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At thoughtbot we’ve been experimenting with using JSON Schema, a widely-used specification for describing the structure of JSON objects, to improve workflows for documenting and validating JSON API s. Describing our JSON API s using the JSON Schema standard allows us to automatically generate and update our HTTP clients using tools such as heroics for Ruby and Schematic for Go, saving loads of time for client developers who are depending on the API. It also allows us to improve test-driven development of our API. If you’ve worked on a test-driven JSON API written in Ruby before, you’ve probably encountered a request spec that looks like this: describe "Fetching the current user" do context "with valid auth token" do it "returns the current user" do user = create ( :user ) auth_header = { "Auth-Token" => user . auth_token } get v1_current_user_url , {}, auth_header current_user = response_body [ "user" ] expect ( response . status ). to eq 200 expect ( current_user [ "auth_token" ]). to eq user . auth_token expect ( current_user [ "email" ]). to eq user . email expect ( current_user [ "first_name" ]). to eq user . first_name expect ( current_user [ "last_name" ]). to eq user . last_name expect ( current_user [ "id" ]). to eq user . id expect ( current_user [ "phone_number" ]). to eq user . phone_number end end def response_body JSON . parse ( response . body ) end end Following the four-phase test pattern, the test above executes a request to the current user endpoint and makes some assertions about the structure and content of the expected response. While this approach has the benefit of ensuring the response object includes the expected values for the specified properties, it is also verbose and cumbersome to maintain. Wouldn’t it be nice if the test could look more like this? describe "Fetching the current user" do context "with valid auth token" do it "returns the current user" do user = create ( :user ) auth_header = { "Auth-Token" => user . auth_token } get v1_current_user_url , {}, auth_header expect ( response . status ). to eq 200 expect ( response ). to match_response_schema ( "user" ) end end end Well, with a dash of RSpec and a pinch of JSON Schema, it can! An important feature of JSON Schema is instance validation. Given a JSON object, we want to be able to validate that its structure meets our requirements as defined in the schema. As providers of an HTTP JSON API, our most important JSON instances are in the response body of our HTTP requests. RSpec provides a DSL for defining custom spec matchers. The json-schema gem’s raison d'être is to provide Ruby with an interface for validating JSON objects against a JSON schema. Together these tools can be used to create a test-driven process in which changes to the structure of your JSON API drive the implementation of new features. First we’ll add json-schema to our Gemfile: Gemfile group :test do gem "json-schema" end Next, we’ll define a custom RSpec matcher that validates the response object in our request spec against a specified JSON schema: spec/support/api_schema_matcher.rb RSpec :: Matchers . define :match_response_schema do | schema | match do | response | schema_directory = " #{ Dir . pwd } /spec/support/api/schemas" schema_path = " #{ schema_directory } / #{ schema } .json" JSON :: Validator . validate! ( schema_path , response . body , strict: true ) end end We’re making a handful of decisions here: We’re designating spec/support/api/schemas as the directory for our JSON schemas and we’re also implementing a naming convention for our schema files. JSON::Validator#validate! is provided by the json-schema gem. Passing strict: true to the validator ensures that validation will fail when an object contains properties not defined in the schema. Finally, we define the user schema using the JSON Schema specification: spec/support/api/schemas/user.json { "type" : "object" , "required" : [ "user" ], "properties" : { "user" : { "type" : "object" , "required" : [ "auth_token" , "email" , "first_name" , "id" , "last_name" , "phone_number" ], "properties" : { "auth_token" : { "type" : "string" }, "created_at" : { "type" : "string" , "format" : "date-time" }, "email" : { "type" : "string" }, "first_name" : { "type" : "string" }, "id" : { "type" : "integer" }, "last_name" : { "type" : "string" }, "phone_number" : { "type" : "string" }, "updated_at" : { "type" : "string" , "format" : "date-time" } } } } } Let’s say we need to add a new property, neighborhood_id , to the user response object. The back end for our JSON API is a Rails application using ActiveModel::Serializers. We start by adding neighborhood_id to the list of required properties in the user schema: spec/support/api/schemas/user.json { "type" : "object" , "required" : [ "user" ], "properties" : "user" : { "type" : "object" , "required" : [ "auth_token" , "created_at" , "email" , "first_name" , "id" , "last_name" , "neighborhood_id" , "phone_number" , "updated_at" ], "properties" : { "auth_token" : { "type" : "string" }, "created_at" : { "type" : "string" , "format" : "date-time" }, "email" : { "type" : "string" }, "first_name" : { "type" : "string" }, "id" : { "type" : "integer" }, "last_name" : { "type" : "string" }, "neighborhood_id" : { "type" : "integer" }, "phone_number" : { "type" : "string" }, "updated_at" : { "type" : "string" , "format" : "date-time" } } } } } Then we run our request spec to confirm that it fails as expected: Failures: 1 ) Fetching a user with valid auth token returns requested user Failure/Error: expect ( response ) .to match_response_schema ( "user" ) JSON::Schema::ValidationError: The property '#/user' did not contain a required property of 'neighborhood_id' in schema file:///Users/laila/Source/thoughtbot/json-api/spec/support/api/schemas/user.json# Finished in 0.34306 seconds ( files took 3.09 seconds to load ) 1 example, 1 failure Failed examples: rspec ./spec/requests/api/v1/users_spec.rb:6 # Fetching a user with valid auth token returns requested user We make the test pass by adding a neighborhood_id attribute in our serializer: class Api :: V1 :: UserSerializer < ActiveModel :: Serializer attributes ( :auth_token , :created_at , :email , :first_name , :id , :last_name , :neighborhood_id , :phone_number , :updated_at ) end . Finished in 0.34071 seconds ( files took 3.14 seconds to load ) 1 example, 0 failures Top 1 slowest examples ( 0.29838 seconds, 87.6% of total time ) : Fetching a user with valid auth token returns requested user 0.29838 seconds ./spec/requests/api/v1/users_spec.rb:6 Hooray! |
Really, you shouldn’t need a reason to be nice to your waiters. It’s a low-paying job that’s both physically and mentally demanding, and the least you can do is treat them kindly. But if you ever need a little extra motivation, a paper recently published in the journal Human Performance warns of what food-service workers do in retaliation to jerk customers. Here’s what the 438 food service employees admitted to doing when a customer pissed them off, via the press release: Making fun of the customers behind their backs (79 percent) Lying (78 percent) Purposefully making them wait longer for their order (65 percent) Ignoring them (61 percent) Being rude right back to the customer (52 percent) Arguing (43 percent) Flatly refusing a perfectly reasonable customer request (25 percent) Confronting a customer about a crappy tip (19 percent) Insulting the customer to his face (14 percent) Secretly increasing the tip (as in, on a credit-card payment) (11 percent) Doing something gross to the food (6 percent) Threatening the customer (5 percent) So most servers aren’t going to mess with your food, even if you make them mad — but, you know. They could. Stay on the safe side; it’s not that hard to be pleasant and tip well. |
An Australian company has taken Christmas celebrations to a new extreme, setting up a Slip 'n Slide through the middle of the office. Flight Centre's HQ in Brisbane is the scene of the party, where office workers can be seen during Friday's Christmas celebration looking on from cubicles as a colleague slides face-first down a corridor covered in washing detergent. See also: How people celebrate Christmas on the beach The 60-metre side is a yearly tradition to support Flight Centre's foundation charities. A participant wins the competition by sliding the entire length of the corridor. This year, it was won by the Aussie Managing Director, Reddit user Travelator, who posted the photo, according to Nine News. Flight Centre, Australia's largest retail travel company with stores around the world, is known for its fantastic work culture and staff perks. "It's awesome to work for a company that doesnt take itself too seriously," a Flight Centre worker, who declined to be identified, told Mashable. "Flight Centre staff work extremely hard but know how to let their hair down. We are well known for our love of a good party all over the world, and the annual Christmas Slip n Slide is just one example of this." The company also hosts an epic annual event known as a Global Gathering, where 2000 top achievers are sent to an international destination. Previous events have taken place in Cancun, Macau, Las Vegas and Paris. |
In case you’re not up to date on the latest women’s lacrosse news, University of Southern California annihilated New Hampshire on Monday, 15-4, and the No. 4 Trojans are now riding a three-game win streak. Freshman midfielder Kerrigan Miller was one of three USC players to walk away with a hat trick, and her first goal — also the first of the game — was out-of-this-world impressive. Stepping below the goal line to the right side of New Hampshire’s crease, senior attacker Kylie Drexel fed the ball in front of the goalie to Miller as she cut from the top of the arc. This could have been a boring shot on the Wildcats’ net, but Miller got creative. Just before she hit the top right side of the crease, she turned for a shot over her right shoulder without even looking at the goalie — who, in all fairness, Miller probably successfully confused. It’s definitely one of those goals you have to watch a couple times to appreciate the brilliance in it. |
For a story that broke over Fourth of July weekend, the controversy over an allegedly anti-Semitic image tweeted by Donald Trump attracted quite a lot of attention. In case you weren’t plugged in over the holiday weekend, here’s what you missed. The original Trump tweet, its deletion, and the revised tweet At 9:37 am on Saturday, July 2, Trump tweeted an image to his roughly 9.5 million followers. It jabbed his presidential opponent, Hillary Clinton, amid criticism for a 30-minute meeting sought by her husband, former President Bill Clinton, with Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who heads the Justice Department, which is investigating Hillary Clinton’s use of State Department email on a personal server. Observers across the ideological spectrum criticized Bill Clinton’s decision to seek a meeting, saying it could be perceived as an effort to pressure Lynch on the email case. Trump’s tweet featured a picture of Hillary Clinton set against a background of U.S. currency, with the headline, "History Made." A band across the bottom read, "Fox News Poll." The element that quickly caught the eye of some was the inclusion of a red, six-pointed star with the legend, "Most corrupt candidate ever!" Soon after Trump tweeted the image, some social media users began question whether the use of a six-pointed star to slam Clinton -- particularly when combined with piles of money -- amounted to the use of anti-Semitic imagery and age-old stereotypes. Such concerns had arisen in response to previous Trump tweets. For instance, Trump twice retweeted from the feed of the Twitter account @WhiteGenocideTM, which claims to be located in "Jewmerica" and regularly posts anti-Semitic material, and once from the now-defunct account @cheesedbrit, which had an account page that featured Swastika art and said in part, "we Should have listened to the Austrian chap with the little moustache" -- that is, Adolf Hitler. And Trump also attracted criticism when he initially said he didn’t know who former KKK leader David Duke was. At 11:19 am, less than two hours after the original tweet, the Trump account sent out a new image -- one that was identical except that the words "Most corrupt candidate ever!" were placed in a red circle rather than a star. The original tweet was deleted some time during that roughly two-hour period. Details emerge about sourcing, and the Trump campaign’s initial responses As criticism over the initial tweet mounted on July 2 and 3, the Trump campaign had no official response. But more details emerged about where the image had come from. On July 3, mic.com, an online publication geared towards millennials, published an article that tracked the image to its source. According to mic.com: "The image was previously featured on 8chan's /pol/ — an Internet message board for the alt-right, a digital movement of neo-Nazis, anti-Semites and white supremacists newly emboldened by the success of Trump's rhetoric — as early as June 22, over a week before Trump's team tweeted it. Though the thread where the meme was featured no longer exists, you can find it by searching the URL in Archive.is, a "time capsule of the internet" that saves unalterable text and graphic of web pages. Doing so allows you to see the thread on /pol/ as it originally existed." It later emerged that a Twitter user, @FishBoneHead1, had used the original image as early as June 15. That account, now defunct, "regularly tweeted out anti-Clinton and right-leaning messages and images," according to the Associated Press, including several cited by mic.com that most people would consider racist or anti-Semitic. Here’s a screen capture of the June 15 tweet. These revelations prompted a new round of criticism on social media. Eventually, at 9:42 am on July 4, Trump tweeted, "Dishonest media is trying their absolute best to depict a star in a tweet as the Star of David rather than a Sheriff's Star, or plain star!" His campaign also released a statement at 5:35 pm on July 4 that said in part, "These false attacks by Hillary Clinton trying to link the Star of David with a basic star, often used by sheriffs who deal with criminals and criminal behavior, showing an inscription that says ‘Crooked Hillary is the most corrupt candidate ever’ with anti-Semitism is ridiculous. Clinton, through her surrogates, is just trying to divert attention from the dishonest behavior of herself and her husband." He also posted the statement on Facebook. By July 4, the Clinton campaign had also gotten directly involved. The campaign’s Jewish outreach director, Sarah Bard, issued a statement criticizing the tweet that read in part, "Donald Trump’s use of a blatantly anti-Semitic image from racist websites to promote his campaign would be disturbing enough, but the fact that it’s a part of a pattern should give voters major cause for concern," Bard wrote in part. "Now, not only won't he apologize for it, he's peddling lies and blaming others. Trump should be condemning hate, not offering more campaign behavior and rhetoric that engages extremists." And the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, a leading group that opposes anti-Semitism and other types of prejudice, added its voice to the criticism of Trump’s handling of the issue. "Donald Trump should stop playing the blame game and accept that his campaign tweeted an image with obvious anti-Semitic overtones and that, reportedly, was lifted from a white supremacist website," Jonathan A. Greenblatt, the group’s CEO said in a statement released on the evening of July 4. "It's long past time for Trump to unequivocally reject the hate-filled extremists orbiting around his campaign and take a stand against anti-Semitism, bigotry and hate." The back and forth continues On the evening of July 4, Daniel Scavino Jr., the Trump campaign’s social media director, further addressed the issue. "The social media graphic used this weekend was not created by the campaign nor was it sourced from an anti-Semitic site," Scavino posted to Trump’s Facebook page. "It was lifted from an anti-Hillary Twitter user where countless images appear. The sheriff’s badge -- which is available under Microsoft’s ‘shapes’ -- fit with the theme of corrupt Hillary and that is why I selected it. As the Social Media Director for the campaign, I would never offend anyone and therefore chose to remove the image." The next day Scavino added in a tweet, "For the MSM (mainstream media) to suggest that I am antisemite is AWFUL. I proudly celebrate holidays w/ my wife's amazing Jewish family for the past 16 years." However, criticism continued, even from Trump’s fellow Republicans. On July 5, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., told Milwaukee radio station WTMJ, "Anti-semitic images — they’ve got no place in (a) presidential campaign. Candidates should know that." Our conclusion Based on the evidence available, it seems unlikely that the Trump campaign intended to put out a Star of David image. In fact, the campaign moved to replace the star with a circle when the image gained attention. Having said that, this seems to be yet another a case of Trump using social media to broadcast material that comes from sources with a history of spreading racism, anti-Semitism or white supremacy. It is unusual to see a presidential campaign operate with such a lack of message discipline. |
In going back through our articles about Dominique Pamplemousse in order to inform this article about the sequel (THERE IS A SEQUEL TO DOMINIQUE PAMPLEMOUSSE [Itch.io page] – flagging it up in case I end up burying the lede), I found Alec had coined the term “Claymation Noir” for the game and thought that was pretty much perfect. Good work, Alec of the past!As per the listing for Dominique Pamplemousse & Dominique Pamplemousse in “Combinatorial Explosion!” over there on Itch: “In this sequel to 2013’s breakout musical hit, Dominique Pamplemousse in ‘It’s All Over Once The Fat Lady Sings!’, our favourite genderqueer private detective discovers that, through the power of multiple endings from the previous game, they have been cloned! Join the two Dominiques as they traverse surreal locations and interrogate increasingly bizarre characters in order to answer a very important question: which one of them is canon? “There is also plenty of singing. And feelings. And, of course, singing about feelings.” It occurs to me that I never played the original despite being interested in it at the time and hearing positive things (I find claymation really disconcerting) so I might settle down with it over the weekend and see where I get. If you wanted to pick up the games as a pair there’s actually a sale on where the dev, Squinky, is offering both for a minimum of $4 (it’s a 60% reduction and the games work out at $2 each – the wording got a bit confusing as I read through the post on that front). It’s a pay-what-you-want deal over and above that $4 minimum with the proceeds going to help towards the cost of surgery. You can read more about that in Squinky’s own words here. Alternatively you can pick up the sequel as a standalone for a minimum of $2 here. |
Darsh Patel, the 22-year-old Rutgers student who was mauled to death by a black bear in New Jersey in September, was taking photos of the bear with his cell phone just before the attack, according to NJ Advance Media. A public records request submitted by the local news organization returned five photographs taken with the young man's cell phone from no farther away than 100 feet. The phone, which was recovered with Patel's body, was also damaged by the bear. In October, hikers in the Lake Tahoe area were warned about taking selfies with bears at Taylor Creek, an area where the bruins gather in the fall to feed on spawning trout. Black bears are generally considered less likely to attack humans than the larger grizzly bears, which are making a comeback in the northern Rockies. |
Sirin Labs is developing an open-source smartphone that will on a fee-less blockchain. Sirin is actively crowdfunding, should the company make $70+ million it will produce an all-in-one blockchain PC with a 2K display and biometric sensors to complement its smartphone. According to sources, Sirin`s smartphone will be the only smartphone in the world that's fully secure and safe enough to hold cryptographic coins. The upcoming device, known as the Finney (after bitcoin pioneer Hal Finney), is said to run on a secure, open-source operating system called Shield OS - Android. This would utilize advanced blockchain & cryptocurrency trading algorithms for secure transactions, as well as current blockchain apps, such as a crypto wallet, secure exchange access & encrypted communications. According to Sirin, all its devices (Smartphones, all-in-one PC`s, tablets) will operate without centralized backbones or mining centers, Sirin devices will form an independent blockchain network powered by IOTA, which is a revolutionary new distributed ledger which is scalable and enables companies to explore new business-2-business models by making every technological resource a potential service to be traded on an open market in real time! Sirin smartphone users will inherit a default currency - SRN tokens (only SRN token holders will be able to purchase the device). Here is the kicker - the value of the SRN tokens is dependent largely on the number of people investing. Sirin Labs says that “a strong economy requires the SRN to have growing demand within the SRN network and proportional growth in supply,” in its “Sustainable Economy” summary from its White Paper. This would be driven by “device sales”, the value of SRN tokens will be wholly dependent on sales, for a product ahead of its time, are we confident that the small “crypto community” will embrace another niche product, a product that will be priced at £740 which equates to approx. a third of a bitcoin… I would invest that money in bitcoin or alternate cryptocurrency! For £740, what do you get? Aside from the advanced blockchain & cryptocurrency trading algorithms, the phone comes with a 256GB internal memory and 16MP camera. You also get a behavioral-based intrusion prevention system, physical security switch and blockchain-based tamper-proof feature. This phone is impossible to hack (remember the Titanic – impossible to sink, right?), Sirin`s smartphone has a large internal memory, well thought out features and a top of the line smartphone... …however, would you trust a mobile device with your crypto wealth? I am not convinced. |
13/10/2016 - KTOS sunhwapark Oct 13th, 2016 ( edited ) 6,717 Never 6,717Never Not a member of Pastebin yet? Sign Up , it unlocks many cool features! rawdownloadcloneembedreportprint text 11.53 KB 13/10/2016 - KTOS Live Maintenance The following errors have been fixed. [Skill Related Fixes] Doppelsoeldner - Cyclone: Movement - The cooldown not applying correctly with this attribute has been fixed. - Double Pay Earn - Fixed issue where this buff wasn't applying when party members attacked. Templar - Mortal Slash - Fixed issue that occured when casting this skill and moving forward at the same time. Cryomancer - Subzero Shield: Duration - The cooldown not applying correctly with this attribute has been fixed. Thaumaturge - Reversi - Fixed issue where Reversi was enabling Spell Shield Skills (Subzero) to be sustained. Chronomancer - Reincarnate - Fixed issue with multiple boss reincarnation issues. (Note:) Boss Monsters can only be re-incarnated once, and this skill has a chance to fail. Necromancer - Raise Dead - Fixed issue where the Raise Skull Archer: Enhance Attribute was not applying. Quarrell Shooter - Running Shot - Fixed issue when weapon swapping with a Canon weapon would allow you to run around freely shooting stuff with the Bazooka Skill. Ranger - Barrage - Fixed animation issues that applied when using this skill with a crossbow. - Steady Aim - Fixed issue where the skill effect was actually different than what was specified in the tool-tip. Scout - Camouflage - Fixed issue where the Barrell would sometimes appear and float around the characters head when using this skill. Schwarzer Reiter - Limacon - Fixed issue with skill duration description at Lv.14 and some other issues regarding the skill. Sadhu - Out of Body - Fixed issue where damage wasn't being counted to Boss Rank Contribution when dealing any damage in the Out of Body state. Paladin - Conversion - Fixed issue where the 'Might Enhance' attribute was not being applied to converted monsters. [Quest Related Fixes] A Deeper Place (1) - Fixed issue where quest NPCS were incorrectly marked on the map. Endless Gluttony (1) - Fixed issue where the target monsters did not appear in the location of the quest. And, Eternal Repose (1, 2) - Fixed issue where the players quest items were not properly collected. Material for Compiling A Scripture (2) - Fixed issue where the players quest items were not properly collected. Little by Little, a History Book - Fixed issue with this quest where it would not be repeatable after completion. De-Contruction [Cannoneer Advancement] - Fixed issue where it was not required to destroy named objects. Make It Doubly Sure [Lancer Advancement] - Fixed isue where the monster spawned was a different level to the actual quest level. [Item Related Fixes] Goddesses' Blessed Cube - Fixed issue where this item could be used during crafting processes. Thumbs up Armband - Fixed item clipping issues with Cleric's Servant (F) Costume. Armbands - Fixed issue when some players wearing armbands would have their client abnormally shut-down when attempting to connecting Golden Anvil - Fixed issue with confirmation of use window Monster Cards - Fixed issues with Golem, Glass Mole, Chapparition, Progola, Manticen Cards overlapping card effects. Electus - Fixed issue where the item was not granting the bonus lightning property damage. Hair Accessories - Fixed issue with some hair accessories staying invisible even when toggled on with the 'Toggle On/Off' option. [Graphic & UI Related Fixes] Improved background elements in Fedimian Fixed the issue where if 10 buffs were currently active, only 8 of them would be displayed. Fixed the issue with the Quest Share Button & Its respective UI not updating correctly when this option has been selected. Fixed issue where the back of [Natural Wave] hairstyle would break when performing certain gestures. Fixed issue with visual clipping on the [Storage Keeper Costume]'s scarf and pants. Fixed issue when using a 2-Handed Spear/Rapier on a Velheider/Hoglan would cause the mounted companion to not animate correctly. Fixed visual errors with the [Wilhelmina Costume] that occured when the user casted Bash/Concentrate. Fixed visual animation issues that occured when the user was affected by the [Finestra] buff and then casted [Skyliner]. Fixed issue with knock-backs on companions sometimes causing the face to become broken. Fixed issue with Dual Color Boater not displaying properly at certain angles. Fixed issue when Female characters wearing [Ribbon-ornamented Double Buns] would get hit, their hair would fall off. Fixed issue with Magnum Opus' UI chat bubbles often covering the markets of other UI elements. Fixed issue when changing hair color facing the 10 o' clock direction with the Natural Wave Perm, the hair would break. Fixed issue where checking the 'display shouts' option would reset if there were no recent shouts. Fixed the 'Help - Remove' information for Necronomicon & Poison Pot UI. Fixed issue when hit by Golem attack sometimes caused a characters face to become broken. Fixed issue when attempting to re-roll a cube and the item would sometimes not pay a reward again. Fixed Graphical Issues affecting Monks using [Double Punch] [General Fixes] Fixed issue where you could cure the 'bleeding' debuff by simply right-clicking it. Fixed issue with the scrolling bar and some overlapping buttons in the character lodge. Fixed issue when selecting a character in the lodge, they continue to mindlessly walk forwards. Fixed issue where certain item names were affecting the ability to retrieve said items from the marketplace. Fixed issue where players could walk through various terrtain of stone obstacles in Fasika Plateau. When being transported whilst on a companion, sometimes the companion would make un-natural movements. Fixed issues with players freezing when riding a companion in [Zeraha]. Fixed the issue where everyones eyes were demonically flashing simultaneously whilst in lodge. Fixed issue with BGM when playing in a Party. Fixed issue where players could become stuck between a statue and building in Sventmas Exile. Existing Block Rate Calculations have been corrected. The game has been updated with the following changes. [New Additions] Instanced Dungeons / Missions: - A new section of [Earth Tower - Solmiki] has been added. It is available to users who are Lv. 310 and above. - The [Earth Tower - Lolopanther] Section wil be improved. - Through the use of Symbol items (Symbol of Pyroego, Gosarius, Turtai), players can start at floors 6/11/16 instead. - These Symbol items drop from the respective bosses on each of the floors you fight them on. - Loading Images for Earth Tower will be added. - Multi-Mode functionality has been added to instance dungeons. - Instance Dungeon EXP Scaling & the ability to increase Item Droprate. (Through using Multi-Mode a Multi-Mode Token will be deducted in accordance with your amount of entries) - An [Instance Dungeon Multi-Token] Item to use this feature. [[Instance Dungeon Multi-Token] drops from these areas] - Kalejimas Visiting Room - Storage - Solitary Cells - Workshop - Investigation Room - Emmet Forest - Pystis Forest - Syla Forest - Alembique Cave - Arcus Forest - Phamer Forest - Ghibulinas Forest - Mollogheo Forest - Locations where the [Instance Dungeon Multi-Token] can be utilized. - Fallen Legwyn Family Dungeon - Archmage Tower Dungeon - Underground Chapel Dungeon - Catacombs Underground Dungeon - Siaulai Mission - Historic Site Ruins - Hollow Thorn Forest - Crystal Mine Mission - Seven Valley Mission - Catacombs Mission - Collapsed Residential Quarters - Deep Underground Prison Dungeon - Monument of Desire Dungeon - Thorn Forest Mission - Blue Fortress Dungeon - Castle Dungeon - With Premade Party Members you can sign up and join auto-matched Dungeons/Missions together. UI - Dungeon Information Board's UI have been improved. - Now displays the featured Bosses and Obtainable Items from each designated dungeon. - Instance Dungeon/Mission Specific Background Images have been added. - Automatic Party Matching UI has been simplified. - Players can now continue to search for parties whilst playing the game, however changing map will cancel your search for a party. New Shops - A Recycling Shop has been added, this shop allows users to exchange hair accessories obtained from the [Goddesses' Blessed Cube] and gives [Recycling Medals] in return. Further information regarding this can be found on the latest GOS Magazine Guild - Guild masters can now grant permissions to other guild members, granting them the power to invite/expel members. Quest - New Quests have been added to the maps [Norbeer Forest] and [Yudejan Forest]. [Changes] - The guild level & max member cap have been increased. - Guild Level Cap: Lv.15 → Lv.20 - Max players Cap: Lv.10 → Lv.15 - In Saalus Convent, A new mission has been added & The Area of Ruins Mission has been removed. - "Block Rate" on items has been changed to be called "Final Block Rate" - The drop rate for quest items in [Lunatic Wizard (4)] has been increased. - The chance for magic circles to explode in [Cleaning the Strange Aura (1)] has been reduced. [Monsters] In Earth Tower, Instanced Dungeon and General Rank 8 Maps, Some monster properties have been weakened. Some monsters have also been given special abilities in maps around Rank 8. [Items] Some optional effects obtained from Enchant Scrolls have been improved. Red, Blue & Yellow Gems have been improved. Armor efficiency has been improved, The higher the rank - the higher the efficiency of the armor. [New TP Items] Swordsman's Snow-White Costume (M/F) - 129 TP Wizards' Gothic Lolita Costume (M/F) - 129 TP Archer's Liutenant General Costume (M) - 129 TP Archer's Sailor Costume (F) - 129 TP Monk Circle 3 Costume (M/F) - 129 TP Brown Lens - 49 TP Orange Hair Dye - 49 TP Goddesses' Blessed Cube (11x) - 300 TP Skill balance has been improved with the following changes. [General] Some attributes of some skills have been changed to Soul & Poison properties. The following skills properties have been changed as a result. (TN: The new property table can be found @ https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GmXV0k4TNzjMouiIfz0TESNBzu92-b4AdDGqNwtm8yg/edit#gid=322269149 ) [Soul] == Psychokino - Psychic Pressure, Gravity Pole [Soul] == Alchemist - Alchemistic Missile [Soul] == Sadhu - Astral Body Explosion, Possession, Basic Attack from OOB. [Poison] == Featherfoot - BloodBath, Blood Sucking, Bone Pointing, Ngadhundi, Kundela Slash, Blood Curse [Class Specific Changes] Cleric ► Guardian Saint: ○ The chance for this ability to trigger has been changed from 50% to 100%. ○ A new attribute [Guardian Saint: Change Target] has been added. ○ The [Guardian Saint: Decreased Damage] attribute now has a level cap of 10. (Previously 5) Sadhu ► Out of Body ○ Out of Body has been changed so that the spirit comes out infront of the caster. ► Posession ○ The positioning of this skill has been moved a little bit closer to the caster. ○ Possession's Target count will be changed from 5 to → (Skill Level + 4) ► Transmit Prana ○ New attributes have been added. ○ Transmit Prana: Strength, Transmit Prana: Health, Transmit Prana: Spirit, Transmit Prana: Dexterity. Paladin ► Smite ○ The wind-up animation delay for initiating this skill has been reduced. ► Barrier ○ [Barrier: Ranged Defense] attribute has been added. RAW Paste Data 13/10/2016 - KTOS Live Maintenance The following errors have been fixed. [Skill Related Fixes] Doppelsoeldner - Cyclone: Movement - The cooldown not applying correctly with this attribute has been fixed. - Double Pay Earn - Fixed issue where this buff wasn't applying when party members attacked. Templar - Mortal Slash - Fixed issue that occured when casting this skill and moving forward at the same time. Cryomancer - Subzero Shield: Duration - The cooldown not applying correctly with this attribute has been fixed. Thaumaturge - Reversi - Fixed issue where Reversi was enabling Spell Shield Skills (Subzero) to be sustained. Chronomancer - Reincarnate - Fixed issue with multiple boss reincarnation issues. (Note:) Boss Monsters can only be re-incarnated once, and this skill has a chance to fail. Necromancer - Raise Dead - Fixed issue where the Raise Skull Archer: Enhance Attribute was not applying. Quarrell Shooter - Running Shot - Fixed issue when weapon swapping with a Canon weapon would allow you to run around freely shooting stuff with the Bazooka Skill. Ranger - Barrage - Fixed animation issues that applied when using this skill with a crossbow. - Steady Aim - Fixed issue where the skill effect was actually different than what was specified in the tool-tip. Scout - Camouflage - Fixed issue where the Barrell would sometimes appear and float around the characters head when using this skill. Schwarzer Reiter - Limacon - Fixed issue with skill duration description at Lv.14 and some other issues regarding the skill. Sadhu - Out of Body - Fixed issue where damage wasn't being counted to Boss Rank Contribution when dealing any damage in the Out of Body state. Paladin - Conversion - Fixed issue where the 'Might Enhance' attribute was not being applied to converted monsters. [Quest Related Fixes] A Deeper Place (1) - Fixed issue where quest NPCS were incorrectly marked on the map. Endless Gluttony (1) - Fixed issue where the target monsters did not appear in the location of the quest. And, Eternal Repose (1, 2) - Fixed issue where the players quest items were not properly collected. Material for Compiling A Scripture (2) - Fixed issue where the players quest items were not properly collected. Little by Little, a History Book - Fixed issue with this quest where it would not be repeatable after completion. De-Contruction [Cannoneer Advancement] - Fixed issue where it was not required to destroy named objects. Make It Doubly Sure [Lancer Advancement] - Fixed isue where the monster spawned was a different level to the actual quest level. [Item Related Fixes] Goddesses' Blessed Cube - Fixed issue where this item could be used during crafting processes. Thumbs up Armband - Fixed item clipping issues with Cleric's Servant (F) Costume. Armbands - Fixed issue when some players wearing armbands would have their client abnormally shut-down when attempting to connecting Golden Anvil - Fixed issue with confirmation of use window Monster Cards - Fixed issues with Golem, Glass Mole, Chapparition, Progola, Manticen Cards overlapping card effects. Electus - Fixed issue where the item was not granting the bonus lightning property damage. Hair Accessories - Fixed issue with some hair accessories staying invisible even when toggled on with the 'Toggle On/Off' option. [Graphic & UI Related Fixes] Improved background elements in Fedimian Fixed the issue where if 10 buffs were currently active, only 8 of them would be displayed. Fixed the issue with the Quest Share Button & Its respective UI not updating correctly when this option has been selected. Fixed issue where the back of [Natural Wave] hairstyle would break when performing certain gestures. Fixed issue with visual clipping on the [Storage Keeper Costume]'s scarf and pants. Fixed issue when using a 2-Handed Spear/Rapier on a Velheider/Hoglan would cause the mounted companion to not animate correctly. Fixed visual errors with the [Wilhelmina Costume] that occured when the user casted Bash/Concentrate. Fixed visual animation issues that occured when the user was affected by the [Finestra] buff and then casted [Skyliner]. Fixed issue with knock-backs on companions sometimes causing the face to become broken. Fixed issue with Dual Color Boater not displaying properly at certain angles. Fixed issue when Female characters wearing [Ribbon-ornamented Double Buns] would get hit, their hair would fall off. Fixed issue with Magnum Opus' UI chat bubbles often covering the markets of other UI elements. Fixed issue when changing hair color facing the 10 o' clock direction with the Natural Wave Perm, the hair would break. Fixed issue where checking the 'display shouts' option would reset if there were no recent shouts. Fixed the 'Help - Remove' information for Necronomicon & Poison Pot UI. Fixed issue when hit by Golem attack sometimes caused a characters face to become broken. Fixed issue when attempting to re-roll a cube and the item would sometimes not pay a reward again. Fixed Graphical Issues affecting Monks using [Double Punch] [General Fixes] Fixed issue where you could cure the 'bleeding' debuff by simply right-clicking it. Fixed issue with the scrolling bar and some overlapping buttons in the character lodge. Fixed issue when selecting a character in the lodge, they continue to mindlessly walk forwards. Fixed issue where certain item names were affecting the ability to retrieve said items from the marketplace. Fixed issue where players could walk through various terrtain of stone obstacles in Fasika Plateau. When being transported whilst on a companion, sometimes the companion would make un-natural movements. Fixed issues with players freezing when riding a companion in [Zeraha]. Fixed the issue where everyones eyes were demonically flashing simultaneously whilst in lodge. Fixed issue with BGM when playing in a Party. Fixed issue where players could become stuck between a statue and building in Sventmas Exile. Existing Block Rate Calculations have been corrected. The game has been updated with the following changes. [New Additions] Instanced Dungeons / Missions: - A new section of [Earth Tower - Solmiki] has been added. It is available to users who are Lv. 310 and above. - The [Earth Tower - Lolopanther] Section wil be improved. - Through the use of Symbol items (Symbol of Pyroego, Gosarius, Turtai), players can start at floors 6/11/16 instead. - These Symbol items drop from the respective bosses on each of the floors you fight them on. - Loading Images for Earth Tower will be added. - Multi-Mode functionality has been added to instance dungeons. - Instance Dungeon EXP Scaling & the ability to increase Item Droprate. (Through using Multi-Mode a Multi-Mode Token will be deducted in accordance with your amount of entries) - An [Instance Dungeon Multi-Token] Item to use this feature. [[Instance Dungeon Multi-Token] drops from these areas] - Kalejimas Visiting Room - Storage - Solitary Cells - Workshop - Investigation Room - Emmet Forest - Pystis Forest - Syla Forest - Alembique Cave - Arcus Forest - Phamer Forest - Ghibulinas Forest - Mollogheo Forest - Locations where the [Instance Dungeon Multi-Token] can be utilized. - Fallen Legwyn Family Dungeon - Archmage Tower Dungeon - Underground Chapel Dungeon - Catacombs Underground Dungeon - Siaulai Mission - Historic Site Ruins - Hollow Thorn Forest - Crystal Mine Mission - Seven Valley Mission - Catacombs Mission - Collapsed Residential Quarters - Deep Underground Prison Dungeon - Monument of Desire Dungeon - Thorn Forest Mission - Blue Fortress Dungeon - Castle Dungeon - With Premade Party Members you can sign up and join auto-matched Dungeons/Missions together. UI - Dungeon Information Board's UI have been improved. - Now displays the featured Bosses and Obtainable Items from each designated dungeon. - Instance Dungeon/Mission Specific Background Images have been added. - Automatic Party Matching UI has been simplified. - Players can now continue to search for parties whilst playing the game, however changing map will cancel your search for a party. New Shops - A Recycling Shop has been added, this shop allows users to exchange hair accessories obtained from the [Goddesses' Blessed Cube] and gives [Recycling Medals] in return. Further information regarding this can be found on the latest GOS Magazine Guild - Guild masters can now grant permissions to other guild members, granting them the power to invite/expel members. Quest - New Quests have been added to the maps [Norbeer Forest] and [Yudejan Forest]. [Changes] - The guild level & max member cap have been increased. - Guild Level Cap: Lv.15 → Lv.20 - Max players Cap: Lv.10 → Lv.15 - In Saalus Convent, A new mission has been added & The Area of Ruins Mission has been removed. - "Block Rate" on items has been changed to be called "Final Block Rate" - The drop rate for quest items in [Lunatic Wizard (4)] has been increased. - The chance for magic circles to explode in [Cleaning the Strange Aura (1)] has been reduced. [Monsters] In Earth Tower, Instanced Dungeon and General Rank 8 Maps, Some monster properties have been weakened. Some monsters have also been given special abilities in maps around Rank 8. [Items] Some optional effects obtained from Enchant Scrolls have been improved. Red, Blue & Yellow Gems have been improved. Armor efficiency has been improved, The higher the rank - the higher the efficiency of the armor. [New TP Items] Swordsman's Snow-White Costume (M/F) - 129 TP Wizards' Gothic Lolita Costume (M/F) - 129 TP Archer's Liutenant General Costume (M) - 129 TP Archer's Sailor Costume (F) - 129 TP Monk Circle 3 Costume (M/F) - 129 TP Brown Lens - 49 TP Orange Hair Dye - 49 TP Goddesses' Blessed Cube (11x) - 300 TP Skill balance has been improved with the following changes. [General] Some attributes of some skills have been changed to Soul & Poison properties. The following skills properties have been changed as a result. (TN: The new property table can be found @ https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GmXV0k4TNzjMouiIfz0TESNBzu92-b4AdDGqNwtm8yg/edit#gid=322269149 ) [Soul] == Psychokino - Psychic Pressure, Gravity Pole [Soul] == Alchemist - Alchemistic Missile [Soul] == Sadhu - Astral Body Explosion, Possession, Basic Attack from OOB. [Poison] == Featherfoot - BloodBath, Blood Sucking, Bone Pointing, Ngadhundi, Kundela Slash, Blood Curse [Class Specific Changes] Cleric ► Guardian Saint: ○ The chance for this ability to trigger has been changed from 50% to 100%. ○ A new attribute [Guardian Saint: Change Target] has been added. ○ The [Guardian Saint: Decreased Damage] attribute now has a level cap of 10. (Previously 5) Sadhu ► Out of Body ○ Out of Body has been changed so that the spirit comes out infront of the caster. ► Posession ○ The positioning of this skill has been moved a little bit closer to the caster. ○ Possession's Target count will be changed from 5 to → (Skill Level + 4) ► Transmit Prana ○ New attributes have been added. ○ Transmit Prana: Strength, Transmit Prana: Health, Transmit Prana: Spirit, Transmit Prana: Dexterity. Paladin ► Smite ○ The wind-up animation delay for initiating this skill has been reduced. ► Barrier ○ [Barrier: Ranged Defense] attribute has been added. |
