misbehavior that some scientists believe is more common than the few known cases suggest. One key point of debate is whether ruining someone's experiments should fall under the definition of research misconduct, which is usually restricted to fabricating or falsifying data and plagiarism. Some experts argue that wrecking experiments, while terrible, is more akin to slashing a fellow researcher's tires than to making up data. Koziol declined to discuss the case with Science on the advice of her lawyer. Her complaint says that she first repeated her fish experiment to persuade Giraldez, who suspected the animals were poisoned with ethanol. Koziol told him she also had reason to believe someone had spiked her reagants. Giraldez and Robert Alpern, dean of the Yale School of Medicine, agreed to install the secret cameras that supposedly fingered Ocbina. (The complaint doesn't speculate about his possible motives.) Giraldez and Yale lawyer Howard Rose confronted Ocbina with the evidence on 8 March 2012, and he confessed, according to the complaint. At a lab meeting the next morning, Giraldez said Ocbina would not return to the lab and told his group not to discuss the incident. He also threatened Koziol with "legal consequences" and "prosecution" if she did, she claims. From then on, Koziol's relationship with her boss deteriorated. The complaint says he refused to provide her with a letter about the sabotage, which presumably would have helped explain her lack of data to future employers. Koziol alleges that he criticized her work and character, didn't help her make up for the lost time, gave her "angry looks when passing in the lab," didn't list her as a contributor to a Nature article, and threatened to fire and "destroy" her. Koziol became depressed, suffered from sleeplessness, and gained weight; when she and Giraldez talked for 3 hours in August 2012, Koziol "cried throughout the meeting," the complaint says. Koziol filed a grievance procedure against Giraldez, which she lost; Yale, in its statement to Science, calls her allegations against Giraldez and the university "factually distorted and legally baseless." Giraldez's request to lab members not to discuss the case was "[i]n keeping with the law of the State of Connecticut, which protects the confidentiality of certain employment information," the university says. Lisa Rasmussen, a philosopher and research ethicist at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, says it's not uncommon for misconduct cases to remain under wraps because the law requires a university to protect personal information about its employees. But Koziol's lawyer, Daniel Kryzanski, says that the university cannot restrict free speech about the reasons why someone was fired. Publicly known incidents of sabotage in science are rare. The only recent one in the United States happened 4 years ago at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where a postdoc named Vipul Bhrigu confessed to repeatedly killing the cultured cells of a colleague, Heather Ames, also using ethanol. He, too, was caught using hidden cameras. Bhrigu told a Nature reporter that he was under "internal pressure," and that he had hoped to slow Ames's work. Theodora Ross, Ames's boss at the time, says that after the case became public, she heard from many people who suspected or knew of foul play in their own labs or elsewhere. "I think it happens a lot," says Ross, who's now at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. Sabotage isn't hard to commit, especially in biomedical labs, where samples and reagents are often stored in communal cabinets or fridges. And it's hard to detect or prove; plenty of experiments fail without anyone committing mischief. Koziol's complaint also contends that Yale broke its contract with her by failing to report her case to the Office of Research Integrity (ORI), the U.S. agency that investigates misconduct in federally funded biomedical research. In Bhrigu's case, that's what happened: The university reported the case to ORI, while the state of Michigan prosecuted Bhrigu, who pleaded guilty to malicious destruction of property and was sentenced to more than $30,000 in fines and restitution. Mentor. After leaving Yale, Koziol returned to the Cambridge, U.K., lab of Nobel laureate John Gurdon, who strongly supports her. CREDIT: PHOTO BY JOHN OVERTON Kryzanski, Koziol's lawyer, says Yale didn't report the case to the police as a potential crime. Yale declined to specify how it has treated Ocbina's case, but its statement says that Giraldez notified the U.S. National Institutes of Health, which funded Ocbina's work and is one of the agencies under ORI's purview. An ORI spokesperson told Science that the office can "neither confirm nor deny" whether it was informed about the case. Whether sabotage belongs under ORI's purview is questionable, Rasmussen says. A long and contentious debate took place in the 1990s over whether the U.S. federal definition of research misconduct should include anything beyond fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism, commonly referred to as FFP. Some argued that other types of bad behavior, such as sexual harassment or vandalism, could constitute research misconduct as well; others said that would open the floodgates to all kind of accusations, and that such misdeeds could be dealt with through other mechanisms. In the end, ORI adopted the FFP-based definition. Yet it did issue a ruling in the Bhrigu case; in 2011, the agency ruled that his tampering "caused false results to be reported in the research record," and thus amounted to data falsification. The research record, in this case, was simply the lab notebooks in which Ames recorded her failed experiments, Ross says; Bhrigu's obstruction didn't result in any flawed papers. It will be "interesting" to see whether ORI has gotten involved in the Ocbina case, Rasmussen says, because Koziol presumably mentioned the dead fish in her notebooks as well. Koziol left Yale in March 2013 and returned to the lab of Nobel laureate John Gurdon in Cambridge, where she had done her doctoral work. "I was very happy to have her back," Gurdon says, "because her work is excellent. She was a model student." Gurdon helped secure a small grant for Koziol and donated some of his personal money to keep her going. He's optimistic about her chances against Yale. "They wrote her a letter promising her circumstances in which she could conduct her research," he says. "And they quite clearly did not provide even remotely adequate circumstances." Gurdon has written HFSPO, Koziol's funder, urging the program to withhold support for Yale if the university can't properly explain what happened. HFSPO Secretary General Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker says he sympathizes with Koziol, but does not know the details of her case. He says he had urged the parties to avoid an expensive and lengthy court fight. "It would have been much better if they had reached a compromise," Winnacker says. "It's too bad they couldn't." |
HUNTSVILLE, Alabama - Get ready for Parker Griffith versus Mo Brooks, the rematch. Griffith said Thursday he will file papers Friday to run in the March 13 Republican primary against Brooks for the nomination as 5th Congressional District representative. Griffith, a retired physician and businessman, was elected to Congress as a Democrat in 2008 and changed parties in mid-term. Brooks defeated him in the 2010 Republican primary. "When I changed parties, I hurt a lot of feelings," Griffith said Thursday. "I've had to go back and explain this is about jobs, about maintaining our community and making it a better place." Griffith said the Democratic leadership he found in Congress wasn't helping North Alabama, and he thinks his change has been validated by the number of Democrats who have switched to the GOP since he did. "We'll contrast my time in Congress with my opponent's time in Congress," Griffith said Thursday. "The distinction is clear." Griffith said he will make a case that Brooks "wandered away from many of the issues people want us to address." |
Well, it appears that conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh is a Hurricane Irma truther. During Tuesday’s broadcast of The Rush Limbaugh Show, the right-wing pundit decided to provide his own personal analysis as residents in the Caribbean and South Florida are scrambling for safety and supplies as the Category 5 hurricane bears down on them. “The reason that I am leery of forecasts this far out, folks, is because I see how the system works,” Limbaugh noted, adding that this is something you can see in the way “the deep state deals with Trump.” The conservative stalwart went on to claim that meteorologists and an “abundance of people” believe “that man-made climate change is real” and also believed Al Gore when he said hurricanes would be stronger and more abundant than in previous years. “And, of course, when Harvey hit, it was the first hurricane that had hit in 12 years,” he stated. “There haven’t been more hurricanes and they’re no more dangerous than any others in previous years.” Limbaugh wasn’t done, though, as he wanted his audience to know that all of the attention on the dangerous storm was as a way to get people to believe in climate change. “So there is a desire to advance this climate change agenda, and hurricanes are one of the fastest and best ways to do it,” Limbaugh declared. “You can accomplish a lot just by creating fear and panic. You don’t even need a hurricane to hit anywhere.” He finished off by claiming that hurricane panic also benefitted retailers and the media, as stores are able to sell large quantities of bottled water and other supplies, and the media gains by getting more viewers who are watching for storm coverage. Finally, it would seem a bit odd that Limbaugh thinks Hurricane Irma is a left-wing hoax, especially considering how much coverage the Drudge Report gave the storm on Tuesday. Listen to the clip above, via Media Matters. [image via screengrab] — Follow Justin Baragona on Twitter: @justinbaragona Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.com |
Tap here to access our NFL Free Agent Tracker, which includes every signing, trade and rumor. The Indianapolis Colts have agreed to terms with veteran running back Frank Gore, the team announced Tuesday. Gore's status has been one of the most interesting stories to follow ahead of free agency, as the 10-year veteran initially appeared set to sign with the Philadelphia Eagles before reconsidering the situation and backing out of the deal. While details on the contract with the Colts have yet to emerge, Gore is expected to receive a deal similar to the three-year, $12-million offer he had from the Eagles, including $8.5 million in guarantees. Gore will turn 32 years old before the 2015 season gets underway, but consistent production in recent seasons would suggest that he still has plenty to offer the Colts as a lead running back. The Colts are also reportedly meeting with veteran wide receiver Andre Johnson, who was released after 12 seasons with the division-rival Houston Texans on Monday. |
U.S. Marshals stand outside U.S. Federal Court in Brooklyn on April 2, 2015 in New York City. (Victor J. Blue/Getty Images, file) Armed US Marshals Are Arresting People for Outstanding Student Loans US Marshals have started arresting people over outstanding federal student loans. Paul Aker appears to be one of the first. He said seven armed deputy US Marshals showed up at his Houston home last week and arrested him for an outstanding $1,500 loan he received in 1987. They grabbed me, they threw me down. Local PD is just standing there. “They grabbed me, they threw me down. Local PD is just standing there,” the 48-year-old told the Daily News. “I say, ‘What is this all about? They say, ‘Shut up, you know what this is all about.’ I don’t have a clue.” The marshals escorted him to federal court, where he spent time in a cell and was later forced to sign a payment plan for the school loan—in addition to the cost of the arrest, which apparently totaled nearly $1,300. A source with the US Marshals in Houston told Fox26 that the deputies are planning to serve from 1200 to 1500 warrants to people who have not paid their federal student loans. “Congressman Gene Green says the federal government is now using private debt collectors to go after those who owe student loans. Green says as a result, those attorneys and debt collectors are getting judgments in federal court and asking judges to use the US Marshals Service to arrest those who have failed to pay their federal student loans,” the broadcaster added. But Green isn’t behind what’s going on. “There’s bound to be a better way to collect on a student loan debt that is so old,” he said. There doesn’t seem to be collections going on in other states as of yet. |
Sōmen (Japanese: 素麺), somyeon (Korean: 소면), or sùmiàn (simplified Chinese: 素面; traditional Chinese: 素麵) are very thin noodles made of wheat flour, less than 1.3 mm in diameter. It is used extensively throughout East Asian cuisines. The most common example is Japanese somen and the noodles are usually served cold with soy sauce and dashi dipping sauce, similar to mori-soba (盛り蕎麦) noodles style. There are no academic study nor evidence of where the somen originally invented. The difference between somen and another thin Japanese noodles hiyamugi (冷麦) are, hiyamugi is sliced by a knife to make them thin noodles but somen noodles are thinned by stretching the dough. The dough is stretched with the help of vegetable oil to make very thin strips and then air dried. When served warm in soup, usually in winter, they are called nyumen (煮麺) in Japanese. East Asian cuisines [ edit ] Japan [ edit ] Sōmen are usually served cold with a light flavored dipping sauce[2] or tsuyu. The tsuyu is usually a katsuobushi-based sauce that can be flavored with Japanese bunching onion, ginger, or myoga. In the summer, sōmen chilled with ice is a popular meal to help stay cool. Sōmen served in hot soup is usually called nyūmen and eaten in the winter, much as soba or udon are. Some restaurants offer nagashi-sōmen (流しそうめん flowing noodles) in the summer. The noodles are placed in a long flume of bamboo[3] across the length of the restaurant. The flume carries clear, ice-cold water. As the sōmen pass by, diners pluck them out with their chopsticks[3] and dip them in tsuyu. Catching the noodles requires a fair amount of dexterity, but the noodles that are not caught by the time they get to the end usually are not eaten, so diners are pressured to catch as much as they can. A few luxury establishments put their sōmen in real streams so that diners can enjoy their meal in a beautiful garden setting. Machines have been designed to simulate this experience at home.[citation needed] Sōmen (in large white bowl at upper-right) with assorted toppings Nagashi-sōmen Korea [ edit ] In Korean cuisine, somyeon is used in hot and cold noodles soups such as janchi-guksu (banquet noodles) and kong-guksu (noodles in cold soybean soup), as well as soupless noodle dishes such as bibim-guksu (mixed noodles). It is often served with spicy anju (food that accompanies alcoholic drink) such as golbaengi-muchim (moon snail salad). Gallery [ edit ] Dried sōmen noodles Five-colour somyeon Boiled somyeon See also [ edit ] References [ edit ] |
Georgia Tech’s new partnership with Adidas already has at least one project underway – selecting one shade of gold that can be used consistently on uniforms, fan apparel and graphics. Athletic director Todd Stansbury said that Tech staff and designers from Adidas are in the process of choosing between 20 and 30 shades of gold. He said the decision will come soon. “From a merchandise standpoint, you have to get that (color) down,” he said. “Because if we have a gold-out, who knows how many different shades of gold and yellow will show up to that game?” Stansbury said that the new gold will be called “Ramblin’ Wreck gold.” Part of Tech’s challenge in this realm has been that, while old gold and white are the school’s official colors, the school also gives licensing approval for other shades of yellow and gold for different uses, which is how the Tech bookstore can sell apparel with varying hues. This has been known to cause irritation among certain pockets of the alumni. How Georgia Tech and Adidas came together Another layer of difficulty is that one shade of color might appear different on football pants or a jersey than it does on a helmet, as they’re made of different materials and reflect light differently. The shade that Stansbury selects will not replace old gold as an official school color, but will be the one that the athletic department uses. Regardless, uniformity is the goal. It has been a process that Stansbury has led, not just with color but also logos, fonts and other means of branding. “We’re not going to touch the ‘GT,’ but we’re going to make sure that the ‘GT’ you see is the same every single time,” Stansbury said in his July podcast. Adidas has already brought in its “identity team” to participate, said Jim Murphy, the Adidas sports marketing director for the NCAA. Schultz: Tech gains apparel deal, loses a star, but Johnson says team will be fine “The same group that goes in and does (Leo) Messi, the same group that goes in and does the NBA, the same group that goes in and does the NHL, that’s the same group that’s coming in and meeting with Georgia Tech and going through their marks, their identity, their logo slicks,” Murphy said. “We’re just trying to clean all that up so we can just have some consistency in the marketplace.” One result of the Adidas contract is that fans will eventually see more Tech apparel, made by Adidas, and in one shade of gold. Bradley: Tech allies itself with Bradley, which has always been cool “It definitely provides us with an opportunity to get our gold out there,” Stansbury said. “That’s one of the things I’ve always heard: ‘Well, I want to wear gold to the games, but I can’t find it.’ I think that’s going to be one of our priorities, is, how do we work with them to make sure that the people who want to find Georgia Tech gold can find it.” It is, undoubtedly, part of Tech’s appeal to Adidas. Said Murphy, “I’m sure the fan base is starved for product.” |
President Obama is finalizing plans to move federal agents, equipment and other resources to the border with Mexico to support Mexican President Felipe Calderón's campaign against violent drug cartels, according to U.S. security officials. In Obama's first major domestic security initiative, administration officials are expected to announce as early as this week a crackdown on the supply of weapons and cash moving from the United States into Mexico that helps sustain that country's narco-traffickers, officials said. The announcement sets the stage for Mexico City visits by three Cabinet members, beginning Wednesday with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and followed next week by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. Napolitano, designated by Obama to convene a multi-agency security plan for the border, said the government is preparing plans to send more agents and intensify its investigation and prosecution of cartel-related activity in the United States. In addition, she said, the government may expand efforts to trace the sources of guns that move from the United States into Mexico. To combat the southbound flow of guns, ammunition and grenades at border checkpoints, the government may deploy new equipment, such as scales to weigh vehicles and automated license-plate readers linked to databases, as well as other surveillance technology, she said. Government officials are discussing how to increase intelligence sharing and military cooperation with Mexico, following a visit there this month by Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And the administration could employ tools used to track terrorist financing to follow the flow of funds within the estimated $65 billion North American drug trade. Funds -- estimated at $18 billion to $39 billion a year -- move through wire transfers as well as cash smuggled into Mexico in planes and vehicles and by human "mules." Obama, who plans to visit Mexico in mid-April and has said he will have a "comprehensive policy" on border security in place within months, has elevated to the top of the agenda a subject that did not receive significant attention in the presidential campaign. His focus on Mexico follows a sharp increase in drug-related killings in Mexican cities along the border, prompting fears in the United States of destabilization in the populous neighbor. Since the beginning of 2008, more than 7,200 people have died in drug-related violence, according to Mexican authorities. Andrew Selee, director of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, said Obama's security and foreign policy aides have spent the past two months reordering their priorities as "snowballing" concern in Congress pushed Mexico "to the front burner" alongside the economy and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama's efforts mark a shift from the homeland security priorities of the Bush administration, targeted mainly at the threat of Islamist terrorists overseas and illegal immigration at home. While the new president has vowed to maintain counter-terrorism efforts, the addition of fighting Mexican drug trafficking as well human smuggling networks represents a new emphasis. While a Pentagon study in November concluded that the sudden collapses of Mexico and Pakistan into failed states "bear consideration" as potential worst-case threats over 25 years, several senior U.S. intelligence officials disputed that analysis and said they do not believe the cartels will deliberately target U.S. government personnel, interests or civilians in the United States in the near-term. "The ongoing violence is a concern, but not a national security threat to the United States," said Mike Hammer, spokesman for the National Security Council, who said it has largely resulted from Calderón's "determined and courageous" effort to dismantle the cartels. Spillover violence in the United States is primarily cartel-on-cartel crime, such as kidnappings, Napolitano said. Phoenix, for example, reported 700 kidnappings in the past two years, mostly as human smugglers extorted fees from their clients. |
Recently, at a mass in Vatican City, Pope Francis said that, if given the chance, he would baptize aliens. (“Who are we to close doors?” he asked.) Unfortunately, judging by “Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication,” a new book, about the complexities of communicating with extraterrestrials, released last month by NASA, it won’t be that simple. For a long time, the people most interested in searching for extraterrestrial intelligence came from “hard science” disciplines like astronomy or physics; to them, the main obstacles seemed technical (building radio telescopes, processing signal data). But, in recent years, the field has broadened to include people who already study other civilizations here on Earth. In these essays, they report that their jobs are hard enough as it is. Archaeologists struggled to decipher ancient Greek; deciphering a transmission from another world will be even more difficult. Even if we do manage to detect a signal, they write, fully understanding what it means may be impossible. The challenges described by the contributors are daunting (and, at least to me, surprising). On Earth, they write, we were able to use the Rosetta Stone to figure out Egyptian hieroglyphics. (It contained the same text written in glyphs, Demotic script, and ancient Greek.) But there will be no Rosetta Stone for our communication with extraterrestrials, and the distances involved make conversation unlikely—which may mean that our comprehension of their message will be confined to math and numbers, never able to make the jump to broader concepts or less abstract words. (How do you describe a lake, or a tree, with math?) The speed of the message presents another problem: here on Earth, human language happens at a speed somewhere between birdsong and whalesong, so how fast should our message be, and on what scale should we be listening? And then there are all the difficulties created by the nature of our interlocutors. What if they’re so different from us that our messages are mutually incomprehensible? What if the message is sent by some sort of automated system—a voicemail from a long-dead civilization? Douglas Vakoch, the editor of “Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication,” is the director of interstellar message composition at the SETI Institute, in Mountain View, California. (The Institute’s name refers to the “search for extraterrestrial intelligence,” an umbrella term for a number of projects that began in the sixties, some funded by NASA.) Vakoch has degrees in comparative religion, the history and philosophy of science, and clinical psychology (“I expected to become an astronomer, but discovered that I was more interested in people than in stars,” he told me). At SETI, Vakoch is responsible for designing the messages that we might send to extraterrestrials; he is also a member of the International Institute of Space Law, where he works on the policy issues surrounding the messages’ composition. (There are currently no laws about sending signals into space; in theory, anyone with a powerful enough antenna could be talking to the cosmos right now.) “We used to think we would get an Encyclopedia Galactica,” Vakoch said. One of his primary goals, in editing the book, was to give air time to the less optimistic views of social scientists, and to start thinking about what an incomplete or indecipherable message from space might mean to humankind. Vakoch spoke to me by phone, from his home in California. This interview has been edited and condensed. “Stargate” notwithstanding, when I think of space, archaeologists and anthropologists don’t come to mind. What do they contribute to the SETI effort? Anthropologists are very familiar with encountering those who are radically other; archaeologists are very good at saying, We have only a fragment of a past civilization, and we’re trying to reconstruct it. Both of those situations will be at the center of communicating with extraterrestrials. When we take seriously the distance between us and any other civilization, we see that we have no easy way to ask a question and get a reply. We don’t even know what language they’re going to be using. And if we’re thinking of replying, and of getting a reply back, then we have to ask: How do we make sure that, one thousand years from now, future humans will be able to understand that message? Because it’s only at those time scales that it becomes plausible that we’ll begin to understand something. Your job is to help design the messages we might send to extraterrestrials. What’s the starting point for that work? How do you begin? There is no obvious starting point, but there are some approaches that are easier than others—for example, mathematics. So then the question is, What are the most fundamental parts of mathematics? Maybe it’s counting. Maybe mathematics as a whole isn’t universal, but if we can start with something fundamental, we can build up to communicating, step by step, our way of bringing order into the universe. It’s also useful to step back and look at communication more generally. In the early days of SETI there was this idea of “send them information, and make it redundant, and the patterns will be self-evident.” Nowadays, that seems ridiculous. So what’s the alternative? If something like language—whether a natural language like English or Mandarin, or a language like mathematics—if those aren’t universal, maybe we can step back and look at signs in a more general sense. That’s one of the ways in which semiotics has been helpful. Maybe a big accomplishment in communicating with an extraterrestrial is just to convey that there’s something on this end who’s intending to send something. Even if it’s something as rudimentary as sending an index—a message that points toward an astronomical object—or an icon, something that looks like, say, the radiation pattern of hydrogen. Just so they say, “Oh, these are sign-bearing, sign-using creatures—there’s hope.” Has SETI, or has anyone, actively started broadcasting in a way designed to attract notice? There have been a few transmissions. There hasn’t been anything sustained, though, and I think there would be real advantages to starting a sustained transmission. That would increase the sense of this being an intergenerational project. It signals our own hopes for humanity—that we hope to be around in one thousand years to get a reply back. We recognize that what we do today is just one step in contact. One of the most inhibiting aspects of interstellar communications is the sense that, somehow, we need to get everything absolutely right and completely comprehensible the first time out. That’s not how we communicate on Earth. You’re in favor of transmitting sooner rather than later? If it turns out that we actually have little hope of understanding a message, how does that affect our search strategies? Maybe it makes sense for us to start transmitting. The way it’s typically been cast in the past is, They’re smarter, and they’ll be better at sending an intelligible message. But the flip side is, if they’re smart, they’ll also be better at decoding an ambiguous message. Maybe they’ll be able to detect, from the form of the message, “This seems to be something we’ve seen from visually oriented species, or auditory-oriented species.” That might be more important. Let’s suppose that at some point we do make contact, but using these ambiguous, perhaps indecipherable messages. What’s the point of that? First of all, we have to think, For whose benefit are we sending this message? Is it for our benefit, to say that we existed? To say, Here are values that we have? You could also ask, What would an extraterrestrial want to know? We could say, “We’re wise, we’re strong.” A more interesting message might be, “This is what we’re struggling with; we don’t know if we’re going to exist for another century, or what life will look like on this world then.” One of the benefits of all this is, we have to reflect on what we want to say, and how we want to say it. We have a Web site called Earth Speaks, where we ask visitors to contribute what they would like to say to an extraterrestrial. We look at the words people use: in comparison to English in general, the word “but” is used one hundred and fifty times more often. On the other side: in the book, [the philosopher and cognitive scientist] Dominique Lestel talks about the implications of realizing, over the course of millennia, that we really can’t communicate or decipher a message. And he calls it an existential crisis. Because how does that impact our understanding of what we’re doing when we’re doing math, science, philosophy? It seems like the trend has been toward a more pessimistic outlook, at least as far as interpreting a message is concerned. Are there any optimistic trends? What you describe as pessimism I would characterize as skeptical and critical. But it’s a criticism that engages, as opposed to a criticism that dismisses. We’re getting closer to understanding, What are the complexities we face? And what are their implications? One of the big positive developments is that, in the last fifteen years, we’ve learned that there are planets out there. Now we know that almost every star has planets—about one out of five probably has an Earth-like planet in a habitable zone. Knowing where the planets are lets us prioritize those targets in our searches. This actually would have been even more relevant if it had turned out that planets are rare! But the very fact that we’re finding so many—we now know there are roughly Earth-sized planets within the habitable zones of even red dwarfs—that’s a game changer. We know there are places where extraterrestrials could live. And what if you work at SETI for the rest of your life, doing this work, and you don’t find anything? There are payoffs to the project that we can be assured are happening, at some level, with some degree of depth. But the greatest outcome—actually making contact with and understanding another civilization—that’s difficult to have any assurance of. So this is a case where the project requires an ability to stand in the unknown. Science is usually associated with values like objectivity and truth, and we want those, too. But one of the values behind SETI is patience. Illustration by Dadu Shin. |
Anna Pantelia was born in 1991 in Athens, Greece. She is studying at the Faculty of Photography and Audiovisual Arts of Technological Educational Institute of Athens and she has also attended classes in Germany at Hochschule der Medien. Her main photography work is directed to photojournalism and it is focused in immigrant minorities’ and financial crisis’ issues. She is currently doing her internship as photojournalist at European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva. Her website (anna-pantelia.com) is not only an art photography inspiration but also a photographic testimony and a great source of knowledge around the social issues that she is working on. Here you can read about the Dark Side of Greece, The Arabic School in Athens and the region called New Life (Nea Zoi in Greek) established by 500 Roma refugees arrived in Greece in 1940 after the Second World War. Text and photos are copyrighted and exclusively belong to Anna Pantelia. The Dark Side of Greece This is a fantastic project still in progress. You can really feel this misty mood that crisis has brought in the country, the immigrants and Greek people. The Arabic School of Athens The Arabic School of Athens was founded in 1981 in Neo Pschihiko, Athens. Through agreements between Greece and Libya because of the Libyan immigrants who live in Greece. This is a public school which is financially supported by the Greek State. Teachers and students originate mainly from Egypt, Palestine, Syria and Libya and they are immigrants who live years in Greece. Earlier, Greek language is taught but not anymore. Before the economic crisis in Greece the number of students was more than double the current number. With their certificate and attending some Greek courses the students from Arabic school are able to participate on Greek higher education. It is noteworthy that before the death of Gaddafi, when school was private, Libyan students were not obliged to pay tuition unlike other students. The school was also providing school-bus but just for Libyan students. The modern history of the Arab Spring has begun to be taught after Gaddafi’s death. Nea Zoi (New Life) In 1940 about 500 Roma have sough refuge after the great persecution during the IIWW. Their story is a story of persecution. Nea Zoi (New Life) is located 20km from Athens. Passing from Nato avenue, nothing betrays the existence of Roma’s settlement. Some months before, the Mayor of the region gave order to destroy their settlements. Today, Roma are living without water and electricity. Some of them are working as street vendors or garbage collectors. However, the lack of education, the poor living conditions and the illegal acts, children are not attending school and most of the times they get pregnant very young (around 15 years old) and they get married. Unfortunately, because of poor sanitary conditions, lack of medicines and heating, the mortality of children is high. Many of them who survive, often face serious health problems and disabilities. Comments comments |