Image caption The trial of Estibaliz Carranza attracted a huge media interest in Austria A court in Vienna has sentenced to life in prison a woman for murdering her ex-husband and her lover and hiding the bodies in her ice cream shop. Estibaliz Carranza, who has joint Spanish-Mexican citizenship, will now be put in a secure mental institution. The 34-year-old shot dead her ex-husband in 2008, and killed her lover while he slept two years later. She cut up the bodies with a chainsaw and buried them in concrete in the shop's basement in Austria's capital. Personality disorder Delivering the verdict on Thursday, chief prosecutor Petra Freh described the murders as "horrific". She said Carranza was a "highly dangerous woman ready to do anything". In her final statement, Carranza said: "I can't say anything other than that I am sorry." The remains of her ex-husband Holger Holz and lover Manfred Hinterberger were found during routine maintenance works in the shop last year. Carranza then fled the country to neighbouring Italy in a taxi, but was captured and extradited several days later. During the trial, Carranza pleaded guilty to all the charges. The defence argued that she had been tyrannised by the two men and this should be taken into account. A court psychiatrist determined that Carranza suffered from a personality disorder as well as serious mental abnormalities. The trial attracted a huge media interest in Austria, with the accused being dubbed in the press "the Ice Killer". |
Veterans Ombudsman Guy Parent is calling for improvements to the compensation provided to Veterans and their survivors who fall under the New Veterans Charter. He released on Tuesday a report entitled: “Fair Compensation to Veterans and their Survivors for Pain and Suffering.” “While no amount of money can provide full restitution, veterans who have suffered from an illness or injury due to their service need to be fairly compensated for the impact their disability has on their lives and on the lives of their families,” Parent said in a statement. “In addition, changes need to be made to the New Veterans Charter so that single Canadian Armed Forces members without dependents can designate a family member to apply for and receive the Death Benefit.” The report analyzes the New Veterans Charter as it applies to compensation for non-economic loss provided by Veterans Affairs Canada to disabled Canadian Armed Forces members and veterans and their survivors, Parent’s office noted. More details from the Veterans Ombudsman’s news release: It compares what veterans and their survivors receive to compensate for non-economic loss with what other Canadians may receive under other federal, provincial and/or territorial programs and the courts, and it also looks at what veterans in other countries may receive. The findings in the report indicate that the $360,000 Disability Award is fair compared to how other Canadians are compensated for the non-economic effects of impairment or injury. However, the Ombudsman is calling for compensation for Veterans and their survivors under the New Veterans Charter to recognize the non-economic effects of exceptional incapacity. “I sincerely hope that the three recommendations in this report will lead to fair recognition of the sacrifices made by Veterans. Our Veterans and their families deserve no less,” Mr. Parent concluded. This report builds upon a previous commitment made by the Veterans Ombudsman to improve compensation for non-economic loss to Veterans who need it. “My work to ensure that Veterans and their families receive the services and benefits that they are entitled to continues. This report highlights what needs to be done to compensate Veterans and their survivors for the pain and suffering they experience as a result of their service to our country” said Mr. Parent, “but there is still more to do to ensure that our Veterans are adequately supported economically, and I intend to pursue these priorities in the months and years to come.” Veterans Affairs Minister Kent Hehr has released this statement in response to the Ombudsman’s report: “Our government values feedback from the Office of the Veterans Ombudsman and I would like to thank the Ombudsman and his staff for their dedicated service and work. I am pleased that several recommendations made in the report Fair Compensation to Canada’s Veterans For Pain have already been addressed by the historic changes we delivered in Budget 2016. Improvements to the Disability Award and increased access to the Permanent Impairment Allowance are just some of the benefits that we improved that are aligned with the Ombudsman’s recommendations. Other recommendations may take more time, consultation with stakeholders, and coordination with departments across government to address. I am committed to working collaboratively with the Office of the Veterans Ombudsman as we move forward to implement our mandate commitments and deliver good public policy that will improve the lives of Canada’s Veterans.” |
Despite being the best pound-for-pound boxer on the planet, Floyd Mayweather seems to have a hard time keeping his name out of the mixed martial arts landscape. Whether it’s a war of words with women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey or getting called out by any number of fighters who promise they could trounce the boxer inside the Octagon, Mayweather is one of the most talked about figures in MMA even if he has no interest in the sport whatsoever. While mixed martial artists might all have some kind of grudge against Mayweather, he isn’t returning the favor, especially when it comes time to respond to the comments about all the different fighters who say they would beat him. Article continues below ... According to the multi-weight class champion, answering every challenge is just beneath him, but Mayweather promises he doesn’t hold any ill will toward anyone fighting in MMA. "I’m in the $100 million business, not the $100,000 business," Mayweather said about MMA. "I shouldn’t even be stooping to certain levels, because it doesn’t make any sense. People that’s in MMA, I wish them nothing but the best. I don’t have anything negative to say about them. The hand I was dealt in life, I was dealt a royal flush and I just have to be thankful and appreciative of the hand I was dealt. "I don’t have anything negative to say about anyone. I wish every one of them nothing but the best." Mayweather’s history with the sport goes back much further than his recent brush against Rousey when she took a jab at the boxer during her post-fight speech following a win for ‘Fighter of the Year’ in 2014. According to Mayweather, he actually worked with UFC president Dana White long before he was the president of the biggest mixed martial arts promotion in the world. "I can remember, I think you can go back to the beginning, to day one of my career, my first fight — my uncle Jeff Mayweather and I, that’s when Dana White used to work for us, he used to be with us. When nobody else knew who Dana White was, before when he was a little square white guy, before he cut all his hair off and became a tough guy in the MMA," Mayweather said. "He used to run around with me and nobody would wear his patch and I said I would do it for free, showed him love and I’m proud of him. I’m proud of how far he has come." No matter how many compliments Mayweather bestows upon MMA, there’s one inescapable question that always seems to come up when he starts talking about the sport, and it’s probably the most laughable one of all. Would Mayweather actually fight Rousey if the opportunity arose? "You’re a comedian," Mayweather said with a sly smile. Thankfully, he finds that question just as absurd as anyone should when it comes to matching the two combat sports superstars together in an actual fight. |
by Gavin Tomson It’s 11AM on the 4th day of Spring Break. He’s reading Steppenwolf at a minimal loft cafe that sells tote bags and leather notebooks and beard lube. He’s drinking a $4 Americano and debating whether he should step outside to roll a cigarette. Earlier today, when he arrived at the café, which by the way is called “Brooklyn,” he thought to himself, One ought only to smoke on weekends. Yet Spring Break is currently revealing-itself-to-him-as-weekend, so he goes outside to smoke. As he observes, flâneuristically, the soft light play upon the Portuguese Church steeples across him, he feels he’s on the verge of a profound realization, a Joycean epiphany, something that will blow his mind. Google, is he manic-depressive? Sometimes he feels so much, it’s almost unbearable. There’s no way most people feel as much as he does. He’s unique. He might be a genius. He’s certainly heterosexual. He’s probably going to grad school. He is the Alternative-Bro. Dumpster diving though his rent is paid for him, arranging gatherings between radicals less privileged than he, calling everything “dialectical,” listening to chillwave, perpetually nodding, feeling “depressed”: this is what the Alt-Bro lives for. This is what intoxicates him “in a particularly Dionysian way.” The Alt-Bro is now thinking, as he observes an elderly woman enter the Portuguese church, Religion has done a lot of terrible things, obviously, but it has done a lot of good things, also, and this is something most people don’t understand. The Alt-Bro wishes most people thought about things as much as he does. He’s neither elitist nor classist, but he doesn’t trust people who don’t “fundamentally feel ideas.” He says things like, “But then you start to think in iambic pentameter and it’s fucked.” The Alt-Bro takes himself seriously. The Alt-Bro has a gift for looking like he’s thinking. His desktop background is of Swedish architecture. The Alt-Bro is in “an open relationship” with a girl who doesn’t call it an “open relationship.” He claims to be attracted to “both men and women,” though he finds “something special” about women. He doesn’t know what it is. It is a mystery. The Alt-Bro is “passed” binary thinking. He’s interested in Buddhism, though only intellectually. He’s “really getting into non-duality these days.” The Alt-Bro is always really getting into something. He cares about ideas so much! The Alt-Bro has witnessed too many of his intellectual peers succumb to caring about lesser things such as gender and postcolonialism. The group of self-identified queers who run his university’s left-wing newspaper and volunteer at community kitchens and publish their undergraduate essays in graduate journals are “pretty chill,” the Alt-Bro guesses, but “what they fail to realize is that some things transcend politics.” The Alt-Bro never fails to realize. The Alt-Bro is always “transcending” something. The Alt-Bro uses “Dude” as punctuation. “Dude” can mean “!” or “.” or even “:” The Alt-Bro tells sad stories about his childhood to girls in their bedrooms. Yeah, well, in one sense, he does consider himself a feminist, but “it’s just so much more complex than that.” The Alt-Bro believes he’s a good person. The Alt-Bro pretends he has self-hating thoughts. At house parties, the Alt-Bro asks girls if they’ve read The Doors of Perception. He tells them they should read Hunter S. Thompson and “get into gonzo journalism,” though he himself doesn’t plan to write journalism because it’s “too commercially contingent” and besides, he’d rather work on his novel. His novel is tentatively entitled, Towards Death. In his bedroom, the Alt-Bro keeps a bottle of whiskey next to his case of vinyl records and Kim Jong Il’s On the Art of the Cinema. The Alt-Bro jerks off to X-Art on YouPorn. Afterward he logs onto Facebook without washing his hands. The Alt-Bro doesn’t have “much faith” in Judith Butler. The Alt-Bro is going to get a PhD. Probably he’ll get a PhD in philosophy but he “doesn’t really know German” (or French) and he’s open to other options “if and only if” he doesn’t have to “fall from the realm of ideas.” The Alt-Bro thinks things like, Imagine how much more beautiful the world would be if you believed God created it. The Alt-Bro is deeper than you. The Alt-Bro lives in a loft space with three other Alt-Bros. Together they arrange “good people gatherings” and ingest psychedelics and play drone music and make ephemeral screen-prints of vaguely Japanese foliage. At the beginning of these gatherings, the Alt-Bro says to the other attendees, also Alt-Bros, “What matters most is not the art we plan to make today, but that we all came together, to be in this space.” The Alt-Bro loves talking about space and he loves nodding. The Alt-Bros all nod together because they’re such good dudes. The Alt-Bro’s inner world is full of conflict. He keeps death in mind in order to live authentically. The Alt-Bro says things like, “I’m in love with solitude.” He says, “I love to to take long walks in the forest, as Nietzsche did.” The Alt-Bro manages to be at once earnest and oblivious to what other people think of him. The Alt-Bro romanticizes mental illness. He feels “pretty insane sometimes.” The Alt-Bro thinks all his friends will become intellectuals. He lives his life like he’s the protagonist of an un-ironic Künstlerroman. “Is it impossible for a guy and a girl to have a relationship that’s not romantic?” he asks women his age or younger. The Alt-Bro finds something cruel about humor, yet he hasn’t uncovered what precisely it is. The Alt-Bro listens to Ethiopian jazz. The Alt-Bro wants to astral-project. The Alt-Bro who reads this will think he’s an exception. At a party, the Alt-Bro speaks to a queer anarchist with a lisp about beekeeping. The Alt-Bro says, “Don’t affect that lisp. It’s offensive to people who have lisps.” For lunch, the Alt-Bro eats cheese and baguettes because Europe is better. The Alt-Bro endorses collective politics so long as he gets to lead. The Alt-Bro bikes everywhere without a helmet and keeps his bike chain looped to his belt and never signals. “I know I look like I’m completely out of control when I’m biking,” he tells people, “but I’m actually completely in control.” The Alt-Bro doesn’t shit talk. The Alt-Bro “discusses what people are like.” The Alt-Bro will finish his undergrad and pursue an MA at the university where he did his undergrad. He’ll barely pass his classes because he’ll be too busy writing a “philosophical column” in the undergraduate left-wing newspaper which will be run by a fresh batch of precocious self-identified queers who replaced the old ones because the old ones have moved on. The Alt-Bro will develop a general sense of malaise with the world as he’s experiencing it. He’ll claim to have an existential crisis. He’ll cut his hair and record an EP called Guilt. The Alt-Bro will actually start to feel guilty. His guilt will impel him to have another realization: I should stop intellectualizing things so much and just act. The Alt-Bro will apply to speak at panels on gender and colonialism. He won’t get accepted to speak at any of them. The Alt-Bro will tell people he’s moving to Berlin but will instead move to Brooklyn because in Brooklyn people speak English. He’ll “live as a writer” for two weeks. Then he’ll return to his loft space because he doesn’t have a job and he hasn’t written anything and everyone in Brooklyn looks like him, just more hip. The Alt-Bro will receive his graded MA thesis in the mail and check his eyesight. He’ll realize yet another thing: I don’t have the grades to apply to PhDs. The Alt-Bro will call his parents and tell them he wants to apply to another MA program. They’ll say, “But you already have an MA,” and the Alt-Bro will argue with them and hang up. That afternoon, the Alt-Bro will meet a young woman for coffee. They are “really good friends, but it’s platonic.” He’ll complain about his problems. The young woman will finally say, ending their friendship, “You need to grow up.” The Alt-Bro will begin to feel real depression. He’ll get scared because though he’s talked so much about being depressed, he’s never actually been depressed. The next four weeks the Alt-Bro will spend unemployed, nodding at drone shows. At one of these shows he’ll meet a 2nd-year Art History student outside having a smoke. The Alt-Bro will ask her for a cigarette and then talk about himself and his problems. The 2nd-year Art History student will mistake his self-indulgence for vulnerability. Later that night, after the venue closes, they’ll eat bagels together at a 24-Hour diner. By then the Alt-Bro will feel too fatigued to talk, so he’ll just keep nodding. The Alt-Bro loves to nod. The Art History student will mistake his constant nodding for listening. The next afternoon she’ll ask him via text message if he wants to hang out and he’ll say, “Yeah.” The 2nd-year Art History student and the Alt-Bro will hang out a few times in his big loft bedroom. He’ll talk about how scared he feels. The 2nd-year Art History student will try to comfort him by “putting things in perspective.” Soon this pattern will feel repetitive, so she’ll ask, “Why don’t we go outside and do something?” The Alt-Bro will tell her he’s too depressed to do something. She’ll say, “I understand that, but sometimes it really does help to get out of the house.” Later that week, the two of them will bike to a public park and drink wine and smoke the Alt-Bro’s rolled cigarettes. The wine will remind the Alt-Bro of art, so he’ll start asking the Art History student about her interests and childhood. She’ll tell him a lot, and she’ll start to feel vulnerable. The next day the Alt-Bro will hardly respond to her texts. When he does, he’ll space his responses in such a way that must be deliberate. The 2nd-year Art History student will come over to his loft space and find him in his bedroom. She’ll ask, voice warbling, “What do you want from this?” The Alt- Bro will turn to the wall and mumble something incoherent. The 2nd-year Art History student will ask, “What?” He’ll say, “I’m sorry, I don’t know. I’m just confused about everything.” Feeling hurt and manipulated, the 2nd-year Art History student will leave the Alt-Bro’s loft space and ignore his apologetic texts. The Alt-Bro will go on to study architecture. Gavin Tomson is the recent winner of The Dalhousie Review’s inaugural short story contest and his writing is forthcoming in Maisonneuve and Joyland. He lives in Toronto, where he works as a publicity agent for The Puritan and writes for its bloggy appendage, the Town Crier. Illustration by Vincent Tao. |
Have you ever wondered where our agricultural crops come from? And what were they like thousands of years ago, or hundreds of years ago? Our food crops today are in fact very different from the original wild plants from which they were derived. About 10,000 years BC, people harvested their food from the natural biological diversity that surrounded them, and eventually domesticated crops and animals. During the process of domestication, people began to select better plant materials for propagation and animals for breeding, initially unwittingly, but ultimately with the intention of developing improved food crops and livestock. Over thousands of years farmers selected for desirable traits in crops, and thus improved the plants for agricultural purposes. Desirable traits included crop varieties (also known as cultivars, from "cultivated varieties") with shortened growing seasons, increased resistance to diseases and pests, larger seeds and fruits, nutritional content, shelf life, and better adaptation to diverse ecological conditions under which crops were grown. Over the centuries, agricultural technology developed a broad spectrum of options for food, feed, and fiber production. In many ways, technology reduces the amount of time we dedicate to basic activities like food production, and makes our lives easier and more enjoyable. Everyone is familiar with how transportation has changed over time to be more efficient and safer (Figure 1). Agriculture has also undergone tremendous changes, many of which have made food and fiber production more efficient and safer (Figure 1). For example in 1870, the total population of the USA was 38,558,371 and 53% of this population was involved in farming; in 2000, the total population was 275,000,000 and only 1.8% of the population was involved in farming. There are negative aspects to having so few members of society involved in agriculture, but this serves to illustrate how technological developments have reduced the need for basic farm labor. Figure 1: A timeline showing how human transportation systems have evolved. A timeline showing how human transportation systems have evolved, from primitive, slow, and inefficient vehicles, to modern, faster, and more efficient options. Corresponding advances in agricultural biotechnology are shown below, similarly illustrating how advances changed our ability to develop new agricultural crops. © 2012 Courtesy of Ania M. Wieczorek and Mark G. Wright. All rights reserved. This article concentrates on how scientific discoveries and technological developments have allowed us to improve crop development in agriculture. Most people do not realize that among early agriculture developments, really at the genesis of agricultural technology, the ancient Egyptians made wine and made rising dough for bread, using fermentation. A significant event in the development of agriculture occurred in 1492 with the introduction of corn, native to the Americas, to the rest of the world, and European growers adapted the plant to their unique growing conditions. At this stage of history, crops were being transported around the world and grown under a diversity of conditions.Agriculturalists started conducting selective breeding of crops before having a thorough understanding of the basis of genetics. Gregor Mendel's discoveries explaining how traits pass from parents to offspring shed new light on the matter. Mendel's work showed thatseparate during the formation of, and unite randomly during; he also showed that genes are transmitted independently of one another to offspring. This understanding of the way that plants and animals acquire traits form parents created the potential for people to selectively breed crops and livestock. Gregor Mendel's discovery revolutionized agriculture by launching the development of selective cross breeding with a comprehensive understanding of the underlying mechanisms of inheritance. |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Some Republican foreign policy veterans who came out against Donald Trump during the presidential campaign said on Wednesday they were sticking to their guns following his election victory, but a few others signaled that objections to serving in his new administration were softening. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump gestures as he speaks at election night rally in Manhattan, New York, U.S., November 9, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Segar Trump’s stunning upset over Democrat Hillary Clinton has created a new dilemma for the Republican national security establishment, much of which had publicly distanced itself from their own party’s candidate, declaring him unfit to lead. They must now decide whether to return to the fold. Some career diplomats, intelligence officials and military officers are also facing a choice of whether to quit their posts because of concern that a Trump presidency would violate their principles, or else stay and try to influence policy from the inside. However, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said, “I wouldn’t expect a mass exodus.” About 150 of the Republican party’s most prominent national security specialists signed open letters in March and August in outright opposition to Trump’s candidacy. One said he was “utterly” unqualified for the White House. The other warned that he would be “the most reckless president in American history.” While neither letter said the former officials would never work for Trump, their scathing critique was clearly intended to discourage fellow Republicans from supporting him. Trump responded at the time by deriding them as members of “the failed Washington elite” who “deserve the blame for making the world such a dangerous place.” A number of the signatories contacted by Reuters on Wednesday made clear that they were unswayed from their negative view of Trump and would not work for him. However, they stopped short of urging others to also shun the next administration, which is widely seen as having limited foreign policy expertise at a time when the next president will face the challenges of Syria’s civil war, the fight against Islamic State, a newly assertive Russia and the rise of China. “I don’t expect to be asked. I wouldn’t serve. But there are others who will. It will be a matter of individual conscience,” said Eliot Cohen, who served as counselor to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and helped spearhead the March letter, which was posted on a blog called War on the Rocks and created a stir among Republicans. “I’m concerned about his ignorance, the belligerence, the misunderstanding of how the world works,” Cohen said of Trump, a wealthy real estate developer and former reality TV host who rode to victory on a wave of voter anger toward Washington insiders. Max Boot, a foreign policy adviser to Republican Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign and a supporter of the U.S.-led Iraq invasion in 2003, said: “I won’t have anything to do with Trump, but I don’t know about others. I hope good people go into the government.” WAITING AND WATCHING But others appeared to waver, with some saying decisions on whether to join the Trump administration could depend on how the president-elect behaves during the transition and who he appoints to senior posts. Among the Trump allies said to be in consideration are former House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich and one-time United Nations ambassador John Bolton for secretary of state, and General Michael Flynn, a former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, for national security adviser. Dov Zakheim, a former Pentagon undersecretary who signed one of the dissent letters, said Trump would have to reach out beyond his circle of supporters to find enough qualified people to fill many important jobs. “He will want to show that he is not dividing the Republican party, so he will extend an olive branch to those in the party who opposed him,” Zakheim said. Asked whether he expected to be offered a post, he said: “I have no idea, as it’s not up to me.” Bryan McGrath, a retired US Navy officer and co-organizer of the War on the Rocks letter, said he did not expect that those who signed it “were signing away employment rights, that they weren’t going to work in a Trump administration.” If the president asks for your service, he said, “you have to take that request seriously.” Patrick Cronin, an Asia expert and former third-ranking official at USAID under President George W. Bush, said that despite his earlier opposition to Trump, he eventually briefed his transition team and would continue to provide advice. But he said he was not interested in joining the administration. Michael McFaul, President Barack Obama’s former ambassador to Moscow and a Clinton supporter in the election, said the Republicans had a “deep bench of experience” for enlisting foreign policy experts. Even as Trump prepares to form his foreign policy team, some career diplomats, intelligence officials and military officers are facing a post-election quandary. Some said privately before Tuesday’s vote they would consider retiring or quitting rather than working under Trump, who alarmed them during the campaign by questioning U.S.-led alliances, praising Russian President Vladimir Putin, suggesting that Japan and South Korea should be allowed to have nuclear weapons and threatening to order the resumption of interrogation methods condemned as torture. Other officials suggested they would wait to see how he acts once in office and who he names to senior posts, saying the responsibility for government service transcended any one president. “If he keeps some of his campaign promises, about the use of torture, for example, many of us have discussed whether we are honor-bound to resign or to stay and try to have some influence from the inside. It’s too early to say,” one CIA officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity. |
What would our solar system's rocky bodies look like if seen at a distance of dozens of light years? "It takes one to know one," as the old truism goes. When it comes to unraveling the mysteries of far-off exoplanets, the same holds true — one more reason why astronomers want to thoroughly understand the local planets right here in our Solar System. A new scientific paper moves the ball forward in this regard by simulating how several rocky Solar System bodies would look if glimpsed at the light-years distance of alien worlds. Across such great spans, exoplanets are just dim specks. But what little light does get to us could, the study suggests, imply intriguing details about their surface features, provided we know what to look for. Previous studies of Earth have demonstrated that oceans, continents and ice caps bounce back strikingly different amounts of light into space. Models demonstrate that even from considerable distances, an observer would be able to pick out the different types of surface materials of water, land and ice. [Our Solar System: A Photo Tour of the Planets] The new study extends this concept to solid worlds unlike Earth, such as Mars and the Galilean moons, to broaden our basis for comparison. "We eventually want to investigate the surface environments of Earth-like exoplanets, and for this purpose the observable signatures of Earth have been widely studied," said lead author Yuka Fujii, a postdoctoral research scientist at the Tokyo Institute of Technology's Earth-Life Science Institute. "To interpret the data of unknown planets obtained in the future, we also need to know the possible variety of observable features of other, non-Earth-like planets." The study, titled "Geology and Photometric Variation of Solar System Bodies with Minor Atmospheres: Implications for Solid Exoplanets," has been accepted for publication in the journal Astrobiology. he Hubble Space Telescope's view of the star Fomalhaut and a directly imaged object encircling it, Fomalhaut b, thought to be an exoplanet. (Image: © NASA, ESA, P. Kalas, J. Graham, E. Chiang, E. Kite (University of California, Berkeley), M. Clampin (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center), M. Fitzgerald (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory), and K. Stapelfeldt and J. Krist (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory) Staring right at you Although astronomers have discovered nearly 2,000 exoplanets to date, we know very little about any of them. For the vast majority, we merely possess either a mass or a size measurement. Exoplanets are simply too remote and faint for our current suite of instruments to glean tangible, worldly properties like color, surface features and cloud cover. Our most detailed exoplanetary information so far has it that a handful of these worlds harbor gases, such as water vapor and carbon dioxide, in their atmospheres. That knowledge comes from signatures imprinted by those gases onto light that has passed through the atmosphere. The measurement, though, is indirect. The light assumed to pertain to the exoplanet is separated out from the overwhelming glare of its star. Fujii's study goes a step further in considering worlds that we will "directly image." The distinction: The light from a directly imaged world is just from the world itself, not inferred from within a star's comparatively blinding glare. This happens to be how we study planets in the Solar System: We look right at them rather than teasing their presence out from a blaze of light. Less than two dozen exoplanets have been directly imaged to date. The potential advantage of this technique is to be able to distinguish features on small, rocky exoplanets, the best places we think for life to arise. Today's top-notch telescopes, like the Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes, will not be up to this task, however. Instead, we must wait for next-generation telescopes and specialized instruments that can collect the planetary light more efficiently than today's instruments, separately from the host star. Several of these instruments in the works may utilize the James Webb Space Telescope, slated for launch in 2018, and the "thirty meter" class of telescopes on the ground. Oceans absorb more light than continents and ice caps and thus look darker. (Image: © NASA/NOAA) From here to there To lay a foundation for this future work, Fujii's study rendered Solar System worlds as far-off, dim exo-worlds. Fujii and colleagues collected existing data, as well as some fresh observations of Mercury, the Moon, Mars and the four Galilean moons of Jupiter (Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto). Because these bodies are all relatively close, detailed maps have been made of their surfaces, consisting of thousands of pixels. Exoplanets, however, owing to their distance, can occupy only a single pixel — a so-called point source. To render Solar System bodies as point sources, Fujii averaged the total color, or brightness, of their numerous pixels down to a single pixel. (Ice, for instance, reflects more light than land, so it has a brighter color.) As a world rotates, the brightness of this single pixel varies over time if the world's surface is not all the same. For example, when Earth rotates such that the vast Pacific Ocean faces toward an observer, the planet's overall brightness changes compared to when, say, the giant landmass of Asia swings into view. "Due to the spin rotation, we see different slices of the surface at different times," said Fujii. "So if the brightness varies as the planet rotates, it indicates non-uniform surface material." [10 Planets That Could Host Alien Life] The pockmarked, colorful surface of Io. (Image: © NASA) Telltale light changes The various worlds considered in the study did demonstrate average color variations over time that could be explicitly tied to factors affecting their surface compositions. For a waterless body like the Moon, regions with potentially large contrasts to elsewhere on the lunar surface are "maria," the dark lava fields that form the pareidolic "Man in the Moon" patterns. And sure enough, the Moon stood out as a Solar System object with discernibly dissimilar light-reflecting regions. Mercury, though it has a fairly uniformly gray color, has smooth plains covering 40 percent of its otherwise heavily cratered surface. The effect on its light reflectance patterns was similar in some ways, but not as dramatic as that of the two-tone Moon. Io, meanwhile, jumped out thanks to its raging volcanoes, which have slathered the surface in yellows and reds, famously looking like pizza. The brightnesses of the other three Galilean moons, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, fluctuated because of patches of darker material deposited on lighter, water ice. Ganymede's light patterns also hinted at its rumpled surface, with grooves and ridges owing to past internal heating events. Mars, interestingly, had a lot of light variability at longer wavelengths, because fine-grained particles on the Red Planet's surface scatter these forms of light. The iron oxides, or rust, that covers a significant portion of Mars, however, are efficient at absorbing shorter wavelength light. So the notable presences and absences of certain wavelength of light told a convincing tale of what large expanses of the Mars' surface are like. Overall, over the course of a single rotation of a planet or moon, these geological characteristics caused changes in brightness ranging from five percent to a quote noticeable 50 percent. "Other Solar System bodies are also distinct, exhibiting various interesting surface features, some of which affect their characteristic surface colors, highlighting the amazing diversity that awaits future reconnaissance, and thus the need for continued study," said Fujii. [Photos: The Search for Water on Mars] A super-Venus, illustrated on the left, would have a very different-looking surface brightness-wise from a super-Earth, drawn at right, with varying surface features, such as oceans and continents. (Image: © NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ames) Getting the basics down The results point to how we might, with direct imaging, begin to pick out exoplanets with distinct, yet familiar geologic histories and perhaps even habitable conditions. One major aspect that the study sidesteps is the lack of atmospheres in the chosen worlds. Intervening gases, and especially clouds, can make surface characterization difficult or impossible using direct imaging. For example, the thick, cloudy atmospheres of Venus or Saturn's moon, Titan, completely hide their faces. But in the case of Earth, although clouded here and there, the primary surface entities of continents, oceans and ice caps, can clearly be identified even at tremendous distance, the evidence suggests. Although indirect atmospheric characterization of habitable exo-worlds will surely precede direct surface imaging, both of these techniques will need to be brought to bear to figure out if, and what sort of, alien life has developed. "We think this kind of survey is useful," said Fujii, "because in terms of astrobiology, we will be interested in the details of the planetary surfaces after we know the atmospheric profiles." Along with setting aside atmospheres for now, another caveat of Fujii's study is that the first solid, potentially life-friendly exo-worlds we will likely directly image will be significantly heftier than Earth. These "super-Earths" are on the order of up to twice Earth's width and several times its mass. Per their bigness, super-Earths will be easier to find and examine. "We wish we had super-Earth counterparts in the Solar System, because then we would definitely study their properties first," said Fujii. Even so, building upon Fujii's results, astronomers should be well-placed to get a bead on super-Earth surfaces — at least compared to familiar Solar System objects. "Now that we have a handful of planets and satellites in the Solar System whose properties we know in some detail," said Fujii, "we want to make the most of that knowledge, which we consider as necessary target practice." This story was provided by Astrobiology Magazine, a web-based publication sponsored by the NASA astrobiology program. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. |