Hospitals are already as much as 99% full as the NHS braces itself for the winter – far over the 85% limit experts say must be maintained to protect patient safety. Hospital trust chief executives have disclosed that they are running at close to 100% bed occupancy even before the expected bad weather and major flu outbreak this winter have arrived. NHS bosses speaking on condition of anonymity also voiced fears that patients could be harmed and staff left unable to cope with the seasonal surge in demand for care because their hospitals could run out of spare beds. “We’re lucky to get below 99% bed occupancy rates,” said the chief executive of one trust. “We plan for winter all year round, but there’s an underlying lack of beds and resources. There is a daily battle [over where to care for patients who need to be admitted] due to the lack of beds.” The chief executive admitted to being worried about a chronic lack of beds risking patients’ health. “In terms of extreme pressure, we do worry. We worry about getting people into beds quickly enough.” Another trust chief executive said: “We’re at 98% capacity and 11% of our beds are occupied by delayed transfer of care patients [who are medically fit to be discharged but cannot leave as social care support is not available]. Every day we have 80 to 90 patients in beds who should be somewhere else.” The combination of bed shortages and what the NHS calls Dtocs is a real concern owing to its potential impact on the quality of care, the boss added. Health experts internationally agree that if more than 85% of beds are occupied there is a greater risk of patients acquiring infections such as the Clostridium difficile and MRSA superbugs, ending up on wards not suitable for their illness and receiving inadequate care. The NHS admitted last month that a £1bn drive to free up 2,000 to 3,000 hospital beds in England by this autumn had failed. The initiative has significantly reduced delayed transfers of care in only a few areas, it has been claimed. Hospital bosses are also worried that a growing shortage of beds in care homes is denying them the chance to in effect expand the number of patients they can care for by paying care home operators to look after some elderly people – a tactic some use in winter to relieve pressure. Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers, which represents hospital trusts, said: “It is worrying to hear of occupancy rates in some places moving close to 100% before winter has started.” “The health service may be sorely tested in the coming months as it is already at or close to full stretch.” Hopson said that while the government’s recent £337m injection of emergency funding was welcome, it had come too late to make much difference to hospitals’ winter planning. NHS Providers has also warned in a report published on Thursday that the health service is critically short of paramedics, GPs, A&E doctors and nurses. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Dr Chaand Nagpaul, chair of the BMA: ‘High levels of bed occupancy will make it difficult for many hospitals to provide beds to ill patients who desperately need to be admitted.’ Photograph: BMA NHS leaders say they fear that staffing agencies may exploit the late arrival of the government’s emergency funding and the health service’s serious staff shortages to increase the rates they demand for supplying doctors, nurses and other personnel. “These figures are deeply worrying and show an NHS which is now struggling to find free beds year round. The UK already has fewer beds than equivalent European nations and further cuts could exacerbate pressures, which will adversely impact patients,” said Dr Chaand Nagpaul, chair of the British Medical Association. “Bed occupancy remains higher than recommended safety levels of 85%, and this is added to by lack of capacity in community services and social care. High levels of bed occupancy can increase the risk of cross infection between patients, and will make it difficult for many hospitals to provide beds to ill patients who desperately need to be admitted.” A spokesman for NHS Improvement, which regulates hospital performance, said: “The NHS is under great pressure, bed occupancy is very high in some areas and its staff are owed a huge thank you for working so hard for patients in these circumstances. “Planning for this winter has been more effective and more extensive than ever before. We would always encourage the public to consider alternatives to going to hospital wherever possible, including their local GP or pharmacist.” |
Screenwriting competitions can be a fantastic opportunity for both fledgling and professional screenwriters alike to raise their profile, and with a little bit of luck, earn some substantial cash prizes. To boot, many great careers have been launched through a combination of time spent at screenwriting school and some notable contest wins, with many agents and other film representatives keeping a very close eye on the names that rise to the top of the following screenwriting competitions. So, without further ado, here are a few that are well worth considering… 6 Best Screenwriting Competitions You’ve (Probably) Never Heard Of Closing Date: October 15 (for next year’s competition). Entries open June 15. Entry Fee: $35 to $70. Student discounts may apply. What They’re After: Shorts and full screenplays of any genre. International entries accepted. What You Stand to Win: Between $1,500 and $15,000 for finalists, plus every screenplay entered receives a written analysis. Closing Date: Final deadline for entries is May 15. Entry Fee: $79 for last minute entry (plus $110 if feedback is requested). What They’re After: Original screenplays, short film scripts and teleplays. What You Stand to Win: Tiered cash prizes between $250 and $25,000. Closing Date: Final deadline is April 29, so get in quick. Entry Fee: $65 for last minute entry. What They’re After: Original screenplays of various genres. What You Stand to Win: Grand prize of $10,000, plus $500 for best of each genre. Closing Date: May 20 Entry Fee: $55 if entered before May 1, otherwise $65 What They’re After: Original screenplays of various genres. What You Stand to Win: Grand prize of $20,000 plus a huge exposure/development package. Runner up cash prizes and exposure packages also offered. Closing Date: Regular deadline closes June 9, extended deadline July 21 Entry Fee: Between $35 to $80 What They’re After: Original screenplays in the category of short, original teleplay, feature and horror. What You Stand to Win: Grand prize of $5,000 and $2,000 to winners of each category, plus free services. Closing Date: May 31 Entry Fee: $75 before April 30, otherwise $85 What They’re After: 30-70 page pilot script for comedy or drama TV show. What You Stand to Win: A range highly lucrative and reputable exposure and development packages offered to 3 grand prize winners, 10 finalists and 25 semi-finalists. 3 Screenwriting Competitions You Should Have Heard Of Below are three of the most noteworthy and renowned screenwriting competitions in the entire industry. Winning one of these is the proverbial golden ticket to career success, and although the odds of beating the mass of other entrants is low, those that win invariably never regret having entered. Closing Date: May 1 Entry Fee: $75, plus an optional $40 to receive reader comments on your submission. What They’re After: Original screenplays (no adaptations.) An additional caveat is that entrants must not have earned more than $25,000 writing screenplays for either film or television to date. What You Stand to Win: Up to five $35,000 fellowships are awarded each year, plus Oscar level, career-launching exposure. Closing Date: April 20, with late entries closing May 20 Entry Fee: Between $30 to $50 depending on long form or short form submission and deadline window What They’re After: Shorts, feature-length screenplays and teleplays. What You Stand to Win: Cash prizes ranging between $500 and $2,500 plus coveted awards and exposure. Closing Date: May 1 Entry Fee: $40 What They’re After: Original screenplays, though screenwriters who have already had more than one prior screenplay produced are ineligible for entry. What You Stand to Win: Not technically a competition of sorts, selected applicants will be invited to attend the Screenwriter’s Lab; possibly the most prestigious and exclusive workshop in the entire country. So there we have it—a total of nine screenwriting competitions that you should consider entering for the next awards season. Know of any others that you’d recommend a fellow screenwriter to check out? How about any success stories or experiences you’d like to share from entering competitions? Drop a comment below, and share with the group! |
For the past year, publicly-funded health providers in Oregon have vied for financial incentives by questioning and advising low-income women on what contraceptives they use and their plans for having children. The Oregon Health Authority says the first-in-the-nation practice will improve care and cut costs. The pro-life director for Oregon’s Knights of Columbus calls it population control.“It is unfortunate that women who are not perceived as rich enough to have children are being targeted,” says Bill Diss, a member of Holy Rosary Parish.In Oregon, 16 groups of health providers have formed to care for low-income patients using Medicaid. Called coordinated care organizations, they include Health Share of Oregon and Family Care, both in Portland, Trillium Community Health Plan in Lane County, Willamette Valley Community Health in Marion and Polk counties and Jackson Care Connect in Jackson County. Almost a million patients are enrolled in Oregon’s coordinated care organizations.The organizations receive bonus money from the state if they meet quotas in areas such as teen doctor visits, substance abuse treatment, improved access to care and conversion to electronic records.New for 2015 was “effective contraceptive use” by women.The state focuses on women ages 15 to 50 who are not pregnant and ask what contraceptives they use and the result. When enough women enrolled in the coordinated care organizations end up using contraceptives effectively, that becomes a step toward a boost of government money for the group.The Oregon Health Authority has long urged health providers to increase women’s access to contraception and to “enhance partnerships” with family planning clinics like Planned Parenthood.Diss, who came to prominence as chief protester against a new Planned Parenthood clinic in Northeast Portland, says Oregon has a history of attempting to engineer the population. He points to a state eugenics board that between the 1920s and 1980s approved sterilizations of almost 3,000 people who were mentally ill, had epilepsy, had committed crimes, or were homosexual. Also sterilized were residents of reform schools and girls who were considered promiscuous. Gov. John Kitzhaber issued an apology in 2002.Diss says the new contraceptive metric is a descendent of such policy.“For some reason many rich people believe it is their duty to control population of certain classes,” he says, citing donations by Clarence Gamble, of Procter & Gamble, to control population among poor blacks in the South, a project begun by Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger. Diss says that today, the Buffet Foundation and Bill and Melinda Gates have contributed heavily to Planned Parenthood, which in the past decade has located clinics in areas with a large black populations, like Northeast Portland.Diss rues the fact that a majority of his fellow Catholics probably will allow such policies to carry on. “In 2014 and 2012 Catholics in Oregon could have easily signed petitions to allow measures to have been placed on the ballot to stop state funding of abortions for people on Oregon's Health Plan,” he says. “If Catholics do not care about millions being spent on aborting the ‘not so rich people’ of Oregon, will they care about harmful contraceptives being forced on these citizens?”Susan Muskett, senior legislative counsel for the National Right to Life Committee, writes that the reproduction of Oregon women seeking aid is now the government’s business. In an article on the Witherspoon Institute’s Public Discourse website, Muskett says the “invasive questioning” of low-income women will violate privacy and religious freedom.“Faithful Catholic women who seek government aid in Oregon will find themselves bombarded by intrusive questions about their family planning decisions and will be lectured to use forms of contraception they believe to be gravely and intrinsically immoral,” Muskett writes. Recognizing the class and race implications of the Oregon policy, Muskett says other states nevertheless are likely to follow Oregon’s lead. |
Lack of reference to Judaism or antisemitism in Trump administration’s statement ‘puzzling and troubling’, head of Anti-Defamation League said The White House raised eyebrows on Friday when it issued a statement to commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, that did not mention Jews, Judaism or antisemitism. The statement read: It is with a heavy heart and somber mind that we remember and honor the victims, survivors, heroes of the Holocaust. It is impossible to fully fathom the depravity and horror inflicted on innocent people by Nazi terror. Yet, we know that in the darkest hours of humanity, light shines the brightest. As we remember those who died, we are deeply grateful to those who risked their lives to save the innocent. In the name of the perished, I pledge to do everything in my power throughout my Presidency, and my life, to ensure that the forces of evil never again defeat the powers of good. Together, we will make love and tolerance prevalent throughout the world. The Holocaust was the systematic genocide of European Jewry by Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. More than six million Jews were murdered, along with Gypsies, gay people, political dissidents and others that the Nazi regime found undesirable. On Twitter, Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the Anti-Defamation League wrote that the statement “misses that it was six million Jews who perished, not just ‘innocent people’” and described it as “puzzling and troubling” that there was no explicit mention of Jews. In past statements and speeches commemorating International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Barack Obama explicitly referred to the “unique” nature of the Holocaust and “the scourge of antisemitism” and to the murder of six million Jews. The oversight by the White House comes as the Trump administration is still adjusting to the transition of power. The night before the statement on the Holocaust was issued, the White House issued a daily schedule that repeatedly misspelled the name of the British prime minister, Theresa May. The White House did not respond to a request for comment. However, Fred Brown, a spokesman for the Republican Jewish Coalition, said in a statement “it’s outrageous that people are using Holocaust Remembrance Day for partisan reasons or to try and settle scores. The horrors of the Holocaust are not to be taken lightly. Today is about remembering the millions of Jews who suffered at the hands of hate, and the heroes who died fighting it.” |
Ever since I started working on changing my habits from bad to good I have been doing a bit of thinking and writing too. That's because my day now seems to be a little longer than 24 hours. No more time wasting watching TV or going on unnecessary learning escapades on the Internet. Now I get things done. Anyway, as I was saying I started thinking about how special my phone has become to me over the past few years. It suddenly occurred to me that it's no longer the dog that is Man's best friend. It's the smartphone ! I don't know about you, but to me my smartphone phone is one of the most important devices that I have ever owned. To a certain extend, I think I could go as far as saying that it is like a part of my brain that I keep in my pocket. I use my mobile phone for almost everything. To me a phone is no longer simply a phone. It's a device that can be used for endless purposes. You can use your phone for taking pictures, recording your baby doing funny stuff, to send to grandma, using both audio and video, making a shopping list, purchasing goods online, editing documents, as a watch (remember those things called watches?), for sending text messages, etc. You can even use a phone as a means of tracking your child's (or wife's) movements without even leaving your house. The possibilities are endless. Hell, you can even make your phone bark if you want to. Remember the days when we all used to look at network coverage when deciding which network to buy our phones from? Those days even the weight of the phone being offered was a big i ssue. People would pick up the cellphone and bounce it up once or twice and try to check whether the weight was alright. Those where the days when owning a cellphone was a symbol of success. Those days are gone. We are living in a time where each and everyone can have a mobile phone. Even preschool children have phones these day. Believe me. I am a teacher and I am talking from experience here. These days there are so many different types of phones to choose from. And then there are applications to worry about. Since the smartphone is now Man's best friend, we need to take good care of it by installing the best possible software. With the right set of applications installed, your phone can help you improve productivity. Now the question is what should we take into consideration when purchasing a mobile phone since weight is no longer an issue. Neither is network coverage. I believe choosing a phone is just as important as choosing a dog that you are going let your kids play with and be sure they will be safe. May be I exaggerated a little bit. But the point I am trying to make here is that selecting a smartphone and the combination of applications that you choose to install can make a big difference to your productivity. I am quite happy with my current phone, a Sony Ericsson WT19i, but there have been quite a few cases where I was not satisfied with phones that i purchased. So I have decided to put down a list of things to take into consideration next time I decide to purchase my next best friend. With your help I am sure I won't go wrong. Please add your ideas and what you think is important to remember when buying a good phone. I believe that Man's best friend should include the following: A good Internet package - if you want to use your phone as a true mobile device I guess the most important thing is to get a good deal for the Internet access from your service provider. Operating system - there are quite a few to choose, i.e. android, iOS, windows phone, etc. I probably will go with an Android since Linux is my daily bread. The number of available applications has a huge influence on my choice for the operating system. Even though a lot of applications work across all platforms, there are still situations where my choice of smartphone will depend on the applications I intend to use. This means I should plan ahead. There is need to research applications before buying a phone. RAM and CPU - I am a fan of productivity enhancing applications and I have a lot of them running at any given time. That means the maximum possible RAM and a fast CPU. Installing a lot of applications means on-phone storage will be very important. This is especially true if the applications I will be installing will not have the option to install them on the SD card. They say size does not matter. In the case of SD cards that is a lie. Most applications will be installed on this card. This is the same place where my documents, photos, videos, music and other things will be stored. So the bigger the better. Screen size is also very important, but not as important as the quality of the graphics card. I am not really a fan of taking photos but a good quality camera comes in handy when showing grandma photos of her grandchildren since she lives thousands of miles away Audio quality will be important when listening to those productivity podcasts The last point is to go online and read reviews and opinions written by people who have already purchased a similar phone. They usually have a lot of good information about the kind of problems to expect if you buy one. I would trust other users' judgement more than the information on the manufacturer's website. That's all from me. Now it's your turn to add what you consider to be important when buying a phone. I hope this list will help each and everyone of us to purchase our next best friend armed with the all the necessary requirements. |
Will sez, "The Department of Justice is using secretive prison facilities on U.S. soil, called Communication Management Units, to house inmates accused of being tied to 'terrorism' groups. They overwhelmingly include Muslim inmates, along with at least two animal rights and environmental activists." It is difficult to discern the rationale behind why some inmates are transferred to the CMU and others are not. For instance, John Walker Lindh, the "American Taliban," is housed at the CMU in Terre Haute. He pleaded guilty to supporting the Taliban and carrying a rifle and grenades on the battlefield in Afghanistan. However, the government announced last month it is actually easing restrictions on his communication. In the case of Andy Stepanian, he was one of six codefendants, and by the admission of prosecutors he was one of the minor players in the case. He is not accused of any violent crime or any property destruction, and had no disciplinary problems while incarcerated. Stepanian received the second-lowest sentence of the group, and his codefendants are not in CMUs. Daniel McGowan's notice of transfer to the CMU gives some indication of the government's reasoning. It says that he has been identified "as a member and leader in the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and Animal Liberation Front (ALF), groups considered domestic terrorist organizations." But in a letter from the CMU, McGowan wrote: "It's funny-I have like 13 codefs [codefendants] + there are 11 other eco prisoners and I end up here." Part of the explanation for his transfer to the CMU, it seems, is that he is a vocal, prominent activist with a large group of active supporters. For McGowan, his near celebrity status within the environmental movement, along with his continued activism, has become a liability. When I attended his sentencing hearing in Eugene, Ore., in 2006, the judge made a point of criticizing his media appearances and his website, SupportDaniel.org. |
Congress’ mammoth farm bill restores the imposition of an extra fee on home heating oil, hitting consumers in cold-weather states just as utility costs are spiking. The fee — two-tenths of a cent on every gallon sold — was tacked on to the end of the 959-page bill, which is winding its way through Capitol Hill. The fee would last for nearly 20 years and would siphon the money to develop equipment that is cheaper, more efficient and safer, and to encourage consumers to update their equipment. It’s just one of dozens of provisions tucked into the farm bill, which cleared the House on a bipartisan 251-166 vote last week and faces a key filibuster test in the Senate on Monday. It is expected to survive and face final passage Tuesday before heading to President Obama’s desk. Taxpayer groups say the bill could increase spending over the previous version and that it’s crammed with favors for individual lawmakers, such as rules legalizing industrial hemp. The heating oil fee was backed by Northeast lawmakers who said it would fund important research to benefit consumers. “The National Oilheat Research Alliance (NORA) has long benefitted low- and middle-class families and small businesses throughout the Northeast and other cold weather states,” Rep. Leonard Lance, New Jersey Republican, said in a statement. “The program improves energy efficiency and lowers heating bills at no cost to the U.S. taxpayer.” PHOTOS: President Obama's favorite footstool: The famous Resolute desk The bill prohibits oil companies from passing the fee on to consumers, but taxpayer advocates said that’s a sham and that the money has to come from consumers. “To say they can’t pass on the cost, are they supposed to take it out of their kid’s college fund?” said Diane Katz, research fellow in regulatory policy at the Heritage Foundation. “It’s kind of silly because of course the costs are going to get passed on. Money is fungible. There’s no way it’s not going to get passed on to the consumer.” Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, agreed that it’s unrealistic to think the fee won’t be passed on to consumers and said violations would be impossible to prove. “It just makes people feel good to say that, but doesn’t really translate in reality to how it will actually happen for consumers,” he said. Congress established the National Oilheat Research Alliance in 2000 to try to expand the oil heat market. Almost 70 percent of oil heat users live in the Northeast, a Government Accountability Office report found, because a lack of infrastructure in the region restricts access to natural gas. This winter, Massachusetts residents are projected to spend about $3,400 on more than 900 gallons of heating fuel per household, according to Massachusetts Energy and Environmental Affairs. This means the fee could add about $1.80 to fuel costs for a house over the winter. But the oil heat fee expired in 2010, and the industry says it needs the government to reimpose it to get the program up and running again. “Technician training has degraded over time and we haven’t been as responsible developing new fuels as we should have been,” said John Huber, president of the National Oilheat Research Alliance. “All technical training stopped in 2010, and we haven’t been upgrading and training on new technologies that have been entering the industry.” Because the program expired, work stopped on developing environmentally friendly biofuels, a priority for Northeasterners who put a premium on green energy, he said. He disputed the claim that consumers would end up facing price hikes, saying a number of factors go into that calculation and that the law prohibits the fee from being passed on to customers. “When they price, they’re looking at market competition, looking at their margins, looking at what services they provide to the customer, how far away the customer is,” he said. “Adding two-tenths of a cent, they can’t do under the law.” Mr. Ellis said other businesses work to improve their products without government mandates. “If companies and the industry want to innovate, that’s great,” he said. “But we shouldn’t be in the business as the federal government of propping it up and creating this overall system.” The National Oilheat Research Alliance has faced other problems. A 2010 Government Accountability Office audit found it was spending the majority of its money on marketing and was neglecting research. The farm bill requires that a majority of funding go to research and development of more efficient oil heat technology and other environmentally friendly fuel initiatives. Lawmakers in the House and Senate sponsored bills to try to renew the National Oilheat Research Alliance, but the legislation got bottled up in committee. The farm bill offered them a chance to short-circuit the usual legislative process and avoid the kind of scrutiny that accompanies a stand-alone bill. Indeed, it was not raised at all during the debate on the House floor last week. Rep. Henry A. Waxman of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, did not want the program to be slipped into the massive bill without more scrutiny. He said the GAO audit raised questions that needed answers. “In the past, NORA has used the funds it has collected primarily to run public relations campaigns,” he wrote in a Jan. 23 letter to the committee’s chairman. “The committee should carefully examine the value of these efforts before subjecting the consumers of heating oil to additional costs.” Ms. Katz said hiding a piece of legislation in the farm bill that could not pass on its own is not the right way to move legislation and could end up hurting the oil heat provision by tying the Energy Department initiative to future farm bills that could face political trouble. “They couldn’t get this passed since 2010, so they reverted to sort of hiding it in the farm bill. There’s already enough junk in the farm bill that shouldn’t be in there. This just adds to that,” she said. Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission. |
Ice Age Co-Stars: Horses, Camels And Cheetahs Mammoths and saber-toothed cats may be the most famous beasts of the Ice Age. But they shared the prairie with horses and camels, too—both of which evolved in North America and crossed the ice bridge into Eurasia, before disappearing here. Matthew Kohn and Christopher Hill talk about the lesser-known fauna of the Ice Age. IRA FLATOW, HOST: This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. We're broadcasting live from Boise, Idaho. And Idaho, you may not know, is not only famous for its potatoes. Just a couple of hours from here are the Hagerman Fossil Beds, where the skulls and skeletons of hundreds of early horses have been dug up. These fossils are the earliest known examples of the equus genus, relatives of today's zebras and horses and donkeys. And that's right - horses evolved here in the grasslands of North America before going extinct here also. But they weren't alone. There were a lot of unusual creatures roaming around North America during the Ice Age, ones you don't hear much about, as much as the mammoths and the saber-toothed cats. Did you know that camels lived here too, alongside supersized bison, American lions that are bigger than the African lions, and cheetahs. And this is safari-quality stuff. But you'd have to be a caveman to have gone on safari in those days because many of those large beasts disappeared around 10,000 years ago, just as humans were entering upon the scene. Were they hunted to extinction? Where did they go? Killed off by disease? Or could the culprit have been then climate change also? And why did most of the large mammals die out where the small ones lived on to modern-day time? Just a few of the mysteries about our North American fauna, and that's what we'll be talking about for the rest of the hour. We won't be taking calls today, but if you're here in the audience, I invite you to step up to the mic and ask a question. You can also tweet us @scifri at S-C-I-F-R-I, and go to our website at sciencefriday.com, where you'll find links to the topic, and you can leave a message also. Let me introduce my guests. Matthew Kohn is a distinguished professor in the Department of Geosciences here at Boise State University. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY. MATTHEW KOHN: Thanks Ira, pleasure to be here. FLATOW: You're welcome. Christopher Hill is associate dean of the Graduate College at Boise State University. He's also associate professor of anthropology here. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY. CHRISTOPHER HILL: Thank you, Ira. FLATOW: You know, this is - this I think is certainly knew. When we were talking about topics we were going to talk about when we came to Boise, is talking about the menagerie of animals, Christopher, that were here at one point. You always hear about the mammoths and the saber-toothed cats, but there's a whole lot of other stuff like camels here. HILL: Sure, there were both plant-eaters like camels and bison. Down in Idaho we had musk ox and caribou. So there were a lot of plant-eaters, and then there were meat-eaters like saber-tooth cats. FLATOW: So you mean the camel was here before it was out there in the desert in another continent in the Middle East? HILL: Sure, the camel evolved in North America. It started off as something about the size of a rabbit about 20, 40 million years ago, and over time the population's changed, and it became even larger than the kinds of camels we see today. So there were gigantic camels for a while. And then around 11,000 years ago camels disappeared in North America. FLATOW: Did they go someplace? (LAUGHTER) FLATOW: I mean... HILL: They became fossils. FLATOW: They became fossils, and you have found those fossils of the camels. HILL: Yes, so we found examples of camels in Southern Idaho and in Montana, and they're connected with all these other animals you were talking about. FLATOW: Did they evolve into the camels that you see in other parts of the world? HILL: Sure, so they spread across probably from Alaska to Siberia and into Asia and then became the different types of camels we see all over the world. FLATOW: Wow. Matthew Kohn, you've studied the horses from the Hagerman Fossil Beds. Tell about that. It must be very exciting. You found a lot of stuff in that bed. KOHN: Well, one of the things I do, my specialty is really in stable isotope geochemistry. FLATOW: What? KOHN: Stable isotope geochemistry. And so what we do is we analyze the ratio of stable isotopes of oxygen and carbon to learn something about the ecosystems and the plants that were living in the area at the time. So what we analyze are scraps of tooth enamel, and they're tooth enamel from these different animals that lived here. Some of them are from Hagerman horse. There were also some camels, mastodon. We've analyzed some beavers as well. FLATOW: And these are all found in this one spot? What makes that spot so special that all of these fossils were found? KOHN: Well it's one of the more fossiliferous localities in the... FLATOW: We keep doing these F-things, I'm going to run out of... (LAUGHTER) FLATOW: Why would they be all there in that one spot? KOHN: Well, those particular kinds of sediments turn out to be quite fossiliferous. Hagerman has an extremely well-exposed sequence of sedimentary rocks. They're all about three to four million years old. And there is one particular locality, the Hagerman Horse Quarry, where hundreds of horses were discovered, their fossils were discovered back in the late 1920s, early 1930s. FLATOW: And how does the Hagerman Horse fit in with the modern horses and zebras of today? KOHN: Yeah, it is the earliest representative of the genus equus. So you have to think about horses. There used to be many, many different genera of horses across North America. There are individual localities in - from about 14 or 15 million years ago, where there will be seven or eight different genera of horses, not just species, but these are the actual genera, whereas today we only have one genus, the genus equus. So these genera evolve, and over time the genus equus evolved. Hagerman is the earliest representative, as far as I know, of the genus equus, and from that genus then spread out all of the different species of equus. FLATOW: So the big mystery, we had the horses, we had lions that were bigger than lions in Africa, Christopher? HILL: That's right. FLATOW: Giant lions, how big? HILL: About 20 percent bigger than the African lion. And there were other kinds of large cats. FLATOW: Such as? HILL: There was a saber-toothed cat. FLATOW: We call it the saber-toothed tiger, right? Is that a... HILL: Please don't say that. (LAUGHTER) FLATOW: I won't say that. HILL: So there's another saber-toothed cat called homotherium, and we've found examples of that. And besides the American lion, there's also a puma, but it looks sort of like a cheetah, so it's sometimes called the American cheetah. FLATOW: And they all disappeared about 10,000 years ago, and that's the big mystery of where they went - they became fossils - and what happened to them. And your theory is about what happened. HILL: Well, it's an important experiment we have in the natural history to look at these examples of animals that went extinct and to try to figure out what might have been the reasons why they went extinct. And the two big reasons, usually, that are discussed are either changes in the environment, like global warming events or global cooling events, or also predation, like.. FLATOW: Hunters. HILL: Hunters. And one example of that would be over-hunting by humans. FLATOW: These were the Clovis people? HILL: In North America, the old Stone Age people that lived right at the end of the Ice Age are called the Clovis