"The United States does not torture." --President George W. Bush We are dealing with Star Wars. It involves the combination of chemtrails for creating an atmosphere that will support electromagnetic waves, ground-based, electromagnetic field oscillators called gyrotrons, and ionospheric heaters. Particulates make directed energy weapons work better. It has to do with "steady state" and particle density for plasma beam propagation. They spray barium powders and let it photo-ionize from the ultraviolet light of the sun. Then, they make an aluminum-plasma generated by "zapping" the metal cations that are in the spray with either electromagnetics from HAARP, the gyrotron system on the ground [Ground Wave Emergency Network], or space-based lasers. The barium makes the aluminum-plasma more particulate dense. This means they can make a denser plasma than they normally could from just ionizing the atmosphere or the air. More density [more particles] means that these particles which are colliding into each other will become more charged because there are more of them present to collide. What are they ultimately trying to do up there -- is create charged-particle, plasma beam weapons. Chemtrails are the medium - GWEN pulse radars, the various HAARPs, and space-based lasers are the method, or more simply: Chemtrails are the medium -- directed energy is the method. Spray and Zap. This system appears to be in Russia, Canada, the United States, and all of Europe. Exotic weapons can be mobile, stationary, land-based, aerial, or satellite. It is an offensive and defensive system against EM attacks and missiles. It uses ionospheric particle shells as defense mechanisms [like a bug-zapper shell]* against missiles and EM attacks. That means they spray and then pump up the spray with electromagnetics. When these shells are created using the oscillating, electromagnetic, gyrotron stations, it "excludes" and displaces the background magnetic field. These shells can be layered one above another in a canopy fashion for extra protection from missiles. The chemtrail sprays have various elements in them like carbon which can used to absorb microwaves. Some of these sprays have metal flakes in them that make aerial craft invisible to radar. Spoofer sprays. Sprays like these can be used to create colorful, magnetized plasmas to cloak fighter jets. There are satellite weapons involved. Activists are using meters and are getting readings of microwaves, x-rays, and some other kind of emission that they are not sure of, maybe a low-intensity laser. They are also photographing gas plasma generation due to the heating of chemtrails by electromagnetics. The technical names for vertical and horizontal plasma columns are columnar focal lenses and horizontal drift plasma antennas. Various size of gas plasma orbs are associated with this technology. These orbs can be used as transmitters and receivers because they have great, refractory and optical properties. They also are capable of transmitting digital or analog sound. Barium, in fact, is very refractive -- more refractive than glass. What does that mean? Someone or someones are very involved in unconstitutional, domestic spying and the entrained plasma orbs carried on electromagnetic beams can be used for mind control programming. The satellites can be programmed to track and monitor various frequencies on different parts of your body. These electromagnetic beams carrying the gas plasma orbs stick due magnetic polarity and frequency mapping and tracking to people's eyes, ears, temples, and private parts. A beam with entrained orbs carries pictures in each orb just like the different frames in a movie. It is a particle beam that is also a frequency weapon. The satellites download holographic mind control movies, pictures, sounds, and sensations to people through this technology. The Air Force has stated in "Air Force 2025" that their goal is to develop virtual and augmented reality mind control. Depending on the how the computer is programmed or depending on the mood or intent of the person interfacing with the technology, you can be probed, bothered, gaslighted, frightened, manipulated, electronically raped, or tortured. It scans your brain frequencies and deciphers your thoughts. The satellites track you by mapping your bioenergetic signature [body biometrics] and constantly scanning an area to find you. We are the lab rats for this technology and something is very wrong in the military or intelligence branches somewhere. Because developmental projects in government and military are often so compartmentalized, I suppose someone could be using and developing this technology secretly and without authorization. Then again, behavioral and mind control programs were an authorized policy under MKULTRA. Our country has a history of experimenting on its citizens. We are talking about satellite charged-particle frequency weapons attacking a person 24 hours a day. Psychotronic weapons are considered weapons of mass destruction by the U.N. "HAARPs" can create earthquakes and can also x-ray the earth to find underground military bases, gold, or oil reserves. These ionospheric heaters can also operate as an over-the-horizon or under-the-ocean communications system. This system can control the weather or create disasters. Taken together with the aurora keyhole through-your-roof satellite surveillance system, Echelon electronic computer/phone sweeps, plasma-cloaked DOD Drug War helicopters and stealths, implants, and cameras on the street, it constitutes one, big global and space control grid. These weapons involve beams. Two beams overlapped will couple into a particle-ion beam that will bounce off of a remote target and send a holographic image back to the satellite for remote spying operations. When you cross two strong beams, you can supposedly* create scalar energies. These energies can be used as untraceable weapons for nuclear size explosions or for defense. These crossed-energies can be used to cause a person's physical electrical system to fail or with a lower frequency, administer a kind of remote electro-shock. Visualize touching a positive and negative electric cable to each other on top of your head. Scalar energies can be utilized in hand-held military guns and on tanks. They can dud-out electronics or cause large, electrical blackouts. Scalar energies are practically impossible to shield against. You need lead, ceramics, and a deep underground facility to not be affected by these weapons. Or, you need to be up and above the field of battle. People who are working on these issues hear tones and hums. If you hear persistent tones and static; have body vibrations, burning sensations, "bangs" to the head, neurological damage, or immune system damage; are hearing electronic voices or hearing the sound of a plasma; suffering from pains deep in your organs or constant headaches; or experiencing other anomalous activity then you may be being targeted by directed energy, mind control weapons. These weapons could be on helicopters, jets, stealth fighters, or on satellites. Directed energy beams and electromagnetic waves can be sent to you via hand-held devices or piggy-backed in on cell phone and satellite towers. Is it possible that someone(s) are very afraid of coming famines and riots due to the ongoing, man-induced failure of the ecological system, and they are saturating the earth with chemtrails for large- scale, gas plasma mind control? Is this the last grasp for the world's resources? Or, are they just control freaks and money mongers? Someone would like to get to that oil under the melting [due to chemtrail-trapped EM heat] Artic. And, I guess the Third World is not a part of this system. I don't think that the developed nations are going to let them in on this either. Any country that joins this NATO system will become mind-controlled and diseased due to the associated, intense, oscillating, electromagnetic fields, electromagnetic soup, and the poisonous, toxic chemtrails. Our DNA will break. We risk the earth's spin and tilt becoming messed up due to mucking around with the magnetic fields through this military technology. Maybe, it is already messed up. It constitutes U.S. global domination via NATO and the erosion of civil rights. According to Charlotte Iserbyt and Al Martin, there are ex-KGB and ex-STASI advising our new Office of Total Information Awareness. They are the ones creating our new internal passports [national ID]. And under "The Treaty on Open Skies," we have overflights by Russian and German military. Who exactly is flying those plasma-cloaked craft that are seen all over this country and mistaken for UFOs by people who do not know about this aerial deception technology? Obviously, we have another "Project Paperclip" in the making. We can add the new thugs to the 2,000 Iraqi brought into country by Daddy Bush who are now living in Nebraska. The elitist corporate government is going to hold the rest of us hostage with directed energy weapons in space, if the Policy for a New American Century group - PNAC - Bush and cronie think tank has their way, along with directed energy attacks against any country or citizen that they decide they do not like. These weapons can create climate war, weather war, mind war, cyber war, disease war, disaster war, and undetectable war. Taken together they can create economic war. If this system is not stopped, it will kill billions due to aluminum and barium poisoning. It will kill billions due to crop failures and world-wide famine. It will cause heart attacks, strokes, and cancers. It will cause stillbirths, miscarriages, and infertility. The chemtrail sprays often have fungi, bacteria, viruses, dessicated red blood cells, crystalline substances, carbon, metal cations, lithium, other chemicals, heavy metals, and God knows what - probably smart dust, or nanocrap. Years of biowarfare testing on the American public is no big secret anymore. Spraying germs in the sky where they mutate due to the ultra-violet light -- brillant plan, my man. Are we acceptable losses or is this by design? I know that many of the major players have big investments in pharmaceutical companies, GM seeds [seeds that can grow in an electromagnetic soup], weapons and directed energy development contracts, oil contracts, genetic research, and mind control research. Some of these people have had a familial history of financial and policy support for population control, eugenics, Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Lenin, Marx, Pinochet, Hussein, and various other dictators. Some of the major players were the masterminds of the death squads in Central and South America. They stand to make a big profit on our death and disease. Just take a look at Rumsfield and Tamiflu. I assume that they know the dangers of this system and that they take care to stay in their shielded, air-filtered offices, homes, bases, and cars. I assume they take chelating substances to remove the barium and aluminum from their bodies and minds. If not, then they really do not understand the far-ranging implications of this destructive system. Congress may not understand just what a terrible weapons system and control grid they are funding. As I understand it, Tesla towers attached to deep-earth, free-energy taps are to be created over the 10-12 magnetic poles and the GWEN system phased-out. Has this already been done? This should allow total control of the earth through giant, Tesla death ray-guns. This natural, electromagnetic earth was not meant to be an un-natural dynamo to power man's weapons or his utility companies. Over-unity systems [Tesla devices]* are as of yet, another unexplored and probably not understood man-made energy. We should be very suspect of free energy. As we can see, the forms of man-made energy that have been created and used in the past have not been good for this planet. Maybe it is time to reconsider the options available to us through the development of crops for fuel, wind, solar, and water power. We need world-wide, different, more holistic, renewable, energy programs. Is there any good news? Yes. There has been tons of particulate dumping through the spray operations for 8 years over the Americas, Europe, Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, and from what I can find out, over Russia. And, what goes around blows around, right? So, these substances are probably actually global. It sure makes a ton of sense to spray poisonous elements in 24 NATO countries and let the substances be carried around the earth on the jet streams to poison yourself, your enemies, and all neutral and non-combatent countries. Talk about making more enemies. The water, air, and soil of all of these countries is so saturated with metal cations that these weapons freaks should be able to zap and mind f--k each other quite well now and as often as they wish. Once they have clobbered each other with light-saber beams for a few years and razed and scorched sections of the earth, they may start to realize that this foreign policy will lead to a defective human race and a rotten economy. Do you think they will have knocked some sense into each other by then and will decide that non-proliferation and arms reduction is the more civilized and mature direction to take in world affairs? I doubt it, cause only idiots would have developed horrific, planet-killer weapons like these. But, I'll bet the rest of the planet will finally rise up and tell these juvenile delinquents to quit playing with those rayguns right this second. After further thought on Bearden + -- a big over-unity and free energy proponent of Tesla technology that makes energy off of boiling the ionosphere or stealing electricity from the mis-named "vacumn" called Life, I have decided that Bearden is telling us some, if not most, of the truth. Same for Eastlund. |
A Tory MEP has been accused of illustrating a walk he was enjoying the Hampshire countryside by tweeting out stock photos of Wales from 1998. Unbelievably, this isn’t the oddest part of this thread. First up, that slightly unusual country walk. How have I never seen this? Dan Hannan goes on imagined walk in Hampshire. Tweets stock pics of Wales. Is he mad? https://t.co/3vgg1DS2ii pic.twitter.com/vDV5G1t4QV — Tom Peck (@tompeck) July 17, 2017 Here’s the tweet. And that familiar looking stock photo. Yep, they’re the same alright. No, the fun really starts when @tompeck suggested it might be a slightly unusual thing to do. He went for a walk in the country & tweeted out a nice picture of countryside to go with it. You seriously want to claim that’s mendacious? — Andrew Lilico (@andrew_lilico) July 17, 2017 Well I, like you, have got no idea if he went for an English country walk or not, because his picture is from Wales. — Tom Peck (@tompeck) July 17, 2017 I’ve got a pretty good idea if he went for an English country walk, cos he said he went for an English country walk. — Andrew Lilico (@andrew_lilico) July 17, 2017 Well I haven’t, because his picture of his nice country walk was taken by someone else, in Wales, 20 years ago. — Tom Peck (@tompeck) July 17, 2017 if you went for an English country walk and wanted to post a picture, why wouldn’t you take a picture? — Josh (@SurreyCricBlog) July 17, 2017 Because whilst you are walking, you might want to concentrate on the walking, not on your phone. — Andrew Lilico (@andrew_lilico) July 17, 2017 it takes about five seconds to take a picture… — Josh (@SurreyCricBlog) July 17, 2017 It also takes longer to search Google for a ten year old photo, save it to your phone then tweet it as your own. It’s weird isn’t it? — Jon the rascal (@giftedrascal) July 17, 2017 yeah, I don’t even care if he did or didn’t go on a walk…i just want to understand what the point of it was…what’s his goal?! — Josh (@SurreyCricBlog) July 17, 2017 And then, with joyous inevitability, this began. Fifteen miles up and down over the slopes of Winterfell, pausing for a pie. God I love Westeros in the summer. pic.twitter.com/zrZaPSQMFb — Jim Pickard (@PickardJE) July 17, 2017 15 miles up and down Bowscale Fell. God, I love the Lake District pic.twitter.com/fRz9ey9PfZ — Henry Mance (@henrymance) July 17, 2017 15 miles up and down Hampshire’s sloping fields, pausing for a pie @VineHannington. God, I love England in May. #hannanviews pic.twitter.com/t4Lh5wmTrj — Laurence Horton (@laurencedata) July 17, 2017 Source |
Police say a 30-year-old woman has confessed to being involved in the Oct. 4, 2011, murder and robbery of Zachary Higdon at his trailer at 900 Airport Road. Jessica Tene Sterchi is charged with first-degree murder, especially aggravated robbery and tampering with or fabricating evidence. The body of the victim was found by relatives at his unit at the Whispering Pines Trailer Park. Police said numerous items of value had been removed from the trailer. Investigator Zach Fuller said on Wednesday he interviewed a witness who said he had information on the Higdon murder. He said Ms. Sterchi told him "she was responsible for the murder of Zachary Higdon." The witness said Ms. Sterchi explained in detail how the murder and the robbery were carried out. She stated they were going to rob Higdon and she was the one who shot and killed him. He said she told where the murder weapon could be located along with certain items taken from the trailer. Investigator Fuller said on Saturday Ms. Sterchi agreed to speak with him. She said she was present when Higdon was killed. She said she was with her boyfriend and his brother when they decided to go get some cocaine from Higdon. She said she entered the trailer first and purchased cocaine from Higdon. She said the two men then entered. She said when they tried to rob Higdon he fought back and was shot and killed. She said they left, but returned twice to retrieve valuables from the trailer and to clean up the murder scene. Investigator Fuller said the items Ms. Sterchi described matched those taken from the residence. She said the gun had been thrown in the river. Ms. Sterchi admitted pawning items taken from Higdon. |
"Hapworth 16, 1924" was the last original work J. D. Salinger published in his lifetime. It appeared in the June 19, 1965, edition of The New Yorker, infamously taking up almost the entire magazine. It is the "youngest" of Salinger's Glass family stories, in the sense that the narrated events happen chronologically before those in the rest of the series. Both contemporary and later literary critics harshly panned "Hapworth 16, 1924"; writing in The New York Times, Michiko Kakutani called it "a sour, implausible and, sad to say, completely charmless story .... filled with digressions, narcissistic asides and ridiculous shaggy-dog circumlocutions."[1] Even kind critics have regarded the work as "a long-winded sob story" that many have found "simply unreadable", and it has been speculated that this response was the reason Salinger decided to quit publishing.[2] But Salinger is also said to have considered the story a "high point of his writing" and made tentative steps to have it reprinted, though those came to nothing.[3] Plot [ edit ] The story is presented in the form of a letter from camp written by a seven-year-old Seymour Glass (the main character of "A Perfect Day for Bananafish"). In this respect, the plot is identical to Salinger's previous unpublished story "The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls", written 18 years earlier in 1947. In the course of requesting an inordinate quantity of reading matter from home, Seymour predicts his brother's success as a writer as well as his own death and offers critical assessments of a number of major writers. Publishing history [ edit ] After the story's appearance in The New Yorker, Salinger—who had already withdrawn to his home in New Hampshire—stopped publishing altogether. Since the story never appeared in book form, readers had to seek out that issue or find it on microfilm. Finally, with the release of The Complete New Yorker on DVD in 2005, the story was once again widely available. In 1996, Orchises Press, a small Virginia publishing house, started a process of publishing "Hapworth" in book form. Orchises Press owner Roger Lathbury has described the effort in The Washington Post and, three months after Salinger's death, in New York magazine.[3][4][5] According to Lathbury, Salinger was deeply concerned with the proposed book's appearance, even visiting Washington to examine the cloth for the binding. Salinger also sent Lathbury numerous "infectious and delightful and loving" letters.[4] Following publishing norms, Lathbury applied for Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data, unaware of how publicly available the information would be. A writer in Seattle, researching an article on Jeff Bezos, came across the "Hapworth" publication date,[6] and told his sister, a journalist for the Washington Business Journal, who wrote an article about the upcoming book.[7] This led to substantial coverage in the press. Shortly before the books were to be shipped, Salinger changed his mind, and Orchises withdrew the book. New publication dates were repeatedly announced, but it never appeared.[8] Lathbury said, "I never reached back out. I thought about writing some letters, but it wouldn't have done any good."[4] Citations [ edit ] |
Charles Barkley: Conservatives are 'fake Christians' David Edwards and Chris Tackett Published: Friday February 15, 2008 | Print This Email This Former NBA star Charles Barkley, who is not known for his timidity when it comes to discussing his political beliefs, will surely be ruffling right-wing feathers with his latest comments. Barkley, currently an NBA commentator for the TNT network, appeared today on CNN's 'Situation Room.' When asked by host Wolf Blitzer about his views on the presidential race, Barkley said he didn't want to see the Republicans win because they were 'fake Christians.' The comment came after Barkley was asked his reasons for supporting presidential candidate Barack Obama, rather than Hillary Clinton or any of the Republican candidates. "I've got great respect for Sen. McCain, great respect, but I don't like the way Republicans have taken this country," said Barkley. "Every time I hear the word 'conservative,' it makes me sick to my stomach, because they're really just fake Christians, as I call them. That's all they are." Blitzer moved on to a different question following the comment, but later followed-up at the end of his interview and asked him to elaborate on what he meant by "fake Christian." "I think they want to be judge and jury," Barkley replied. "Like, I'm for gay marriage. It's none of my business if gay people want to get married. I'm pro-choice. And I think these Christians, first of all, they're not supposed to judge other people. But they're the most hypocritical judge of people we have in the country. And it bugs the hell out of me. They act like they're Christians. They're not forgiving at all." Barkley also explained why he was supporting Barack Obama. "When i look at him, he represents everything that's good in the black community," Barkley said. "He's intelligent. He's articulate. You know, most of our role models are athletes or entertainers. We've got to get more black kids to be educated, carry themselves with great class and dignity. He's perfect for what we need. We've got so much black-on-black crime in this country right now. We've got a lot of kids not getting their education. That's why I'm supporting him." Barkley also reiterated a claim he has made before regarding his intention to run for governor of Alabama. "I just bought a house in 2007 and in 2014, I promise you I'm going to run for governor," Barkley said. "You have to have residency for seven years. I bought my house at the end of last year and I'll be eligible in 2014." |
On the world's longest hunger strike, Irom Sharmila has completed ten years of fasting over human rights abuses in Manipur and promises to continue.Silently but forcefully, she is highlighting the rarely reported decade-long insurgency in Manipur and the government's response to it with Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), something she opposes.Irom Sharmila Chanu is a poet, a writer and an activist. She was brought to the jail ward of Jawaharlal Nehru Hospital at the age of 27. Now ten years have passed in solitary confinement.In the year 2000, she had pledged a fast-unto-death against the imposition of AFSPA in Manipur. She was arrested and since then kept in custody - force fed with a tube.When we met her, a cheerful Irom Sharmila seemed more determined than ever to continue with her fast. She, however, did not wish to talk much.NDTV: In Manipur ten years back, there was a 27-year-old girl who sat in Malom for a protest. Ten years later, what do you see when you look back?Irom Sharmila: Let us realise why we are here in this world. How and when we will go away from here? This is our duty to just self-realise. This was a rare interview opportunity for both of us. But the one-hour, so hard-earned, was spent mostly in edgy silence. As if she was asking, 'I am living the struggle...I am living my protest...what more can my words give you that my life already doesn't?' |
Doc Rivers on Dirk Nowitzki: "He's his own bird, is what I love about him. There's not been a Dirk. Ever. There's been a lot of great players in our league, but the great, great players are the ones where you say well there's never been one of those. To me that's Dirk. I don't know, who would you say was a Dirk before Dirk? No one. Now, there's a lot of guys trying to be it and probably ruining their careers trying to do it. Same thing happened with Magic. I thought Magic, in the middle of his career, there was a bunch of 7-footers trying to be guards, none of them made it. They wanted to be like Magic. And I think that's the same thing with Dirk. A lot of guys are – it's growing, the shooting with the bigs is all over the league, but Dirk is a rare bird." |
Before seeing Clash of the Titans in 3-D, filmgoers at AMC theaters must sit through previews for the Nightmare on Elm Street remake, Salt, and Step Up 3-D, among others. These films have little in common and seem intended for vastly different audiences. How do movie theaters decide which trailers to show? The “quadrant” system. As many as six trailers play before features at major chains, like AMC and Regal. The studio releasing a given film typically has automatic rights to two of these slots, and theater executives (in consultation with higher-ups from various studios) select the remaining four. Though theoretically studios and theaters could attach any trailer to any movie, they usually decide which releases to promote by using the “quadrant” system, which divides potential audiences into four different categories: men under 25, women under 25, men over 25, and women over 25. Before chick flicks, theaters play previews for romantic dramas as well as romantic comedies, because they figure that’s what young women will eventually want to see. Regal Cinemas also began matching red band trailers, which include profanity and sexually explicit scenes, with R, NC-17, and unrated movies in 2008. And sometimes theaters disregard quadrants altogether if something else ties the movies together—say, if they’re all in 3-D. (It’s impossible to show a 3-D trailer before a 2-D movie, since those audiences aren’t wearing special glasses.) Of course, since there are often more than four possible previews available in a given quadrant, negotiating which trailers make the cut can be tricky. The young men going to see Clash of the Titans might enjoy learning about any number of upcoming movies—Kick-Ass, The Losers, Iron Man 2—in addition to the films already being advertised before the feature. Theaters further narrow the field by trying to treat all major studios more or less equally. They might play Warner Bros. trailers on 20 percent of all screens and Disney trailers on 30 percent, for example. The same trailers don’t always play before the same movie at every branch of a large chain, so it’s possible to spread the wealth around. Sometimes distributors don’t want to settle for equal treatment. Every studio wants its own films to piggyback on surefire hits, regardless of quadrants.As TiVo, the cable renaissance, and the Internet have eaten away at television audiences, theatrical trailers have become more and more important as marketing tools. Moviegoers are a captive audience, after all—and studios will do whatever they can to take advantage. Though such behavior is frowned upon, executives have on occasion paid exorbitant amounts to ensure that their trailers will be well-placed, as when Sony’s Jeff Blake gave a theater chain $100,000 to ensure that the trailer for The Animal, a Rob Schneider vehicle, would be shown before Universal’s The Mummy Returns in 2002. The trailer placement system at independent theaters is much simpler: They only show trailers for movies that will soon be playing on one of their screens. For these exhibitors, the calendar is the only factor at play—and sometimes, their coming attractions don’t even have trailers, which simplifies things even further. Got a question about today’s news? Ask the Explainer. Explainer thanks Brendon Bouzard, Samuel Craig of NYU’s Stern School of Business, and Adam Walker of Film Forum. Become a fan of Slate and the Explainer on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter. |
Noted author and journalist Jimmy Breslin’s most recent book is The Good Rat: A True Story, published by Ecco. There are these sudden loud noises in the hotel kitchen, one, two, three, probably a tray falling, and then there is so much screaming and a hand holding a gun high in the air and Robert Kennedy, who had walked into the gun, is on the floor with his eyes seeing nothing. On this June night in 1968 he has just won a Presidential primary and suddenly he is fit only for a gravedigger’s dirt. It happens this way when the claws of madness swipe through the sky. In 1919 Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes called it for all time, and crashingly so today, when he wrote, “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.” And now in New York they are turning an empty lot of the old World Trade Center and a mosque that isn’t built and probably never will be, into national fear. Omaha fights the mosque in Manhattan! Some foamer named Jones says he burns the Koran, and he actually is treated as news. All day on television yesterday you had the aimless babbles of this Beck, who looks like he eats Bibles. They all come with the double barrels of a Low IQ and High Color Fear let loose on cable stations and e-mail, of which yesterday you read in disbelief. Let me tell you what a life spent running after news like this has left me remembering. In each case, we had chunks of our Democracy ripped up and leaders lost and the worst rising. Start with Robert Kennedy on the kitchen floor and over him, people tear the gun away from the killer and his body is thrown onto a steam table and I lose my feet and I don’t know how I am here, but I am sitting atop these thrashing legs and there is more screaming to hold his body down. Thrashing those legs won’t help. I’m too heavy to throw off. Now the football player Roosevelt Grier’s arm, bigger than a steam pipe, comes down across the guy’s chest and that is that. Grier says quietly, “He isn’t going anywhere.” He does not. His name is Sirhan Sirhan. He went to prison. His kind is not gone. When you have so many hoping for tragedy they are right over us waiting for the return of the worst of memories. Before his night in Los Angeles, I am in Dallas on November 22nd, 1963, and in the days before there were these big inflammatory ads about the evils of President John Kennedy and the lousiness came out of the radios and television, small whispers when matched with what we have today, and Kennedy is in an open car and a shot comes out of the infested sky and he is gone. In the Dallas Police Headquarters at night, police in cowboy hats kept taking this pale white in a checked sports shirt out into the hall for the cameras to take pictures with them holding him, keeping him out there in a crowded hallway as if he were mounted on a target range, which he sure was. On one of these times the crush virtually plastered him into me, the sports shirt touching me, and I claim I can remember the eyes as being insane. I sure can tell you the name: Lee Harvey Oswald. Then what was it, only a couple of years later, when the skies screamed nameless revenge and hurled James Earl Ray into Memphis to shoot Martin Luther King and that night, when riots broke out everywhere, I sat with Andrew Young in a musty room in Memphis and he talked so quietly about the madness of the air people were breathing. The identical madness that was in Los Angeles where it built another stadium for murder. And all day yesterday, while they squalled and broke out poor Jesus at rallies to help them promote race and baseline dumbness, many could barely wait for September 11th, when they can act as owners of the place where the World Trade Center stood. Look around; they say they are victims but they appear to be just another mob trying to take us apart. |
Moments after Donald Trump took the stage on a college campus in Colorado Springs, he tore into what is really making America not so great. “We have thousands of people in a room next door,” he said. “We have thousands of people trying to get in and we have a fire marshal that says ‘No, we can’t allow more people in.'” Trump said it was “so unfair” to those who couldn’t make it inside the 1,500-capacity auditorium. “They won’t let them in, and the reason they won’t let them in is because they don’t know what the hell they’re doing, that’s why,” Trump said to loud cheers. “That’s why our country has — hey, maybe they’re a Hillary person. Could that be the answer? Probably.” Trump called it a “disgraceful situation,” adding, “this is the kind of thing we have in federal government also, by the way, and then you wonder why we’re going to hell. That’s why we’re going to hell.” A long line of attendees trying to get in snaked down the sidewalk and around the building. Those who couldn’t get in filled a separate room on campus. Toward the end of his hourlong speech, Trump again circled back and lit up the fire marshal. “He’s probably a Democrat,” Trump said. “Probably a guy that doesn’t get it.” He ended by saying he would go speak to the overflow crowd next door. Following the speech, Brett Lacey, the fire marshal in question, said in an interview he is a registered voter but declined to say whether he is a member of a political party. “It doesn’t matter to me,” he said. “We’re just here to do the job.” |
If you weren’t one of the lucky ones able to get your hands on a Nintendo Switch on Amazon or Best Buy before they completely sold out, there’s a new bundle that GameStop is offering…before you get out your pocketbook, let’s take a look. The $600 Bundle Includes The funniest part about this Gamestop bundle is that it’s actually about $20 more expensive than if you were to go out and get each of these items separately on Amazon. Of course, Amazon doesn’t have them in stock so you’ll have to pay a premium if you want a Nintendo Switch. GameStop’s page for this specific bundle says it won’t be shipping until the 16th of April. Hooray… Amazon usually will often times have lower prices than other competitors. This Gamestop Switch bundle apparently isn’t to save the consumer money, but rather to get them to purchase quite a bit more items (and up that price a bit) just to secure themselves a Switch console. This same strategy was one seen quite a bit back when the Wii was in short stock as well. The Wii had so much shovel ware and forgettable games packed in with their “bundles”, but unfortunately for many, this was the only way to actually get their hands on the console. This isn’t to say that buying yourself a SanDisk 64GB microSD card is a poor choice, but not every average consumer will need one. So if you’re in the market for each of these items listed above, I’d recommend putting in the extra bit of effort and saving yourself $20 in the process. That’s an extra $20 to put towards a new game. |