people, based on an archaeological site in Clovis, New Mexico, where the first spear point was found with mammoth, mammoth bones. FLATOW: Would it be that they suddenly learned how to be better hunters? HILL: Well, so one argument is that there was a human population, a small human population here, maybe before 11 or 12 thousand years ago, but they didn't know how to use spear points to hunt these large animals, and then around 11,000 years ago that population learned how to use spear points, these large spear points, to hunt the animals. FLATOW: Matthew, you were shaking your head about all of this. KOHN: Oh, absolutely, yeah. Those are the two hypotheses: rapid climate change, changes in the environment or ecosystems, and then over-hunting by humans. I should say not all of the large animals went extinct, right? We still have deer, we still have moose, we still have antelopes, and they lived back in the same time period that all of these - you know, we consider them exotic animals - were living here too. FLATOW: The bison were living back then, right? Why didn't they get hunted for extinction if they were hunting? KOHN: Well, we almost did, didn't we? (LAUGHTER) FLATOW: Well, that was just 100 years or so ago, right? KOHN: Well, that's true. FLATOW: But they were a little heartier, maybe, Christopher? HILL: There are some examples, or many examples, of bison kills connected with a time right after Clovis, called the Folsom Period, around 10,500. And that was - most of those sites connected with Folsom are connected with bison, whereas Clovis sites are connected with mammoths. But the bison is an example of an animal that probably came to North America between two and one hundred thousand years ago and then survived in different versions until about 11,000 years ago. So it went through different climate change episodes, and then right around 11,000 years ago, apparently there was a bottleneck, a decrease in the population. The numbers of bison and all the bison that live in North America now are from a group that was a fairly small group that almost went extinct around 11,000 years ago. FLATOW: Quick question before the break, yes. UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Ira, I think you're wonderful, first of all. Thanks for coming to Boise. Can families take their children to Hagerman to see the fossils that you have explored? HILL: You can certainly go to Hagerman Fossil Beds, and you know, it's a public area. You can walk around. But in general, the fossil localities themselves are not open to the public. And in general, all federal lands are prohibited from vertebrate fossil collection. Private lands, of course you talk to a landowner, but federal lands are generally protected. FLATOW: We have a tweet coming in from Jado(ph), who says: Don't forget about the giant ground sloth, the short-faced bear and the giant armadillo. Those are - we're not forgetting now. HILL: We've analyzed them. (LAUGHTER) FLATOW: How big were these animals? Were they bigger than the kind we have today, or are they... HILL: Ground sloths are, what, seven feet tall? KOHN: Yeah, there was a ground sloth called Megalocnus that was found at Hagerman, and it was probably seven or eight feet tall, and it was probably one of the smaller of the ground sloths. And a version of that ground sloth also went extinct around 11,00 years ago. An interesting thing about the ground sloths is that their - we were talking earlier in the previous hour about what is native and non-native, what would be an exotic animal. This is an example of an animal that would - originated in South America and migrated into North America. And there are other examples of that also. A living example would be a porcupine. It's an example of - the ancestors of porcupines came from South America. On the other hand, we were talking about bison, and they are also an exotic animal if you look at geologic time scales. They came to North America between two and one hundred thousand years ago. FLATOW: Wow. All interesting stuff. We're going to take a break and come back more - and talk more with Matthew Kohn and Christopher Hill, and questions from the audience, talking about the lions and tigers and - no tigers. No more saber-toothed tigers. We're not going to call them that anymore. So we'll be right back after this break. Stay with us. I say, we'll be right back. Don't go away. (APPLAUSE) (SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) FLATOW: This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. We're talking this hour about the beasts of the Pleistocene, like mammoths and camels and early horses and why they suddenly disappeared about 10,000 years ago. My guests are Matthew Kohn, distinguished professor at the Department of Geosciences; Christopher Hill, associate dean of the Graduate School, all here at Boise State University. Our number is 1-800 - but we're not going to take calls today. We're going to take calls - hopefully - people stepping up to the mic here. Let me ask you, Matthew, as we begin: This must have happened - if there was a climate change, this must have happened over a really short period of time, did it not? What would be the estimate on that? KOHN: Well, it's interesting because when we talk about climate change on the Earth, there are different parts of the Earth that respond more or less rapidly. So when we look at places at high latitudes, they respond very quickly to climate change. We see that today, that the arctic is responding very quickly to global warming. When people have looked at the Greenland ice cores, they have found evidence for climate change that is very rapid, this is the transition from the Glacial Period into the warm period of the Holocene, on timescales of decades or even less than decades. Now, once that occurs, there's a huge ice cap over North America, it takes thousands of years for that ice cap to disappear. So there's some parts of the climate system that respond more slowly, but there are other parts that are very sensitive, and they respond very quickly. FLATOW: Yeah, we're watching the Arctic respond very quickly these days. KOHN: Exactly. FLATOW: Let's go to the - let's go to the audience here. UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: To the question earlier, we took our children to the Hagerman National Fossil Beds Visitor Center, which was really interesting for them. They became junior rangers. But a ranger that was there explained to us that the majority of the fossils they found of the Hagerman horse all died at the same time. And so I had questions if you had theories as to how they died. KOHN: Yeah, so the Hagerman horse fossils, I mean we're talking about a single quarry that - where over 200 individuals were excavated, mostly as skulls or jaws but also some complete skeletons. In general, these deposits are called bone beds, and they're really two different kinds of generations of bone beds. One is a gradual accumulation - for example, a watering hole that might have animals that accumulate every year until finally you have a lot, or you can have a catastrophic event. And the theory, the prevailing theory for Hagerman horse, those horse fossils, is that it was a catastrophic event - for example, a flash flood that could've taken out a herd of horses. Or they could've been killed upstream and washed downstream and deposited in that location. But it is viewed by most people as a catastrophic accumulation. FLATOW: Thanks. We have a tweet poured in from MichaelDeGraff(ph), who says: To the lady who wanted to show your kids the fossils, please take your kids to the National Park Service Visitor's Center at Hagerman, so you can get - I'll go here and I'll come back here. Yes, ma'am. UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Going back to the Pleistocene overkill versus climate change hypothesis, Matt and Chris, it seems - I'm not a hunter, but it would seem pretty to take out a seven-foot sloth, but maybe not so easy to take out a giant cat. So did the cats go extinct because they lost their prey, or were people actually maybe hunting them? HILL: You know, there aren't any examples that I know of where we have evidence of people hunting the carnivores, like the saber-toothed cats. But there is an example where one of the saber-tooth cats, homotherium, we found a den that contained lots of examples of baby mammoth teeth in that den. So it's an example where the homotherium, that ancient cat, probably went extinct not because of over-hunting but because its prey went extinct, and that's one example that we have of that. FLATOW: Was it a scary time to be a person? We've got these - all these big animals that might be coming after you... KOHN: Ira, maybe it was a delicious time. (LAUGHTER) FLATOW: No beer. No... (LAUGHTER) FLATOW: Yes, ma'am. UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: With the advancement of technology, can you evaluate multiple evidences at the same time and create a probability of one theory versus another theory more easily than maybe 10 or 20 years ago? FLATOW: Christopher? HILL: Well, there are lots of different ways we could kind of try to answer the questions about over-hunting or climate change. And some of them are - we find bones that we can't identify based on what they look like. And it might be that we could use techniques like DNA to test those bones to see if they're actually extinct animals or animals that still persist today. Another big question when we're looking at the different models, the different ideas connected with extinction, is the timing. Do we have people there before or after the extinction event? And today we have much better precision in terms of being able to estimate, measure and estimate the timing for extinctions. FLATOW: Would there be enough people around at that point to wipe out all these animals? HILL: Well, that's a good question. I think there were very low numbers of people at that time. So one idea would be that overkill was a contributing factor but not the only factor that combined to lead to the extinctions at the end of the Ice Age. FLATOW: OK, let's go here, and then I'll come back here, yes. UNIDENTIFIED MAN: So I'm curious what it takes to identify a new species from the fossil record. It seems like in the past, you know, somebody will find a fragment of a skull and declare it a new species. I'm wondering what's the threshold. Do you need an entire skeleton? Do fragments count? How does that work? KOHN: Most species - genera and species are identified based on tooth morphology, and that's largely because - well, for a couple reasons. One is it's distinctive, and so different species have different crenulations to their tooth enamel and so on. But the other thing about teeth is they're incredibly well-preserved. So they're very resistant to physical abrasion and to chemical decay, and so that's one of the best materials that we have. It's not the only thing that is used to identify different species, and so the morphology of the skull and the shape of the limb bones is also used, although the limb bones and body bones, generally called post-cranial material, is generally less well-preserved than the skull material. FLATOW: Before - you want to follow up? UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Well, I just was going to say I'm a dentist, I just happen to be a dentist, and I see tons of different morphology in teeth in humans. I don't know if that's different from other species, but it's just a coincidence. FLATOW: They could use you over there at the dig. (LAUGHTER) KOHN: But it's also true, there is internal variability to any tooth morphology that one might be willing to assign to a particular species. So it has to be a morphological feature that exceeds some threshold that is identified by looking at populations of teeth. FLATOW: OK. Yes, sir. UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Hi. I was glad to hear you say that hunting was a contributing factor because I'm a retired science teacher, and I remember before plate tectonics came in, I was starting to teach. And then plate tectonics came in, and it started to explain things. And they had that theory about everybody running across the land bridge, slaughtering animals and populating North America. UNIDENTIFIED MAN: And then they figured out that you'd have to have tribes of people every few years picking up and moving down to make that happen. And so my question is: You know, as we find more and more evidence, like Kennewick Man or like other spear points, not just in Clovis, New Mexico, but on the Eastern Seaboard, maybe near New York, and they find these things around, how does that register for you as a teacher, professor and a scientist, in changing how we view the theories that we once purported as being the best theory, and now we've got to move on because it's obvious there's new evidence. So how do you guys address that? That's my question. HILL: Well, the great thing is we're getting more and more information. We're getting larger samples and samples that we can study in a lot more detail. So you're right. I think if we were in a radio show 20 years ago, we would talk about Clovis, and Clovis would be the first real good example of people in North America. And today, with more discoveries, there are some possibilities of older things, older than Clovis. And that would then connect with the question of extinction. If there are already human groups in North American prior to Clovis, why didn't they cause the extinction? So there are all these new discoveries that then lead - help us test our explanations, test our hypotheses. FLATOW: We were a radio show 20 years ago and did talk about Clovis. (LAUGHTER) FLATOW: Apologies to the audience. We've run out of time for this segment. We're going to thank you both for taking time to be with us today, and it was very interesting, talking about all the species that have become extinct. And thanks again. HILL: Thank you. KOHN: Thank you. (APPLAUSE) FLATOW: Matthew Kohn, Christopher Hill from Boise State University. Copyright © 2012 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record. |
Pin Buffer Email 686 Shares Another year, another opportunity for a fresh start. Now that 2018 is officially over and we’re moving swiftly into 2019, it’s the perfect time of year to adjust our mindsets, change our habits and plan for a productive year ahead. The thing is, most entrepreneurs will coast into 2019 without really taking the time to set their year up for success so don’t be that person. Take the time to choose a New Year’s Resolution or two and get planning for what’s to come. Not only is this the perfect time of year to make changes and set goals for your own life, but it’s also a great time of year to do the same for your business. January marks the start of the first quarter of the year and you have the power to take charge of this fresh start and turn it into a productive and successful foundation upon which you can continue to build your business throughout the year. There’s no better time to focus on the future with a positive outlook and a plan for productivity than right now, that’s why we’ve brought you our 2019 New Year’s Roundup. This New Year’s Roundup post has become a bit of a tradition on our blog over the years, and every year we like to add to it and update it with new tips, tools, and resources we’ve learned and used throughout the year. If you usually let the New Year slip past without much reflection or goal setting, this year we urge you not to. Instead, set some time aside at the start of this year to tie up last year’s loose ends and plan for the upcoming year. It’s amazing what a little goal setting can do to help you progress throughout the year! Without further ado, read on to find out more about how you can move forward into 2019 with a plan of action that’s sure to set you up for a successful and productive year ahead. Let’s have an awesome year. Reflect In order to move forward into the New Year, it’s important to reflect over the previous year so you can get a sense of where you’re at and how you should continue to proceed. Take this time to reflect on: What Your Goals Were What goals did you set for 2018? Did you even set any? Which ones did you achieve and which ones did you slowly give up on throughout the year for whatever reason or another? Reflect on your choice of goals that you set the beginning of last year and evaluate whether they were realistic or idealistic so you know how to set better goals for yourself this year. What You Did Well No matter how big or small, there must have been something that went right for you this year. Reflect on what you did well and give yourself some credit! It can be so easy to focus on what doesn’t go well and let the small successes slip by sans celebration. List out all the things you accomplished in 2018 so you can see right in front of you everything you worked hard to put into fruition this year. You did the work and you made things happen so let yourself feel the effects of your success! What You Didn’t Do Well We all make mistakes, we all plan and execute poorly but there’s no need to dwell on it. Recognize what you didn’t excel at last year and consider how you can change that this year. Didn’t stick to your goals? Acknowledge that and consider what you can do differently this year so you actually achieve them. Made some mistakes? Recognize what you did wrong, make amends with yourself and consider what you’ll do this year to not make the same mistakes again. Protect Your Assets Alright, now it’s time to get some housework done. This might not be exactly what you had in mind when preparing for your awesome New Year, however, it’s an extremely important step that many entrepreneurs let slip throughout the year which can end up costing them big time in the long run. Throughout the year, many of us fall guilty of not properly updating, backing-up, and securing important information on our devices but before you head into another busy year, take the time to actually do those tasks you’ve been putting off and