The surgeon’s knife followed the path of the cancer, and by the time the end drew near, Stephanie Whiting-Stradinger’s face was pretty much gone. She had been diagnosed with malignant skin cancer in her early 20s, and as the disease propelled the young mother of three toward an early death, her mother, Joni Whiting, grew weary of the screams of agony. Dozens of Oxycontin pills every day, sometimes as many as 60, could not take away her daughter’s pain. That’s when the resident of rural Jordan, Minn., a self-described law-and-order mom who served in the Vietnam War, turned to medical marijuana. “What would you have done if you were in my shoes?” a tearful Whiting asked a Minnesota Senate committee Wednesday, testifying on behalf of the latest attempt to legalize the use of medical marijuana for patients suffering from chronic and debilitating illnesses. The drug helped her daughter eat, Whiting said. She lived another three months before dying in 2003 at age 26. The bill passed the Committee on Health, Housing and Family Security, one of the lowest of many hurdles it must clear before becoming law. Past efforts at a bill have been met with opposition by law enforcement groups, as well as Gov. Tim Pawlenty. Spokesman Brian McClung said Pawlenty’s opposition remains unchanged. More than a dozen states have medical marijuana laws on the books, and there is widespread anecdotal evidence that doctors recommend it for everything from easing the effects of chemotherapy to pain management. The Minnesota Medical Association has not taken a position on the issue. And despite a futile, decade-long effort to pass a medical marijuana bill at the state Capitol, a SurveyUSA poll released last May found that Minnesotans favor legalizing medical marijuana by more than a 2-to-1 margin. Medical marijuana supporters have again drummed up a bipartisan list of supporters. One of those is Sen. Paul Koering, R-Fort Ripley, who said medical marijuana is an issue on which both sides can work together. “If medical marijuana will ease somebody’s pain in their dying days, who in the hell are we to say no to that?” Koering said. Also testifying in support of the bill was Dr. George Wagoner, a retired fellow of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists who lives in Michigan. He said his wife, who died of ovarian cancer, found that only marijuana eased the nausea associated with chemotherapy. “Lunch isn’t a big deal until you can’t eat. This bill isn’t about the street use and abuse of marijuana. That’s an entirely different deal. This is about medicine,” Wagoner said at a news conference before the hearing, adding that he is dedicating the rest of his life to making marijuana accessible to those who need it. Opponents include Harlan Johnson, executive director of the Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association. He said he is concerned that marijuana has not been approved for use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and that it would wind up in the hands of people who have no medical need for the drug. “Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it’s hard to get it back in,” Johnson said. The bill would allow people with cancer, glaucoma, HIV or a host of other illnesses to use a doctor’s recommendation to obtain a registry card, which allows them to possess up to 2.5 ounces of marijuana or grow as many as 12 marijuana plants. Falsifying records to obtain such a card would be a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. The bill contains several provisions addressing questions that have been raised during past attempts at a bill. They include prohibitions on children obtaining a registry card and bans on using medical marijuana on school grounds, in a corrections facility or while operating a motor vehicle, including a school bus. Despite states passing similar laws, state laws do not supersede the federal ban on possessing marijuana. That has led to conflicts in states such as California — which in 1996 enacted the first medical marijuana law by popular vote — where federal agents have raided dispensaries across the state. A spokesman for President Barack Obama has said federal law enforcement officers should not circumvent state wishes when it comes to medical marijuana. |
CNN admits parts of Mueller’s probe “unconnected to the 2016 elections” Desperate to politically damage President Trump to lay the grounds for impeachment, Robert Mueller’s investigation into “Russian collusion” now includes material “unconnected to the 2016 elections” and even includes tenants who stayed in Trump Tower over the last six years. Sources told CNN that a “potential prosecution” could be secured not by way of evidence that proves Russia schemed with the Trump campaign to swing the election (which is supposedly the entire focus of the investigation), but by proving past financial improprieties by Trump-owned business interests. This not only underscores how the entire investigation, which now involves a Grand Jury, is a pure witch hunt, but also how Mueller almost certainly knows that there is no clear evidence of Russian collusion with which to nail Trump. “Sources described an investigation that has widened to focus on possible financial crimes, some unconnected to the 2016 elections,” reports CNN. This includes, “the list of shell companies and buyers of Trump-branded real estate properties and scrutinized the roster of tenants at Trump Tower reaching back more than a half-dozen years,” as well as “the backgrounds of Russian business associates connected to Trump surrounding the 2013 Miss Universe pageant.” In other words, Mueller is going to present Trump having done business with Russians at some point in the recent or murky past, or even him renting out an apartment or office space to a Russian citizen, as evidence of “Russian collusion”. This is completely absurd. The report vindicates critics who have accused Mueller of leading a witch hunt against Trump that will seek to damage him with anything even if it has nothing to do with alleged Russian meddling in the presidential election. As radio host Mark Levin explains, it’s all about inflicting as much political damage on Trump to set him up for impeachment if Democrats win back the Congress in 2018. “This is a coup,” Levin said. “This is a coup that should upset every American — Trump supporter or not.” Via Infowars Featured Image: Talk Radio News Service/Flickr |
For years the Broncos and Denver have been interested in hosting a Super Bowl or NFL draft to put the city on a national stage. And they’re hopeful they’ll get to do so soon. Broncos president and CEO Joe Ellis told The Denver Post on Saturday that the team has submitted an application to the league to try to host the 2020 draft, and that if Denver is not selected for that year, they will “absolutely” try for 2021, 2022 or 2023. “The draft is something we’d really like to see accomplished,” Ellis said. “I think it’d be nice for Mr. B (owner Pat Bowlen), to know that the city he’s witnessed tremendous support from in terms of what they’ve done for the Broncos and how important the Broncos are to people and how important football is people. “We’ve put in an application for 2020 and that may or may not come to fruition depending on how the league feels about when they’re going to honor 100th season. … We believe it would be a great thing for the city, a great thing for Colorado, a great thing for this Rocky Mountain region. It would draw a lot of people and would be a really fun event.” Ellis said he’s already had discussions with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and his staff about Denver’s interest in hosting and said that “if we put the right package together we have an excellent chance.” Though the Broncos had looked into submitting bids for earlier drafts, they faced scheduling issues with events at the convention center, where draft night would likely take place. The Broncos will likely face the same hurdles in future years because of Denver’s growth and popularity as a site for hosting conventions. But as NFL drafts morph into city-wide festivals, the league has gotten creative with venues and Denver could use Philadelphia’s 2017 model to work around potential conflicts. Instead of hosting the latest draft inside one of Philadelphia’s historical venues or its convention center, the NFL created a 3,000-seat theater on the steps of the Museum of Art. The city attracted a record 250,000 people to its streets for the three-day event. The Broncos are also interested in hosting a Super Bowl, but remain realistic about their odds of landing one. “The sense that I get is that the (NFL) committee tasked with guiding ownership to the pool of candidates for Super Bowls is less than enthusiastic about cold-weather sites,” Ellis said. “It appears after New York (Super Bowl XLVIII) they’re not in a hurry to do that again. And one day in Denver in February it’ll be 60 degrees and sunny, and the next day it’ll be snowing. “Now, if the league were to open up the game to cold-weather sites without a dome, we would definitely want it. And I think Visit Denver and the mayor expressed interest in trying to throw our hat in the ring.” |
No one knows how many sandhogs are, at any given moment, working beneath the streets of New York City, but one morning this winter half a dozen men could be spotted gathering around a hole on the northwest corner of Tenth Avenue and Thirtieth Street. The hole, surrounded by a tall aluminum fence, was thirty feet wide and reinforced with concrete. A priest had visited months before, to offer a brief prayer: “May God be with all ye who enter here, that the earth shall return ye safely.” Now, as the sun rose, the men stepped from the snow-covered ground into a green metal cage, which was suspended over the chasm by an enormous winch. They wore yellow slickers and rubber boots with steel tips; they carried, among other things, flashlights, scissors, cigarettes, cough drops, knives, extra socks, and several twenty-pound crates marked “explosives.” A worker who was to remain above ground pulled a lever, and the cage began to descend. As it accumulated speed, and the light from the surface grew thinner, James Ryan, one of the older men in the crew, peered over the edge into the void. He had a long, hard face flecked with scars. “We got nine cases of dynamite,” he said. “That should be plenty.” His voice reverberated in the shaft as the men went down thirty, forty, fifty feet, then another fifty, then a hundred more. “Two hundred,” one of them called out. By three hundred feet, they could no longer see anything above or below. Surrounded by darkness, and pressed closely together, the men exchanged sight for sound—the ping of dripping water, the echo of voices, the cable groaning overhead. At five hundred feet, the air became warmer, denser; one of the men put on a mask to keep out the dust that floated through the shaft. “All right,” Ryan told me. “We’re almost there.” A thin beam from a flashlight suddenly rose up from the bottom of the shaft, catching the men’s faces. They were all part of the fraternity of sandhogs, a rare breed of tunnel digger whose name comes from the workers who excavated the soft earth under the Brooklyn Bridge in the eighteen-seventies. The men in the cage with me were mostly middle-aged, with barrel chests and knotted fingers; dust had already begun to streak the skin around their eyes. A bell sounded, and the cage came to a halt, bouncing up and down on the cable. “This is it,” Ryan said. “Brace yourself.” He unsealed the cage door. We were nearly six hundred feet underground. Until that moment, I had only heard tales of New York City’s invisible empire, an elaborate maze of tunnels that goes as deep as the Chrysler Building is high. Under construction in one form or another for more than a century, the system of waterways and pipelines spans thousands of miles and comprises nineteen reservoirs and three lakes. Two main tunnels provide New York City with most of the 1.3 billion gallons of water it consumes each day, ninety per cent of which is pumped in from reservoirs upstate by the sheer force of gravity. Descending through aqueducts from as high as fourteen hundred feet above sea level, the water gathers speed, racing down to a thousand feet below sea level when it reaches the pipes beneath the city. It is a third water tunnel, however, that is the most critical. Designed to meet expanding demand and to serve as a backup system in case something ever happens to City Tunnel No. 1 or City Tunnel No. 2, City Tunnel No. 3 has been under development since 1969, and was initially billed as “the greatest nondefense construction project in the history of Western Civilization.” Already, twenty-four people have died building it—roughly a man a mile—and it is not expected to be completed until 2020. As an engineering feat, the water-tunnel system rivals the Brooklyn Bridge and the Panama Canal. Yet it has the odd distinction that almost no one will ever see it, save for the sandhogs who are building it. Over the years, the men have constructed an entire city under the city, a subterranean world as cluttered as the Manhattan skyline: it includes four hundred and thirty-eight miles of subway lines, six thousand miles of sewers, and thousands of miles of gas mains. “If it’s deeper than a grave,” sandhogs often say, “then we built it.” The water tunnels have become the sandhogs’ greatest and most elusive achievement, an often deadly effort that has consumed generations. “I’ll take you down there if you want,” Jimmy Ryan had said when I asked him to show me the tunnel’s newest section. “But, trust me, it ain’t like Macy’s down there.” A large, reticent man of fifty who prefers gestures—an upturned eyebrow or a curled lip—to words, he has spent nearly as many hours underneath the earth as above it. “I started working on the third water tunnel when I was a kid,” he told me. “I’m still working on it, and I’ll probably be buried in it.” Ryan, who was elected president of the sandhogs’ union, Local 147, in 1999, has trouble lifting his shoulders; his red hair has turned silver, and his broad chest is compressed, as if it were about to collapse. After Ryan opened the cage, I stepped out with him and the other men into the bottom of the shaft. Water seeped down the sides of the opening and dripped on us. There was a pool at our feet, and as we moved forward the icy water spilled over the tops of our boots. I began to sink in the muck, and Ryan gave me his hand to pull me out. “Don’t stand under the shaft,” he said. “If somethin’ falls from the top, it’ll go right through you.” I looked up and could barely see the opening. Once, in Queens, a sixteen-ton winch fell down the shaft, crushing one worker and injuring seven others; another time, a man died after being impaled by a broken icicle. As I followed Ryan into the tunnel’s main artery, it was hard to orient myself. There were only a few scattered electric bulbs, suspended from wires clamped to rocks and shrouded in mist, and I blinked, trying to adjust to the watery light. Several of the men turned on flashlights; through the shadows I could see a hospital stretcher and emergency medical supplies propped against a wall. At last, the tunnel came into focus: a cramped, crumbling cavern that extended a hundred yards or so in either direction. This stage of Tunnel No. 3 will eventually run nine miles, reaching down to the Manhattan Bridge and looping up to Central Park; its walls will be honed into a smooth cylinder, ten feet in diameter and lined with concrete. But at this early stage swords of black schist—formed more than four hundred million years ago—hung from the ceiling, which was buttressed with steel bolts to prevent collapse. Ventilation pipes ran along the sides of the tunnel, circulating the choked air, which, unlike the freezing air at the surface, was nearly seventy degrees, a humid mist of dust and fumes. The men split into two groups and went to opposite ends of the tunnel, where they began painting detailed patterns on the rock face. Moving out from the center of the rock, they carefully dabbed white dots about three feet apart, forming an elaborate grid. Then the sandhogs mounted hydraulic drills and bored a ten-foot-deep hole into each mark, their arms and legs rattling up and down, the lamps on their hard hats shaking. As the men prepared the rock face, listening to each echo for any sign of danger, they spoke in a private language: a jackhammer was known as a “jackleg”; a bucket, a “battleship”; the Nerf-like sponge used to clean a pipe was called a “rabbit.” Sometimes, because of the noise, the men would simply draw images in the air, like mimes. After a while, they took out blowpipes, which blasted air and water into the holes, washing away the dirt. “Everything has to be done just right,” Ryan told me. With his knife, he opened one of the boxes of explosives. Inside were dozens of red sticks of dynamite. The men packed the sticks into the holes as if loading muskets. Each piece of dynamite was wired to the next, and soon dozens of cords crisscrossed the rock face. Then the men turned off the lights, one by one, until the tunnel was completely dark, except for a single flashlight that guided us back to the metal cage. “We need to be a thousand feet away,” Ryan said, as we slowly rose to the surface. “It’s not like the old days, when they’d blow the son of a bitch in your ear.” When we reached the street, the sun was fully in the sky, and Ryan squinted uncomfortably in the light. He leaned over a small detonator while the men cleared the intersection of pedestrians. A woman in a camel coat, who insisted that she was late for work, tried to force her way past. “One minute,” Ryan said, cocking an eyebrow. Another sandhog put his hand on the T-shaped lever. “Now,” Ryan said. The sandhog slammed the lever with both hands, yelling, “Fire in the hole! Fire in the hole!” There was a great roar, a percussive rumble that grew louder and louder. The sidewalk and fences began to tremble, along with the ground beneath our feet. The crane that was suspended above the hole rattled from side to side. One bystander looked up at the sky, then down at the ground, not sure what was happening. “Is it a bomb?” another asked. A plume of dust rose out of the shaft. Then everything fell silent. The tunnel had advanced another nine feet. “All right, hogs!” the foreman yelled. And before anyone noticed, Ryan and the other men vanished into the hole. At the end of the day, the sandhogs congregated in the hog house, a small white shack with wooden benches, lockers, and a shower, inside the fenced area on Thirtieth Street. Yellow slickers, now black with mud, hung from hooks. A television set murmured in the corner, and several men stood around it in towels while another mopped the floor around their feet. Ryan sat down at a table to talk with me. His elbow rested on his hard hat; a line of mud traced the side of his cheek. He had lost part of his hearing from the constant concussions, and he spoke louder than normal. “No one wants to talk about it, but we’re flirting with disaster,” he said. Like the country’s electricity grid, which recently left parts of the city in the dark for more than twenty-four hours, the city’s water system is deeply antiquated. The old tunnels, Ryan explained, were leaking “like a sieve”; some of the sections were built nearly a century ago and were in desperate need of repair. But until Tunnel No. 3 is virtually complete there will be no way to fix them. In part, this is because getting inside Tunnel No. 1 or No. 2 would require the city to shut the water off, and without a backup supply there would be serious water shortages. But it was more than that, and, as several sandhogs peered over his shoulder, Ryan started to draw a circle on the table with his muddy finger. “See this?” he asked me. “These are the valves that control the flow of water.” “They’re hundreds of feet underground,” another sandhog said. The valves were designed, Ryan said, to open and close guillotine-like gates inside the cylindrical tunnels, stopping the flow of water. But they had become so brittle with age that they were no longer operable. “They’re afraid if they try to shut the valves they won’t be able to turn ’em back on,” Ryan said. He wiped some mud from his eyes. “Look,” he said. “If one of those tunnels goes, this city will be completely shut down. In some places there won’t be water for anything. Hospitals. Drinking. Fires. It would make September 11th look like nothing.” Ryan wasn’t the only one who spoke of the tunnel system’s frailties, even if the others did so in slightly less alarming terms. One day this spring, I met Christopher Ward, the head of the city’s Department of Environmental Protection, which is responsible for designing and operating the tunnel system. With a broad chest and a blunt, goateed chin, he looks more like a sandhog than a politician, and has a tendency to lean forward when he speaks, as if about to leap to his feet. “People don’t want to acknowledge it, but the useful life of a tunnel does exist, and at some point it does start to fail,” he said. The metal valves, in particular, degrade until they can no longer withstand the pressure. Ward said that the original two tunnels were so dilapidated that it was too risky to try to shut off the water and repair them until City Tunnel No. 3 was operational. He added that there is still time before the aging tunnels collapse—“We’re not talking about today or tomorrow”—though it is impossible to predict how much. Others are more pessimistic. One D.E.P. scientist told me, “Some of the aqueducts are already hemorrhaging water badly,” while a recent study by Riverkeeper, an environmental organization, concluded, “In some cases, this extraordinary infrastructure is literally crumbling.” Upstate, in the industrial town of Newburgh, for example, water has begun to pour out of cracks in the underground aqueduct that feeds into the city tunnels—so much that the leaks have created a giant sinkhole. Many experts worry that the old tunnel system could collapse all at once. “Engineers will tell you if it fails it will not fail incrementally,” said Ward. “It will fail catastrophically.” If City Tunnel No. 1, which is considered the most vulnerable, caved in, all of lower Manhattan and downtown Brooklyn, as well as parts of the Bronx, would lose its water supply. If the aqueducts gave out, the entire city would be cut off. “There would be no water,” Ward told me. “These fixes aren’t a day or two. You’re talking about two to three years.” In the past, the city sometimes tried to assuage concerns about New York’s water system, but Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently noted at a press conference that the aging pipelines were “very vulnerable” and that “this city could be brought to its knees if one of the aqueducts collapsed.” Anthony DelVescovo, the project manager who has been working on City Tunnel No. 3 for nearly fifteen years, echoed Bloomberg’s warning. “What no one knows is that we’re facing a potential apocalypse,” he told me. “It’s a race against the clock.” It is hard to imagine a city without water, its faucets empty, its hydrants dry, its plazas filled not with fountains but with citizens suffering from diseases spread by dirt and desiccation—to imagine, as Charles Einstein put it in the title of his 1964 futuristic novel, “The Day New York Went Dry.” For much of its history, however, New York was a parched city. Though surrounded by the sea, its principal supply of freshwater remained, as late as the eighteenth century, a single fetid pool in lower Manhattan called the Collect Pond. Human waste was dumped into it, along with the occasional dead body. Distribution of water was dominated by racketeers known as teamen, who roamed the streets with giant casks, gouging customers. In 1785, with the city’s population reaching nearly thirty thousand, the New York Journal published an open letter to government officials complaining that the water supply had become a “common sewer.” One daily newspaper declared that it was “sickly and nauseating,” adding, “The larger the city grows, the worse this evil will be.” Even as the paper warned that a “plague will make a yearly slaughter until you furnish better water,” pestilence spread through the squalid streets. In 1798, yellow fever wiped out two thousand New Yorkers, and venders wandered the streets yelling, “Coffins of all sizes!” The plague returned in 1805, 1819, and 1822. “New Yorkers are like the rich man told of in the Parable,” one resident noted in the local paper. “They have no clean cool water to slack their thirst when the flames of the plague are devouring their vitals.” One summer morning in 1832, two children woke up in Manhattan with severe pain in their intestines. They stopped urinating and were overcome by thirst; they began to vomit and their skin turned blue. By the next day, they were dead, and two days later so was their mother. Asiatic cholera, an excruciating disease that is spread, in large part, by water contaminated with feces, had struck. In barely a month, two thousand New Yorkers were dead, their bodies marked by a bluish tinge and puckered extremities; more than a hundred thousand residents—half the city’s population—fled to outlying villages. By the time the scourge ended, the death toll had reached more than three thousand. A group of doctors who visited the city at the time reported a “constant and imploring” cry: “Cold water, cold water, give us cold water!” Finally, in the winter of 1834, the Common Council vowed to locate new sources of water. But before plans got under way a fire broke out near Wall Street. Without enough water to extinguish it—the rivers were frozen solid—the flames leaped from roof to roof, carried by a gale-force wind. Within minutes, the fire had spread from Exchange Place to Water Street, then on to Front and South Streets, and still onward. (The smoke was visible as far away as Philadelphia.) The fire burned for twenty-four hours, and after it had consumed nearly seven hundred buildings and caused such mass looting that the military was called in, roughly a third of New York City lay in ruins. One witness, who called it “the most awful calamity which has ever visited these United States,” wrote, “I am fatigued in body, disturbed in mind, and my fancy filled with images of horror which my own pen is inadequate to describe.” And so at last the city began to construct its first aqueduct. By today’s standards, the Croton Aqueduct is modest in scope, but at the time it was considered an architectural marvel. Begun in 1837 and completed in 1842, it extended more than thirty miles, running from the Croton Reservoir down the east bank of the Hudson River—an elegant, eight-by-seven-foot brick pipeline. When it was finished, church bells rang out across the city and thousands poured into the streets to parade past new fountains, whose water sparkled in the sun. Philip Hone, who eventually became mayor of New York, wrote in his diary, “Nothing is talked of or thought of in New York but Croton water. . . . Water! water! is the universal note which is sounded through every part of the city, and infuses joy and exultation into the masses.” Twelve years later, however, the city’s demand for water again exceeded supply, and the pressure in the pipeline fell so low that the water could no longer reach the third story of a building. By 1882, with thousands of immigrants arriving each week, the Times pleaded, “More Water Wanted,” adding, “The health of families . . . was jeopardized because sufficient water could not be secured.” Yet, unlike the previous century, when the city had looked on impassively at civic problems, there was now an almost evangelical faith in human progress. In 1905, Mayor George McClellan, who had just inaugurated the city’s first subway system, laid out a vision of “an additional supply of pure and wholesome water,” a vision so bold that it struck many as evidence of hubris. At an estimated cost of a hundred and eighty-five million dollars—3.7 billion in today’s dollars—it would be the largest municipal water system in the world. In 1907, at the groundbreaking, McClellan declared, “The course of human events is not permanently altered by the great deeds of history, nor by the great men but by the small daily doings of the little men.” Before long, thousands of laborers arrived in the Catskill Mountains and began clearing away vegetation. Under the expansive McClellan Act, which one judge complained gave “power that the Almighty would not delegate to an archangel,” the city appropriated more than twenty-five thousand acres of land, including hundreds of homes around the area of Shokan, which is just south of Woodstock. Nine villages were torn down, some burned to the ground, and nearly three thousand residents driven out; even cemeteries were dug up. “The trees are all cut down and the village is fading as a dream,” the Kingston Freeman reported. Then dams were built, water was diverted from streams in the Catskills, and rain was collected. The entire elevated basin was flooded, creating one of several reservoirs that, together, are nearly as large as the island of Manhattan. In photographs of the Shokan area taken before the flooding, the land is green and expansive; months later, it is covered by a glasslike inland sea. Meanwhile, sandhogs burrowed through mountains and under hillsides to construct the Catskill Aqueduct, a ninety-two-mile conduit that slopes gently downhill from Shokan to Storm King Mountain and then down to White Plains. At one point, it crosses below the Hudson River, at a depth of eleven hundred feet—an achievement that New York City’s new mayor, William Gaynor, called “one of the greatest engineering feats in history.” The hardest part of the project, however, was yet to come. According to the engineers’ elaborate design, water would flow from the aqueduct into a reservoir in Yonkers. From there, it would be channelled into another tunnel—one dug deep beneath the city, and able to withstand the pressure of more than half a billion gallons coursing through it each day. This water would then begin flowing upward, into smaller and smaller pipes, ultimately discharging into the millions of faucets around the city. Construction on what become known as City Tunnel No. 1 began in 1911. Many men went down once and never went back. Those who stayed received about two dollars a day. Once, under the strain, a riot erupted twelve hundred feet underground, and workers attacked each other with picks and shovels. The situation was equally difficult on the banks of the East River. According to “Liquid Assets,” a history of the city’s water system by Diane Galusha, natural groundwater made the rock so soft that the shafts which allowed sandhogs to descend into the tunnel became watery death traps. Engineers were forced to build on each bank a giant inverted box called a caisson—a risky device that was pioneered during the laying of the foundations of the Brooklyn Bridge. About fifteen feet on each side and weighing as much as two thousand tons, the steel-and-concrete boxes were sealed on all sides except the bottom. As they were lowered into the soft ground, compressed air was pumped into the caissons, pushing out the mud and water. To get into the caisson the sandhogs were lowered in a bucket down a steel shaft; from there they entered an air lock, much like a diving chamber. Air was pumped in, and the sandhogs could feel their eardrums strained to bursting, the blood rushing to the center of their bodies. Many assumed that they were dying. Once the pressure in the air lock was equal to that inside the caisson, the sandhogs crawled through a trapdoor into the caisson, where, standing ankle-deep in mud, they began to dig from the bottom, removing the muck in a bucket through a hatch in the ceiling. As they dug, under pressure that was so great they could work for only two hours at a time, the caisson would slowly sink, allowing the sides of the box to carve the lining of a shaft. An engineer who had been in a caisson during the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge described the sensation this way: “The pulse was at first accelerated, then sometimes fell below the normal rate. The voice sounded faint, unnatural, and it became a great effort to speak. What with the flaming lights, the deep shadows, the confusing noise of hammers, drills, and chains, the half-naked forms flitting about, with here and there a Sisyphus rolling his stone, one might, if of a poetic temperament, get a realizing sense of Dante’s Inferno.” More unnerving, though, was the threat of a “blowout”—a breach in the lining of the caisson wall, caused by a sudden imbalance of pressure, which created suction much like that of an airplane door opened in mid-flight, accompanied by a terrifying kettle-like screech. Men had a few seconds to climb inside the air lock; if they didn’t make it, they could be sucked into the earth, as happened in 1916, during the construction of a tunnel under the East River, when three men were swallowed through a crevice; two died, while a third, Marshall Mabey, was propelled safely into the afternoon sky on a geyser said to be four stories high. “I felt myself being pushed into the hole,” Mabey later explained to a reporter. “As I struck the mud it felt as though something was squeezing me tighter than I had ever been squeezed. I was almost smothered.” It’s not known how many sandhogs died building the Catskill system, but in 1913 the Pine Hill Sentinel reported, “Approximately ten out of every 100 [workers] are killed or injured every year. More than 3,800 accidents, serious and otherwise, to workers on the great aqueduct have been recorded. . . . The men doing the rough work are virtually all foreigners or negroes. Owing to the laborers being so inconspicuous, the death by accident of one or more of them attracts no public attention.” In 1917, more than a decade after the work began, the last explosion was sounded. It was now possible to walk underground from Manhattan all the way to the Catskills. The city marked the accomplishment, but the event was more subdued than the Croton celebration. The moment a new fountain by the reservoir in Central Park was turned on, the skies opened up and rain poured down. “Hey, can you smell it?” Jimmy Ryan asked. “What is it?” I asked. “Dynamite.” We were back inside City Tunnel No. 3, watching the sandhogs scoop out the blasted rock—“mucking it out,” as Ryan called it. It had been only minutes since I watched the men detonate the explosives, and the misty air was laden with smoke and dust; soon, a thin yellow film covered everything. Rocks that had endured earthquakes had been smashed against the surrounding walls. Some were cracked in two, revealing bits of mica, beautiful white glimmers amid the dust; others were black and dull. At this early stage, the method of digging through the rock was similar to that used on the first water tunnel. As Ryan put it, “You stick the dynamite in, blow the motherfucker up, then haul the shit out.” It was a repetitive, driving ritual, one in which there was no day or night and the sound of concussions replaced the passage of time. The men now loaded crushed granite into enormous buckets that carried as much as twenty-eight tons in a single load and were hoisted out by a crane through the same shaft that the men had come down. Each sandhog had his own role in the operation. There were muckers and blasters and signalmen and nippers; these last remained above the hole, connecting materials to the hoist. One veteran nipper, Brian Thorne, told me, “Everyone has a skill. My best skill is rigging. The guys downstairs want to know they can trust the guy that’s upstairs to put stuff over their head and not worry. If you hit someone, you can’t say, ‘Oops, I’m sorry.’ That person is dead. So you always have to be on top of your game.” Over the years, Ryan had risen from mucker to foreman, or “walking boss,” and now, as president of the sandhogs’ union, he is largely responsible for the whole gang. One colleague paid him the highest compliment you can give a sandhog: “No job is too dirty for Jimmy.” But as Ryan waded through the mud, his eyes peering out from under his hard hat, he seemed slightly removed. When younger sandhogs started to recall some near-death tale, he would arch an eyebrow and say, “You got some line,” or “You’re a real bullshit artist, aren’t you?” Unlike the other men, who tell stories about the tunnel the same way fishermen spin tales about the sea, Ryan rarely speaks of his time underground. When his shift is over, he heads home to Queens, where he often changes from his digger uniform into bright golf pants and plays the links, trying to propel the ball with his sore arms as he breathes in the smell of freshly cut grass. His wife told me, “He never says a word about the tunnel. I don’t know what he does down there.” Ryan is not, by the standards of the trade, a particularly superstitious man—he doesn’t carry a lucky crescent wrench or refuse to go down on Friday the thirteenth—but he maintains a constant watchfulness. And now, while the others told jokes, Ryan stood off by himself, quietly inspecting the walls to make sure there were no cracks that might cause chunks to shear off. After a while, he trudged to the end of the tunnel, where there was a pile of smoldering rubble. At lesser depths, sandhogs had been known to uncover jewelry, murder weapons, false teeth, a chest of coins, a Colonial dungeon. “In the sewer tunnels, you sometimes find rats,” Ryan said. “But this far down there are only sandhogs.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a plastic bag, which he carefully unwrapped, revealing not his lunch but a pack of Marlboros. He was the only one who, in spite of the stinging dust, seemed always to work with a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth—like the detectives in the old dime novels he likes to read. Some of the men propped a ten-foot ladder against the rubble and Ryan started to climb it, the embers of his cigarette leading the way. “Come on,” he said. When I reached the top, he pointed down the tunnel, as if to say, Go on, take a look. And I saw a dozen figures moving through the dusty haze. There was a cacophony: men slamming picks into the jagged rocks, drills probing new holes, buckets moving back and forth amid sparks that flickered like fireflies. After five months of blasting and mucking, of two shifts working sixteen hours a day, of engineers and contractors measuring the quickest route, they had advanced only two city blocks, from Twenty-ninth Street to Thirty-first Street. But as I peered from one end to the other at the ceiling of rock, dripping with water and bathed in sulfurous light, I could sense the first hint of a design. “So, what do you think of our cathedral?” Ryan asked. Later, as he was taking off his boots in the hog house, Ryan told me, “You know, my grandfather did the same thing.” He clapped his boots together. “He came to this country in 1922, from England. He started working first on the Holland Tunnel, but then they started the second water tunnel and he moved over to that. It was even bigger than Tunnel No. 1. It was pretty brutal. That much I can tell you.” In 1929, to keep pace with water consumption, which had increased by thirty-five million gallons per day since the first tunnel was built, the city began to construct Tunnel No. 2. Once again, another aqueduct was built, this one drawing water from the Delaware River. (It is still listed in the “Guinness Book of World Records” as the world’s longest water-supply tunnel.) Once again, villages were flooded and cemeteries were dug up. Nick Ryan, Jimmy’s grandfather, was tall, with a broad chest and red hair. Jimmy Ryan is said to resemble him, but Nick was more of “a wild man,” as his grandson puts it, with a distinct hint of understatement. He was known for his penchant for whiskey, which in those days was often consumed in the tunnel. He had little, if any, formal education. Most of the sandhogs of his generation were recently arrived immigrants, typically from Ireland, Italy, and the West Indies, who would show up for work in their only set of clothes and wrap plastic bags around their shoes. The Board of Water Supply would sometimes put them in camps, and try to teach their children to read and write; the townspeople occasionally complained of “immigrant hordes.” Black-and-white photographs taken at the time show Nick’s gang standing in the tunnel, only a few beams of timber supporting the crumbling rock over their heads. Instead of a hard hat, Nick Ryan wore something more like a cowboy hat. In a 1936 log from one of the earliest meetings of Local 147, to which Nick belonged, there is a warning to the men not to pack pistols. “Even during the Depression, most men wouldn’t take these jobs,” one miner who was in the union with Nick Ryan recalled in an oral history. “Nobody was going to go down and work with a shovel all day and then work in compressed air. We had some hard, hard people, and you had to be a rough commander. . . . They told you, Do it or get the hell out. So the only ones, as the insurance adjusters will tell you, that survived were the most fit.” Nick Ryan endured chest pains, broken limbs, bleeding sinuses, and caisson disease—the bends. Then, in 1937, with his family still in need of money, Nick Ryan took his eighteen-year-old son, Joe, down the shaft with him. “That’s how my father learned how to survive underground,” Jimmy Ryan recalled. “Years ago, it started as a father-son business,” a sandhog whose father worked side by side with Joe Ryan told me. “The fathers brought the sons in, then the brothers brought the brothers in, and the sons brought the cousins in. I don’t know how you word this, but no one ever asked you your pedigree if you came here. They didn’t care if you had a criminal record—as long as you worked you could stay in the hole.” Shorter and more compact than his father, Joe Ryan was known as Red. A ferociously driven and, to those who didn’t know him well, intimidating man, he carried the burden—and perhaps the anger—of someone who had given up a football scholarship at Wake Forest University to work underground, helping to support a father who was sometimes out too late to make it to work on time. After Nick Ryan died, in 1958, his son briefly ran a gas station. But before long he returned underground—to the place that he knew best. A section of the Catskill Aqueduct, 1910. The city seized twenty-five thousand acres for the system; even cemeteries were dug up. *Courtesy New York City D.E.P. Archive*{: .credit} Courtesy New York City D.E.P. Archive By the fifties, the city was already in frantic pursuit of more “pure and wholesome water.” This time, it was not simply demand from an exploding population, or even droughts, that provoked alarm. This time, it was something that few, if any, had ever contemplated. In 1954, unbeknownst to most residents of the city, several engineers went into a shaft to try to turn off the water supply in City Tunnel No. 1, to see if the tunnel needed repairs after being in operation for almost half a century. “Imagine your faucet after only ten years,” Christopher Ward, the D.E.P. commissioner, said. “These things had been pounded away at for decades.” At the bottom of the shaft, sticking out of the tunnel, was a long bronze stem with a rotating wheel at the end. It was supposed to control the six-foot-diameter valve inside the pipeline. But when the engineers started to turn the handle, using all their might, it began to tremble and crack. “There was too much pressure on it,” Ward said. “They were afraid if they turned it any more the whole fucking thing would break,” Richard Fitzsimmons, Jr., the business manager of the sandhogs’ union, said. After decades of building the world’s greatest water system, the city had stumbled across its weak point, a single flaw that had rendered an otherwise invincible body mortal. “It scared the bejeezus out of people,” Doug Greeley, an engineer in charge of the city’s water distribution, said. There was no effective way to shut off the water, no way to get inside and weld a crack, no way to know if a tunnel was about to burst. By the late sixties, officials had decided that something had to be done. “One of the original tunnels was seventy years old, and we were unable to repair any valves,” Ed Koch, who was a congressman at the time, recalled. In some cases, he said, “we didn’t even know where the valves were.” Koch, who later served three terms as mayor, added, “You can exist without food, but you can’t exist without water.” On a cold January day in 1970, the ground was officially broken for the third water tunnel, which would dwarf both of its predecessors. Designed to be constructed in four stages, it would extend sixty miles, from the reservoir in Yonkers through the Bronx and down to the southern tip of Manhattan, and then into Brooklyn and Queens. The project would include another underground aqueduct. More important, at the center of the entire system would be thirty-four specially designed valves that would be made not of bronze but of stainless steel, with shorter stems that could withstand greater force. (Most were manufactured in Japan, where city inspectors lived for two years to insure that they were made according to precise measurements.) All of the valves would be contained in a single centralized chamber, where they could be easily reached and turned off. Construction on the chamber began in 1970 and was not finished until 1998. Though the tunnel sections that will feed into the chamber have not yet been completed, this past spring the D.E.P. gave me a glimpse inside the vault—which is in the Bronx, not far from the sandhogs’ union hall. There is nothing above ground to indicate the vault’s existence except a small guard tower and a sealed door that leads into a grassy hillside. “Ordinarily, we’re not supposed to let anyone in,” Greeley told me, standing outside the door. Like many of “the pencils,” as the sandhogs call the engineers, Greeley is a fastidious man: he has a neatly trimmed mustache and was wearing a blue blazer and a tie. The main door, which he unlocked as if it were a safe, was constructed out of solid steel. “They built this place during the Cold War,” he said. “It’s supposed to withstand a ten-megaton nuclear bomb.” As he pressed his weight against the door, it gradually gave way, emitting a loud sigh. It was damp and cool inside; the corridor was made of concrete. After descending a flight of metal steps, we rode an elevator twenty-five stories down. As Greeley opened another thick door, he said, “Prepare to have your perception of the water supply permanently altered.” The vault resembled an airplane hangar; it extended more than two hundred yards, with a domed ceiling that was forty-one feet high and walls that were cloaked in condensation and algae. Lights hung from the top like crescent moons. Suspended twenty feet off the ground, one after the other, were the valves, or, rather, the pipes that contained them: seventeen thirty-five-ton steel cylinders with studded bolts that reached horizontally from one side of the forty-two-foot-wide vault to the other. Each cylinder contained two valves. A metal gangplank ran alongside them, and Greeley walked excitedly to the first cylinder, running his hand along the torpedo-like shell. “This way, if a tunnel develops a crack, we can shut it off from here,” he said. “Everything’s right at your fingertips.” If a valve broke, the cylinder could be lowered down to the bottom of the vault, and carried out on tracks. One piece, Greeley explained, could be removed without disrupting the rest of the system. The old tunnels had run in a straight line from the reservoirs into the city, but City Tunnel No. 3 was designed with various redundant loops (upper Manhattan has a loop; Brooklyn and Queens have a loop) that would pass through the chamber, so that parts of the city can be taken off-line without cutting the water supply entirely. Putting his hand on a small wheel that jutted out of the cylinder, Greeley said, “Here we can turn the valves on and off electronically or, if there’s a power outage, even manually. Of course, if you did it manually, you’d have to turn it twenty-nine thousand times, but if you had to you could get a couple of guys down here and crank it away.” It was cold in the chamber, and Greeley shuddered as he held out his hand to demonstrate another innovation. “They’re called butterfly valves,” he said of the sluices inside the cylinder. Unlike the old guillotine-like sluices, these gates rotated slowly into position. “That takes off the pressure and makes it easier to close,” he said, turning his hand clockwise. Though he had been in the vault dozens of times, he paused for a moment and looked out at the dozens of valves. Then he said, “Once the third water tunnel is finished, all the water in the city will flow like Zen.” In 1969, just before construction on the first stage of the third water tunnel began, Jimmy Ryan’s father took him below the streets. “When I was eighteen, he said, ‘Come with me,’ ” Jimmy Ryan recalled. “He was old school. You never asked what your father did. . . . Then they put us in this big bucket. I had no idea what to expect. It got darker and darker. My father told me to stay close and watch what he did. And that’s how I became a sandhog. I was born into it.” Jimmy Ryan became known as the Red-Headed Hippie. “That was the style back then,” Jimmy told me, somewhat defensively. “Even the old-timers had sideburns.” If he was slightly rebellious, he had his father’s unrelenting drive: he told me that he wanted to prove to his “old man” that he could do the job. Jimmy also had a forthrightness that made him popular among the men. “I can’t say a bad word about Jimmy,” Buddy Krausa, one of his old foremen, said, adding that Ryan was the type “who would never steal a crescent wrench.” After short stints on other jobs, the Ryans moved to the third water tunnel. On a summer day in 1982, Jimmy Ryan, Krausa, and a dozen or so other sandhogs went down a hole near Van Cortlandt Park, in the Bronx, where they were connecting a tunnel that would feed into the new valve chamber. The section had already been bored and they were in the final stages: building a steel form—it resembled the skeletal hull of a ship—around the contours of the carved-out earth, then pouring in concrete. To reach the cavern’s ceiling, Ryan had climbed atop eighteen feet of scaffolding. Around noon, some of the men stopped for lunch, but Ryan and a few others were still working when another sandhog, George Gluszak, who was a mile up the line, saw two twenty-ton agitator cars, which were used to mix concrete, racing down the tunnel. They had broken free from the brake car and were picking up speed along the steady decline. Some of the men tried to throw things on the tracks to slow them down, but it had no effect. Jimmy Ryan was drilling when the cars slammed into the scaffolding, catapulting him twenty-five feet through the air. “Everything turned upside down,” Ryan said. “I was knocked unconscious, and when I came to, all the lights had gone out. All I could hear were moans.” Krausa, who had not been injured, felt his way through the tangle of steel, rock, and machines. He could hear the other men calling out for help. Eventually, he found a flashlight and pointed the beam in front of him. “It was like nothing I’d ever seen,” he said. Sandwiched between two flatbed cars was Johnny Wademan, who had been drilling alongside Ryan. The two cars had collided under his shoulders and he was suspended in midair, his legs dangling, his arms outstretched. “He looked like Jesus Christ,” said Gluszak, who, along with his team, had run through the darkened tunnel to the scene. One of the men shouted that Wademan was dead. Ryan was bleeding profusely from his head. “Jimmy was hurt pretty bad,” Krausa said. “God bless him, he was still looking for people, trying to help them. I don’t know how he could walk.” In the corner, trapped between a concrete pipe and the wall, was a sandhog named Mike Butler. Most of his leg had been cut off, the crushed bone exposed; his foot, where the skin and tissue had been butterflied open, was pinned, so that he couldn’t move. “He was bleeding to death,” said Ryan. Someone pulled out a penknife and, guided only by the unsteady beam of a flashlight, tried to pry him loose. His heel wouldn’t budge. “I told him we were going to have to cut part of his foot off,” Gluszak said. “He said, ‘Do whatever you have to do.’ ” While one sandhog held a cigarette to Butler’s lips, another began to slice off his heel, severing what remained of the tendons and bone. “I took off my shirt, and wrapped his foot up in my undershirt and put a tourniquet around his leg,” Gluszak said. While Butler was being freed, the other men pulled Wademan down from where he had been suspended. As he hit the ground, they heard a groan. He was still alive. It had been one of the worst accidents to date in the third water tunnel. Butler later had the rest of his leg amputated. Wademan’s legs and hips were broken, six of his ribs were shattered, and he suffered severe head trauma. Ryan got a hundred and twenty stitches in his forehead and chin; he also had a broken knee, six fractured ribs, and two separated shoulders. It took him eight months to recuperate. When I asked him why he returned to work, he replied, “I’m a sandhog. That’s all I know.” He never went back to the scene of the accident, and he grew even quieter. “The accident took the life out of Jimmy,” another sandhog said. “The exuberance.” “They ain’t gonna do any psychological work on me,” Ryan told me. “They ain’t ever gonna penetrate this head.” Shortly after Ryan resumed working, he noticed that his father was having trouble breathing. “He’d walk thirty feet and have to stop,” Ryan said. Then Joe Ryan started to cough up black phlegm. When Joe visited the doctor, X-rays showed spots on his lungs. He had contracted silicosis, a disease caused by years of breathing dust. Jimmy Ryan said his father had always told him that sandhogs die unexpectedly. They die of cave-ins and blowouts. They die of explosions and electrocutions. They die of falling rocks and winches and icicles. They die of drowning. They die of decapitation and the bends. They die without legs, without arms. They die by plunging hundreds of feet or simply a few. They die quickly and, more often than not, painfully. In May, on Ascension Thursday, Ryan put on a neatly pressed tweed jacket and a tie and drove from his home, in Queens, to St. Barnabas Church in the Bronx for a service in honor of all those who had died in the third water tunnel. The stone church had stained-glass windows that could be opened, allowing in the unfiltered sunlight. Ryan sat toward the front, his jacket tight around his broad shoulders. Packed in the pews around him were Christopher Ward, the D.E.P. commissioner; Anthony DelVescovo, the contractor; and dozens of sandhogs and engineers. “Let us pray for all those who have been hurt or killed in construction of City Tunnel No. 3,” the priest intoned. “Lift them up,” a sandhog responded. “Lift them up.” Ryan knelt against the front of his pew as the priest read the names of the twenty-four men who had died in the tunnel. “Lord have mercy on them,” the priest said. When the service was over, Ryan and the others headed down the street to an Irish pub. “My father was one of the lucky ones,” he said. “He held on until 1999. That’s when the silicosis finally got him.” “I’m John Ryan. I think you met my father.” The young man was standing by a shaft for a tunnel on the corner of Thirty-sixth Street and First Avenue. Short, with compact arms, he looked more like his grandfather than his father. He was twenty-eight, and his face had yet to develop the hard etchings of a sandhog. It was broad and frank, with bright-green eyes; red hair poked out of the front of his hard hat. The other sandhogs called him “Jimmy’s kid,” but he had little of his dad’s reticence. “You never know what’s going on up there,” he said of his father, with a smile. “I’m more of a bullshit artist.” He looked up at the crane that was lowering materials down the hole. “I used to think my father was out of his mind. I was about eight years old when he got hurt. I still remember it. He didn’t want to stay in the hospital and came home in a wheelchair. That’s when I first realized what it meant to be a sandhog, and I said, ‘Christ, I ain’t ever gonna do that.’ ” He peered down the hole. “It’s in your blood, I guess.” Holding out his arms, he added, “We’ve probably got more muck in our veins than anything else.” “Nobody wants their kid to go into it,” Jimmy Ryan told me later. “You’ll always hope they’ll find some kind of pencil job.” “I grew up wanting to be a baseball player,” John Ryan said. “Then I dropped out of college, and one day my father came in the bar where I was working and said, ‘All right, mister, you want to bartend? Come with me.’ I’d never been in the hole before. I was scared. I won’t lie to you.” “I can only imagine what he was thinking,” Jimmy Ryan said. “We try to help each other.” John Ryan’s great-grandfather brought home only a few dollars a week from his work on the water tunnel; today, sandhogs earn as much as a hundred and twenty thousand dollars a year. Though many are descended from tramp miners, they now often emerge from the hog house in tailored suits, their hair perfectly combed, as if they were bankers or accountants. Chick Donohue, the head of the hog house, has a degree from the Kennedy School at Harvard and is well known in city politics. He wears his Harvard ring on one hand and his sandhogs’ union ring on the other. “That way, if I can’t outsmart ’em with the left, I hit ’em with the right,” he told me. Just as sandhogs have gradually transformed the city, the city has gradually transformed the sandhogs. Some now arrive at the hole in a Cadillac or a BMW. John Ryan, who is engaged to be married, is buying a Colonial house in Nassau County. “A lot of guys are drawn to the money,” he admitted. He paused. “And there’s the camaraderie. That’s a big part of it, too.” He paused again, as if still searching for the deepest reason, then added, “Hell, I like it down there.” After five years on the third water tunnel, John Ryan had risen to foreman. His current mission was to build the city’s newest “mole,” a two-hundred-and-thirty-ton drill that would be placed at his father’s site, on Tenth Avenue. Experimented with as early as the seventies, the mole was officially introduced in the water tunnels in 1992, and had become the sandhogs’ most critical instrument—comparable, in the world of tunnelling, to the invention of the printing press. In February, the latest mole was transported from New Jersey to Manhattan, in pieces weighing sixty to a hundred and thirty tons, on a flatbed truck; the payload was the largest ever to cross the George Washington Bridge. The components were then lowered into the Thirtieth Street hole by a special crane that could withstand the enormous weight. One day in February, after the mole had been assembled in the tight confines of the tunnel, John Ryan invited me to go down with him and see it. The pipeline was twelve and a half feet in diameter. The mole had already been driven nearly half a mile, and to reach the heading we had to ride a railroad car called a “man trip,” which rattled from side to side. Groundwater seeped out of the surrounding rock, splattering against the walls as we sped past. After about five minutes, we came to a sudden stop. In the distance, I could see a monstrous machine that looked more like a space shuttle than a drill. The mole’s hydraulic engines churned, and its blinking lights gleamed. “Come on,” Ryan said excitedly, walking toward it. “That’s only the trailing gear.” This gear—including a conveyor belt that carried out the crushed rock—took up most of the tunnel. A narrow gangplank had been built on the tunnel’s side. Occasionally, to pass one of the fifteen or so sandhogs, we had to turn sideways, pressing our faces against the damp rock. As we went deeper, the mole began to resemble a colossal organism: its giant cylindrical arms gripped the walls and pushed the machine’s mouth forward through the rock. In some compartments of the mole, engineers were peering at computer screens; the mole had lasers that registered the precise type of rock at the heading. A siren sounded, and the men began to run up and down the plank. “What’s happening?” I asked nervously. “Nothing,” Ryan said. “We’re just starting it up.” The mole coughed and sputtered and shook. The temperature had been twenty degrees at the surface, but the mole heated the tunnel air to eighty degrees, and some of the men began to strip off their layers. After walking seventy-five yards, we reached the front of the mole: a round shield with twenty-seven cutters, each weighing three hundred and twenty pounds, pressed against the rock face, obscuring it completely. The cutters, driven forward by hydraulic propulsion, spun ferociously and noisily, chipping away at the granite, which was then carried out on the conveyor belt and loaded into muck cars. Ryan, who had grown up listening to tales of his forebears, said it was hard to believe that “my great-grandfather had only a goddam muck stick”—sandhog slang for shovel. Indeed, until the mole was invented, tunnelling had changed only incrementally since the days of the Romans, who used fire and water to crack the rock and horses to carry it out. When a prototype of the mole was introduced in New York, in the seventies, many of the sandhogs feared it as much as caving rock. “It’s like that old story about John Henry,” Chick Donohue explained, recalling the fabled contest between man and machine after the invention of the steam drill. “Well, when they introduced the first mole over in Brooklyn, the cutters kept breaking, and the sandhogs would jump in with their shovels and picks. They knew they were competing for their jobs, and they were actually beating the mole! Of course, they then perfected the mole, and there was no contest.” The construction of the first water tunnel required no fewer than eighty men to drill and blast for at least a week in order to advance a hundred feet. The mole, with a fraction of the manpower, can tunnel that far in a day. Yet, even with the mole, the third water tunnel has already taken six times as long as either City Tunnel No. 1 or No. 2; some people think it won’t be completed, as scheduled, by 2020. “We should’ve been done with this thing twenty years ago,” Jimmy Ryan said. “But the city keeps fucking around.” Conditions above ground have proved almost as difficult as those below. After the initial phase of a billion-dollar contract to build the tunnel was awarded to a consortium of companies, costs began to exceed estimates by the millions. When the city balked at the rising costs, the companies sued and the work stalled. Then, in 1974, when the city went bankrupt, construction was halted altogether. In all, nearly a decade was lost, and in 1981, with work proceeding only piecemeal and the ever-growing demand for water forcing the old tunnels to carry sixty per cent more capacity than intended, city officials were so desperate that they pleaded with the federal government to fund the project. Meanwhile, charges began to surface that Tammany Hall-like machinations were contributing to the delays. The once vaunted Board of Water Supply, which oversaw the construction, had become a “Democratic patronage plum tree,” as one critic put it. Stanley M. Friedman, the Bronx Democratic power broker who was later convicted of racketeering, was given a lifetime position on the board, with a salary of twenty thousand dollars, as well as an office, a secretary, a chauffeured car. “When I came in as mayor, it was a lifetime job given to retiring politicians,” Koch told me. “They didn’t do anything.” The board was dismantled. But in 1986 the man in charge of supervising purchasing for the water tunnel at the D.E.P., Edward Nicastro, warned that contracts were still not being properly monitored. “You’d be amazed at how easy it is to steal in the system,” he told a reporter at the time. In recent years, the greatest delays seem to be caused not by efforts to defraud the public but by attempts to placate it. Where the old water board once plowed over communities, the D.E.P. is now impeded by them. In 1993, when it tried to sink a shaft on East Sixty-eighth Street, Councilman Charles Millard protested that his office had received calls from parents whose children were “finding it difficult to concentrate.” numby, or “not under my back yard,” movements sprang up. In 1994, after engineers had spent two years planning a new shaft site, residents in Jackson Heights held a protest, carrying signs that said, “don’t give us the shaft.” Engineers were forced to find a new location. “When we want to choose a shaft site, everyone says, ‘Oh, the water system is a miracle, but please find another place,’ ” Ward told me. “ ‘We’re building a co-op’—or hotel or park—‘there.’ ” A D.E.P. engineer and geologist, Scott Chesman, added, “Instead of taking seven years to finish, we’re on thirty years, and hardly any of it’s been done. It’s like the eighteen-hundreds again.” Indeed, for the first time, the historic Delaware Aqueduct—the eighty-four-mile underground pipeline that carries the water from reservoirs upstate down to Yonkers, where it connects to City Tunnels No. 1 and No. 2—has begun to crack. According to some D.E.P. reports, in 1995 the aqueduct was losing about five hundred million gallons a month from leaks, which were creating massive sinkholes in Ulster and Orange Counties; in 2000, the monthly loss sometimes exceeded a billion gallons. An investigation by Riverkeeper warned of a potential “collapse” of the aqueduct, which would cut off as much as eighty per cent of the water flowing into the city. In the spring of 2000, the D.E.P. decided to send a team of deep-sea divers down to do repairs on one of the original bronze valves in the Delaware Aqueduct, in the Dutchess County town of Chelsea, which had cracked, spewing a torrent of water through a hole the size of a quarter at eighty miles per hour. “For about two or three months, we built a mockup of the valve and a mockup of the bottom of the shaft,” said John McCarthy, the engineer who oversaw the project. “We took the crew and experimented in a tank of about fifty feet of water, without any light, trying to simulate the conditions.” After practicing for days, the engineers transported a diving bell and a decompression chamber to the leak site. Four divers, who were hired from the same company that had helped to salvage the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk after it sank in the Barents Sea in August, 2000, had to remain inside the decompression chamber for twenty-four hours, in order to adjust to the intense water pressure underground. The chamber was about the size of a van, only round. On the outside were valves and hoses and an air-lock door to send in food (mostly fluids and peanut butter) and to remove human waste. The pressure in the chamber was gradually brought to the same pressure as that of the water seven hundred feet underground. After breathing a mixture of ninety-eight per cent helium and two per cent oxygen for twenty-four hours, two of the divers crawled into a thirteen-foot diving bell that was attached to the top of the chamber. Once they had sealed themselves inside, the bell was lifted by a crane and lowered down the shaft that led into the aqueduct. There were only inches between the bell and the walls of the shaft. When the divers reached the bottom, one climbed out and swam toward the leak. (The other diver remained in the bell in case of an emergency.) He wore a wetsuit, a mask, and scuba equipment, and carried a small waterproof tool set. While struggling to stay in position against the pressure of the escaping water, he placed a brass plug in one of the holes, then sealed it with a clamp and an epoxy compound. Each shift lasted at least four hours, then the bell was lifted up and two other divers went down. “It was not for the faint of heart,” McCarthy said. The men spent ten days finishing the repairs, and fifteen more in the decompression chamber. Still, far greater leaks are suspected somewhere between the Rondout Reservoir, in the Catskills, and a reservoir in Putnam County. This June, the D.E.P. sent a custom-made two-million-dollar submarine through forty-five miles of the Delaware Aqueduct. (The job was deemed too dangerous for a human.) The eight-hundred-pound craft, which was nicknamed Persephone, took three hundred and fifty thousand photographs. “The sub looks like a torpedo with catfish antennas,” Commissioner Ward told me. “While a motor pushes it through, the antennas help it bounce back off the walls to stay within the middle of the tunnel.” The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, on Cape Cod, and the D.E.P. are now examining the pictures to evaluate the structural integrity of the pipeline. But even if the locations of the leaks are determined, and if engineers can then concoct some way to plug them, most D.E.P. officials I spoke with do not consider this section of the aqueduct the most vulnerable. They are more worried about pipelines closer to the city—in particular, Tunnels No. 1 and No. 2, which, because of their greater depth and buried valves, are far less accessible, even to a self-piloted submarine. Some sandhogs believe that the only thing preventing these sections from collapsing is the pressure of the water pushing against their walls. A former chief engineer on the water system, Martin Hauptman, has noted, “We see headlines in the streets frequently where a 24-inch water main breaks and the street’s flooded, basements are flooded, the subway is flooded, and people think that is a horrible situation. Failure of a tunnel is an entirely different situation. What bothers me most . . . is the element of time. You cannot buy time with a situation like that.” And there is now the additional threat of terrorism. Although the public’s attention has focussed on the danger of someone’s poisoning the water supply, officials believe that the system would likely dilute a toxin’s effects. The greater danger, they say, is that a terrorist might blow up one of the pipelines before the third water tunnel is up and running. “That’s the scary thing,” Ward said. Fitzsimmons, the sandhogs’ union leader, added, “If you attacked the right spots—I hate to say this, but it’s true—you could take out all of the water going into New York City.” On the morning I went down the hole with John Ryan, he told me, “My hope is that we can finish the third water tunnel, so my father will be able to see it completed.” The mole was boring into the rock. Several sandhogs had laid new tracks on the floor, pounding them into the rock with sledgehammers. “All right!” Ryan yelled. “Let’s check the cutter heads.” He looked up at me from under his hard hat. “You want to go?” he asked. “Where?” He pointed underneath the mole, where a small passageway led into the bowels of the machine. Two other sandhogs were already crawling in and, after a moment, I followed. First we had to crouch in a cavity no more than three feet by four feet. One of the sandhogs, who introduced himself as Peter, fumbled with the lamp on his hard hat. “Fucking thing’s busted,” he said. The other worker turned his light on, and I could see that the passage led to a five-foot-long corridor that connected to the head of the mole. “Whenever you’re ready, John,” Peter yelled to Ryan, who was outside the cavity, directing the operation. “You can roll the head.” We stayed in a crouch for several more minutes, watching the mole’s cutters rotate several degrees one way, then the other, until at last they came to rest. “This is the most dangerous part,” Peter said. He then lay on his stomach and stuck his hands straight out in front of him and began to squirm, feet first, through the narrow passage leading to the mole’s cutters. He slid through the mud and water, and I followed on my stomach. Soon, I was standing in mud and water up to my knees, staring at the giant metal blades. I tried to step away, but my back hit something hard: the head of the tunnel. We were sandwiched between the mole and the rock. “You just don’t want anything to move,” Peter said. As groundwater seeped from the ceiling, hitting the machine, puffs of steam filled the cavity. “Go ahead, touch it,” Peter said, pointing to one of the blades. I reached out and touched the edge: it was scalding hot, from friction. “You could fry an egg on it,” Peter said. The other sandhog squeezed into the crevice. Now the only wiggle room was above our heads. As the water crept up to our thighs, Peter craned his neck, inspecting the front of the tunnel to make sure the rock was sound. There was a series of grooved concentric circles where the blades had cut. “It looks like a dartboard, doesn’t it?” Peter said. “Like a tree,” the other sandhog said. They checked the blades to make sure they didn’t require replacement. I told them I thought I needed to leave. “Just a second more,” Peter said. The other sandhog exited first, followed by me, then Peter. When I saw John Ryan again, he looked at my muck-covered clothes, then clapped me cheerfully on the back. “Welcome to our fucking world,” he said. There was no man-trip car to take me back to the shaft, so I set out by myself, walking the length of the tunnel. “If you see a muck car coming,” Ryan told me, “just hang on to the pipes on the side of the tunnel.” A few minutes later, the noise from the mole faded, and the tunnel was empty and still. Though it extended as far as the eye could see, this tunnel was not even one-sixtieth the projected length of the third water tunnel; it was a mere one-thousandth of all the miles of water tunnels and pipelines and aqueducts combined. For the first time during my underground excursion, I had some sense of this city under the city—of what many engineers refer to as “the eighth wonder of the world.” After a while, a light flickered in the distance and I thought it was a muck car. As Ryan had instructed, I hung on to the pipes on the side of the tunnel. But it was only a sandhog come to escort me out. |
Another honorarium (Burning Man funded) project this year was the Kinetic Cab Company, where dozens of machines gathered and were available for rides around town. Here Captain Carl (right) pushes a giant wheeled machine across the playa. The latest stakeholder in the revitalization of San Francisco's mid-Market District is none other than Burning Man. San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee announced Wednesday that Burning Man/Black Rocks Arts Foundation LLC has agreed to sign a lease for a 19,000 square foot office at Sixth and Market Streets. That, on the heals of Twitter's lease at Ninth and Market Streets. Lee said the two will bring a synergy of the creative arts and innovative technology to the area. Burning Man 2009 in Pictures "Like Twitter, Burning Man embodies innovation and will lead to the creation of new jobs, a sense of community, and services to an underserved area," Lee said. Burning Man founder Larry Harvey is clearly on board with that idea. "We hope to collaborate with other new mid-Market immigrants and to find common cause with the community that is already here. Together, we can marshal a creativity that is unique to San Francisco," Harvey said. Burning Man 2010 in Pictures and Words The Market Street location will be Burning Man's official headquarters. Burning Man has already made its mark on the area with public art displays, with more to come. In addition to Burning Man and Twitter, Pearl’s Deluxe Burgers will also be a newcomer to the mid-Market District by summer. |
Why Few People Bike To and From Transit, and How We Can Change That Alta Planning + Design Blocked Unblock Follow Following Sep 11, 2017 Maybe you’d like to take the bus to work, but the walk to the bus stop is too long. Wouldn’t it be great if there were a way to get to the bus stop faster than walking, but without having to deal with the hassles of park-and-ride? Behold! — the humble bicycle. The bicycle could be the perfect combination with transit: faster than biking on its own, yet more flexible than transit alone — and, as a package, supporting healthier lifestyles and economies. Making it easier for people to combine bicycling and transit can improve access to jobs, contribute to healthier lifestyles, reduce personal and household transportation costs, and increase transportation choice. So why don’t more people bike to and from bus stops and rail stations? And how can we encourage combining bikes and transit to help solve transit’s first/last mile problem, bicycling’s limited range, and leverage the health and economic benefits associated with fewer single occupant vehicle trips? Those are a few of the questions the Alta team was charged with answering during our recent project with the Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC). ARC’s award-winning regional bicycle and pedestrian plan, Walk.Bike.Thrive!, outlines a vision for active transportation in the Atlanta region, including the role walking and bicycling plays in supporting transit, and vice-versa. Now and in the future, transit serves as the “spine” of the Atlanta region’s active transportation system for trips outside walking and bicycling access sheds. While working on Walk.Bike.Thrive!, we discovered a big opportunity: A third of the Atlanta region’s population lives within a 5-minute bike ride of a transit stop, while nearly two-thirds of the population works within a 5-minute bike ride of a transit stop. Very few people are biking to transit, however, due to multiple barriers. The obvious challenges are a lack of low-stress bicycling facilities along the corridors that connect to transit, and a lack of adequate bike parking at transit stops. But there are also psychological barriers: Mode switch logistics In a similar way that having to make a transfer may deter people from choosing transit for a given trip, having to switch from bicycling to a bus or train partway through a trip — including the mechanics associated with having to lock up one’s bike and/or bring it with them on a transit vehicle — are likely to be unfamiliar and may feel overly complex. In a similar way that having to make a transfer may deter people from choosing transit for a given trip, having to switch from bicycling to a bus or train partway through a trip — including the mechanics associated with having to lock up one’s bike and/or bring it with them on a transit vehicle — are likely to be unfamiliar and may feel overly complex. Annoyance thresholds In addition to traffic stress tolerance, people also have a threshold for the cumulative amount of discomfort and inconvenience they encounter when attempting to combine a bike trip with a transit trip. This includes seemingly minor details such as a lack of shade trees on a hot summer day, short sections of a route where pavement quality is poor, vehicles parked in bike lanes, a lack of curb ramps leading up to a bus stop or rail station, or bike parking placement that makes locking up one’s bike cumbersome. In addition to traffic stress tolerance, people also have a threshold for the cumulative amount of discomfort and inconvenience they encounter when attempting to combine a bike trip with a transit trip. This includes seemingly minor details such as a lack of shade trees on a hot summer day, short sections of a route where pavement quality is poor, vehicles parked in bike lanes, a lack of curb ramps leading up to a bus stop or rail station, or bike parking placement that makes locking up one’s bike cumbersome. Travel time budgets Depending on the trip distance, trip type, and travel time relative to driving, combining a bike trip with a transit trip may exceed the total amount of time people are willing to spend traveling to arrive at a given destination. Moreover, it’s unlikely that many people would consider combining a bike trip with a transit trip the “ideal” way to get anywhere. People that are willing to consider riding a bike to the bus or a train likely fall into three categories: 1. People who would ideally prefer to make a short walking trip to transit, but their origin/destination is too far from the stop for this to be practical. A significant portion of these potential users are likely “Interested but Concerned” about biking and require a low-stress bikeway to the transit stop (e.g. conventional bike lanes on a busy street). 2. People who would ideally prefer to bike for the full duration of their trip, but their trip is too long, too hilly, or the weather isn’t conducive to bicycling on that day. Many of these potential users may be enthusiastic and confident or interested but concerned bicyclists who would not consider leaving their bike locked at a station all day unless long-term bike parking offers them a secure option. 3. People who would ideally prefer to drive, but rely on transit to access the places they need to go on a daily basis. Neither transit nor bicycling may be this group’s first choice, but they may ride a bike to a transit stop because walking distances are unreasonably long, because they are too young to drive, or because car ownership is not economically viable or efficient for them. The focus for these users should be on providing safe access with minimal delay. Making bicycling to transit an attractive alternative to driving requires overcoming a significant set of physical and psychological barriers, and requires facilities to be held to a higher standard than is currently typical in the US. This means focusing on providing a world-class user experience, with direct, low-stress bikeways that minimize delay while meeting the needs of people of all ages and abilities. It also means providing convenient, secure bike parking at high-ridership bus stops, park and ride lots, and rail stations. (And yes, a lot of it also has to do with land use patterns/policy, but that’s a whole ‘nother blog post!) Here are some of the solutions Alta documented for the Atlanta Regional Commission: 1. Mitigate bike-bus conflicts with raised/floating boarding islands |