start protecting your assets. Yes, it’s tedious and yes, you might think it’s not actually all that important, but it’s much easier to prevent assets from being compromised than to recover from it, so just do yourself a favor and make this a priority while you prep for your year. Future you will thank you. Even if you can’t bring yourself to put these preventative measures in place for your personal accounts — that is, ultimately, your decision — you MUST secure your business’ assets for the sake of your customer’s security. When you’re a business owner you no longer just handle your own information, you handle other people’s as well, plus any method you’re generating income with online should be protected to secure your livelihood. Here are 4 easy ways you can protect your assets: Change Your Passwords 2018 was the year of data breaches and it’s expected to continue at an accelerated rate. The United States is understood to be the #1 target for targetted cybersecurity attacks (Source) which is a scary spotlight to be in and with the average time to identify a data breach taking 196 days (Source), you don’t want your own personal or business data compromised for that long — or at all — if you can help it. The good news is, there are steps you can take to help protect you and your business from potential data breaches and hacks. First of all, change your passwords. There’s no doubt that we’ve all heard this tip before — it’s nothing new, but it’s effective. Changing your passwords regularly and using an original password for every account can help prevent your accounts from being compromised. If you’re a password recycler (someone who uses one main password for most of their accounts) then your overall security for all of your online accounts is likely to be very low and easily hackable. If one of your accounts gets hacked and you use the same email and password for other accounts, the possibility of those also getting hacked is very likely. For example, in 2018 there were 5 main data breaches alone: Facebook’s data breach exposed the data for 50 million users, the hotel group Marriott data breach affected 500 million customers, Quora’s data breach compromised 100 million users, the British Airways data breach affected 380,000 of their customers’ data, and Ticketmaster’s data breach impacted 40,000 customers. If you had accounts on any of services within the last year alone, your data and other accounts could be compromised. Each time a data breach happens, it’s reasonable to presume that the data is being sold on the dark web — or being used by the hackers themselves — to run the data they acquired against other programs on the web to see where else users may have used the same usernames, emails, and passwords. This is why it’s simply no longer acceptable to be using recycled passwords for multiple online services because it just simply isn’t safe and puts you at further risk. We get it, it’s difficult to remember lots of different passwords, that’s why so many of us are password recyclers. If this is how you feel then your best option is to use a password management service like Dashlane. Dashlane is one of the best password management services out there and you can use it for free. It stores your passwords, evaluates your overall online security so you have an idea of how secure your accounts are, it can help you update your current accounts so they can be more secure, and anytime you sign up for a new account it will help you generate a secure password. It’s super simple to use, it saves you from having to enter passwords every time you log in to an online service and it also automatically logs you in which is super convenient. Dashlane also saves receipts, personal information, and credit card info for safekeeping and better management. When you use Dashlane you’ll only need to remember one “master” password that you don’t use for any other account and it will remember the rest. Important Note: Here’s another reason why it’s important to change your passwords often, even if you have no reason to suspect they have been compromised: When you forget your password for a service and you try to recover it, most of the time you’ll be sent an email with a link to click to create a new password. Why don’t they just send you your password? That’s because most services don’t actually have access to your password. It’s encrypted, and that’s good. However, if you ever hit the “I Forgot My Password” button and you get an email with your password in it, that means your password was never encrypted and anyone at that company with the capabilities can see your password. Enable 2-Factor Authentication Now that you’ve sorted out your passwords, implementing Two Factor Authentication (also known as Two-Step Verification) is the next step up in terms of security. With 2FA, every time a login attempt is made on your account, you’ll have to input an additional unique 6-digit code to actually be able to log in to your account. 2FA is not necessary, or available, on every account as in some cases a strong password is usually sufficient enough and adding 2FA slows you down by creating an additional step, however, for accounts that store very important or sensitive information, enabling 2FA is highly recommended. Here’s a short video that better explains what 2-Factor Authentication is: The accounts you should definitely enable 2FA on include: Your Email Account This is a huge one. If you’re like most people, you likely use an account like Gmail and have other email addresses filtered through it. This means that for any online service you use, your recovery emails (if you forget your password) go to your Gmail account. That means if someone gets into your email they can change every other password and, since they have access to all your emails, they can also easily find out exactly what services you’re signed up to. Think about that for a second: It’s scary. Do yourself a favor and protect your email account with 2FA if it’s available for your email service provider. Your Ecommerce Platform & Blog Your online business is an income revenue stream, your livelihood, and it should be protected. You don’t want this to ever be compromised as it can result in a loss of money and put sensitive information for you and your customers at risk. Depending on which ecommerce or blogging platform you use, there may be an option to implement 2FA. If there is, definitely consider enabling it so you can make it one step harder for your important information to be compromised. Your Social Media Platforms You can also enable 2FA for some social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat, so if you think those accounts would benefit from an extra layer of security, considering implementing 2FA for them as well. Other Important Accounts The Authy App Check out the Authy app to help you log into any 2FA secured accounts more easily. You simply scan each account’s QR Code and the app continuously refreshes 6 digit codes every 30 seconds for each 2FA secured account. Anytime you need to log into those accounts, head to your Authy app on your device and enter the 6 digit code instead of waiting for it to be emailed to you. The reason we recommend the Authy app over other 2 Factor Authentication apps is that Authy is free, it’s easy to set up on your devices, you can use it on both desktop and mobile devices, and it backs up to the cloud so you’ll never get locked out of your accounts if you lose your devices or don’t have access to them for some reason. This feature, in particular, is a huge advantage to using Authy, simply because getting locked out of your own accounts because of your 2FA provider can be a huge pain and not something you want to subject yourself to if you can help it. Check Your Credit Score Quick, what’s your credit score? If you couldn’t answer that question, it’s time to get the answer. Your credit score, especially as an entrepreneur, is extremely important, however, most people have actually no idea what their score is, nor do they know what’s on their credit profile. This is a problem because your credit score can affect your approval and rates on a car, a house, credit cards, and loans. Checking your report is critical because mistakes happen and being in the dark and wishing for the best isn’t a very good strategy. Even if you think your credit report is squeaky clean, that doesn’t mean that it is. The only way to know for sure is by checking your report regularly. For more information on getting your credit report, follow the links below: To learn more about how to hack your credit score and take it to the next level, click here. Get Insured Your business — especially if it’s providing you with some, or all, of your income — is an important asset to protect and you should consider whether insuring it is the right course of action for your circumstances. Insurance can help provide you with protection against damages, lawsuits, and copyright infringement related to your business and can be completely specific to what kinds of products you sell or digital content you create. Look into insuring your business in your local area and see if it’s worthwhile for your business. Bonus: Interested in other ways to secure your ecommerce business? Check out our article on Interested in other ways to secure your ecommerce business? Check out our article on How to Bulletproof Your Online Business for relevant and important information about securing your online business from potential loss & threats. Get Organized It’s no secret that being well organized helps enable productivity and, in turn, success. Keeping the most fundamental aspects of your life organized — like your workspace, your appointments, and your to-do list — helps keep you on track and ready to attack your daily activities. Trying to operate with uncategorized files, poor time management, and a messy desk does nobody any good so start your year off on the right foot: Get organized. Delete Unused & Distracting Apps from Your Phone It’s entirely possible that your cell phone is one of the most cluttered and distracting areas of your life. If you want to have a productive and successful year, you need to take control of how you spend your time and those fun apps that are taking up space both on your phone and in your life are only going to set you back. Be honest with yourself about which apps are essential to have on your phone and which ones are just cluttering it up and delete the ones that detract from your productivity. After that, set up the Screen Time feature on your phone to restrict you from using specific apps at certain times of the day or to set daily time limits for apps you want to manage your time on. The Screen Time feature can also give you weekly reports detailing how much time you spend on your phone, and a breakdown of time spent on each app, which can be really enlightening information to help you reduce distractions. Bonus: Get a list of the most important apps for you to have on your phone when it comes to keeping up-to-date with your businesses on the go in our Get a list of the most important apps for you to have on your phone when it comes to keeping up-to-date with your businesses on the go in our 20 Smartphone Apps to Manage Your Online Business on the Go article. Practice File Management This is the time to get your computer organized. After a busy year, you might have files piled up in every nook and cranny of your system. Take the time when you’re mindlessly sitting down to watch some TV one night and trudge through what’s there. It’s a mindless process but it’s necessary for both the health of your computer as well as your mind. Completely Clear Your Desktop First, get rid of what’s on your desktop and try to completely clear it if you can. Files saved to your desktop should be for short-term use only as they can slow down your computer and they make your desktop appear cluttered. Find a proper place for them to live or put them in the trash. Use a tool like CleanMyMacX and CleanMyPC to help you remove unnecessary files and get your computer back to running like it did when it was new. Sort Through Your Downloads Next, clear up your downloads. Again, having a bunch of files sitting in this folder can slow down your computer, plus you probably don’t need them anymore so clear up the space they’re using so you can put it to better use this year. Organize Your Bookmarks You know all those bookmarks you saved so you could come back to them later? Sort through them and only keep what’s necessary. Either have a look through them now to see if there’s anything you saved worth reading or watching, or just delete them because you know you won’t be coming back to them anytime soon. A short list of bookmarks helps you find what you’re looking for much easier — especially if they’re properly titled, so do that too. Create folders within your bookmarks too for an even more organized system. Backup Your Files Just do it. We’ve all been guilty of not doing this at some time or another, but just take the time to do this before you get wrapped up in another busy year. Dropbox and Sync are good options for backing up your files to the cloud and syncing them across all devices. We particularly recommend using Sync because they offer end-to-end encryption which adds an extra layer of security to them that protects your files from data hacks and breaches. Some other popular cloud storage alternatives include: Backup Your Ecommerce Store While you’re at it, you should also backup any websites or online stores that you have and keep that backup safe on your computer or your cloud storage. If your online store is your livelihood or even a side hustle then backing it up really shouldn’t even be an option and should just be something you do on the regular. Tools like Rewind are designed specifically to backup Shopify stores, BigCommerce stores, Quickbooks Online and even have WordPress and Google Drive integrations on the way. We highly recommend implementing Rewind on your store because you never know when you’re going to need it throughout the year, whether you accidentally delete parts of your website when you make an update, a disgruntled employee removes important files, or a malicious hacker attack deletes your website entirely. This isn’t something you want to take your chances on, so just back it all up now. Learn more about Rewind in our Rewind Review and take advantage of our exclusive Rewind Offer to get an extended 45-day free trial. Organize Your Notes If you keep notes, don’t forget to organize them as well. Whether it’s business ideas, quotes, important links, or website code snippets, you need to keep these notes organized and easily searchable for them to be effective. If you’re not using Evernote you really should be. Another alternative is Bear Notes for iPhone, iPad & Mac. If you’re already using a notes service like these two, it’s time to go through all your notes from the last year and organize them with proper titles and tags. It can be easy to let that slip throughout the year as you’re quickly jotting things down, so take time now to go back and organize everything properly. Clean Out Your Email Inbox The email inbox is a scary and daunting place where forgotten emails are left to rot as new emails constantly continue to bury them. Set aside a good chunk of time to completely clear your inbox. If you’re time constricted — and bold — just delete them all. Assuming that you trust your recipients will send a follow-up email, you probably won’t miss out on much. Besides simply emptying your inbox you should also implement proper inbox management techniques. This means using your email service provider to their fullest potential and making use of folders to manage your inbox. When customer service inquiries come in, drag and drop them into the “Customers” folder. Just got a personal email from an old friend? Put it into the “Personal” folder. Your flight info for your next trip was just sent over? Put it in the “Travel” folder. This helps you keep your main inbox clear and all your other emails organized so you can keep up with them through a logical system. You can also automate this process by adding labels and filters to manage and organize all your emails. We use this little trick to automatically forward all our business receipts into one accounting folder using a specific email address that we only use for this purpose so we can save and file our business-related receipts in a more organized matter that makes tax time much easier for us and our accountants. We discuss this technique more in our How to Bulletproof Your Online Business article under the “Utilize Alias (Or Forwarded) Email Addresses” header. You can also use the web app Unroll.me to scan your entire email inbox and identify every newsletter you’ve subscribed to. It will then present them to you with a 1-click unsubscribe button for each of them. You’ll be surprised at how many useless newsletters you’ve signed up to over the past year. Important: Use caution when using email newsletter unrolling services. In order to use their service, you’re likely giving them access to all of your emails so they can determine which newsletters you’re signed up to so read through their privacy policy carefully before signing up to their service. If you don’t want to use an email newsletter unrolling service, you can always manually unroll yourself from email newsletters. It might take some time, but if you use Gmail you can just head straight over to the “Promotions” tab in your inbox and many emails from company newsletters will be hiding out there. Alternatively, you could conduct a search for the word “Unsubscribe” in your email inbox, as every email newsletter has to offer an unsubscribe option, so you can find newsletters more easily. If you’re going through the Promotions tab in your inbox, or maybe even your Spam folder, and notice there are email newsletters there that you haven’t been receiving in your normal inbox (like ours!) but you want them to be showing up there, don’t forget to whitelist them! This will