The International Cat Association (TICA) is considered the world's largest genetic cat registry. Originally a North American organization, it now has a worldwide presence. The organization has a genetic registry for pedigreed and household pet cats and is one of the world's largest sanctioning bodies for cat shows. Activities [ edit ] TICA's activities include:[1] encouraging its members to be owners, lovers and breeders of cats who work together to promote the preservation of pedigreed cats and the health and welfare of domestic cats maintaining a certified pedigree registry providing cat shows which promote both pedigreed and non-pedigreed cats promoting positive relations between breeders in the USA and other countries setting up a foundation to encourage research on feline health issues and to provide lists of resource materials on health issues to its members TICA cat shows [ edit ] TICA administers the rules for the licensing and management of hundreds of cat shows annually in 104 countries.[2] The TICA show season runs from May 1 to April 30 of a given year at which point all Regional and International Award points are reset. All TICA shows are open to the public. A TICA cat show is a number of smaller shows all running at the same time in various “rings” throughout the show hall. Each ring is run by a licensed TICA judge who evaluates each cat based on a written standard that describes the ideal for each particular breed.[3] Household pets and household pet kittens (cats of random or unknown breeding, or pedigree cats that for one reason or another cannot show in championship classes), are not judged against a standard but instead are evaluated on overall condition, health, appearance and personality.[4] Classes [ edit ] TICA recognizes cats for competition in 8 classes.[5] Each class is judged separately. For example, alters are not judged against kittens. Each cat entered in the show is assigned an identifying number based on its class and coat length so that exhibitors know when their cats are needed in a ring. Class Description Numbers Kittens Kittens of breeds and colors recognized by TICA for championship status. Kittens must be between 4 months and 7 months old on the day of the show. Kittens may be whole or spayed/neutered. Longhair: 1-50 Shorthair: 51-100 Championship Adult cats of breeds and colors recognized by TICA for championship status. Cats must be 8 months of age or older on the day of the show. In this class the cats can not be spayed or neutered. Longhair: 101-200 Shorthair: 201-300 Alters Adult spayed or neutered cats of breeds and colors recognized by TICA for championship status. Alters must be 8 months of age or older on the day of the show. Longhair: 301-350 Shorthair: 351-400 Household Pet Kittens Non-pedigree kittens or pedigree kittens that can not be shown in kitten class for some reason. Household Pet Kittens (HHP Kittens) must be between 4 months and 7 months old on the day of the show. HHP Kittens may be whole or spayed/neutered. Longhair Kittens & Adults: 401-450 Household Pet Adults Non-pedigree cats or pedigree cats that can not be shown in an adult class for some reason. Household Pets (HHPs) must be 8 months old or older on the day of the show and must be spayed or neutered Shorthair Kittens & Adults: 451-500 Preliminary New Breed This is a special class for the evaluation of new breeds. The intent of the new breed classes is the eventual recognition of these breeds for championship competition. Preliminary New Breed is for those breeds who are at the beginning of this process. 501-550 Advanced New Breed This is a special class for the evaluation of new breeds. The intent of the new breed classes is the eventual recognition of these breeds for championship competition. Advanced New Breed is for those breeds who have demonstrated merit to advance in the program. 551-600 New Traits This class is for the evaluation of new traits, such as new colors or hair lengths of existing recognized breeds where these traits are not currently recognized for championship competition. The intent of New Traits class is the eventual recognition of these traits for championship competition. 601-650 In the rare instance where there are more cats than fit in the range of numbers, the next class starts with the first available number. For example, if there are 55 longhair kittens, then those kittens are 1-55, the shorthair kittens would start at 56. Rings [ edit ] Judging ring [ edit ] A typical judging ring is usually made up of an L or U shaped arrangement of cages, with the judge’s table in the center. Three people normally work in each judging ring: the judge, clerk and steward.[6] All TICA judges are trained and licensed to thoroughly evaluate each breed of cat in order of how well they represent their individual breed standard. The clerk acts as an executive assistant to the judge. They are responsible for the accuracy of all records of the ring. Each clerk keeps a marked catalog of the results of the ring and validates that what the judge writes in their own records is how the awards were presented in their evaluation to the audience.[7] A steward helps keeps the cages clean and disinfected in between cats in order to prevent illnesses from spreading. Types of rings [ edit ] There are two types of judging rings at TICA shows, Allbreed and Specialty. Allbreed rings will have all longhair cats and shorthair cats within each class judged together in competition with one another. In a Specialty ring, longhair cats within each class are only judged against longhair cats and shorthair cats are only judged against shorthair cats. Regardless of the ring type, each judge evaluates every cat entered in the show. Process [ edit ] A TICA judge evaluates a 2-year-old Birman Alter at a show in Albuquerque, NM The cat show competition is structured like a pyramid. First, all of the entries are divided into their respective classes.[8] Within each of these classes, cats are called to the judging ring according to breed, division and color/pattern.[9] The judge handles each cat placed in the judging ring. Each cat is taken from their cage, placed on the judging table and evaluated against the written standard for the breed. Some judges will use toys to get a better look at a cat’s eye shape, ear size and placement and overall balance. Although some associations make a cat’s title known, the only information provided to a TICA judge about each cat is its: breed, color, sex and age. The judge has no way of knowing if it is the cat’s first show or how it has performed in other rings. Judging pyramid [ edit ] After the judge is done evaluating each cat in a breed group, they will hang a colored ribbons on the cat's cages to award Best of Color and Division. TICA does not have Best of Breed ribbons but the judge will announce their choices and also note their selections in the Judge's Book. The clerk will also write down each of these selections for the record.[2] Place Color Division Best Blue Black 2nd Red Purple 3rd Yellow Orange 4th Green - 5th White - TICA judges narrow down their top cats by deciding Best of Color, Division and Breed out of all the competing cats. Best of Color: The judge will first award the best of color through the 5th Best of Color for each breed. For example, if seven blue British Shorthairs are competing; the judge will select and rank five of the seven. The cat is judged against the whole breed standard, not just color. Out of the seven British Shorthairs competing they are judged against how the fulfill the full British Shorthair standard. “Best of Color” does not necessarily mean that the cat has the best blue coat. All Household Pets and Household Pet Kittens will receive a Best of Color award regardless of how many cats of a particular color there are. Best of Division: From the color winners, the judge will select a Best, Second and Third Best of Division. For example, the seven blue British Shorthairs belong to the Traditional Solid Division. Other solid colored British Shorthairs (white, lilac, cream) would also be judged in the Solid Division. Tabbies would be judged in the tabby division and so forth. Household Pet Kittens do not receive division awards. Best of Breed: Once a judge has selected their First through Third of Division cats, they will select Best, Second and Third Best of Breed from all of the breed’s divisions. Household Pet and Household Pet Kittens do not receive breed awards. Finals [ edit ] After the judge has seen all of the cats in a particular class, they decide on their best exhibits of each breed and then ask for them to be returned to the ring for a final. Finals are essentially a "Best in Show" for that particular ring. Earlier placements are taken into consideration during finals as a cat that came in Second of Breed cannot place higher than a cat who was Best of Breed and so forth. The judge will then explain their placings – between Top 5 and 10 depending on how many cats are competing. If there are 20 cats or less competing in one class the judge will award a Top 5, 21 cats are a Top 6, and so on, up to 25 cats or more which awards a Top 10. The only exception to this rule is the Household Pet and Household Pet Kitten class where a maximum of 10 places are awarded regardless of the number of cats in competition. So If only 8 Household Pet Kittens/Cats are competing the judge will award 8 placements. Scoring [ edit ] Points [ edit ] All points earned are tracked by the TICA Executive Office in Harlingen, Texas. Points are awarded for placing in Color, Division and for each final awarded. Points are calculated ring-by-ring and tracked from the Judge’s Book, a copy of which is sent to the Executive Office after a show. Title points start accumulating with a cat's first adult show. Any balance of points from a previous title will be applied toward the next title. If a Championship Cat is altered it can keep the titles and points won as a whole cat or they can choose to start over. Points are assigned best on color and division awarded in each ring. Points are not earned for breed placements.[10] Color and division [ edit ] Color Division Points Best Best 25 2nd 2nd 20 3rd 3rd 15 4th - 10 5th - 5 Finals [ edit ] Points are also assigned based on the cat's placement in a final. The scores are different between Allbreed and Specialty rings. Place Allbreed Points Specialty Points Best 200 150 2nd 190 140 3rd 180 130 4th 170 120 5th 160 110 6th 150 100 7th 170 90 8th 130 80 9th 120 70 10th 110 60 For example, if a Chocolate Spotted Ocicat were to be awarded Best of Color and Best of Division, he would earn 50 points. First of color and second of division, would be 45 points and so on. If that same Ocicat were awarded Best Allbreed in a final, they would also earn 200 points on top of the 50 points for Color and Division. Titles [ edit ] Title points are computed by using the final award points plus Best of Color and Best of Division Points. Cats also need to earn a certain number of finals to achieve each title. With the exception of Championship Kittens and Household Pet Kittens, each class has its own set of titles although they are tiered equally and the requirements to reach them do not change. All cats begin their show career as a Novice (NOV), once a show is scored and titles are conferred by the Executive Office, the cat can add the title abbreviation to their registration. Cats registered in isolated areas which do not see as many shows as other areas (as in Alaska) only require half the point values to achieve the titles and a lower number of finals. Championship Alter Household Pet Points Needed Plus Isolated Area Champion (CH) Champion Alter (CHA) Master (MS) 300 Finals from 4 different judges, one must be AB Finals from 2 different judges Grand Champion (GRC) Grand Champion Alter (GCA) Grand Master (GRM) 1000 6 finals from 4 different judges, 3 in top 5 SP or top 10 AB 3 finals from 2 different judges, 1 in top 5 SP or top 10 AB Double Grand Champion (DGC) Double Grand Champion Alter (DGCA) Double Grand Master (DGM) 2000 1 final in top 5 SP or top 10 AB as GRC/GRCA/GRM 1 final in top 5 SP or top 10 AB as GRC/GRCA/GRM Triple Grand Champion (TGC) Triple Grand Champion Alter (TGCA) Triple Grand Master (TGM) 3000 1 final in top 5 SP or top 10 AB as a DGC/DGCA/DGM 1 final in top 5 SP or top 10 AB as a DGC/DGCA/DGM Quadruple Grand Champion (QGC) Quadruple Grand Champion Alter (QGCA) Quadruple Grand Master (QGM) 4000 1 final in top 5 SP or top 10 AB as a TRC/TGCA/TGM 1 final in top 5 SP or top 10 AB as a TRC/TGCA/TGM Supreme Grand Champion (SGC) Supreme Grand Champion Alter (SGCA) Supreme Grand Master (SGM) 6000 1 BEST as a QGC/QGCA/QGM 1 BEST as a QGC/QGCA/QGM Note: The Supreme title cannot be earned on the same day of the show as the Quadruple Title Regional and International Awards [ edit ] All TICA-registered kittens, cats, alters, HHPs and HHP Kittens can compete for Regional and International Awards during the show year. For adult cats, the Top 50 rings are used in computing season scores. For all kittens the top 30 rings are used. If a cat reaches the ring cap, the lowest score will be dropped in favor of a higher score. Points are computed by using the final award points PLUS cats defeated. Color and Division points are not used for scoring Regional and International Points. Regional and international points are computed by using the final award points plus cats defeated. For example, if there were 58 cats competing and your cat got 6th place in an Allbreed final the cat would earn 202 points, 150 (6th place) + 52 (as 5 cats placed higher and you placed higher than 52 of them) = 202 points towards Regional and International Awards. The same rules would apply in a specialty ring using the SP Ring finals chart. Award ceremonies [ edit ] The highest scoring cats, kittens, alters, household pet kittens and household pets are honored with Regional and International awards. Regional awards are presented at an award banquet hosted by each of the TICA regions. International Awards are presented at the Annual Convention and Awards Banquet on Labor Day weekend. Each region takes turns hosting the Annual Convention. The Annual has previously been hosted in Bellevue, Washington,[11] Worcester, Massachusetts,[12] Columbus, Ohio, and Salzburg, Austria. Also presented at the banquet are the Best of Breed Cats for the show season. Recognized breeds [ edit ] As the world's largest genetic registry of pedigreed cats, TICA currently recognizes seventy-one breeds of cats for championship competition. In addition, the number of breeds can change as new breeds are developed.[13] Listed in alphabetical order by breed, as of 2015:[14] Championship breeds [ edit ] Breeds of cats that have been accepted for championship and are recognized as being eligible to compete in TICA sanctioned shows and eligible for appropriate titles and/or computation of Annual Awards. These cats must be eight months of age or more and may be male, female, neuter or spay. Pedigreed kittens (under eight months of age) do not earn titles, but are eligible to compete in TICA sanctioned shows and may earn points towards Annual Awards. Advanced new breeds [ edit ] The second level of the Championship Advancement Class Program. These breeds are eligible to be shown in TICA sanctioned shows but do not earn titles or points towards Annual Awards and must follow specific rules to be eligible for championship status. Preliminary new breeds [ edit ] The beginning level of the Championship Advancement Class Program. These breeds are eligible to be shown in TICA sanctioned shows but do not earn titles or points towards Annual Awards and must follow specific rules to be eligible for the next step in achieving championship status. M - Minskin Registration only [ edit ] TICA accepts cats for registration only. Under this status the association agrees to provide registration facilities for development of the breed in question. There is no guarantee that TICA will accept the breed for advancement.[17] Non-championship breeds [ edit ] This class consists of Household Pets and Household Pet Kittens. Household pets earn titles comparable to Championship cats and are eligible to compete in TICA sanctioned shows and may earn points towards Annual Awards. Household pet kittens do not earn titles, but are eligible to compete in TICA sanctioned shows and may earn points towards Annual Awards. Experimental breeds [ edit ] The Experimental Record is for tracking the parentage of cats not yet recognized in TICA for the Stud Book or Foundation Registries. Tracking of these proposed breeds will provide a precise chronicle of the proposed breed's progress and development. Records will include analysis of any genetic problems inherent in a particular breeding program thus proving or disproving its future acceptance as a viable, healthy breed. Regions [ edit ] TICA is divided into of 14 regions. Regions are grouped together geographically.[21] Americas [ edit ] Great Lakes [22] - Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Manitoba, Canada, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Nunavut Canada, Ohio, Saskatchewan Canada, South Dakota, Wisconsin - Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Manitoba, Canada, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Nunavut Canada, Ohio, Saskatchewan Canada, South Dakota, Wisconsin Mid Atlantic [23] - Delaware, District Of Columbia, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia - Delaware, District Of Columbia, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia Mid Pacific [24] - Northern California, Northern Nevada, Utah - Northern California, Northern Nevada, Utah Northeast [25] - APO, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Brunswick Canada, New Hampshire, New York, Newfoundland Canada, Nova Scotia Canada, Ontario Canada, Prince Edward Island Canada, Quebec, Rhode Island, Vermont - APO, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Brunswick Canada, New Hampshire, New York, Newfoundland Canada, Nova Scotia Canada, Ontario Canada, Prince Edward Island Canada, Quebec, Rhode Island, Vermont Northwest [26] - Alaska, Alberta Canada, British Columbia Canada, Idaho, Montana, N W Territory Canada, Oregon, Washington, Wyoming, Yukon - Alaska, Alberta Canada, British Columbia Canada, Idaho, Montana, N W Territory Canada, Oregon, Washington, Wyoming, Yukon South America [27] - Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela - Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela South Central [28] - Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, Louisiana, Mexico, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas - Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, Louisiana, Mexico, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas Southeast [29] - Alabama, Bermuda, Florida, Georgia, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Mississippi, North Carolina, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Tennessee, Us Virgin Islands - Alabama, Bermuda, Florida, Georgia, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Mississippi, North Carolina, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Tennessee, Us Virgin Islands Southwest[30] - Arizona, Hawaii, Southern California, Southern Nevada Asia [ edit ] Japan, North Korea, South Korea[31] Europe [ edit ] Northern Europe [32] - Belgium, Belarus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Russia, Sweden, The Netherlands (Holland), Ukraine - Belgium, Belarus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Russia, Sweden, The Netherlands (Holland), Ukraine Southern Europe [33] - Albania, Austria, Bosnia-Herzogovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, France, Gibraltar, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Kuwait, Macedonia, Malta, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, UAE - Albania, Austria, Bosnia-Herzogovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, France, Gibraltar, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Kuwait, Macedonia, Malta, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, UAE Western Europe[34] - Channel Islands, England, Iceland, Ireland, Isle Of Mann, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales International [ edit ] Australia, Brunei Darussalam, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, Taiwan, Thailand.[35] TICA Trend [ edit ] The International Cat Association publishes the TICA Trend, an official bi-monthly magazine that is distributed to the association's members as part of their membership.[36] The Trend contains current TICA news, a calendar of upcoming shows, and articles on cat health and care, breeding and showing. The magazine also spotlights cats that have earned titles at shows. The Trend also contains board of director meeting minutes, financial reports for each region, and a list of all licensed and trainee clerks and judges. Judith Milling is the current editor of the Trend. |
Image copyright AFP Image caption Nutella is commonly found in French households A French court has stopped parents from naming their baby girl Nutella after the hazelnut spread, ruling that it would make her the target of derision. The judge ordered that the child be called Ella instead. He said in his ruling that the name Nutella was the trade name of a spread that is commonplace in Gallic homes. "And it is contrary to the child's interest to have a name that can only lead to teasing or disparaging thoughts," he pronounced. French parents are usually free to choose the names of their children, but local prosecutors are empowered to report what they deem to be unsuitable names to a family court. The parents in the case on Monday did not attend the court hearing, so the judge decided in their absence that Ella was a more appropriate name. There have been several cases involving children's names in France since 1993, when parents were finally given the freedom to name their children as they pleased, including: A couple who wanted to call their daughter Fraise (Strawberry) which a judge also ruled could result in the child being teased. The baby instead was renamed Fraisine, a name popular in the 19th century A father who took legal action to try to stop French car makers Renault from using the same name as his daughter, Zoe Renault. Cedric Renault argued that if Renault named car model Zoe it would make his daughter's life a "nightmare" lain and Sophia Renaud in 1999 fended off legal action to prevent them from naming their daughter Megane, even though local authorities said it sounded too much like a car Your name is not allowed Iceland: Elvis ( yes ); Carolina ( no ) Elvis ( ); Carolina ( ) New Zealand : Number 16 Bus Shelter ( yes ); Yeah Detroit ( no ) : Number 16 Bus Shelter ( ); Yeah Detroit ( ) Germany : Legolas ( yes ); Matti ( no ) : Legolas ( ); Matti ( ) Sweden : Metallica ( yes ); Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116 ( no ) : Metallica ( ); Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116 ( ) Japan : Akuma (means Devil) - ( no ) : Akuma (means Devil) - ( ) Portugal : Mona Lisa (no) : Mona Lisa (no) India: Lenin, Stalin, Brezhnev and Khrushchev (yes) Why do some countries regulate baby names? |
A key component of being a movie fan in the year 2016 is learning to shrug off remakes of your favorite movies and learn to live with the fact that bonafide classics are always going to get dusted off by studios hoping to capitalize on a familiar title. Remakes are going to happen. History has shown most of ’em to stink. Their presence has never erased the original from existence. The scales balance. And yet, there’s something undeniably irritating about someone remaking An American Werewolf in London, one of the greatest horror movies of all time and the crown jewel of writer/director John Landis‘ career. It’s a near-perfect movie that just-so-happens to have a famous title. This was inevitable. The big twist here is that Max Landis, John Landis’ son, has jumped on board the remake as a writer and director. The Hollywood Reporter broke the news of Landis’ involvement in the remake, but rumblings of Max Landis being involved in a remake of his father’s classic first emerged in August when the Chronicle and Victor Frankenstein screenwriter starting dropping some not-so-subtle hints about a future project on Twitter. However, he ended up backtracking, telling various outlets (including /Film) that he was not involved in the project. @slashfilm I'd say or what — Max Landis (@Uptomyknees) August 18, 2016 Ah, okay. Suuure. While Landis is a prolific screenwriter (he’s sold far more screenplays than he’s seen produced), the An American Werewolf in London remake would be his sophomore feature as a director, following last year’s Me Him Her. THR reports that The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman and David Alpert will serve as producers. Landis has proven himself to be a divisive presence amongst movie fans, having written good movies and bad movies while taking his social media presence very, very seriously. It’s enough for some people to have an immediate knee-jerk reaction to him being involved in any film, let alone a remake of an oft-imitated, never-toped genre classic that found the perfect balance between grim humor and gruesome horror while breaking ground with its astonishing practical make-up and creature effects (the great Rick Baker won the first-ever Best Make-Up Oscar for his work on the film). It’s a great freakin’ movie, guys. If you’ve seen it, you don’t need me to tell you that. An American Werewolf in London is a film that carries a certain amount of baggage and Max Landis, being the son of the man who made the original, surely knows this more than anyone else. If this piece of movie news was the plot point in a Hollywood satire, we would start waiting for the scene where father and son have angry confrontation about legacies and what-not. In any case, a remake surely can’t be worse than An American Werewolf in Paris, the ill-conceived 1997 sequel. These are still early days for the new An American Werewolf in London and anything can happen between now and whenever (or if) it gets made. In the meantime, Landis’ next screenplay, Bright, is currently being filmed for a 2017 release, with David Ayer behind the camera and Will Smith starring. |
This paper considers three versions of the claim that society doesn’t existence in order to investigate the problem of the idea of the social in social media. It identifies a convergence between the claims that society doesn’t exist and the social media we have. Yet it notes a disjunction between the media we have and the arguments of net critics and activists who say the problem is centralization and that what we need is individual control. Against this position, the paper argues for the relation between dispersion and centralization and the political potential manifest in centralization insofar as it makes apparent the social relations between people at the core of production. Contents Introduction Three claims for the non–existence of society If society doesn’t exist, what would social media look like? Tactics and critique From concentration to dispersion and back The social substance Introduction Over roughly five years, eons in Internet time, the term “social media” has become ubiquitous. Taking the place of the contestation and uncertainty over “new media,” “digital media,” “networked media,” “personal media,” “participatory media,” and even “tactical media,” “social media” has effectively hegemonized the field, not only producing a generation unaware of pre–Facebook and pre–Twitter connectivities, but also reformatting prior digital experiments as so many failures or advances on the way to mediated sociality. Perhaps most indicative of the theoretical dilemma social media poses: there is general, assumed agreement on what social media is even as there is significant doubt as to whether society exists. Three claims for the non–existence of society For the last 30 or 40 years, society has been said not to exist. The claim appears in at least three versions. The neoliberal version of the claim that society doesn’t exist was voiced most famously by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. In a 1987 interview with Douglas Keay published in Women’s Own following her third term win, Thatcher emphasized personal responsibility and hard work [1]. Wanting and working to get more money, she said, was “the great driving engine, the driving force of life.” Against basic principles of social welfare, she argued that it was not the government’s role to look after the misfortunate; it wasn’t society’s fault that they were homeless, sick, or unemployed. “There is no such thing as society.” Rather, “there are individual men and women and there are families.” The neoliberal version of the claim that society doesn’t exist, then, emphasizes individuals and families. Even when churches are acknowledged, they are treated more as sites for the individual practice of faith than they are as social forces. The claim that there is no such thing as society, moreover, is raised critically. It is part of the ideological justification for the attack on the welfare state as a social solution to the social problems inevitably accompanying capitalist markets. Neoliberalism says that the idea that society can deal collectively with common concerns is an illusion. The reality is that it’s every man for himself. People are first and foremost individuals. A second version of the idea that society doesn’t exist is the network version. The network version appears in a variety of guises in contemporary social and media theory, the most prominent of which is Bruno Latour’s actor–network theory. He writes, “It is no longer clear whether there exists relations that are specific enough to be called ‘social’ and that could be grouped together in making up a special domain that could function as ‘a society’.” [2] Starting from the position that there is no such thing as society, Latour advocates a sociology that can trace the actions through which things are assembled into associations [3]. Groups form and un–form; they are groupings of previously disparate elements rather than fixed or constant collectivities. The methodology Latour proposes for critical sociology also manifests itself as a solution: the non–existence of society can be fixed with the proper technologies. If we attend to the ways collectivities are assembled, or if we ensure that they have the right techniques and technologies, procedures and processes through which to connect, then we can put together social moments and political issues (Marres, 2005). To be sure, these moments and issues are always disruptable, but that is both liberating and unavoidable. A third version of the claim that society doesn’t exist can be called the radical democratic or post–Marxist version. In Hegemony and socialist strategy (1985), Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe write: ... we must begin by renouncing the conception of ‘society’ as founding totality of its partial processes. We must, therefore, consider the openness of the social as the constitutive ground or ‘negative essence’ of the existing, and the diverse ‘social orders’ as precarious and ultimately failed attempts to domesticate the field of differences. Accordingly, the multiformity of the social cannot be apprehended through a system of mediations, or the social order be understood as an underlying principle. There is no sutured space peculiar to ‘society’, since the social itself has no essence. [4] Society doesn’t exist. Conflicts, forces, power, struggles, competition, and oppression, however, do. “Social orders” attempt to suppress, evade, and “domesticate,” these processes, making them appear as ruptures of a whole rather than as contingent relations among diverse and antagonistic elements. The primary difference between the network and the radical democratic version of the claim for the non–existence of society is that the network version thinks that objects (things) exist and considers their creative, combinatory action, their agency, as a primary associative force. The radical democratic version pays less attention to things, emphasizing instead a variety of uniting and dividing forces. What do these three versions of the idea that society doesn’t exist have in common? First, they are from the same basic historical period, the period of the end of the welfare state and the rise of neoliberalism. Second, they all reject the idea of an organic social whole or grounded totality; since society doesn’t exist there is no need for a conceptual account of its ground or basis. Third, and relatedly, they reject notions of natural hierarchies, which would only make sense in a relatively fixed setting. It follows, fourth, that they also reject the idea that there is or could be some central myth, theme, story, or authority that gives structure to society. Rather, there are mutually productive entities (individual persons and objects) and forces. If society doesn’t exist, what would social media look like? If there is something right or true about any of these accounts of society and the sense in which it doesn’t exist, what would we expect social media to look like? The neoliberal version replaces the idea of society with the claim that there are individual men and women and there are families. These men and women are responsible for themselves. They are motivated by money in a competitive, capitalist environment. We can imagine, then, that they are concerned with jobs, maybe with finance, with security, and likely with finding mates and making families that can take care of them with they are old or infirm. We could also expect that these individuals might try to find ways to measure themselves and others so that they can determine who is the most successful, the most powerful. Such knowledge could conceivably help them in the job market as well as let them know who to pursue as a mate (Foucault, 2008). We might also expect that people would deal with the pressures of competition by forming alliances and building networks (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2005). Individual competitors might see it as in their self–interest to combine, so they would probably look for ways to do this easily and efficiently. They would want to know what others are doing in order to keep up with or even get ahead of their competition. They might also want relief from the loneliness of temporary work on short–term contracts, desiring connection to others insofar as they work from home or shift from office to office. Their social lives might be increasingly screen–based since their preoccupation with making money and getting ahead might estrange them from more community–based activities. In short, if the neoliberal claim that society doesn’t exist is true, we would expect a social media tailored to individualism, competition, alliance, entertainment, and pro–creation. We would expect it to be concerned with individual interests — privacy, security, property — much in the way that companies and entrepreneurs are always trying to protect their advantages. If the actor network version of the non–existence of society is true then we would expect social media to be focused on making, on invention. Insofar as the problem of politics is building issues and enabling association, we would expect ongoing innovation in technologies that facilitate collaboration. We might imagine more apps that let people share — the content would be less important than the fact of sharing. Overall, we would expect enthusiasm with respect to the activity of associating and relatively less concern with the content, substance, or purpose of association. The social media we would expect if the radical democratic version is true would be basically the same as what we get from the actor network version — a tumultuous media environment. The primary difference would be that whereas the former delights in making, the latter delights in contestation. So we would imagine people designing and using media in order to build identities, coalitions, and alliances. We would imagine media as a terrain of struggle over these identities. And we would expect unceasing turbulence with respect to contents, uses, applications, platforms, and protocols, especially insofar as any sedimentation or cohesion establishes the hegemony of one group or outlook, diminishing the potential of the others (Jordan, 2007). Generally, then, the three accounts of the non–existence of society would lead us to expect a media environment pretty much like what we have. To be sure, we might be surprised that a common protocol TCP/IP was possible at all. But for the most part the Internets we have, our different devices, uses, and apps, are basically what we would expect. If society doesn’t exist, we would expect social media to correspond in some way to this non–existence — to be individualistic, competitive, fluid, contested, and turbulent. We would expect emergent hierarchies, in groups and out groups, multiple opportunities for individuation and individual self–aggrandizement. To be clear, I am not arguing that the media we have reflects the fact that society doesn’t exist. I am not making a simple “reflection” argument. Rather, the argument I am making (so far) is about mutual constitution: this is the media that “we” as disparate, unequal, competitive individuals would build and use. Tactics and critique There is a convergence, then, between the claims that society doesn’t exist and the social media we have. Yet there is a disjunction between the media we have and arguments that flow through critical media theory and tactical media activism. In these circles, we hear that the problem is centralization and that what we need is individual control, individual autonomy, more privacy, better security, more choices, and more options [5]. We hear these points made in the language of critique, even radical critique, as if they were not repeating the dominant ideology of individualism. The presumption seems to be that egalitarian emancipation depends on independence from centralized structures of communication and power. It seems to be, in other words, that centralization is a (if not the) crucial barrier to more just and responsive political arrangements. More bluntly put, the same mantras of concern that animated John Perry Barlow and the cyber–libertarians on the information frontier and then the California techno–utopians turned Wired champions of the so–called new economy are echoed today. The alternatives and their positive/negative valences are the same: decentralized, distributed, bottom up, contingent, and individual are better than centralized, unified, top down, collective, and planned (Dean, 2010). As Fred Turner (2006) powerfully demonstrates in his book on Stewart Brand and cyberculture, this is an ideological matrix that became powerful during the Cold War and was then “groovied up” in the nineteen sixties. Why do critical media theorists and activists repeat the critique of centralization in a decentralized media environment? Why do they continue to applaud and urge individual choice and self–organization even as neoliberalism insists on privatization and capitalism insists on individual competition rather than collective cooperation? Psychoanalysis provides several possibilities (Dean, 2009). The insistence on repeating the same critique might be a psychotic response to missing authority, to the foreclosure of the paternal function. Or maybe it’s a paranoid response that enables the subject to avoid acknowledging what is missing and confronting his own freedom. Or maybe the answer is simple mistrust, an element of the larger cultural crisis of legitimation facing political and economic institutions (a crisis which neoliberalism relies on and exacerbates). What’s dissatisfying in these psychoanalytic possibilities (even for those who find psychoanalytic explanations compelling) is that the mistrust expressed among critical media theorists and activists is a mistrust of networks, of the very decentralized and individualist processes and patterns an early generation lauded as the remedy to centralized power. The networks we have are not secure enough, not private enough, not flexible enough. Our information and identities are insecure, at risk. We are too vulnerable. The mistrust of networks, then, seems to assume the possibility of a completely free and completely friendly network, where one could say whatever one wanted to whomever one wanted with absolutely no repercussions. In other words, it assumes a fantastic, impossible network that is both secure and politically radical at the same time. From concentration to dispersion and back Before addressing the mistrust of networks, I want to recap the argument thus far. My first claim is that there has been a significant critique of the idea of “the social.” This critique has pointed out the ways that something that can be called “society” doesn’t exist, that instead there are persons and things, gaps and flows, and contingencies and processes. My second claim is that the social media we have look like what we would expect from this description of the absent social. They are changing and incomplete, multi–layered, populated by subjects and objects that compete and combine in various ways. And my third claim is if the first two are true, then there is a