help your email service provider understand which emails you want to be receiving in your normal inbox so you don’t miss out on news and updates from the brands you love. Clean Up Your Social Media Accounts After another year of posting, sharing, and stalking, our social media accounts can get overwhelming with friends, followers, and tags. Go through your Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, LinkedIn and any other platforms you use and filter out what — or who — is no longer relevant to you. You’re aim here isn’t to cut people out of your life, it’s just to keep your social media accounts under wraps so everything that’s on there reflects your online presence the way you want it to. Unfollow or mute people who take over your Instagram newsfeed, unfriend individuals on Facebook who are no longer a part of your social circle, mute the voices on Twitter you don’t need to see every time you open the app, and untag yourself from any photos or events you no longer want to show up on your feed. These are all simple tasks but it’s just a matter of keeping them under your control that puts you in a beneficial place to start a new year. Delete Unused Online Accounts As an entrepreneur, you’re likely always signing up for social media platforms, tools, and apps to help you grow your business. Use the web app JustDelete.Me to get direct links and instructions on how to delete accounts and profiles that you’re no longer using. And this year, use a disposable email address when signing up to new services that you’re just trying out for the first time and aren’t sure if you’re going to use it more than a few times. Use a fake email service like Mailinator or 10 Minute Mail to create an instant and disposable email address to test services before you commit. These disposable email services can help prevent your email address from being spammed and added to an endless list of newsletters that crowd your email inbox. Tidy Your Workspace A tidy space is a tidy mind. Remove any redundant notes that scatter your workspace, file all those papers you just shove into your drawer, dust off your desk lamp or whatever the case may be. Get your space fresh and ready for a successful year ahead by purchasing some new pens, stationery, or anything you use regularly that could do with an update. If you work from home, even if it’s just part-time for your side hustle, and haven’t yet created a designated workspace, consider making a space for a desk this year. Having a designated workspace at home that you use ONLY for work helps boost productivity by setting the scene and putting you in the right mental state to work. If you’ve just been working on the couch or kitchen table, see if you can squeeze a small desk in somewhere that’s used only for you and your business. If you haven’t already read or heard of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo, check it out for some immediate tidying up inspiration. Review Your Expenses You’d be surprised at how much you’re likely overpaying for services. The New Year is a great time to review your bills and see what you can cut down on and where. Negotiate Your Cell Phone Bill: Call your phone provider and negotiate your monthly rate (if you tell them you’re leaving them, they will send you to their retention department which has more power and flexibility to offer you better deals. Call your phone provider and negotiate your monthly rate (if you tell them you’re leaving them, they will send you to their retention department which has more power and flexibility to offer you better deals. Bank Smarter: Review your banking plans for your accounts, as well as your credit cards to make sure you’re getting the best deal possible. To better understand your finances, you may also want to sign up to Mint.com or You Need a Budget. Review your banking plans for your accounts, as well as your credit cards to make sure you’re getting the best deal possible. To better understand your finances, you may also want to sign up to Mint.com or You Need a Budget. Cancel Your Cable: By canceling cable, not only can you save a substantial monthly payment but you can also increase productivity from not wasting time in front of the TV. As a replacement and to have some entertainment, try just having Netflix and/or an online season pass for your favorite sports team. By canceling cable, not only can you save a substantial monthly payment but you can also increase productivity from not wasting time in front of the TV. As a replacement and to have some entertainment, try just having Netflix and/or an online season pass for your favorite sports team. Review Your Internet Service: You can likely get better/faster internet for cheaper, it’s just a matter of reviewing new plans that are available from all of your local internet service providers. Keep in mind, many companies offer attractive incentives for new customers, so switching providers can be very lucrative if you find the right promotion. Prep Your Business Sign Up for Services You’ve Been Meaning to Try Throughout the year maybe you’ve come across interesting services like courses, webinars, tools or resources that you’ve flagged in your mind to investigate more on later, but you have yet to actually follow up on them. These could be things that you’ve bookmarked for later, saved in your email inbox, or even services you’ve signed up for but haven’t actually used yet. Take the time now, at the start of the year, to learn more about these services and decide whether or not they’ll be worth putting into practice this year. If so, start figuring them out so you know how to use them and start applying them to your daily life. If some of these services turn out to not be what you thought or needed, delete them from your bookmarks or inbox and forget about them so they stop cluttering your mind. Whatever services you’ve been saving throughout the year probably have something in them that will benefit either your life or your business, so don’t put them off any longer and start actually putting them into use so you can make positive changes this year and become even more efficient and productive. Bonus: Have a look at the Have a look at the Exclusive Offers we provide and get discounts on some of the best ecommerce tools in the industry, and sign up to AppSumo’s email list to find out the deals they offer throughout the year on online tools and services. Plan Your Posts No matter what kind of business you’re running it’s likely that you’re using social media to connect with your audience as well as gain exposure. Producing consistent content is one of the most surefire ways of growing an audience, as we discussed in our Content Strategy: The Ultimate Guide to Preparation, Production, Publication and Promotion article, so to boost your own growth create a plan of action this year for what you want your year to look like in terms of how often you’ll be able to post and what you want your content to look like. Depending on the type of social media you’re utilizing to engage with your audience, the number of times you post should be relative to what the users expect and can keep up with. If you’re wanting to grow an audience through Instagram, you’ll likely want to make a goal to post at least once a day, if not twice a day. If you’re engaging with your audience through your blog, posting anywhere from once every two weeks to once or twice a week is an acceptable way to grow an audience. You can use a post scheduling service to help you post consistently, so you don’t always have to remember to do it. Post schedulers are a great way to make sure there’s always content going out on your platforms, but you want to make sure they don’t enable you to become lazy or robotic with your content. When mixed with organic posts that you publish in the moment, they can help you keep a balanced social media presence that provides pre-meditated content as well as organic content. Recommended Scheduling Services: SocialBee: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ Buffer: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest Hootsuite: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter SmarterQueue: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn MeetEdgar: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn However, no matter how often you’re posting you’ll also want to plan out how you want your content to look like over the next year so you keep progressing. How you plan your posts is up to you, the platforms you post on, and your own skills and abilities. If you think more people would engage with you on Instagram if you had better pictures, plan out how to make your photos better. Maybe you need to learn how to arrange props or people in an image better, or you need to learn how to edit images, or maybe a unified filter like the ones you can get from FilterGrade or template package you can get from Creative Market can help you to create a consistent theme. Check out our roundup of these 25 Gorgeous Instagram Templates for Ecommerce Businesses for more ideas. If you’re blogging, plan out topics you want to cover on your blog this year. This list doesn’t have to be super detailed, it just has to have enough information so you know what you want your blog to achieve this year and how you want it to take shape so you’re not scattered and all over the place. Having topics pre-planned will also help you to post consistently because you’ll have ideas ready and waiting for you to write about. We talk more in detail about how to do this in our Content Strategy post, and we also discuss exactly the strategies we use to run this very ecommerce blog. Bonus: Looking to create beautiful social content? Check out Looking to create beautiful social content? Check out Creative Market for images, fonts, and social media packs. Getting your blog content scheduled? Try out AirTable — it’s been one of our best app discoveries of the past couple of years and it has truly changed the way we work & plan, for the better! Also, check out our roundup of 200+ Curated Graphic Design Resources for all the image, icon, and font assets you’ll ever need. Set Your Focus for the Year What is the one thing you want to achieve with your business this year? Ask yourself this question and set your answer as your focus for this year. Understanding what the one big thing is that you’d like to do with your business this year helps give you a direction to work towards and it gives you a sense of what steps to take at the start of the year to help your goals come true. It can be anything! Maybe your focus for your business is just to launch this year. Maybe you want to grow your customer base, your email list, your monthly reader count or your social media followers. Maybe you want to branch out to provide another product or service to your customers. Maybe you want to provide better products or services. Maybe you want to post content more consistently. Whatever it is, set your focus for this year so you know what direction you’re working towards and what steps you need to start taking. Create Your Plan of Action Your plan of action should directly help you achieve the focus you’ve set for your business this year. Setting a focus is great, but lots of little steps have to be achieved first in order to achieve a larger goal, so create a plan of all the little steps you need to achieve first. You don’t have to create a plan of action for the whole year because that can be daunting and it will most likely change. Instead, create a plan of action for this month or this quarter including tasks that you can achieve that will help you on your way to achieving larger tasks. One big achievement is just the sum of a lot of little achievements, so plan out your little achievements and you’ll be more likely to stick to them and succeed. Learn More About a Certain Skill to Help Your Business It never hurts to be more educated or informed, so think of a skill that would help you be a better owner and operator of your business and work towards learning more about that skill this year. Being an entrepreneur requires you to wear lots of different hats to get and keep your business up and running, including but not limited to coding, graphic design, web development, marketing, customer service, copywriting, blog writing, social media management, product design, human resource management, inventory management, etc. There’s a lot to know and learn and it isn’t possible to be an expert at everything, but it is possible to learn more about a certain skill just to help you better yourself and your business overall. Pick a skill you’re either interested to learn more about or choose to learn more about a skill you’re the weakest at. Don’t aim to become an expert at the skill, just invest some time learning a little more about it so you can expand your knowledge and hopefully be able to apply it to your business somehow. Find a book on the topic, watch some Youtube videos or see if you can find an online course about it or any other resource that may be available to you. Some skills we recommend you learn more about and places to find valuable information about them include: Skillshare for continued learning covering many different topics AdEspresso University to learn more about Facebook Ads ClickMinded SEO Training Course to learn more about SEO Google’s Digital Garage for Digital Marketing Hire Someone If you want to 10x your business, hiring someone to outsource some of the work you do as an entrepreneur can be exactly what you need. Hiring someone who knows more about a certain aspect of your business helps you to produce a better outcome more efficiently which means you save time and get a better result. There’s obviously going to be a monetary impact, but if you can hire a freelancer to do contract work, a student who would benefit from the experience or just someone to start out part-time, then you can still get someone who knows what they’re doing for a little bit less of the monetary commitment. Start off by considering the task (or tasks) you’re the weakest at when it comes to operating your business and find a way to outsource it. It can be any task from photography, social media, graphic design, web development, filming, writing, etc. and by minimizing the amount of time you spend struggling through the task you don’t excel at, you give yourself more time to input into other tasks you’re better at. Check out these places to hire freelancers: Use an Email Form Instead of publishing your email in the “Contact” section of your website, consider providing an email form instead for customers to fill out when they have an inquiry. This is useful for two reasons: It Stops Your Email from Getting Scraped by Spambots: With your email address floating around on your website unprotected, you’re more likely to get spammy and junk emails sent to you. An email form prevents this almost entirely. With your email address floating around on your website unprotected, you’re more likely to get spammy and junk emails sent to you. An email form prevents this almost entirely. It Helps You Create a More Organized Workflow: When you have all your business emails coming into one inbox when you use an email form that links with an email management service like HelpScout, you have one place that you can go to check and respond to emails, making it a more organized process. You’ll be much more likely to respond to all emails in a timely fashion and they’ll be much easier to categorize. Accounting Stay on top of your accounting from day one. We repeat: Stay on top of your accounting from day one. Do yourself a favor, and keep up with your accounting. It makes it much less headache-inducing for everyone involved. Granted, the fiscal year does not start in January, so you should already have your proper accounting habits in place, but it’s never too late. If you don’t already have your accounts in order, do it now before you get to the end of the year and everything is a disorganized mess. One major tip we’ve found to be helpful this year is having a designated “accounting@yourdomain.com” email. Use this email when sending receipts to yourself, or anything you need to account for, and set a rule in your inbox to have every email coming in from this address forwarded to an “Accounting” folder. This will help you to stay much more organized, plus it’s automated so once you set it, you don’t have to do anything else. Otherwise, we highly suggest you check out a service such as Bench to help you take care of your bookkeeping online. They help you to manage your accounts throughout the year so it’s less overwhelming when it comes to filing your taxes. When it comes to filing your taxes, we recommend checking out TaxJar for automated sales tax reporting and filing. Narrow Your Focus It’s proving more and more that businesses that focus on doing one thing and doing it well tend to be extremely successful. Consider this concept this year and how it might lend itself to your business. Oftentimes consumers are so bombarded by things they should buy that taking out some, or all, of the choice you offer, is the best thing you can do for your sales. Instead of offering a few color choices, offer one. Instead of offering a bunch of styles, offer a couple. Narrow down the choices to the ones that are the best and your customers may thank you for it. Otherwise, try out the “One Product Strategy” this year: Pick one product to sell, hone in on your niche, and sell it to your customers really well. Don’t try to do everything, just do the best at one thing. Set Your Goals Each year it’s important to set goals so you have a mental map of how you want your year to progress and improve. There are many different facets to life, so setting a goal for each area of your life can help you to maintain balance and progression throughout all areas this year. These are the 7 areas we recommend setting goals for this year: Financial Personal Development Love/Relationships Friends Family Professional Network Health/Fitness Although setting goals is important, what’s more important is