problem with approaches to social media rooted in a critique of centralization and a concern with privacy, autonomy, individual choice, and security because neither centralization nor the lack of individual choice is the problem confronting radical activism today — not even loss of privacy is the problem. Rather, the opposite is the case: dispersion is the problem; de–centralization is the problem. Consider contemporary distributed work arrangements. In early 2012, for example, news broke of IBM’s intention to layoff thousands of its German workers, a program called “Liquid” [6]. The company’s plan entails organizing a distributed “talent cloud” on an Internet platform something like Facebook. The company would store information regarding workers’ skills “in the cloud” and rehire them when necessary. Workers would compete for higher rankings and companies would hire them on a task–by–task basis, avoiding inconvenient labor laws, the expense of health benefits, and the need to maintain a physical plant. Personal international employment contracts would subvert national labor regulations. As Andrew Ross (2013) points out, the Internet mobilizes the dispersed work of multiple individuals. It does so, moreover, not simply by allowing for “telecommuting” or by enabling ever longer global supply chains. Rather, it connects people who work for free (that is, who don’t construe their online activities as work for which they should be paid) and free–lancers (or “e–lancers”) who cobble together income through myriad micro–tasks in multiple settings. Ross writes, “As in the offshore outsourcing model, the dispersion of this labor is highly organized but it is not dependent on physical relocation to cheap labor markets.” [7] Tasks are distributed, workers are dispersed. And this makes organizing an opposition, finding ways to come together in common struggle, building the solidarities necessary to sustain a fight extraordinarily difficult. Attacks on “centralization” and “hierarchy” thus put the problem ideologically; they invert it. Because they don’t recognize this inversion — or the interconnection between dispersion and concentration — the “solutions” they offer only make it worse. They increase dispersion and amplify noise, making it harder for people to find what they want, to know what they want, and to know what to trust. Albert–Laszlo Barabási’s (2003) work on complex networks demonstrates this point. Complex networks are characterized by free choice, growth, and preferential attachment. Examples include academic citation networks, blockbuster movies, and the popularity of blogs and Web sites (Shirky, 2006). Barabási explains that complex networks follow a power law distribution of links. The item in first place has twice as many links as the item in second place, which has more than the one in third and so on such that there is very little difference among those at the bottom but massive differences between top and bottom. So lots of novels are written. Few are published. Fewer are sold. A very few become best–sellers. The idea appears in popular media as the 80/20 rule, the winner–take–all or winner–take–most character of the new economy, and the “long tail” (Anderson, 2004). In these examples, the “one” (the item exponentially more popular than the many) emerges as the field or network expands (hubs are an immanent property of complex networks). In the context of a broadly distributed labor market, expansion diminishes opportunities for income and paid labor (as we’ve seen in the collapse of print journalism and university presses). We should recognize here a primary condition of labor under neoliberal capitalism. Rather than having a right to the proceeds of one’s labor by virtue of a contract, ever more of us now win or lose such that remuneration is treated like a prize. In academia, art, writing, architecture, entertainment, design, and increasing numbers of additional fields, people not only feel fortunate to get work, to get hired, to get paid, but ever more tasks and projects are conducted as competitions, which means that those doing the work are not paid unless they win. They work but only for a chance at pay. The implication of the shift from wages to prizes is the mobilization of the many to produce the one. Without the work of the many, there would not be one (who is necessarily contingent): the bigger the network, the bigger the hub — and the bigger the reward for the one at the top. The administration of U.S. President Barak Obama has made inducement prizes a key part of its “Strategy for American Innovation.” Outlining its vision for a more competitive America, the White House announced that government “should take advantage of the expertise and insight of people both inside and outside” Washington by using “high–risk, high–reward policy tools such as prizes and challenges to solve tough problems.” [8] In effect, it decentralized expertise and redistributed risk. Contests privilege those who have the resources to take risks as they transfer costs associated with doing work to contestants (furthering neoliberalism’s basic mechanism of socializing risk and privatizing reward). People pay to do work for which they will not be remunerated. Multiplication and dispersion are inextricable from powerful centers. Hubs like Facebook are effects of dispersion. The very hierarchies that decentralization and dispersion are supposed to eliminate also result from them. No long tail without the one. Since hubs emerge out of dispersion, we would do well to think more about some of the advantages of centralization. Conglomeration has its own pleasures; people like being part of something bigger themselves. A key pleasure of social media is the pleasure of connectivity. It is a reaction to the disconnections of precarious labor, the breakdown wrought by neoliberalism. All three versions of the claim that society doesn’t exist accept this. The neoliberal version recognizes that people might want to connect for both careerist and escapist reasons; the actor network version looks for ways to build association; and, the radical democratic version addresses collective struggles. The affective dimension of hubs, then, points to a way in which centralization is desirable: people want to be where their friends are, where the action is. Social media makes the fact that production is always production for others manifest. Whether it is affect or information (understanding “information” as designating a relation, whether of signal to noise, sender to receiver, or contribution to content), production in social media is reflexive, always a production of relations. The cooperation of different individuals appears as what it is, the productive force that arises out of our combined and multiplied efforts. Rather than congealed within a commodity form that renders relations between people as relations between things, the social substance manifest itself in a clear, visceral way on Twitter, Facebook, You Tube, in fact, in massively popular social media. The social substance I have argued that the basic problem of social media, a problem that we access by thinking about the ostensible non–existence of society, is not centralization. Centralization is rather the flipside of the drive to proliferate, as well as a kind of solution to the dispersion proliferation yields. Why do critical media people not get this? I have suggested that it is because of ideological illusion, the repetition of the mantras of new economy neoliberalism as if these were critical insights. To leave the argument here would be one–sided. There is more to it than this because the critical impulse against centralization is right. It just expresses itself in ideological terms, treating centralization per se as the problem rather than ownership and property as the problem. More bluntly put, that Facebook has over a billion active users is not the problem. The problem is that the company that we make in common does not belong to us. The production of the social substance that we see in Facebook and Twitter is not completely for itself — someone else owns it. There are millions of users and one billionaire. It is not like Facebook and Twitter are user owned: more than a billion users, one billionaire (a clear power law). Facebook is explicit about this. The Web site declares: “Our product development philosophy centers on continuous innovation in creating products that are social by design, which means they place people and their social interactions at the core of the product experience.” [9] You can’t eat your friends. There is an ongoing lawsuit, though, regarding whether you can eat your followers... Because of the property relations that allow a common product to be owned by a single person (or a corporation which, in U.S. law, is a person), producing social relations does not enable producers to procure means of life, means of subsistence. You can’t eat your friends. There is an ongoing lawsuit, though, regarding whether you can eat your followers — a company is suing a former employee for taking his followers with him when he left the job, claiming loss of ad revenue and valuing followers at $US2.50 per follower [10]. My point is that the production of social relations is for someone else, the capitalist. So we are alienated from our means of socializing even as we are completely immersed in them. In fact, the more immersed, the more alienated insofar as there are more hits and clicks and pageviews to be tracked, auctioned, sold, and put back to capitalist use (thus, I use alienation not to describe a subjective experience but an objective process). In massive social media there is a disconnecting of social relations from relations through which one provides and is provided food and shelter — and this is a real contradiction. Active production of social relations is not active production of food and shelter; and, for more and more people, active production of food and shelter is not the active production of social relations. That is to say, most people are not paid for their productive engagement in social media. It is not the way they earn money. At the same time, most of the active production of social relations does not occur through the production of food and shelter. This means that what paid labor there is in social media produces something else or serves and administers something else. Corrupt arguments like those of Chris Anderson (2008) that announce that everything is “free” in the networked economy obfuscate the reality of the loss of income people need to survive. If everything is free then no one earns the money to pay for food and shelter. Social media relies on a strong, even constitutive division between communicative labor and the labor that produces food and shelter. Emphasizing this division reveals how waged labor and property are fetters on communicative production and thus instruments of alienation. The problem of social media is the problem of capitalism — private property and ownership. Communication under communicative capitalism is a primary means of production, but it does not belong to us. Our basic communicative acts, our affects and feelings, hopes and ideas, to the extent that we express them electronically, belong to another not ourselves. Hence, even when we critique this other and its system, we contribute to it, reinforce it (Dean, 2010; 2009). Only those who neglect this fundamental feature of communicative capitalism can champion some kind of “new politics” or speak about Twitter and Facebook revolutions. They mistakenly treat as having arrived what is not yet there. The politics that matters is not in the content coursing through the networks. It is in the form of mass individual use of personal media to create new, huge, conglomerations and combinations of people. The form can be used in a new politics — but not as long as it owned by someone else, not as long as it is confined within capitalism. Marx wrote in The German ideology, “In imagination, individuals seem freer under the rule of the bourgeoisie than before because their conditions of life seem accidental to them. In reality, they are less free, because they are more subjected to the domination of things.” [11] Critics and activists who conceive the problem of social media in terms of centralization and massness or who think what we need is more dispersion, diversity, and privacy in networks seem to want to make more things accidental, less necessary. The reality is that this is less emancipation, not more, because of the stepping away from the power that comes with collectivity, a power to which social media gives expression. Mass social media like Facebook and Twitter make the fact of collective production, of social power, present and undeniable such that it seems completely bizarre and contradictory that anyone could justifiably own them, or any substantial means of production at all. They are common property but not common property, public but not public, private but not private. To focus on individual privacy rights and security issues is to displace this fact, to push it away and proceed as if capitalism were not contradictory. I close by returning to the social. The three versions of the claim that there is no such thing as society miss the way that society does exist, namely, antagonistically, through class conflict. Society is not a whole or a unity. Rather, it exists in the enactment of collectivity and common production. About the author Jodi Dean teaches political and media theory in Geneva, New York. She has written or edited 11 books, including The communist horizon (New York: Verso, 2012) and Democracy and other neoliberal fantasies: Communicative capitalism and left politics (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2009). Notes 1. Transcript archived at the Margaret Thatcher Foundation, at http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/106689. 2. Latour, 2005, p. 2. 3. Latour, 2003, p. 143. 4. Laclau and Mouffe, 1985, pp. 95–96. 5. See, for example, the program for Unlike Us #3, specifically the project section showing alternatives in social media; see http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/unlikeus/past-events/2-amsterdam/program/. 6. Markus Von Dettmer und Frank Dohmen, 2012. “Frei schwebend in der Wolke,” Der Spiegel (6 February), at http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-83865244.html. 7. Ross, 2013, p. 20. 8. “A Strategy for American Innovation: Securing Our Economic Growth and Prosperity,” at http://www.whitehouse.gov/innovation/strategy. 9. Facebook, at http://newsroom.fb.com/Culture. 10. Bob Sullivan, 2012. “When you and employer split, who gets your friends and followers?” at http://redtape.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/12/14373762-when-you-and-employer-split-who-gets-your-friends-and-followers?lite. 11. Marx, 1994, p. 145. References Chris Anderson, 2008. “Free! Why $0.00 is the future of business,” Wired, volume 16, number 3, at http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free?currentPage=all. Chris Anderson, 2004. “The long tail,” Wired, volume 12, number 10, at http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html. Albert–László Barabási, 2003. Linked: How everything is connected to everything else and what it means for business, science, and everyday life. New York: Plume. Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello, 2005. The new spirit of capitalism. Translated by Gregory Elliot. London: Verso. Jodi Dean, 2010. Blog theory: Feedback and capture in the circuits of drive. Cambridge: Polity. Jodi Dean, 2009. Democracy and other neoliberal fantasies: Communicative capitalism and left politics. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. Michel Foucault, 2008. The birth of biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–79. Translated by Graham Burchell. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Tim Jordan, 2007. “Online direct action: Hacktivism and radical democracy,” In: Lincoln Dahlberg and Eugenia Siapera (editors). Radical democracy and the Internet: Interrogating theory and practice. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 73–88. Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, 1985. Hegemony and socialist strategy: Towards a radical democratic politics. Translated by Winston Moore and Paul Cammack. London: Verso. Bruno Latour, 2005. Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor–network–theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bruno Latour, 2003. “What if we talked politics a little?” Contemporary Political Theory, volume 2, pp. 143–164, and at http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/downloads/83-POL-GB.pdf.http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.cpt.9300092 Karl Marx, 1994. Selected writings. Edited, with an introduction, by Lawrence H. Simon. Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett. Noortje Marres, 2005. “No issue, no public: Democratic deficits after the displacement of politics,” dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of Amsterdam, at http://dare.uva.nl/document/17061. Andrew Ross, 2013. “In search of the lost paycheck,” In: Trebor Scholz (editor). Digital labor: The Internet as playground and factory. New York: Routledge, pp. 13–32. Clay Shirky, 2006. “Powerlaws, Weblogs, and inequality,” In: Jodi Dean, Geert Lovink, and Jon Anderson (editors). Reformatting politics: information technology and global civil society. New York: Routledge, pp. 35–42. Fred Turner, 2006. From counterculture to cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the rise of digital utopianism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Editorial history Received 20 February 2013; accepted 20 February 2013. Copyright © 2013, First Monday. Copyright © 2013, Jodi Dean. Society doesn’t exist by Jodi Dean First Monday, Volume 18, Number 3 - 4 March 2013 https://journals.uic.edu/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/4616/3419 doi:10.5210/fm.v18i3.4616 |
A boat captain working to rescue sea turtles in the Gulf of Mexico said he saw BP ships burning sea turtles and other wildlife alive, myFOXtampabay.com reported late Tuesday. Captain Mike Ellis said in an interview posted on You Tube that the boats were conducting controlled burns to get rid of the oil. "They drag a boom between two shrimp boats, and whatever gets caught between the two boats, they circle it up and catch it on fire. Once the turtles are in there, they can’t get out," Ellis said. Ellis said he had to cut short his three-week trip rescuing the turtles because BP quit allowing him access to rescue turtles before the burns. "They're pretty much keeping us from doing what we need to do out there," Ellis said. Other reports corroborate Captain Ellis' claims. A report in the Los Angeles Times described "burn fields" of 500 square miles in which 16 controlled burns will take place in one day. "When the weather is calm and the sea is placid, ships trailing fireproof booms corral the black oil, the coated seaweed and whatever may be caught in it, and torch it ... " the report said. Ellis said most of the turtles he saw were Kemps Ridley turtles, a critically endangered species. Harming or killing one would bring stiff civil and criminal penalties and fines of up to $50,000 against BP. Read more at MyFoxTampaBay.com. |
You use it every single day. In English it's called the "at sign." The Italians call it "snail." The Spaniards, "arroba." The Slavs, "monkey." But what did @ really mean 473 years ago? On May 4, 1536, Francesco Lapi—a Florentine merchant who at the time was in Seville, Spain—used the symbol @ in a letter, the first ever known instance of a document containing it. It didn't had a domain name after it, however. Back then, he was referring to the number of "amphoras" that were shipped in three vessels which departed Spain on their way to Rome, Italy. An "amphora" was a commercial volume measure of those times. The document you can see above says: There, an amphora of wine, which is one thirtieth of a barrel, is worth 70 or 80 ducats. Advertisement In Spanish, the word for that measure was called "arroba," which is the name the @ symbol still receives today in that language. Later, the symbol was conserved in typewriters' keyboards: People kept using the at sign through the centuries, and it was common in commercial accounting where it meant "at the price of." It was in 1971 when Ray Tomlinson saw the symbol and thought it could be good to append the mail server host to the name of the person receiving an email: I chose to append an at sign and the host name to the user's (login) name. I am frequently asked why I chose the at sign, but the at sign just makes sense. The purpose of the at sign (in English) was to indicate a unit price (for example, 10 items @ $1.95). I used the at sign to indicate that the user was "at" some other host rather than being local. Advertisement And the rest, as they say, it's history. I don't know about you, but from now on I would be saying jesus amphora gizmodo dot com every time I have to tell my mail address. It just sounds so much better. Or better yet, jesus monkey gizmodo dot com. Yes. Definitely this one. [NYT Blog] |
The Wunderlist app is a great way to help you capture your ideas, things to do, and places to see. Today, though, and thanks to a tip from Leandro (thanks Leandro!) we can report to you that an update is in the works for the app. @leandromaxi6 I'm really sorry that we're keeping you waiting on that! The update we're working on is pretty big, so I don't have an ETA yet — Wunderlist Support (@WunderlistHelp) May 4, 2016 As seen above, Wunderlist Support mentioned the update, and also detailed that it is pretty large. While nothing in this tweet is exactly official, and there is no actual ETA for the update, this is still a splash of hope for Windows Phone fans who continuously use this app. Microsoft acquired 6Wunderkinder, the makers of Wunderlist, just about a year ago, and it has been featured in The New York Times, Lifehacker, TechCrunch, CNET, The Guardian, Wired, and Vanity Fair, and many other media outlets. It is truly a great app which makes it easy to share your lists and collaborate with everyone in your life. So, if you’re not already an avid user of this app, you can download Wunderlist by clicking the link below. Then, once you do download, please drop us a comment to let us know how the experience is going, or what you think this possible update means for the future of the app. Share This Further reading: App update |
Thousands of university students have marched through central Mexico City to protest against media coverage they say favours the candidate of the former ruling party in upcoming presidential elections. "We want schools, not soap operas," the protesters chanted late on Wednesday, referring to PRI presidential candidate Enrique Pena Nieto, the frontrunner whose wife Angelica Rivera is a popular soap opera star known as "Seagull". The students also protested against the media, specifically Televisa, the largest conglomerate broadcasting in Mexico and other Spanish-speaking countries, which they accuse of shilling for Pena Nieto. The students claim that newspapers and television stations are tilting their coverage towards Pena Nieto, who is leading the polls ahead of the July 1 vote. Many of the students were from the elite Iberoamerican University, where a May 11 appearance by Pena Nieto set off a rare wave of protests by young people against a return to the presidency of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which ruled Mexico for 70 years before it was voted out in 2000. The students say Mexico's largest television channel, Televisa, was particularly biased in its coverage of the rally and the campaign in general. Inside Story: Who will be Mexico's new president? Many finished the march at Televisa's studios, where Pena Nieto was appearing on a live interview show. Local media reported smaller, simultaneous marches in at least half-dozen other cities around Mexico. A Televisa spokesman declined immediate comment, as did Pena Nieto's campaign. Latest opinion polls put Pena Nieto with 46 per cent of the vote, compared to just 26 per cent for Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution, and 24.6 per cent for Josefina Vázquez Mota of the governing National Action Party. Pena Neito, a young ex-state governor, has been cast as the new face of the PRI. But many Mexicans still mistrust the party and worry the PRI's return will hurt their young democracy. Pena Nieto's supporters have labelled the students as supporters Lopez Obrador, but many at the rally said they supported none of three main presidential candidates. |
Liberty: Tales from the Tower :: Entry 2-05: Side Effects Posted by Archon Reeve on July 11, 2017 From the world of Liberty comes Tales From the Tower – Standalone stories of myths, legends, and horror to haunt the Citizens of Atrius. A new drug is devastating Citizens within Atrius. One brave doctor is willing to do anything it takes to understand and counter the effects of this psychedelic, including trying the drug himself. “Side Effects” is written by Lake Clarity‘s Pacific S. Obadiah – check out their series and the Kickstarter for their second season. Join your host for this nighttime broadcast and and hope that the Archon watches over you. Vote for Liberty in the Podcast Awards! Look for “Liberty” under the Arts & People’s Choice categories Credits: Written and co-produced by Pacific S. Obadiah – Lake Clarity Co-Produced by Travis Vengroff Mixing by Brandon Strader Cast: Dr. Livius – Russel Gold Dr. Cornelius – Sean Francis Whisper – Kaitlin Statz Officer – Pacific S. Obadiah Petrus Claerhaut – Peter Lewis “Tales from the Tower Theme 2.0” – Arranged and Performed by Brandon Boone “News Theme” – Written and Performed by Travis Vengroff Tales from the Tower art by Cap Blackard Mixing by Brandon Strader Special Thanks to: Our Patreon supporters! | Klipsch | Tovusound | Cap Blackard | Brandon Boone | Dayn Leonardson Click Here For Full Sound Effect Credits Liberty Links: Liberty is a Trademark of Travis Vengroff. For more information about the Liberty universe please follow us on facebook or email to thelibertycomic@gmail.com. May the Archon watch over you! |
Second homes should face huge taxes to force 'townies' out of the countryside says former Poet Laureate Sir Andrew Motion Sir Andrew Motion has called for increased taxes to stop second-home owners 'gutting' rural communities President of the CPRE said too many rural homes being snapped up by 'townies' who only visit at weekends Harsher taxes should be introduced to stop 'townies' buying second homes in the countryside and 'gutting' rural communities, the head of the Campaign to Protect Rural England has said. Former Poet Laureate Sir Andrew Motion - who took over as president of the CPRE last year - said the tax on second homes should be ratcheted up to discourage city workers from snapping up countryside properties to use as weekend retreats. He said too many second home owner fail to contribute to the life of rural communities and simply 'scoot down' for the weekend before returning to London 'in time to catch the 10 o'clock news on Sunday night'. 'Townies': Too many owners of countryside holiday homes don't contribute to the life of rural communities, Sir Andrew Motion has said 'I would increase taxes on second homes to make it very expensive,' he told the Times. 'I think there's a question about whether second homes mean you have inert dormitory communities in the countryside through most of the week, very often lived in my people who scoot down in their cars, see their smart friends, don't join in the life of the community and don't feed into it,' he said. Rural life: The former poet laureate said taxes on second homes should be boosted to discourage city workers from snapping up rural properties The latest census figures show that more than 165,000 people in the UK own a second home for weekends and holidays. Cornwall was revealed as the country's second-home capital - with almost 23,000 people listing a Cornish address away from their main home where they could be found for a month or more each year. St Ives MP Andrew George wants to see the council given authority to block second home owners altogether to ensure more Cornish homes stay in the hands of local owners. Campaign: The MP in St Ives, Cornwall, wants the council to have the power to block outsiders from buying property to use for weekends and holidays Mr George has called for the introduction of a class of 'non-permanent occupancy' for homes, meaning people buying houses to use as a holiday property would have to declare it and seek permission. Permanent residents in the tourist hotspot say the area's popularity with city workers seeking second homes is pushing the price of housing out of the reach of local workers on comparatively lower wages. 'Local authorities need the power to curb the sheer volume of properties being transferred from family homes to holiday homes,' he said. Other parts of the UK with high concentrations of holiday homes include Gwynedd in North Wales, North Norfolk, and the Lake District. |
At least 30 people were killed and over 250 injured in widespread violence that erupted soon after godman Gurmeet Ram Rahim was convicted of rape by CBI court in Panchkula. Curfew has been imposed in various parts of Haryana and Punjab. It has also been extended to Delhi, Noida and Ghaziabad. Within few hours of the pronouncement, Dera followers gathered in thousands, unleashed violence and set afire government buildings and vehicles in Panchkula. Advertising Police and paramilitary tried to control the violence using teargas shells and firing. Dera Chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh is currently lodged in a special jail in Rohtak. His quantum of sentence will be argued on August 28 through a video conferencing. Several leaders condemned the violence. The Dera chief faces up to seven years in jail. PM Modi urged officials to work round the clock to restore normalcy and provide all possible assistance that is required. Follow LIVE updates | Ram Rahim rape case verdict in pictures 8:00 am: To read further Live updates CLICK HERE 5.00 am: 485 train services have been affected (due to the violence). Of these, 445 stood cancelled: Neeraj Sharma, spokesperson, Northern Railway, said. Advertising 4.00 am: Dera Sacha Sauda followers tried creating mischief, case has been registered. We have CCTV footage, probe underway: Madhur Verma, Delhi Police 3.00 am: Baghpat District Magistrate directs all schools in the region to remain closed today in Uttar Pradesh 2.00 am: Curfew imposed in Sangrur, security stepped up after violent protests by Dera followers post Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh’s conviction. 1.00 am: According to railway officials, as many as 445 trains have been cancelled due to the law and order situation in Punjab and Haryana: PTI 11.35 pm: Commenting on the attack on the media, Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi said,”Rule of law is a pillar of democracy, let’s respect it but govt must allow accurate reporting by media to ensure transparency and accountability.” 11.28 pm: “PM Modi’s exhortation turned on its head by CM Khattar. Haryana’s mantra is ‘maximum government, minimum governance,” said Chidambaram. 11.26 pm: Taking a dig at Haryana Chief Minister, Congress leader P Chidambaram said, “CM Khattar sets new standard for ‘maximum government, minimum governance’.” 10.57 pm: Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has written letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, urges him to take immediate and necessary action to ensure the protection of life and property of the citizens. “I have personally been receiving calls from Malayalees who are in fear of their life and property , from the affected areas. May I request you to take immediate and necessary action to ensure that the life and property of all our citizens are protected without fail. Strict action against those behind these unprecedented acts of violence may also be ensured,” the Kerala CM wrote. 10.50 pm: As per ANI, section 144 has been imposed in Uttarakhand’s Nainital. 10:35 pm: Following the violence erupted after Dera chief’s verdict, Delhi Transport has suspended inter-state as well as Delhi-Lahore bus services, reports PTI. 10:15 pm: Watch video of Baba Gurmeet Ram Rahim in police custody soon after his conviction. Gurmeet Ram Rahim was accompanied by his daughter when he reached the courtroom in Panchkula after travelling from the sect headquarters at Sirsa. #Video | Baba Gurmeet Ram Rahim in police custody soon after his conviction pic.twitter.com/5AoZ4ZNH9O — The Indian Express (@IndianExpress) August 25, 2017 The mob of Dera followers seen pelting stones on security forces on the highway between Panchkula-Zirakpur in after the verdict on Dera chief. 10:00 pm: IGP Amitabh Dhillons is seen making the announcement at Shah Satnam Chowk to the aware public to remain inside houses and cooperate with police and administration. 9:50 pm: Tightening the security in various parts of Haryana and Punjab, the government has deployed six column army in Panchkula, two columns army in Sirsa, one column army Mansa and Mukhtsar. The police have blocked the road in Sirsa using razor wires. 9:22 pm: Union cabinet minister Smriti Irani in a tweet reminded media channels not to sensationalise events that cause panic and distress among the people. ” Drawing attention of News Channels to Clause B of Fundamental Std. of NBSA refraining channels from causing panic, distress & undue fear,” said Irani in a tweet. 9:12 pm: Taking preventive measures, the Chandigarh police has arrested six private commandos of Ram Rahim Singh, weapons and petrol cans has also been seized from them. Police also detained 81 people, said Chandigarh DGP Tejinder Singh Luthra. 9:05 pm: Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a tweet condemned the violence following the conviction of Dera Sacha Sauda chief and termed it as deeply distressing. “The law & order situation is being closely monitored. I reviewed the situation with NSA & Home Secretary,” tweeted PM Modi. He further urged officials to work round the clock to restore normalcy and provide all possible assistance that is required. 8:56 pm: Pictures from the violence: This is the carnage that followed Ram Rahim conviction 8:55 pm: Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar today visited the Civil Hospital in Panchkula to meet those injured in violent protests. The chief minister has directed best possible treatment for the injured. He also said, “Haryana Government had made complete arrangements but the mob was really huge.” 8:45 pm: Schools in Ghaziabad region will remain closed on Saturday directed the District Magistrate. Delhi Police has imposed Section 144 CrPC in 11 districts of Delhi including New Delhi. 8:34 pm: Following Gurmeet Ram Rahim’s conviction, Z category security to him will be withdrawn. Rampant violence in various parts of Haryana and Punjab has led to killing of 30 people and more than 250 have been injured, reports PTI. 8:32 pm: Curfew has been imposed in five districts of Punjab due to violent incidents post-Dera Sacha Sauda verdict. These include: Bathinda, Mansa, Ferozepur, Fazilka and Patiala. In Fazilka- only Abohar constituency is under curfew. In all 8 dera followers have been arrested in Bathinda while 10 have been rounded up in Mansa. In Mansa all the Sacha Sauda deras have been vacated and followers have been forced to go back to their houses. Naveen Singla, SSP Bathinda told that miscreants were all dera followers and they have been booked under waging the war against state and damage to public property 8:30 pm: Supporting Dera Chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim, BJP MP Sakshi Maharaj said, “One person alleging sexual exploitation but crores stand with him today,why those crores of ppl are not being heard?” “If even bigger incidents take place, the court will also be responsible not just Dera people,”he added. 8:15 pm: Soon after Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh’s conviction was announced, he was lodged in a make-shift jail at a police training centre in Rohtak. “Gurmeet Ram Rahim has been put in (special jail at) PTC Sunaria,” said Rohtak Deputy Commissioner Atul Kumar as quoted by PTI 8:08 pm: One of the Injured Dera follower is taken to the Civil hospital in sector 6 during clash between Dera followers and force after the dera verdict in Panchkula on Friday, August 25 2017. Express Photo by Sahil Walia 8:00 pm: Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh’s quantum of punishment will be argued through a video conference on Monday, August 28, said CBI sources as quoted by PTI. The Godman was today convicted in a 15-year old rape case. 7:56 pm: Scenes from the Panchkula hospital post violence- Express Photo by Sahil Walia 7:52 pm: President Ram Nath Kovind condemned the widespread violence that broke out in several parts of Haryana and Punjab by followers of the Dera Sacha Sauda and asked all people to maintain peace. 7:45 pm: A High-level meeting will be held at Home Minister’s residence on Saturday to control the situation in Haryana. Home Secretary & others senior officials will also be present, said MHA Sources 7:35 pm: Delhi Commissioner of Police appeals to all to maintain peace & order. A brief meeting about law and order in Delhi was soon held after the verdict. Delhi Police is on full alert and strict action will be taken against miscreants for any violation, said the DCP. 7:30 pm: Congress President Sonia Gandhi has expressed grave concern and shock at the unabated violence in Panchkula and other parts of Haryana resulting in the death of over two dozen persons including children, wide spread destruction of public property and senseless attack on the media. Gandhi appealed to everyone to maintain peace and harmony. She has spoken to the Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh and has asked the Govt of Haryana and U T Chandigarh to ensure safety and security of all citizens . 7:20 pm: Following the intense violence in Panchkula almost 250 trains have been cancelled. ” All trains going towards Rohtak cancelled for tomorrow, ” said Neeraj Sharma, CPRO, Northern Railway. 7:15 pm: Additional Chief Secretary Ram Niwas has assured compensation for the losses of media and other properties by the state government. He further added that strict action would be taken against the protesters as there are video footages to identify them. Ram Niwas also urged Dera supporters to stay calm & deter the protesters. 7:10 pm: Following the rampant violence in Panchkula, section 144 has also been imposed in Noida and Ghaziabad regions, reports ANI. DG CISF OP Singh has sent alerts to all officers posted at Delhi Metro stations. 7:05 pm: At least eight persons have been arrested in Bathinda f or causing violence at various places in the district. Masked motorcyclists tried to burn the petrol machines in Bannawali village of MansaFour villages in former CM Parkash Singh Badal’s constituency were targeted where damage had been reported at Sewa Kendras, Telephone exchange. 6:55 pm: And this is an Associated Press photo of a press OB van being toppled by supporters of Ram Rahim Singh after his conviction in a rape case. 6:45 pm: This is a photo from Mansa near the Income Tax office where a car was set on fire allegedly by dera supporters. 6:31 pm: Dera comes out with its first official statement after the conviction – It says they have been wronged and that they will appeal in a higher court. Meanwhile, at least 1000 Dera supporters have been detained in Panchkula. 6:30 pm: Have you seen pictures of the clashes in Panchkula? See them here. 6:20 pm: ANI is reporting that death toll has jumped to 17 now with over 200 injured in the clashes. However, indianexpress.com has not been able to confirm the 17 deaths. If adequate security arrangements were made, such precious lives wouldn’t have been lost. There’s a lot of demand for the resignation of Haryana CM ML Khattar on social media. If adequate security arrangements were made, such precious lives wouldn’t have been lost. There’s a lot of demand for the resignation of Haryana CM ML Khattar on social media. 6:15 pm: The National Conference working president Omar Abdullah has called for removal of Haryana CM ML Khattar for “gross dereliction of duty” in the wake of mounting death toll following the violence erupted by Dera Chief’s followers, reported PTI. 6:06 pm: Losses incurred due to violence should be recovered from selling the properties of Godman Ram Rahim Singh, said the Punjab and Haryana High Court as quoted by ANI. 6:00 pm: According to ANI, death toll has reached 12 and over 100 people have been injured following the Dera violence in Panchkula. Security has been strengthened in and around Civil Hospital in Sector 6 Panchkula. 5:55 pm: Following the violence in Panchkula, aerial survey is being carried out using Drones & helicopters, reported ANI. Security has been tightened at the Delhi BJP HQ post violence at various places in Delhi after Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh’s conviction. 5:44 pm: Okay, so updates are coming in from various places where violence has been reported: * Vehicles set on fire in Panchkula * Income Tax office in Punjab’s Mansa set alight * Bus set on fire in Loni near Ghaziabad by 2 persons * Bus near Babu Jagjivan Ram Memorial hospital set ablaze in Delhi * Two buses set on fire near Nand Nagri in Delhi 5:45 pm: BIG UPDATE – PTI is reporting, via the CMO of the civil hospital in Panchkula, that 12 people have been killed in clashes. 5:30 pm: Reuters reporting that 13 people have been killed in clashes so far, although indianexpress.com cannot confirm that death toll. 5:25 pm: Videos now showing two empty train coaches of the Rewa Express at Delhi’s Anand Vihar railway station burnt allegedly by supporters of the Dera chief. 5:20 pm: Police say bus torched in northeast Delhi’s Loni Chowk allegedly by Dera Sacha Sauda supporters, PTI reporting. Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal has requested for peace in the area. 5:10 pm – BIG UPDATE: The death toll in the Panchkula clashes climbs to six now. 5:00 pm: Punjab and Haryana High Court said that they shall attach all the properties owned by Dera Sacha Sauda because the dera had given an undertaking in the court that its followers shall not damage any public or private properties and will not disrupt peace. High Court has also asked the union government to send more paramilitary forces to Haryana. The state’s Advocate General Baldev Raj Mahajan was informed that the court has learnt that Haryana police were the first ones to run away from the spot where clashes erupted after dera chief was held guilty. The court asks AG to submit a detailed report on this alleged dereliction of duty by Haryana police, by tomorrow. High Court said that it shall keep monitoring the case constantly and can anytime take it up in the coming days. Punjab has also sought more paramilitary forces from the union government in this regard. 4:55 pm: Balluanna railway station in Punjab has now been set on fire. This is increasingly getting out of control. Reports of tear gas shells being fired in Sirsa, the headquarters of the Dera as well. Meanwhile, Haryana CM ML Khattar has called for an emergence cabinet meeting. 4:45 pm: PTI quotes doctor at civil hospital saying five people are dead in Panchkula violence. 4:40 pm: Punjab CM Amarinder Singh has just tweeted saying that he has spoken to Home Minister Rajnath Singh. “Would not allow anyone to disturb peace in Punjab,” he said. 4:35 pm: Three people including a woman have been taken in an ambulance to the hospital. All three were found lying motionless. The deaths have not been confirmed as yet. 4:30 pm: Reports of casualties coming in, but we cannot confirm anything right now. 4:25 pm: Delhi and Gurgaon have been put on high alert now. Uttar Pradesh has reportedly sealed the border with Haryana. 4:18 pm: Curfew has now been clamped in Panchkula as supporters have become restive in the wake of the court decision. 4:15 pm: If you are just joining us, there’s been heavy violence in Panchkula after Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, the chief of the Dera Sacha Sauda, was found guilty by CBI judge Jagdeep Singh. A minimum of seven years in jail is likely to be awarded to him. The quantum of punishment will be announced on Monday. Followers of Rahim Singh, numbering in lakhs, following the news of his conviction broke down barricades, assaulted police and journalists and set media OB vans on fire. The police lobbed tear gas shells and fired gunshots in the air to quell the protesers. Curfew has been imposed in several districts of Punjab. 4: 12 pm: As being claimed by some sections of the media, Ram Rahim Singh is NOT in the custody of the Army. The Army has NOT YET been deployed in Panchkula. 4:10 pm: Agitated mobs are barging into government buildings in Sector 2 and 5 of Panchkula and vandalising buildings. Meanwhile, curfew has been extended to Punjab’s Bathinda, Mansa, Ferozepur, Muktsar, Malout and Budhlada 4:05 pm: Gunshots are now being fired in Panchkula. The scene there has become very chaotic. Violence, in case of a conviction, was expected. 4:00 pm: The judge said the prosecution has been able to prove beyond doubt that he is guilty. Ram Rahim Singh was accompanied by his daughter and he is being taken out of the court, likely to be taken to the jail in Rohtak. 3:55 pm: Curfew has been imposed in Malout and Mansa in Punjab. 3:50 pm: Followers of Ram Rahim Singh are trying to get as close as possible to the courtroom where he has been kept into custody. Cameramen and journalists are being beaten up badly by the followers and there is heavy stonepelting in Panchkula. 3:40 pm: Ok, there are reports of police vehicles being smashed and overturned. Gunshots and tear gas being fired in the air. A railway station has also been set on fire in Malout and private vehicles torched in Mansa in Punjab. 3:35 pm: NDTV reporting that its OB van has been vandalised near the court premises in Panchkula, allegedly by followers of Ram Rahim Singh. 3:30 pm: There are clashes being reported now in Panchkula and tear gas shells being fired by the police. Thousands of supporters of the Dera chief have descended upon Panchkula in anticipation of the verdict. 3: 15 pm: Dera Sacha Sauda chief taken into custody by Haryana police after being convicted in rape case. Reports suggest that the self-styled godman is to be taken to Rohtaik jail on chopper. Meanwhile, Dera followers are gathered at one spot and are observing silence after the verdict. 3:05 pm: Dera Sacha Sauda chief has been convicted in rape case by CBI court in Panchkula. The bench said that the quantum of sentence in the case will be announced on Monday. 2:55 pm: Reports say Judge Jagdeep Singh is currently reading out the verdict in the court. 2:50 pm: Power supply of the nearby regions in Panchkula has been disconnected, according to Hindustan Times, ahead of the verdict. Meanwhile, some reports indicate that the verdict will not be disclosed to public for about 45 to 60 minutes after it is read out in court. There is no confirmation on these reports yet. We will update you with the verdict as soon as we receive a confirmed report. 2:40 pm: According to reporters, followers of Dera Sacha Sauda are seen celebrating outside the court in Panchkula. According to reporters at the scene, the followers are saying that the verdict is declared and he has been cleared of the charges. We are unable to confirm any verdict yet. 2:30 pm: The hearing in the case has begun at CBI court in Panchkula, HT reported. The verdict will be declared shortly. 2:28 pm: “We have made adequate arrangements for the post-verdict situation. Whatever is court’s verdict, we shall implement the court procedure. We are ready to deal with any kind of situation. I appeal to the people to maintain peace and harmony”, said Haryana Chief Minister, Manohar Lal Khattar while issuing a public appeal just now as dera chief entered the CBI court complex in Panchkula. 2:22 pm: Here is a small reminder on the security outside the CBI court. The court complex that houses the CBI court is protected by three layers of security, with 150 personnel of Haryana Police and paramilitary forces guarding it over a radius of 200 m. Some reports say only two cars from his cavalcade will be allowed in the court premises. 2:18 pm: Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh arrived at CBI court in Panchkula, where the verdict will be announced any time now. We will keep you updated with the verdict as soon as it is announced. Meanwhile, Punjab police has initiated a one-km curfew outside the premises of Patiala Palace, as the situation continues to get tense ahead of the verdict. 2:10 pm: The Dera Sacha Sauda chief will shortly reach the CBI court in Panchkula where the verdict will be soon be announced. According to reports that are coming in, Ram only two cars from the cavalcade will be allowed entry inside the court’s premises. 2:00 pm: Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh has arrived at Panchkula to appear before a special CBI court. The verdict in the rape case against the Dera Sacha Sauda Chief will be announced soon. The Dera Sacha Sauda chief was accompanied by a 200 car convoy. Below are earlier visuals of Ram Rahim Singh’s convoy as it passed through Kurukshetra district of Haryana, on its way to Panchkula. According to a report by HT, Ram Rahim stopped on the way at Kurukshetra to meet up with his followers. 1.50 pm: If you’re just joining us, here’s a quick update on what’s happening ahead of the CBI court’s verdict on the rape case against Dera Sacha Sauda head Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh. Ram Rahim left the sect’s headquarters in Sirsa at around 9 am this morning and will shortly arrive in court. There is heavy deployment of Army personnel in Panchkula, around the court and the CBI headquarters. Ahead of the verdict, the Punjab and Haryana High Court directed personnel to use weapons and force if the situation gets out of hand — there are thousands of Dera supporters in the city, who are awaiting the judgment. The court will reconvene at 4 pm to take stock of the situation. 1.35 pm: Curfew has been imposed in a one kilometre radius around Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh’s residence, reports HT. Meanwhile, there are reports that Ram Rahim has reached the Panchkula court, although we can’t confirm this. 1.14 pm: There has been a decline in the number of patients at the Panchkula civil hospital over the last three days. “On August 22, the number of patients admitted to the emergency was 274. On August 23, the number was 194. The number of patients registered till Thursday evening was around 100,” an official from the hospital said. The decrease may be attributed to the police restrictions across the city, ahead of today’s verdict. Read more here. 1.09 pm: Security has been stepped up at gurdwaras in Haryana. At Nadha Sahib Gurudwara, as many as five police personnel are deployed at its entrance and are on alert. 12.49 pm: The AG has told the Punjab and Haryana High Court that media reports claiming the dera chief is travelling to Panchkula in a convoy of 800 vehicles is incorrect. “The convoy comprises five vehicles of dera chief and five-six of state police”, AG said. He was responding to a full bench, comprising Acting Chief Justice Justice SS Saron, Justice Avneesh Jhingan and Justice Surya Kant, which was hearing a PIL this morning. 12.42 pm: The Punjab and Haryana High Court has said “forces should not hesitate to use weapons, if required”, while hearing a PIL on the situation in Panchkula. The bench of justices also directed the Haryana government to monitor the law and order situation and take immediate action against any political party or leader if there’s interference. Read More here 12.38 pm: Army columns are moving towards Panchkula, as more followers gather in the town ahead of the CBI court’s verdict against Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh. At the same time, personnel are surveying the city from helicopters, to maintain law and order. 12.32 pm: What is Dera Sacha Sauda? The spiritual sect was established by Mastaa Balochistani on 29 April 1948. The sect’s headquarters is located in Sirsa district of Haryana, but there are over 46 ashrams across the country. Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, 50, is the head of spiritual sect. The Dera’s official website claims it has 60 million “faithful followers” worldwide. It has a massive following across Punjab, Haryana and other states, most of whom are Dalits. 12.10 pm: Former Haryana CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda has appealed to the people to maintain peace. “Want to appeal to people of Haryana to maintain peace,” he was quoted as saying by ANI. Meanwhile, the Dera chief, after stopping to eat breakfast at Kaithal, is now on the road again. He is likely to stop in Kurukshetra next, reports Hindustan Times. 11.54 am: 89 trains in the Ambala division of the Northern Railway has been cancelled in light of security arrangements made ahead of the CBI court’s verdict on the rape case against Ram Rahim. Dinesh Kumar, Divisional Railway Manager (DRM), Ambala division, told Chandigarh Newsline that no train would operate from 5 am to 5 pm between Chandigarh and Ambala on Friday. List of trains affected due to Law & Order situation in Haryana & Punjab. Other trains (not in list) are running.@RailMinIndia@GM_NRlypic.twitter.com/RS7NbUAjSs — Northern Railway (@RailwayNorthern) August 25, 2017 Read: Travel operators in Chandigarh hike fares in view of prevailing situation 11.44 am: This is the third major police-public standoff in Haryana, under the BJP government led by CM Manohar Lal Khattar. The first confrontation was with the followers of godman Rampal in which six people were killed, and the second, during the Jat quota agitation, in which 30 people died. But, twice bitten, Haryana CM Manohar Lal Khattar is not third-time shy. 11.36 am: Security around the CBI court in Panchkula has been beefed up, with three layers of security comprising 150 personnel of the Haryana Police and paramilitary forces. Security is also beefed up at the CBI zonal headquarters in Sector 30. CBI Judge Jagdeep Singh, who will pronounce the verdict, has been assigned additional security as well. Read more about the three-layer security ring thrown around CBI court. 11.10 am: Who is Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh? Born in Sri Gurusar Modia village in Rajasthan’s Sri Ganganagar district, Gurmeet was raised by his father, a landlord. The 50-year-old, who is said to have always been spiritual, was picked out by Shah Satnam Singh, then head of the Dera Sacha Sauda in Sirsa, when he was seven. In 1990, when he turned 23-years-old, Ram Rahim was chosen as Satnam Singh’s successor. He has completed high school and is married to Harjeet Kaur. They have three children, Charanpreet, Amanpreet and Jasmeet. They also adopted a girl later. 10.54 am: “There’s peace and everything is in place. Have faith in us, proceedings will take place peacefully,” DGP Haryana said ahead of the verdict, reported ANI. 10.42 am: The Indian Express explains why a court verdict has Punjab, Haryana on tenterhooks: “Both states, in which a large number of Dera followers reside, fear large-scale violence if the verdict goes against the Dera chief. Dera followers, who are called “premis”, have already gathered in their thousands in Panchkula, at the headquarters of the sect in Sirsa, and at its deras in Punjab and Haryana to express solidarity with Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh in case of a conviction. The Dera has a massive base of followers across Punjab, Haryana and other states, most of whom are Dalits.” Read more here. 10.38 am: Dera followers have been reluctant to leave Panchkula, leaving personnel in a tight spot. Many of them have said they will leave the town only after having the sect head’s “darshan”. The city is in lockdown, as followers crowd parks, roads and any other available space. 10.31 am: The situation in Punjab and Haryana is being closely monitored by both governments under Chief Ministers Amarinder Singh and Manohar Lal Khattar. The Centre is also watching the situation, and is being regularly updated by the states. The Army was deployed in Sirsa and Panchkula this morning, a day after Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh assured Khattar of the Centre’s support. 10.26 am: The Dera chief’s followers attempted to stop his convoy from leaving the sect headquarters at Sirsa this morning. Many of them were in tears, while several reportedly fainted as his convoy left the city. While on Thursday it remained uncertain as to how Ram Rahim would travel to Panchkula, with reports of him being airlifted, he is now enroute via road and likely to reach in three hours. 9.55 am: Ram Rahim left the sect headquarters at Sirsa at around 9 am this morning to appear before a special CBI court at Panchkula. Sirsa is 260 kilometres from Chandigarh. It will take him at least three hours to reach the court. The Dera chief has been assigned ‘Z’ category security, but is accompanied by his own security guards as well this morning. Speaking to PTI, Sirsa deputy commissioner Prabhjot Singh confirmed, “He has left Sirsa by road.” 9.44 am: Yesterday, a Dera spokesperson had claimed that nearly 5 lakh followers had arrived ahead of the verdict. Aditya Insa had said, “Five lakh followers have arrived in Dera. The sect has contributed in various fields to serve humanity.” Meanwhile, another spokesperson, Dilawar Insa had said the sect favours peace but fears some anti-social element may take advantage to “defame it”, reported PTI. 9.20 am: Ram Rahim has left for Panchkula, where the CBI court will deliver its verdict in the rape case against him, reports PTI. 9.07 am: The Punjab and Haryana High Court on Thursday had rapped the state government for its inaction in imposing Section 144, which disallows groups of more than 5 people to gather. The court had stated: ““We want preventive action and it is visible in none of the state’s orders. It is really disheartening. The same thing happened during the Jat agitation. You are encouraging them. Where is the order prohibiting the assembly of five and more? We asked you to get the order. These are the basic preventive measures even for a simple law and order problem. You then cry before the Centre on the gravity of the situation but who has created the gravity.” The court was hearing a PIL regarding the presence of thousands of Dera followers. Read: ‘Complete collusion, why let the crowd gather’ 9.02 am: Ram Rahim had confirmed yesterday that he will appear before the CBI court today for the verdict. Despite the presence of personnel in Panchkula, Rahim’s travel by road from Sirsa will challenge the police are his followers are expected to throng the entire 250-km stretch of the state highway. Along this route, over 20 companies of paramilitary forces will be deployed. Read: Curfew on in Sirsa on night before Dera chief verdict Taking to Twitter, Ram Rahim on Thursday said, “I have always respected the law. Even though I am having a backache, still abiding by law, I will go to court (tomorrow). I have full faith in God. Everyone should maintain peace.” 8.55 am: Following the trial, the complainant had alleged, “My life has changed after I gave the statement. I can’t move freely. There is danger to my life. I am also apprehensive about lives of my family members. Nothing can happen in the dera without permission of the ‘Baba’ because of his terror. I have heard that if somebody speaks against the Guru, he should be lynched. The followers take his preachings as message of God. The dera chief gives money to followers if they influence their relatives and others to join the dera”. Read more here. 8.49 am: To recap the developments in the case: A case of sexual exploitation was registered against Ram Rahim in 2002, based on anonymous letters alleging the sect head had raped two women followers. The trial began in 2008. The CBI was able to track down the two sadhvis, who deposed in court. The verdict of this will be read today. 8.36 am: Tens of thousands of people have assembled in Panchkula ahead of the verdict, which is likely to be read at 2.45 pm. Over 15,000 paramilitary personnel are deployed in both Punjab and Haryana as a precautionary measure, while the local police are on high alert and watching the situation on ground and on social media. WhatsApp groups, Facebook and Twitter are being monitored to ensure fake news is not circulated. The Centre has assured help to the two state governments. 8.30 am: Welcome to our live blog on a CBI court’s verdict on a rape case against Dera Sacha Sauda head Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh. Advertising (With inputs from Varinder Bhatia, Sukhbir Siwach and Man Aman Chhina) |
Did Drake and Future really make What a Time to Be Alive in six days? That's the same amount of time it took God to create the Earth. And Drake and Future have earned their seventh day of rest for "Diamonds Dancing". Future goes high soprano, the saxophone comes in cool, and the hook is simply "diamonds, diamonds, diamonds, diamonds on me dancing"—an extremely fun alliteration, especially when said over crushingly low drums. The five-minute track ends with a stereotypical Drake lamentation over ambient noise that will not convert anyone who thinks he is a melancholy cornball. But if you love that shit, well, it is perfect. Could "Diamonds Dancing" be shorter? Yes. Could the chorus be longer? Yes. But God fucked up some Earth shit, too. Who needs pollution and murderers? But sometimes you accept the worst and turn your face to the best in order to live. What a time to be alive, indeed! Listen on Apple Music. |
A witness to the drowning of two Winnipeg children — an 11-year-old girl and a 12-year-old boy — on Monday at Grand Beach calls the event a "terrible tragedy." Wendy Nichol was sitting near the beach safety station on the western side of Grand Beach along Lake Winnipeg when she first noticed there was a search underway for two missing children. "I was convinced, they're at the arcade, They're on the trail," Nichol said. Moments later she saw a "very concerned, very worried" beach safety officer, who unlike lifeguards do not provide supervision but do administer first aid and water rescues, run over to where other safety officers were gathering. "They all put their arms around one another and they walked very slowly along the beach ... gradually got a little deeper and a little deeper." An 11-year-old girl and a 12-year-old boy died in the water off Grand Beach on Monday. 2:24 "They were up to their necks ... then they got into a little huddle and all of a sudden they said, 'We found them we found them.' They scooped up these young children and I could see these skinny little arms and legs. I was just sick. Just sick." Police were called at about 7:30 p.m. and a STARS air ambulance landed about 30 metres from the water's edge at 8:15 p.m. The two children had already been pulled ashore by the time emergency workers arrived on the scene, RCMP said According to Nichol and RCMP, the children were found in the water along the western side of West Beach, near the popular boardwalk area. "It was a terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible tragedy. A terrible tragedy to see two young children like that," said Nichol. "The two children were in the water together and being supervised by the parents of the 12-year-old boy when one of the parents lost track of the children due to the setting sun," RCMP Sgt. Bert Paquet said in a statement. Grant Magnusson saw lifeguards, police and others clear the beach and try to revive the children as they lay on the sand. An 11-year-old girl and a 12-year-old boy, both from Winnipeg, drowned in the waters of Lake Winnipeg at Grand Beach on Monday evening, RCMP say. 0:35 "They were working pretty fast and furious. The firefighters were doing a lot of very heavy chest compressions," Magnusson said. Emergency crews spent 30 minutes trying to resuscitate the pair but were unable to save them. STARS spokesperson Cam Heke said the spot where the two drowned is "quite busy" and there were a lot of people in the area who were moved from the beach to the boardwalk area. @GrandMaraisMB Cottage Rentals tweeted this photo of a STARS air ambulance landing near the shoreline in Grand Beach, Man., Monday night. (@GrandMaraisMB) "This was a very sad and very tragic call," Heke said. "Our heart goes out to everyone directly involved but also the broader community, because this was a very tragic and very public event." RCMP are investigating but said the drowning doesn't appear suspicious in nature. Drowning deaths in Canada happen most often in the summer months, with 34 per cent, or just over one-third, of all drownings from 2009 to 2013 happening in July and August, a report from the Lifesaving Society Canada states. Just over one-third of all drowning deaths from 2004 to 2013 happened in lakes or ponds. There were 15 water-related fatalities in Manitoba in 2014 and nine in 2015. At least two people drowned in Manitoba in July 2016. |
Jared Wickerham/Getty Images The kid from Iona had a good arm—good enough to light up a radar gun at 95 mph, good enough to attract major league scouts and eventually good enough to convince the Washington Nationals to draft him in the fourth round of the 2015 MLB draft (134th overall) and give him $410,700. The kid had a good arm, but plenty of kids have good arms, and this kid didn't stand out enough that you'd know his name. Except in his case, you do know his name, because you've been hearing it for years. Mariano Rivera. The kid is Mariano Rivera III, and he's just three games into his professional career, three games and a total of eight innings for the Auburn Doubledays of the New York-Penn League. It's still far too early to know if he'll make it to the big leagues, let alone whether he'll live up to the name his famous father gave him. For now, he's a prospect and also part of a unique trio of Nationals minor leaguers. Not many sons of Hall of Famers follow their dads into professional baseball, but the Nationals have two of them—three if you count Rivera, whose father is certain to make it to Cooperstown as soon as he's eligible (2019). Already, the Nationals had Ryan Ripken (son of Cal Ripken Jr.), who was drafted in the 15th round last year. Already, they had Tony Gwynn Jr., signed to a minor league contract in March and playing this year at Triple-A Syracuse. Nationals people will tell you it's more coincidence than anything, three separate situations for three very different players. Ripken's kid wasn't considered a big prospect, although he showed a decent bat before suffering a broken ankle this spring. Gwynn Jr. has kicked around from team to team and was signed because the Nationals needed someone who could play center field in Triple-A. Rivera is different, because he is a prospect. Not many sons of Hall of Famers make it to the big leagues (Gwynn is one of only 11, according to research by the Hall of Fame and by Joe Posnanski), and even fewer star in the big leagues (Dale Berra, Yogi's son, probably had the best career of the eight). At 21 years old and just getting started in the low minors, Rivera has a long way to go. But he also has that good arm that got him noticed and those good genes that made everyone think about him a little more than you would the average college pitcher. "It's in the blood," said John Malzone, the Nationals scout who followed Rivera for two years and eventually signed him. It's in Malzone's blood, too. His father, Frank Malzone, was a six-time All-Star, not quite a Hall of Famer (Cooperstown version), but a Red Sox Hall of Famer. It's in Mike Rizzo's blood, too. Rizzo is the Nationals general manager, but he's also Phil Rizzo's son. And Phil Rizzo was in the inaugural class at the Professional Baseball Scouts Hall of Fame (and now works for his son as a Nationals scout). Mike Rizzo understands the pressure of following a well-known father into the family business. "It obviously puts added pressure and scrutiny on the players, especially young players learning the craft," he said. "It's real. It's tangible." Malzone first saw Rivera at a scouts day at Iona, then went to watch one of his final starts in 2014. He wrote up a report, but it was the Yankees who drafted Rivera in June 2014. He was a 29th-round pick and didn't sign, so Malzone kept him in mind when he saw the Iona schedule last winter. "The first time I saw him [this year], it was a cold, rainy, windy day, and I think I was the only scout in the stands," Malzone said. "I was watching and I thought, 'Wow, he looks really good.' The fastball was crisp, and he had a swing-and-miss slider. The gun reading was up 3-4 mph from the year before. "His mound presence was even better. He's just getting better and better." The elder Rivera made a living throwing basically one pitch, a cut fastball that he didn't throw until his second full year in the big leagues. "A gift from God," Rivera would call it. Rivera III doesn't have that gift, at least not yet. But Malzone said when he watched the kid pitch, he saw the same demeanor and focus that the great Mariano showed. The comparisons will continue, for better or for worse. Rivera made his first professional appearance on the road, on June 23 in State College, Pennsylvania. As he took the mound, the hometown Spikes played "Enter Sandman," his father's famed walk-in song. "I knew they were going to try to mess around with me," Rivera told Kelsie Heneghan of MiLB.com. "They did it, and it's their way of having fun." His fun came once the song ended. Rivera pitched two scoreless innings, striking out four. In two outings since, he's had mixed results. He's made two relief appearances and one start, and the Nationals seem content to wait before deciding whether his future is in the rotation or the bullpen. His father, remember, was a starter through the minor leagues, before moving to the bullpen as a big league rookie. The kid will keep pitching, and he'll go as far as his right arm will take him. He'll need to go a long way before his name appears without a mention of his father. "It's very tough carrying that name," the younger Rivera told James Wagner of the Washington Post. "I always felt there was a shadow. I've learned to step away from that shadow, and learned to become my own person and my own player." Tony Gwynn Jr. could certainly relate. So could Ryan Ripken. It's not always easy, and maybe that's why so few sons of Hall of Famers have even made it to the big leagues for a day. Not one of them has made it to the Hall of Fame himself, or even come close. Perhaps the kid from Iona will change all that someday. For now, he's just a kid with a good arm—and a famous name. Danny Knobler covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report. Follow Danny on Twitter and talk baseball. |
poster="https://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201609/3341/1155968404_5138409475001_5138395027001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" true Bobby Knight lauds 'Saint Donald' for temperament If not for the presidency, Bobby Knight is pushing Donald Trump for sainthood. “I actually enjoyed the day with Saint Donald and I've enjoyed watching him. I've really enjoyed watching him, I think go about things the way that he thought things should be.,” the legendary basketball coach said Friday on “Fox & Friends,” echoing a sobriquet he has begun using for the Republican nominee in recent days. “I think the man has a lot of really, really good things to bring to the table.” Story Continued Below Remarking upon Trump’s transformation as a presidential candidate, the famously hot-headed Hall of Fame coach said he was not sure if he would say the boastful businessman has become “milder.” “But I just have seen him take a different approach to how things should be and go about attacking things and what's wrong,” Knight said. “I've really been impressed with the interest that he has in seeing that things are done in the right way.” Asked whether he had discussed the ongoing unrest in Charlotte, North Carolina, after police shot and killed an African-American man, Knight replied, “Not really.” “I mean that's -- you know, what is there to say?” he remarked. “It was wrong. It was—You know, you could go forever. That was not something that we really directed our attention to.” As far as what the two did discuss, Knight made note of Trump’s business records and ability to solve problems. “And that's what I think is the most important thing he brings to this job. The guy is going -- hey, this isn't working, we got to figure out what's wrong with this and we got to get this straightened out,” Knight said. “That, to me, is what being president is all about, and I don't think -- has there ever been a president that hasn't had problems?” The best president at that “might have been Reagan,” Knight said, adding, “that’s what Donald Trump brings to the table.” When it comes to Hillary Clinton’s assertion that Trump lacks the temperament to be commander in chief, Knight invoked his favorite presidents to argue the opposite. “Well, I think that being pretty strong willed is a pretty good asset to have,” he added. “I mean, who had -- has there ever been a president that was better than Harry Truman and Harry Truman had a damn good temperament.” |
Federal forces will take over security in a large swath of a western Mexico state where firefights between vigilante groups and drug traffickers erupted over the weekend, a top Mexican official announced. Interior Secretary Miguel Angel Osorio Chong on Monday said federal forces with support from Michoacan state police will patrol an area in the state known as Tierra Caliente, the home base of the Knights Templar drug cartel. "Be certain we will contain the violence in Michoacan," Osorio Chong said. He gave no details on what federal agencies would be involved or give numbers on planned forces. Some federal police and troops have been sent to the region in recent months because of the unrest, but have generally not intervened. Osorio Chong made the announcement after a meeting called by Michoacan state governor Fausto Vallejo following a weekend of firefights between drug traffickers and some of the vigilante groups that have sprung up by the dozens over the past year to confront the gangs. Joining forces Congressman Ernesto Nunez of the Green Party, who was at the meeting in the state capital of Morelia, said the federal government is looking to have members of the self-defence groups join police department. "Those who they see really have the (police) vocation, those who really love their communities, will be invited to join the police," Nunez said. Estanislao Beltran, a leader of a vigilante group, rejected the idea of giving up their guns or becoming police officers. "If we give up our weapons without any of the drug cartel leaders having been detained, we are putting our families in danger because they will come and kill everyone, including the dogs," Beltran said. He said none of the members of the vigilante groups aspire to be police officers. "What we are doing is fighting for the freedom of our families," he said. No clashes were reported in the Tierra Caliente region Monday, but almost every store was closed in Apatzingan, the biggest city in the area. There were few people on the street and little police presence. Fighting drug traffickers On Sunday, hundreds of members of one vigilante group entered another town, Nueva Italia, and disarmed the local police as part of what they said is a campaign to free communities from the control of the Knights Templar cartel. Shooting broke out almost immediately in and around the town square. Only one injury was reported. Opponents and critics contend the vigilantes are backed by a rival cartel. The groups deny that. Osorio Chong said federal authorities will go after anyone acting outside the law and called on self-defense group members to return to their villages. The federal government has said the civilian vigilante groups are operating outside the law. They carry high-caliber weapons that Mexico only allows for military use. But government forces have not moved against the groups and in some cases have appeared to be working in concert with the vigilantes. Rumors circulate that some self-defence groups have been infiltrated by the New Generation cartel, which is reportedly fighting a turf war with the Knights Templar in Michoacan, a rich farming state that is a major producer of limes, avocados and mangos. Some in the region say members of the Knights Templar have also tried to use self-defence groups as cover for illegal activities. |
cityscape Scene: Ai Weiwei’s Bikes Arrive at Nathan Phillips Square Ai Weiwei's contribution to Nuit Blanche 2013 has arrived, but some assembly is required. SHOW CAPTION ✉ Share on: 277962 20130919aiweiweibikes1 https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/20130919aiweiweibikes1-100x100.jpg https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/20130919aiweiweibikes1-640x425.jpg https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/20130919aiweiweibikes1.jpg 640 425 https://torontoist.com/2013/09/scene-ai-weiweis-bikes-arrive-at-nathan-phillips-square/slide/20130919aiweiweibikes1/ 20130919aiweiweibikes1 0 0 277963 20130919aiweiweibikes2 https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/20130919aiweiweibikes2-100x100.jpg https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/20130919aiweiweibikes2-640x425.jpg https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/20130919aiweiweibikes2.jpg 640 425 https://torontoist.com/2013/09/scene-ai-weiweis-bikes-arrive-at-nathan-phillips-square/slide/20130919aiweiweibikes2/ 20130919aiweiweibikes2 0 0 277964 20130919aiweiweibikes3 https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/20130919aiweiweibikes3-100x100.jpg https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/20130919aiweiweibikes3-640x425.jpg https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/20130919aiweiweibikes3.jpg 640 425 https://torontoist.com/2013/09/scene-ai-weiweis-bikes-arrive-at-nathan-phillips-square/slide/20130919aiweiweibikes3/ 20130919aiweiweibikes3 0 0 277965 20130919aiweiweibikes4 https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/20130919aiweiweibikes4-100x100.jpg https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/20130919aiweiweibikes4-640x425.jpg https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/20130919aiweiweibikes4.jpg 640 425 https://torontoist.com/2013/09/scene-ai-weiweis-bikes-arrive-at-nathan-phillips-square/slide/20130919aiweiweibikes4/ 20130919aiweiweibikes4 0 0 277966 20130919aiweiweibikes5 https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/20130919aiweiweibikes5-100x100.jpg https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/20130919aiweiweibikes5-640x425.jpg https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/20130919aiweiweibikes5.jpg 640 425 https://torontoist.com/2013/09/scene-ai-weiweis-bikes-arrive-at-nathan-phillips-square/slide/20130919aiweiweibikes5/ 20130919aiweiweibikes5 0 0 277967 20130919aiweiweibikes6 https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/20130919aiweiweibikes6-100x100.jpg https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/20130919aiweiweibikes6-640x425.jpg https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/20130919aiweiweibikes6.jpg 640 425 https://torontoist.com/2013/09/scene-ai-weiweis-bikes-arrive-at-nathan-phillips-square/slide/20130919aiweiweibikes6/ 20130919aiweiweibikes6 0 0 277968 20130919aiweiweibikes7 https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/20130919aiweiweibikes7-100x100.jpg https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/20130919aiweiweibikes7-640x425.jpg https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/20130919aiweiweibikes7.jpg 640 425 https://torontoist.com/2013/09/scene-ai-weiweis-bikes-arrive-at-nathan-phillips-square/slide/20130919aiweiweibikes7/ 20130919aiweiweibikes7 0 0 WHERE: Nathan Phillips Square WHEN: Thursday, September 19, 11:30 a.m. WHAT: Nuit Blanche 2013 is still a couple weeks away, but this morning assembly work began on what’s expected to be one of the all-night art event’s major installations: Forever Bicycles, a commission from the world-famous Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei. The piece will consist of 3,144 bikes, all interconnected to form a massive, three-dimensional structure. It’s expected to take 15 days to assemble, and will remain on display even after Nuit Blanche ends, until October 27. Another sculpture by Ai, Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads, is currently on display in the Nathan Phillips Square reflecting pool, and the Art Gallery of Ontario is hosting a big exhibition of his work. |
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