acting on them. After you set these goals for each facet of your life, consider what you can do right now to start working on them. It can be anything from ordering books so you can read more in-depth about a specific topic, calling up friends or family members to arrange some quality time, budgeting for this month, choosing a fitness plan to try out, ridding your cupboards of unhealthy snacks, etc. Put your goals into action right away so you can engage with them immediately. Start Planning in Quarters Each year comprises of 12 months, which separates neatly into 4 quarters, each quarter being 3 months. It works out like this: Quarter 1: January – March January – March Quarter 2: April – June April – June Quarter 3: July – September July – September Quarter 4: October – December When you start making plans for the year, whether it be in relation to goals for your personal life or your business, planning in quarters can make the task much less daunting and much more realistic. Things change throughout the year, so it’s a bit ridiculous to know exactly what to expect for months as far away as December, but for the upcoming months like February and March, you have a better understanding of what you can plan and achieve. By planning in quarters you give yourself a much more realistic plan of action to follow and you’ll be more likely to stick to it. Planning in quarters also allows you to make changes or additions as the year progresses. You may be adding new methods or habits in the first quarter that may or may not work out, and as you progress into the second quarter you can make adjustments without completely ruining your yearly plan. Planning in quarters gives you much more flexibility while also giving you a regimented period in which you can try things out. The three month period of each quarter gives you enough time to implement methods and habits without it being too short to notice results and too long to seem overwhelming and daunting. So instead of planning your entire year out, set plans and goals for quarter one right now, and when you get to the end of it then assess your successes and achievements and make more plans and goals for quarter two. You’ll be much less daunted by the sight of what you have to achieve each quarter, and you’ll give yourself a set time to complete each task or goal by. Stay Motivated This is the biggest challenge every year. Making goals is easy, but staying motivated to stick to them is the hard part. When you’re trying to do something new consistently there’s a period of time you’ll have to spend motivating yourself to do it before it becomes a habit. When you were little your parents motivated you to do simple tasks like brushing your teeth, but now it’s a habit so you just do it. The same goes for all new things you try to implement into your daily routine: It’s going to take some time to get used to being consistent with a task, but once you’re consistently doing it, it will become a habit. This goes for anything, whether it be in your personal life or for your business. Use the following tips as motivation to help you when your own motivation starts to wane. Persistent Starting Persistent starting is the ideology that you have to continuously make yourself “start” a task over and over until it becomes something you no longer have to motivate yourself to do. For example, if you’re trying to get into the habit of posting a blog post every week and then you miss a couple weeks due to lack of motivation, start again. Then you post on your blog a few more times weekly and then you lose motivation and miss another few weeks, so then you start again. The point is, we all fall off the wagon and lose motivation, you just have to let that go and start again. You have to persistently continue to start again. And when you lose motivation after that, start again. No More Zero Days This ideology was born through a motivational comment posted to a Reddit thread that went viral and now serves as motivational literature for people of all walks of life. Here’s an unedited paragraph from the whole text, but if you’re interested in reading the entire comment check it out here. “Rule numero uno – There are no more zero days. What’s a zero day? A zero day is when you don’t do a single fucking thing towards whatever dream or goal or want or whatever that you got going on. No more zeros. I’m not saying you gotta bust an essay out everyday, that’s not the point. The point I’m trying to make is that you have to make yourself, promise yourself, that the new SYSTEM you live in is a NON-ZERO system. Didnt’ do anything all fucking day and it’s 11:58 PM? Write one sentence. One pushup. Read one page of that chapter. One. Because one is non zero. You feel me? When you’re in the super vortex of being bummed your pattern of behaviour is keeping the vortex goin, that’s what you’re used to. Turning into productivity ultimate master of the universe doesn’t happen from the vortex. It happens from a massive string of CONSISTENT NON ZEROS. That’s rule number one. Do not forget.” So essentially, just aim to have no “Zero Days” this year. No matter how small your actions may be, doing even a little bit is better than nothing, and over time you’ll likely be more inclined to do more and more. Bonus: For more motivational perspectives, quotes, and videos, check out our roundup of the top For more motivational perspectives, quotes, and videos, check out our roundup of the top Inspirational Quotes & Videos for Entrepreneurs Time-Management Techniques These are small techniques you can use to help motivate you to work on your goals. These techniques stem from the idea that the hardest part of completing a task is just getting started, but these techniques can help you to get started so you’ll hopefully keep going. The first is the Pomodoro Technique. It’s a time management technique that breaks down your work period into different intervals: 25 minutes of work followed by a period of time to rest. During the timed 25 minutes, you’re expected to work until the timer goes off. If you think of something else you need to do or something important comes to mind, write it down and then switch back to your work. Once the timer rings, mark a check mark on a piece of paper and take a short break. Once you’ve done a few Pomodoros and acquired more check marks, take longer breaks. It’s important to track and record your progress as it gives you a sense of accomplishment and you can visually see the amount of time you’ve put into your work. The second technique to use is much less structured and is focused on helping you through the hard part: Getting started. Set a timer for 5 minutes and start working. If when the timer goes off you still don’t want to work then you can stop. It’s simple, but it can be highly effective. Usually, when you’ve immersed yourself in your work for 5 minutes you’ll already be in your groove and you won’t feel like stopping. If you do feel like stopping though, you probably aren’t in the right mental state to complete your task anyway and it’s a good idea to move onto something else. Choose New Skills to Learn You may have already included learning a new skill in your yearly or Q1 goals but it is worth us separating it from the bunch and giving it a point of its own. Being an entrepreneur and being lean go hand in hand with having a wide range of skills so if you want to be successful as an entrepreneur you need to know marketing, finance, graphic design and photography among a hundred other skills. Since this is the case, we highly suggest you join Skillshare classes to help you learn new skills taught by industry experts, including all types of business, creative, and online skills. Bonus: These are the These are the top 40 business related Skillshare classes we recommend taking if you’re interested in boosting your skills this year. Start Something We’ve discussed why it’s so important for everyone to become an entrepreneur in our Start Something post, and we’ve also discussed How to Start an Online Business When You’re Not Ready to Start an Online Business, so we wanted to take the time again to encourage you to start something, anything, and some ways you can do it right now. Start an Email List Start by building an audience you “own”. Email lists are king in ecommerce because it allows you to “own” your audience. You don’t have to hope they’re online or pay for your email to end up in their inbox, people just sign up to receive your emails and they get them. When you build an audience on a social media platform, that platform owns your audience. If that platform ever goes down, you can’t reach out to your audience. Start building an email list so you have an audience of people who are interested in what you do so you can reach out them when you have something to share or sell to them. Use MailChimp or Klaviyo to build an email list Start a Landing Page A landing page gives you a web presence for others to discover that you can adorn with your email sign up or links to your social media pages, blog, YouTube channel or anything else you want to share. Again, creating a landing page helps you to build a presence outside of social media platforms, and when you pair it with an email list you give your audience a place on the web they can go to when they want more updates from you or your links. Use Carrd to build a landing page Check out our Carrd Review to learn more about their features & services Start a Business If you’re the kind of person who reads all the books and blogs about business that you can, you listen to podcasts, you take courses, you have the motivation, the passion, and the drive to start your own business and you can see yourself being a successful entrepreneur, then make this year the year you go for it. Do it. Start a business, become an entrepreneur, put the reading aside and use all the knowledge you’ve just been consuming up until this point to use. Start something, no matter how mediocre it may be, just start somewhere and start something. You can always grow and improve from something you’ve already started, you can’t grow and improve on something if you haven’t even started yet. Use Shopify to build your online business. Check out our Shopify Review to learn more about their features & services. You can always grow and improve from something you’ve already started, you can’t grow and improve on something if you haven’t even started yet. Click To Tweet Conclusion Time is your most precious asset so this year, use your time wisely. Reflect on your past year so you know which direction you want to move towards and plan your year ahead in terms of the goals you would like to achieve and the little steps you’re going to achieve daily to make those larger goals come true. Protect your assets because they help you do what you do. Get organized and delete all the clutter from your life whether it be online or off. Prepare your business for a productive year ahead. Plan your posts, set your focus, create a plan of action and learn a skill that will help better you. Don’t worry, you will lose motivation at some point, but if you start persistently and have mostly non-zero days, you’ll get back on track until you make better habits. But most importantly, just start something. With as little or as much as you have, it’s entirely possible to create something of quality, so just get out there and start. Let’s have a great 2019. |
Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) launched a nationwide Hindu Helpline for helping people travelling in the country. Dr Pravin Togadia, International Secretary General of VHP launched this facility in Ahmedabad on Monday. Talking about the helpline Dr Togadia said, "While travelling or even otherwise, we all wish that there should be someone reliable around to help. Sometimes there may be a sudden natural calamity or a personal health problem or an accident. In such emergencies, Hindu Helpline will play the role of a Reliable Friend of Hindus. All one needs to do is to call 020-66803300 or 075886 82181 & Hindu Helpline (HHL) call centre will hear the caller out, pass on the immediate message to the HHL volunteer at the location where the caller has a problem & the local HHL volunteer will help the caller immediately." He further said, "All over Bharat around 25000 HHL volunteers & around 25000 service providers are expected to be associated with Hindu Helpline for helping Hindus." Ranchhod Bharwad, joint general secretary of VHP Gujarat state unit said, "There will be five types of services provided by the Hindu Help Line. They will help travellers to get assistance for health, transportation in travel, administrative and government, legal, religious and general services. Each district in the country will have two advisors on the board of advisors from each of these fields. Thus, there will be a minimum of 12 prominent people from significant social fields on the board of advisors of the Hindu Helpline." When asked whether the helpline would provide assistance to non-Hindus, Dr Togadia said, "VHP is a Hindu organisation and people rendering their services will also be Hindus. However, the helpline will ask for the assistance needed and not any details of the caller." |
Ballpark Bucket List: How To Fly To All 30 Major League Ballparks for Under $2.4K Summary The shortest tour of all ballparks involves just over 9,000 miles of flying, but would cost nearly $3,000 in airfare The cheapest tour saves more than 20% on airfare while flying 60% more miles Use Hopper’s interactive tool to pick the airport closest to you and start your tour! Details Have you dreamed of visiting every major league ballpark? With baseball season back in full swing, Hopper decided to find the shortest and cheapest circuits of all 30 major league stadiums. We found the closest major airports to each park, and looked at the prices of flights connecting them. We calculated great circle distances, ignoring any intermediate stopovers. Both the shortest and cheapest loops involve flying to 24 airports, but due to the idiosyncrasies of airline pricing, the cheapest loop takes you 60% further while saving about 20% on airfare. Use our interactive tool to pick the airport closest to you and start your tour! Shortest Tour of All 30 MLB parks Figure 1: The shortest flying circuit of all ballparks: 9,004 miles at a cost of about $2,970. The shortest flying route is summarized in the table below, and involves flying to 24 airports to visit all 30 stadiums. Airfare shows good deal one-way price from the previous city to the listed one (e.g. STL-MDW for $208). Distance is the corresponding flight distance in miles (e.g. YYZ-BOS is 445 miles). Airport City Airfare Distance (miles) Stadium MCI Kansas City $96 393 Kauffman Stadium STL St. Louis $202 236 Busch Stadium MDW Chicago $104 251 U.S. Cellular Field, Wrigley Field MKE Milwaukee $162 81 Miller Park DTW Detroit $149 237 Comerica Park YYZ Toronto $148 214 Rogers Centre BOS Boston $140 445 Fenway Park EWR Newark $148 200 Citi Field, Citizens Bank Park, Yankee Stadium BWI Baltimore $120 169 Nationals Park, Oriole Park at Camden Yards PIT Pittsburgh $93 210 PNC Park CLE Cleveland $208 106 Progressive Field CVG Cincinnati $134 221 Great American Ball Park ATL Atlanta $117 374 Turner Field TPA Tampa $100 407 Tropicana Field MIA Miami $91 205 Marlins Park IAH Houston $158 963 Minute Maid Park DAL Dallas $73 217 Globe Life Park in Arlington DEN Denver $187 651 Coors Field PHX Phoenix $68 602 Chase Field SAN San Diego $94 304 Petco Park LAX Los Angeles $116 109 Angel Stadium of Anaheim, Dodger Stadium SFO San Francisco $58 338 ATT Park, O.co Coliseum SEA Seattle $79 679 Safeco Field MSP Minneapolis $120 1,395 Target Field Cheapest Tour of All 30 MLB parks Figure 2: The cheapest circuit, which at $2,367 is more than 20% cheaper, covers 14,154 miles, nearly 60% farther. The cheapest flying route is summarized in the table below, and also involves flying to 24 airports to visit all 30 stadiums. However, the order of flights is different for cheapest route vs. shortest route. Airport City Airfare Distance (miles) Stadium PIT Pittsburgh $192 222 PNC Park BOS Boston $67 494 Fenway Park BWI Baltimore $62 369 Nationals Park, Oriole Park at Camden Yards CLE Cleveland $93 313 Progressive Field EWR Newark $79 403 Citi Field, Citizens Bank Park, Yankee Stadium ATL Atlanta $67 745 Turner Field TPA Tampa $100 406 Tropicana Field MIA Miami $91 204 Marlins Park DTW Detroit $125 1,147 Comerica Park DEN Denver $63 1,119 Coors Field MCI Kansas City $63 531 Kauffman Stadium MKE Milwaukee $81 435 Miller Park MSP Minneapolis $93 296 Target Field MDW Chicago $69 348 U.S. Cellular Field, Wrigley Field STL St. Louis $104 251 Busch Stadium CVG Cincinnati $109 307 Great American Ball Park IAH Houston $146 871 Minute Maid Park DAL Dallas $72 216 Globe Life Park in Arlington PHX Phoenix $145 877 Chase Field LAX Los Angeles $69 369 Angel Stadium of Anaheim, Dodger Stadium SFO San Francisco $58 337 ATT Park, O.co Coliseum SEA Seattle $79 679 Safeco Field SAN San Diego $103 1,051 Petco Park YYZ Toronto $225 2,153 Rogers Centre References 1.http://www.ballparkchasers.com/ Site dedicated to collecting ballparks 2.http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/ranking-baseballs-best-ballparks/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0 Nice table of stadium rankings from yelp 3.http://www.rsvlts.com/2013/10/21/mlb-ballpark-yelp-ranking/ A list with pictures of all the ballparks and update rankings Data and Methodology The data presented in this analysis comes from Hopper’s combined feed of Global Distribution Service (GDS) data sources which includes about 10 million queries and 1 billion trips per day. Demand is represented as the number of queries not actual ticket purchases, and is calibrated across all GDS sources for each market. Lowest fare, or deal fare, is represented by the 10th percentile prices. For example if the 10th percentile price is $800 dollars it means that only 10% of trips are priced at or below this price. |
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